Indholdsfortegnelse for 08/11/18 i Autosport

Lewis Hamilton is not only a brilliant racing driver – he’s a fascinating character who polarises opinion because in so many ways he just doesn’t fit the accepted stereotype of what a racing driver should be. But his lifestyle – his showbiz friends, his move into fashion, his music, his vegan diet – most definitely sits well with him and is part of what makes him such a formidable force. And we’d probably far rather that than an automaton who lists his hobbies as going to the gym and keeping fit. One week after Hamilton clinched his fifth – and best – Formula 1 World Championship title, our own Jonathan Noble brings you an interview (p16) with the Mercedes star. Hamilton opens up, bringing an illuminating insight into what makes…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 cars should lose around one third less downforce when following each other next year, according to the latest predictions from the FIA. In the wake of difficulties in overtaking since revised aerodynamic rules were introduced last year, teams and the governing body agreed a raft of aerodynamic changes for 2019 to improve the situation. A series of tweaks, including modifications to front and rear wings, are aimed at helping cars to follow each other more closely. Although the magnitude of the benefit the changes will make will be unclear until cars actually hit the track, FIA single-seater head Nikolas Tombazis said the change will be especially noticeable in medium-speed corners. Speaking in the latest issue of the FIA’s Auto magazine, Tombazis said: “We consider the critical…

BTCC Mini Challenge titan Excelr8 Motorsport will join the British Touring Car Championship grid next season with two MG6 GTs. The Norfolk-based team has taken over the TOCA BTCC Licences to compete and the cars from AmD Tuning. It is assessing opportunities with other suitable automotive makes for the future, with a focus on British marques, although none of the current Mini range fits within the BTCC rules regarding the minimum length of the cars. One unnamed driver has already signed up with Exceler8, and the team is in talks with others regarding the second car. Team manager Oliver Shepherd said: “We’ve been looking towards the BTCC for a few years now and when we got the chance to get hold of the MG GTs it was an opportunity that…

FOR HALF OF THE 2018 SEASON, THE BATTLE FOR THE world championship swung back and forth between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. But from his victory in September at Monza, which Hamilton himself considers the key turning point that broke Ferrari’s challenge, the Mercedes driver marched imperiously to the title. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was in no doubt that Hamilton’s continuous excellence made all the difference. “He has been the differentiator,” said Wolff after Hamilton’s title victory in Mexico. “Our car was the fastest at times, then not the fastest at other times. “Keeping calm and holding his nerve [is a strength]. We had times when the car was good enough to win and times when the car was not good enough to win, and he was very stable.…

While Yann Ehrlacher has probably, over the balance of the season, ended up with the second-best package available after his YMR deal fell through, the Hyundai has unquestionably been the car to beat this year. Seven drivers remain in mathematical contention for the title heading to Macau next week – Ehrlacher, who is 11th, was knocked out of the fight after a dismal run of 10 points from nine races – but in reality it will require a lot to stop any of the leading three i30 N contenders from taking the crown. Yvan Muller has led the drivers’ standings this year and he and team-mate Thed Bjork (the 2017 World Touring Car champion) occupy second and third overall, but it’s the venerable Gabriele Tarquini who heads the standings by…

THERE WAS MUCH excitement surrounding Aston Martin Racing’s 2018 Vantage GTE, the team’s first new GT contender for a decade (the ’12 Vantage GTE had its roots in the ’08 GT2 car). But things didn’t start well. The fastest Aston qualified more than two seconds off the pacesetting Fords at the Spa World Endurance Championship opener and the team was never in contention at Le Mans. As is often the case with GTs, the category’s Balance of Performance – designed to give every car a chance – came in for scrutiny. But Darren Turner, who has been involved in Aston’s racing programme since 2005 and has been part of contests in GT1, GT2, GT3 and GTE, is philosophical about the situation. “It’s part of the sport,” says Turner, who drove…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS PUKEKOHE (NZ) NOVEMBER 3-4 ROUND 15/16 A tense weekend both on and off the Pukekohe track ended with a win apiece for Supercars title rivals Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin. The New Zealand circuit provided the perfect setting for a dramatic all-Kiwi clash – mid-race penalties, post-race investigations, protests and parc ferme mind games all adding to the intrigue. Saturday’s race was a classic case of speed versus a potentially superior strategy. Van Gisbergen had the pace advantage, which he demonstrated perfectly by passing McLaughlin on lap 22. But DJR Team Penske played the undercut game well, looking to give McLaughlin clear air while van Gisbergen battled away with either lapped traffic or cars off-kilter in terms of strategy. That meant van Gisbergen had to go 14…

