This year’s British Grand Prix was supposed to be Silverstone’s swan song and the theatrics of the yearlong telenovela that was the 2009 Formula One season were certainly in synch with the drama: it was the weekend when Formula One appeared to suddenly die.

It was also the weekend that marked the end of Jenson Button’s domination, as his young rival Sebastian Vettel powered away to a win.

Donington Park was set to host the British Grand Prix from 2010 on, but its promoters have failed to secure the funds to do so and were stripped of the rights to host the race.

Silverstone, a former airstrip which first held a Grand Prix in 1948 and was the site of the first Formula One race in 1950, is now back for at least five years, as Damon Hill—president of the British Racing Drivers’ Club, Silverstone’s owner—and Bernie Ecclestone have come to an agreement.

Meanwhile, secure in his burrow, Silverstone Bunny is celebrating this wonderful turn of events with a mighty bottle of carrot champagne.

In case you were wondering about the man on fire, it’s Brabham BMW’s Andrea de Cesaris in the process of rupturing his fuel line during the 1987 F1 race at Silverstone.

Photo Credit: Chris Cole/Allsport, Pascal Rondeau/Allsport

After kicking the collective asses of Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello, Nelson Piquet and a bunch of other famous drivers, Schumacher was asked about his rumored return to F1 as Nico Rossberg's teammate at Mercedes. Refusing to refute the story, Schumi said, "Who knows? Anything can happen....I don't have any problems with my neck. It's 100 per cent."

Worried that the 40-year-old might not have what it takes to deliver the goods in F1? Check out this video for proof of his driving chops.
[via 0-60]

This is the start of a new semi-regular Jalopnik series we're calling "Auto-Erotic Design." We give you our favorite shot of a car part, you try to one-up us in the comments below by posting your favorite shot. To see if you can beat the hot automotive sex we've dropped atop the post we'll run our reader responses as a gallery the next day. (Note to starred commenters: Help us out by promoting the threads with pictures!)

First up, we're choosing foot pedals. You think you've got some hotter pedals than what McLaren's got? Prove it and show us the sexy below.

[via ColdTrackDays, Richard Thompson]

It’s probably been Formula One’s worst kept secret these past few weeks, but it’s official now: after Rubens Barrichello’s leave for Williams and Brawn GP’s sale to Mercedes-Benz, Jenson Button has left the team to join McLaren for the 2010 Formula One season.

The legend of Brawn GP, with its single season in Formula One which has resulted in both the drivers’ and the constructors’ title, is thus complete.

As for Button’s new job, consider that Lewis Hamilton has consumed two teammates over the course of but three seasons: Heikki Kovalainen over 2008–2009 and double world champion Fernando Alonso in 2007. Both left McLaren in a very unhappy state of mind.

Hamilton is McLaren’s home-grown talent, nurtured since age 13, and while he is undoubtedly scary fast in a well-sorted car, he is also a vain man known for public temper tantrums whenever things go even slightly wrong. Like in the first half of the 2009 season, when McLaren had the misfortune to produce a dog of a racing car.

So while the BBC is calling the Button–Hamilton lineup a “dream team at McLaren,” with both of them British and both of them world champions, expect rifts. McLaren already has a “one driver” and his name is Lewis Hamilton.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/Getty Images, Mark Thompson/Getty Images

The laconic Finn’s premature exit was the talk of the sport for most of the year, especially after Ferrari’s 2009 car turned out to be quite a dud. Nowhere was Räikkönen’s indifference more stark than at the Malaysian Grand Prix, where during a break forced by torrential rain, he wandered about the pits with a bar of ice cream instead of remaining by his racing car:

Räikkönen was forced to leave Ferrari at the end of the season to make way for Fernando Alonso. There were talks with Toyota, hampered by Räikkönen’s high price and ultimately by Toyota’s exit from Formula One, then there were talks with his former team McLaren, which fell through. One has to wonder whether Räikkönen’s exorbitant salary demands—rumored to be close to $50 million, very much not in synch with his performance over the last two seasons—were a deliberate move on his part to ease his exit from the sport.

