Andrew Frankel: ‘Having the best car and the best driver was not enough in F1 these days’

I can say this, because I’m neither editor nor staff member but a mere humble contributor, and am therefore not bound by the conventions of modesty when it comes to the achievements of him and his team. This title’s centenary celebrations at The Dorchester was the best event of its kind I have attended. Everything was right from the size of the venue – big enough to be a proper occasion, yet sufficiently small to feel intimate, to the fabulous hosts in the form of Steve Rider and Karun Chandhok. As for the guests, the last time I found myself amid a greater density of superstars was in the driver’s briefing for the RAC TT Celebration race at Goodwood.

So I asked one of those stars, someone who really knows, why Red Bull has been unable – at least at the time of writing – to maintain the apparently insuperable form displayed at the start of the season. Was it simply that McLaren and Mercedes had got their respective acts together? He said no.

I wasn’t taping the conversation so don’t have the precise wording, but essentially he said that simply having the best car and the best driver is not enough these days. You have to be the best team, and with all the backstage psychodrama playing out between Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, with Jos Verstappen stirring the pot and Adrian Newey no longer front and centre prior to his departure at the end of the season, Red Bull had “simply taken its eye off the ball”. That bit I remembered.

I expect the title race is already decided for this year, but 2025 is looking more exciting now than imaginable at the start of the year. Is Lewis yet wondering whether he should have stayed at Mercedes if, indeed, that option was even open to him?

Le Mans seems an age ago so I won’t trouble you with a race report, just three observations, the first being the weather meant it was clear long before the start that the race would be won not by the fastest car but the team that had the most luck and made the fewest mistakes. That team was Ferrari and their victory was thoroughly deserved.

The second is that no team could be heard complaining about being unfairly disadvantaged by a last-minute change to the Balance of Performance. Great news, at least in theory. In reality, the reason is probably not that they all thought they’d got a fair deal, but that the FIA has banned anyone from talking about it. So who knows what actually went on behind closed doors in smoke-free rooms at the back of the paddock?

Finally, and more positively, there was the best atmosphere at the race I can recall in 30 attendances over the last 36 years. The place was rammed yet while everyone was there to have a good time, of the seriously unedifying sights I’ve witnessed before – predominately pissed Brits being disrespectful to poor French waiting staff – there was no sign. It reminded me of the kind of crowd you get at the Le Mans Classic: real enthusiasts enjoying a few beers of course, but there primarily to watch motor racing. I went out to Indianapolis in the early hours of Sunday morning and was amazed by the crowds standing there watching cars fly through the kink, throw themselves into the tight left-hander and rocket away towards Arnage. Save being out there myself, there’s no place on any track I’d rather be.

“It is almost a tonne heavier than the first car to wear the M5 badge”

By the time you read this, the new G90 BMW M5 will have been formally revealed to the world. It’s a 727bhp monster powered by a hybrid-assisted 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8, but the statistic that most closely attracted my attention was its weight: at 2435kg, it carries over half a tonne more mass than the last of the previous F90 generation, the 1900kg M5 CS. Half a tonne! My Caterham weighs less than that. So great is its weight that despite an additional 100bhp, its power to weight ratio is much worse. And they call this progress.

It is also almost an entire tonne heavier than the first car to wear the fabled M5 badge, originally applied to the E28 generation 40 years ago. And earlier in the month I spent a day on Welsh mountain roads thanks to a generous, enthusiastic and accommodating owner. So now you’re expecting me to say how modern it still felt after all these years, but I’m not. It felt older even than it was: the E28 was a largely new car when introduced in 1981 but leaned so heavily on the previous E12 generation its doors, skins and windscreen are interchangeable. That car was launched in 1972, meaning it was designed in the 1960s. And in its narrowness, its sit-up-and-beg posture, needle-thin A-pillars, lack of torsional rigidity and oversteer-addicted handling, that’s how it feels. It was fun, but you only needed to drive its successor, the genuinely all new E34 introduced late in 1988, to realise how dated it was even when new.

Apart, that is, from its engine. That 3.4-litre twin cam, 24-valve straight six came from the M1 with little more than a different fuel injection, a wet sump and deleted hydraulic operation for its tappets. It actually delivered a few more horsepower in the four-door saloon than the two-door supercar. Its appetite for revs and searing exhaust note are unforgettable. Indeed in its history BMW only made one better engine than this, the V12 that sat in the back of the McLaren F1.

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A former editor of Motor Sport, Andrew splits his time between testing the latest road cars and racing (mostly) historic machinery

Follow Andrew on Twitter @Andrew_Frankel