Indholdsfortegnelse for 05/12/19 i Autosport

What more can Lewis Hamilton do to enhance his reputation in Formula 1? The obvious answer is by beating Michael Schumacher’s titles and wins records. Both are well within range, but would taking yet more success with Mercedes add much to his status? There’s one thing that definitely would, and that’s winning a title with Ferrari, which is why the rumours that gained momentum last weekend (see page 4) are so interesting. If Hamilton could succeed where Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel have failed, there would be no doubt that he is the driver of his generation. When assessing the greatest of all time, one of the factors that often comes up in the Autosport office is how many teams a driver was able to succeed with. A third team…

FORMULA 1 Williams’s George Russell has been testing for Mercedes this week as part of three days of running he is due to complete for the team before the end of 2019. Mercedes protege Russell started this week’s post-season Abu Dhabi Formula 1 tyre test with Williams on Tuesday morning at the start of the two-day 2020 tyre test, but was due to hand the FW42 over to ex-F2 driver Roy Nissany for the afternoon. He was then set to drive the Mercedes W10 on Wednesday, after Valtteri Bottas had run it on Tuesday. World champion Lewis Hamilton is not available as he has team sponsor commitments. Russell will return to Abu Dhabi next week for two further days of 2021 18-inch-tyre running in Mercedes’ mule car. It will be…

#1 ALLEN BERG Marc Surer’s serious injuries sustained in a rally crash in 1986 gave the 1984 British F3 runner-up his chance. Surer’s drive at Arrows was taken by Christian Danner, and the lofty German’s departure from Osella freed up a place at the Italian team for this diminutive British Columbian. Berg started nine GPs, but never got close to 110% from the pole time. #2 BILL BRACK This Toronto racer was a serious force in domestic competition. After his trio of GP starts, he was a three-time Canadian Formula Atlantic champion and won races against Gilles Villeneuve, Bobby Rahal and Keke Rosberg. Made three starts in his home GP, in 1968 with Lotus (pictured), and in 1969 and 1972 with BRM, but didn’t finish any of them. #3 GEORGE…

WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP Hyundai Motorsport director Andrea Adamo wants to run a second team in next season’s World Rally Championship. The potential for manufacturer second teams in the WRC returned last week as Adamo looked to find a home for Craig Breen and Andreas Mikkelsen, and Jari-Matti Latvala aimed to keep himself in the fight for a full-time WRC return in 2021. Second teams were a regular part of the WRC picture until the new generation of cars arrived in 2017. Now, Hyundai and Toyota have been linked to potential ‘B’ teams for next year. Breen and Mikkelsen both will compete at this weekend’s Monza Rally, and Adamo is determined the Italian event will not be their final outing with the manufacturer. “We are working together with Craig and with…

Sebastian Vettel neither sounds like a driver who is about to walk away from Formula 1 – after finishing fifth in last weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he mocked the suggestion that it had been his last race – nor looks like one. We can’t be sure what is going on in his mind and he could yet surprise us but, while his 2019 campaign was disappointing, and at times blundersome, it wasn’t that of a driver who had lost the determination and desire to be here. The thinking is that a combination of team-mate Charles Leclerc’s success and desire to have things all his own way within Ferrari, Vettel’s own struggles, and the attraction of life away from the demands of F1 now that he’s had his third child,…

After a second half of the season full of twists and turns to the plot, it was appropriate that Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes rounded out the 2019 Formula 1 campaign by returning to dominant form in the Abu Dhabi finale. To underline his advantage, Hamilton nailed fastest lap with two laps remaining on well-worn hard Pirellis. This was a crushing, emphatic full stop to a season in which driver and team again demonstrated their supremacy, even when others were capable of going quicker. That Ferrari’s fuel use was catapulted back to front and centre by the pre-race bombshell that F1 technical delegate Jo Bauer had referred it to the stewards was also appropriate in a season blighted by suspicions over its engine advantage. This was because the FIA had discovered…

FIA FORMULA 2 ABU DHABI (ARE) 30 NOVEMBER-1 DECEMBER ROUND 12/12 For Sergio Sette Camara, his Formula 2 feature-race win signified everything the young McLaren test and development driver’s season should have been. For DAMS, it meant the most emotional of triumphs as the Brazilian’s victory sealed the teams’ title months on from the death of the squad’s founder Jean-Paul Driot. The DAMS drivers – 2020 Williams Formula 1 signing Nicholas Latifi in the other car – have carried stickers commemorating Driot ever since, and the squad could easily have suffered a slump in form or even capitulated. But the strong final quarter of the year proved everything Driot stood for: put good people in the right places and the results will come. One of those people, DAMS team boss…

