Charles Leclerc’s brilliant home win for Ferrari and questions over McLaren’s lack of team orders dominate this week’s Autosport magazine, out today (5 September).
Even for non-Ferrari fans, a victory for the legendary team in the Italian Grand Prix is special. While we’ll have to see whether the SF-24’s latest upgrades have truly put it back in the frontrunning frame on more conventional circuits, the Monza event raised a few queries about McLaren, now that it arguably has Formula 1’s fastest car.
On the cover, we’ve asked if McLaren got it wrong at Monza. We think the team did, but not chiefly because of the decision to go for a two-stop strategy instead of the one-stopper that Leclerc used to win. As Alex Kalinauckas investigates in his column, allowing Oscar Piastri to attack Lando Norris on the opening lap not only risked contact, but allowed Leclerc into second and made it much harder for McLaren to control the race.
Nobody likes team orders, and rapidly rising star Piastri is certainly no number two, but circumstances sometimes make them a sensible option. With the points gap between Norris and Max Verstappen still 62, the Briton could do with all the help he can get – that’s something he hasn’t always had so far, but McLaren may need to reconsider that position sooner rather than later.
Ferrari’s excellent weekend got even better when late drama helped Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Robert Shwartzman beat Toyota in Austin’s World Endurance encounter. Gary Watkins was there to see how they did it – and Aston Martin take a dominant LMGT3 win.
In UK motorsport, Rali Ceredigion brought top-level rallying back to Wales last weekend. Tom Howard was there to report on Hayden Paddon’s first European Rally Championship victory of 2024 and to see how far the event could help get Britain back on the World Rally Championship schedule.
We also report on Motorsport UK’s U-turn on proposed series changes and the remarkable comeback of Cedric Bloch three years after his life-changing motorbike crash.
The Goodwood Revival takes place this weekend. We pick out the highlights and focus on two of historic racing’s 2024 successes. Our full event report will appear next week (12 September).
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