Indholdsfortegnelse for 12/05/2016 i Autosport

RED BULL IS INEVITABLY CRITICISED WHEN IT MAKES any kind of move involving its junior drivers. The swap of Max Verstappen and Daniil Kvyat is no exception. It’s certainly harsh on Kvyat, a driver with real potential who’d been making progress before his mishaps at the start of the Russian Grand Prix. And it puts enormous pressure on 18-yearold Verstappen at a time when he is still, inevitably, learning his trade at the highest level in only his third season of car racing. But Red Bull has always been unashamedly ambitious with its young drivers. It’s looking for world-champion material. You can’t blame Red Bull for its willingness to put Verstappen to the test, especially given the risk that if he was left at Toro Rosso for too long, it…

“The ACO believes this could foster real interest” THE INTRODUCTION OF A DRAG REDUCTION system is one of a number of ideas under evaluation to increase the performance of privateer LMP1 cars in the World Endurance Championship from next season. A wide-ranging review of the non-hybrid P1 class, in which only privateers can run, has been instigated by the rulemakers in an attempt to make the division more attractive. The aim is to close the widening gap between the independent teams and the factories under the latest P1 rulebook introduced at the start of 2014. Le Mans 24 Hours organiser the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, which writes the rules with the FIA, has revealed that it is ready to go beyond simply increasing power by upping the permitted fuel flow…

Formula 1 is dead and here’s why. F1 is and always was an engineering challenge where the fastest car wins. This is not new. Every year, designers strove to find an advantage so their car could be better and faster than the previous year. But then it happened. Cars just got too fast and instead of this continued pursuit of speed, we deliberately made them slower. If engineers were given a free hand, they could design a car which would lap at speeds way beyond what we have now, but instead we introduce regulations that artificially make the cars slower for what are largely (and understandably) safety reasons. We are caught up in some weird groundhog-day nightmare, while deluding ourselves that the cars on the grid are the best that…

WHEN LORIS CAPIROSSI FINISHED THIRD IN the 2008 Czech Grand Prix at Brno for Suzuki, Maverick Vinales was just 13 years old. That was the last time a Suzuki rider graced the MotoGP podium and it has been a long time between drinks, including the Japanese brand spending 2012, ’13 and ’14 on the sidelines owing to the impact of the global financial crisis. Since returning last year, Suzuki has made major inroads, particularly over the last winter to bring its engine closer to the pack and introduce a seamless-shift gearbox. Vinales qualified on the front row in Qatar and should have claimed his maiden podium in Argentina, when he fell challenging Valentino Rossi for second. Three rounds later at Le Mans, things did not look good on Saturday. Ducati…

UNIVERSITY OF WOLVERHAMPTON TO ENTER NEW TEAM IN MSV F3 CUP Students from the University of Wolverhampton have formed part of a brand new team in MSV F3 Cup Championship in 2016, an exciting enterprise linked to the provision of a range of Motorsport Engineering courses at the Telford Innovation Campus. Entering the ultra-competitive championship under the banner University of Wolverhampton Racing, abbreviated as UWR, the squad will be headed-up by Team Principal, David Tucker who is the Principal Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at the institution’s Faculty of Science and Engineering. Shane Kelly, who raced in Formula Renault UK back in 2002 and 2003 before going on to win the Club Formula 3 title in 2006, prior to establishing a career as professional driver on TV and film sets, will…

SUPER GT FUJI (J) MAY 4 ROUND 2/8 NISMO’S REIGNING CHAMPIONS RONNIE Quintarelli and Tsugio Matsuda made it a rare two wins on the trot in their Nissan, but only after the Impul Nissan of Joao Paulo de Oliveira and Hironobu Yasuda suffered tyre failure while leading with four laps remaining. The Kazuyoshi Hoshino-fronted Impul team had led most of this longer-than-usual race, with de Oliveira driving the first and last stints and Yasuda the middle. Quick pitwork got Quintarelli out after the final stops in the lead, only for de Oliveira to repass the Italian, whose car was carrying 40kg of success ballast. Heikki Kovalainen was able to take his first podium with second in the SARD Lexus he shares with Kohei Hirate, with James Rossiter/ Ryo Hirakawa and…

