Indholdsfortegnelse for 26/04/18 i Autosport

In the fifth year of the hybrid-engine rules in Formula 1, we finally have what we’ve been waiting for: three teams quick enough to be in the mix at the front. With Ferrari and Red Bull now applying pressure, Mercedes’ weaknesses are proving more costly. Strategic conservatism cost Lewis Hamilton victory in the Australian Grand Prix, a better shot for Valtteri Bottas in Bahrain, and the chance to salvage Hamilton’s weekend in China. It’s not implausible that Mercedes could have won all three races had the team played its cards differently, but it’s not just calls from the pitwall that are hindering the Silver Arrows. As Edd Straw shows in our cover piece (page 24), the W09 struggles on the softer Pirelli tyre compounds. Just as the 2017 car was…

NASCAR NASCAR’s worst-kept secret is now official: Ford will bring the Mustang name to the 2019 Cup series. And with Chevrolet having launched its Cup Camaro for 2018, it means a revival of the Mustang-versus-Camaro battle. “We had started our new Mustang before Chevy came for submission with their Camaro,” said Ford Performance global director Mark Rushbrook. “We were actually very happy when we saw that Chevy was bringing the Camaro because we knew with our Mustang it would be great to have those two nameplates on track at the Cup level racing each other.” History is always a goldmine in NASCAR, but look beyond the narrative and the Mustang is important for several reasons. Gone are the traditional NASCAR stock cars: North America’s star makes have brought sports cars…

WATCH OUR ONLINE PREVIEW AT AUTOSPORT.COM UK START TIMES FRIDAY FP1 1000 FP2 1400 SATURDAY FP3 1000 QUALIFYING 1400 SUNDAY RACE 1310 LIVE ON SKY SPORTS F1 & CHANNEL 4 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE 1300 TYRE ALLOCATION TRACK STATS LENGTH 3.730 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 51 2017 POLE POSITION Lewis Hamilton 1m40.593s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m40.593s (2017) RACE LAP RECORD Sebastian Vettel 1m43.441s (2017) PREVIOUS WINNERS 2017 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 2016 Nico Rosberg Mercedes THEMES TO WATCH CAN MERCEDES BOUNCE BACK IN BAKU? Three races down, three defeats – this has been a poor start to Mercedes’ title defence. But Baku is the perfect place to get back on track. Although a loose headrest spoiled his race, Lewis Hamilton qualified more than a second clear of the…

Motorsport’s must-see megastar If you haven’t caught the MotoGP bug yet, I urge you to as soon as possible if for no other reason than to get a glimpse of a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. I am of course referring to Marc Marquez (right), whose exploits on the bike are nothing short of extraordinary. His ability to cling to the machine (Valencia, Malaysia, Czech Republic) and efforts to stay on in the face of disaster (qualifying at Austin) make clear that the bike is a part of his being. Yes, he is incredibly aggressive to the point of recklessness (can you say ‘Max Verstappen’?), but if you haven’t seen him ride, you owe it to yourself to do so. David C Berkey New York Verstappen relies too much on luck Feisty or foolish,…

“AT BARCELONA, THE MERCEDES SEEMED PERFECTLY SUITED TO HAMILTON’S DRIVING STYLE” It was during Saturday morning practice in China that things started to go wrong for Mercedes, in particular Lewis Hamilton. The conditions were cool, around 12C, and with a gusty wind that made life difficult for everyone. But Hamilton looked more uncomfortable than most. During pre-season testing at Barcelona, it appeared that the Mercedes was perfectly suited to Hamilton’s style. At the chicane, he was able to hit the brakes hard and turn in aggressively, rotating the rear to perfection and carrying good speed through the left/right flick. The rear end always stayed with him, never sliding too far. Contrast that with Shanghai in the slow Turn 11 left-hander that leads into the long right onto the back straight.…

