Oliver Oakes might be able to lay claim to being the quickest team principal in F1, but for the meantime however, he has his work cut out in saying the same for his Alpine team.

Oakes, 36, is the latest incumbent in charge of the Enstone-based team that in recent seasons has seen it slump steadily towards the back of the grid. 

Now, though, after a period of turbulence, he is hoping that alongside Renault’s CEO Luca de Meo and Flavio Briatore, who is acting as a special supervisor to Renault’s F1 project, the trio can bring some stability and deliver an upturn in results for the beleaguered team.

Oakes has racing pedigree. His father Billy was the founder and owner of the former Formula Renault and British F3 team, Eurotek Motorsport.

He started karting at just four years old and in 2005 was crowned the world karting champion. At one point was part of the Red Bull Junior Team alongside Sebastian Vettel, Brendon Hartley, Jamie Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi.

When we meet in the Alpine hospitality unit, the subject of his early motorsport career quickly pops up, and he jokes that if he suggested he was the quickest team boss, then he might be getting a text message from McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown, who also continues to compete, rather sharpish.

“Sometimes I was quick,” he says when asked by Motorsport.com what went wrong with his own driving career, “but ultimately not quick enough, hence why I am on this side of the fence! I had my moments. [Red Bull motorsport advisor] Helmut Marko has been pretty brutal that I did not translate that into cars. I think he he is half-right. I did in some cars but not all of them.

Oliver Oakes, Carlin Motorsport. Formula BMW Testing, Silverstone, England

Photo by: Edd Hartley

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“I don’t know why it did not work out. Perhaps I should ask myself that and do some soul searching! When you look back to then, obviously when you were young, and there were things you could have done differently. There were some things that didn’t go your way. It is a mixture of things.

“Like everything in racing, there is not one silver bullet. But I also feel quite lucky from the other side that I did do all of that; from karting all the way up to F3 level and came out of it and achieving a dream another way.”

Oakes is referring to the Hitech GP team he set up in 2015 and now runs successfully across six different championships, including Formula 2 and Formula 3.

Having grown Hitech GP as a business and a successful team, Oakes feels he can utilise his experience as a former driver turned team owner to good effect at Alpine, where he will now focus his full attention.

He added: “Definitely having a little bit of the driving background helps, you have to be careful not to do too much, because you think it is the engineers or its the car…and its not the driver. But then you can balance that and go too much the other way.

“Actually it is kind of strange. If someone asked me today, what do I think has been the biggest help having taken this job, from my background, I think it is a mixture of all of it. 

“The driving bit was pretty decent but I was lucky my mum made me go to school. Although I used to complain like hell to her on a Monday morning and going in for 8am after I got back in the early hours from racing in Italy!

Paul Aron, Hitech Grand Prix

Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd

“And then also building and growing my own company, from the business side; those six teams, 100 people and building that up.”If I put it all together in a mix, I feel quite fortunate that I had all of that and I guess you call it a different education. I had a racing education.”

When James Vowles took over at Williams from Mercedes, he hit the headlines for mentioning how he was shocked the team was using an Excel spreadsheet for managing more than 20,000 car parts, saying it was “impossible to navigate”.

Oakes says he has not had anything comparable during his first few months at Enstone but does admit there are areas of the campus that require some investment.

“I sort of knew different facets of it from the last couple of year,” he said. “There has obviously been a lot of change. When Otmar [Szafnauer] was here, he was a mate, so through catching up with him occasionally, you’d learn things.”I arrived without anything much predetermined because you have to take things as they come and I dare say you never really get the truth until you get down in the weeds and see it. You have to suss things out for yourself.

“But since I have been here, lots has been talked about over the years, what has been done and for what reasons. At the moment I am front foot forward and we need o push on and the past is in the past.

“Some parts of Enstone have had a lot of investment and there are some parts that are still as they were, not quite as far back as Flavio’s time, but there are a lot of good bits and a lot of bits that we can keep improving but I think actually I would not say anything like [what Vowles found at Williams].”