AT A GLANCE RACE ONE 1 Mortara Audi 2 Wickens Mercedes 3 Muller Audi RACE TWO 1 di Resta Mercedes 2 Farfus BMW 3 Martin BMW P56 FULL RESULTS DTM HOCKENHEIM (D) MAY 7-8 ROUND 1/9 PAUL DI RESTA UNDERLINED WHY he is tipped by so many to regain the DTM title this season with an emphatic victory in race two to give him an early 11-point lead in the standings. The Scotsman, who was crowned champion in 2010 prior to his move to F1, was measured and controlled as he maintained a steady lead just a day after finishing fourth in race one. There was a brief, yet serious, challenge from fellow Mercedes driver Gary Paffett, but a drive-through penalty wrecked any hopes of an all-British scrap. Di Resta…

THE FORMULA KART STARS series has gone into administration after Formula One Management withdrew its funding. The series, which was relaunched last year with backing from FOM’s Bernie Ecclestone, had a difficult opening round of the 2016 season at Buckmore Park last month. Over the winter some suppliers were not paid and engines reportedly not worked on since the end of last season, meaning there was a last-minute rush to get them ready. There was no testing on the Friday, resulting in a number of competitors complaining about the situation. There were also concerns over entry numbers. Despite 80 drivers being signed up in January, only 40 took part in the season opener. The series’ second round at Glan-Y-Gors was cancelled because of a lack of spare engine parts and…

THE TWO GINETTA JUNIOR RACES AT Thruxton both featured tight battles for victory as championship leader Stuart Middleton went from joy in race one to misery later on. In race one, Middleton grabbed the lead from polesitter Seb Perez, who was relegated to third by Will Tregurtha at the start of lap two before being hit with a drive-through penalty for a jumped start. Middleton and Tregurtha escaped at the front as the chasing pack squabbled over third, with Dave Wooder seizing the place on lap six of nine and staying there until the finish. Up front, Middleton and Tregurtha regularly switched places and on the final tour they raced side by side from Church to Club. Perfect judgment from both prevented disaster, with Middleton emerging victorious. Tregurtha briefly took…

THE PITHER ROTHERY SPECIAL (PRS) 1b is possibly the quickest car in the 750 Formula arena, but since co-creator Ed Pither’s double victory in Britain’s oldest club-racing championship’s openers at Donington back in March reliability has been its Achilles’ heel. Following a dramatic halfshaft failure at Brands Hatch last month, reigning champion David Bartholomew was uncatchable in the PRS in both Silverstone races before a broken battery mount gifted victories to Robin Gearing and Bill Cowley. Despite a poor start in Saturday’s opening leg, Gearing (Darvi P88) won by a country mile from Cowley in his eponymous MkIV. Cowley reversed the order second time out, helped by his rival losing downforce when he damaged his car’s nose. Spurred on by a supporters’ club at the venue, four-time champion Peter Bove…

THE SIGNATECH ALPINE squad looked home and dry in LMP2 with just over an hour of the race to go. The ORECA-Nissan 05 shared by Nicolas Lapierre, Stephane Richelmi and Gustavo Menezes had just made its penultimate stop and was only a second behind Roberto Merhi in the Manor ORECA, which was due into the pits. The safety car that followed blew the P2 battle wide open. Lapierre held a narrow advantage of just three seconds when the race went green with 40 minutes to go, but he also knew he was going to have to make a splash-anddash before the end. The former Toyota LMP1 driver was able to pull away from Pipo Derani, who was in fuel-save mode aboard the lead Extreme Speed Motorsports Ligier-Nissan JSP2. Lapierre managed…

AT A GLANCE RACE ONE 1 Morgan Mercedes 2 Ingram Toyota 3 Jordan Ford RACE TWO 1 Jordan Ford 2 Collard BMW 3 Morgan Mercedes RACE THREE 1 M Jackson Ford 2 Neal Honda 3 Morgan Mercedes P57 FULL RESULTS BRITISH TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP THRUXTON (GB) MAY 8 ROUND 3/10 THREE PODIUM FINISHES, INCLUDING HIS second victory of the season, meant Adam Morgan has laid down some pretty serious title credentials after three hectic races last weekend. Races two and three were shortened after several cars suffered tyre failures in the opener, which was red flagged after a multi-car accident. They went from the slated 16 laps down to 12, equalling almost 10 miles less in race distance. None of that bothered Morgan, as his Mercedes-Benz A-Class was able to…

