Indholdsfortegnelse for 23/07/20 i Autosport

Last week we expressed hope that Red Bull could find something extra to challenge Mercedes at the Hungaroring. But if anything, the RB16 was further away from the W11 than it had been at the Red Bull Ring, though Max Verstappen did a brilliant job to split the Mercedes duo. As our report on page 18 shows, both Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas had to make amends for errors last Sunday – and they did. But way ahead of them was Lewis Hamilton, who has rarely looked more dominant than he did last weekend. Which is saying something! It’s clear that the Mercedes has a significant advantage over the opposition this year, perhaps the biggest since 2016. And that means that Hamilton could break Michael Schumacher’s Formula 1 wins record of…

MOTOGP Reigning MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez will be out of action until at least the third round of the 2020 season after breaking his arm in a violent crash during last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez. Honda’s six-time MotoGP title winner was recovering through the field after a spectacular off, in which he prevented a front-end crash at the fast Turn 4 left-hander, until he found himself chasing Maverick Vinales for second. Marquez highsided going through Turn 3 on lap 22 and landed heavily in the gravel, taking a big knock from his bike in the process. The 27-year-old suffered a break to the humerus in his right arm and underwent a successful operation on Tuesday, where a plate and screws were fixed to the bone. Speaking to…

Ron Tauranac will be remembered fondly as a doughty competitor with a brilliant technical mind, and the master designer of production racing cars. He was a brilliant and unassuming engineer whose superlative chassis beat allcomers contemporarily from the early 1960s to the late 1980s and are now revered in historic arenas worldwide. The perfect business partner and foil to Jack Brabham, whose ability as a mechanic were possibly equal to his driving skills, the pragmatic Tauranac created a long line of masterpieces at Motor Racing Developments, alongside those that carried his mate to his third Formula 1 World Championship in 1966. Tauranac’s supremely elegant Repco Brabham-branded single-seaters (Black Jack was not interested in sports-racers, yet there were a few) were gorgeous to behold and competitive. All his BT-prefixed customer cars…

How things have changed in 12 months. In qualifying for the 2019 Hungarian Grand Prix, Red Bull took pole with Max Verstappen and the two Racing Point cars were knocked out in Q1. This year, a startling turnaround took place. But this was not about Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas locking out the front row, of course. Given their performance while under pressure (largely from the punishing Red Bull Ring track) in the opening two rounds, with the Mercedes W11 now effectively unleashed on the smooth-and-flowing Budapest circuit, the championship leaders were in a class of their own. The biting, rapid turn-in for the fast left of the Turn 4 kink and the Turn 11 right at the end of the second sector just reinforced how good the car is,…

Lando Norris was left to rue a shocking start, which he called “probably the worst start I ever got in my life”, as he followed his two starring drives in Austria with a low-key 13th in Hungary. The McLaren driver was stuck in the pack from there and had rather undone another fine qualifying performance, albeit for eighth and not the glittering grid spots McLaren enjoyed in Austria. The team felt this was a reflection of its natural pace in the 2020 pecking order. “I was trying to go forward and when you try and go forward in the wet, you go backwards,” Norris told Sky F1 of his start. “It’s as simple as that. I screwed everything up and it’s such a difficult track to overtake on that I…

As Josef Newgarden stepped from his car last Friday night, he was furious. Fate, in the form of flashing yellow lights and flapping yellow flags, had robbed him of a victory that had looked certain since qualifying. Now, hot from the evening’s exertions in an aeroscreen-equipped IndyCar around the 170mph, 0.894-mile bowl that is Iowa Speedway, he was almost doing a jig of agitation. “Not to sound too overconfident, but we had the car to beat tonight, hands down,” he declared from behind his face mask. “It’s just bad luck. The yellow coming out when it came out, you can’t predict that stuff. You weigh the pros and cons when you’re trying to go long or trying to go short with your pit windows. “I had a rocketship, and I’m…

