Indholdsfortegnelse for 29/02/24 i Autosport

The new Formula 1 season is upon us, with all the usual questions and excitement that come at the start of a fresh campaign. The big one is, of course, can anyone challenge Red Bull and Max Verstappen? But there are many others that we attempt to answer in this week’s F1 2024 season preview special. As Alex Kalinauckas points out in our analysis of last week’s Bahrain pre-season test (page 18), Red Bull’s radical racer looks ominously impressive, but the pace and consistency of Ferrari has given some hope that things won’t be quite so one-sided in 2024. As well as all the key data from testing, we take a look at the tech battlegrounds in the third year of this ground-effect era (p24), look at the challenges facing…

DAYTONA 24 HOURS Ferrari and BMW have lost their IMSA SportsCar Championship GTD Pro and GTD manufacturers’ points from the Daytona 24 Hours last month. The two marques, which finished first and third in the former class, were also fined as a result of their respective GT3 machines violating declared performance levels. Manufacturers in the twin GTD categories have to declare their performance under a new system of Balance of Performance introduced to the North American IMSA series for this year. Statements from IMSA said that it had been decided that the Ferrari 296 GT3 and the BMW M4 GT3 had “demonstrated performance in the Daytona 24 Hours that exceeded IMSA’s expectations as shared in the GT manufacturers’ technical working groups”. It added that the goal of the new system…

BTCC Long-time British Touring Car Championship independent One Motorsport is taking what it has termed a ‘planned pause’ from racing for 2024. The Brackley squad has won 19 races with Honda Civic Type R machinery dating back to its days as BTC Norlin Racing in 2018, 16 of them scored by Josh Cook. But doubts had begun to swirl amid the departures over recent months of Cook, Aiden Moffat and team principal Danny Buxton to Speedworks Motorsport. Although Cook won the independents crown, the team went winless for the first time in six years in 2023, when it had no on-track test programme to speak of beyond the pre-season launch day. “We won’t be downing tools as we have a clear programme of work that we want to carry out,”…

Let’s start off with both a little secret and also something correcting the record from the 2023 Formula 1 season. The alternative headline for this column was: ‘An apology to Nico Hulkenberg’. The sentiment here is that the Haas racer was the one to suffer most in our driver ratings for 2023, when it was race performances only that were assessed for a mark out of 10. That’s a rather hyperbolic way of describing the situation, of course. But ultimately, when it came to our regular rankings following each F1 weekend last year, Hulkenberg’s consistent qualifying heroics were ignored. But a change we’re making at Autosport means that, even if Haas’s VF-24 turns out to be no better in race trim than the tyre-chomping VF-23, when Hulkenberg inevitably wrestles it…

Mercedes has not been the only team to experiment with its front wing geometry for 2024, with teams taking more liberties within the letter of the regulations to produce more favourable flow patterns at the front end. The Haas front wing has been surprisingly eye-catching, taking the effort to play with the attachment points between the wing elements and the endplate. The wing elements have exposed trailing edges, all firing airflow outwards, while the rearmost flap has a tiny winglet attached to it. This was something that a number of teams explored last year, but Haas has put a little endplate on it to build vorticity and strengthen the airflow’s path outwards around the front tyre. The RB wing has two small winglets situated at the trailing edge of its…

Where else to begin but Red Bull? The reigning world champion squad did have something of a tricky start to testing when Max Verstappen was regularly having to back out of corners on the opening morning as the team chased an initial set-up. But it’s all relative, and in any case the RB20 looked utterly planted by mid-morning on day one. A day later, with Sergio Perez at the wheel, it was a similar story. Each time he made his way through the high-speed left of Turn 7 at the start of the second sector in the opening session, he was able to whip his car’s nose through the continuous rotations quicker than his rivals. It’s a visibly faster change of direction – and not just here. At Turn 11…

Shortly before the drain issue on the second day, we’d been watching the cars descend to the tight Turn 8 right-hand hairpin, checking to see how each package stacked up on braking stability. This is key to providing confidence for the drivers when pushing. The standout outliers were Mercedes and Aston Martin – Lewis Hamilton consistent at the wheel of the W15, Fernando Alonso at this stage on board the AMR24. The two cars, with their shared pushrod rear suspension layout, were visibly oscillating as they slowed each time through. Alonso, who locked up heavily twice during our view of this stage in proceedings, later said the situation “feels tricky”, when Autosport asked what had been going on with the AMR24’s braking. “But I think the conditions the [first] two…

The dust from Lewis Hamilton’s shock move from Mercedes to Ferrari for 2025 had barely had time to settle by the time Formula 1 testing got under way in Bahrain. The seven-time world champion and the two teams all appeared keen to get this winter’s headline story out of the way before the start of the season, to avoid speculation spilling out into the coming weeks and months and becoming an ever-larger distraction. But while there is now clarity over the 2025 Ferrari line-up and Hamilton’s future – which we thought we already had, given he signed a two-year Mercedes deal last summer – the subject of speculation will inevitably shift to the identity of Hamilton’s successor and to how the intra-team dynamic within Mercedes will change in 2024. It…

STARTS 369 | FIRST GP AUSTRALIA 2005 | WINS 113 | POLES 95 | FASTEST LAPS 95 | 2023 1ST Red Bull heads into the season as the red-hot favourite once again. There’s no reason why a team that won all but one race in 2023 – for a 95.5% victory rate – should not be eyeing perfection this time around. Historically, its package has been a rocketship in a straight line thanks to a very efficient aerodynamic layout allied to excellent Honda engine grunt, and packed-on downforce via its intricate floor arrangement to dominate in the corners. What undid the team in its 2023 Singapore Grand Prix defeat was an aversion to kerbs and bumpy courses. Fixing this has been a key target for the new campaign. When its…