JAMIE STANLEY AND PAUL McNEILLY ARE SET TO become the first driver pairing to run the new Ferrari 488 GT3 in British GT after lodging an entry for the showpiece Silverstone 500 event in June – provided the chassis arrives in time. The car has been entered for the three-hour race under the FF Corse with Fox Motorsport banner, but has yet to be delivered from Maranello. Should the car not turn up in time, Stanley and McNeilly will race the same Ginetta G55 GT4 they shared for the past two British GT campaigns. “Certainly the intention is to race the 488 and give it its British GT debut at Silverstone,” said Stanley. “We have delivery assured in good time for me to drive the car up the hill at…

GINETTA WILL EVALUATE WHETHER ITS GT5 Challenge will continue to make cameo appearances on the BTCC support package next season and beyond. The series replaced Ginetta’s flagship GT4 Supercup at Thruxton last weekend for its first TOCA slot, and is also on the timetable for next month’s Croft round. Race winner Ollie Chadwick welcomed the move: “We’ve done British GT previously, and it’s really growing in strength, but it’s still nothing compared to this with the crowds.”…

“AMAZING” WAS HOW TREVOR CARLIN described the third Thruxton race. It just about sums up an incredible weekend of racing that provided drama throughout. The change in name from MSA Formula to British Formula 4 coincided with a change in mentality from the drivers as they took advantage of the slipstreaming opportunities the Hampshire track provides in three incident-filled races. The opener was dominated by Carlin’s Romanian driver Petru Florescu as he stormed to a third win of the season. Behind, things were more complicated – not least for two of his team-mates. After losing out at the start to JHR’s Sennan Fielding, Max Fewtrell’s race then ended abruptly when fighting with James Pull into the Club chicane. The Carlin cars made contact, sending Fewtrell into a roll before landing…

“PERFECT, YOU COULDN’T ASK for more” was Ollie Chadwick’s assessment of last weekend as he left Thruxton with two Ginetta GT5 Challenge wins and a healthy championship lead. Such was Chadwick’s dominance that he raced comfortably clear from pole position in both of the races, but there were still entertaining scraps in his wake in each. In race one, Matt Chapman “bogged down” off the line from second on the grid and fell to fourth. That forced the TCR driver to battle back past Jonny and Ryan Hadfield, with brave moves around the outside at Club heading into the chicane. As Chapman then gamely but fruitlessly chased Chadwick, the Hadfield brothers squabbled over the final podium spot, which was finally settled when Ryan Hadfield spun at the chicane. In race…

LIKE FOOTBALL, MOTOR RACING AT Bishopscourt tends to resemble a game of two halves. Just like last year, the fourth running of the annual event at Northern Ireland’s ‘other’ circuit produced yet another two-part affair with Saturday’s activity taking place on a wet track, while long-awaited sunshine arrived midway through Sunday to change everything from grip levels to the general mood. A 20-race programme for the BARCrun event made it a busy weekend but despite the early rain and a few red flags, the meeting ran to time – a credit to all. With both races scheduled for soggy Saturday, FF1600 got the worst of the day’s weather, but from the start of practice it seemed Alan Davidson had got the best deal. Having claimed a brace of pole positions…

YOU’D HAVE BEEN FOOLED INTO thinking that Anglesey had moved to southern Europe on Sunday, the weather drastically changing from the grey and miserable skies of Saturday. Fitting timing then for Oliver Allwood to secure his place in the European MX-5 Cup, the award given to the leader of the MX-5 Championship after the Anglesey weekend. “I’m excited, but have no idea what to expect,” Allwood said. It had looked as though the tickets to Spain had Tom Roche’s name on them for much of the weekend. With a victory in the wet race one as well as a promotion to first in race two following Allwood’s time penalty for contact, Roche suffered a severe loss of power in race three, handing a simple victory and the tickets to Barcelona…

ANOTHER WEEK AND ANOTHER SCOTT Moran-dominated event, only this time without any hill records, along with a display of virtuosity from 1600cc competitor Richard Spedding. Moran again saved his finest until last with Best Time of the Day on the final run-off of the weekend. “At times it may look as if this car can drive itself to the top, but the competition is fierce,” he said. “In the first run-off I fluffed the start and was in too high a gear at the first corner, but the old girl comes into her own further up Harewood.” Man of the meeting was Spedding in the sweet little Raptor, only the third of its type to be built. Previously considered by many to be ‘harum-scarum’, local BARC Yorkshire Centre member Spedding…

