Monday Motorsports: Vettel Closes Out History-Making Formula One Season

Sebastian Vettel ended the 2013 Formula One campaign in dominant fashion on Sunday at the season finale in Brazil, scoring a strong victory over his Red Bull Infiniti teammate, Mark Webber, and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso. Vettel, 26, had already secured his fourth straight World Championship; Alonso was a distant runnerup in the points battle.

The victory was Vettel’s 13th for the season, tying a record held by Michael Schumacher. And it was also Vettel’s ninth victory in a row in the same season, a new Formula One record; Alberto Ascari also won nine grand prix races in a row, but it was over two seasons, the last six races of the 1952 season and the first three in 1953.

The race marked the end of Webber’s Formula One career; he has announced plans to race factory-backed Porsches in sports car endurance events starting next year.

The 2014 Formula One season begins March 16 in Australia.

In other racing news from the weekend:

¦ The Audi drivers Stéphane Ortelli and Laurens Vanthoor were crowned champions of the 2013 Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile GT Series, with their victory in the season finale on Sunday on a street circuit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Sebastien Loeb and Alvaro Parente, co-drivers in a McLaren MP4 12C, finished fourth on the track, but were elevated to second place in the official posting of the race results after 10-second penalties were assessed the original second and third place finishers.

¦ Andrew Palmer, a 19-year-old from Chicago, planned to return to classes at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., on Monday much like he has throughout this term. Yet, something is now very different in his life: Palmer is now a world champion.

In a somewhat unlikely outcome, Palmer competed over the weekend in the World Finals of the Lamborghini Blancpain Super Trofeo series, held in Rome. He finished second in the first race of the doubleheader format, won the second race and scored enough points to collect the championship title.

What was so unlikely about that?

For one, the races were held in the rain, conditions in which Palmer said he had little experience, especially compared with some of the other seasoned professionals who qualified for the event.

For another, Palmer took up auto racing only in October. That’s when he won a race in his debut weekend at Virginia International Raceway, in Alton, Va., which qualified him for the World Finals.

“It’s a surreal feeling to be world champion,” said Palmer, who became interested in auto racing through go-karting. “I am not sure the reality has really sunk in just yet.”

He added that returning to his math and economics classes this week was going to be “quite weird.”

Formula One: Encouraging Signs in U.S. Grand Prix's Second Year

AUSTIN, Tex. — Before the U.S. Grand Prix, the biggest question was whether Sebastian Vettel could make history and become the first driver in Formula One to win eight straight races in a single season.

He answered that easily Sunday, leading from start to finish and winning without a challenge in yet another walkover.

But the secondary question floating over the weekend was whether Austin would succeed as a venue after nine other locations in the United States in the past half century had failed to give the series a permanent home and national recognition in the world’s biggest economy.

While “two in a row” is a far more modest figure than Vettel’s winning streak, it appears after the second race here that Austin has veered away from the feared pattern of a new race’s succeeding in the first year, only to peter out thereafter.

As a whole, the event was well attended. The announced crowd of 113,162 on Sunday was just 4,000 fewer than last year, and the race was better organized, too, though it still has progress to make in a few areas.

Ross Pringle, an Austin resident who was attending his first grand prix, pointed out that the race had faced tough competition for fans, including a vast festival linked to the race and the biggest show in town: college football with the Texas Longhorns.

“It came on a very busy weekend,” he said. “You had to pick what you wanted to do. I didn’t go to the football game because I came here.”

Nearly 79,000 people attended Saturday’s qualifying session alone. That is more than double the 30,000 people who attended race day at some of the failed races, such as the Turkish Grand Prix outside Istanbul, which increasingly lost popularity after its successful debut in 2005 before it was dropped after the 2011 season.

And while the Austin race suffered again from traffic jams leading to the venue on Sunday, organizers made improvements nearly everywhere else, especially when it came to the fan experience at the circuit. The V.I.P. list was as good as any race outside of Monaco, while local media attention remained healthy.