Going where many Finn have gone before, Räikkönen is set to continue his career in rallying. He has, in fact, already debuted in the World Rally Championship: Räikkönen drove a Super 2000 class Fiat Grande Punto Abarth for Tommi Mäkinen Racing at this year’s Rally Finland in August.

He leaves the sport after nine seasons, with occasional displays of devastating speed and a lucky world championship in 2007, when he exploited the rivalry between McLaren’s Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton and the hubris of the latter to beat both at the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix, claiming the title which had eluded him at McLaren.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images, Massimo Bettiol/Getty Images

Mercedes-Benz have been racing cars for over a century now, but since 1955, they have been doing it in disguise: as AMG, as Sauber, as McLaren.

This is set to chance in 2010: Brawn GP will become Mercedes-Benz’s factory team as Mercedes Grand Prix.

The new team, headed by Ross Brawn, will have quite a history to match. The most famous Mercedes-Benz racing cars are the Silver Arrows, named for their unpainted aluminum bodies: two groups of cars which competed in the 30s and the 50s and won most of the races they were entered in.

Here they are.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W25
Year: 1934–1936
Engine: 3.3-liter straight-8
Power: 354 HP
Claim to fame: The first Silver Arrow

The rise of Mercedes-Benz’s grand prix team paralleled the Nazis’ ascent to power in Germany. After Adolf Hitler became Germany’s chancellor, he was approached by a Daimler-Benz executive and they agreed to a deal where the German state would sponsor the Mercedes-Benz racing team, which was then in deep financial trouble. There is dispute about the precise amount of sponsorship, with various sources pegging it between 10% and 40% of expenses.

The W25 was created for the 750-kilo formula: cars could weigh no more than 1650 pounds. It is not precisely clear how they lost their German racing white to became silver, but the most widely quoted story is that team manager Alfred Neubauer and driver Manfred von Brauchitsch devised the scheme to strip the car of its paint to squeeze it below weight regulations.

In any case, after early teething problems were overcome, it was a very successful car, winning many races in 1934 and taking the 1935 European Grand Prix Championship for Rudolf Caracciola. In its last year, it was eclipsed by Auto Union’s Type C, driven by Bernd Rosemeyer.

Like every Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrow which would follow, the W25 had a supercharged engine which emitted a characteristic whistle under acceleration. If you’re interested, Jenson Button drove it at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, where I captured the whistling on video.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W125
Year: 1937
Engine: 5.6-liter straight-8
Power: 646 HP (← not a typo)
Claim to fame: Most powerful Grand Prix for decades

The W125 was supposed to be a stopgap for the 1937 season, before new rules for 1938 would come into effect, but what a stopgap it’s turned out to be! Developed by young engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who could drive it on the Nürburgring at race speeds, it rectified the W25’s handling problems and received an engine which would not be matched for power until Can-Am cars became truly mad, a good three decades later.

Rudolf Caracciola used the W125 to retake his European Grand Prix Championship title from Bernd Rosemeyer. As displacement rules changed for 1938, the car was retired after its single successful season.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W125 Streamliner
Year: 1937
Engine: 5.6-liter straight-8
Power: 646 HP
Claim to fame: Won fastest ever Grand Prix race

This was a version of the W125 entered for the ludicrous AVUS race, held on two straight stretches of Autobahn with banked corners to connect them. The cars reached speeds of 240 MPH on the straights. Hermann Lang, who won the race in the car pictured, described the sensation as more akin to airplane acrobatics than auto racing.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W125 Rekordwagen
Year: 1938
Engine: 5.5-liter V12
Power: 736 HP
Claim to fame: Holds land speed record on public road

Mercedes-Benz also used the W125 to run speed records attempts on Germany’s newly built Autobahns. On a January morning in 1938, Rudolf Caracciola drove this W125 at 268 MPH on a measured mile between Frankfurt and Darmstadt. To this day, it remains the highest speed ever achieved on a public road. Caracciola would describe the experience of running under overpasses at such speeds as trying very hard to stick a piece of thread through an eye of a needle.

