Beaky Simms is a veteran Formula 1 mechanic who started his career in the 1960s and these days runs the Risi Ferrari ALMS team based in Houston. Simms is an old friend of Bernie Ecclestone and talks regularly with the F1 impresario. He told me last week that financial support for the US GP is beginning to take off.

“Bernie’s discovered how much money there is in Texas – in Houston and Dallas,” said Simms. “There are plenty of wealthy and successful Texans who are falling over themselves to do business with Mr Ecclestone, and the track is going to be a proper race track with fast corners and elevation changes. I think this race in Austin is going to be a big success.”

The Austin road circuit will be first track built in America specifically for F1. Hellmund says this fact is essential to the race’s long-term success, pointing out that the US GP enjoyed its longest period of stability and success when it was run from 1961-80 at Watkins Glen in upstate New York. None of the many street circuits that followed – Long Beach, Las Vegas, Detroit, Dallas or Phoenix – lasted more than a handful of years and Long Beach was the only of these temporary venues that generated any enthusiasm or cachet.

Hellmund and McCombs will have to spend a lot of money and effort to have their track ready in time for 2012, but they may be onto something with a permanent F1-style track located in south-central Texas. Austin is close to San Antonio, about 200 miles south of Dallas and 150 miles west of Houston. The city is Texas’s state capital and is also a college town renowned for its arts and music scene, so it should prove to be a refreshing change from the likes of Vegas, Detroit and Phoenix.

The F1 team owners continue to talk about a second US GP, but they’re getting way ahead of themselves. They need to work with Ecclestone, Hellmund and McCombs to make sure Austin happens in the best possible way rather than dreaming about races in New York or San Francisco. The left-leaning politics and anti-car culture of this pair of great American cities ensure that motor racing will never occur anywhere near their environs.

The FIA and F1 team owners may not have paid attention, but NASCAR was utterly stymied in its recent attempts to build on oval track on Staten Island, adjacent to Manhattan. Also, the Philip Morris Corporation spent many millions of dollars 15 and 20 years ago trying to make a New York GP happen. And about a year ago New York mayor Michael Bloomberg (below on left) met with Ecclestone to talk Grand Prix racing in Manhattan. “We’d be delighted to host Formula 1,” Bloomberg said. “How much will you pay us?”

So it’s Austin, make or break. If the race in Austin doesn’t work out, America will almost certainly be lost to F1 forever. Both F1 and the United States need Austin to be successful.

Festival of Speed review
We pick six of the best cars to grace Goodwood and speak to the stars

Aston Martin at Le Mans
Motor Sport joins the team in the pits; Sam Hancock reports from the cockpit

Ferrari P4 can-Am
This rarity started life as a successful sports racer before heading Stateside

The logistics of F1
Williams reveals just what it takes to get a team to 19 Grands Prix a year

Lunch with… Mika Hakkinen
His run-in with Senna, his Adelaide crash, and that pass on Schumacher

Stuart Turner
Former BMC and Ford competitions boss recalls a golden time for rallying

Turbocharged talk
F1 chiefs discuss proposals for a 2013 engine with worldwide potential

Road cars
New section includes Goodwood motor show review and Mercedes SLS test

Le Mans Classic
Maserati Tipo and Porsche 917 are among the greats racing at La Sarthe

Pageant of Power
Cholmondeley Castle showcases some of Tom Wheatcroft’s favourite cars

Classic Racing Cars
The Porsche 911 Carrera RS – a road car that redefined the sports car ideal

Dear Nigel,

I would love to hear your thoughts/opinions on Lewis Hamilton. For me, his raw talent, driving style and never-say-die attitude are strongly reminiscent of Gilles Villeneuve – I hope this is not being sacrilegious to you as I know you and Gilles were close. Anyway, at Istanbul, watching the pass on Lewis by Jenson Button when the former was clearly assuming a ‘hold station’ situation was in play, Lewis’ subsequent downbeat/subdued attitude on the podium was very reminiscent of Imola ’82… Thanks for the great articles and podcasts!

