Indholdsfortegnelse for 25/01/18 i Autosport

FERNANDO ALONSO’S INDIANAPOLIS 500 ATTACK was one of the motorsport highlights of 2017. Now he has turned his attention to endurance racing, with the ultimate aim of winning the Le Mans 24 Hours. Exactly when the double Formula 1 world champion will take on the French Classic is not yet known, but he’ll make his first step this weekend at the Daytona 24 Hours. In our cover piece, Edd Straw speaks to Alonso – and the drivers and team members working with him – to see how the Spaniard is finding this latest challenge. Predictably, Alonso has already worked out the key areas that need to be honed to do the best job in sportscar racing, including helping his co-drivers get the most out of the machinery. The United Autosports…

AMONG THE 20-STRONG Prototype field, four cars stand out: and they are all the same. The Dallara LMP2-based Cadillac DPi-V.R swept the board at the pre-Daytona 24 Hours Roar test earlier this month and, having won nine out of 10 IMSA Sportscar Championship rounds last year, there’s no reason to think things will change in 2018. That said, things are a little different. Gone is the 6.2-litre V8 the Caddys used last year, replaced by a 5.5-litre version. Based on performance so far, there’s no reason to expect there’s any disadvantage, although the Balance of Performance changes announced last Friday have reduced the size of the air restrictor on the engine from 32.2mm to 31.6mm since the Roar test. Last year’s winning Wayne Taylor Racing squad has also undergone some…

LORENZO BANDINI (1967) Sharing with Chris Amon, Bandini took a Ferrari 330 P4 to victory in the second Daytona race to be run over 24 hours. JO SIFFERT (1968) One of five drivers in the winning Porsche 907LH alongside Vic Elford, Jochen Neerpasch, Rolf Stommelen and Hans Herrmann. Siffert was also classified second after car-hopping! PEDRO RODRIGUEZ (1970, ’71) After winning the Daytona sportscar race in its early days as a three-hour and a 2000km race in 1963 and ’64, Rodriguez won the big one for Porsche twice. THIERRY BOUTSEN (1985) Switching to the winning Porsche after his 962 retired, Boutsen shared victory with Bob Wollek, AJ Foyt and Al Unser in Preston Henn’s Swap Shop entry. JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (2007, ’08, ’13) Montoya claimed a trio of victories in…

“You can’t discount Ogier. Last year he was finding his feet, but he still won” For all the talk about Andreas Mikkelsen and Thierry Neuville having everything going for them this year at Hyundai, ask either of them who’s the one to watch this year and they’ll give the same answer: Sebastien Ogier. Last year the reigning champion was up against it in a new car and a new team, but the Volkswagen refugee rose to the challenge and ticked off title number five in the M-Sport Ford Fiesta. In doing so, he demonstrated patience to match the pace we’d always known about. Toyota’s Jari-Matti Latvala has already made it plain that he wants to ape Ogier’s season this time around, while Citroen’s Kris Meeke was similarly impressed. “He was…

The World Rally Championship has been in the hands of French drivers for the past 14 years. It’s therefore hard to lambast British drivers for a lack of recent success without castigating every other nation. But before the Sebastien Loeb and Ogier-led French revolution, it had only been two years since Richard Burns won Britain’s second world title, with Colin McRae at the sport’s forefront for a decade before that. Now, though, there’s a genuine opportunity for Britain to be the best once again. You may have read those same words this time last year, but 12 months ago they were about just one driver: Northern Ireland’s Kris Meeke. Now, though, his rival from the eastern shores of the Irish Sea has to be seriously considered: Elfyn Evans. Having disappeared…

COLIN NOBLE WILL RETURN TO defend his UK LMP3 Cup title in 2018 with Nielsen Racing and co-driver Alasdair McCaig. Scotsman Noble will combine this with outings in both the Le Mans Cup – for which he won funded entries through last year’s LMP3 Cup title – and the European Le Mans Series. “I’ve never done a championship twice so there will be some pressure now I have the experience,” Noble said. The Nielsen Racing team’s cross-championship plans are helped by the UK LMP3 Cup’s move to Michelin tyres for this year, bringing the series into line with other LMP3 contests. Last year the championship used Pirellis not specifically designed for LMP3 machinery. • The LMP3 Cup will also hold an eSports Championship through the Online Racing Association in 2018.…