EDD STRAW Apart from Colin Turkington, Andy Rouse is the other driver with four titles so it’s a good opportunity to discuss who is the greatest BTCC driver, and it’s not just between those two. In the title decider Colin knew he was up against it, but he still got in the car, drove a good race, kept it clean. There was a point where he was behind Dan Cammish for a handful of laps – he could have tapped him off, but he kept his cool, he worked his way past. There’s a lot to be said for a driver who can do that. I think that shows a good amount of class to do that, particularly in a sprint race. MATT KEW Last year he won the title…

This year was going to be a walk in the park for Kalle Rovanpera. Yes, he was only 18 at the start of the year, and yes, there was a bit of pressure, but he had a factory Skoda and, well… he’s Kalle Rovanpera – the WRC’s wunderkind to end all wunderkinds. He would, the storyline went, have the all-new WRC 2 Pro title all sorted by the end of the Finnish summer. Some even went so far as to suggest that he could be swapping a Fabia R5 for a Toyota Yaris WRC before the end of the year. Then he crashed on the Monte. And in Sweden. And in Corsica. Oh… That pressure got real in Chile, his fourth start of the season. We were about to find…

JUNIOR SALOON CARS Successful Junior Saloon Car Championship squad Westbourne Motorsport plans to return to the series next season after not fielding cars in the category for the past two years. The squad has won titles in both the series’ current JSCC guise and in its previous Saxmax form. Westbourne’s main campaigns in recent years have been in the Renault UK Clio Cup, Michelin Clio Series and in historic racing. Team boss Richard Colburn says that developing the careers of young drivers is a key part of the team and he wanted to return to a junior category to assist with this. “It’s been a very good championship for us in the past with wins,” he said. “We’re already talking to a couple of people who ran in it this…

CONNOR TAKES MAIDEN WIN British Formula 4 driver Alex Connor claimed his maiden car racing victory in one of two non-championship UAE F4 contests that supported last weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Connor, who took ninth in the F4 standings this season after being too young to contest the Brands Hatch opener, won the second race at Yas Marina with Xcel Motorsport, having finished third in the opener. Amna Al Qubaisi – daughter of ex-WEC racer Khaled – won the first race but crashed out of the second. SKELTON’S PORSCHE BID British Formula 4 race winner Josh Skelton is evaluating a move into the Porsche Carrera Cup GB next season. Skelton finished fourth in this year’s F4 standings in his second season in the championship. He has tested In2 Racing’s…

Darren Turner has had an incredibly successful GT career and been a lynchpin of the Prodrive-run Aston Martin success since 2005. That includes three class wins at Le Mans, but he could have had at least two cracks at winning the 24 Hours outright had things fallen slightly differently. The first opportunity came in 2004 in one of the Veloqx Audis contesting the Le Mans Endurance Series. “Veloqx introduced me to Prodrive and we went to the Sebring 12 Hours and Le Mans in 2003 with a Veloqx Prodrive Ferrari 550,” recalls the 45-year-old. “That got me in front of [Prodrive team principal] George Howard-Chappell, and that year Jan Magnussen couldn’t do the Miami American Le Mans Series round. Because of my performances earlier in the year, I ended up…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has been freshly linked to a possible Ferrari move, but Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff believes there is only a “25%” chance of that happening. Hamilton is one of several topline drivers out of contract after next season. He and Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas both need new deals, as do existing Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The future of Charles Leclerc, Vettel’s team-mate, may also need deciding – although he joined Ferrari on a multi-season arrangement this year, the explicit nature of his deal is unknown. The Hamilton/Ferrari rumour originated in Italy, where La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that Hamilton had met twice this year with Ferrari president John Elkann. Then, when asked at last weekend’s Abu Dhabi…

FORMULA 1 Honda has extended its deal with Red Bull by one year to commit to the 2021 Formula 1 season, with discussions under way to continue the partnership to at least the end of 2023. The Japanese manufacturer has begun evaluating the cost of being part of the next rules cycle, preventing the company from making a significant long-term commitment to F1. But it has taken the first step towards doing that by confirming it will continue to partner Red Bull and the energy-drinks company’s junior team Toro Rosso in 2021. Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has described it as “a great relief for us”, while both parties have admitted that talks have started on extending the deal for the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Honda must cut its…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE Lamborghini talisman Mirko Bortolotti’s switch to Audi – confirmed earlier this week – marks the end of an era, as the last driver involved in the development of the Huracan GT3 to depart for pastures new. The 29-year-old Italian has been the driving force behind most of Lamborghini’s major successes since the Huracan debuted in 2015, notably the sweep of Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup and overall titles in 2017, and back-to-back GTD class wins at Daytona in 2018 – the car’s first in a 24-hour race – and 2019. The 2018 Blancpain Sprint Cup was also within reach until co-driver Christian Engelhart attempted to hide evidence of driving with his FHR device over his belts by destroying the on-board camera’s SD card, causing their exclusion from…