Rich Gray

Dear Nigel,

If you could be transported back in time to the start of any season of motor racing, which would you choose and why?

Richard Shield

Anyway… enjoy and do let us know what you think. We’ll be back on air later this month or early next month with another guest so ’stay tuned’.

Immediately there were howls of outrage, for ‘team orders’ are supposedly banned, and a ‘team order’ this unquestionably was, prompting some to compare the incident with the notorious happenings in the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Michael Schumacher through.

Team orders are never welcome, of course, most people in the sport feeling that drivers should be allowed to race their team-mates, the only proviso being that they do not ‘take each other off’.

That said, to compare Hockenheim ’10 with the A1-Ring ’02 strikes me as a touch farcical. In Austria Barrichello completely outpaced Schumacher in both qualifying and race, and by the time the order came through from sporting director Jean Todt he had built up a considerable lead, and was not many laps away from the chequered flag. As well as that, the Ferraris were under no threat from any rival – and Schumacher already had an enormous lead in the World Championship. On the run up to the finish line, Barrichello had almost to stop in order to allow him to catch up.

At Hockenheim Alonso was considerably quicker than Massa in qualifying, but being second fastest (to Vettel) he necessarily started on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid, whereas Massa – third – was on the clean side. Away from the grid Vettel predictably chopped across to block Alonso, and as the two of them messed around Massa swooped around the outside of the pair of them.

It was a little like Malaysia, where Vettel snicked by team-mate Webber into the first turn, and the race result was decided right there. So difficult is passing in F1 – particularly between identical cars – that he who leads into the first corner is, all things being equal, going to win the race.

So why did ‘team orders’ come into play at Hockenheim? In their post-race remarks, the drivers offered little clue. Massa was plainly upset by what had happened, Alonso plainly embarrassed. There was a lot of mumbling about it being ‘a good day for the team’, and so on. Massa, asked to comment on the moment he backed off, smiled sadly: “I don’t think I need to say anything about what happened…”

“I think,” Alonso said, “that sometimes you’re quick, and sometimes you’re slow, depending on your tyres…” And Massa allowed that, on the very hard Bridgestones on which they ran for the bulk of the race, he was ‘struggling’ (although it hardly looked that way).

If Ferrari had a concern, it was surely that Vettel still lurked in third place, and not very far behind. Alonso may have been the faster of the Ferrari drivers, but he couldn’t get past Massa. The supposition was that if Vettel mounted a strong late-race challenge, Ferrari considered that Alonso would be better able to keep him at bay. May be right, may be wrong, but that’s what most people thought.

Whatever, the post-race atmosphere was certainly clouded, and that was a pity, because in all other respects Ferrari – after a run of miserable luck – could hardly have impressed more. It was good to see Alonso and Massa in the think of things, where they belong, and where they should have been all season long. “The car has been much better in the last few races,” Alonso commented. “We were very competitive at Valencia and Silverstone – but we came away with no points…”

Despite that, in recent weeks Alonso refused to rule himself out of the World Championship reckoning, and on the strength of the red cars’ pace in Germany he was right to do so. It was good that the Ferraris were so quick, too, for otherwise Red Bull would have been completely unopposed, McLaren being off the pace this time out. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished fourth and fifth, banking more World Championship points, but they were fully half a minute adrift of Alonso at the flag.

It was a low-key weekend, too, for Mark Webber, who started fourth after making a mistake on his final qualifying lap, but was obliged to take it easy for much of the race, the team much concerned by his engine’s excessive oil consumption. In the circumstances, Mark was happy enough to come away with sixth place, and eight points. The two Red Bull drivers, incidentally, now have 136 apiece, Webber ahead of Vettel in the standings by virtue of more victories, three to two.

If McLaren had a middling time at Hockenheim, for Mercedes it was not less than disastrous. Initially Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher were encouraged by technical updates on the car, and spoke in terms of qualifying in the first six. When it came to it, though, Rosberg only just made it into Q3 – but Schumacher did not. Both finished in the points, Nico ahead of Michael as usual, but eighth and ninth places – behind Robert Kubica’s Renault – were not what Mercedes was looking for in its home race.