Oakes replaced Bruno Famin, who was only in the role for just over a year while Szafnauer also had a similarly-short stint before being axed. And the Brit’s arrival coincides during a turbulent period as Renault ceases its F1 engine operation, causing disharmony within Renault’s plant in Viry-Châtillon.

Oliver Oakes, Team Principal Alpine F1 Team, Flavio Briatore, Executive Advisor, Alpine F1

Photo by: Alpine

Add into the mix Oakes will be working alongside the divisive character that is Briatore, who ran the Enstone team during its most-dominate period when it won the constructors’ and drivers’ championship with Fernando Alonso in 2005 and 2006.The Italian’s presence will only magnify the pressure on Oakes, but he says it is “a nice pressure”.

He added: “There is pressure for myself, yes, because I don’t like walking to the back of the grid. The job comes with pressure but I think it is different…I think years back a sport’s psychologist, who told me some thing that sticks with me. Pressure is like something that comes out of the shower as water pressure.

“I actually see leading a F1 team as a responsibility. There are a thousand people who rely on you for leadership to make the right decision. That’s one word I would use, and the other is competitive. You want to be the best.I am pragmatic in that I know F1 is complexed you have a lot of big teams that are well run and have been doing it for a long time with a lot more stability than us.

“But actually, I am quite excited about that because the great thing about F1 is that you are always judged constantly and if you can do a good job, everyone sees it. I put it on myself because I want to do well.

“Having Flavio is a great help and big part of why I committed to coming on this journey. I call it the project. He pushes because he wants to see this team go back to the front of the grid and anyone know knows him knows that Enstone is his baby.

“We all have a first love in life and he would not mind me saying that. For him, it is something that he really cares about and is what attracted me to doing this, and also working with him because he is hugely experienced. He’s hugely successful whether that be in F1 or his restaurant businesses and you know that he is committed.

“Ultimately maybe right or wrongly, I sat there and tracked back looking at teams that became successful in F1 and most of the time it was because of really strong leadership at the top and that can be two, three or four people really aligned and that is normally that is the owner and the senior management of the team.When I spent time speaking to him and Luca [de Meo], you could see their passion for the project. You could see that age is a number is is pretty about what drives you.”

Oliver Oakes, Team Principal, Alpine F1 Team

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Oakes though, is looking to stamp his own mark on the Alpine team. Insiders have praised his openness and willingness to communicate and already there is a sense of the mood lifting within the organisation and finally a feeling that the team is finally pointing in the right direction again. 

“There are a lot of different management styles,” he says. “It is interesting because you can see a real mix today. There was a bit of a trend of entrepreneurs, guys who started their teams and then ran it. Then there was another trend of ex-engineers being team principals.

“But everybody does what best suits their background. I don’t claim to be the best engineer or the best businessman, or the best driver. 

“I am all about, ‘if we are going to be successful we need to have the best people and a good culture to empower those people’. Those are the simple things we need to get right and something Enstone did really well in the past.”

During a glittering Formula 1 career that for many years made him the most experienced driver ever, Rubens Barrichello enjoyed a special affinity for Monza.

Three of his 11 victories came in the Italian Grand Prix, making it statistically his most successful circuit. Of course, it helped that the Brazilian’s triumphs in 2002 and 2004 came while adorning the scarlet overalls of Ferrari.

Twenty years on from leading team-mate Michael Schumacher in a 1-2 aboard the all-conquering F2004, Barrichello will return to the track where he won his final Grand Prix for Brawn in 2009 when he races a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 in the International GT Open championship. But the location alone isn’t the only point of significance for the 52-year-old, who won his domestic Stock Car title for a second time in 2022.

What will elevate a welcome nostalgia hit for Barrichello into something rather more special is the team he is joining. Perhaps rejoining would be a better way of putting it. Because after 32 years, he will unite with Il Barone Rampante, the outfit he raced for during the 1992 International Formula 3000 championship.

