| Tuesday, May 6th 2014, 09:08 GMT |
Williams stalwart Dickie Stanford, who left his role as its Formula 1 team manager earlier this year, is to head up a new historic division at the Grove-based outfit
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| By Jonathan Noble | Tuesday, May 6th 2014, 10:59 GMT |
Ferrari has tipped Kimi Raikkonen to rapidly get on top of his early season Formula 1 struggles
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| Tuesday, May 6th 2014, 11:23 GMT |
Al Pease, who started two Formula 1 world championship grands prix in Eagle machinery in the late 1960s, died on Sunday at the age of 92.
British-born, he moved to North America after the Second World War and settled in Canada, entering what was now his home grand prix from 1967-69 driving an Eagle-Climax T1G on all three occasions.
Driving uncompetitive machinery, he qualified 15th and 17th for the 1967 and '69 races, but was unable to start in '68 because of engine problems.
He was running at the finish in 1967, but not classified as he was, infamously, 43 laps down, although this was primarily the result of recurring battery problems.
By 1969, the Eagle was even more uncompetitive and he was black-flagged after incurring the ire of too many frontrunning drivers while being lapped.
While his outings in grand prix racing were characterised by a lack of pace and earned him an unfair reputation, in Canadian national motorsport Pease showed his worth.
There, he was a serial race and title-winner, enjoying success in categories such as the Canadian Road Racing Championship.
After starting out racing sportscars in the 1950s, Pease diversified into single-seaters and was still competing in historic events in the late eighties. He will be remembered as a significant figure in Canadian motorsport.
| By Jonathan Noble | Monday, May 5th 2014, 08:48 GMT |
Niki Lauda believes Mercedes is doing a better job in dominating Formula 1 this year than Red Bull did when it was winning everything at the end of last season.
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| By Edd Straw | Monday, May 5th 2014, 10:54 GMT |
Scuderia Toro Rosso's upgrade package for the Spanish Grand Prix is only the first in a series of developments for the next four Formula 1 races
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| By Jonathan Noble | Monday, May 5th 2014, 11:24 GMT |
Formula 1 teams should waste no time in implementing changes to make cars more spectacular, claims former driver Derek Warwick.
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| Friday, May 2nd 2014, 15:30 GMT |
Nigel Stepney, the former Ferrari mechanic who was at the centre of the 2007 Formula 1 'spygate' scandal, has died.
The 56-year-old was involved in a road traffic accident in Kent in the early hours of Friday morning.
A statement from the Kent Police said that investigations were underway as to the cause of the incident.
PC Glen Braidwood of Kent Police's Serious Collision Investigation Unit said: "A silver VW caddy van, driven by a 56 year-old man from the Essex area, had stopped on the hard shoulder of the M20 Londonbound carriageway at Ashford.
"For reasons yet to be established, the man appears to have entered the carriageway and was then in collision with an articulated goods vehicle. He was pronounced deceased at the scene."
Stepney enjoyed a lengthy career in F1, working for Shadow, Lotus, Benetton and Ferrari.
Having left F1 in the wake of the 2007 spy affair between McLaren and Ferrari, Stepney most recently worked in sportscars - joining the JRM outfit in 2010.
James Rumsey, the owner of JRM, was one of the first to pay tribute to Stepney.
"Nigel was an intense and fierce competitor and always strived for excellence in our racing," he said.
"We certainly could not have achieved our level of success without his leadership and experience.
"Away from the track, he was a focused, driven and passionate member of the JRM Group, and a loving father to his family.
"The rest of the engineering and race team here at JRM learned an unimaginable amount from Nigel in the four short years he was with us and his death this morning has shocked everyone to the core.
"Today, the motorsport world has lost one of its greatest characters and competitors. He will be sorely missed and we send our sincere condolences to his family and the many friends he leaves behind."
| By Jonathan Noble | Friday, May 2nd 2014, 12:50 GMT |
The Mercedes Formula 1 team has set its sights on having a bigger advantage over its rivals in the Spanish Grand Prix than it has enjoyed so far this season.
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| Friday, May 2nd 2014, 15:59 GMT |
Nigel Stepney was a key player in Ferrari's dominance of Formula 1 during the Michael Schumacher era but achieved notoriety for his involvement in the spy scandal of 2007.
Stepney's first role in motorsport was with the Broadspeed touring car team as an apprentice mechanic.
There, he worked on Broadspeed's successful touring car programmes before moving into F1 with the Shadow team.
In 1979, he began a long association with Elio de Angelis, following the Italian to Lotus the following year as number one mechanic.
When de Angelis moved to Brabham in 1986, Stepney stayed at Lotus where he worked with Ayrton Senna.
Stepney moved to Benetton ahead of the 1989 season, staying at the team for four seasons, during which he worked with Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher.
He worked outside of F1 in 1992, running the Piquet Racing squad that ran Olivier Beretta in Formula 3000, but after an unsuccessful season returned to F1 with Ferrari.
Stepney played a crucial role in turning Ferrari into a well-organised squad, a process accelerated by Jean Todt's appointment to run the team in mid-1993.
In 1994, Stepney was one of the Ferrari mechanics struck by the wheel shed by Michele Alboreto's Minardi in the pits during the San Marino Grand Prix.
Six years later, during the Spanish GP, he was involved in another pitstop incident when Schumacher was released before Stepney had detached the refuelling hose.
Stepney was dragged to the floor, sustaining ligament damage, but soon returned to work.
He held the key roles of chief mechanic and race/test technical manager at Ferrari before being appointed head of performance development late on.
Stepney admitted to being unhappy with Ferrari in early 2007 and his time with the team came to an end when he became embroiled in the McLaren spy scandal.
He was accused by the Scuderia both of sabotaging the team's cars and passing its intellectual property to rival squad McLaren and was dismissed by the team in July that year.
Stepney admitted to the FIA that he did pass on sensitive information to McLaren but later downplayed the scale of his involvement.
He escaped any sporting censure beyond it being recommended teams should not associate with him.
He was sentenced to 20 months in prison for his part in the affair by an Italian court in 2010 but did not serve any time.
By then, he had already returned to motorsport, in 2008 joining on-board camera specialist Gigawave, which also fielded a sportscar team.
In 2010, he joined the JRM team, running factory Nissan equipment in sportscars.
There, Stepney worked as technical director, leading the team to victory in the FIA GT Championship in 2011 with Michael Krumm and Lucas Luhr.
The squad then moved into prototypes in the World Endurance Championship, running HPD machinery to sixth in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2012 with David Brabham, Peter Dumbreck and Karun Chandhok.
The JRM-developed Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 took Lucas Ordonez to last year's Blancpain Endurance Pro-Am Cup championship title and the outfit continues to support customer squads this year.
| By Jonathan Noble | Friday, May 2nd 2014, 12:50 GMT |
The Mercedes Formula 1 team has set its sights on having a bigger advantage over its rivals in the Spanish Grand Prix than it has enjoyed so far this season.
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