STAT 4 Adam is aiming for a fourth British GT title with a fourth different co-driver @AS_National @AutosportNational BRITISH GT British GT race winner Graham Davidson has targeted the 2019 title after switching to TF Sport alongside three-time champion Jonny Adam, billing it as an “all-or-nothing year”. The 2017 GT Cup champion stepped up to the category with a Jetstream Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage this year, and took a first win at Spa alongside Maxime Martin, but suffered bad luck and only finished seventh in the points. After moving to partner defending champion Adam, who switches from Optimum Motorsport back to the team he won the 2016 title with, Davidson is determined to make the step to championship contender with Aston’s new Vantage GT3. “The aim is to do a…

WALTER HAYES TROPHY Leading Formula Ford drivers and teams slammed Walter Hayes Trophy officials over the use of a telehandler to conduct a live snatch recovery during the second semi-final at Silverstone last Sunday. Scottish driver Logan Hannah’s car was stranded at the side of the circuit after contact with Stephane Lemeret before the first corner. The clerk of the course deployed the telehandler to retrieve the car under yellow-flag conditions, with the process taking a number of laps to complete. Three-time Hayes winner Joey Foster said: “It was the most dangerous situation I have ever seen one of those used. It was very slippery into Copse, you could easily lock up on the downshift, even when you’re not pushing. “A safety car would have been absolutely fine in those…

SILVERSTONE WALTER HAYES TROPHY NOVEMBER 3-4 Until halfway through the 2018 Walter Hayes Trophy final, ’17 winner Michael Moyers looked like a man with serenity to spare. A dominant heat poleman and winner on Saturday, a relatively comfortable semi-final winner once Kevin Mills Racing team-mate Michael Eastwell had misfired his way backwards, and then swiftly past yet another KMR Spectrum team-mate – Julian van der Watt – to lead the final from second on the grid. The potential mishap of a too-dry set-up for the quite-wet track was averted with a last-gasp change completed just as the whistle blew in the assembly area. Moyers had the lead and the pace. Back-to-back wins looked predestined. Then, coming into a fiendishly slippery Brooklands just before half-distance, Moyers had his only blip of…

youtube.com/AUTOSPORTdotcom Dan Ticktum tests a McLaren Formula 1 car at Silverstone Autosport spent the day with 2017 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner Dan Ticktum as the Formula 3 European Championship runner-up enjoyed his first taste of Formula 1 machinery. Jump on board as he takes Abbey (Turn 1) on Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit flat out in McLaren’s V8-powered MP4-28 challenger, as used by Jenson Button and Sergio Perez during the ’13 F1 season. Go to http://bit.ly/ticktumMABA…

Nino Vaccarella (Alfa Romeo T33/3) receives the approbation of Sicilian fans – always getting as close to the action as possible – en route to a resounding victory in the 1971 Targa Florio, breaking Porsche’s five-year domination of the event. Vaccarella’s co-driver Toine Hezemans took the flag ahead of the similar car shared by Gijs van Lennep and Andrea de Adamich. The Jo Bonnier/Richard Attwood Lola-Ford T212 was third. FOR MORE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS, VISIT MOTORSPORTIMAGES.COM…