Already a rising star with the British Formula 3 championship in his back pocket, Barrichello made an instant impression on his graduation to what was then F1’s main feeder category in 1992 aboard IBR’s unmistakable yellow and purple Reynard-Judd. Slotting seamlessly into the shoes of Alex Zanardi, who had challenged for the title as a rookie during the maiden campaign for Guiseppe Cipriani’s team in 1991, Barrichello was on the podium at the first time of asking at Silverstone by finishing runner-up to Jordi Gene’s Pacific Reynard.

It set the tone for an ultra-consistent season in which he began the year with three podium finishes from as many races. A mistake-free visit to Pau, a tall order for any newcomer, netted third place and was followed by finishing second to third-year team-mate Andrea Montermini in Barcelona. At that point he led the standings, although a run of victories for Luca Badoer’s monoshock-equipped Crypton Reynard ultimately took the title out of his grasp.

Barrichello finished second to Jordi Gene at Silverstone in 1992

Photo by: Motorsport Images

A mid-season change of engine to the Mader Cosworth used by Crypton did not herald the instant success hoped for, and Barrichello ended the season without a win – albeit an impressive third in the standings. Had he returned for 1993, it’s likely he would have been the class of the field, but he had no need to do so. His performances for IBR had set him on a path to F1 with Jordan for 1993, and he never looked back.

IBR dropped off the F3000 grid in 1993, but has been revived as a vehicle for Cipriani’s own exploits in GT racing. The Italian has already clinched his third Am class title in the GT Open series run by Jesus Pareja’s GT Sport organisation and for the 2024 season finale on 19-20 October will step up to the Pro-Am class to pair up with one of his most esteemed former drivers.

Barrichello has already tested the Huracan at Barcelona ahead of what will be his category debut, although he has previous experience in GT3 machinery from winning an Italian GT round in 2022 alongside fellow ex-F1 racer Giancarlo Fisichella aboard a Ferrari 488 at Vallelunga.

“I’m really happy to race in Monza with Il Barone Rampante in the Lamborghini Huracan,” said Barrichello, whose son Fernando has raced on the GT Open support bill this season in the Euroformula Open category for Formula 3-style cars.

“I had already raced with them when we were involved in Formula 3000; obviously the team has changed category and members, but they are still an excellent team, they have already won the Am class title fighting for the podium at every race.

Rubens Barrichello celebrating winning the 2009 F1 Italian Grand Prix at Monza

Photo by: Sutton Images

“Competing in Monza is always special for me, here I won twice with Ferrari and once with Brawn GP. ​​I had some wonderful moments when I competed with Ferrari and I can’t forget the tremendous support of the fans, who always followed me with affection even when I changed teams.

“I’m competing in the GT Open for the first time and so it will all be new for me. I had the opportunity to do some laps with the car in Barcelona and I have to say that I felt good. Now I can’t wait to get on track for the first tests!

“In Monza my son will also compete in the Euroformula Open, where he is currently third in the standings. It will be a busy weekend and hopefully full of satisfaction for the whole family!”

Barrichello will race a Il Barone Rampante Lamborghini Huracan GT3 at Monza

Photo by: GT Sport

Formula 3 has confirmed that DAMS will join the grid in place of Jenzer for the next three-year cycle.

The move sees the French outfit expand its operation beyond only a single series focus for the first time since ex-Formula 1 driver Charles Pic bought the team in 2022, when it ceased operating in Formula E to leave Formula 2 as its only project.

DAMS was last present at the third tier of motorsport in 2017 when it withdrew from the GP3 series.

Founded by Jean-Paul Driot and Rene Arnoux in 1989, DAMS has largely operated in single-seater championships and been a mainstay of F2 since its previous guise as GP2 began in 2005, winning the 2019 teams championship with Sergio Sette Camara and Nicholas Latifi.

Since its formation out of the ashes of the GBDA team in which Driot and Arnoux also had an interest, it has earned drivers’ titles in Formula 3000 and GP2 with Erik Comas, Olivier Panis, Jean-Christophe Boullion, Romain Grosjean, Davide Valsecchi and Jolyon Palmer.