STARTS 946 | FIRST GP MONACO 1966 | WINS 183 | POLES 156 | FASTEST LAPS 164 | 2023 4TH Before Ferrari came back strong at the end of 2023, McLaren had worked its way to being Red Bull’s most consistent challenger thanks to a series of impressive upgrades to a package that resembled the RB19. But it heads into the 2024 season having seemingly been usurped by Ferrari based on their testing showings, with others in the best-of-the-rest gaggle also in close contention. McLaren had a more difficult test overall than the rest of the frontrunning pack – a problem with detritus in its fuel system restricted its long running on day two, and further small issues prevented Lando Norris from completing any race simulation running. When Oscar Piastri…

STARTS 810 | FIRST GP SPAIN 1977 | WINS 114 | POLES 128 | FASTEST LAPS 133 | 2023 7TH If 2023 was a tentative first step in Williams’s recovery from underfunded also-ran to a competitive force, then this season team boss James Vowles will look to make bigger strides in his quest to return to the front in his second year in charge. Last year’s low-drag FW45 was a one-trick pony that could only shine on low-downforce circuits such as Monza and Montreal in the hands of lead driver Alex Albon, while still facing too many limitations to keep up with the rest of the midfield on more technical layouts. With the FW46, Williams has attempted to produce an all-rounder that can score anywhere, which will be crucial if…

STARTS 166 | FIRST GP AUSTRALIA 2016 | WINS 0 | POLES 1 | FASTEST LAPS 2 | 2023 10TH Development of the 2024 car was paused for two long months last season while Haas focused on a critical upgrade for October’s United States Grand Prix. But the new parts did little to remedy soaring tyre temperatures that ruined races. Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg were thereafter forced to run different car specifications as investigations continued. All told, the revised VF-24 will wade into battle with damp powder. Initially, it’ll be underbaked and missing key wind-tunnel findings. Despite those concerns, pre-season testing hasn’t painted an entirely bleak picture. The focus was on finally putting those Pirelli problems to bed. Haas is happy with how the troubleshooting has gone. So, some…

You’ll find the odd person at Toyota who’ll stand in front of you and tell you with a straight face that the Japanese manufacturer isn’t favourite going into this year’s World Endurance Championship. Most, however, will happily concede that a marque that swept to a fifth straight drivers’ and manufacturers’ title double last year has, in reigning champion Brendon Hartley’s words, “a target on its back”. But on the other hand, insists his team-mate Sebastien Buemi, “that doesn’t mean we are going to be at the front again”. “It’s hard to deny that if you have won six out of seven races one year, you have to be the favourite the next,” admits Buemi, who together with Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa repeated the title they won in 2022 in the…

Porsche 963 Penske #5 Matt Campbell Michael Christensen Frederic Makowiecki #6 Kevin Estre Andre Lotterer Laurens Vanthoor Jota #12 Callum Ilott Norman Nato Will Stevens #38 Jenson Button Phil Hanson Oliver Rasmussen Proton #99 Julien Andlauer Neel Jani Harry Tincknell Porsche arrives in year two of its LMDh programme with real momentum. In development, the 963 turned a corner last summer and became a much more raceable – and competitive – machine. It led for more than half the race at Fuji, the privateer Jota team might have made the podium in Bahrain and, over in IMSA, the Penske factory squad won two of the final three races. And then came the Daytona 24 Hours victory last month. For much of its maiden season, the 963, developed in conjunction with…

Alpine A424 #35 Paul-Loup Chatin Ferdinand Habsburg Charles Milesi #36 Nicolas Lapierre Mick Schumacher Matthieu Vaxiviere The rhetoric from Alpine is all too familiar for a top-class newcomer, or in this case returnee (its ‘grandfathered’ ORECA LMP1 was a race winner in 2022). The Renault marque will “remain humble” as it goes into a “learning year” with its new A424 LMDh run by Signatech, says motorsport boss Bruno Famin. But then it was hardly likely to stand up and proclaim that it was going to be winning races from the get-go. Yet there seems to be real optimism in the camp. Famin insists that Alpine’s humility doesn’t signal a lack of ambition for its maiden season for the A424, developed in conjunction with ORECA. Those ambitions, it seems, appear to…

Isotta Fraschini Tipo 6 Competizione LMH #11 Carl Wattana Bennett Antonio Serravalle Jean-Karl Vernay This once-renowned manufacturer undergoing a relaunch appears to have done everything right on the technical front ahead of its WEC entry with an all-new Le Mans Hypercar. Michelotto Engineering, the architect of the Isotta Fraschini project, has assembled an impressive list of partners in the development of a car known as the Tipo 6 Competizione LMH, WAE Technologies (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering) and HWA among them. What were clearly high aspirations for the project must have been tempered in the run-up to its WEC debut. “We want to compete, not to be at the back. We think we can be somewhere in the middle” First, Isotta made a late switch of team from the British Vector…

NASCAR CUP ATLANTA (USA) 25 FEBRUARY ROUND 2/36 Daniel Suarez experienced a full circle of emotions in last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The race began with the Mexican’s Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet collected in a multi-car wreck on lap two, but by the last of 260 tours he was back in position to contend for the win. Entering Turns 3 and 4, Suarez went to the outside lane as he joined Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney to make it a three-wide battle for the lead. The trio drag-raced to the finish line where, after a brief review, NASCAR declared Suarez the winner by 0.003 seconds over the Team Penske Ford of 2023 champion Blaney. Officially, it was the third closest finish in series history and snapped a…