FIA FORMULA 3 HUNGARORING (HUN) 18-19 JULY ROUND 3 He’s not old enough to drive a car on the road yet, but 16-year-old French prodigy Theo Pourchaire is a proper talent on the tracks. One week after lucking into a maiden FIA Formula 3 Sunday win at the Red Bull Ring, he stamped his mark on the race that really matters – the Saturday contest – to take victory by 12 seconds on slicks in the damp at the Hungaroring. The lap times weren’t showing Pourchaire to be a contender in qualifying, yet a deeper look at the ART Grand Prix starlet’s sector times hinted that something special was brewing. Once he finally nailed sector one as the chequered flag was flying, he elevated himself right up to third on…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK (AUS) Race 1 Scott McLaughlin DJR Team Penske Ford Mustang Race 2 Nick Percat Brad Jones Racing Holden Commodore ZB Race 3 Jack Le Brocq Tickford Racing Ford Mustang PORSCHE SUPERCUP HUNGARORING (HUN) Dylan Pereira Lechner Racing NASCAR CUP TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY (USA) Austin Dillon (above) Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE NASCAR XFINITY SERIES TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY (USA) Austin Cindric Team Penske Ford Mustang NASCAR TRUCK SERIES TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY (USA) Kyle Busch Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota Tundra For full results visit motorsportstats.com…

BRITISH GT Balfe Motorsport has withdrawn its McLaren 720S GT3 due to be shared by Rob Bell and Shaun Balfe on the eve of the British GT Championship season and will revert to a race-by-race programme with Stewart Proctor and Joe Osborne. Bell and Balfe were third in the inaugural season for the 720S last year and were expected to challenge for the title in 2020. But, amid the “change of priorities” resulting from the pandemic, Balfe told Autosport that his family construction business and growing customer racing operations needed to take precedence. “I know what it takes to deliver a championship campaign and I don’t feel I could give it the necessary commitment,” he said. “It doesn’t seem right for me to race alongside my customers, stretching the team…

MOTORSPORT UK Motorsport UK has relaxed the rules restricting the number of marshals that can attend a race meeting. The governing body imposed strict limits on marshal numbers as part of its ‘Getting Back on Track’ guidance following the coronavirus pandemic. Initially, only two marshals were allowed to be at any one post in order to maintain social distancing. But, after assessing how the initial events worked, it was decided to drop this restriction from last weekend and instead there is now no set number of marshals per post. But the requirement to maintain two-metre social distancing remains, meaning there will still be significantly fewer marshals at events than last year. “It’s good we can have a few more, but it’s not a pre-COVID normal, it’s not like we were…

DONINGTON PARK MSVR MASTERS HISTORIC RACING 18-19 JULY Michael Lyons made the opening Historic Formula 1 races of the season thoroughly entertaining, even though he ultimately twice finished third in his Hesketh 308 as Mike Cantillon did the double at the wheel of his Williams FW07C. In the early laps of Saturday’s Donington Park race, Lyons worked the Hesketh into the lead in pursuit of his second win in seven days, but he had his hands completely full of Cantillon and Steve Hartley (McLaren MP4/1). The three cars made a fabulous sight and sound, but Lyons knew he was up against it with two ground-effect cars on the gearbox of his older Hesketh. Sure enough, despite Lyons’s best efforts, Cantillon finally wriggled ahead to go clear, and not long after…

NATIONAL & NORTHERN FORMULA FORD Races 1 & 2 Neil Maclennan (Spectrum 011C) TOURING CAR TROPHY & VOLKSWAGEN RACING CUP Race 1 Henry Neal (Honda Civic Type R FK2, below) Race 2 Lewis Kent (Hyundai i30 N TCR) BMW COMPACT CUP Race 1 Ian Jones Race 2 Tom Griffiths CIVIC CUP Race 1 Bruce Winfield (EP3) Race 2 Morgan Bailey (EP3) ST-XR CHALLENGE Race 1 Mark Robinson (Ford Fiesta ST) Race 2 William Heslop (Ford Fiesta ST) CATERHAM ACADEMY White Domenique Mannsperger Green Tom Cockerill For full results visit: tsl-timing.com…

LOCOST Race 1 Geoff Peek Races 2 & 3 Murray Shepherd FORMULA VEE Races 1 & 2 James Harridge (Maverick Vee) TOYOTA MR2 Race 1 Aaron Cooke (Mk2) Race 2 Nick Williamson (Mk2) BIKESPORTS & SPORTS 1000 Race 1 Martin Brooks (Radical PR6) Race 2 Josh Smith (Radical PR6, below) CLASSIC STOCK HATCH Race 1 Pip Hammond (Vauxhall Nova GTE) Race 2 Ryan Morgan (Ford Fiesta) ALFA ROMEO Race 1 Barry McMahon (156) Race 2 Graham Seager (GTV) 116 TROPHY Samuel Carrington-Yates MA7DA Races 1 & 2 Jonathan Lisseter CLIO 182 Races 1 & 2 Ryan Polley MX-5 CUP Races 1, 2 & 3 Ben Short TYPE-R TROPHY Races 1 & 2 Dan Thackeray SPORT SPECIALS Race 1 Andy Hiley (Chronos HR1S) Race 2 Paul Collingwood (Eclipse SM1) For full…

