Features - by Tom Clarkson

Brazil is mad for this world title showdown. Pictures of Felipe Massa adorn the sides of buildings throughout Sao Paulo; Paulistas walk the streets wearing counterfeit Ferrari F1 t-shirts and even the...

Got a feeling of déjà vu? Lewis Hamilton has a seven-point lead going into the final round of the World Championship, as he did last year, and the balance of power between Ferrari and McLaren is much...

How much more can Lewis Hamilton take? After his recent penalties at Spa-Francorchamps and Fuji Speedway, the perceived wisdom in the Formula 1 paddock is that Lewis no longer knows what’s permissible...

I’ve just got back from climbing Mount Fuji with Sebastian Vettel and Alex Wurz. What a fantastic way to spend a day, with two of the most down-to-earth racing drivers in the world on the highest...

A fascinating sport this Formula 1. Or so the Japanese would have you believe because every evening at Fuji Speedway thousands of fans sit opposite the pits watching the teams at work. For as long as...

It’s 3am on Monday. The Singapore Grand Prix finished five hours ago and still the lights lining the Marina Bay Circuit blaze away outside the press room. Artificial light is now the norm for F1...

This is turning out to be one weird weekend. Due to the late practice sessions and 8pm (local time) start on Sunday, the Formula 1 paddock is sticking to European time for the weekend. That means...

'There’s something about Sebastian [Vettel],' said Gerhard Berger prior to the start of the year. 'Everything about Formula 1 seems to come so easily to him; it’s as if he was born to be here.' On the...

It’s absolutely bucketing down here. For those of you who can remember last year’s Japanese Grand Prix, the weather’s like it was there: rivers are flowing across the track, mechanics are sweeping...

Should Lewis lose the World Championship by four points, he will look back at this race and think ‘what if’? What if Nicolas Deschaux, Surinder Thatthi and Yves Bacquelaine – the three FIA ...

The magic of Spa is its incongruousness in modern F1. New tracks – Sepang, Istanbul, Shanghai and Bahrain – begin life on Hermann Tilke’s computer screen, but Spa was created by nature. The track...

Valencia laid on a great welcome for the Formula 1 circus over the weekend and it deserved a more exciting inaugural race than this weekend’s uneventful European Grand Prix. It was the most boring...

The track resembled Oxford Street on the last Saturday before Christmas. Drivers, engineers, sponsors and journalists tripped over each other yesterday while walking the new Valencia street circuit,...

They were the most impressive ten seconds of Felipe Massa’s Formula 1 career. His reaction to the lights going out was sublime; he then fed the perfect number of Ferrari horses through his rear...

The Hungaroring is the slowest permanent circuit on the Formula 1 calendar. The quicker cars lap at an average speed of ‘just’ 122mph, which makes slow-speed grip the main focus of attention for...

Great drivers give you options. Michael Schumacher’s four-stop strategy en route to victory at Magny Cours in 2004 was one such example, and Lewis Hamilton’s dominant display at Hockenheim yesterday...

The new Hockenheim is a bit poxy compared to its super-fast predecessor, but you won’t find a better racing circuit anywhere in the world. The long straights and slow corners make overtaking possible,...

People thought Lewis Hamilton couldn’t handle pressure. Mistakes in China and Brazil last year cost him the 2007 World Championship and pessimists had begun pointing to this year’s Canadian and French...

Silverstone marks the halfway point of the 2008 season. Ferrari look like they’re going to walk the constructors’ championship, but four drivers – Felipe Massa, Robert Kubica, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis...

The only surprise was the order of the red cars. Until half distance in the race, Kimi Raikkonen had been the quicker Ferrari driver all weekend, but a broken right exhaust left him down on power and...

Magny Cours gets a bad rap. Too much cow dung and not enough nightlife is the most common complaint. In reality, though, the track’s location is no more remote than Silverstone, Hockenheim,...

We mightn’t know what it’s like to race a Formula 1 car at 220mph, but we know about red traffic lights. Red means stop. So when Lewis failed to see the red light at the end of the pitlane on lap 20...

The feel-good factor surrounding the Canadian Grand Prix makes people do the oddest things. Jenson Button swam the length of the two-kilometre rowing strip behind the paddock on Wednesday ('the water...

As soon as Lewis saw the rain on race morning, he had a good feeling about the Monaco grand prix. Rain raises the bar through these tortuous streets: the visibility is terrible and the road markings...

At 2pm on Sunday, Monaco will become a ludicrous place to stage a grand prix. The race will be a 78-lap procession: no-one will be able to overtake and the Safety Car will be deployed following the...

Tyre wear dominated the pre-race paddock chat in Istanbul, but in the end the Turkish Grand Prix will be remembered for two fantastic human performances. Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton were a class...

Of the new generation tracks, and by that I mean the eight tracks on this year’s calendar that have been designed and built since 1999 by Hermann Tilke, Istanbul Park is the most demanding, both...

After the race, no-one at McLaren could give me the stats surrounding Heikki Kovalainen’s accident on lap 22. The impact speed, the G-forces and even the cause of the left front wheel failure were all...

Big weekend for Lewis Hamilton, this. His world championship challenge requires him to see off Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen in the Spanish Grand Prix, as does his confidence. By his own admission, Lewis...

As predicted, the Prancing Horse galloped into the distance in Bahrain. Felipe Massa controlled the race from the front and Kimi Raikkonen demonstrated the superiority of the F2008 by driving around...