It also enjoyed success in the Formula Renault 3.5 championship, and A1 Grand Prix.

Pic bought out Olivier and Gregory Driot, who had assumed control of the team following their father’s death in 2019.

He said: “We’re thrilled to have been selected to enter a Formula 3 team from next season for the next three years.

DAMS previously competed in GP3

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“This is a logical step for us as we’re already competing in F2, and this latest endeavour means we can develop younger drivers from our F3 programme into our F2 team, using systems we have put in place to support and train drivers on the technical side.

“The main objective of this first campaign is to develop a competitive car, like we’ve done in F2 this year.

“Starting the championship with the arrival of a brand-new car is great timing, as we can reuse our methods that we’ve developed over the years.

“We’ve put together a very experienced technical team with proven engineers alongside good mechanics, so I’m confident we can deliver strong performances in Formula 3 over the coming seasons and be a contender at the front of the field.”

All of the other nine existing teams will remain on the grid for the coming cycle.
Championship CEO Bruno Michel added: “For the next three-year cycle, we have retained nine of our current teams.

“Their level of professionalism and expertise guarantee the best preparation for the young drivers who aspire to progress to the highest levels of motorsport.

“To complete the grid, we welcome DAMS to the list of selected teams. We know them very well from the FIA Formula 2 Championship. Their pedigree and level of performance make them the perfect addition to the F3 field.

“Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Andreas Jenzer and everyone at Jenzer Motorsport for their commitment to Formula 3 since the beginning of the category.

Jenzer bows out after a long stint in the GP3/F3 championship, having won its first race in 2010

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“They have left their mark in the championship, and I completely respect their decision to focus now on new challenges.”

Jenzer won the very first round of the GP3 championship with Pal Varhaug in 2010, when it finished third in the teams’ standings.

That result was matched in 2017, but results were harder to come by following the merger with European Formula 3 to form the current FIA F3 championship in 2019.

Taylor Barnard became the Swiss squad’s final F3 race winner in the Spa feature contest in 2023.

The 2024 Bathurst 1000 was somewhat of a slow burner with the pole-sitting Erebus Motorsport Chevrolet Camaro of reigning Supercars champion Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood leading for the duration. 

It had appeared that the 1000 km distance was set to run under green flags for the duration until Matt Payne lost control of his Grove Racing Ford Mustang at The Cutting, resulting in the sole safety car intervention and a 27-lap sprint to the flag. 

This put the Triple Eight Camaro of Broc Feeney and Jamie Whincup on the tail of the leaders, with the two lead cars quickly gapping the field. 

With neither Kostecki nor Feeney putting a wheel wrong, it was the Erebus car that took the flag by 1.3496s.

“I can’t believe it, this guy here [Hazelwood] did a stellar job all weekend,” said Kostecki after giving Erebus its second 1000 win – the other triumph coming in 2017 with David Reynolds and Luke Youlden.

“We had a really good car for the middle stint but as soon as the clouds came over we lost a little speed. They were 32 shootout laps [at the end].

The race gets under way at Bathurst

Photo by: Supercars

“You can bring your pace back a little bit and lose it a little bit.”

It was a deserving result for Kostecki, who stood aside for the opening two rounds of the championship and for Hazelwood, who stepped into the #1 Camaro at the Bathurst 500 and at Albert Park, and whose previous best result in a Supercars race was third place.

“Unbelievable, I think I am hallucinating. I am lost for words!” said an emotional Hazelwood.

“’Bush’ [Kostecki] is an absolute legend. It has been a tough year but when you win Bathurst, it makes up for everything. No better bloke to do it with, he is a wizard around the Mountain.”

Most of the race was an arm wrestle between Chevrolet’s two dominant squads, Erebus and T8. Kostecki, who started from pole position for the second year in a row, controlled the opening 28-lap stint, when he stretched away from Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney, then the third, when Feeney’s co-driver Jamie Whincup was in the blue Camaro for two consecutive 28-lap stints.