Who will win the Rookie of the Year at the Autosport Awards on Sunday? As always, there are contenders from outside Formula 1, but logic suggests that it will be a contest between Alexander Albon, George Russell and Lando Norris. All three have done sensational jobs in 2019 on their graduation from Formula 2, and each has further enhanced his reputation and proved to be a worthy choice for their respective teams. But arguably it was Norris who made the biggest strides over the course of the season, and ended it with the greater momentum. In Abu Dhabi last weekend he not only led the midfield grid-position battle with seventh place, but he also won the season qualifying fight with McLaren team-mate Carlos Sainz by 11-10. To be fair, on…

Qualifying hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes during 2019 (well, it’s all relative! – ed), so to sign off with a fifth pole position – and first since July’s German Grand Prix – was very obviously a source of tremendous satisfaction to him. Doubly so considering he struggled during Friday practice and had to “recompose” himself overnight before bagging his 88th F1 pole. His task was simplified by two factors. First, that the Mercedes was the class of the field in Abu Dhabi thanks to its prodigious pace in the slower corners that proliferate over the second half of the lap. The second was that his main rival, team-mate Valtteri Bottas, had a back-of-the-grid penalty thanks to taking a complete new Mercedes power unit following…

Ferrari escaped with a €50,000 fine for having “significant difference” between the fuel load declared by the team in Charles Leclerc’s car and that measured by the FIA. After measuring the amount of fuel, FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer referred the discrepancy between the two measurements to the stewards for further investigation. Although the breach was reported prior to the race, the FIA decided to defer any decisions until afterwards, as the check had been completed approximately five minutes before the pitlane was declared open. FIA race director Michael Masi explained that the team would be afforded a chance to present its argument, given that there wasn’t enough time to do so before the race began. After their investigation, the Abu Dhabi stewards acknowledged that Bauer’s report showed that Leclerc’s…

Although the first-lap scuffle was the only real incident of note, Antonio Giovinazzi and Robert Kubica did their best to grab TV time by clashing at the end of the second DRS zone into Turn 11. Kubica lost ground in the battle, escaping to the pits having been cleared by the Alfa Romeo driver, but enjoyed the cut-and-thrust of wheel-to-wheel racing in his final grand prix appearance for Williams. “That’s racing,” Kubica said. “We did have a bit of fun, when you’re racing far behind, at least. I knew he was there but I thought he would back off. I tried to go around the corner but it was so tight there and we touched.”…

The FIA’s engraver had better be ready for this. After starting his World Rally Championship work with ‘Sebastien’ for the past 15 years, finally he gets to do his work with his eyes open. Instead of Loeb or Ogier, Ott Tanak is the new hero, the new ruler of rallying. Rarely has a driver been so deserving of a title. And in all honesty, it probably should have come last year. From late April’s Rally Argentina onwards, Tanak found a groove with his Toyota in 2018, and he has been in it ever since. The speed he showed in South America last year was a step on from what others were achieving with this generation of very fast rally cars. He hasn’t been able to maintain that shocking pace universally,…

1 OTT TANAK Six wins, monstered the stage-time chart and led for way, way longer than anybody else. Should have had this one in the bag before the final action in Spain. Probably should have had it in the bag last year… A totally deserving champion. 2 SEBASTIEN OGIER Back to Citroen after seven years and six titles, but there was no dream return. The Frenchman won three times through dogged determination, but ultimately the package wasn’t up to the job and he walked out of Versailles for the second time. 3 THIERRY NEUVILLE Was this the Belgian’s best chance yet? Probably not – he had a better opportunity to become champion in 2017. Again, he was right at the sharp end of the title fight, but missed out when…

TCT/TCR UK Bosses of the Touring Car Trophy have announced a seven-date calendar for the 2020 season, which kicks off at Silverstone on 18-19 April. The series was launched in 2019 with an 11-race programme and it included an overseas trip to Spa. The TCT will remain solely in the UK in 2020. The category allows British Touring Car Championship cars to take part, although only those with the older-spec GPRM parts can tackle the series during the course of the year as the BTCC does not allow in-season testing. The TCT also admits cars from the TCR UK series, S2000-spec tin-tops as well as SEAT Leon Supercopa cars. The dates have been designed to not clash with the 2020 BTCC schedule and series boss Stewart Lines hopes that current…