FORMULA 1 Williams performance chief Rob Smedley will leave the team at the end of the 2018 season, ending a relationship that first began 20 years ago in touring cars. Smedley joined Williams from Ferrari in 2014 as head of performance engineering as the team sought to bounce back from a tough 2013 campaign. It marked a return to the organisation that hired him in 1998 to work as an engineer on the Williams-run British Touring Car Championship Renault Laguna project. In F1, Smedley helped guide Williams to back-to-back third-place finishes in the constructors’ championship, then fifth place in 2016 and ’17. He said he has not decided on what he will do next, while Williams has no immediate replacement as it is thought to still be evaluating changes behind…

INDYCAR IndyCars hit the US Grand Prix Austin circuit last week as the series gears up for its first visit to the Texan venue next year. Andretti Autosport, Carlin and AJ Foyt Racing each sent a car to help tyre supplier Firestone collect data. “I can tell you that our car around that track is awesome!” said 2018 series runner-up Alexander Rossi, who drove the Andretti car. “I had a smile on my face for the entire 90 laps and the package is great.” Because it’s Texas, we’ve pictured the Foyt car, driven at the test by popular IndyCar veteran Tony Kanaan. FORMULA 3 Top single-seater squad Prema Powerteam has committed to the new European Regional Formula 3 championship, which will kick off in 2019. The news comes as no…

TRACK STATS LENGTH 2.677 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 71 2017 POLE POSITION Valtteri Bottas 1m08.322s POLE LAP RECORD Valtteri Bottas 1m08.322s (2017) RACE LAP RECORD Max Verstappen 1m11.044s (2017) THEMES TO WATCH ANOTHER F1 TITLE FOR MERCEDES? Lewis Hamilton has the drivers’ title in the bag, but Mercedes still has to wrap up the constructors’ crown. This should happen in Brazil – provided Ferrari does not outscore Mercedes by 13 or more points – to give the Silver Arrows a fifth consecutive title. BOTTAS’S SHOT AT REDEMPTION Valtteri Bottas is the only driver in the top three teams not to win a race so far this year. But he came within a late-race puncture of doing so in Baku, and had to hand victory in Russia to Hamilton. Hamilton has…

Spending money for the sake of it ‘Drawing Board’ with Giorgio Piola and Gary Anderson is a perfect illustration of where F1 is going wrong; in the October 11 issue it was an explanation of the new floor for Ferrari, which involved huge sums of money and resource for a minimal return. Do they do it because they can due to the budgets they have available? If Ferrari et al had the restricted resources of the smaller teams, this type of nonsense would be severely curtailed. I have written in the past about this, but it does make the heart sink when you consider where such resource could be used effectively without detriment to grand prix ‘racing’. I have also stated in the past that the designers/technicians are not building…

LEWIS HAMILTON’S MARCH TO A FIFTH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP has produced arguably his most complete season, in which he comfortably defeated a strong rival in Sebastian Vettel and clinched the title with two rounds to spare. But what really has been striking about his season is his lack of significant errors. Vettel, meanwhile, has thrown away big points. And while the Ferrari star says that his German Grand Prix error – where he crashed out while leading – was a very small mistake that wouldn’t have put him out of the race had he not done it at the one corner with an inescapable gravel trap, Hamilton has known exactly when he can and cannot get away with things. His decisions in wheel-to-wheel battle have been impeccable. His passes on Vettel…

Factory Aston Martin driver Darren Turner has been an enthusiastic Goodwood regular for many years, but until 2018 success had eluded him. That changed at September’s Revival meeting when he scored an unlikely victory in a famous car that hadn’t even made it to the most important event it had been built for. As with many racing stories, the combination came together by chance. “I was on an event with the new Aston Martin DB4 GT Continuation car and after that one of the owners contacted me and said a friend had the DB2 at the Revival,” explains Turner, who had owned a DB2 road car but had to sell it before ever getting to restore and drive it. “They asked if I’d like to drive. It was an easy…

