609 april 2013

NEW FERRARIvs NEW McLAREN

w

WW

W.C

AR

MA

GA

ZIN

E.CO

.UK

APR

IL 2013 £4.50 ISSUE 609

T H E F I R S T D R I V EWas £30k, now £3k: used BMW, Audi and Jaguar buying guide

World’s hairiest hot hatches: A1 Quattro vs Mini GP | BMW M6 cabrio group test

Gone in 3.5sec!Hardcore 911 GT3 blasts off

NEW GOLF GTI

A P R I L 2 0 1 3 I S S U E 6 0 9

2013 F1S E A S O N G U I D E

HAM I LTON

ALL TH E TEAMS AN D D R IVERS RATED

21-PAGE F1 SPECIAL

950bhp supercar war starts here!

E X C L U S I V EOn his faith, his girlfriend, his father, his rivals... and McLaren

M c L A R E N v s F E R R A R IP I S T O L S A T D A W N

The McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari take Formula One’s tech war to the street. How do they square up? Turn the page…

T E C H H E A D - T O - H E A D

McLaren P1 vs LaFerrari

68 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK I APRIL 2013

T E C H H E A D - T O - H E A D

McLaren P1 vs LaFerrari


M c L A R E N v s F E R R A R IP I S T O L S A T D A W N

The McLaren P1 and Ferrari LaFerrari take Formula One’s tech war to the street. How do they square up? Turn the page…

69APRIL 2013 I CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK 69APRIL 2013 I CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK

Words: Gavin Green


It’s all very matey at the moment, but the competition between them will be much more intense than it was in karting, when Lewis had the better results. Back then his peerless natural talent got the better of everyone, but F1 is a more technical and cerebral sport than karting and Nico has told friends that Lewis should expect a different driver now to the one in 2000.

Nico has trained like a maniac over the winter, to the extent that he’s lighter than at any time in his F1 career. His body mass index is less than 10%, akin to a marathon runner, and he’s worked hard with his race engineer since the season-closing Brazilian Grand Prix to figure out ways to improve his car set-up compared with last year.

Lewis has done his share of training, but his preparations have been disrupted by a change of trainer. Antti Vierula, with whom he worked at McLaren, is staying with the team and he’s had to find someone new for his move to Merc. He’d yet to find that man by mid-February, but he was confident of cutting a deal soon.

As a result, Lewis had to organise his own training over the winter, which revolved around snowboarding in Aspen, jet-skiing in Hawaii and cross-country skiing in the Swiss Alps. Hobby sports but, to be fair, all very good for general conditioning.

Lewis is way behind his team-mate when it comes to understanding the team. Nico is entering his fourth season as a Mercedes driver, whereas Lewis started the year with just six days of testing with his new race engineer Pete Bonnington. But he says he’ll cope; Pete’s his third race engineer since September, following a swap around at McLaren late last year due to some paternity leave. Come Melbourne, Lewis will be ready.

T HE CRUX OF CAR’s interview with Lewis takes place away from the hushed corridors of Brackley. Today he’s also visiting Brixworth, the home of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, and we ride with him for the

50-minute journey between the two factories. Lewis is behind the wheel of his new employer’s latest

model, the A45 AMG hot-hatch, for the 50-minute journey, but grudgingly. ‘I don’t want to drive,’ he tells us in the car park. ‘I’m sure it’s a great car, but I hate driving on the road. I never drive on the road; I want you to drive.’

Me drive Lewis Hamilton? After a few nervous glances, we persuade Lewis to get behind the wheel and we set off along the A43 towards Silverstone and Northampton. As soon as he’s in the driving seat he reverts to kind: he blips the throttle freely and smiles at the throaty roar of the hand-built 2.0-litre motor (turbocharged – just like his 2014 F1 engine will be) that produces a tasty 355bhp. He then mashes the throttle to see what she’ll do, leaving Ben Pulman (driving our Focus ST support car) for dust.