With a combined age of 71, Fred Makowiecki and James Rossiter stretched the definition of rookie to breaking point, but their deployment by Techeetah at the mid-season test in Marrakech may well prove to have been the masterstroke in delivering the title. Techeetah’s customer status means it has drastically fewer test days in which to prepare pre-season than its manufacturer rivals. Bringing in two drivers with such an enormous wealth of experience – Rossiter was an F1 tester at a time of virtually unlimited running, while racing in Japan comes with reams of tyre testing, and Makowiecki has equally been pounding around the test tracks evaluating various rubber compounds – meant that rather than assessing the drivers’ abilities, the team could work on the car instead. “We found out after Marrakech…

BLANCPAIN ENDURANCE CUP MONZA (I) APRIL 22 ROUND 1/5 Audi didn’t look like potential race winners for much of the opening Endurance Cup round of the Blancpain GT Series at Monza. But the Belgian WRT squad played a long game to pull off a first victory for the German manufacturer at what has always been its bogey circuit, with Christopher Mies, Alex Riberas and Dries Vanthoor. The winning Audi had been nowhere in free practice on Saturday before ending up third after qualifying. But the car didn’t appear to have the pace of the frontrunners for the first two thirds the three-hour race. Mies dropped to fifth at the start and then Riberas quickly lost the couple of places that a typically swift WRT pitstop had gained the car at…

SUPER FORMULA SUZUKA (J) APRIL 22 ROUND 1/7 Naoki Yamamoto jumped into the lead of the Super Formula standings by winning from pole position at Suzuka in his Honda-powered Team Mugen car. Yamamoto, the 2013 champion, is something of a Suzuka specialist – all four of his Super Formula wins have come at the circuit, as have seven of his nine poles. And Team Mugen was on astonishing form, with series debutant Nirei Fukuzumi completing a lock-out of the front row. Honda definitely had the edge, with Tomoki Nojiri (Dandelion Racing), Takuya Izawa (Nakajima Racing) and Kodai Tsukakoshi (Real Racing) completing a qualifying sweep of the top five for the manufacturer. Top Toyota runner was reigning champion Hiroaki Ishiura, sixth in his Cerumo-Inging machine. Yamamoto made a great start followed…

HISTORICS Patrick Blakeney-Edwards and Fred Wakeman will branch out from racing period sportscars to field a Group 2 Rover Vitesse in the Historic Touring Car Challenge. They have recently bought the car, which raced in South Africa in period and contested the Kyalami 9 Hours in 1981 and ’82. It was originally built by David Price Racing and came back to the UK to be restored by BGM Sport in 2014 for Tim Summers. Now Blakeney-Edwards and Wakeman will race it, alongside their sportscars, in the Historic Touring Car Club-run series starting at the Donington Historic Festival. “We had a shakedown at Silverstone and it’s fantastic,” said Blakeney-Edwards. This year the series heads to Thruxton for the 50th Anniversary Celebration, then to the Silverstone Classic, Oulton Park Gold Cup and…

There were three different winners in the GT Cup at Donington Park. Nigel Hudson’s Aston Martin GT3 was never headed in race one but, after a pitlane start, Gareth Downing climbed rapidly through the order in his Mosler. Having ousted Michael Igoe’s Porsche for third at the chicane, he took second from Paul Gibson’s McLaren at Redgate. Downing began to encounter gear-selection problems, enabling Gibson to briefly regain the position, but Downing was able to fight back and secure a second-place finish. Although Downing led into Redgate at the start of race two, Dan Gibson had taken over the family McLaren and scythed ahead into the Old Hairpin on the opening lap. Downing was forced to pit from second when his door came open after just three laps, leaving a…

SILVERSTONE VSCC APRIL 21-22 By its nature, one-make racing doesn’t inspire thoughts of great diversity. When it comes to the likes of Ginettas, the Renault UK Clio Cup or the Mini Challenge, little more can be used to tell entries apart than a car’s number and livery. As an exception to the rule, the 33-strong grid of Frazer Nashes in the inaugural Freddie Giles Memorial Race at the Formula Vintage curtain raiser for the Vintage Sports-Car Club was awash with variety. They may have all entered under one company’s illustrious history, but engine capacities ranged from 1500cc up to Justin Maeers’s 6.1-litre GN Parker. The models spanned the 1920s through to the ’50s, when the cars were running Bristol gearboxes and engines borrowed from BMW following wartime reparations. Such was…

