Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2, 2017 i Autosport

CONGRATULATIONS TO LEWIS HAMILTON ON HISfourth Formula 1 world title. He might not have clinched the crown the way he wanted in Mexico last weekend, but there is no doubt he is a deserving champion. This was perhaps his best season. So where does this leave him now in the pantheon of the greats and how much more can he go on to achieve? The first part of that question will be tackled by Autosport in more depth later in the year, but it is not unreasonable to compare him with the very best drivers the sport has seen – only Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio won more championships, and Hamilton is second on the GP wins list. As for the future, there is no reason to think Hamilton…

QUALIFYING WAS ALL ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT A RED BULL COULD beat Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes to pole position. But Sebastian Vettel wasn’t interested in that script, delivering a virtuoso performance in Q3 to grab his 50th Formula 1 pole position. Vettel’s lap wasn’t perfect, by his own admission – he shifted down to first in the Turn 6 double-apex hairpin, leading to the rear end being kicked out towards the exit. But the rest of the lap was outstanding, with Vettel controlling beautifully any misbehaviour from the car and provoking the rear to perfection on turn-in. That, combined with Max Verstappen failing to improve on his second run, was enough for pole position by 0.086 seconds. “It was quite a lap,” was Vettel’s verdict. Red Bull’s challenge had looked…

LEADING FORMULA 1 FIGURES hailed Lewis Hamilton as a great of Formula 1 after he secured his fourth world championship. While Hamilton’s qualifying pace has always been celebrated, Williams chief technical officer Paddy Lowe, who worked with Hamilton at McLaren, suggests Hamilton’s racecraft now stands out among the sport’s great champions. “The style with which he qualifies and races, it is always very exciting,” said Lowe. “His racecraft is probably unparalleled. It would have been great to see him race against the likes of [Ayrton] Senna. Michael [Schumacher] achieved fantastic records but his racecraft was not one of his greatest strengths, for example. Why people love Lewis is they love the way he races.” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff suggested this was the hardest of Hamilton’s title wins for Mercedes from…

PIERRE GASLY FINISHED 13TH ON HIS RETURN TO Formula 1 after missing the United States Grand Prix, replacing Daniil Kvyat in the Toro Rosso team’s line-up. The 21-year-old had a disastrous run in practice, managing just 12 laps thanks to sitting out the first sessions for Sean Gelael, then Renault power unit problems in the next two. Similar issues also prevented him from driving in qualifying. He was running 9.485 seconds and two places behind team-mate Brendon Hartley when the New Zealander retired on lap 31. While his race pace was a little slower, considering his lack of practice and track experience, it was a respectable performance. “You mustn’t forget Pierre couldn’t do many laps because of reliability problems,” said Red Bull’s Helmut Marko. “He did a really good job.”…

MOTOGP SEPANG (MAL) OCTOBER 29 ROUND 17/18 JUST WHEN IT SEEMED MARC MARQUEZ was on the brink of securing MotoGP title number four, Andrea Dovizioso scored a sixth race win of the season to ensure that this most unpredictable of championship campaigns goes down to the last race. It seems only fitting that such a battle between two very different but equally worthy potential champions should be resolved at the Valencia finale, even if the odds remain overwhelmingly stacked in favour of Marquez. Then again, 11 years ago, the late Nicky Hayden arrived at Valencia facing a seemingly insurmountable deficit to the man widely considered the best rider in the field. But Valentino Rossi succumbed to the pressure and crashed, and the crown was Hayden’s. The biggest difference between those…

PORSCHE SUPERCUP MEXICO CITY (MEX) OCTOBER 28-29 ROUND 8/8 FORMER RED BULL JUNIOR Michael Ammermuller was happy to watch Matt Campbell claim a double victory in Mexico City, as a brace of second places earned him his first Supercup title at the sixth attempt. Australian Porsche junior Campbell took the race one lead from Ammermuller’s title rival, Denis Olsen, on the run to Turn 1. Thereafter, he was never threatened, with Ammermuller passing Olsen into Turn 1 and then spending the rest of the race keeping his rival behind to extend his lead to five points. While Campbell led the second race from start to finish from pole, Ammermuller held second off the line from Olsen. Any chance of a battle between the title contenders evaporated on lap three, when…