On Sunday evening Ferrari was required to explain its actions to the FIA stewards, and later it was announced that the team had been found in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, and would be fined $100,000. As well as that, the stewards’ statement said, the case is to be referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council ‘for further consideration’.

Amid all the huffing and puffing and outrage, more reasoned observers considered this a lot of fuss about not very much. “Ferrari were too honest,” one cynic laughed. “All this talk on the radio, all this apologising to Massa… other teams do this sort of thing so much better, don’t they? They slow this driver or that by telling him he’s low on fuel, and need to turn his engine down, or something like that…”

This has been a pricey season for Ferrari, which has not only had to pay off Kimi’s contract (while he contests the World Rally Championship for Citroën), but also to stump up for Fernando, who may be earning somewhat less than Kimi did (and certainly less than Mercedes is paying Michael Schumacher), but is still at the high end of the pay scale.

I’ll admit that when Alonso’s signing was confirmed I thought it good reason for other teams to quake a little. In the two years when Fernando won the World Championship, 2005 and ’06, Schumacher was still in his pomp, yet Alonso – with Renault – beat him. Put all that talent and commitment to work at Maranello, and how could anything much go wrong? When Fernando won the opening Grand Prix, in Bahrain, it seemed to suggest a stellar season for Ferrari.

As I write, immediately before Hockenheim, that remains the team’s only victory in 2010. All season long Red Bull has had unquestionably the quickest car, but it has been by no means the most reliable – and that, whatever else, has always been one of Ferrari’s strongest suits. When Sebastian Vettel’s car faltered in Bahrain, it was Alonso and Massa who took over.

Since then, though, it has been McLaren which has benefited most from Red Bull failings – and rightly so, because its car has been consistently developed, in the traditional McLaren manner, and if the MP4-25 is not the equal of the Red Bull (particularly in qualifying), in most of the races it hasn’t been far away. Thus, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button sit first and second in the point standings.

Ferrari, meantime, has had a pretty thin season, and although Alonso has predictably outpaced Massa, one may be sure that he never envisaged, at mid-season, being only fifth in the championship, 47 points adrift of Hamilton.

In part this is because Fernando has made mistakes, which is uncharacteristic of him. There have been tangles at the first corner, an unfathomably jumped start, a shunt at Monte Carlo, which obliged him to miss qualifying and therefore start from the back – after being quickest of all in the first two practice sessions…

Many of the mistakes, I would suggest, have occurred because for a long time Alonso has necessarily been driving right at the edge in a car not truly on the pace. After an encouraging start to the season, Ferrari failed to keep pace with the developments other teams were introducing, and only in the last three races have decent innovations come through – in Montréal Fernando was right there, and only a couple of backmarkers kept him from threatening Hamilton in the late laps. In Valencia he was on Lewis’s tail, in third place, when the controversial safety car incident removed him from the reckoning. At Silverstone a drive-through penalty – also controversial – put him out of the points.

In Italy there is much talk of a crisis at Ferrari, and even speculation – misplaced, one hopes – about the future of Stefano Domenicali. Yes, the team has been through a very bad patch, but Alonso continues to insist that he can still be World Champion this year. He loves the team, and they him, but the time has come for a series of good results, and everyone knows it. I’m betting that Fernando will come on very strong through the balance of this season…

Twenty-four hours earlier, at the post-qualifying press conference, Webber had looked like a man ready to explode, which indeed he was. Alongside him sat the pole position man, his Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel, and clearly Webber felt it had not been a fair fight.

It was all a matter of wings – in particular, front wings. The team had new ones for Silverstone, but there had been time enough to manufacture only two, one for each driver. Or so Webber thought. On Saturday morning, though, Vettel’s collapsed on the Hangar Straight – ‘finger trouble’ (F1-speak for ‘human error’), apparently – and it looked like bad luck for Sebastian, for the wing was damaged beyond repair and no spare was available.