FORMER BRITISH GT CHAMPION JAMES GORNALL has been stripped of last season’s BMW Compact Cup crown after his car failed post-season scrutineering. The series’ top three cars were examined after the season had finished and it was at this point that scrutineers found that Gornall’s engine had been modified. Gornall appealed the decision to the National Court but was unsuccessful and has therefore been excluded. Chair of the National Court panel David Munro said in his report: “The examination revealed clear evidence that the crankshaft had been ground to the front web and accordingly Mr Kennedy [scrutineer] concluded that it had been modified and was therefore not compliant with championship regulations. “The National Court concludes that the examination was conducted in accordance with the regulations and that the crankshaft did…

TCR UK There’s no disputing the success the TCR concept has enjoyed across the world. The idea of a tightly controlled, affordable touring car series with stable regulations has unsurprisingly been a hit – to the point where the World Touring Car Championship has decided to adopt the TCR format. When it was announced last July that TCR would be coming to the UK, there was a buzz in British motorsport that is very rarely seen. Teams from across the motorsport spectrum were queuing up to say they were considering entering, with at least 47 expressing serious interest. Some bought cars, including Motorbase Performance, Team Hard, Sean Walkinshaw Racing and Team Pyro. A support-series package was also assembled around TCR UK, with the British Racing & Sports Car Club bringing…

The 1998 Belgian Grand Prix is etched in the memory of fans thanks to the spectacular crash following the first attempt to start the race, the later violent coming together of David Coulthard and Michael Schumacher (and Murray Walker’s “Oh God!”), and the Jordan team’s first Formula 1 win. Here, in another moment of drama, Mika Hakkinen’s McLaren and Schumacher’s Ferrari touch at La Source just after the restart, which spun the Finn into the path of Johnny Herbert’s Sauber, eliminating them both from the race. latimages.com @latimages…

HALF OF THE FORMULA 2 GRID FOR THIS season is yet to be revealed, but the calibre of the drivers unveiled so far points to an exciting and multi-layered 2018 contest. Prema Racing – the dominant force in GP2/F2 for the past two seasons – and returnee Carlin had already respectively announced line-ups of Nyck de Vries and Sean Gelael, and Formula 3 European champion Lando Norris and Sergio Sette Camara. And now junior single-seater powerhouse ART Grand Prix has unveiled a tantalising all-rookie pairing, with 2017 GP3 champion and Mercedes Formula 1 junior George Russell confirmed as team-mate to Jack Aitken. “I’m not here for a Lando-v- George battle or whatever” “It was a natural step for me and it made complete sense to continue with ART,” said Russell…

The Formula 1 Strategy Group has at last come up with a sensible solution to the problem of a driver’s weight with a ballasted minimum weight of 80kg, intended for introduction in the 2019 season. This is something I have been advocating for years because it isn’t correct for someone who would healthily weigh 75kg to go on a diet just because the car is overweight. In the 1980s and ’90s, the weight of the driver was not part of the overall car weight and there were no minimum cockpit-length dimensions, so small-and-light drivers were the order of the day. But while that all changed, and for the better, there is still more that needs to be done to help bigger drivers. If the planned changes are brought in for…

REIGNING DAYTONA 24 HOURS WINNER CADILLAC has had its performance pegged back for this weekend’s running of the Florida enduro following its domination of pre-event testing earlier this month. The Dallara-based Cadillac Daytona Prototype international (above), which topped every session at the so-called ‘Roar’ test, has been given smaller-diameter air restrictors for the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener that will rob it of engine power. The latest Balance of Performance for the weekend means that the revised 2018 5.5-litre normally-aspirated V8 will now run 31.6mm restrictors, 0.6mm down on the 32.2mm the four Caddys were allowed at the test. Mazda, which ended up eighth in the overall times, has been given two performance breaks ahead of the race. The Joest-run RT24-Ps have received a minimum weight reduction of 15kg and a…