BRITISH FORMULA 4 TEAMS HAVE welcomed the decision for Neil Brown Engineering to become the category’s engine-support provider from next season. The renowned company will be responsible for balancing the F4 Ford EcoBoost engines as well as providing trackside support. Double R team boss Anthony Hieatt has been heavily critical of the engine support provided by Sodemo and the equality of the motors in the past – describing it as the “worst thing about the championship” – but he says the addition of Neil Brown Engineering is very positive. “It’s a fantastic step in the right direction – it can only be a good thing,” said Hieatt. “It was a crazy decision in the first place for an MSA championship to go with a foreign engine tuner when we’ve got…

FOR THE THIRD TIME IN 10 YEARS, a team from the RAF Motorsports Association won the Birkett Six Hour Relay race at Silverstone as Armed Forces Race Challenge organiser Chris Slator led his squad to handicap honours. While none of the five drivers that combined to claim the prize for RAFMSA this season was involved in 2008, Slator and Darren Howe were part of the 2011 winning team, with their Peugeot and Volkswagen Golf this year joined by Dan Smith’s Ford Fiesta and BMWs for Scott Lawson and Ed McKean, who saw them home. McKean picked up the baton in a strong position, with the team leading from two-thirds distance, although they had languished in 27th after two hours. A squad of Mk5 Golfs – the Production GTI Gentlemen being…

KEVIN MAGNUSSEN DESCRIBED his eighth place as “like a victory” at a circuit that Haas team principal Gunther Steiner said was one of the squad’s worst scenarios. Magnussen and team-mate Romain Grosjean were the slowest drivers in qualifying, with Magnussen starting 14th, thanks to five drivers being given grid penalties. He ran 12th at the end of the first lap after passing Pascal Wehrlein and Lewis Hamilton, then moved to ninth with Sebastian Vettel’s early stop, Carlos Sainz Jr’s spin and Felipe Massa’s puncture. He gained a further two positions as a result of the retirements of Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo, with the recovering Vettel passing him at half-distance. He had Fernando Alonso chasing him for much of the rest of the race, then held off Hamilton on the…

RENAULT ADMITTED ITS PREPARATIONS for the altitude of the Mexican Grand Prix were not adequate after suffering a litany of failures – despite Max Verstappen’s victory. Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly suffered a turbo problem on Friday, then an engine failure on Saturday that kept him out of qualifying, with team-mate Brendon Hartley stopping in the race with an engine issue. Renault pairing Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr both retired from the race with power unit problems, while Daniel Ricciardo stopped with a turbo failure. The air density in Mexico City is approximately 23% lower than at sea level, putting extra demands both on the engine and the turbocharger, and reducing cooling potential. “We’ve made an error of judgement in our preparation in the way we have been trying to…

THE WRC2 SUPPORT CATEGORY FEATURED a stellar entry for R5 cars, but the result was similar to the main event. A runaway winner and an epic battle for second. But the pre-event hype was all around Kalle Rovanpera. The Finn, fresh off passing his driving test at 17-years-old, was making his WRC debut and the pressure was on. On stage five, he slipped off the road and his day was over. There was a little more to it than that, though. The car wasn’t suiting his style. “We are learning all the time,” said the young prodigy. “We had understeer a lot because my driving style [isn’t working] with this car. My style is really clean. With this car it’s different, you have to throw it around.” He returned on…

