Indholdsfortegnelse for 03/04/18 i Autosport

What does Ferrari need to do to challenge Mercedes in Formula 1 this year? The team in silver is unlikely to make the sort of blunder that cost Lewis Hamilton victory in the Australian Grand Prix last month very often, so the famous Italian squad has to raise its game. In our cover story on page 18, Edd Straw identifies six key areas that Ferrari needs to address to defeat Mercedes this year, while our technical expert Gary Anderson takes a closer look at the concept of the SF71H. Does it have enough potential and can that be unlocked? We also celebrate a driver who did his fair share of Ferrari-beating. Fifty years ago this week, Jim Clark was killed at Hockenheim. His death shocked the sport and left a…

WORLD ENDURANCE Toyota driver Anthony Davidson will return to race duties in the World Endurance Championship after the Le Mans 24 Hours in June. The Briton, who has been moved to a test-and-reserve role with the Japanese manufacturer, will drive for DragonSpeed in the LMP2 class for the remainder of the 2018-19 superseason. The 38-year-old will join up with fellow ex-Formula 1 driver Pastor Maldonado and Roberto Gonzalez in the American entrant’s ORECA-Gibson 07 from the Silverstone WEC round in August. P2 regular Nathanael Berthon will fill the seat at Spa and Le Mans. Davidson explained that he was looking forward to racing in the secondary prototype division. “I’m ready for the challenge of P2; it looks like pure racing and that’s what I like,” he said. “I can’t wait…

WATCH OUR ONLINE PREVIEW AT AUTOSPORT.COM UK START TIMES FRIDAY FP1 1200 FP2 1600 SATURDAY FP3 1300 QUALIFYING 1600 SUNDAY RACE 1610 LIVE ON SKY SPORTS F1 & CHANNEL 4 LIVE BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA TYRE ALLOCATION TRACK STATS LENGTH 3.363 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 57 2017 POLE POSITION Valtteri Bottas 1m28.769s POLE LAP RECORD Valtteri Bottas 1m28.769s (2017) RACE LAP RECORD Pedro de la Rosa 1m31.447s (2005) REMEMBER The extra loop that was used for the 2010 Bahrain GP? It wasn’t great. It wasn’t used again THEMES TO WATCH THE EMPIRE SHOULD STRIKE BACK Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton should have won the Australian Grand Prix, and if the performance advantage carries over to Bahrain then they will be short-odds favourites. But remember, Bahrain was a tricky weekend…

Give F1 the bumps – just like Sebring I have been thinking about why the recent Sebring 12 Hours was so interesting (and exciting) compared to what we are likely to be served up by Formula 1 this year. We have already touched on the ludicrous front wings on F1 cars, but maybe there is another element at Sebring that we need to think about. That is bumps. Yes, you heard me – bumps! This was highlighted to me by a story last week in your sister publication, Motorsport News, when it reported that F1 cars are likely to be one second a lap faster at Silverstone this year as a result of resurfacing work. Frankly, do we care? To see drivers struggling with car control over the bumps at…

Momentum has been gathering behind Tom Ingram’s career in the British Touring Car Championship. The Speedworks Toyota Avensis driver conquered the podium in his second season in the top flight, won races in his third and lifted the Independents Trophy in 2017. There can only be one target for this season, surely? “In 2017 we set out to win the Independents, but after three meetings we were leading the drivers’ standings overall,” says Ingram. “In a way, last year was a bit of a letdown in the end. We had a tough couple of meetings in the middle of the year and that knocked us off course. “You can’t underestimate what we achieved by winning the Independents. That was massive, but I was just as eager to finish in the top…

Sam Tordoff’s return to the British Touring Car Championship this season caught most people by surprise. The 2016 championship runner-up went off to British GT and the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup last term. He’d had his fill of tin-tops after a mentally exhausting title chase, which he narrowly lost to Gordon Shedden’s Team Dynamics Honda Civic. “I just needed to recharge a bit,” says Tordoff (above, top), who will drive one of Motorbase Performance’s Ford Focus RS cars. “I was always going to come back, and even I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. But [Motorbase Performance] boss David Bartrum got in touch, and it went from there. I didn’t know an awful lot about the team before – they pretty much kept themselves to themselves – but I’ve…