This image is also testament to the troubled relationship Mercedes-Benz has with its past, where great racing success happened to coincide with Nazi power. Look close and you’ll see a swastika airbrushed into moderate oblivion on the driver’s headrest.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W154
Year: 1938–1939
Engine: 3-liter V12
Power: 425 HP
Claim to fame: Beat Auto Union

For 1938, Mercedes-Benz designed a brand-new car, in keeping with the new regulations, which limited displacement to three liters. The resulting W154 was a low-slung technological marvel, running on a mixture of methyl alcohol, nitrobenzene, acetone and sulfuric ether, a gallon of which would propel it for a mere 2.8 miles. Auto Union’s rival Type D was no match for it, and Rudolf Caracciola used the car to take his third and last European grand prix crown.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W165
Year: 1939
Engine: 1.5-liter V8
Power: 254 HP
Claim to fame: Took revenge on sneaky Italians

In the 1920s and 1930s, Tripoli—the Libyan capital, then part of an Italian colony—was host to a glamorous grand prix with high prices. By colonial tradition, it was an Italian home race. Following Hermann Lang’s back-to-back wins in 1937 and 1938 for Mercedes-Benz, the Italians suddenly changed the rules to allow only 1.5-liter cars for the 1939 years—cars which Alfa Romeo and Maserati, as opposed to Mercedes-Benz, happened to possess.

With only 8 months to go, Mercedes-Benz had their work cut out for them. A skunk works was formed, which took the 3-liter W154 and downsized it for Tripoli, finishing the car just in time. Hermann Lang didn’t waste the opportunity and rounded out his hat trick of Tripoli titles to the Italians’ great irritation.

Four months later, Europe was at war and motor racing came to a halt.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: W196 Type Monza
Year: 1954
Engine: 2.5-liter straight-8
Power: 257 HP
Claim to fame: Returned Mercedes-Benz to Grand Prix racing in high style

Barely a decade after World War Two, the Mercedes-Benz team was back in action. Team manager Alfred Neubauer and engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut returned to lead a new team, luring Maserati’s world champion Juan Manuel Fangio to drive their new car, the W196. The team debuted at the 1954 French Grand Prix, where they proceeded to take a 1–2 win.

The streamlined body was good for high-speed tracks like Rheims and Monza but unsuitable for most other circuits. After two races, Mercedes-Benz dropped the streamliner and introduced an open wheel version of the W196 which was used for the rest of their time in Formula One.

Photo Credit: Louis Klemantaski

Name: W196
Year: 1954–1955
Engine: 2.5-liter straight-8
Power: 257–290 HP
Claim to fame: Won back-to-back Formula One World Championships

The W196 was one of the most successful cars ever constructed for Formula One. It debuted and exited with a victory and won a total of 9 races between the 1954 French Grand Prix and the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. During that period, it was only beaten three times.

Of those nine wins, eight went to Juan Manuel Fangio and one to Stirling Moss.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: 300SLR
Year: 1955
Engine: 3-liter straight-8
Power: 310 HP
Claim to fame: Won World Sportscar Championship

You probably know this car already! The 300SLR was a two-seater version of the W196, with the engine enlarged to three liters. In 1955, Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson drove it to an incredible victory at the Mille Miglia, averaging 100 MPH over one thousand miles of Italian public road, a record which still stands.