FORMULA RENAULT EUROCUP BARCELONA(E) OCTOBER 28-29 ROUND 10/10 SACHA FENESTRAZ SEALED the 2017 Formula Renault Eurocup title with a race to spare as he took second place in the second race of the weekend, comfortably clear of his closest rival, Will Palmer. Fenestraz, a championship outsider for much of the season, had to wait for race two to be resumed after an enormous Turn 2 crash eliminated 13 cars on the first lap and the event was red flagged. The crash was a knock-on effect of Max Defourny and Gabriel Aubry clashing as they ran through the left-hander, which spun the former to a halt. He was collected by the second half of the field. After a 20-minute suspension, Fenestraz attacked polesitter Robert Shwartzman on the run to Turn 1…

NIALL MURRAY WILL RETURN TO FORMULA Ford action this weekend to defend his Walter Hayes Trophy success from 12 months ago. The 22-year-old will contest the annual Silverstone event aboard a Van Diemen LA10 that he has already used to take the Northern Ireland Formula Ford championship this season. “As the reigning winner of course you want to go on and defend the crown,” said Murray, who dominated last year’s event in torrential rain. “If I win it this year, I would probably try and do it next year for the hat-trick. “Of course, you need a lot of luck. With the amount of entries there’s a big chance of something going wrong. If it goes wrong in the heats, you’ve more or less got very little chance [of winning].…

BRITISH GT4 CHAMPION STUART Middleton will race in January’s Daytona 24 Hours after winning a fully funded seat in a Cadillac Daytona Prototype courtesy of Sunoco. Middleton was crowned the winner of this year’s Sunoco Whelen Challenge contest last weekend, and will now get to race an Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R for the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener. The prize is worth an estimated £190,000. Middleton will share the car with former Formula 1 racer Felipe Nasr, World Endurance Championship regular Mike Conway and 2016 IMSA champion Eric Curran. Middleton, 18, won this year’s prize after standout performances alongside Will Tregurtha in the HHC-run Ginetta G55 GT4 as the pair took the British title. Middleton was put clear in the Sunoco points when Radical European Masters racer Stuart Moseley was…

THURSTON TO MAKE WALTER HAYES BOW Historic Formula Ford frontrunner Ed Thurston (above) will make his debut at the Walter Hayes Trophy this weekend, aboard a rare Jamun M89. Thurston, 18, campaigns an Elden Mk8 in the HSCC-organised Formula Ford championship, and, through a tie-up with friend Nigel Tye, will race at one of the formula’s showpiece events as it reaches 50 years of age. F4 ACE VAN UITERT TESTS LIGIER LMP3 Dutch teenager Job van Uitert tested the RLR Motorsport Ligier JSP3 at Donington Park last week, with regular team driver Alex Kapadia on tutoring duties. Van Uitert finished second in this year’s Italian F4 Championship with four wins. COTTRELL STEPS DOWN FROM BRSCC British Racing and Sports Car Club chairman Bernard Cottrell has stepped down from his role…

FORMER BRITISH TOURING Car champion Andrew Jordan is building a TVR Griffith to contest selected historic events next season. The Jordan Racing Team, which entered the historic arena in 2015, has built a number of historic touring cars, including the Jordan family’s successful Austin A40. Now Jordan plans to build a ‘wide-body’ V8-engined TVR, with Nigel Reuben Racing, to share with his father and fellow BTCC race winner, Mike, in high-profile historic meetings for pre-1966 GT cars. “We’ve got so many car builds on at the moment, but this is for me and dad to do some racing in,” said the 28-year-old, who confirmed JRT is also expanding its workshop. “We’d like to do the Oulton Park Gold Cup, Classic Daytona and, depending on dates, the Silverstone Classic or Donington…

JACOPO SEBASTIANI SEALED THE F3 CUP championship at Oulton Park with yet another convincing display, a second place and victory in the season finale confirming him as champion, 34 points ahead of runner-up Shane Kelly. A strong weekend at Brands Hatch last time out meant the Italian’s intention to not play the numbers game was evident from the start as he took pole position for race one. But it was the impressive Cian Carey who won the opening race to secure his first victory of the season, storming into second at Old Hall Corner. He inherited the lead at the end of the opening lap after Wade Eastwood pulled into the pits with an engine issue. Sebastiani had made an uncharacteristically poor getaway and slipped back to third, which then…