NASCAR CUP TEXAS (USA) NOVEMBER 4 ROUND 34/36 Victory in Texas ensured Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick of his spot among the final four playoff drivers who will fight it out for the NASCAR Cup title at the Homestead finale later this month. After he had swept the first two stages and carried a four-second lead into the final 40 laps of the 337-lap race, Harvick’s comfortable run to the finish was interrupted by three late-race cautions to prompt a challenge from Ryan Blaney. The two exchanged the lead after the second restart but, heading into the final green flag, Harvick emphatically stormed around the outside of the #12 Penske Ford to seize the win by 0.447s. After bumping Martin Truex Jr at the final corner to win at Martinsville, and…

FORMULA ATLANTIC Ian Flux was reunited with his Formula Atlantic Ehrlich RP5B at Silverstone last week, 36 years after he last raced it. The car’s current owner John Hayes-Harlow arranged for Flux to test the car he last raced at Mondello Park in October 1982. “It was a proper memory-jerker, which took me back 36 years to when I last raced for Dr Josef Ehrlich,” said Flux. “I’d not gone as many years between drives in a car before. “A really nice touch was that Paul Crosby who built the chassis came along to the test day and got his hands dirty. We had a few issues with fuel pressure initially, but when it sort of cleared it was better than I remembered.” “The experience transported me back to the…

If you were going to pick possible heat winners before the weekend, Felix Fisher, Julian van der Watt and Rory Smith were perhaps not at the top of the list. But all three triumphed as the Saturday races produced some surprising results. Fisher did benefit from a huge slice of luck to win heat two. Jordan Dempsey and Matt Cowley had a close battle for the lead, and Dempsey held the advantage into lap seven of the eight. But then into Brooklands the pair collided and spun. Dempsey described Cowley’s move as “stupid”, saying: “Matt just went for a gap that wasn’t there. An experienced driver would know that it’s going to close. I don’t know what he was thinking.” Cowley countered: “I darted right and then back on the…

For those who falter on the first day of the Walter Hayes Trophy, Sunday morning provides an opportunity for redemption. Unusually, only three drivers of note needed the get-out-of-jail card afforded by the repechage system. Josh Fisher and Sebastian Job made short work of getting to the front of the Progression race, and were making serene progress to the next stage until contact at Brooklands on the final lap caused Job to spin, but he retained second. Job tracked Fisher through the Last Chance race too, but this time behind Matt Cowley, who had earlier outbraked Jack Kemp at Becketts to take the lead. The trio safely moved into the semi-finals, but Job’s progress – and his first season of racing – ended in the opening last-72 race, with an…

“RADICAL NOW CLAIMS TO HAVE SOLD OVER 2000 CARS SINCE ITS INCEPTION IN 1997” You’d struggle to think of any other modern make of racing car, built in the UK for amateur drivers and trackday enthusiasts, as fast or as capable as Radical Sportscars. They have always been brilliant bits of kit, clearly designed and built by people who understand the importance of function over form. They are not showy, but they are easy to show off in, because they are so quick. Outside of motorsport’s professional ranks, you’re unlikely to be able to lap a UK circuit quicker than you could in a Radical SR8 – unless you’re in the best historic Formula 1 or F5000 cars around, and extremely good at driving them. The SR3 – still Radical’s…

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN? WHO IS THIS? From between the river banks to a long stint at the top, this local hero retains a key presence to this day. He started in the traditional way and caught the eye of a countryman who helped many of his clan. This led to a move south of the border and onto the first rung of the ladder. The good book of motorsport clocked his talent and he became the first to receive its ultimate accolade. Through the son of a superstar he caught a big break that carried him into the ocean of talent lapping on the shores of the promised land. But it took the ultimate tragedy to fulfil his destiny. Two titans fought over him and, although the flightless birds…

“SOMETIMES YOU THINK, ‘WHY AM I HERE? I COULD BE AT HOME WITH THE KIDS’” FORMULA 1 Formula 1 veteran Kimi Raikkonen believes that tougher stewarding on bigger incidents would eliminate “stupidity” from drivers. The FIA is constantly adapting its stewarding process to try to improve the policing of bad driving, ranging from appointing former racing drivers to its panel of race officials back in 2010 to tweaking how those stewards should consider applying penalties. New penalty options and a driver penalty-points system are among the ways the governing body has recently tried to clamp down indiscretions. Stewards have been criticised heavily by several drivers for being too harsh with penalties, but Raikkonen believes the perception that they have been “very strong” is incorrect. “It’s so random that you cannot…