OBITUARY Tributes have been paid to former British Formula 4 and Ginetta Junior racer Joel Pearson, who died last week after a courageous three-year battle with cancer. He was just 19 years old. Pearson first made the switch from karts to cars partway through 2018 before contesting two full Ginetta Junior campaigns, finishing eighth in 2020 after taking two podiums. He was then due to graduate to British F4 the following year with Argenti Motorsport prior to his cancer diagnosis. The Yorkshire teenager resolved not to let his illness put a stop to his racing dreams and continued to drive on simulators during his treatment, while Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff and stars George Russell and Max Verstappen were among those to film messages of support. But the particularly rare…

AVON The historic Avon brand is set to continue and some of its tyre ranges will still be manufactured, despite the closure of its factory at the end of last year, following an agreement between parent firm Goodyear and the new Nova Motorsport tyre company. Goodyear has confirmed that Nova has bought “certain assets used in the manufacturing and sale” of Avon Motorsport tyre ranges, including the brand licence. These tyres are set to be constructed at a new facility, independent of the Goodyear group, and Vintage Tyres will continue to act as a UK dealer for the rubber. “We were fully cognizant of the potential repercussions that the closure of our Melksham facility in the UK could have on some niche motorsport championships, hence we are pleased to have…

Every weekend during the thick of the national racing season there are scores of events taking place that feature a stunning array of cars and some brilliant battling. Yet it’s no secret that, at many of these race meetings, very few people are spectating trackside and get to witness this action – it might just be the marshals and a small number of family and friends of the participating drivers. But leading circuit operator MotorSport Vision has been trying to change that for the past decade, by organising an increasing number of special, themed events that have attracted thousands of people through the gates and showcased the wonders of club racing to a whole new audience. “We’re fortunate we have so much national racing compared to a lot of other…

WHAT’S ON INTERNATIONAL MOTORSPORT Bahrain Grand Prix F1 World Championship Round 1/24 Sakhir, Bahrain 2 March TV Live Sky Sports F1, Fri 1510, Sat 1455 TV Highlights Sky Sports F1, Sat 1830, Channel 4, 1950 Formula 2 Round 1/14 Sakhir, Bahrain 1-2 March TV Live Sky Sports F1, Fri 1410, Sat 1025 Formula 3 Round 1/10 Sakhir, Bahrain 1--2 March TV Live Sky Sports F1, Fri 1010, Sat 0855 Qatar 1812Km World Endurance Championship Round 1/8 Losail, Qatar 2 March TV Live Eurosport 2, Sat 0730, 1615 NASCAR Cup Series Round 3/36 Las Vegas, USA 3 March TV Live Viaplay 2, Sun 2000 NASCAR Xfinity Series Round 3/33 Las Vegas, USA 2 March NASCAR Truck Series Round 3/23 Las Vegas, USA 1 March Brazilian Stock Cars Round 1/12 Goiania, Brazil 3…

That Kelvin Burt never finished lower than second aboard the Dallara F393 on his way to the 1993 British Formula 3 title makes its selection as his favourite car somewhat self-explanatory. Its vast superiority over the Reynard 933 in which he’d started the season prompted Burt’s Paul Stewart Racing team to jump ship for the 10th round of the championship at Donington Park, and he never looked back. Burt won first time out in a car that he says felt “tighter” than the Reynard, and collected a further four over the remainder of the year. He was only beaten at Pembrey, where he struggled with tyre wear, and denied a 100% qualifying record when beaten to pole at the Thruxton finale. Third on aggregate at the Macau Grand Prix ensured…

WEC Porsche took first blood in the pre-season World Endurance Championship Prologue ahead of this weekend’s Qatar 1812Km. Its 963 LMDh ended up fastest overall as well as topping the times in each of the four sessions of the delayed two-day test on the Losail International Circuit. Frederic Makowiecki was quickest overall in the #5 Porsche Penske Motorsport car in the final session on Tuesday afternoon. The Frenchman posted 1m40.404s early in the three hours, which was initially 0.8s clear of the field. But it stood until the chequered flag despite a flurry of quick times as conditions cooled towards the 1700 finish. Alex Lynn jumped to second aboard the solo Chip Ganassi Racing-run Cadillac V-Series.R with a 1m40.621s, and then improved to a 1m40.458s to finish 0.054s off Makowiecki.…

FORMULA 1 Ex-FIA sporting director Steve Nielsen has taken on a consultancy role for the Formula 1 organisation. He quit the governing body at the end of 2023, after a year in the job, due to growing concerns about how the organisation was being run and its direction. But Nielsen was back in the paddock last week for pre-season testing in Bahrain, albeit so far without an official title. When he’s not on official championship business, he will work with other clients, such as circuits. After starting as a truck driver with the MSL catering firm, Nielsen worked for Team Lotus, Tyrrell, Benetton/Renault, Honda, Arrows, Caterham, Toro Rosso and Williams, mostly in team manager or sporting director roles. He left Williams to join F1 as sporting director in August 2017…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Pascal Vasselon will remain at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe and take the reins of the Japanese manufacturer’s programme to put a prototype powered by a hydrogen combustion engine on the grid of the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2027. The 60-year-old Frenchman had been expected to move into the role after he was abruptly removed at the start of this year from the technical directorship he had held since 2006. It has now been confirmed, along with David Floury’s promotion to Vasselon’s former job, which he had filled in an acting capacity since January. Vasselon has been announced as the new vice-president of TGR strategic motorsport development in which he will “contribute to the planning and development of future global motorsport activities with a focus on…