For 1957 and ’58, Formula 1 and Indycars competed together on the banking at Monza, and across various heats Ray Crawford scored a best result of fourth in this 4.2-litre Kurtis Indy Roadster at the event. Later revisions, including inverted suspension and a redesigned nosecone, have prevented current driver Frederick Harper from attaining FIA papers to make the grids at Goodwood. Nevertheless, he won the Patrick Lindsay Memorial race for pre-1961 racing cars, having passed Gareth Burnett’s Alta 2-litre in the closing laps.…

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN? WHO IS THIS? Born into a world of two-wheel racing, this venerable Latin fittingly grew up in the ‘City of the Bicycle’. He enjoyed domestic and European success in the third tier of car racing, before being fast-tracked into the big time when his fellow countryman was taken ill. He was given a one-off chance to fulfil every racing driver’s dream and went half way to making his point. A recurring theme throughout his career would be tin-top salvation whenever funding ran dry, but he used some fancy footwork to stand among the best. He rolled into the world’s top national saloon car series, but never lived up to expectations and retreated to the continent, where he would have sporadic success, until he finally became a…

FORMUL A 1 Formula 1 races will be faster next year after the F1 Strategy Group and F1 Commission agreed at their meetings in Paris last week to increase race-fuel allowance from 105 to 110kg in 2019, “in order to be able to use the engine at full power at all times”. The change, now set to be ratified by the FIA World Motor Sport Council, has been welcomed by F1 teams. They have faced increased fuel consumption due to the higher downforce levels and faster lap times generated by last year’s aerodynamic changes. A combination of extra drag and more time spent on the throttle has meant that at the higher-consumption venues, 105kg is now seen as being right on the limit, unless a safety-car intervention helps out. That…

FORMULA 1 Mercedes chief strategist James Vowles has explained the factors that led to Lewis Hamilton not pitting under the safety car during the Chinese Grand Prix. Hamilton was running fourth, behind Max Verstappen and ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, when the safety car was deployed on lap 31. Both Red Bulls were called in, with Ricciardo capitalising on using soft-compound Pirellis that were 13 laps fresher than Hamilton’s mediums to climb from sixth to win. Had Hamilton pitted, he would have remained behind Verstappen but ahead of Ricciardo, although it is touch and go whether he would have fallen behind Kimi Raikkonen. “At that point cars weren’t really overtaking, even when there was a difference in compound between them,” Vowles said in a Mercedes video. “We had Kimi in front…

WORLD RA L LYCROSS Former British Touring Car champion Andrew Jordan will compete in his home round of the World Rallycross Championship at Silverstone next month as part of a three-event 2018 programme with the MJP Racing Ford Fiesta team. Jordan began his career in rallycross, and has made ad-hoc appearances in WRX since the series’ inaugural season, finishing on the podium at Lydden Hill in 2014. Now he rejoins the Austrian MJP team – with which he made the semi-finals at Lydden last year (left) – to pair up with Finn Toomas Heikkinen in 2018-spec Fiesta Supercars. “Max Pucher [MJP owner] got in touch about doing one or maybe more rounds and obviously my home event makes sense,” Jordan told Autosport. “I’m not going to turn down that opportunity.…

After a soporific race in Melbourne, then a humdrum affair in Bahrain, Shanghai happily – one might say mercifully – produced some action, and it delighted me that Daniel Ricciardo’s supreme opportunism was rewarded with victory. Some years ago Fernando Alonso told me he thought Ricciardo the best overtaker in the business, and in a recent chat David Coulthard echoed that: “Absolutely he is. Danny’s an incredible racer, and his judgement is amazing: from what looks way too far back he’ll have a go – and still make the corner. “In my opinion,” DC went on, “Red Bull has the strongest driver pairing in Formula 1, and although last year it looked as if Max Verstappen had a slight edge, in terms of pure pace, it would be a huge…