Except, of course, for the one on Webber’s car. And it was decided by the team that because Vettel was ahead of Mark in terms of championship points and position, he should have the one and only new front wing at Silverstone. Accordingly, it was transferred from Webber’s car to Vettel’s, and symbolically – if nothing else – that was highly significant, for it further fuelled the widespread belief (hotly denied by the team, of course) that Sebastian is the favoured one at Red Bull, and Mark ‘the other driver’.

Webber was livid, and none could blame him. Unsmiling, stone-faced, he suggested at the conference that, “The team had got the result it wanted…”

As we know, Webber has come through a hard school en route to the top echelons of Formula 1, and as the cars came up to the grid one almost – but not quite – felt a twinge of sympathy for the boy Vettel, who was about to experience the wrath of a team-mate who felt he had been wronged.

Having qualified second, Mark was of course on the ‘dirty’ side of the track, but at Silverstone this tends to be less of a problem than at most circuits (perhaps because of the unusually large number of support races here), and when the lights went out the second Red Bull was instantly alongside the first, Webber ignoring Vettel’s attempt to block him.

In effect, the destiny of the British Grand Prix depended on a drag race in the opening seconds, and Webber won it. At Copse, the first corner, Vettel’s problems were multiplied when his car was hit from behind by Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren: swiftly he radioed in to say he had a puncture.

Vettel came at the end of the first lap, his soft Bridgestones replaced by the harder ones – which would now, of course, have to last for an entire Grand Prix. Initially Sebastian, dead last, seemed to lose heart, but by half-distance he had come alive again, and in the end finished a good seventh, having dealt in the late laps with fellow Germans Nico Hulkenberg, Adrian Sutil and, ahem, Michael Schumacher…

After the race Webber was all smiles, of course, after one of the most satisfying races of his life, and the victory put him up to third in the World Championship, one place ahead of Vettel. Did this mean, someone asked, that if there were a ‘wing situation’ or something similar at the German Grand Prix (in two weeks’ time), he would get preferential treatment over Vettel? Mark grinned: “Dunno, mate. You’d think so, wouldn’t you…?”

Although, as expected, the Red Bulls were clearly the fastest cars at this, a circuit made for their peerless ability in ultra-quick corners, Webber allowed that he had not had an easy afternoon, Hamilton not having the car quite to challenge him, but certainly one quick enough to keep him alert. “I had no interest in anyone else in the race,” said Mark. “All I wanted was the pitboards giving me the gap to Lewis…”

Hamilton reckoned his qualifying lap, good for fourth on the grid, to have been probably the best of his life, which is saying something. McLaren looked to be in real trouble during practice on Friday, with the team’s new exhaust-blown diffuser (due originally to make its debut at Hockenheim) not producing the results anticipated. That evening it was decided to drop it for this weekend, and put the cars back to original specification. But still they didn’t look like front-runners, and Hamilton’s fourth best time – Jenson Button was back in 14^th – was heroic, as indeed was his drive on race day. Button, for his part, also drove a fine race and came up to fourth, sandwiched between Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes and Rubens Barrichello’s ever-improving Williams-Cosworth.

Before the race it looked unlikely that anyone would offer a serious challenge to Red Bull, and so it proved, but the man apparently closest to Vettel and Webber on pace was Fernando Alonso, as usual comfortably faster than his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.

Alonso, though, made a poor start, dropping instantly from third to fifth place, demoted by Rosberg and Robert Kubica’s Renault, and there he stayed until the tyre stops. The revisions to Silverstone went down better with some drivers than others, but all concluded that, sadly, they offered nothing in terms of more overtaking opportunities.

Later, in a scrap with Kubica, Alonso somewhat unavoidably cut a corner, and in so doing got ahead of the Renault driver, after which he should have given the position back. By the time the stewards reached a decision that he should be penalised – with a ‘drive-through’ – Kubica had already retired, and instead of losing just one position Alonso lost a great many. Most considered the stewards’ decision harsh, and afterwards Fernando was so angry that he refused to be interviewed. With precisely four points from the last two races, Ferrari – while pretty good on pace – is having a thin time of it just now.