So much for taking slow-speed, car-to-car action shots.The A-class is a left-hooker, which makes overtaking

difficult. When we hit traffic around Northampton, Lewis places one hand on his knee and starts to talk. I place my Dictaphone on the fake carbonfibre (he’s used to the real thing) dashboard and let him roll. No subject is off limits.

‘I feel so fresh,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I even thought about F1 during the winter break. I trained, I spent time with my girl [Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger] and I spent a lot of time in the recording studio that I’ve built in my house in

2 0 13 S E A S O N P R E V I E W

Lewis Hamilton

LEWIS HAS HIS SAY...On road-car driving:

‘I don’t want to drive. I hate driving on the road. You drive’On religion:

‘I’m proud of my relationship with God. I pray every day’On Vettel:

‘I sometimes wonder how many titles I’d have won if I’d been at Red Bull’

HISTORY IS repeating itself. A big manufacturer fails to win in F1, so it sacks its lead driver – a multiple world champion – and drafts in a young gun to bring home the bacon.

The last time it happened was in 1991, when Alain Prost got the chop from Ferrari after failing to land its first drivers’ title since 1979. The team hired Michael Schumacher (below) a few years later and he duly delivered five titles on the bounce.

This time it’s Schumacher getting the sack from Mercedes. The seven-time champ wanted to stay on for one more season, but three years of failure was enough for the

marketing men in Stuttgart. Lewis is the man they needed; can he achieve what Schumi did at Ferrari?

A lesson from history?

93APRIL 2013 I CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK

LA. The studio was meant to be for Nicole because I want her to be able to stay home when she wants to make music, rather than fly somewhere, but I think I spent more time in there than she did!’

I ask Lewis about his relationship with his father, who was his manager throughout the formative years of his career. ‘We spent Christmas together, which was great. I’ve tried to get him into golf because it’s something that we can do together and we even had a lesson together. But he doesn’t have the patience for the game, so it didn’t really work out. But dad’s my hero. I don’t know if he knows how much I appreciate everything he did for me when I was growing up because without him and my stepmum Linda – and the incredible belief they had in me – I wouldn’t be here.’

We begin talking religion – a subject very close to Lewis’s heart. ‘I was very quiet about my faith when I first came into F1. I didn’t let people know that I go to church, or that I read the Bible. I don’t know why I didn’t; maybe it was something my dad said to me. But I’m at a place now where I don’t care. If people don’t like it, I’m sorry about that, but I’m not going to stop. I’m proud of my relationship with God. I pray every day and I definitely felt He gave me a lot of signs about this team being the way to go.’

But Mercedes is a relative long-shot for Lewis. Does he ever wish he’d had the advantages enjoyed by Vettel at Red Bull? ‘I sometimes wonder how many world titles I would have won if I’d been in a Red Bull for the past three years. If I’d been up against Sebastian [Vettel] in the same equipment, the stories that the media would have written would have been very different. But that’s not the way it is and I’m happy for Sebastian that he’s had the success.’

Not for the first time in his career, a lot of what Lewis says smacks of his hero, Ayrton Senna. The need for a long winter holiday to re-charge his batteries; the strong family ties; the divine inspiration and the sense of injustice that he hasn’t always been driving the fastest car.

For Lewis to talk so freely is unusual, which suggests he’s happy and relaxed in his new environs. The shackles of youth have finally been removed; will the success that his undoubted talents deserve come with it?

‘What I’d like to see is progress,’ he tells me. ‘The team finished fifth in the world championship last year, so the aim is to be fourth or better this year. In year one, all I want is to be put within punching distance of the front-runners.’

That’s Lewis’s message to Seb, Alonso, Jenson and co: prepare to glance nervously in your mirrors…

LEFT: Nico on fire in testing. Reliability an issue?BELOW LEFT: With dad Anthony. ‘He’s my hero’BELOW: With Vettel. ‘Check your mirrors!’

90 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK I MARCH 2013

With Hamilton an unknown quantity, can anyone stop Seb notching his fourth title? Can Alonso finally deliver the silver he moved to Ferrari for? Can McLaren

end a 15-year drought? Team-by-team, Tom Clarkson runs the rule


Photography: Darren Heath

A N Y V E T T E L B E A T E R S O U T

T H E R E ?