OBITUARY Wilson Fittipaldi, who died last Friday aged 80, was a Formula 1 points scorer and constructor in his own right – not just the older brother of double world champion Emerson and father of Indycar race winner Christian. Fittipaldi had been hospitalised since Christmas Day, also his birthday, after he choked on a piece of meat. His family was unable to clear his airway, which triggered a cardiac arrest. Born in Sao Paulo, he drove a wide variety of cars in his youth, encouraged by father and key Brazilian racing figure Wilson Fittipaldi Sr. In 1966 he had a brief initial stint in Europe in Formula 3, but it was only after Emerson’s impact that he made the full-time move in 1970, becoming an F3 race winner. At the…

Second tier promises top-notch entertainment What an exciting season of racing we have coming up, starting with Bahrain this weekend. So many quality drivers, who should, and no doubt will, be duking it out for the championship. No, I am not talking about F1, unless Red Bull has slackened and the RB20 turns out to be merely competitive and not dominant. I am, though, talking about the F2 championship. Not since the class of 2018, with George Russell and Lando Norris, have I looked forward so much to watching the second-tier category. Although Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been dominating the media coverage, he will not have an easy ride. Victor Martins, Ollie Bearman, Zak O’Sullivan, Zane Maloney, Ritomo Miyata, Kush Maini and Gabriel Bortoleto, I’m certain, will have a large…

At the launch of its RB20, Red Bull avoided its recent tactic of pushing out an old car in a new livery and instead chose to demonstrate a representative model. The caveat was that the team had taken great pains to keep its sidepod inlets hidden from view, either through lighting at its launch or liberal use of the burn tool in Photoshop. But there’s no hiding once testing begins, and the RB20’s full form had to emerge from the shadows at some point. After pioneering the underbite inlet arrangement, Red Bull switched to an overbitten leading edge to the sidepods with a short, wide inlet recessed into the undercut like a letterbox. Underneath, two vertical slots are fed by the flanks of the chassis, not dissimilar to the positioning…

Like Red Bull, McLaren has strayed away from the underbite sidepod inlet structure for 2024, and has introduced a wing section ahead of the apertures to which the mirrors are mounted (1). This is not dissimilar to the sidepod inlet treatments that many opted for prior to the introduction of the current rules in 2022, so it’s another situation where old design solutions are beginning to creep back into the modern formula. With this, McLaren can have more control over the airflow that reaches the sidepods, and offers a chance to help condition any wake from the tyres that may migrate towards this area of the car. During its launch, McLaren had also kept its floor concealed, but images from testing detail the first iteration of its edge on the…

Lando Norris was an important reference as we watched from Turn 13 on the second day. This was during a spell late in the first half of the second session on Thursday, when the wind had really started blowing hard from the Arabian Gulf to the east of the small island of Bahrain. The McLaren was the first of three cars to have huge snaps of oversteer as they traversed the gusts, the rear end stepping out violently. These moments were either side of the Red Bull and RB serenely sailing through unruffled. Norris’s former team-mate Carlos Sainz was the second driver to catch a potential big moment. But Ferrari’s wind-sensitivity weakness from Bahrain testing a year ago – particularly at the twisting, staccato Turns 5-7 complex – seems to…

Five wins in five years is hardly the return Charles Leclerc hoped for when he embarked upon his journey with Ferrari in Formula 1. His collection of 23 pole positions has translated into victories only four times, perfectly symbolic of his tenure at the Prancing Horse. Although he bears the responsibility for a few of those failures to convert, most have not been Leclerc’s fault. Ferrari has been plagued by a handful of false dawns, the team’s sloppy strategy calls and untimely unreliability issues serving to restrict Leclerc’s appearances on the top step of the podium. In a 2019 season where Ferrari had flattered in testing only to deceive in the opening rounds, Leclerc had a first win denied in Bahrain by a control system glitch in the final 10…

Aston Martin and McLaren helped prop up a deeply unspectacular Formula 1 campaign for large parts of last year. Aston’s flying start made it the surprise early package, and Fernando Alonso chased the Red Bulls as it became clear that Mercedes and Ferrari had dropped the ball. When a development path, which attempted to reverse-engineer parts for the 2024 car to fit the AMR23, knocked Aston well off course, McLaren picked up the mantle. Following its Austrian GP update, Lando Norris became the second-highest-scoring driver behind only Max Verstappen. Their seasons showed two different ways to skin a cat: fast out of the gates versus finishing with a flourish. The choice of lead driver is similarly contrasting. Outside of the top three teams, Alonso and Norris are the two most…

STARTS 293 | FIRST GP FRANCE 1954 | WINS 125 | POLES 137 | FASTEST LAPS 105 | 2023 2ND After last year’s botched start to the season, Mercedes finally relented and gave up on its zeropod concept. The Brackley squad implemented a partial concept shift from May’s Monaco Grand Prix onwards, but what it really needed was an all-new chassis to truly realise the behavioural changes often requested by Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. Fortunately for Hamilton and Russell, the long-awaited W15 seems much more poised and compliant than its devious predecessors. The two Britons no longer have a diva car, and it looked reasonably quick over long runs. The 2024 car is probably the last roll of the dice for team boss Toto Wolff and Mercedes to regain…