Alain Prost pilots his Ferrari 641/2 during the 1990 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. This was a weekend in which the Frenchman was always the bridesmaid: he qualified second, behind Ayrton Senna (McLaren-Honda MP4/5B), finished second, behind Senna, and took second-fastest lap of the race, behind… well, no prizes for guessing. At least his car was one of the most sublime examples of mechanical eye candy ever to grace the track – for Autosport’s top 10 best-looking F1 cars, visit bit.ly/bestlookingF1 or watch bit.ly/bestlookingF1video For classic 1990s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

The Mini 7 Racing Club must be doing something right. Any championship that continues to thrive after 50 years has certainly found a winning formula. Last year it also secured a whole new fanbase when it produced two cracking races in support of the British Touring Car Championship at Thruxton – and it has been invited back for the Brands BTCC event next month. One of the Thruxton winners was historic racing ace Nick Padmore, who has competed in a stunningly diverse range of machines, from a Williams FW07 to a Lola T70, and yet the Miglia is still one of his favourites. “I always wanted to do it because my dad raced them back in the ’70s,” he explains. “All my racing life, he’s been saying, ‘You haven’t driven anything…

The penultimate corner of the Autodromo do Algarve is a harmless enough long, double apex right-hander – think Silverstone’s Luffield but with a downhill exit. In such corners, usually drivers find themselves twiddling their toes, trying desperately to summon the patience required to avoid over-driving the turn and messing up the all-important exit. Rarely, if ever, do they find themselves so physically exhausted from the effort of driving they simply can’t turn the steering wheel enough to negotiate the corner at decent speed. But that’s the situation I found myself in after driving Phil Abbott’s new Revolution sportscar around this deceptively punishing Portuguese track. Having separated from the Radical Sportscars company he co-founded in the late-1990s, Abbott was determined to bring his own vision of a 21st Century Radical, using…

JULY DATE CIRCUIT MEETING 25 Kirkistown 500MRCI 25 Oulton Park MSVR 25-26 Brands Hatch MSVR Ferrari 25-26 Mondello Park IMRC 25-26 Thruxton CSCC 26 Cadwell Park CMMC 26 Mallory Park 750MC AUGUST DATE CIRCUIT MEETING 1 Castle Combe CCRC 1-2 Brands Hatch BARC 1-2 Cadwell Park BRSCC 1-2 Donington Park BARC BTCC 1-2 Oulton Park MSVR British GT WEEK TWO 8 Oulton Park MSVR 8 Snetterton BRSCC 8-9 Brands Hatch BARC BTCC WEEK THREE 15 Brands Hatch 750MC 15-16 Donington Park MSVR British GT 15-16 Silverstone MSVR 15-16 Snetterton CSCC 15-16 Thruxton BARC Thruxton Historic 16 Brands Hatch MSVR Festival Italia WEEK FOUR 22 Cadwell Park MSVR 22 Silverstone BDC 22-23 Anglesey BRSCC 22-23 Brands Hatch MSVR Masters Historic 22-23 Donington Park BARC 22-23 Knockhill TBC 22-23 Mondello Park CCC…

FORMULA 1 Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel could find refuge at Aston Martin following his Ferrari exit and has confirmed that talks are ongoing over a drive for 2021. Vettel’s departure from Ferrari at the end of this season was confirmed back in May after the team opted not to offer him a contract renewal, making him a free agent for next year. The 33-year-old made clear that he wanted to remain in Formula 1 and stay competitive in 2021 in the face of suggestions of a sabbatical. He may have found the means to do so through the team currently known as Racing Point, which will be renamed Aston Martin next season. Sources indicated to Autosport that negotiations between Racing Point and Vettel had intensified in recent weeks, with…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Ginetta will field a solo LMP1 car at the Le Mans 24 Hours in September in what will be its only appearance of the remainder of the current World Endurance Championship. Neither of the factory Team LNT squad’s Ginetta-AER G60-LT-P1s are on the entry for the Spa WEC round on 16 August, and team boss Lawrence Tomlinson has stated that he had no intention of the team racing in the Bahrain finale in November. Le Mans on 19-20 September, with a solo car driven by Guy Smith, Chris Dyson and Mike Simpson, will be the team’s final appearance in the WEC – it has no plans to continue into the 2021 season. Tomlinson explained that Team LNT was missing Spa for a number of reasons, which…