F1 2013

91MARCH 2013 I CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK

5 0 Y E A R S O F L A M B O R G H I N I

Driving the Miura

OF THE FOUR Brits on the grid, Jenson Button has the best chance of championship success this year. His MP4-28

has proved quick but fallible in winter testing; if the team can harness its potential, then Jenson can win. But…

The car’s fluctuating form is a real concern. It’s been quick one moment and mysteriously slow the next, and no-one has been able to put a finger on why. It smacks of last year’s inconsistencies, which cost the team a shot at both world titles. ‘It’s been very tricky to understand where the car is,’ said Jenson at the Barcelona test. ‘At times the car feels good, at other times it doesn’t and we’re still trying to work out why that’s the case.’

Crucially, the team has opted for revolution rather than evolution with this year’s car. A new aerodynamic solution at the front sees the car sporting a high nose (like Red Bull, Lotus and the rest) for the first time and success levels in 2013 will depend on how quickly the team understands, and then maximises, the benefits of opening up the frontal area of the car.

‘I’m very impressed with the McLaren,’ says former Jordan technical director Gary Anderson. ‘McLaren has corrected all of the weak areas on last year’s car and what it’s come up with is a neat-looking car.’

There’s no doubting Jenson’s pace, even if he’s a less versatile driver than the likes of Alonso and Hamilton. But he’s the lead driver now; the weight of responsibility rests on him. Can he hack it? In order to dominate a race weekend,

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Strengths

They had the fastest car at the end of 2012, and they still do

Weaknesses

Perez an unknown quantity

You’ll read

Lewis who? Brilliant Button sweeps away ghost of Hamilton

They’ll say

‘We still have confidence in Sergio’

6 2

Sergio Perez

Titles 0 Starts 38 Wins 0 Podiums 3 Poles 0 Fastest laps 1 Odds 12/1 CAR says: 9th

5 2

Jenson Button

Titles 1 Starts 228 Wins 15 Podiums 49 Poles 8 Fastest laps 8 Odds 5/1 CAR says: 3rd

MP4-28

‘At times the car feels good and at times not.

We’re trying to work out why’

like he did in Belgium last year, Jenson needs the perfect car underneath him and perfect F1 cars aren’t the F1 norm – even when you’re driving a McLaren. Expectation is its own pressure.

Sergio Perez, meanwhile, is still an unknown quantity, and he’s done little to suggest that he’s the Next Big Thing. McLaren bosses have tried to persuade us otherwise, but the fact remains that he had one chance to win a race, in Malaysia 2012, and he bottled it. Seb Vettel had that same chance in an equally uncompetitive car at Monza in 2008, and duly became the youngest race winner in history.

Perez’s race simulations looked a bit ragged in testing, although he was able to turn a lap when the car was behaving on Pirelli’s soft rubber. What his presence in the team really emphasises is how much McLaren under-appreciated Lewis Hamilton’s talents. To replace Lewis, whose peaks are higher than anyone else on the grid, with Perez is mystifying.

Of course there are commercial benefits to Perez, and McLaren’s sponsorship portfolio is the envy of the pitlane. But race wins matter more.

With tech boss Paddy Lowe defecting to Mercedes at the end of the year, there’s a degree of uncertainty at the McLaren Technology Centre. Tim Goss, formerly the team’s director of engineering, has taken over from Paddy and he’s a very capable engineer. But the team will still miss Lowe. Tech boss gone? Senior driver gone? Unproven new boy? Schizo car? Not the ideal platform for a tilt at what would – incredibly – be McLaren’s first constructors’ title in 15 years. 4

Odds 11/4


Lewis gone, Perez unproven, tech boss defected. Can Jenson beat the pressure… and Red Bull?

No.No.