STARTS 71 | FIRST GP NETHERLANDS 1959 | WINS 0 | POLES 0 | FASTEST LAPS 1 | 2023 5TH A dazzling start to 2023 catapulted Aston Martin from the midfield to genuine podium contenders through the evergreen Fernando Alonso, who captured four third places in the opening five races. Its in-season developments did not entirely offer the opportunity to retain that form, however, and the team had to be content with only two visits to the podium after the summer break. After looking sideways at the growth McLaren enjoyed over last season, technical director Dan Fallows tasked the Silverstone squad with producing a car with a stronger potential development curve. The AMR24 is an evolution of its predecessor and, says Fallows, features “no surprises”, but has been augmented with…

STARTS 351 | FIRST GP BAHRAIN 2006 (AS TORO ROSSO) | WINS 2 | POLES 1 | FASTEST LAPS 3 | 2023 8TH (AS ALPHATAURI) The 2024 season is one of sweeping change for the former Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri operation, which is now known as the unwieldy ‘Visa Cash App RB’. In the wake of Dietrich Mateschitz’s death in 2022, Red Bull’s new leadership decided something had to give after its second F1 team continued struggling for performance on and off the track. Former FIA bod Peter Bayer and Ferrari’s Laurent Mekies have arrived to replace long-time team boss Franz Tost, who was given a send-off at the 2023 Abu Dhabi finale after nearly two decades of service. They established a new, vanilla identity to boost the team’s commercial…

1 BAHRAIN GP Sakhir 2 March UK start time: 1500 2 SAUDI ARABIAN GP Jeddah 9 March UK start time: 1700 3 AUSTRALIAN GP Melbourne 24 March UK start time: 0400 4 JAPANESE GP Suzuka 7 April UK start time: 0600 5 CHINESE GP* Shanghai 21 April UK start time: 0800 6 MIAMI GP* Miami 5 May UK start time: 2100 7 EMILIA ROMAGNA GP Imola 19 May UK start time: 1400 8 MONACO GP Monte Carlo 26 May UK start time: 1400 9 CANADIAN GP Montreal 9 June UK start time: 1900 10 SPANISH GP Barcelona 23 June UK start time: 1400 11 AUSTRIAN GP* Red Bull Ring 30 June UK start time: 1400 12 BRITISH GP Silverstone (above) 7 July UK start time: 1500 13 HUNGARIAN GP Hungaroring…

Toyota GR010 HYBRID #7 Mike Conway Kamui Kobayashi Nyck de Vries #8 Sebastien Buemi Brendon Hartley Ryo Hirakawa It looks like business as usual at Toyota, the acknowledged king of the WEC. There’s been just one change in the line-up of drivers, with the belated arrival of Nyck de Vries in the #7 GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar. But what might be described as a tickle to the driving roster isn’t the only shuffle of the pack. What impact a management change at the top of the Cologne-based Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe organisation that masterminds the WEC programme will have can’t be determined until the season gets under way. But Pascal Vasselon’s surprise and unheralded departure can’t be underestimated. Not only was the long-serving technical director one of the key…

Cadillac V-Series.R #2 Earl Bamber Alex Lynn Sebastien Bourdais* *only confirmed for first round in this car Cadillac returns for its second World Endurance Championship campaign with the factory Chip Ganassi Racing-run squad, again with only a single car. There had been talk of upgrading to two cars, but finances didn’t allow for that, though there will be three V-Series.R LMDhs at the Le Mans 24 Hours, where the second Cadillac Racing entry and the Action Express Racing car from the IMSA SportsCar Championship join the grid. It’s a strategy that probably shows where the priorities lie for the General Motors marque. The Caddy LMDh, for which General Motors partnered with Dallara Automobili in Italy, hit the ground running at the start of its maiden campaign. It could have made…

BMW M Hybrid V8 #15 Raffaele Marciello Dries Vanthoor Marco Wittmann #20 Robin Frijns Rene Rast Sheldon van der Linde “The 2023 season was our learning year.” So says Maurizio Leschiutta, project manager on the BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh. That suggests the expectation at the Munich marque is that it has to hit the ground running in the WEC after a debut season for the car in IMSA in 2023. He does add a perhaps inevitable caveat: that a manufacturer making its first factory bid for outright Le Mans honours since its 1999 victory is new to the Hypercar class, if not the championship after its GTE Pro campaign in 2018-19. Key to the hopes of BMW, which was fourth in the GTP order – on pace and points…

Variety is back in vogue in the World Endurance Championship’s GT class. While there was nothing wrong with GTE Am’s sea of Porsches and Ferraris, with the odd Aston Martin and Corvette mixed in, the new era has plenty of upsides – chiefly, that nine manufacturers will be represented, each with two cars. At least 18 GTs will be on the grid at each round, four more than last season’s highest non-Le Mans tally. It would surely be more had the full season overall entry not been capped at 37, since LMGT3 cars have ABS, which make them more accessible to the non-professional bronze drivers who are GT racing’s lifeblood. “It makes it easier to make that last step quicker,” explains WEC newcomer James Cottingham, “because you get so much…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS MOUNT PANORAMA (AUS) 24-25 FEBRUARY ROUND 1/12 Any thoughts that Triple Eight’s Chevrolet team would take a while to settle in the youngest driving line-up in the Supercars pitlane were swept aside by two convincing victories at Bathurst. Second-year driver Broc Feeney and new recruit Will Brown traded pole positions and then victories in Saturday’s and Sunday’s 250-kilometre races, and left Mount Panorama already looking like the drivers to beat in 2024. Brown’s 2-1 results give him the edge in the championship points after Feeney finished third on Sunday, largely because of a five-second pitlane penalty after a clash with a fast-starting James Golding (PremiAir Chevrolet). That penalty dropped Feeney behind the other form driver of the weekend. Chaz Mostert sacrificed a little straightline speed from his Walkinshaw…