MOTOGP Indonesia will become the latest addition to the MotoGP calendar in 2021 with a new street circuit on the island of Lombok. Although the race is not yet formally announced, it is understood that a delegation from series promoter Dorna visited Lombok last month and that the contract for the race venue has been awarded to Vinci Construction. Vinci has been allotted 131 hectares of land surrounding Mandalika, a business area in the southern part of Lombok, and will also serve as the chief investor in the race, with the French company’s contribution expected to be in the region of €900million The track will feature an urban element, with Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta having previously suggested that the start/finish straight and paddock of what was then just a planned…

DAKAR RALLY If Sebastien Loeb’s not careful, nobody’s going to believe a word he says. Earlier this year, when he wasn’t dismissing his chances of winning a round of the World Rally Championship, he was laughing off talk that he could be back in South America for another shot at a Dakar Rally win. Those days, he reckoned, were behind him. Now, just days after his 79th WRC win, he’s booking his tickets to Peru: Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena are Dakar-bound and chasing a maiden marathon event success from January 6-17. The luxuries of a Peugeot factory contract, mile after mile of testing and a wide-track 3008 DKR Maxi are long gone, though. Come January, rallying’s most successful partnership will have completed a private test somewhere in the sand…

You would think that Lewis Hamilton, after the intense season he’s endured, would have an overriding feeling of relief to have that fifth world title in the bag with two races to spare. After all, this season has given Mercedes its biggest challenge – and therefore put it through its biggest stress points – since it became Formula 1’s dominant force from the start of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014. It was Ferrari that had the fastest car for much of 2018, and there were times when all the indications were that Mercedes was broken and it was Maranello that was going to come out on top. But a combination of some brilliance from Hamilton and car progress from Mercedes, allied with a run of errors by Sebastian Vettel and…

It’s now five years since Yvan Muller – arguably the greatest tin-top driver of all time – won the most recent of his four World Touring Car titles. In the time since, he’s had to learn to play second fiddle to Jose Maria Lopez in Citroen’s dominant WTCC programme, retired from racing, made a one-off comeback at the end of 2017 and, this year, reversed his retirement decision altogether with a sensational return in the World Touring Car Cup. Muller’s campaign has undoubtedly been a successful one, as his three victories and second place in the standings (with the caveat that there’s still one round still to go) attest. But while there are mutterings that he could prolong his fruitful second coming into yet another season, the time will inevitably…

2007 LE MANS 24 HOURS, GT1 VICTORY After two near-misses and some epic battles with the Chevrolet Corvettes, Aston Martin won GT1 at Le Mans with Darren Turner, David Brabham and Rickard Rydell at the wheel of a DBR9. “Having been involved in the programme from the beginning and with us getting so close in 2005 and ’06, that win was special,” says Turner. “It was a tough race and the conditions were difficult too.” 2009 LE MANS SERIES “We were never going to be knocking on the door of the diesels but, given how small the budget was, the LMP1 [Lola-Aston Martin] was a giantkiller,” reckons Turner. “At Spa I got a puncture on the first lap so I was behind. It cut through traffic – it was really…

MOTOGP SEPANG (MAL) NOVEMBER 4 ROUND 18/19 The record books will show Marc Marquez as claiming a straightforward ninth victory of the 2018 season in the Malaysian Grand Prix last weekend, but it was his old arch-rival Valentino Rossi who dominated the headlines at Sepang. Rossi controlled the race beautifully until a crash with four laps to go. Not only was the 39-year old robbed of the chance to register his first win since the 2017 Dutch TT, but also fans were denied a mouthwatering showdown between the Yamaha man and Marquez. Immediately before Rossi’s fall – a low-speed loss of the rear at Sepang’s tight Turn 1 right-hander – Marquez had been gaining by about a tenth per lap. But it was clear that the Honda rider was having…