@AS_National TCR UK Dan Lloyd is hoping to secure more outings in TCR UK this year after winning the inaugural races at Silverstone as the championship received praise for a strong opening weekend. Lloyd, who has completed balance of performance testing for the TCR formula and appeared in its International series in 2017, qualified on pole and took victories aboard a WestCoast Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI. He endorsed the championship and is hopeful of a deal to return. “TCR UK is only going to go one way, and that’s upwards,” said the ex-British Touring Car and British GT driver. “It has had a tough birth because it’s up against the strongest domestic touring car championship in the world in the BTCC, but it certainly warrants its place as a feeder…

HSCC SUPER TOURING Abbie Eaton will race a 1983 Holden Commodore in the Historic Sports Car Club’s Super Touring series in 2018. Eaton, the 2014 Mazda MX-5 Supercup champion and now test driver on the Amazon Prime TV show The Grand Tour, starring Jeremy Clarkson, will race in the invitational class in a car built by her father Paul. She’ll use the season to stay sharp as she hunts a seat in a GT3 car or in the Porsche Carrera Cup UK for 2019. “It’s such a beast to drive and it’s a big V8 in it – it takes a lot of taming,” said Eaton. “We’re changing lots of bits on it. It’s a new challenge and it’s interesting every time you get in it. “We can’t win the…

MASTERS ENDURANCE LEGENDS Aaron Scott’s Akron Sport team is expanding to field a pair of Chevroletpowered ORECA 09 prototypes in the Masters Endurance Legends series in 2018, after testing the car at Brands Hatch last month. Historic sportscar and Formula 1 racers Keith Frieser and Tommy Dreelan will compete in the championship for Le Mans cars from 1995-2002, driving a car each. ELMS GT class winner Scott, who has raced Dreelan’s F1 March 761 and Williams FW08, and co-driven Dreelan’s Spice and Porsche 962, will continue to share with the Celtic Speed boss in historics. Also at Brands was Le Mans podium finisher Nicolas Minassian, who was reunited with a V12 version of the Peugeot 908 he drove in period. Minassian drove a V8 variant of the car at the…

OULTON PARK BRITISH GT APRIL 2 Flick Haigh created British GT Championship history as the first female driver to claim an overall race victory, while inclement weather later curtailed race two of the Oulton Park season opener. Teamed with double champion Jonny Adam, Haigh stole the headlines for Optimum Motorsport with pole and a win in the weekend’s sole race. A coating of sleet met drivers on Easter Monday, Haigh utilising a safety car start to romp over six seconds clear in the early stages of the race while last year’s double Oulton winner Jon Minshaw began a determined charge from seventh. The Barwell Motorsport driver survived first-corner contact that sent Mark Farmer’s Aston Martin spinning, quickly passing the two Team Parker Racing Bentleys to take second and proceeding to…

THERE WAS A SPECIAL ATMOSPHERE throughout the BRDC Formula 3 paddock over the course of the Easter weekend meeting. While that’s usually the case for any season opener, the remarkable return of Billy Monger to competitive racing after his dreadful crash last year was enough to fire up the coldest of dormant engines (see opposite). Double R’s Linus Lundqvist won the opening race after beating the polesitter, Clement Novalak, off the line and then holding Nicolai Kjaergaard at bay for the duration of the race. Despite lapping faster than Lundqvist, Carlin racer Kjaergaard couldn’t quite find the pace to pass, admitting that he “didn’t want to take too many risks this early in the season”. It was that level-headed attitude that ensured the Dane concluded round one on top of…

BRANDS HATCH BARC APRIL 1-2 Winning honours were shared when the 2018 British Truck Racing Championship started at a chaotic and sometimes wild Easter race meeting. Multiple champion Stuart Oliver grabbed the early points lead with a win and three more podium visits before the final, and there were popular victories for Ryan Smith and David Jenkins. A smaller than expected entry was boosted by the late addition of four-time champion Mat Summerfield and Smith, the latter the current title holder, but with zero preparation time neither was fully up to speed. Oliver took the opening Division 1 honours after a duel with Jenkins in a restarted race, with Summerfield and Smith next. Summerfield missed Monday morning’s race after reporting of blurred vision, and Richard Collett caused a red flag…

Last year could easily be considered one of the best for the quality and realism of racing video games released across various platforms. Project Cars 2 refined its irritating bugs from the first instalment, Codemasters stepped it up with F1 2017, and Dirt 4 gave World Rallycross and rallying a superb simulator. That’s a lot for 2018 to live up to, and Milestone – the creator of the enjoyable-but-lacking Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo in ’16 – has now released Gravel on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. In truth, Gravel is unlikely to be remembered as a classic, and it doesn’t come close to the depth and the realism of Project Cars or Dirt. And while that may be a negative to an area of gaming that is increasingly embracing…