@EddStrawF1 “IN THE LIST OF TOP FAVOURITES, WE ARE NOT ON IT” When Fernando Alonso set his sights on becoming only the second driver, after Graham Hill, to win the so-called triple crown of motorsport, he was on a lopsided footing. Whether or not you consider the Monaco Grand Prix (as Autosport does) or the Formula 1 World Championship as one of the three legs of the achievement, Alonso ticked those off long ago. But he hadn’t turned a single lap at Indianapolis or even contested a 24-hour race, let alone the big one at Le Mans. Last year’s glorious (Honda) failure at The Brickyard established Alonso as a credible victory threat there, whenever it is he next goes back in machinery capable of challenging. And this weekend he’ll earn…

RALLY SWEDEN February 15-18 Based Karlstad/Torsby Surface snow/ice The WRC’s winter rally continues with a dual-country format, with the opening day’s action running through Norway – the Rojden stage starts and finishes in Sweden, but includes most of its mileage in Norway. Based out of Torsby again this year, in the hope that being further north guarantees more snow. RALLY ARGENTINA April 26-29 Based Villa Carlos Paz Surface gravel With close to a million fans regularly lining the route for this South American classic, Rally Argentina is a highlight for the drivers. The roads are a mix of wide and fast and tight and technical, and the vistas and backdrops are out of this world. As is the smell of beef cooking on asados RALLY FINLAND July 26-29 Based Jyvaskyla…

One of the most interesting subplots in this year’s World Rally Championship will be Toyota’s ability to keep three charging drivers from either side of the Baltic Sea happy. Last year Toyota’s order was well set: Jari-Matti Latvala arrived late, but took the seat at the head of the table without any questions; Esapekka Lappi still hadn’t started a world championship event in a World Rally Car; and Juho Hanninen was more than happy to toe the party line in an effort to further illuminate the twilight of his career. Now Lappi’s a Rally Finland winner and Hanninen’s been replaced by Ott Tanak, a man who, with a bit more planning and event management early in 2017, could have been sticking the #1s on either side of his Yaris WRC…

Based Versailles, France Car Citroen C3 WRC KRIS MEEKE (GB) Age 38 WRC starts 85 WRC wins 5 WRC titles 0 Co-driver Paul Nagle (IRL) When the car is there, Meeke’s speed is always beyond question. Happily for the Northern Irishman’s fans, we also saw an ability to temper his enthusiasm towards the end of last year. He knows what he’s got to do and few want the title more than him. CRAIG BREEN (IRL) Age 27 WRC starts 48 WRC wins 0 WRC titles 0 Co-driver Scott Martin (GB) Breen finished fift h six times last year, and now needs to press on and challenge for podiums where he has the experience. He can win, but, like Meeke, his chances will definitely hinge on whether the car beneath him…

AREAS OF THE BRANDS HATCH Grand Prix Circuit will be out of bounds to the spectating public in the wake of changes planned for this season. In a bid to improve safety, certain as-yet-unspecified areas of the loop will be inaccessible, and debris fencing will be erected around parts of the circuit. The debris fencing will not be put up around the whole GP loop. It will be in selected yet-to-be-confirmed areas as part of a safety review by circuit owner MotorSport Vision. Part of the impetus for the review was the return of the German-based DTM, which will race this season at Brands for the first time since 2013, and for the first time on the GP loop. MSV group operations and engineering manager Giles Butterfield told Autosport: “The…

LMP3 CUP Where did it all go wrong? The pre-season hype around the new-for-2017 LMP3 Cup was palpable. But it failed to deliver, with a high of 10 entries and a low of five. For a championship dedicated to prototypes in the UK, that’s surely not good enough. There are a few areas in which it stumbled. The Pirelli tyres – developed for GT cars – required different set-ups compared to the Michelin rubber used in LMP3 on the continent. That ruled out some of the European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup regulars from joining for the series’ away round at Spa for circuit experience, as they would have had to run the Pirellis around which their cars were not optimised. In order to use the LMP3…

CONDENSING THE ENTIRE HISTORY of a motor-racing series into a two-hour documentary often results in a fairly generic retelling of events – with very little room for the character and intrigue behind pivotal moments to stand out – all set to the background of some nice archive footage. Racing Together, Dorna Sports’ own attempt at telling the complete story of MotoGP, does follow this fairly standard set-up, with riders past and present, alongside a selection of journalists, giving their accounts of events gone by. But where the film deviates from this tried and tested (and boring) path, is in its focus on the many important subplots of the series’ history, from four-time 500cc champion Geoff Duke pioneering the one-piece leather suit in the 1950s, to Honda’s ahead-of-its-time four-stroke NR500, and…