MERCEDES POINTS AFTER THREE ROUNDS 2014 - 111 2015 - 119 2016 - 114 2017 - 102 2018 - 85 DURING LAST YEAR’S Monaco Grand Prix weekend, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff famously described the Mercedes W08 as “a bit of a diva” after encountering early-season troubles persuading it to remain within its performance window. Mercedes had some success in taming the car, and duly took both the constructors’ and drivers’ titles. Since this year’s Mercedes W09 is an evolution of the 2017 car, designed to improve upon the original diva, it was hoped that this would be the last Mercedes would hear of that word. “We hope that we keep the good character traits of the diva,” said Wolff before the season began. “While we all like divas, sometimes…

On face value it certainly looks as if things are getting a bit strained within Mercedes, and having two teams biting at its heels is definitely exposing the team’s weaknesses. It seemed like business as usual at the start of the season, with Lewis Hamilton on pole position for the Australian Grand Prix by 0.664 seconds. We talk about tenths being a lifetime in Formula 1, and when a team is more than half a second clear of its nearest rival it looks like the season is more or less done and dusted. Thankfully, that’s not the case in 2018 and a battle royale is just beginning. The relative performance in the races is closer and Mercedes is making more strategy mistakes. You’d have to say that, after three races,…

When James Rossiter lined up on the grid for last weekend’s Super Formula opener at Suzuka with TOM’S, it represented something of a Holy Grail for a 34-year-old talent who has frequently been so close to a top single-seater drive, only to be denied at the last gasp. From Formula 1, via IndyCar, to his later career in Japan, he’d seen chance after chance fall at the final hurdle… MISSING A GRAND PRIX DEBUT After success in Formula Renault and Formula 3, Rossiter became an established part of the BAR/Honda/Super Aguri axis as an F1 test driver. When Takuma Sato was taken ill before the 2007 Turkish Grand Prix, it appeared that Rossiter would finally get his chance for a race debut with Super Aguri. “I was told on the…

When Rolf Stommelen arrived on the German national racing and hillclimb scene in 1964, some immediately labelled him a playboy. He was, after all, driving a Porsche 904 GTS bought for him by his father. It’s clear that Stommelen certainly liked the limelight. Porsche engineer and future race team manager Peter Falk recalls a story from the 1968 Gaisberg Hillclimb near Salzburg, the debut of the marque’s lightweight 909 ‘Bergspyder’, that illustrates the point. “Gerhard Mitter drove the 909 in practice, but decided the car was not good enough,” says Falk. “We also had two 910s with us and he drove one in the event, and won. Stommelen didn’t drive his normal 910; he wanted the worse car in the 909 because he knew the media would want to take…

FRENAULT EUROCUP MONZA (I) APRIL 21-22 ROUND 2/10 Double Formula 4 champion Christian Lundgaard continued his progression up the Formula Renault Eurocup leaderboard at Monza. Fifth and third at the Paul Ricard opener, the MP Motorsport driver claimed second in the opening race in Italy and then notched up a maiden series victory at only the fourth time of asking. The Renault Sport Academy recruit couldn’t do anything on Saturday about Josef Kaufmann Racing driver Yifei Ye, who became the first Chinese to win in the Eurocup. But on Sunday, Lundgaard jumped to the front on lap eight with an around-the-outside manoeuvre on polewinner Lorenzo Colombo into the second chicane straight after the second of two early-race safety cars. The Dane got his head down and edged away, only to…

NASCAR CUP RICHMOND (USA) APRIL 21 ROUND 9/36 Kyle Busch matched Kevin Harvick’s earlier streak of three wins in a row. Busch had claimed in the build-up that Harvick still held the edge, and seemingly backed that up by qualifying his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota 32nd after a strategic error. But a series of adjustments and clean racing through stages one and two allowed Busch to join Harvick in the lead pack. He used the penultimate caution to go around the outside of Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing Ford for second late on. At the final caution, Busch stole a march on reigning champion Martin Truex Jr. Chase Elliott also jumped to second ahead of Denny Hamlin as Hendrick Motorsports continues to recover from a poor start to the year. WEEKEND WINNERS…

