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For months now I have been stuck in a motorsports wilderness desperately searching for an F1 fix and like a true addict I have tried all kinds of substitutes. eSports just couldn't match the high, Indy Car left me feeling dirty and old races scratched the itch, but did not satisfy for long. It was like the winter break but worse as no-one could tell us when it would end.   It genuinely felt like something was missing from my life at a time when I could have really used the lift F1 gives me. A distraction from the real news. The easy social interaction and an excuse to call people to chat about the latest developments. The elation of watching the lights go out and watching the world's best drivers competing in the world's fastest cars.   When they first published the eight confirmed races for this season I chose not to get my hopes up as it could after all change so quickly.  The world has changed in ways we do not even understand yet as a result of this insidiou...

I have lost track of the number of times when telling someone that I am a passionate F1 fan that they announce ‘Oh F1 is boring; I only watch the starts’ or ‘the crashes are the only good bits.’ My response is normally to tell them they are watching it wrong; with this article I hope to explain how even new fans can find the whole Grand Prix interesting, even when not much is happening on track.    Get to know the larger-than-life personalities It feels like some of Liberty Media’s efforts to attract new fans to the sport are working and one of the most successful of these new initiatives is the excellent Drive to Survive documentary on Netflix.  F1 has always been famous for its larger-than-life personalities. There is a long list including the likes of Fangio, Ferrari, Hunt and Senna to name a few.  It is hardly surprising then that the current paddock includes more than a few big personalities and the behind-the-scenes style of Drive to Survive reall...

Amid all of the furore surrounding a certain race changing penalty awarded to Sebastian Vettel there has been little coverage of a number of stories that would have been big news after any other race. Let’s have a look at three big stories that nobody is talking about. Renault Renaissance This weekend in Montreal Renault scored as many points as they had in the previous six races. With Daniel Ricciardo qualifying in an impressive fourth place and finishing in an almost as impressive sixth following some exciting racing with Max Verstappen and Nico Hulkenburg who managed to qualify seventh and hold on to his starting position to the end of the Grand Prix. The big question is was this some sort of fluke or quirk of the Canadian GP? The good news for Renault is that this may well be a representative result. Renault announced that they would be bringing a significant back log of upgrades to Canada as well as an engine upgrade halving the deficit to Mercedes. This certainly see...

F1 insiders often describe the Monaco GP as the ‘Jewel in the F1 Crown’ and it would be easy to understand why if you had access to Champagne and super yachts, but for us mere mortals existing far from the glamour of the principality the race has often been, to be frank, a little bit dull. The race has in recent years been a bit of a procession with wide cars struggling to overtake on narrow streets with the occasional crash thrown in to liven things up. As a die-hard Formula 1 fan I will obsessively watch all of the races but I must admit I was not really looking forward to Monaco this year. To my great surprise I found that I not only enjoyed the race, but probably enjoyed it as much as any of the other races so far this season. Is this a damning indictment of the races so far in 2019 or was Monaco more watchable than it has been in previous years? The build-up to the race was characterised by the usual razzmatazz that marks the arrival of F1 in Monaco and a qualifying that...

I should start this article by holding my hand up and admitting I am a big Mercedes fan; in fact, I am almost as fanatical as a full blown Tifosi is about Ferrari. Despite this I have a dawning realization that perhaps the current period of Mercedes’ dominance since 2014 may be damaging the sport. We have seen periods of dominance by other constructors, notably Red Bull and before that Ferrari, but the sport has rarely seen the level of dominance that allows a team to score five consecutive 1-2 finishes at the start of a new season. Since the introduction of the V6 hybrid engine in 2014 the numbers make stark reading. Mercedes have won five consecutive Driver and Constructor World Championships. They have won 78 of the 104 races during this period or just over three quarters. Even more starkly there have been only six races during this period during which they did not make the podium. Mercedes cannot be blamed for dominating so utterly. They are a race team; this is their ra...

We are only three races into the 2019 season and it has already been kinder to some drivers than others. This article will examine which drivers are thriving at the top of their game and who is hanging tight just to survive to the next race. Thriving: Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas It is probably best to get the discussion about the undeniable success of the Mercedes duo out of the way first. Lewis has started the season with the assurance that you would expect from a five-time world champion and Bottas has come back from the closed season with an assurance we haven’t seen from the Finn since his days at Williams. The Mercedes W10 is undoubtedly an excellent car and worryingly for Ferrari one with great upgradability. Both Mercedes’ drivers have put in the sort of assured, level-headed performances that have allowed them to capitalise on mistakes from Ferrari when they have been behind. I think most Formula 1 fans are hoping that Ferrari can find some performance or ...