The 300SLR also won the RAC Tourist Trophy and the Targa Florio, which was enough to beat Ferrari for the 1955 World Sportscar Championship title.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: 300SLR, Le Mans version
Year: 1955
Engine: 3-liter straight-8
Power: 310 HP
Claim to fame: Killed 85 people, caused Mercedes-Benz to withdraw from motorsports

On June 11, 1955, it went all wrong for Mercedes-Benz. Running a customized high speed version of the 300SLR in Le Mans against the Jaguar D-Types, Pierre Levegh’s 300SLR catapulted into the air and slammed headfirst into a wall of spectators, killing scores. The car was made of a highly flammable magnesium alloy called Elektron, which did not help things. The burned-out husk you see on the picture is what remained of Levegh’s car.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Name: 300SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé
Year: 1955
Engine: 3-liter straight-8
Power: 310 HP
Claim to fame: Fastest road car of the 1950s

Had Mercedes-Benz not retired at the end of the 1955 season, this is the car they would have raced at Le Mans. A coupé version of the 300SLR race car, it was instead used by Rudolf Uhlenhaut as his daily driver. The car could run at 170 MPH on the public road, which Uhlenhaut, a driver of almost Formula One quality, exploited to the last drop.

As the 300SLR itself was based on the W196 Formula One car, a way to imagine its devastating speed would be to install a canopy on Jenson Button’s championship-winning BGP–001 and use it as a daily driver.

New Formula One cars are usually introduced in January, so expect the next Silver Arrow to crop up sometime in January 2010. We’ll be here to tell you all about it.

Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz

This marks the first time that Mercedes-Benz will compete under its own name in Formula One since 1955, when they retired at the end of the season following the disaster at Le Mans.

They have already signed Nico Rosberg as one of their drivers, while world champion Jenson Button is rumored to leave the team and join McLaren. His teammate Rubens Barrichello has already left for Williams.

Ross Brawn will remain as team principal and part owner.

It appears this year’s offseason will be just as mad as the actual season. Stay tuned.

Source: BBC

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Lego Stig is part of a grand series of racing minifigs, most of them based on Formula One drivers:

Photo Credit: Phil Birkitt

[DailyMail]

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Of course, this means there's no longer a Japanese manufacturer in Formula One with Honda gone and no carmaker from the Land of the Rising Sun in a position to throw that much money away. [AutoNews]

The conflagration which enveloped Ferrari’s Ice Cream Man was fuelled by racing fuel from his fellow Finn Heikki Kovalainen’s McLaren.

Kovalainen left the pits prematurely, dragging a piece of refuelling hose behind his car, which sprayed fuel as he made his way down the pitlane. The spray flashed up for an instant when it touched Räikkönen’s hot Ferrari. With his characteristic cool, he drove on immediately after the flames had died down.

After the race, McLaren was fined $50,000 for dangerous conduct, while Kovalainen received a 25-second penatly, which dropped him from 9th to 12th position in the final classification (both outside the points).

The drivers are already out there. Lewis Hamilton has set the fastest time in Friday morning’s free practice. The Abu Dhabi circuit, built on the island of Yas, is as new as circuits get: its Formula One license was granted a mere 23 days ago on October 7. As you can imagine, the track is high Gulf extravaganza, snaking around a harbor and passing beneath the Yas Hotel, the curvy-bubbly building you see on the photos.

German circuit designer Hermann Tilke, responsible for much of the architecture of Formula One during its heavy eastward expansion in the last decade, has given a rare interview to the British magazine Motorsport, published in the November 2009 issue. He points out some features of his latest work:

[There is] the possibility to drive down the elevation at 190 mph into the arena. This creates a special feeling for the drivers and spectators, and the track layout guarantees a lot of action. Secondly, driving alongside the marina and underneath the hotel – this too can be found nowhere else on a permanent track. Third, the start-finish line is kept tight and short which gives a special atmosphere and a good view for the spectators in the first and the last corner.

Tilke is often criticized for his bland designs, at least when compared to classic circuits like the Nürburgring or Spa-Francorchamps, but you have to keep in mind that modern safety regulations are a heavy set of handcuffs bracing the hand of any designer. And Tilke designs can be brilliant, as he knows full well. This is how he describes Turn 8 at Istanbul Park, perhaps his greatest work:

Yes! The idea was not only to make this a very fast turn, but also to make it in the third dimension. It has waves – first it’s up, then down, up, then down. This makes it very difficult to drive. The race engineers want the cars to lay as deep as possible to achieve more downforce, but with this turn they have to lay the cars a bit higher. So it is really tricky and it influences the whole circuit.