DAVE ALLAN TROPHY Pre-2003 Touring Cars champion AJ Owen will drive a V8 Holden Commodore in 2018, racing with his father Craig in the Dave Allan Trophy race at Castle Combe. Owen Sr has dreamt of racing a V8 Supercar, having driven a Ford Sierra Cosworth in recent years after starting racing in the early 1990s. “It’s not been raced in Australia, but it’s one of the ones they used in Bahrain in a championship they set up out there,” said Owen Jr, the 2015 Pre-2003 Touring Car champion, who will return to that championship alongside racing in the Nippon Challenge in his Honda Civic. “It’s in the ’06 HSV livery. It doesn’t have history in V8 Supercars but has all the right ingredients and look of a Supercar. “We’ve…

BMW CAR CLUB RACING The new BMW Car Club Racing series expects a grid of over 30 cars for its next round at Silverstone, following a successful debut at Castle Combe on Easter Monday. The series had a strong start with a grid of 21 cars across five classes, ranging from M1s to a tightly regulated Cup class for E46 325ti models. Series coordinator Neil McDonald says that the aims of the series are to bring together BMW club racers, ensure low costs and get new people involved in racing. “What has attracted many of the drivers is racing for fun, without costing a fortune,” said McDonald. “The club’s trackdays have been a friendly and welcoming community for years and we want to extend this with BMWCCR.” “For Silverstone, we…

BRANDS HATCH 750MC APRIL 21-22 Graham Gant took victory in the opening Formula Vee race aboard his WEV FV01, having surged through the field from 10th on the grid. Reigning champion Ben Miloudi, driving the Storm GKBM 2015, initially battled with Craig Pollard (Bears GAC) for the lead but, while they were scrapping, both were passed by former Vee champion Daniel Hands (GAC Vee) at Druids. Gant eventually slipstreamed past Hands on the Brabham Straight to take the lead and the win. Peter Belsey (Spyder Mk2) took the final podium spot from Pollard, while Miloudi lost his nosecone after tangling with a backmarker. Miloudi and Pollard did battle again in race two, jockeying lap after lap, with Miloudi the eventual victor; his win made it four different winners in four…

Julian Majzub’s 1927 Bugatti Type 35B was one of three examples to feature in the GP Italia and Lanchester Trophies Race, where he finished third. In the family for nearly 40 years, his 35 has remarkable provenance: it was a genuine works car and contested every grand prix of the 1927 season. It then returned to Bugatti, which uprated the brakes and found an extra 800cc to take the eight-cylinder engine up to 2.5 litres. Latterly it joined Bluebird among a collection of cars raced by land and water speed record holder Malcolm Campbell.…

SNETTERTON HSCC APRIL 21 Attleborough ace Jeremy ‘Jez’ Clark’s credentials are well established, with three Formula Vee and two Porsche Club titles, but two fine ’70s Road Sports victories on home soil – despite braking issues in the ex-Howard Bentham Lotus Elan – opened his HSCC account on Saturday’s jolly closed-wheel bill. After initial leader John Williams’s Porsche 911 broke, Will Leverett’s overheating Lotus Europa led the chase in the opener once Donington winner Charles Barter’s Datsun 240Z lost second gear. Swamped at the start, Howard Payne (Europa) recovered to fifth ahead of Dave Karaskas (TVR 3000M). Leverett and father Mark (Elan) hared after Clark in the afternoon, when Leverett Sr bagged a career-best second. An emotional Kevin Kivlochan (Morgan +8) narrowly won the gripping Historic Road Sports opener. “Gerry…

ELECTRIC PRODUCTION CAR SERIES The Electric Production Car Series will kick off at Jerez in November before visiting the UK for a Silverstone round in September 2019 as part of its inaugural eight-round season. The spec Tesla series, which has been sanctioned by the FIA, gets under way in Spain on November 3-4 before taking in rounds at Paul Ricard (in February or March 2019), the Nurburgring (June 29), Assen (July 20-21), Silverstone (September) and the Algarve Circuit (October 12-13). Two rounds are yet to have venues assigned, although it is understood that discussions are ongoing with tracks outside Europe. “This is a very exciting day for all of us who have worked so hard behind the scenes to prepare for our inaugural season,” said Electric GT CEO Mark Gemmell.…