OBITUARY Ron Tauranac, who has died aged 95, designed the Formula 1 Brabhams that won the world championship in 1966 and 1967. Yet his success in grand prix racing arguably wasn’t the greatest achievement of his long career. Perhaps more important were the scores of junior single-seaters that sprung from his drawing board to set so many drivers on the road to F1. The operation that Tauranac ran together with fellow Australian Sir Jack Brabham wasn’t just a successful F1 team in the 1960s. Motor Racing Developments, the manufacturing arm of their company, was the world’s largest racing car constructor through the second half of the decade. He repeated that success after setting up Ralt Engineering in 1974 and sustained it into the early 1990s. Tauranac-designed machinery won races and…

Although Haas was ultimately penalised for its formation-lap choice to switch its cars onto slick tyres, the decision was a key one for its race – and involved a long-distance strategy natter. The swap boosted the Haas cars into third and fourth in the early stages and, although they slid down the field, with Romain Grosjean’s tumble exacerbated by front-wing damage from Alex Albon’s lunge, Kevin Magnussen hung on to finish ninth on the road. This became 10th when a 10-second penalty, also given to Grosjean, was applied as the team had contravened Article 27.1 of the sporting regulations. This states that the “driver must drive the car alone and unaided”, and limits the radio instructions drivers can receive on the formation lap. “Kevin wanted to try some wet tyres,…

After missing out on a Q3 berth by 0.153 seconds to Pierre Gasly, Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo produced a gutsy drive to rescue an eighth-place finish on a weekend when his team struggled. A final stint on medium tyres helped Ricciardo to make ground, and he eventually began to race Sergio Perez for position – a particularly juicy battle, given Renault’s current protests against Racing Point. Although armed with a set of mediums against Perez’s hard tyres, Ricciardo couldn’t make enough of an impact to take seventh, instead collecting Renault’s third eighth-place result of 2020. Qualifying speed appeared to be lacking, but Ricciardo was left buoyed by the RS20’s race pace and was pleased to have been able to battle one of the Racing Points for position. “I gave it everything…

When Conor Daly finally committed to the US open-wheel scene after several years in Europe, some observers assumed he’d be stronger on road and street courses because of his GP3 and GP2 background, and said he’d need to pick up his oval game. In fact, the Indiana native has looked impressive on ovals over the past few years – his best drives for both AJ Foyt Racing in 2017 and Carlin in 2019, as oval sub for Max Chilton, came at Gateway. Still, if you’d been drawing up a list of driver/team combos most likely to beat Josef Newgarden and Team Penske to pole at Iowa, there would have been a dozen candidates more obvious than Daly/Carlin. And yet last Friday, the underdogs prevailed, to score their first pole. Carlin…

IMSA SPORTSCAR SEBRING (USA) 18 JULY ROUND 3/11 Action Express Racing’s Cadillac DPi-V. R took pole for the third round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship thanks to Pipo Derani and, from the second lap of the 2h40m race, it was clear that on sheer pace there was no one else in the running. Derani and Felipe Nasr dominated the event to score the team’s first win of the season, and Cadillac’s second. For Nasr it was an emotional result, as he had been forced to miss the Daytona 240 earlier this month after catching COVID-19. Wayne Taylor Racing’s Renger Van der Zande and Ryan Briscoe ran second throughout, without the pace to threaten the leader but were able to stay clear of the Multimatic-run Mazdas and Acura Team Penske entries,…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK (AUS) 18-19 JULY ROUND 4/11 Radical new tyre regulations helped Tickford Racing Ford Mustang newcomer Jack Le Brocq to claim a maiden Supercars race win at Sydney Motorsport Park. Like the previous round, drivers were given just five sets of new tyres to get through three lots of qualifying and three races (with mandatory tyre stops), but this time there was a mix of soft-compound (two sets) and hard-compound (three) rubber. It effectively meant drivers were forced to entirely abandon one race, and then choose for either decent results in the other two, or a single shot at glory by burning both sets of softs in one race. Points leader Scott McLaughlin used his rapid hard-tyre pace to partly get the best of both worlds.…