One of the people already trackside is Tamara Ecclestone, daugher of Bernie and Slavica Ecclestone. Her features make you wonder how a British man and a Croatian woman can produce someone with such classic Levantine features.

The race will commence at 7 AM EST on Sunday.

Photo Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images, Ker Robertson/Getty Images, Clive Mason/Getty Images

Jenson Button, talking to the BBC after the race, was a bit more blunt in his description: “Kobayashi is absolutely crazy, very aggressive.”

The 23-year-old Japanese driver has been Toyota’s F1 test driver for the past two seasons but apart from two rounds of free practice at this year’s Japanese Grand Prix, he has never raced.

All that changed when Toyota’s regular driver Timo Glock did not recover from a leg injury in time for the Interlagos showdown. Starting from 11th place on the grid, Kobayashi drove with such brazenness and abandon that one of the commentators on the Hungarian broadcast I was watching remarked that he had never seen anybody drive a Toyota F1 car with such gusto.

Said lack of gusto is a major headache for Toyota, who have been running a well-financed team in F1 for eight seasons without a single win in 138 races. Their drivers have always been a bit…well, a bit like the Toyotas you purchase for daily driving. No major problems to complain about at all—but certainly nothing remarkable about them either.

And you just cannot win in Formula One without remarkable drivers who border on absolute craziness. While some of what Kobayashi was doing, especially his back-to-back overtaking battle with eventual world champion Jenson Button, was on the far edge of the rulebook, one thing is for certain: he is the kind of driver Toyota needs.

Even if the very expensive Kimi Räikkönen ends up slipping from their grip for 2010, Toyota could do worse than install Kobayashi in either Trulli’s or Glock’s permanent seat. Now that they have at last learned how to build a consistently fast car, all they need is a driver with that extra determination to stick his car on the racing line.

Whether that racing line happens to be occupied or not.

Photo Credit: TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty Images, Clive Mason/Getty Images, Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Please note that like all videos depicting recent Formula One races, the one embedded above showing Kobayashi battling Button at the Brazilian Grand Prix can disappear at whim. F1 employs a number of trigger-happy copyright lawyers.

Jenson Button, the whiz kid of late 90s gokarting, who found himself in a Formula One car at the precocious age of 20.

He would probably never have guessed the nine bleak years that would follow, 155 races with a single lucky win in Hungary, punctuated by mediocre or downright horrible racing cars.

His ascendancy to the highest rung of motor racing also happened to coincide with the rise of a particular team led by his current boss Ross Brawn: Scuderia Ferrari.

Awakening from a slumber of almost twenty years, Ferrari came to dominate Formula One like no one had before.

But this scruffy British kid has now been paired with a sublime car and a boss whose giant brain is certainly helpful for building a winning team. With a manic, courageous drive which took him from 14th place to 5th, Jenson Button claimed the 2009 Formula One world championship in high style at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

A beautiful way to end a season tarred and slimed by mischief and mayhem, a season which saw a shakeup of the established order like few seasons ever have, a season which spelled the righteous end of Ron Dennis and Flavio Briatore.

And it’s a season which is not even over yet. November 1 will see the inaugural Formula One race at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit, where Button and his constructor’s champion Brawn GP team will have a chance to say a relaxed farewell to a season to remember.

Or maybe not: also up for grabs is second place in the driver’s championship and Button’s teammate Rubens Barrichello (embraced on the picture above by Button’s father John) maintains but a two point lead over young hotshot Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images, Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Although far from finished, the F1 racer's been fitted with newly mandated skinnier front tires and a bigger gas tank and it's just finished wind tunnel testing.

The team at Lotus got a late start on their entry and as such are working overtime to complete the car by February 2010 for early testing in March. It's been validated in the wind tunnel, but the parts actually need to be built, complete with all machining, carbon fiber work and assembly. The Lotus will be powered by a Cosworth engine and an Xtrac transmission. [Automobile]

At first glance, it looks like a small Datsun, an SP310 Fairlady for instance, but the details don’t add up. There is also this peculiar badge:

And a blurred model name on the quarter panel:

The badge would make you think Prince Motor Company, the guys who made the original Skyline which lives on as the Nissan GT–R, but—as far as I know—Prince never made a small roadster.