Webber, so far the only driver to win three races this year, glowed with delight afterwards. Had this been a case of poetic justice? “Well,” he grinned, “maybe there’s a bloke upstairs every now and then… I made a good start, and I was… very keen to make it my corner, let’s put it that way.

“I wasn’t massively in favour of what happened yesterday, with the front wing thing – to be honest, I would never have signed a new contract for next year if I’d believed that was the way things were going to be. Let’s just see how it goes in the future. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, and hopefully it’s enough.”

And now comes Germany…

Leaving aside the fun and frolics of the Isle of Wight, it’s interesting to look back on what was a highly charged season, brutally fractured by the death of Jochen Rindt at Monza in September. Already we’d lost Piers Courage at Zandvoort and Bruce McLaren in a test session at Goodwood. It seemed it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. The 1970 season is an example, too, of why we should keep an open mind. And this applies as much today as it has done over the decades.

If you recall, the mesmeric Rindt dominated proceedings, winning five races through the summer, from Monaco to the Hockenheimring. The only glitch came at Spa when the Cosworth in his Lotus 49C let go after 10 laps. Two weeks later Rindt, now in Chapman’s innovative 72, won the first of four on the trot. The championship, we thought, was surely his and deservedly so. But motor racing, as we have seen again this year, is full of surprises. Some happy, some sad.

All in all, a momentous year. Jacky Ickx was back at Ferrari after a year away at Brabham and by mid-summer the glorious 312B was coming on song, Ickx winning in Austria, Canada and Mexico. But it was not enough. Despite the tragedy of Monza, the mercurial Rindt could not be caught and he remains the sport’s only posthumous World Champion.

Intriguingly, if Ickx had won the penultimate round at Watkins Glen in October he would have beaten Rindt to the title. But it wasn’t to be. In a dramatic race that typified the season Ickx duly started from pole but this day the Ferrari was no match for the other man on the front row, Jackie Stewart in the new Tyrrell 001. Stewart led easily while Ickx pitted just after half-distance with a broken fuel line, returning in 12th place and storming back to a superb fourth by the flag. Meanwhile, a minute in the lead, Stewart retired, the Cosworth leaking oil. Who came through to win and wreck any hopes of a world title for Ickx? A young Brazilian called Emerson Fittipaldi in a Lotus, in only his fourth Grand Prix.

You needed a very open mind to keep up with the scriptwriter in 1970, and a strong stomach. It was both thrilling and awful, the sport at its best and worst. And it wasn’t over yet. Ickx won a chaotic final race in Mexico where spectators climbed the guardrails, stood trackside, and the maddest ran across the circuit itself. Eventually a dog escaped and ran into the path of Stewart’s Tyrrell, damaging the suspension and forcing the Scot to retire. Ickx came through to win and the 1971 Mexican Grand Prix was removed from the calendar.

Triple World Champion Jack Brabham hung up his helmet, having started his final season with a win in South Africa. Clay Regazzoni scored his first Grand Prix victory in a Ferrari at Monza. March arrived in Formula 1. Tyrrell built its first Grand Prix car, Stewart putting it on pole first time out in Canada. And Goodyear introduced slick tyres to the sport. What a year.

Pedro’s Twin Peaks
The Mexican’s legend is built on great wins in 1970 at Spa and Brands Hatch

They created a monster!
Richard Attwood and Jackie Oliver on how the fearsome 917 was tamed

Breakfast with…Roger Penske
The Indycar team owner and business tycoon is not normally one for reflection

A year of living dangerously
The risks associated with motor racing in the 1970’s

Mercedes’ Indy Special
Penske’s most dominant Indy win was a result of some clever engine design

Mille Miglia in a Merc SLR
Who knew there were two Uhlenhaut Coupes? Doug Nye drives ‘Red’

Road Test – Bentley Mulsanne
Drives better than its Rolls Royce rival,in case you’ve got £220k to spend

Wolfgang Von Trips Museum
An eccentric tribute to the late, great German F1 driver is well worth a visit

World Cup Rally
The London – Mexico race with a footie twist, billed as the world’s touchest rally

Did he lose the plot?
His Le Mans epic – and why it failed to light up the silver screen