BRITISH GT Reigning Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion Adam Smalley will make his British GT Championship debut this season at the wheel of a Garage 59-run McLaren 720S Evo GT3. The 23-year-old, who is also a former Ginetta Junior and GT4 Supercup champion, will partner Shaun Balfe after the Am driver moved across from Barwell Motorsport. “I’ve always wanted to do GT racing and I think this is a fantastic step to becoming a factory driver,” said Smalley. “I looked at all the options – being the Porsche Junior has been an incredible experience and winning the championship was great. This just seemed like the best next step for my career. The way the world is now with GT racing, it’s all on the up and there’s a lot of…

BRITISH GT Steller Motorsport will return to British GT this season, fielding an Audi R8 LMS GT4 for Pro-Am pairing Jordan Albert and Tim Docker. The team spent last year racing in the Le Mans Cup after taking the 2022 British GT4 title with Sennan Fielding and Richard Williams. Albert has competed in British GT over several seasons, including being a GT4 title contender with Beechdean in 2016 and winning at Brands Hatch in 2020 aboard Academy Motorsport’s Ford Mustang. “Steller Motorsport are an impressive team with great infrastructure and they were championship winners in 2022, so I trust they are going to provide a great package,” said Albert, who was also on McLaren’s young driver roster. Docker will make his British GT debut following a strong GT Cup campaign…

MSA F4 Motorsport South Africa’s junior single-seater racing future has been secured with this week’s launch of a bespoke Formula 4-type car at an accessible price for its next phase, starting in 2025. The initiative of UK-born Ian Schofield, chairman of Investchem – sponsor/promoter of the Formula 1600 championship it will supersede – the MSA4 answers varying competitors’ needs. “We came up with the idea a couple of years ago and have worked to perfect it,” said Schofield. “Bertrand Decoster wanted to sell me all the [obsolete] Mygale F4 cars, patterns and jigs. But that wasn’t a way forward and the carbon-fibre tubs concerned me. So we have stuck with a tubular steel chassis, incorporating a halo and side impact structures. It’s what parents want. They look to F1, F2,…

FORMULA 1 The CEO of the Ford Motor Company has written to Red Bull to make plain the manufacturer’s dissatisfaction over the time taken to conduct an investigation into allegations made against Formula 1 team principal Christian Horner by a female employee. A decision on Horner’s future was due imminently as Autosport closed for press on Tuesday. Ford will help Red Bull develop the new-specification powertrain that will debut for the 2026 season, although its marketing strategy around competing in the championship has already whirred into life. According to reports by the Associated Press, boss Jim Farley has written to Red Bull GmbH to urge the energy drinks company to come to a resolution. He writes that Ford is “increasingly frustrated by the lack of resolution or clear indication from…

Remember last week, when we showed you a photo of Jules Gounon going well under the Mount Panorama lap record at the wheel of a modified GT3 Mercedes in a demo run at the Bathurst 12 Hour? Well, last weekend Gounon’s compatriot Romain Dumas sliced 0.3 seconds off that at the Supercars meeting – in an electric van. Ford’s SuperVan 4.2 was whisked around the Aussie track in 1m56.3247s, and exceeded 300km/h on Mountain Straight and Conrod Straight. “We left nothing on the table as we pushed for the fastest lap possible,” said Dumas. “No one has ever driven a vehicle like SuperVan 4.2 around Mount Panorama, and certainly not this quickly!”…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Plans for Porsche to introduce a revised engine for its 963 LMDh in time for the Le Mans 24 Hours round of the World Endurance Championship have been pushed back. But the revisions, centred on a new crank for the 4.6-litre twin-turbo V8, are still scheduled for a 2024 introduction. Porsche has been forced to delay bringing the engine on stream in time for the double-points round in June because the rulemakers – the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest – wanted it to be introduced at the Imola round in April. Two races, the Italian event and then Spa the following month, were required to assess its performance before the big one at Le Mans. That would have compromised the programme of endurance testing…

Sakhir Length 3.363 miles Number of laps 57 UK START TIMES Thursday 29 February FP1 1130 FP2 1500 Friday 1 March FP3 1230 QUALIFYING 1600 Saturday 2 March RACE 1500 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA TV Highlights CHANNEL 4 1950 TYRE ALLOCATION 2023 FINAL CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS Drivers Constructors SAKHIR STATS Previous winners 2023 POLE POSITION Max Verstappen 1m29.708s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m27.264s (2020) RACE LAP RECORD Pedro de la Rosa 1m31.447s (2005) Podiums Lewis Hamilton 11 Kimi Raikkonen 8 Sebastian Vettel 5 Valtteri Bottas 4 Fernando Alonso 4 Max Verstappen 3 Nico Rosberg 3 Sergio Perez 3 Felipe Massa 3 Jarno Trulli 2…

Formula 1 testing for 2024 did not end in the way we have come to expect. There was to be little of the final-hour action that had become something worth watching in previous years, as teams finally switched to performance running – with those typical caveats on fuel loads and engine modes. Think Lewis Hamilton spinning while preparing for a flier on soft C5 Pirelli tyres in 2021. Or Max Verstappen doing likewise a year later but still taking the top spot on that set of rubber. Last week’s top time came via Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz – a 1m29.921s on the C4s – but that came with three hours to go on the second day. Given his team-mate Charles Leclerc was running slightly later and into falling temperatures when he…