WALTER HAYES TROPHY Tom Brown competed in two different cars during the course of the Walter Hayes Trophy, either side of a hospital visit necessitated by rolling the first of them on the final lap of his heat at Becketts. The former Ginetta racer had spun his Van Diemen RF79 after contact at Maggotts on the opening lap of heat two, but had recovered to eighth. “I went to overtake Paul Mason around the outside of Becketts, and we just sort of wanted the same piece of Tarmac,” he said. “My right-rear hit his left-front and I went barrel-rolling.” Mason, who suffered a bent wishbone on his Swift SC94, added: “He turned and tried to make the apex, but I was still there. If he had left one car width…

BARC The organisers of the Pickup Truck Racing Championship are planning to create a mini-package of three series to run at the popular British Truck meetings next year. In addition to its successful Pickup series, SHP Engineering will also run a Super Silhouettes category and a series for American-style sprint cars at truck meetings, with the focus on providing entertaining racing for spectators. SHP will take over organising the British Automobile Racing Club-run Intermarque series and will rename it to reflect the category’s original title, although existing Intermarque organisers still intend to have their own separate series too. “We had a meeting with the Intermarque drivers and they seemed on board for it,” explained SHP founder Sonny Howard. “We have rewritten the rules so it will be for spaceframe chassis,…

As well as finishing a strong 15th in the overall final, Callum Grant also won the Pre-’93 final in his Van Diemen RF91. Grant, who normally races a Merlyn Mk20, finished 12 seconds ahead of Richard Tarling, despite only having driven the car a handful of times before the race. Tarling, in his recently acquired Jamun M92, made a superb recovery drive after dropping to the back of the pack from second on the grid. He had struggled for grip off the startline and had contact at the first corner. Further back, Pirelli engineer Doug Crosbie’s Van Diemen RF89 followed Tarling past a scrapping Jaap Blijleven (Reynard 89FF) and Nicolas Beloou (Van Diemen RF91). Crosbie had qualified fourth but was initially passed by the flying Blijleven and Beloou. The Pre-’82…

BRANDS HATCH BARC NOVEMBER 3-4 Championships were up for grabs for heavyweight trucks, nimble Legends and jousting Pickups at what is one of Brands Hatch’s most popular meetings – not only because of the racing action but for MotorSport Vision’s fireworks display and entertainment programme. On the track, Ryan Smith wasted no time confirming his third British Truck Racing Association championship by dominating Saturday’s Division 1 race. The only driver who could have challenged for the title, David Jenkins, finished second and paid tribute to Smith. He was echoed by multiple champion Stuart Oliver, who joined them on the podium and said Smith had raised the competitive bar and it was up to the rest to catch up. Smith chased from last on a reversed grid to finish second on…

The brakeless bikes accelerate as fast as a Formula 1 car and one of the main events – the British Grand Prix–attracts 40,000 spectators. It’s surprising, then, that speedway remains a minority sport, especially after recent achievements. In October, Tai Woffinden became the first British three-time world champion, while he and Robert Lambert took GB to second in the nations’ cup. At home, the top domestic league is benefiting from regular BT Sport coverage where it rubs shoulders with the World Rally Championship and IndyCar. This led Autosport to the Premiership playoff final at the Norfolk Arena to see why speedway is nipping at the heels of leading motorsport series. Much like top fuel drag racing or a forest rally stage, speedway is something you need to see live to…

Dad passed the newspaper across the kitchen table. “Look,” he said, “there’s a story ’ere about a racing car with six wheels!” My eight-year-old, car-mad self didn’t know much about motor racing save that it existed and there was a place up the road called Brands Hatch where said activity took place. I hadn’t even been given my first set of motorsport-themed Top Trumps at this point – I’d find them under the Christmas tree a few months later. But what I did know was that racing cars should have four wheels, just like the family Austin 1100 and grandad’s Ford Popular. “CARS SHOULD HAVE FOUR WHEELS, JUST LIKE GRANDAD’S FORD POPULAR” That probably explains why I was so taken by the grainy black-and-white images before me. The date was…