F1 LAUNCH DATES ARE SET Formula 1 big guns Mercedes and Ferrari joined the hotly anticipated launch-date-announcement season by confirming that their 2018 contenders will be revealed on the same date: February 22, with Merc taking the wraps off its W09 at Silverstone. McLaren will unveil its car on February 23, with Toro Rosso on February 25. MOSS RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE Sir Stirling Moss has retired from public life, aged 88, following his serious illness at the end of 2016. Severe infections struck Sir Stirling, who has since been making a “slow and arduous recovery”. WHITMARSH BACK IN F1 WITH FIA Ex-McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh is to return to F1 in a temporary consultancy role with the FIA. Whitmarsh will work with the governing body to attempt to…

EX-FORMULA 1 DRIVER GIEDO van der Garde will make a return to the sportscar ranks with Racing Team Netherlands on its full-time graduation to the World Endurance Championship this year. The 32-year-old Dutchman, who has sat on the sidelines since winning the 2016 European Le Mans Series with Jota Sport, will contest the full 2018-19 WEC superseason with the Dutch team as it steps up from the European Le Mans Series. He will share the Racing Team Netherlands Dallara-Gibson P217 (above) with the squad’s boss, Frits van Eerd, and a third driver yet to be announced. Meanwhile, Larbre Competition, a five-time class winner at the Le Mans 24 Hours, is on course to make its 25th participation in the French enduro. The French team, best known for its GT campaigns,…

@MattJMNews AS RECENTLY AS 14 DAYS AGO, BTCC FANS WERE scratching their heads about the potential grid for 2018. They had been extremely patient to find out the likely shape of the line-up – and then there was an avalanche of announcements. Now there’s been one huge bombshell too. That seismic revelation came on Monday, when Team Dynamics and Honda spread the word: three-time champion Gordon Shedden, who has spent 11 of his 12 years in the BTCC’s top flight with Team Dynamics, will leave the series. He has always professed a desire to perform on a wider stage than just the BTCC, although the domestic series has been such a part of his career it was hard to see him walking away. Whether or not he does end up…

WHEN FERNANDO ALONSO made his grand prix debut in March 2001, his Daytona 24 Hours co-drivers were both one year old. Lando Norris’s and Phil Hanson’s combined age is just two and a half months greater than that of Alonso, who responds: “I’m not that old.” It must be a strange, but remarkable, experience for all of them. Norris is well known as a McLaren-contracted rising star. He heads into Formula 2 this year as F3 European champion and, despite being a stablemate of Alonso’s, the Roar test was the first time he’s had the chance to spend significant time working with him. “He’s definitely a character and he’s great to be around,” says Norris when asked about what it’s like to work with a driver shrouded in mythos. “He’s…

“Everyone thinks Zak piles money in and underwrites it, but he’s a businessman and we have to have as much coming in as goes out” WHEN UNITED AUTOSPORTS WAS launched amid much fanfare in 2009, great things were expected. After all, this was a team owned by sponsorship-finder extraordinaire Zak Brown and driver/team boss Richard Dean, who had proved his abilities running such an operation with both Team JLR and then Ginetta. The team has achieved a tremendous amount of success, but perhaps not in the way fans might have expected from high-profile early outings with drivers like Martin Brundle, Mark Blundell and Stefan Johansson. In the European Le Mans Series it has been the dominant force in LMP3 for the past two seasons, and fought for the overall championship,…

@davidevansrally What makes the Monte Carlo Rally so difficult to win? Before answering that, maybe it’s better to rewind to a rather more straightforward question: what makes ice slippery? Ask someone with a working knowledge of science, and they’ll tell you that it’s because ice doesn’t form into a wholly solid state, and instead retains a layer of semi-liquid molecules that are inherently unstable. It’s such science that will potentially decide the outcome of this week’s World Rally Championship season opener in the French Alps. Victory in Monte Carlo this week is really a piece of cake – as long as you know exactly what the weather’s going to be doing in four hours’ time on the far side of the second mountain to the left. And don’t forget, it’ll…