The series has always understood that the key to succeeding in the United States is to provide a spectacle on and off the track, to allow close access to the drivers and the teams and to get the crowd participating, even though organizers in the past never followed through on that, until now.

Spectators said that the 2013 U.S. Grand Prix was better than last year’s, even with the race being less exciting because of Vettel’s dominance.

“I enjoyed this one better, because I think the organization was better at the race track. They were ready now,” said Arturo Sanchez, a Mexico City resident. Thousands of Mexican fans were in the stands, cheering on the two Mexican drivers on the circuit, Sergio Pérez of the McLaren Mercedes team and Esteban Gutiérrez of the Sauber team.

Michael Schumacher held the previous record of seven consecutive victories in the same season, set in 2004. At the Brazilian Grand Prix next Sunday, the last race of the year, Vettel will attempt to equal the record of nine consecutive victories over all. Alberto Ascari set that mark over two seasons, 1952 and 1953. But Vettel, who grabbed his 12th victory of the year Sunday, played down the achievement, as usual.

“What makes me jump into the car is not a certain number,” he said. “But certainly today, when you realize that you’ve done it, it makes you very proud in that moment and, yeah, I think it’s very difficult for all of us to realize what it actually means.”

While Vettel’s race may have been yet another walkover, there was action up and down the pack behind him, with one high point being when Pérez and Gutiérrez fought a wheel-to-wheel battle for seventh position on Lap 31 of the 56-lap race. Pérez finished seventh and Gutiérrez finished 14th.

It was not without interest just behind the leader, either. Mark Webber, Vettel’s teammate on Red Bull, tried to grab second-place late in the race by attacking Romain Grosjean. But Webber, who started second on the grid, never could get by the Lotus driver.

A year ago, Grosjean was in disgrace after he caused several accidents during the season.

On Sunday, he stood on the podium for the sixth time this year, with his first second-place finish.

Besides the traffic jams, the race had a few other problems. Some fans who ordered tickets months in advance and made travel plans around the weekend did not get their tickets until just days before the race. The first practice session was delayed twice on Friday morning.

But it is now clear that Formula One has made a foothold in Austin in a way that few could have imagined a year ago, when the race looked compromised after the project did not finish on time. And the Austin community is quickly becoming aware of the value of the event.

“I know there are people around the world who may not have ever heard of Austin who now know it exists,” said Mike Rollins, the president of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, on NBCSports.com. “We never could have paid for that kind of media attention.”

Formula One, too, appreciates the southern hospitality.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s only our second race here and we’ve got more than 100,000 people coming on Sunday,” said Vettel. “I think this is one of the best races we have all season. The whole city is going crazy, so it’s phenomenal to race here in front of the crowd.”

Wheels: Managing Risk on the High-Stakes Formula One Circuit

Making a Pit Stop in Formula One With ‘Rush’

Ron Howard likes to think of himself as one of those chameleon directors, like Billy Wilder and Mike Nichols, who are known not for any one thing, but rather for doing lots of things well. He has made so many different kinds of movies that he sometimes seems to be working from a checklist: a pair of whimsical comedies (“Cocoon” and “Splash”), a fairy tale (“Willow”), a holiday film (“How the Grinch Stole Christmas”), a firefighting movie (“Backdraft”), a space epic (“Apollo 13”), a biopic (“A Beautiful Mind”), a western (“The Missing”), a boxing film (“Cinderella Man”), a buddy flick (“The Dilemma”) and two Dan Brown thrillers (“The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons”).

Ron Howard

The obvious gaps on this list are a horror movie and a musical, but Mr. Howard’s newest film, “Rush,” which opens on Sept. 20 after a gala screening at the Toronto International Film Festival next Sunday, fills a much tinier niche. It’s a Formula One car racing movie, a genre that had its heyday, if you can call it one, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Formula One is to Nascar, the version of racing more prominent on screen these days, more or less what polo is to rodeo. The cars go faster, cost more, and the sport deliberately affects a snobby, elitist image. It’s far more popular in Europe than in America, where Formula One races are seldom held, and Europe is where most of the money for “Rush” came from.