At one stage the two teams occupied the first five positions, with Jack Le Broc and Jayden Ojeda running fourth in the second Erebus Camaro, and then Craig Lowndes. The veteran drove careful first and third stints in Triple Eight’s wildcard entry, which started from grid 18, before handing over to co-driver Cooper Murray – who was later penalised for a breach of the safety car procedure.

When Le Brocq lost time in the final pitstop, dropping him from the top five, the race was down to Kostecki, Feeney and Brown, leading a pack of Ford Mustangs – Tickford’s Cameron Waters and James Moffat, Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth (Walkinshaw Andretti United), and Richie Stanaway and Dale Wood (Grove Racing).

The Payne/Tander car was the only retirement of the 2024 Bathurst 1000

Photo by: Supercars

When the final dash came, Brown’s speed was just not there. He and co-driver Pye were in the hunt for the podium but not much more, eventually finishing 13.6404s behind the winner.

Fourth came the best of the Fords. Waters mounted a strong recovery from his and Moffat’s problems, to hold off Mostert and 2023 winner Stanaway – who still does not have a confirmed seat for 2025.

The lack of Safety Cars for more than 125 laps meant that any small errors were severely punished. Waters hung onto the leaders until a trip up an escape road, losing eight positions before he recovered. Garth Tander did a similar thing in one of Payne’s Ford, dropping him five places.

Dick Johnson Racing’s Anton De Pasquale looked like a contender to lead the Ford challenge until he dropped around 30 seconds with a troublesome brake change during a pitstop.

Andre Heimgartner, whose Brad Jones Racing crew managed to get only 20 litres into the Chevrolet at the first fuel stop, 100 short of what was intended. The car looked to have top-six speed but with no mid-race yellow flag periods, was doomed to finish back in 16th place.

As a result of his third place Brown, who brought an 189-point lead to Mount Panorama, now leads by 204 points, with 2538 to the 2334 for Feeney, who moves to second. Mostert is third on 2313 from Waters (2074), James Golding (1718) and Payne (1659).

The next round of the Supercars Championship will be on the Gold Coast on 25-27 October for two 250km races around the tight streets of Surfers Paradise.

Supercars Bathurst 1000 Results

Nyck de Vries believes the penalty that cost him his first Super Formula points finish at Fuji is a result of a “domestic-specific” interpretation of the rules governing contact.

In his third and final stand-in appearance of the season for Team Impul, ex-Formula 1 racer de Vries finished eighth on the road, making up nine places from his grid position.

However, a five-second time penalty awarded for making contact with Kenta Yamashita exiting Turn 1 as they battled over ninth place on lap 32 of 41 meant that de Vries dropped down to 11th in the final results.

That matched his result from Saturday’s opening race, when he fell two tenths of a second shy of overhauling Kondo Racing’s Yamashita for the final point in 10th.

While satisfied with his performance, de Vries pointed out the difference between his version of events in his battle with Yamashita and those of the stewards, and feels the move would have been deemed legal in categories outside of Japan.

“I would call the [penalty] decision very domestic-specific, made by people who are watching 100 metres away from the corner, which is different from my view,” said de Vries.

“If you watch the footage, it’s clear that at the apex I am almost half a car length in front of [Yamashita]. I am on the normal line, so I am accelerating at the optimum point, so I have no chance to back out because I need to use all the track.

Nyck de Vries, ITOCHU ENEX TEAM IMPUL

Photo by: Masahide Kamio

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“He accelerates to try and recover the missed ground, but he is going for a gap that isn’t there. I am at maximum lock, and he is coming from the outside and hits me.

“I just feel bad for the team because they’ve had a tough season and they deserve it.”

De Vries added that hopes Super Formula will adopt a more international approach to the rules that govern wheel-to-wheel combat in future.

“People have asked me what I think about Super Formula and how it can become even more relevant to Formula 2 and Formula 1, and I praise the series, because the cars are great and the racing is great,” he said.

“But this kind of rule that has nothing to do with international racing doesn’t make sense to me.”