What makes the whole situation even more baffling is that I ran this photo by my friend Zsolt Csikós, who is a living and breathing encyclopedia of old Japanese cars, and even he came up blank. And when the guy who, roused from his sleep, can tell you year-by-year changes on fourty-year-old non-exotic cars comes up blank, you know you’re in trouble.

Unfortunately, the embedded metadata offers no clue:

SUZUKA, JAPAN - OCTOBER 04: Kazuki Nakajima of Japan and Williams rides in a vintage car during the drivers parade before the Japanese Formula One Grand Prix at Suzuka Circuit on October 4, 2009 in Suzuka, Japan. (Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

So it’s up to you now, expert morphologists of a bygone Japan: what the hell was Kazuki riding in before he brought his Williams home to a not particularly shiny 15th place?

Update: Jim–Bob and Graverobber to the rescue! It’s a Toyota Publica, pronounced paprika.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Poor Nelsinho! Not only did he have to drive under the shadow of a famous father and suffer the intrigues of an unhinged Flavio Briatore, someone has now assembled an unflattering compilation of his short career in Formula One:

While making a crash-laden video of any racing driver is a walk in the park these days, it is a particularly easy job in the case of Piquet Jr., who never distinguished himself with particular car control or outright speed during his year and a half in Formula One.

Apart from a lucky second place at last year’s German grand prix, he failed to finish on any podium, going so far as not scoring a single point in the current season. After 28 races with the team, Renault dropped him after the Hungarian grand prix—in turn, Piquet set in motion the chain of events which led to the uncovering of a sordid episode of race-fixing and the end of Renault’s team principal Flavio Briatore and team engineer Pat Symonds.

So what’s next for the young Brazilian? Perhaps NASCAR: he is set to test a Toyota Tundra for Red Horse Racing next Monday at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina. A close reading of his Twitter feed will perchance also reveal how to say YEEHAW! in Brazilian Portuguese.

Photo Credit: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images, Elsa/Getty Images for NASCAR, Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

The tall, aggressive Pole has had a bummer of a 2009 season, culminating with BMW’s announcement that they were leaving Formula One at the end of the year.

Driving the unimpressive BMW Sauber F1.09, Kubica’s closest chance for victory was at the season’s first race in Melbourne, where he was gaining hard on Jenson Button, only to get tangled up with Sebastian Vettel and crash out of the race with three laps to go:

Compare this with his seven podium finishes last year, including his sole win thus far at the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix.

Renault is remaking itself after the race fixing scandal which has cost team principal Flavio Briatore his career in F1. They have yet to announce Kubica’s driving mate for 2010: Romain Grosjean, who replaced Nelsinho Piquet in the middle of the season, has not yet been confirmed to stay on.

According to sources, Kubica is already training for his new job by consuming vast quantities of omelette du fromage.

Source: BBC, Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Since the advent of colossal downforce through fat tires and wind-tunneled wings, racing drivers are faced with the unique problem of keeping their heads attached to their bodies. With g-forces in modern Formula 1 cars reaching 8 times the gravity of the Earth on certain tracks, this is not a trivial issue. The human head is a large, heavy spheroid attached to the rest of the body through the much lighter and thinner neck. As you’ll remember from our very educational How To Become a Formula One Driver in One Day video, even 3 g’s is a force to be reckoned with when applied laterally.

The solution? Develop neck muscles a Marine would be proud of.

When not using them to keep his head straight in Eau Rouge, Renault’s Ferrari’s two-time world champion driver Fernando Alonso can use his neck muscles to snap a walnut clear in two with barely a flex, as demonstrated here for his fellow Spaniards:

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images (Alonso’s Renault), lapstrake/Flickr (nutcracker)