It’s the first movie that Mr. Howard, known mostly for his mainstream Hollywood hits, has made without America as the primary audience, and it shows. “Rush” is darker, sexier, moodier than any of his previous pictures. By Ron Howard standards, it’s practically an art-house film.

The budget was $30 million, not a pittance by movie standards but hardly the kind of money Mr. Howard is used to. The screenwriter, Peter Morgan, probably best known for “The Queen,” said not long ago about trying to drum up interest in Formula One: “I remember the terrible looks I used to get when I said I was working on a script about Tony Blair and the queen after the death of Diana, or about Richard Nixon and David Frost. People would question my sanity. At least this one has cars, sex and death. To me it felt like ‘Iron Man.’ ”

Though Mr. Howard’s first feature, “Grand Theft Auto” (1977), was essentially one long car chase, ending in a demolition derby, Mr. Howard is far from a motor head. In person, he’s boyish, modest and — despite all the attention he’s been getting lately for his appearances on the Netflix revival of “Arrested Development” — a little shy. He seems less a big shot Hollywood director than a balding, bearded version of Opie Taylor, the character he played on the Andy Griffith television show in the 1960s. While in New York recently, he admitted that for his 50th birthday, in 2004, his wife gave him a BMW 750 and after just a couple of months, he got rid of it and went back to his Volvo station wagon.

“I guess you could say it’s a bit of a stretch,” he said speaking about “Rush” and its place on the Howard résumé in an interview at a Midtown hotel. “But at this point, I don’t know what does sound like a Ron Howard film. I’m just looking for interesting filmmaking challenges and stories that have a chance to surprise the audience.”

He added, “When I started, I didn’t know much about Formula One, but I knew that it was cool, sexy and dangerous, and that’s a pretty good combination.”

He prepped for the movie by studying “Senna,” Asif Kapadia’s 2010 documentary about the great Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna, and by looking at racing movies old and new, even “Talladega Nights.” Because “Rush” is set in the ’70s, he also watched and rewatched “Gimme Shelter,” the 1970 Rolling Stones documentary, which may account for why, in yet another departure, “Rush,” which was shot by Anthony Dod Mantle (who won an Oscar for “Slumdog Millionaire”), has something Mr. Howard’s movies, practically interchangeable in their straightforward, un-fancy cinematography are seldom known for: a look. The movie is so bright at times as to be almost psychedelic, and at others dark and muted, as if shot through a haze of dope smoke.

What most attracted him to this project, Mr. Howard said, was the screenplay and the chance to work with Mr. Morgan again. (Mr. Morgan also wrote the script, based on his own stage play, for Mr. Howard’s film “Frost/Nixon,” and he and Mr. Howard agreed just recently to collaborate on a project based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book “In the Heart of the Sea” — a whaling picture, yet another box Mr. Howard can check off.)

The classic Formula One movies, like John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix” (1966), an early experiment in split-screen technology, were replete with racing footage (much of it real) but skimpy on plot. And in “Le Mans,” the 1971 film that is almost as long as the famed 24-hour race itself, Steve McQueen doesn’t even speak until about 20 minutes have elapsed. But Mr. Morgan wrote the first draft of “Rush” assuming that there might not be any racing sequences at all.

“I wasn’t sure there would be the money,” he said recently by phone from Vienna, where he lives half the year with his wife, who is Austrian. “If you grow up in England, that’s how you think,” he added, laughing. “So I said to myself, ‘Why don’t we work on the assumption that racing is going to be impossible?’ ”

Instead, he structured the whole film, which he wrote on spec, as a kind of race between the two principal characters, James Hunt (played by Chris Hemsworth, better known as Thor in “The Avengers’) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl, a Spanish-born German actor probably best known to Americans for his appearance in “Inglourious Basterds”), drivers who were real-life rivals in the late ’70s. Mr. Hunt, an Englishman, was charming and glamorous, a blond, carefree lothario, irresistible to women. Mr. Lauda, an Austrian, was socially awkward, a little ferrety looking, and obsessive about the mechanical details of racing and the risks, which he endlessly calculated and recalculated.