De Vries’ recovery into the points was all the more remarkable as he was caught up in a second-lap incident involving Iori Kimura and Atsushi Miyake at Turn 10.

That forced the Dutch driver into the pits to replace his front wing, although the resulting safety car meant he was able to restart at the tail of the field.

Nyck de Vries, ITOCHU ENEX TEAM IMPUL

Photo by: Masahide Kamio

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A further safety car period was called when Yuji Kunimoto tapped Kazuya Oshima into a spin at Turn 1 then allowed de Vries to pit under caution and make up further places.

“Our pace was very good in that first stint,” reflected de Vries. “[After the contact] we were overtaking a car almost every lap, so we were making ground anyway, and then the second safety car played into our hands. 

“Actually on the first lap, I was already ahead of [Ayumu] Iwasa. Most of the ground I lost with the front wing change, I already made up before the second pitstop, because I came out behind Kamui [Kobayashi] and Iwasa was just ahead of him.”

Toyota junior Hibiki Taira will take over the #19 Impul car, which was driven earlier in the year by Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire and Lexus IMSA regular Ben Barnicoat, for next month’s season finale at Suzuka.

Taira took the car’s only points finish of the year so far on Super Formula’s previous visit to Fuji in July, when he finished ninth.

Max Verstappen says he was baffled by the rumours swirling over the summer on Red Bull’s alleged use of asymmetric braking, and addressed rival Formula 1 teams trying to stir up trouble.

After a dominant start to 2024, Red Bull’s fortunes took a turn for the worse around May’s Miami Grand Prix, when McLaren brought a major upgrade package that revamped its MCL38 into a race-winning car, while Red Bull says it went down a wrong development path with its RB20.

Red Bull initially struggled to respond to its downturn in competitiveness, with its last win now dating back to Verstappen’s triumph in June’s Spanish Grand Prix, and has only just started turning the corner on its car’s handling issues in recent races.

Speculation over the source of Red Bull’s form dip mounted in the summer when the FIA tightened up its regulations around asymmetric braking, effectively closing a loophole for the 2026 regulations and retroactively applying the new phrasing to this year’s rulebook.

The FIA further confirmed the rule change had not been prompted by a current team using a system that the new wording outlawed, but that didn’t stop speculation from suggesting it was Red Bull that had been using a solution that it then had to remove from the RB20.

Speaking exclusively to Motorsport.com, Verstappen reflected on the whole episode, and the flak his world championship-winning team received, with some amusement. “People always come up with different stuff,” he said. “I find it really bizarre how they come up with some of these things, but it is what it is. It’s part of the game, but I usually just let it go.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images

“I’ve been in F1 for 10 years now and I’m not wasting time on all those stories. I mean, I barely read anything about F1 anyway. Of course, sometimes I see something or someone else tells me: “Did you see what this and that person said?’ But I always say people can think what they want, I’m not going to waste my energy on that. So, I don’t really care about what other people say.”

Red Bull also caught flak from rival teams over its form dip and its off-track power struggles, which prompted McLaren CEO Zak Brown to say that Red Bull had been “destabilised”. He later described the team as a “pretty toxic” environment.

“People that say all sorts of stuff should just focus on their own team,” Verstappen replied when the subject was brought up. “That’s nothing specifically against Zak Brown, by the way, it applies to everyone. People just need to focus on themselves, and that’s what I’m doing as well.”

The Red Bull – McLaren rivalry has now also ignited on track, with McLaren overtaking Red Bull in the constructors’ championship and Lando Norris challenging Verstappen for the drivers’ title, including a collision between the pair in Austria. But the Dutchman doesn’t think things will get as tense as they were during a fraught 2021 title clash with Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes.

“Yes, because right now we still have four teams at the front, while back then you just had the same two people up front,” he explained. “Of course, 2021 was my first world championship, so that was very different already. I think I’m a bit more relaxed about it now.

“Of course, I want to win and of course, I’m going to do my best to defend that [52-point] lead. But the feeling is very different from 2021.”