The row of ducks has never looked quite so ordered. Everything, it seems, is ready for Hyundai Motorsport to step up to the top of the world. Three cars and four seasons have brought the South Koreans to the start of what’s looking like their most exciting year yet. Who can beat them? What can beat them? Simple: themselves. When Hyundai arrived in the world championship in 2014 with a car thrown together in next to no time, it stood no chance against the might of Volkswagen. The German manufacturer’s methodical, painstaking build-up was the very antithesis of Hyundai’s approach. The original i20 WRC should never have seen the light of day; it was as underpowered as it was underdeveloped. It won, but it was lucky. But the paymasters in…

DAKAR RALLY SALTA-CORDOBA (RA) JANUARY 16-20 WORLD RALLY LEGEND CARLOS SAINZ scored his second Dakar Rally win in an eventful and occasionally controversial 2018 edition. The double WRC champion, a winner with Volkswagen in 2010, had not finished any of the three Dakars he had previously contested as a Peugeot works driver, but this year he delivered the goods in the manufacturer’s final outing. Having survived the high-attrition opening leg in Peru, Sainz emerged as the rally’s leader courtesy of back-to-back stage wins either side of the mid-rally rest day in La Paz. These would be his only stage wins of the event, but his path to overall victory over the rest of the rally was relatively smooth – aside from a penalty for an alleged incident with a quad…

McLAREN WILL RETURN TO THE GT3 division of the British GT Championship this season as part of a new multi-class attack from the Balfe Motorsport team. The family-run squad has entered a McLaren 650S GT3 for team owner and racer Shaun Balfe and McLaren factory man Rob Bell. It marks the first time a GT3 McLaren has run in the series since the final round of the 2016 season and Balfe’s first British GT entry since ’13. Bell and Balfe raced together in the 650S in International GT Open last season, where they won the Pro-Am drivers’ championship. “We’ve had a couple of great seasons in Europe, winning the Pro-Am title and finishing second overall, but now it’s time for a new challenge and British GT most definitely provides that,”…

THE SSANGYONG MUSSO PICKUP Racing Challenge has been dropped for 2018 after a change in senior management at the company’s UK importer. The series, which was introduced last year and operated by MotorSport Vision, featured 2.2-litre turbodiesel powered Musso Sports pickup trucks. Six events were held in 2017, and Harry Webb, Lewis Grant and Michael O’Brien were among the race winnners. A spokesman for SsangYong Motor UK said: “SsangYong Motor UK went through a management change at the end of last year, and following a thorough review of the whole business and its activities, the decision has been taken to focus on other areas, and not continue with the Musso Racing Challenge.” P66 NEW NATIONAL RACE SERIES…

HISTORIC F1 CARS GET THREE UK EVENTS The Historic Grand Prix Cars Association’s calendar of races for pre-’66 cars will take in three UK dates in nine events across Europe. Silverstone National (April 21/22), Brands Hatch GP (June 30/July 1) and Silverstone GP (July 20-22) are the domestic dates, while Clermont- Ferrand and Copenhagen join the European schedule. CATERHAM CHAMP ROBINSON TO MINIS Multiple Caterham champion David Robinson will join the Mini Challenge JCW Championship for 2018. Robinson, 29, has partnered with Excelr8 Motorsport after making a one-off appearance in the series finale at Donington Park last season. Robinson has won the Tracksport (2012), Supersport (2013) and Superlight R300 (2015) Caterham titles. CROCKER WITH PYRO FOR TCR UK Former Clio Cup racer Finlay Crocker will compete in the inaugural season…

THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF double Formula 1 world champion Jim Clark’s death will be commemorated with a special programme of events. The Scot, who was killed in a Formula 2 race on April 7 1968 at Hockenheim, won 25 grands prix and his two titles with Lotus. The events will take place on April 7-8, including a commemorative church service in Chirnside and a ceremony at the new Jim Clark Museum in Duns. There will also be an anniversary dinner at Carfraemill Hotel and an exhibition at Chirnside Village Hall. Some of Clark’s famous race cars will also be exhibited by Classic Team Lotus during the weekend, which has been organised by The Jim Clark Trust, Club Lotus, Live Borders and Chirnside Common Good Association. Doug Niven, cousin of Jim…