MOTOGP JEREZ (ESP) 19 JULY ROUND 1 The tears of anguish Fabio Quartararo shed in last year’s Spanish Grand Prix, when a gear-shifter problem denied him a maiden podium a day after scorching to his first MotoGP pole, were replaced by tears of joy at Jerez last Sunday. Aged just 21, Quartararo made history by becoming the first French rider to win a premier class race since Regis Laconi at Valencia in 1999, when Quartararo was only four months old. But the day should have gone differently. Throughout practice Marc Marquez was the dominant force, his dummy race run in fourth practice a frightening glimpse of what Honda’s multiple champion could achieve come lights-out. The Yamaha duo of Maverick Vinales and polesitter Quartararo (with the satellite Petronas SRT team) had…

CLIO CUP UK Renault Sport Racing has decided to postpone the introduction of its new Clio Cup UK championship until 2021. The Clio Cup was set to feature the new fifth-generation Clio this year and switch from running alongside the British Touring Car Championship to joining British GT events, after Renault UK pulled out and RSR stepped in. But the coronavirus pandemic meant the opening event of the season was pushed back to mid-August, and also meant a later delivery of cars. RSR has therefore now taken the decision to launch the revised series in 2021 and give more time for teams to test the new cars. RSR customer racing director Benoit Nogier said: “This is not a decision that we have taken lightly. It is important to stress that…

HINSON MAKES MR2 RETURN The 2012 Toyota MR2 champion Paul Hinson returned to the series for the first time in eight years last weekend at Snetterton and was immediately back at the sharp end, qualifying third for the opening race. He spent the intervening years in the Compact Cup, but opted for a return to Toyotas for 2020 after a successful Birkett Relay race last year. “Last year we won the Birkett and I got the taste for victory again,” he said. “I really love this series so thought I would go back to MR2.” He took a best result of fifth. PROJECT LEADER’S BMW MOVE Macedonian-born Branko Kiprovski joined the BMW Compact Cup at Oulton Park last weekend, having previously raced in the Focus Cup. Before moving to the…

MASTERS HISTORIC F1 Races 1 & 2 Mike Cantillon (Williams FW07C) HGPCA Will Nuthall (Cooper T53) GENTLEMAN DRIVERS GT Gary Pearson (Jaguar E-type) MASTERS HISTORIC TOURING CARS Craig Davies (Ford Mustang) MASTERS HISTORIC SPORTS CARS Jonathan Mitchell (Chevron B19) MASTERS ENDURANCE LEGENDS Race 1 Shaun Lynn (BR01, below) Race 2 Steve Tandy (Lola B12/60) MASTERS PRE ’66 MINIS Race 1 Tom Bell Race 2 Joe Ferguson For full results visit: tsl-timing.com…

Joining the BMW Compact Cup for the first time on Saturday was Renault UK Clio Cup race winner Jordan Stilp. British GT in 2016 was the former BRDC Rising Star’s last full campaign, when he challenged for GT4 Silver Cup honours. Having taken time out of the sport to focus on building his business, Stilp has now returned to racing with a different approach. “I wanted something that I could afford to do myself instead of asking for sponsors,” said Stilp, who was convinced by championship manager Greg Graham to join the Compact Cup when they met at Autosport International in January. “That day I went out, drove straight to Essex and bought the car. “When you’re younger and you want to get somewhere you need to get there fast,”…

SKY SPORTS F1 REVIEW HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX The very few benefits of the lack of media access to the opening races of the 2020 Formula 1 season concern comestibles and comfort. Essentially, with the championship’s ‘biosphere’ coronavirus protocols massively reducing the number of journalists allowed to cover the Austrian, Styrian and Hungarian events on site, much of the coverage has been produced within a few steps of a fridge and a sofa. This somewhat eases the task of report writing until the small hours following a race day, although of course can never make up for the journalistic benefits of being in the paddock, and means morning practice sessions can be taken in with a coffee and laptop timing screens easily adjacent. Well, the latter comfort was severely compromised last…

There was lots of news this week in 1992, with speculation concerning the Formula 1 futures of both Honda and Ayrton Senna. McLaren-Honda had been overtaken by the Williams-Renault combination, with Nigel Mansell strolling towards the world title, and strong rumours suggested that the Japanese manufacturer was on the verge of pulling out. That proved to be correct and Honda left at the end of 1992, having taken 11 titles and 69 grand prix wins – with Williams, Lotus and McLaren – since returning to F1 as an engine builder in 1983. Senna’s future with McLaren was also therefore in doubt, as it became clear that Mansell, Senna and Alain Prost – then on a sabbatical – were all in the running for Williams drives for 1993. “The most likely…