It’s common to hear drivers say they are good on race pace, but qualifying is their main problem. Oft en it will be a driver relatively new to the sport saying it, but it can go right to the top – I recall David Coulthard asking how a qualifying lap can be so different to the fastest lap you’ll drive in a race. He was making a good point, but oft en the focus is in the wrong place, because the process for getting the best out of qualifying is no different to being the best you can be in a more general sense. There are of course differences between a qualifying lap and those done in race conditions when settled into a rhythm – the former is about turning…

01 What materials are Nankang tyres made from? A tyre is made from rubber, silica, carbon black, steel and nylon, to name a few materials. All of these are used in different mixtures, depending on the compound and structure required. Our tyre range covers everything from trailers, commercial vehicles and 4x4s to performance road and track, plus a non-marking grey compound used specifically by Fast and Furious Live during the show’s global tour. 02 There was a video of McLaren’s muddled pre-season F1 testing pitstop in which they got the left and right-side tyres mixed up. Why does this matter in technical terms? Tyre manufacturers put a lot of money and time into R&D to design tyres for a certain purpose, concerning different compounds for different weather or track abrasiveness.…

BRITISH TOURING CARS Reigning British Touring Car champion Ash Sutton says his Team BMR Subaru could struggle to get on the pace in the opening round of the series at Brands Hatch this weekend after a truncated pre-season build up. The 24-year old, along with team-mates Jason Plato and Josh Price, essentially shook down their Levorg estates at the official championship media day at Donington Park on Tuesday of last week, following tweaks over the winter. It was Sutton’s first time in the machine since he lifted the crown at Brands Hatch last October. Sutton set the 20th fastest time at Donington, while Plato was 29th and Price 30th of the 32 runners present. The team then moved to Brands Hatch for further official testing last Thursday, where all but…

FORMULA 1 A bug in an offline tool used by Mercedes was responsible for the miscalculation that led to Sebastian Vettel jumping Lewis Hamilton in the pits under the virtual safety car in last month’s Australian Grand Prix. Hamilton was on course for victory, having led from pole position before pitting to cover the stop made by second-placed Kimi Raikkonen. Vettel stayed out, and later pitted under the VSC triggered by Haas driver Romain Grosjean stopping on track after a pitstop blunder. Mercedes incorrectly calculated the advantage Vettel required to make a stop under neutralised conditions and retain the lead, meaning it did not tell Hamilton to push harder to close the gap. This led to Vettel retaining the lead when he emerged from the pits and going on to…

FORMULA E Seven Formula E manufacturers completed a two-day test of their season-five cars at Monteblanco in southern Spain last week. Audi, DS (above, in Versailles), Jaguar, Venturi, Mahindra, Penske (Dragon) and Nissan all experimented with their new Gen2 cars. The test was split across three days, with Tuesday acting as a rest day, and was conducted under closely private conditions with few details released. BMW was also set to take part in the test ahead of its debut as a works FE entry for the 2018-19 season, but withdrew before the action got under way on Monday. “During our final preparations before loading the car, an unexpected malfunction occurred,” read a BMW statement. “We [therefore] decided to continue working on the car in Munich.” The ninth season five manufacturer,…

Victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix and an early lead in the world championship standings should represent the perfect start to 2018 for Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari. But sometimes a race result doesn’t tell the full story, and the reality is that the Ferrari SF71H has yet to show it is capable of sustaining a title challenge against the might of Mercedes. That’s not simply because good fortune played a massive part in Vettel’s win – he would never have gained a track-position advantage over Lewis Hamilton without the virtual safety car’s intervention and Mercedes gettings its timing calculations wrong. But rather because the 2018 car does not yet look the part. It’s reasonably brisk but, even though Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel outqualified the Red Bulls in Australia, it’s…

10 1961 SOUTH AFRICAN GP EAST LONDON LOTUS 21 (1ST) Stirling Moss was the undisputed world’s best in 1961, pulling off some famous victories in inferior equipment, but Clark’s performances at the end of the season showed that things were changing. Clark’s Lotus 21 had beaten the older 18/21 model of Moss in the Natal GP earlier in the month, but the East London race stepped things up a notch. Poleman Clark and team-mate Trevor Taylor led away, but Moss was soon into second and took the lead when Clark spun avoiding another car. Now Clark charged, despite damage to the gearbox, lapping faster than his pole time, and Moss was powerless to stop him coming through to win by 15.7 seconds. “Moss pulled in behind Clark and tried to stay…