INDYCAR SERIES BARBER M’SPORTS PARK (USA) APRIL 22-23 ROUND 4/16 Wet, dry, wet again – nothing, it seems, can faze the remarkable Josef Newgarden, whose second win from the first four rounds of the 2018 IndyCar Series has shot him to the top of the championship standings. It also continued his remarkable relationship with Barber Motorsports Park, the track that twists and turns for 2.38 miles and 17 turns through the Birmingham, Alabama countryside, like a cross between Mid-Ohio and Cadwell Park. His first IndyCar win came here for CFH Racing in 2015, he muscled his way back onto the podium in ’16, he got lucky last year when leader and Penske team-mate Will Power got a puncture while leading and gifted him victory in the closing stages. But this…

For all the technology, data and engineering brilliance in Formula 1, it’s in the driver that all of these factors meet to dictate the performance of the car. So it’s Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas who are best placed to explain exactly what happens when the Mercedes diva is not in the window. “It’s very unstable,” said Hamilton after the Chinese Grand Prix, when asked to describe how the car’s behaviour diverges from what he wants it to do. “It can’t turn in to a lot of corners. So it was a lot of performance we were losing today. “I’VE GOT TO TAKE IT UPON MYSELF AND FIGURE IT OUT-ON MY SIDE WE STRUGGLE MORE”HAMILTON “I definitely feel like I was on top of my game this weekend. I came…

The Formula E narrative over the past 12 months has been driven by the influx of manufacturers into the all-electric racing series. And with Mercedes, Porsche, BMW and Nissan signing up to take on Audi, DS, Jaguar, NIO and Mahindra (Renault is leaving at the end of this season) that can come as no surprise. But on-track the story is very different. Despite the resources – both financially and technically – of the manufacturer teams, it’s an independent squad sitting at the top of the points table: Techeetah. The story of how the Chinese-owned and backed customer team has been able to take on and beat the best of the rest is a classic David-and-Goliath tale. It’s also testimony to how the rules the FIA and Formula E have put…

The failed IndyCar link-up with Lotus-backed KV Racing (see main story) kick-started a relationship for James Rossiter with the sportscar manufacturer that, he says, allowed him to “fall in love again with the sport after being frustrated so many times.” It took Rossiter through GT and LMP2 projects in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, which morphed into the World Endurance Championship, via racing in GT4 and even the Britcar 24 Hours at Silverstone. “Lotus had big ambitions in motorsport and I felt it was a good place to be, considering who they’d got involved,” he says. “It led to some very different forms of racing, and it made me open my eyes to a bit of the rest of motorsport and to really why I became a racing driver. I did…

MOTOGP AUSTIN (USA) APRIL 22 ROUND 3/19 Marc Marquez continued his extraordinary dominance around Austin’s Circuit of the Americas with his sixth consecutive victory there last Sunday, despite copping a grid penalty for a qualifying misdemeanour. In his 93rd MotoGP start, the #93 Honda rider gave another Stateside masterclass, taking just 12 corners to rebound from being demoted from pole to the second row of the grid. Although Suzuki’s Andrea Iannone put up an early fight, the result was never truly in doubt. Marquez’s record on US soil is unreal, three wins at Indianapolis and one at Laguna Seca all adding to his domination. He took pole in typical Marquez style, setting a scorching pace, falling off while pushing beyond the limit, then jumping on his spare bike and going…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS PHILLIP ISLAND (AUS) APRIL 21-22 ROUND 4/16 Scott McLaughlin was in unstoppable form at Phillip Island, storming into a healthy points lead thanks to a pair of wins. The Penske Ford driver was in a class of his own all weekend, adding his fifth and sixth consecutive poles at the circuit and taking all 300 points on offer from the pair of 250-kilometre races. He’s now 60 points clear of David Reynolds at the top of the Supercars standings, and a whopping 142 ahead of former leader Jamie Whincup thanks to a disastrous weekend for the reigning champ. McLaughlin’s perfect weekend started with a measured win on Saturday, after a race-long battle with Whincup. It was the Red Bull Holden that actually led the majority of the race,…