Because the development of a suspension layout is so entrenched within the chassis design, it’s very difficult to implement geometry changes without either hacking away at the monocoque or building an entirely new one. Hence it comes as some surprise that Mercedes has been able to produce two differing suspension layouts for its W15, where it could move the rear leg of its upper wishbone between two positions along the chassis. This leg either sat just below the AMG logo on the flanks, or was moved down towards the lower wishbone (1). In doing this, Mercedes can explore two things: firstly, the aerodynamic flow around this area assisted by the suspension elements’ shrouding; and secondly, any improvement in anti-dive properties that can enhance the effectiveness of the floor. The latter…

That we got to watch Sergio Perez driving at all on our trackside walk was thanks to an unfortunate event with just over 90 minutes remaining in the first session of the second day. With echoes of the 2023 Las Vegas GP FP1 shambles, a drain cover had worked loose on the approach to Turn 11. It’s been clear how the drivers’ lines here have evolved to take them very far to the right-hand side of the track, with two thirds of each car on the kerbs before they flick left on turn-in as they aim to open up the long, sweeping, uphill left-hander to reduce strain on the tyres, all while maintaining speed. This naturally takes more of the powerful underfloor ground-effect suction onto the drains lining the circuit,…

When Lewis Hamilton threw a depth charge into F1’s ‘silly season’ and blew everyone out of the water with his Ferrari move for 2025, it came at Carlos Sainz’s expense. Without any history as a Ferrari junior or the pull of multiple world titles, the Spaniard was always going to be the more dispensable driver, even though he’s often matched Leclerc over their three-year tenure as team-mates so far. Thanks to his two race wins and strong form at Ferrari, Sainz is likely to be an in-demand option for many of the teams with vacant seats for next season, and there’s still ample opportunity to put himself in the shop window for one of the better drives available. His efforts in 2023 have helpfully showcased his best attributes, and his…

OK, so it wasn’t a proper grand prix, but the record still shows that Oscar Piastri is a Formula 1 race winner thanks to his Qatar sprint success. That’s a feat Lando Norris can’t boast. It also earned the Australian’s rookie campaign comparison with Lewis Hamilton’s sublime start 16 years earlier. Piastri’s reward: a hasty contract extension that runs until the end of 2026 to allow McLaren to keep laying claim to one of the finest pairings on the grid. The MCL60’s terrible form during the early races of 2023 afforded Piastri a chance to acclimatise to on-track life in the top flight away from the spotlight. For his second season, it’s the approach outside of the cockpit that may develop most. Piastri could be spotted at various Heathrow terminals…

STARTS 1074 | FIRST GP MONACO 1950 | WINS 243 | POLES 249 | FASTEST LAPS 259 | 2023 3RD The team that pushed Red Bull so close in the first half-season of F1’s latest ground-effect era in 2022 goes into the new campaign buoyed by a very positive test in Bahrain, after slipping behind Mercedes last year. Ferrari topped the times, but that really doesn’t matter. Instead, the team showed that it had made significant progress on what has been its key weakness of recent years: ability to keep its tyres alive over a race stint. To get there, Ferrari put all its efforts into making a major breakthrough on set-up understanding for its 2023 package at last season’s Dutch GP, which resulted in big progress back towards being…

STARTS 466 | FIRST GP BRITAIN 1977 (AS RENAULT) | WINS 36 | POLES 51 | FASTEST LAPS 33 | 2023 6TH Constant management shuffles rather set the tone for Alpine last season, arguably rooted in departing CEO Laurent Rossi’s accusations of “dilettantism” levelled at the team. Rossi was removed from his duties and, later, team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane were also ousted. Now ex-Peugeot Sport director Bruno Famin has installed, erm, himself as team principal after carrying out the role on an interim basis for the second half of last year. This overshadowed the team’s middling performance over 2023, in which it occupied F1’s no man’s land between the top five teams and those towards the back. With an all-new car, Alpine is hoping to…

STARTS 442 | FIRST GP SOUTH AFRICA 1993 | WINS 1 | POLES 5 | FASTEST LAPS 5 | 2023 9TH (AS ALFA ROMEO) Sauber won’t thank anyone for saying this, but 2024 represents the first of two placeholder seasons. Title sponsorship from Alfa Romeo has come to an end and the Swiss squad won’t formally be recognised as Audi until 2026. That’s if the manufacturer ever arrives, amid the latest round of rumours that a new-look boardroom is having second thoughts. In the meantime, this much-loved team has been clumsily rebranded to Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber. That new identity comes with an equally uninspiring paintjob, which looks as though someone has spilled a tin of flo-vis (some seem to quite like it – ed). As Sauber prepares for…

Autosport.com will provide live text commentary from every practice and qualifying session plus all the races in the 2024 Formula 1 season, alongside comprehensive news and opinion from track and paddock. Regular features will include our examination of practice form on Friday nights and Autosport’s driver ratings – where you can have your say too. Listen to the Autosport Podcast as our global team of journalists join host Bryn Lucas to analyse breaking news, discuss the biggest talking points from inside the paddock, and bring you a complete analysis of every race. On Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify. autosport.com/podcast Autosport’s video coverage around the F1 season continues to accelerate in 2024. We’ll bring you the best analysis, plus details behind the biggest stories from our journalists in the paddock…