TEAM BMR SUBARU ON THE DEFENCE Not much has changed at Team BMR for the 2018 season just looking at the bare facts. The Hertfordshire squad has kept hold of the BTCC’s hottest young charger, Ash Sutton, whom it took to the drivers’ title last season, and it has also retained Jason Plato in one of the estate-shaped Subaru Levorg cars. It has, however, slimmed down to a three-car team for this fresh campaign, with Josh Price remaining in the line-up alongside his illustrious team partners. There are some changes in the background though. One of the most significant could be the switch from Mountune to a Swindon Racing Engines-tuned powerplant. The team will also be affected by the loss of its technical director Carl Faux, who has landed a…

“TOURING CARS IS LIKE A WAVE. WE HAVE A PERIOD of big success, then the costs become too much and we have to drop to a different car.” There’s nothing incorrect about what Alessandro Mariani, the boss of Honda’s long-standing partner JAS Motorsport, has to say. We’ve been down this road before. Group A, Super Touring in particular, and Super 2000 have all come and gone. So should the latest enforced change in regulations (from TC1 to TCR) at the top of the touring car tree come as a surprise? When the World Touring Car Championship introduced its TC1 regulations in 2014, it marked a significant shift away from the S2000 era that had preceded it, but it was no more dramatic a change than the most recent revamp of…

Adam Balon and Ben Barnicoat fought from 10th to win the only British GT4 outing of the day with their Track-Club McLaren. Equipe Verschuur earned early bragging rights when silver-rated drivers Finlay Hutchison and Daniel McKay grabbed the class pole position for both races, but an admin error meant they were excluded from qualifying, having sent out the wrong drivers for each session First beneficiary of the mix-up was HHC Motorsport, with Callum Pointon’s Ginetta G55 heading the 22-strong field behind the safety car. He soon lost his narrow advantage over Michael O’Brien as a result of a slower stop for the HHC car, with Patrik Matthiesen dropping back to ninth by the flag. O’Brien handed the class-leading McLaren over to Charlie Fagg, but he was soon also usurped by…

SILVERSTONE (BRSCC) TCR UK MARCH 31-APRIL 1 Late entrant Daniel Lloyd proved the man to beat at TCR UK’s inaugural weekend of racing. The Volkswagen driver took pole position and both wins, leaving Silverstone with a healthy championship lead, although his participation in further rounds is currently unconfirmed. Lloyd’s closest challenger on pace was Laser Tools Racing’s Aiden Moffat. The Scotsman looked set to snatch pole when he fired in two quick laps at the end of a wet session on Saturday, lifting him from fifth to first. But Moffat’s Alfa Romeo Giulietta was baulked on his final lap, while Lloyd made the most of the improving conditions to post the session benchmark. The pair eased clear in Sunday afternoon’s first race, but Moffat was unable to mount a serious…

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN? WHO IS THIS? This Victorian had racing in his blood, but had to go a long way from home to achieve his dreams. After buying and selling his way onto the ladder he trod the boards to get a leg up, but a misfire cost him some early glory and he was forced to cross the pond. He was trying his hand at the top of the domestic tree when he picked up a car from the landed gentry. This gave him a way to the top and was followed by the chance to race for a legend with unusual backing but their personalities clashed. A princely tragedy gave him a way back in, and through this penumbra he scored a breakthrough win. This took him…

WALERO Fiona James in European GT4 graduation Fiona James, founder of the Walero base layers brand, will make her debut in the GT4 European Series at Zolder this weekend in an Academy Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage. Experienced club racer James, who previously raced a Praga in the Dutch Supercar Challenge, will partner team owner Matt Nicoll-Jones, who finished second in the championship last year with Will Moore. The SRO-organised championship, which supports the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup, boasts a healthy grid in excess of 40 cars, including reigning British GT champions Will Tregurtha and Stuart Middleton. “I’m really excited to be racing with Matt in the Aston Martin Vantage GT4 and am looking forward to progressing with his help,” said James. “It’s a big step up to be racing…