@AS_National @AutosportNational SILVERSTONE CLASSIC Rickard Rydell will race the Volvo S40 in which he won the 1998 British Touring Car Championship at July’s Silverstone Classic, as well as driving the infamous Volvo 850 estate in a demo to commemorate 60 years of Britain’s touring car top tier. Swede Rydell, 50, steered the Tom Walkinshaw Racing S40 to race wins at Thruxton, Brands Hatch and Croft during the height of the Super Touring period. “I really enjoyed that time, especially since at that time there was no touring car championship as big as that one,” said Rydell. “In 1998 there were eight manufacturers and 16 works cars – it meant a lot of testing and it was a way for a driver to be involved in the development, which I really…

CMMC A new racing club already boasting 60 members has gained recognition by the Motor Sports Association, and is hoping to establish itself in the motorsport community over the coming years. The Classic and Modern Motorsport Club has been founded by Richard Culverhouse, formerly of the Classic Sports Car Club. The new club already has two meetings planned for 2018, including the Classic and Modern Motorsport Festival at Mallory Park on June 10 and Snetterton on September 22, as well as classic races at Donington Park on June 24 and Silverstone on August 4. “It came to fruition in the last couple of months,” said Culverhouse. “I actually vowed never to start another club, but I was away in America and when I was there I had three people approach…

DONINGTON PARK LMP3 CUP APRIL 21-22 To mildly misquote Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come. And yet one year in, the LMP3 Cup can claim to have all the prerequisites for a strong series, but it still awaits the arrival of a grid size to match. Last season the fields varied between five and 10 cars. Changes for 2018, including a secondary PT4 class, and Michelin tyres to bring the Cup in line with the European series, were expected to yield double-figure entries. Yet in the Donington season-opener there were seven LMP3s plus one PT4. Series boss Chris Haynes cannot explain the paucity. “As far as we’re concerned there’s no excuses left [not to participate],” he says. “Everything is in place – we have invested for…

On a weekend with a grand total of 319 entries for the 750MC at Brands Hatch, the Historic 750 Formula stood out with a significantly larger field than in 2017. New driver representative Lyndon Thruston has been working hard to make the series better known, advertising it at Vintage Sports-Car Club events and the Kop Hill Climb, and keeping those interested up to date via a mailing list. The results are clear. “We started rebranding the series probably 18 months ago,” Thruston says. “It’s all about publicity. We’ve always had a great series with really great people, but it’s about letting other people know. “We were very lucky to get an invite to the VSCC festival at Snetterton last year, and we took quite a few of our cars up…

Ex-BTCC racer Andy Middlehurst was reunited with the John Bowers-owned Lotus 25 in the HGPCA Pre-66 GP races. Ahead of the car and driver’s fifth Historic Monaco Grand Prix together later this year, Middlehurst opted for a competitive shakedown. Chassis R4, in which Jim Clark won the 1963 Oulton Park Gold Cup before taking his first Formula 1 title, finished second to Barry Cannell’s dominant 2.7-litre Brabham BT11A. Middlehurst reversed that order in race two until a spike in engine temperature forced him to back off.…

You may think that Tony Kanaan’s remarkable 2004 IndyCar season would have been reward enough in itself. In only his second year in the then-all-oval Indy Racing League, he won the championship and, most remarkably of all, he finished every single racing lap. But a reward from Honda came three years and eight IndyCar wins later – the chance to race in the 2007 season finale of Formula Nippon (now Super Formula) at Suzuka. “Are you kidding me? Of course I said yes right away!” recalls Kanaan more than 10 years on. “I’d watched Ayrton Senna in some big races at Suzuka, and it had become a track I’d always wanted to try.” “‘I’D WATCHED SENNA RACE AT SUZUKA. IT’S A TRACK I’D ALWAYS WANTED TO TRY” IndyCar had added…