In the script, first one and then the other pulls ahead — on the racetrack, with wealthy sponsors, in the bedroom — until finally they compete for the viewer’s affection. In that contest, the charismatic Mr. Hunt begins way ahead but, especially after a near fatal accident at Nürburgring in 1976, Mr. Lauda sneaks up.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 28, 2013

An earlier version of this article misidentified the style of racing in the 1971 film “Le Mans.” It is endurance racing, not Formula One racing.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the nationality of Daniel Brühl. He is a Spanish-born German actor, not Austrian.

Wheels: Formula One Exhibition to Be Held in Jerusalem

Ronen Topelberg A 2009 Ferrari F60, showcased in Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM — Although grand prix racing started in Europe, it has recently expanded to Singapore, South Korea, India, the United States and is scheduled to spread to Russia next year. And this week, Formula One cars will run through the streets of this city.

While not a full-scale competition, the exhibition, being called the Peace Road Show, goes beyond typical demonstration events like the one Lotus recently held in Manila or that Red Bull will hold in Durban this weekend. While these spectacles typically revolve around a single team showcasing its cars in a parking lot, the exhibition here will be held on the streets, showcasing a wider variety of cars.

The event, scheduled for Thursday and Friday, will include Ferrari and Marussia Motors Formula One cars, a Lotus Le Mans prototype, an Audi DTM racecar, several Ferrari Challenge racers and motorcycles. Drivers in the event include Giancarlo Fisichella and Vitantonio Liuzzi, former Formula One drivers, and Max Biaggi, a MotoGP rider. The route starts at the city’s Ottoman-era train station and passes landmarks like the King David Hotel and the walls of the Old City.

Ronen Topelberg Red Bull’s Audi DTM will be one of the cars at the Jerusalem Formula One exhibition.

The event was previewed at the restored railway station on Monday, and the cars are on display there.

“There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be proud of showcasing Jerusalem with the Formula Peace Road Show in the center of the city,” said Nir Barkat, the city’s mayor. “It is the first time that such a road show exists in our country, so we’re breaking new ground.”

Mr. Barkat, standing in front of the 2009 Ferrari F60 that Scuderia Ferrari shipped in for the event, said spectators would effectively become ambassadors for the city.

“Jerusalem has huge potential,” he said. “It’s a city which is the center of the world for people of all faiths, and in many ways what we’re doing is opening Jerusalem up for the benefit of the world to enjoy,” he said.

Wheels: Monday Motorsports: Raikkonen’s Lotus Wins Formula One Opener

Rob Griffith/Associated Press Kimi Raikkonen of Finland controling his car on turn two Sunday in the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia.

Kimi Raikkonen seemed to outsmart the competition in the season-opening Formula One race on Sunday, scoring a victory for Lotus in the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.

The Finn managed to conserve his tires well enough – while maintaining a strong pace – to make only two pit stops in the race. The other top contenders had to stop three times.

Fernando Alonso came in second, in one of Ferrari’s better season-opening results. Sebastian Vettel, the defending season champion and the fastest in practice and in qualifying, brought his Red Bull machine home in third. He complained afterward of extreme tire wear problems.

At times, because of the varying pit stop strategies that were gradually played out like poker hands, it was difficult to tell who would come out on top at the end.

Raikkonen said he was pleased with the speed of his Lotus, but he cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the result in Melbourne. “It could be a completely different result next week in Malaysia,” he said in interviews after the race. “The difference today was that we got our tire strategy absolutely right.” (f1.com)

The full schedule for the 2013 Formula One season is at the bottom of this post.