THE DECISION TO allow teams to use three different compounds of slick tyre has added unpredictability to Formula 1 this year, based on the four races we have seen so far. Key to this development is the fact that Pirelli is making softer compounds available at circuits where previously it was reluctant to do so. The super-soft has been used at each of the first four races this year, on circuits where it has never been used before. It’s this more aggressive approach that has mixed up strategies and added some of the unpredictability F1 desperately needs. In Australia Ferrari focused on the supersofts and made more stops than Mercedes. This turned out to be a mistake, but created a situation where Sebastian Vettel tried (and ultimately failed) to hunt…

CIRCUIT DE BARCELONA-CATALUNYA LENGTH 2.892 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 66 2015 POLE POSITION Nico Rosberg 1m24.681s QUALIFYING LAP RECORD Mark Webber 1m19.995s (2010) RACE LAP RECORD Kimi Raikkonen 1m21.670s (2008) Themes to watch ALL EYES ON MAX Max Verstappen swaps places with Daniil Kvyat to get his shot with the senior Red Bull team. How will he perform against Daniel Ricciardo? HAMILTON’S RESPONSE Nico Rosberg says Lewis Hamilton is mentally strong enough to bounce back and challenge for the title. Will Barcelona be the starting point? HAAS ON SONG Haas got back into the points in Russia and now heads to the first track on this year’s calendar where it has previously gathered data in pre-season testing.…

AT A GLANCE MAIN RACE 1 Ide/Mies Audi 2 Schneider/Szymkowiak Mercedes 3 Soulet/Soucek Bentley QUALIFYING RACE 1 Szymkowiak/Schneider Mercedes 2 Perera/Stockinger Audi 3 Mies/Ide Audi P56 FULL RESULTS BLANCPAIN SPRINT CUP BRANDS HATCH (GB) MAY 8 ROUND 2/5 A BLANCPAIN GT ROUND THAT BOILS down to a battle between a WRT Audi and an HTP Motorsport Mercedes is nothing new, and that’s exactly what the Brands Hatch faithful enjoyed last weekend. But what was different was that this Sprint Cup event was a fight that featured neither of those teams’ usual leading line-ups. Victory went to the Audi of Christopher Mies and Enzo Ide over the Merc of Bernd Schneider and Jules Szymkowiak, and it was a very close-run thing. A safety car meant the one-hour race boiled down to…

AT A GLANCE RACE ONE 1 Coronel Chevrolet 2 Lopez Citroen 3 Muller Citroen RACE TWO 1 Huff Honda 2 Michelisz Honda 3 Monteiro Honda P57 FULL RESULTS WORLD TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP MARRAKECH (MA) MAY 8 ROUND 4/12 WHEN JOSE MARIA LOPEZ GOT OUT his Citroen out of shape during the final qualifying shootout, that was the decisive moment in allowing Rob Huff to lead a Honda 1-2-3 in the main race in Morocco the following day. Huff plus team-mates Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro had all made errors on their Q3 runs, leaving Lopez looking nailed on to score an unlikely third WTCC pole position from four rounds after trailing the Honda contingent for much of the weekend. Lopez’s first split time was a tenth up on the benchmark,…

TCR INTERNATIONAL SPA (B) MAY 6-7 ROUND 3/11 CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HAS it that you can’t win a race at the first corner; you can only lose it. But Aku Pellinen proved that the first few seconds of races can be decisive as he catapulted his West Coast Racing Honda Civic from third on the grid to first at the start of Spa’s first race. At the end of the first lap he was almost two seconds clear of Pepe Oriola’s SEAT Leon and on his way to a first TCR victory. While Finn Pellinen did have a scare late on as he struggled on fading tyres, allowing Oriola to get close, the result never looked in doubt. Behind, towering Serbian Dusan Borkovic completed the podium after making a mediocre start…

JAMES BIRCH IS CONTESTING selected GT Cup rounds in a Porsche Cayman Clubsport GT4 this year as he builds up to a return to British GT. The 26-year-old is partnering Esmee Hawkey in the GT Marques-run Cayman, and made his debut in the car at Brands Hatch last weekend. The pair took third place in class in Sunday’s endurance event, with Hawkey scoring a solo podium on Saturday. “The Cayman is a great car; it’s got a great chassis and engine but it’s currently in production spec without the GT4 update kit, so it’s running heavier than the other cars,” said Birch, who raced a part-season in GT4 last year with Century Motorsport. “I’m doing a handful of GT Cup races to see how it goes and hopefully it will…