Ferrari 499P AF Corse #50 Antonio Fuoco Miguel Molina Nicklas Nielsen #51 James Calado Antonio Giovinazzi Alessandro Pier Guidi #83 Robert Kubica Robert Shwartzman Yifei Ye The decision to bedeck the pair of factory 499Ps in a shade of Ferrari racing red inspired by that of the F2007 in which Kimi Raikkonen took the Italian manufacturer’s last Formula 1 world drivers’ title must say something about its aspirations going into the 2024 season. Ferrari triumphed at Le Mans in year one of the programme, so now the next target has to be to win the world championship. That stands to reason. Ferrari was clearly buoyed by its maiden season with its new LMH developed in-house at the Attivita Sportive GT sportscar racing department. It was number two behind Toyota in…

Peugeot 9X8 #93 Mikkel Jensen Nico Muller Jean-Eric Vergne #94 Paul di Resta Loic Duval Stoffel Vandoorne A manufacturer with three Le Mans wins to its name has endured a difficult return to the top of the sportscar tree with its avant-garde 9X8 LMH since it pitched up in the WEC at Monza in the summer of 2022. A single piece of silverware, won at the Italian track 12 months later, is all it has to show for its efforts so far. It is against this backdrop that Peugeot is undertaking a massive overhaul of its concept, a revision that will only come on stream for round two at Imola in April. The original 9X8, which bows out in pure 2023 spec in Qatar, is a traction-limited machine that has…

Lamborghini SC63 #63 Mirko Bortolotti Daniil Kvyat Edoardo Mortara Lamborghini makes a low-key entry into the top flight of sportscar racing for the first time. The Italian manufacturer’s factory Iron Lynx squad is mounting one-car campaigns in the WEC and the IMSA enduros with the new SC63 LMDh developed in conjunction with Ligier Automotive. Opting to go for single-car campaigns was a needs-must decision for a marque that counts North America as one of its biggest markets. And the young but highly ambitious Iron Lynx organisation has essentially split the team run by Prema, which came under its umbrella in 2021 and fielded a pair of LMP2 cars in the WEC last year, although they will re-converge for Le Mans in June. “We have to build our operation,” says team…

Several elements combine to make sportscar racing difficult for newcomers to follow. But in streamlining the World Endurance Championship’s class structure for 2024, not only should it be more straightforward to grasp for those lured in by the current golden era, but it will also ensure that the GT battles get a larger share of the television coverage. It’s the nature of the beast with multi-class racing that the fight for outright honours will get top billing. But for the first decade of the WEC’s modern existence, the rest of the pie had to be split three ways between LMP2, GTE Pro and GTE Am. Now the structure is somewhat simplified thanks to the vast growth of the Hypercar class, which prompted the call to drop the LMP2 category and…

RALLYING Former VW Racing Cup champion Phil House turned heads on last weekend’s East Riding Stages when he teamed up with JWB Motorsport boss Nick Beaumont to tackle the closed-roads event in his ex-works Aston Martin Vantage GT Rally. Only four rally versions of the Vantage were ever made as a partnership between Prodrive and David Appleby Engineering, with House’s car rallied in Europe by Stephane Sarrazin and by Appleby himself. Prior to this year’s East Riding Stages, House had used the car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Yorkshire Motorsport Festival, as well as for various other demonstrations. “Last year doing my first closed-road rally I was scared, but doing this year in the Aston I was petrified,” said House, who finished 44th overall and sixth in class.…

MINI CHALLENGE Former Mini Cooper champion Matt Hammond plans to move to the top JCW class this year and has bought a car to race. Hammond won the 2017 Cooper title before spending a spell on the sidelines working for Excelr8’s Mini squad. He returned to racing in 2021 and was in championship contention again both that season and the following campaign, before taking a year out in 2023 in preparation for the JCW move. “I’ve done my time in the Coopers and the dream has always been to one day move into JCWs,” he said. “I’ve worked with the cars during my time behind the scenes with Excelr8, and have pretty much done everything apart from actually race one! “The obvious challenge is that the budget needed to compete…

8-9 JUNE American SpeedFest, Brands Hatch This event embraces all things Americana, and a special Ford vs Chevy muscle car race is joining the regular EuroNASCAR, Legends and Pickups contests and NASCAR demos. 29 JUNE Supercar Pageant, Oulton Park There are some impressive cars on and off the track at this Cheshire meeting. The supercars of the GT Cup top the racing bill, while plenty more gather around the venue. 29-30 JUNE Super Touring Power 2, Brands Hatch The ever-popular Super Tourers headline this tin-top extravaganza, but the Classic Touring Car Racing Club’s categories cater for a huge range of eras, with a Group A focus this year. 26-28 JULY Historic Gold Cup, Oulton Park A multitude of different historic racing organisers feature at this Historic Sports Car Club-administered fixture,…

The four-wide front row of Juan Manuel Fangio (#1 Maserati 250F), Mike Hawthorn (#8 Ferrari D50), Jean Behra (#2 Maserati) and Peter Collins (#7 Ferrari) heads the field at the start of the 1957 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. What’s about to unfold is one of motor racing’s most thrilling dramas, Fangio’s fightback to victory after a pitlane delay later chosen by the five-time world champion as his greatest race. He described the experience – “I’ve never been a spectacular racer, but I did things I had never done in my life” – to Autosport back in 1989, which can be read here: bit.ly/Fangio57 For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com RACE OF MY LIFE Juan Manuel Fangio on the 1957…