TWO OF THEM WOULD LIKELY have flown Spitfires had they reached adulthood 10 years earlier. Their wide, open smiles and swept, blond hair contrasted starkly with the brooding charisma of the other three – the pair of dashing Italians and the Spanish aristocrat. Five swashbuckling racing drivers, all dangling from the strings of one enigmatic and utterly ruthless puppet-master – and all dead within two devastatingly tragic years that have echoed through the ages: it’s the stuff of movie scripts. And the word is it still could be, on the back of this stunning documentary. Ferrari: Race to Immortality is the story of a quintet of racing warriors, all of whom found themselves pitched into Enzo Ferrari’s famous Scuderia at the same tumultuous time during the second half of the…

THERE WASN’T ANYTHING APPROACHING a masterplan when Fernando Alonso set out on his quest to win the unofficial triple crown of motorsport by adding wins in the Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours to his twin Monaco Grand Prix victories. An assault on the Daytona 24 Hours, the opening round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship, proves that a clear and coherent strategy is beginning to emerge as he turns his attention to Le Mans in his bid to emulate the so-far-unique feat of Graham Hill. The idea of going for Indy glory started out as a bit of banter between Alonso and McLaren boss Zak Brown. No doubt the path to Alonso driving an LMP2 Ligier-Gibson JSP217 for his boss’s United Autosports squad at Daytona alongside rising British star…

THE HONDA WORLD TOURING CAR SQUAD HAS lost its results from the Chinese round of the series after its cars were disqualified on technical grounds. An investigation by the championship’s technical delegate ruled that the team’s fuel injectors were not compliant with the technical regulations. Privateer team Zengo Motorsport was also excluded due to an identical homologation issue with its fuel injectors. Only half points were awarded for the aborted wet second race at the Ningbo circuit and the decision, which was announced at last weekend’s Motegi round, meant Honda lost all the points it had won in China. The injectors of all the Honda Civic WTCCs were marked for further investigation during Friday’s scrutineering session in China, with the results of the races marked as provisional. Following a meeting…

MOTO2 TEAM BOSS STEFAN KIEFER DIES Kiefer Racing boss Stefan Kiefer died in Malaysia, on the eve of the Sepang MotoGP weekend. Autosport understands he died in his hotel room on Thursday 26 October, however details of his passing are limited. The news was confirmed by MotoGP on Twitter after first practice at Sepang last Friday. The Kiefer Racing squad subsequently opted to withdraw from the Sepang MotoGP event. LEIMER WINS FERRARI CHALLENGE FINAL The 2013 GP2 champion Fabio Leimer won the Ferrari Challenge’s headlining Trofeo Pirelli World Final in a chaotic event at the Mugello circuit last weekend. Leimer built up a healthy lead following an early safety car as he made a superb restart and then pulled clear of the chasing pack. Behind the Swiss racer, Bjorn Grossman…

@eddstrawF1 MAX VERSTAPPEN COULD NOT HELP BUT BE FAST IN MEXICO. WITH THE RACEin the bag, and his Red Bull team monitoring the gap back to Valtteri Bottas, he could only say “I’m really sorry” when admonished for his lap times having stayed the same after agreeing to ease off. At that point, early in the second stint of what was a one-stop race for the first and second place finishers, Bottas still had a vague hope of closing the gap after both had switched from ultra-softs to super-softs. That Verstappen could match or outpace Bottas seemingly without trying tells you everything that you need to know about his supremacy. It was a future champion’s drive on a day when Lewis Hamilton became the champion of the present. Hamilton should…