For close to a century racing clubs have been the focal point for motorsport enthusiasts across the UK, and although many have come and gone during that time, there remain a handful that can trace their roots back to before the Second World War. But while there may be older and longer established clubs, one of the newest has also become one of the most successful since it was created less than 20 years ago. The MotorSport Vision Racing club has continued to expand since it was established in 2005 after ex-Formula 1 driver Jonathan Palmer had acquired the Octagon group of circuits – Brands Hatch, Snetterton, Oulton Park and Cadwell Park – the previous year under the umbrella of MotorSport Vision. “With the fact that we were getting a…

On the surface, Formula 1 and Caterham racing don’t have too much in common. But for one Caterham 310R driver, the two very different worlds are intertwined. While at the weekends James Wingfield is a Caterham racer, his day job involves a far higher level of the sport as he is a team leader at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains at Brixworth. And, whenever possible, he tries to apply the approach adopted by F1 teams to his club racing exploits. Before joining Mercedes in 2015, Wingfield held a number of engineering roles at various companies, including working for Ricardo and being part of the RML team that developed the engine for the revolutionary hybrid lithium battery-powered Nissan ZEOD that was the Garage 56 entry for the 2014 Le Mans 24…

FORMULA 1 Two more pieces of the 2021 Formula 1 driver-market puzzle were placed at last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix when Williams confirmed that George Russell and Nicholas Latifi will be staying on for another season. While both drivers were already under contract for next year, the team made its line-up for 2021 official last Thursday, ending speculation that Russell could join Mercedes. With Valtteri Bottas understood to have agreed a new contract in principle at Mercedes, to which Russell has been a protege since 2016, the door looked shut for the Briton to move up. But Russell revealed that Williams deputy team boss Claire Williams was adamant he should see out his three-year deal with the team that started in 2019. “I’m not disappointed in Mercedes at all,” said…

FORMULA RENAULT Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Johnathan Hoggard will make his Formula Renault Eurocup debut this weekend at Imola with reigning champion team R-ace GP. Hoggard, who won the 2019 Award after finishing runner-up in the British Formula 3 Championship, is due to compete in the Asian Carrera Cup this season. But with the series yet to release a revised calendar in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the 19-year-old Briton has been given clearance to return to single-seaters. “The situation out in Asia is still up in the air and we’re waiting to see what Formula 1 does as we were supposed to have support races with them,” said Hoggard. “I’m really happy to be able to get back to racing. I think the…

EUROPEAN LE MANS SERIES United Autosports boss Richard Dean described it as the “perfect weekend”. The team he co-owns with McLaren’s Zak Brown took an LMP2/LMP3 double at Paul Ricard on the belated start of the European Le Mans Series last Sunday. There was also the little matter of Dean’s beloved Leeds United being promoted to the Premier League as winners of the English Football League Championship. The four-hour event was won overall by the United ORECA-Gibson 07 shared by Alex Brundle, Job van Uitert and Will Owen after a race-long battle with the sister car of Filipe Albuquerque and Phil Hanson. LMP3 honours went to the Ligier-Nissan JSP320 driven by 2018 Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award winner Tom Gamble, Wayne Boyd and Rob Wheldon. The winning car (above) led…

Formula 1 fans remember the name Markus Winkelhock. In the 2007 European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring, the German made his only F1 start, in a race that featured catastrophic rain – as evidenced by the cars flying off the road. But he also made history by leading the race for Spyker, and did so because of a formation-lap pitstop call to change tyres. Thirteen years ago, Winkelhock was swapping slicks for intermediates. Last weekend at the Hungaroring, the two Haas drivers – Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean – took slicks after initially lining up on extreme wets and inters respectively. By coming in and not taking the start, they joined the race on the perfect rubber, as there was already a dry line visible for much of the formation…

Behind Lewis Hamilton, there was actually a pretty good Hungarian Grand Prix. The trouble for the other 19 drivers in the race was that he simply left them all behind on the way to his 86th Formula 1 career win, from his 90th pole position. Yet again, Hamilton showed his class in the wet, with a 3.107-second lead on the intermediate rubber at the end of lap one, and from there he was out of reach. As Mercedes’ world champion left his opposition to sort things out between them, attention boiled down to the fight for second place, with Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas each on their own quests to make up for earlier errors. There’s no doubt that Verstappen’s was the bigger calamity. After rain had fallen in the…

Sergio Perez was once again left to consider what might have been in Hungary, after failing to capitalise on a second-row start and crossing the line seventh. Perez, who was suffering from a compressed vertebra, was outqualified by team-mate Lance Stroll. While Stroll scampered off into an early second place, Perez bogged down at the start and was soon overcome by both Ferraris. Initial race pace was hardly stellar for either of the pink cars but, while Stroll let the race come to him, Perez had to battle through the pack. He managed to hold off an assault from the Renault of Daniel Ricciardo, which was on softer-compound tyres, but ran out of laps to clear Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari.…