As you might expect, Marco Andretti has enormous respect for the achievements of his grandfather. But his admiration amounts to far more than the natural pride of family and stems largely from the heightened risks Mario faced during his storied career. “When you think of my grandfather, [his generation] ran one helmet all year – it’s crazy just how much the integrity of the helmet takes the hit and they’re still wearing it…” Externally, the younger Andretti’s helmet bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather’s – having reverted to the red stripe carried by both Mario and Michael after swapping it for blue in his early days “because I didn’t want my helmet to be exactly like theirs” – but that’s where the comparison ends. Bell Racing’s HP7 is at…

For most participants, motorsport is a never-ending quest to get the best performance you can from human and machinery, while keeping an eye on costs. Of course, maximising the capability of the human depends on remaining uninjured for as long as possible. After all, you’re not going to get very good results if you’re convalescing in bed for a year. And, if that happens, the cost of your motorsport activities to your family will have been far more than missing a few visits to your local pizza restaurant so you can afford a new set of shock absorbers. Laurent Mekies joined the FIA from Toro Rosso in October 2014 as the governing body’s new safety director. He’s leaving soon for Ferrari, but remains in his current duties at the Safety…

FORMULA 3 We’re two tests into the Formula 3 European Championship pre-season build-up, and Mick Schumacher has set the overall fastest time at both. Two weeks ago, the son of seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher set the pace at the Hungaroring, and last week his Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes also sat atop the times at the Red Bull Ring. But can he win races in 2018 after a solitary podium in his rookie F3 season? Prema boss Rene Rosin thinks so, and believes that the 19-year old (above) turned a corner before last November’s Macau Grand Prix, where he set a blistering fastest lap of the race. “For a rookie he did an excellent job in Macau,” says Rosin. “That was like a new start for him. He followed everything we…

To butcher a popular maxim, criticism is the sincerest form of flattery in Formula 1. So Haas should be pleased that its rivals are questioning its Ferrari technical relationship and demand answers on whether the restriction on what is allowed in the production of aerodynamic parts is being adhered to. Haas and Ferrari working together in F1 is nothing new. Ferrari supplies Haas with many components the Anglo-American team does not need to build itself and also allows Dallara, Haas’s chassis partner, to use its windtunnel. The third season of this arrangement is threatening to produce its biggest yield so far, on the evidence of Haas’s strong showing in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Haas locked out the third row of the grid in Melbourne and ran fourth and fifth,…

The 2017 British Touring Car Championship campaign was a rarity for the Team Dynamics Honda squad. For the first time in three years, it didn’t lift a single piece of championship silverware at the end of the 30-race season. For a group that has so consistently been at the forefront of the British tin-top category, it was an unusual feeling. Since Honda joined up with Team Dynamics to become an official manufacturer entry back in 2010, the team has been on the attack. In that time, it has lifted five manufacturer crowns, four teams’ titles and, most importantly of all, four drivers’ championships, split between team co-owner and driver Matt Neal and the now departed Gordon Shedden. There are some big changes happening at the team, which has just moved…

THE BRITISH TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP IS A SERIES that cannot only help the drivers progress and steal their share of the limelight. It can also be a fertile environment for teams and engineers to take a step forward too. Perhaps the biggest stride in 2018 has been taken by HMS Racing, which will field an Alfa Romeo Giulietta in the 30-race contest. HMS Racing was formerly known as Handy Motorsport, which entered the championship in 2014 as a single-car team with Renault Clio Cup graduate Simon Belcher. Just four years later it retains race winner Rob Austin in the driver’s seat after joining forces with Austin’s team in ’16 and taking an outright victory last year. That is progress, but for 2018 it’s built a brand new car. The Giulietta…

It’s fair to say that the depth of quality in the World Touring Car Championship declined steadily in its latter years. In contrast, cramming the list of WTCR drivers to watch into a half-page box is a genuine challenge. The pair of two-car Hyundai teams are likely to be in the mix. BRC Racing and Gabriele Tarquini worked by the side of the manufacturer’s customer racing division throughout the development of the car. With Norbert Michelisz completing the attack, the squad has a motivated line-up with experience of working together. In the other two i30 Ns, Yvan Muller and Thed Bjork’s combined five world titles make them the most-decorated pairing. Muller admitted he wasn’t originally supposed to return from his short-lived retirement, and what role he plays alongside Bjork – whom…