FORCE INDIA SECURED fourth place in the constructors’ championship thanks to Esteban Ocon and Sergio Perez finishing fifth and seventh respectively. Ocon qualified sixth, running third in the early stages after capitalising on the Sebastian Vettel/Lewis Hamilton clash and jumping Kimi Raikkonen at the start. But a combination of him responding to the pitstops made by Nico Hulkenberg and Perez, who ran behind him, and stopping on lap 20 when the ultra-soft Pirellis still had good pace in them, and the virtual safety car, meant he dropped behind Raikkonen. He was then passed for fourth by Vettel into Turn 1 on lap 57. Perez was always set to drop behind Raikkonen even without the VSC, which also allowed Lance Stroll to jump him – losses halved thanks to Hulkenberg’s retirement.…

3 All three of Verstappen’s F1 wins have come in a race before which Daniil Kvyat was dropped by a team 4 Hamilton is the fourth driver to clinch the title in Mexico a_ er John Surtees (1964), Denny Hulme (’67) and Graham Hill (’68) 18 Hamilton’s record, taken from Jackie Stewart in Austin, for consecutive races led has finished on 18 50 Vettel’s pole position was his 50th in F1, making him the fourth driver to hit that number 80 Verstappen is the leading points scorer over the past four races with 80 points 90 Raikkonen took his 90th podium finish in F1, the sixth driver to hit that mark 206 This was Hamilton’s 206th grand prix start, drawing him level with old rival Nico Rosberg Lap chart /…

WORLD TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP MOTEGI (J) OCTOBER 29 ROUND 8/10 AT TIMES IN THE WORLD TOURING Car Championship this season, it seems as though fate is conspiring against Honda’s title bid. Tiago Monteiro’s testing crash at Barcelona and its consequences were far beyond Honda’s control, but the blame for its latest setback lay firmly at its own door. A new fuel injector was flagged up by officials in China and, just as had been the case with the ruling over its modified flat floor last season, the part was found to contravene the series’ homologation procedure – costing the team (and independent Zengo Motorsport) all its points from the previous round. It was another case of interpretation of the law with the same outcome, and left Honda facing another uphill…

BRDC BRITISH F3 FRONTRUNNER JORDAN Cane and British F4 champion Jamie Caroline were scheduled to test Formula Renault Eurocup machinery at Barcelona this week as Autosport closed for press. Cane has targeted a season in the category next year, and will run with two teams in upcoming tests before confirming his campaign. “The plan for us at the minute is to do Renault next year,” said Cane. “We’re testing with Fortec in Barcelona and then with Tech 1 Racing at the Nurburgring. We’re not sure yet who we’ll test with at Spa, we’ll see how we gel with which team. “There will be 36 drivers at this test, a lot of second-year drivers, so it should be good. It’s scrutineered so no-one is playing games. “Fortec in previous years have…

TWO-TIME HISTORIC FORMULA FORD 1600 champion Callum Grant will return to Historic Formula Ford 2000 next season for a serious crack at the title in what he says could be his last full season of racing for now. Grant, 22, was HFF champion in 2012 and ’16 and narrowly missed out this year. Now he is planning a full season next year in his father Nigel’s Delta T78 in the two-litre series. “It’s the same car as 2015 when I last raced it,” said Grant. “I did three-quarters of the season in it but we couldn’t get the car handling as we wanted. We did a bit of work and tested it last year and it seemed better. “I think 2018 will be my last full year. We’ll keep the…

MATT RIVETT BECAME THE ONLY driver in 2017 with two Champion of Brands Formula Ford 1600 wins when he triumphed in the season’s final round. Last Saturday’s races produced tussles between Rivett and Sebastian Melrose, who dominated a seven-car entry. Melrose’s trip from Scotland was rewarded in race one, despite wheelspin at the start, when a lunge at Clearways just ahead of yellow flags took him to the front. In race two, it was Rivett’s turn to chase before taking the lead. Melrose spun his Ray GR14 after contact between them at Druids, which left him third behind Keith Wood. Formula Vee champion Ben Miloudi added the 10th Vee Festival to his winning record despite retiring before the first corner in race one with fuel feed problems in his Storm…