DAVE ROBSON WILLIAMS HEAD OF VEHICLE PERFORMANCE What’s the mood about the FW43 after the fine qualifying result in Hungary? Everyone is obviously feeling very positive. We came here a little bit cautious off the back of two races at the same venue. The circuit here is very different, but actually the car’s performed pretty well so everyone is very happy and quite encouraged. Some teams think Hungary shows where they sit in the pecking order. Is that the same for Williams? This circuit is a bit of a standout alongside Monaco, possibly Singapore, so even if the car is good here, it’s perhaps not necessarily what you want for the whole season, although of course we don’t know necessarily where we’re going to go for a good portion of this…

FORMULA 2 HUNGARORING (HUN) 18-19 JULY ROUND 3 Last weekend’s Formula 2 races at the Hungaroring took on the nature of miniature IndyCar nailbiters, such were the complexities of strategy caused by the disastrous performance of the medium-compound Pirelli tyres. And they proved that Robert Shwartzman, the points leader following the double opening events at the Red Bull Ring, has developed extreme adaptability and canniness to the sometimes erratic speed he showed early in his career. Prema Racing must also be given much of the credit for the results of its drivers, Robert Shwartzman and Mick Schumacher. Owing to damp conditions in free practice and a wet track in qualifying, not a single flying lap of the Hungaroring had been completed on the new 18-inch Pirelli slicks until the field…

SUPER GT FUJI (JPN) 19 JULY ROUND 1/8 Toyota dominated the opening round of the new Super GT season at the Fuji Speedway with its brand-new GR Supra, as TOM’S pair Nick Cassidy and Ryo Hirakawa took victory. Cassidy and Hirakawa, the 2017 champions, enjoyed an untroubled run at the head of the field throughout the 66-lap encounter, the first of four Fuji races on this year’s schedule, with Cassidy converting pole into the lead for the #37 car after an early caution period. The New Zealander passed over to Hirakawa with 18 seconds in hand over the sister TOM’S car and, although this advantage was eradicated when the safety car was called for a second time, Hirakawa had no problem fending off team-mate Yuhi Sekiguchi at the restart. Sekiguchi…

GOODWOOD A new three-day behind-closed-doors event – described as Goodwood’s “fastest ever” – that combines the best of the Festival of Speed and Revival will take place in October. The idea of running a televised-only event was first mooted after the cancellation of all three of Goodwood’s main motorsport fixtures this season due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now plans have been put in place to run the new Goodwood Speedweek event across the 16-18 October weekend. As well as traditional circuit races at the Sussex venue, there will also be a rally competition, and the meeting will conclude with a special one-lap shootout among the fastest cars. This will feature modern cars competing at Goodwood for the first time, and it is therefore expected that the lap record will be…

NEW JHR DRIVERS FOR 2020 JHR Developments has revealed an additional driver for each of its BRDC British F3 and British Formula 4 squads this year. Formula Ford 1600 graduate Max Marzorati will join the team’s F3 line-up at selected rounds, while ex-Ginetta Junior and Fiesta Junior driver Nat Hodgkiss will contest the opening F4 events. Hodgkiss replaces Mikkel Grundtvig, the Dane’s plans changing in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. BARR LANDS JAS ROLE Former Mini Challenge runner-up Reece Barr has been named as a member of JAS Motorsport’s driver development scheme. The 19-year-old, who has more recently raced in TCR Europe and German Carrera Cup, will conduct a test programme in an NSX GT3 Evo this year for Honda partner JAS ahead of likely racing one next year.…

116 TROPHY Ex-Formula 1 driver Martin Donnelly returned to racing for the first time in nearly two years when he competed in the 116 Trophy at Snetterton last weekend. The former Lotus driver was making his first race outing since nearly losing his leg in a charity moped accident last year. The opportunity to compete in the opening round of the 116 Trophy arose after he spoke with fellow instructor Ray Grimes the previous weekend. “He said, ‘Do you fancy a drive at the weekend? There’s a BMW drive – 116 Trophy – I’m down as a driver but why don’t you take my seat?’” said Donnelly. “I only live about six kilometres away, so I came down here on Friday morning.” “The car was quite easy to drive, very…