HISTORICS A record field of Group 1 Touring Cars of the 1970s and early ’80s is expected at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting on 28-29 March next year. A new format for the Gerry Marshall Trophy race will increase the entry to 60 cars. The first 15 finishers from each of the two heats will go into the final. This will mark the biggest entry of these cars since they raced in period and will allow entries from cars that have not previously been accepted into the event. The two-driver-format race will move to the Pierpoint Cup for pre-’66 V8 touring cars, which will be the last race on Saturday, running for 45 minutes into the dusk. The driver line-up will include former Formula 1 racers and sportscar stars sharing Ford…

ANDREW HANNAH 1953-2019 We regret to record the death, last week, of Yorkshire GT stalwart Andrew Hannah, following a 14-year battle with cancer. Hannah started racing in the early 1980s in a Jaguar Mk2 and progressed via a Lister to a McLaren M1C replica. He also built a RAM SC Cobra for Adrian Cocking. Hannah loved big American V8s and was in the final stages of completing a Chevrolet-powered Ultima, a project he had started building with his engineer pal John Leek, who died in 2016. MAY DATE FOR PALACE SPRINT The Crystal Palace Sprint will again take place in 2020 in its traditional late-May Bank Holiday slot, on 24-25 May. The Sevenoaks and District Motor Club-run event, using a course including part of the historic Crystal Palace Park circuit,…

As the 2020 national racing calendar takes shape, event organisers are staking their claim to dates to satisfy members’ wishes in a fickle marketplace – one in which it has become increasingly difficult to cover costs. It is interesting to reflect, therefore, on a seismic shift in club racing’s logistics over the 42 years I have been covering the genre for Autosport. Over the winter of 1978-79, after my first full season in the title’s office, 243 days of racing were posted on the national calendar for the season ahead. Numerically, these were dominated by the British Racing & Sports Car Club and British Automobile Racing Club with 49 and 48 days respectively, shared with centres nationally. The Silverstone-based British Racing Drivers’ Club was third on 14, followed by 750…

FORMULA 2 Ferrari is braced for an all-out internal junior war in 2020 after placing five of its juniors in the Formula 2 Championship, with most of them in potentially championship-winning seats. FIA Formula 3 champion Robert Shwartzman will step up to join Mick Schumacher (below) at Prema Racing; Ferrari’s highest placed junior in F2 in 2019, Callum Ilott, joins teams’ championship runner-up Virtuosi Racing; Marcus Armstrong takes a seat at ART Grand Prix, which has fielded the F2 title winner for the past two years; and Giuliano Alesi joins the fledgling HWA team. The eyes are always on Schumacher, who was 12th in the standings this year, but he stopped short of predicting he’ll fight for the title in his second season of F2 with Prema. “I don’t want…

ASIAN F3 W Series champion Jamie Chadwick is to compete in the Asian Formula 3 Championship during the European winter. Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award finalist Chadwick has joined Absolute Racing for the series, which runs over five race weekends beginning next week at Sepang. She contested an Asian F3 one-off at the Malaysian venue back in April as she geared up for W Series, which uses the same Tatuus chassis and Alfa Romeo turbocharged engine. “It’s important for me to use this series as part of my testing and development programme to ensure that I’m race-fit for whatever 2020 throws at me,” said Chadwick, who will bid for a second W Series title. Absolute, run by ex-Formula Master racer Rodolfo Avila, has also snapped…

Shocked at the cost of going racing I write further to Mr Birley’s excellent letter published last week. Having recently retired, I now have the time to look at doing some motor racing in 2020. I have been looking at a number of championships to enter. I have to say however that when I consider the initial costs, entry and licence fees, my enthusiasm has been seriously dampened. Even before you have got on the grid, the ARDS test is not cheap and requires quite an up-front investment in equipment terms, certainly far higher than in some other sports. The blase answer ‘this is motor racing and it costs a lot’ is not good enough, when competition from other leisure pursuits is so strong. Even in comparatively low-cost series such…

The Drag Reduction System was conspicuous by its absence during the early stages of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. DRS wasn’t activated until the 18th lap of the race due to a reported server issue. This meant that the drivers had to overtake in the ‘old-fashioned’ way without any assistance down the straights. “Simple part is a data server crashed,” explained FIA race director Michael Masi. “Immediately, we disabled it until we were 100% confident that it was back up and running with the correct data available – that was when we re-enabled it. So we ran various checks to make sure that everything was working hunky-dory. Until that point we were not going to take a chance until we were confident. For the DRS signals going to the cars,…