LOOK THE BUSINESS,

Quality engineering (by and large), sumptuous spec and enormous brand cachet come free with these mid-ranking saloons. Depressed prices make the four almost impossible to ignore and sealing a decent deal is never likely to be easierWords: Ben Barry I Photography: GF Williams


MERCEDE

S E-CLAS

S

FROM

£3k AUDI A6

FROM

£4k

LOSE THE BILLS

B U Y I N G U S E D

Business barges for buttons


JAGUAR

XF

FROM

£11k BMW 5-

SERIES

FROM

£4k

ALWAYS WANTED TO slap down a BMW, Audi, Mercedes or Jaguar keyfob on the bar? Currently smoking around in a five-year-old Ford Mondeo?

Here’s how to trade up to the executive league, while spending as little as £3k and no more than the mid-teens. The catch? All the cars featured on these pages are previous-generation executive saloons – save for the Jag, which is a pre-

facelift version of today’s model – which means they typically started life with £30k-£40k stickers on their windscreens. So no matter how little you can snaffle them up for, you’re still paying to service and fix a £30k-£40k car, and that means you need to be doubly aware of the pitfalls. No fear, though, as we’ve enlisted our used experts to tell you what to look out for and what to buy, all waiting for you over the page… 4

LOSE THE BILLS


M U S C U L A R C O N T R A P T I O N

Pontiac Trans Am


Smoking with the Bandit

Brassier than an old tap, cheesier than a Wotsit, the Pontiac Trans Am is the forgotten muscle car. But here’s a man making it cool all over again…

Words: Chris Chilton I Photography: Greg Pajo

Similar is not the same as the same: despite universal John Player Special hues, these cars are all quite different animals


G I A N T T E S T

Posh cabrios: Bentley vs BMW, Merc & Jag

With half a million quid’s worth of footballer’s wife-spec cabrio on test we dreamed of wafting on the Riviera. But they gave us Wales. So this isn’t about posing – it’s about driving

SKY SPORTS 4


With half a million quid’s worth of footballer’s wife-spec cabrio on test we dreamed of wafting on the Riviera. But they gave us Wales. So this isn’t about posing – it’s about driving

Words: Steve Moody I Photography: James Lipman

SKY SPORTS 4


F E AT U R I N G : M E R C E D E S - B E N Z C L A / / / A S T O N M A R T I N R A P I D E S / / / F O R D F I E S TA S T / / / N I S S A N J U K E N I S M O / / / L A M B O R G H I N I G A L L A R D O

First Drives

Leading from the frontMerc reinvents the small saloon – with a little help from a front-drive hatchback. By Ben Barry

I’M WALKING around the Mercedes-Benz CLA, eyeballing it from various angles, and all I can think of are those kit conversions that people sell on the internet, the

ones that promise to magic your Toyota MR2 into a Ferrari F430 – all extremely convincing until you realise an actual F430 wouldn’t resemble a seesaw.

With the CLA we’re dealing with a £48k Mercedes CLS four-door coupe that’s been squashed onto a front-drive A-class platform, yours from around

£23k for the basic 180 petrol, £25-26k for the 220 CDI or £27-28k for the 250 petrol (prices are TBC), maybe less if you’re handy enough to DIY the panels.

To be fair, the CLA isn’t a freakish cut-and-shut of a machine, it’s just that from some angles it does the mini-me Mercedes CLS thing with a 100% convincing swagger, then you’ll shift your vantage point and suddenly the tail looks stumpy, the rear wheels strangely under-sized in comparison to the fronts.

Mercedes-Benz CLA

Yet it’s hard not be impressed with the logic that underpins this car, Merc’s first ever front-drive saloon. With Mercedes’ sales lagging behind Audi and BMW, the CLA creates a whole new niche, a kind of far posher, swoopier VW Jetta that just happens to slot beneath the swift-selling BMW 3-series, Audi A4 and – we’ll get to this conundrum later – Mercedes C-class.

You’ll pay around £2.5k more for equivalent versions of those exec saloons, while the £3k stretch from a4 G

REG

PA

JO


FIRST DRIVES

609 april 2013

Documents

s s u e

r e n v s f e r r

t h e f i r s t d r

d t o h e

r ip i s t o

paget e c h h e

u s i v eon

s o n g u i d eham