For thousands of people – whether they be drivers, team owners or simply fans – the return of UK club racing earlier this month can’t have come soon enough. Driving into Snetterton on a grey and drizzly last Sunday morning certainly couldn’t dampen this writer’s enthusiasm to finally be back at a race meeting for the first time in 2020. Even before Sunday, my enthusiasm had reached fever pitch by attending the test day on Friday – in much warmer and sunnier conditions – when the paddock was full of racing machines from Formula Vee and Sports 1000 to Toyota MR2s and Renault Clios ahead of the 750 Motor Club’s meeting. It was great to see first hand that, certainly at club level, competitors are more keen than ever to…

OULTON PARK BRSCC 18 JULY The opening salvoes of the National Formula Ford Championship were fired by Neil Maclennan as he won both races at a very wet Oulton Park. From pole position, he faced intense pressure from Rory Smith on each occasion. B-M Racing driver Smith’s relentlessness told in the opener when he forced a mistake from Maclennan at Hislop’s chicane and he got a run on the Scot’s Kevin Mills Racing Spectrum exiting the corner, but it was to no avail as a red flag meant that Maclennan won on countback. Maclennan had dropped to third after the Team Dolan Van Diemen of Chris Middlehurst passed at Old Hall, before receiving his reprieve. Festival winner Jonathan Browne briefly led the opener when he dived inside Maclennan at Old…

SNETTERTON 750MC 18-19 JULY Geoff Peek had to work hard for a 0.02-second win in a frenetic first Locost encounter around Snetterton’s 200 circuit, as he traded the lead throughout with Martin West and Craig Land. Six cars were in contention on the penultimate lap, but Land spun off at the Wilson hairpin, which gave Paul Clark the advantage, before Clark put himself into the gravel at Nelson. That left four cars battling down the back straight on the final lap for the lead, with David Mason and 2019 champion Thomas Gadd joining Peek and West. But Peek was the last of the late brakers into Brundle to hold off the pack, denying a late surge down the main straight from West to hold on for victory. The second race,…

It was a long time coming. The coronavirus pandemic may have meant the club racing season began in July rather than March, but it seems the delay has done nothing to dampen the desire to get out on track. There have been some fantastic entry numbers to get the shortened campaign off to a strong start, and generally the new COVID-19 protocols seem to be working well. Given national racing is now under way again, it seems the right time to bring back Autosport’s monthly national racing supplements that shine the spotlight on the UK’s eclectic motorsport scene. In this issue, Ben Anderson gets behind the wheel of one of the newest cars racing on these shores: the Revolution A-One (p12). Masterminded by Radical co-founder Phil Abbott, it’s certainly not…

ENDUROKA The newest series introduced by MSVR, EnduroKa, has been created as an affordable and cost-effective way to go endurance racing with friends. In its maiden season grids averaged 27 entries across six rounds, and featured guest appearances from 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours winner Nick Tandy – who secured victory at the season-ending Brands Hatch Indy Ka 500 – and former McLaren Formula 1 team director Eric Boullier. The series uses Ford’s Ka Mk1 1300cc machine, produced from 2002-08. Limited modifications mean racing remains competitive while keeping costs low. ELISE TROPHY The Elise Trophy, which grew from Lotus on Track, has been running since 2007, becoming an official championship for 2014. Although grid numbers only averaged 14 entries last season, it remains an ever-present fixture on MSVR’s roster. The…

It’s Quarter-Final time in the 1989 Formula Ford Festival. Michael Vergers (#53, John Village Automotive) and David Coulthard (#51, David Leslie Racing) battle in their Van Diemen RF89s, before the Scot prevailed. Coulthard was second in their Semi, Vergers fourth, before rain lashed down for the Final. Vergers fell off at Druids on the opening lap, but his comeback to second – on the gearbox of winner Niko Palhares by the flag – has entered Festival lore. Coulthard, that year’s double junior champion, was third. For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com IN ASSOCIATION WITH RYAN MOTORSPORT INSURANCE…

To be totally honest, at the Classic Sports Car Club we had no idea how many entries we would get for our first race meeting back. Were we going to get 10 or 200 cars? But we had to make a decision whether to go ahead with the 25-26 July event at Thruxton. Luckily, it took off spectacularly! Within 24 hours of entries opening we had 250 signed up. Now there’s a total of 418 entries (over 500 if you include second drivers), and six of the 11 races are completely full on a 42-car grid – however that does include reserves. There will unfortunately be people who wish to race, but won’t be able to. Thruxton are not sure what the entry record is, but they’re pretty sure this…