ENAAM AHMED AGE 19 JAPANESE F3 RACE WINNER (AND 2017 AWARD FINALIST) “I didn’t drive the LMP3 car in 2017 and that was my favourite this time around. The steering was super-sharp and you have to get your head around that because the car is very neutral. The GT3 car is very different to what I normally drive, but since then I went and qualified a Vantage third [in his session] for the Kyalami 9 Hours so it was still a really useful experience. It was great that we got to do the last day in the wet. I think that was one of my best sessions. The wait is hard, though. At the Awards the winner is revealed right at the end so you just get more nervous!” JOHNATHAN…

CLIO CUP UK The Power Maxed Racing British Touring Car Championship team is looking to expand into the Clio Cup UK next year. The squad fields the two factory supported Vauxhall Astras in the BTCC and won the final race of the season in 2019 with Jason Plato at the controls. A step into the Clio competition is a new foray for the PMR team, which also operates cars in the VW Racing Cup. It will align the Renault campaign with the BTCC programme and will offer driver training as well as the possibility of testing the Astra at the end of the season. Team principal Martin Broadhurst said that the team could field a brace of the French hatchbacks in 2020. “We’ve seen the car and what the championship…

CLASSIC SPORTS CAR CLUB The Classic Sports Car Club will expand its Open Series grid to include the Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club Saloon and GT Championship for the 2020 season. Since its first meeting in 2003, the CSCC line-up has continually been supported by the Jaguar series and now organises the races on the JEC’s behalf. The Open Series, which caters for cars that are ineligible for other CSCC competitions, has averaged a strong 32-car grid in 2019. It is hoped that the addition of the Jaguar XJSs and XJs will not only boost numbers but also reduce the cost for competitors. The format for the Open Series will change as a result, with the usual 30-minute race format being replaced by two 20-minute bouts to allow for a two-driver or…

MINI MIGLIAS AND SE7ENS The Mini 7 Racing Club has again been offered a space on the DTM support bill when the German series visits Brands Hatch in 2020, following a successful first appearance this year. The club’s Mini Miglia and Se7en categories had two races in Kent alongside the DTM in August as a replacement for their original MG Live date, after that event was cancelled due to Silverstone’s resurfacing work. Now the Minis have been invited back to Brands again on 22-23 August next year. Achim Kostron, managing director of DTM organiser ITR, said: “For 2019, it was fantastic to welcome the Mini 7 Racing Club onto the support package – and their huge fields and close, frantic racing definitely entertained the crowds. It’s fantastic to welcome them…

TV SHOW THE BRUNDLES RACE THE NORDSCHLEIFE Ahead of qualifying for last weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Sky Sports F1 aired Martin Brundle’s 60th birthday present to himself. Not content with a cake, gardening gloves or an Autoglym set, Brundle decided to make his race debut at the Nurburgring Nordschleife. Alongside his son, European Le Mans Series driver Alex, Brundle entered round seven of the 2019 VLN season for a four-hour enduro. It’s not the first time the father-and-son duo have shared a car – Brundle Sr, the 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours victor, returned to that race in 2012 to partner Alex in a Zytek LMP2 car. The 30-minute broadcast, unambiguously named The Brundles race the Nordschleife, is now available for those of us who don’t pay-to-view via the…

The artistry of photographic legend Rainer Schlegelmilch makes Johnny Herbert at the wheel of his Lotus-Ford 107B seem a vision of man and machine in perfect harmony. The truth was rather different, the Briton struggling with a handling imbalance throughout the weekend of the 1993 Portuguese Grand Prix. Having qualified 14th, Herbert was circulating in ninth place when he spun into retirement on lap 61 of 71. Rookie team-mate Pedro Lamy, who’d been running nine seconds behind Herbert in only his second grand prix, befell a similar fate next time around. For classic 1990s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

1) Who, what, where, when? 2) Who is this? This independent spirit took on and beat some of the best of all time. Having decided not to milk it, he was a national champion on bikes before making the switch to cars via the conventional route at the time. With patriotic backing he tried the step up, and even went it alone to make his point. This attracted the attention of a seasoned racer, with whom he would get the chance to show his potential, besting a legendary ace and becoming the last of his kind at the top level. As his reputation grew so did his opportunities, and big race wins followed as he helped to develop a racing car for the ages. After a quick-step failure he joined…