SEBASTIAN PRIAULX SECURED HIS first podium finish in the Ginetta Junior Championship the day after his father took a maiden World Endurance Championship podium for the Ford GT. The day after taking second in the GTE Pro class in the Spa 6 Hours, Andy Priaulx watched his son take a rookie-class win in the Ginetta Junior opener and third overall in the second race. “It was a really interesting second race,” said Priaulx Jr. “It’s great to be third and we were fighting for the lead. It’s a great feeling – I love it.”…

GT3 MARKS 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY The Stephane Ratel Organisation celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first GT3 race at Brands Hatch last weekend. Forty-two cars took part in the inaugural race of the FIA GT3 European Championship at Silverstone in 2006, which was won by Hector Lester and the late Allan Simonsen. Entries from Aston Martin, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Maserati, Corvette, Dodge and Ascari all featured. MINI CHALLENGE EXPECTS GRID BOOST Mini Challenge organisers are confident of hitting 30-car grids again soon, after a number of cars were absent from round two of the championship last weekend at Brands Hatch, reducing the grid to 23. Of the absentees, James Turkington was ruled out due to exams, Jeff Smith was on BTCC duty at Thruxton, while Bence Balogh and Chris Boon were…

IT WAS A CASE OF WHAT MIGHT have been for Mike Bushell at Thruxton as the former champion failed to capitalise on two poles. Bushell lost out at the beginning of the opener to Lee Pattison and the fast-starting Ant Whorton-Eales, who surged from fifth to second. Bushell was then shuffled further down the order at the Complex on lap two before recovering to finish a disappointed third. The Pyro driver had no such troubles in race two, leading throughout, but was denied victory by a five-second track-limits penalty. Therefore Whorton-Eales was able to profit to take a much-needed double win. “You just can’t mess about when the lights go out,” he said of his impressive getaways. “Given what’s happened already this season I am on full attack every corner…

REIGNING MINI CHALLENGE Champion Charlie Butler-Henderson and Cooper class graduate Nathan Harrison remain closely matched on points after two JCW-only confrontations at Brands Hatch. Harrison scored a pair of podium places and Butler-Henderson had a fourth place and a win. Perhaps the star of the weekend, though, was Jono Brown. After a torrid opening round when he crashed out at Donington Park, he gave himself the ideal tonic with pole and a commanding win in race one. Brown used his qualifying tyres in a controlled drive to victory, aiming to leave himself a new set on which to challenge from fifth on the part-reversed race-two grid. A close contest for second made Brown’s task easier. Harrison had the place for much of the race, but Chris Smith moved ahead with…

TEAM SHERARDIZE’S PETER BELSHAW and Jay Shepherd came out on top of a late three-way battle to take the Fun Cup victory over ECO Racing. Belshaw had run strongly from the start of the four-hour encounter, but the first hour featured an entertaining duel between JPR Uvio’s Graham Roberts and Racelogic’s Julian Thomas. A battery fault put JPR Uvio out contention in the third hour and brought out the safety car for its recovery. The whole field made their penultimate stop under the safety car, which handed David Denyer the lead for Racelogic from Paul Turner’s ECO Racing, Chris Hart’s Track Torque/2 Rent Dominoes and Tim Wheeldon’s Team Honeywell. But before the race resumed, Hart suffered engine trouble and dropped out of the top ten. Turner and Belshaw both passed…

WHEN LOOKING BACK AT THE LIFE and career of Ayrton Senna, painful memories of 1994 aside, the story that is most often recalled is his intense rivalry with Alain Prost. It’s this relationship and those now-legendary battles for the championship that provide most of the narrative in any Senna retrospective. But now Mario Muth, in his new film Senna vs Brundle, has chosen to tell the story of a different rivalry from long before those images of Suzuka 1989, but one that nonetheless shares a striking similarity to the story everyone knows so well. Senna vs Brundle is a feature-length documentary about the 1983 British Formula 3 season and the contest for the title that unfolded between Senna and Martin Brundle. “I think a lot of people ignore how drivers…