BRDC BRITISH F3 Jordan Cane was a late call-up to the Douglas Motorsport BRDC British F3 team last weekend, replacing the injured Alexandra Mohnhaupt. Cane, a three-time winner with Douglas last season, rejoined the team for the opening round of the season at Oulton Park after Mexican Formula 4 star Mohnhaupt suffered minor concussion and bruising in a testing accident at Spa. The team was also forced to buy and prepare a former Chris Dittmann Racing car just days before the event after Mohnhaupt’s car was destroyed “It was a last-minute phone call, really,” said Cane, who has signed up to contest the Formula Renault Eurocup with Fortec Motorsports this season. “He [team boss Wayne Douglas] contacted me earlier in the week with the offer and I couldn’t turn him…

Being tall in motorsport brings with it a number of challenges. And one discipline where tall drivers are particularly on the back foot is karting. So it’s no wonder that Patrick Kibble is looking forward to graduating to cars this season. “Being six foot tall at 14 years-old is quite a disadvantage, so at every opportunity I had to move up into the next level [on the karting ladder],” says Kibble. “I was at a disadvantage but I think it was useful because I really improved my racecraft.” A perfect example of that was last year. Kibble moved into the Senior X30 class and was therefore racing against significantly older and more experienced drivers. But the experience proved valuable – especially since it was his first year in major championships…

OULTON PARK BRITISH F3 MARCH 31/APRIL 2 Almost exactly a year ago, Billy Monger’s life changed forever. In April 2017, Monger had both legs amputated after a crash in a British Formula 4 race at Donington Park. Since that dramatic day, Monger has become a source of inspiration for many within and without the world of motorsport; his positive attitude and courage in the face of unbelievable adversity is something to be admired. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, but certainly no less remarkable, that Monger was on the grid for the opening round of the BRDC British F3 Championship at Oulton Park last weekend for his first competitive race since his accident. He’d conducted a programme of testing with Carlin using hand controls and essentially learned how to drive again.…

Returning champion Niall Murray provided an overtaking masterclass on his way to winning at Silverstone in the opening round of the Formula Ford National Championship. The three races were full of frenetic action but Murray kept a cool head to secure third, second and firstplace finishes to head the points. From seventh on the reversed-grid race three, Murray’s Van Diemen RF99 jumped to fifth, then passed Jack Wolfenden and Matt Round-Garrido in one move on the outside at Becketts. Murray repeated the trick on race one winner Joey Foster, then used the outside line at Brooklands to overtake polesitter Stuart Gough. The leader was aided by second-placed Foster spinning after being run into by Wolfenden, with the squabble for second settled in Round-Garrido’s favour, from Luke Cooper and Gough. Foster’s…

There’s no doubting that this is a year of major changes among the British Touring Car Championship’s support series. And that’s even discounting the unprecedented fact that all five of last year’s champions have moved away from the TOCA supports. Perhaps the largest change across the five series is the new car that has been introduced for this year’s Porsche Carrera Cup GB season. Although the second generation ‘Type 991’ 911 GT3 Cup car is more of an evolution of the old machine than a full-scale change, it’s certainly a new variable. While there are minor cosmetic changes, the big difference comes in the engine, with its extra 25bhp. “The drivers love it – the returning drivers say they can really feel the extra power that the new engine gives,”…

The ‘Trulli train’ is a phrase that Jarno Trulli knows well. It was popular in the early noughties, used to describe the queue of frustrated drivers who would habitually form behind the Italian in the early laps of a grand prix after he had qualified midfield machinery higher than it had any right to stay in race trim. Yet the passing of time means such things take a lesser significance and Trulli, who scored four pole positions in 256 appearances in Formula 1, has come to adopt the expression as a badge of honour for his exploits in lesser cars. “I’m truthfully not upset about what [his rivals] were saying, I’m sorry for them!” he chuckles. “The ‘Trulli train’ was happening just because the others were not good enough with…

When it comes to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mario Andretti has seen and done it all. The 1969 Indy 500 winner’s long career – only AJ Foyt has made more appearances – spanned one of the most dangerous eras in the history of motorsport, traversing front-wheel-drive roadsters, normally aspirated rear-wheel drive, and turbocharged ground-effect cars with evermore complex aerodynamics that contributed to speeds rising at an almost unabated pace. At Andretti’s first appearance at the Indy 500 in 1965, the qualifying speed of Foyt’s polesitting Lotus 34 was 161.2mph. By the time of his 29th and final outing in ’94, having taken pole in ’66, ’67 and ’87, the benchmark pace had risen to 228mph and was still climbing, with Arie Luyendyk setting a new course record at 237.0mph in…