In other motorsports news over the weekend:

• Kasey Kahne’s Chevrolet SS pulled away from the field on a final restart after a caution period and scored a victory Sunday in the Nascar Sprint Cup event at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

The victory, the 15th of Kahne’s career in Nascar’s premier series, was his first at Bristol and his first of the season, which is now four events into a 36-race run. The runner-up was the pole-position starter, Kyle Busch in a Toyota, followed by the Ford of Brad Keselowski.

Keselowski, the defending series champion, moved into the points lead for the first time this year, as former points leader Jimmie Johnson damaged his car when a tire blew late in the race. The sixth place finisher at Bristol, Dale Earnhardt Jr., moved into second in points, nine behind Keselowski.

The series next moves to Fontana, Calif., for an event March 24. (nascar.com)

• Audi finished one-two in the Sebring 12-hour endurance race Saturday, as Marcel Fassler, Benoit Treluyer and Oliver Jarvis took turns at the wheel of the No. 1 Audi R18 e-tron Quattro. It was the first victory for a hybrid-powered vehicle in the endurance classic in Sebring, Fla., according to the organizers,

Treluyer, who had to make a fuel stop with just 20 minutes to go, was at the wheel for the close victory over the No. 2 Audi of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Lucas di Grassi. Each Audi completed 364 laps around the 3.74-mile road course. The two Audis traded the lead 21 times. The third place Toyota of Neel Jani, Nick Heidfeld and Nicolas Prost was a distant five laps behind.

In GT competition at Sebring, the Corvette driven by Tommy Milner passed the skidding Ferrari of Matteo Malucelli in the final 13 minutes for the class victory. Malucelli, apparently feeling the pressure from the fast-closing Milner, who codrove with Oliver Gavin and Richard Westbrook, slid off the course twice in the span of a single lap.

• Top Fuel champion Antron Brown, who has escaped serious injury in two fiery crashes in his most recent races, bounced back Sunday with a victory in the N.H.R.A. Gatornationals in Gainseville, Fla. He beat Clay Millican in a razor-close duel to the line in the finale.

Brown’s strong performance gave him the series points lead, despite his fiery mishaps of late.

Johnny Gray, who says he’s retiring at the end of the season, took the victory in the Funny Car class. Quicker reaction time gave Allen Johnson a victory over Jeg Coughlin Jr. And in Pro Stock Motorcycle, Hector Arana Jr. took the win. (nhra.com)

• Cameron Beaubier won the 72nd Daytona 200 motorcycle classic on Saturday, riding a Yamaha YZF-R6 to a decisive victory. His teammate Garrett Gerloff, coming back from a leg-breaking crash at Daytona a year ago, was a distant 22 seconds behind. Bobby Fong of the RMR team was third. (amaproracing.com)

• A 17-year-old sprint car driver careened off the track at Marysville Speedway in California on Saturday, and killed two spectators – one of which was his 14-year-old cousin. Authorities were still investigating the cause of the crash involving the driver, Chase Johnson, who was uninjured, and his cousin Marcus Johnson, and 68-year-old Dale Wondergem. (The Associated Press)

Schedule for Remaining Formula One Races

March 24, Petronas Malayasia Grand Prix, Kuala Lumpur.
April 14, UBS Chinese Grand Prix, Shanghai.
April 21, Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix, Sakhir.
May 12, Grand Prix of Spain, Catalonia.
May 26, Grand Prix of Monaco, Monte Carlo.
June 9, Grand Prix of Canada, Montreal.
June 30, British Grand Prix, Silverstone.
July 7, Grand Prix of Germany, Nürburgring.
July 28, Hungarian Grand Prix, Budapest.
Aug. 25, Shell Belgian Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps.
Sept. 8, Grand Prix of Italy, Monza.
Sept. 22, Singapore Grand Prix, Singapore.
Oct. 6, Korean Grand Prix, Yeongam.
Oct. 13, Japanese Grand Prix, Suzuka.
Oct. 27, Airtel Indian Grand Prix, New Delhi.
Nov. 3, Ethihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Yas Marina.
Nov. 17, United States Grand Prix, Austin, Tex.
Nov. 24, Grand Prix of Brazil, São Paulo.