Indholdsfortegnelse for 19/12/19 i Autosport

It’s that time of year again. Autosport has taken on the near-impossible (and invariably controversial) challenge of ranking the best drivers in motorsport across the season. Many things have to be taken into account when putting the list together, including the level of the series in which the drivers compete, machinery at their disposal, and their level of experience. Turn to page 17 to see who made the list and why we’ve put the drivers in their positions. As ever, our Christmas double issue (which is £4.99 – we’ll be back to the normal £3.99 for the next issue on 2 January) has plenty more beyond the traditional top 50 list. As well as our annual pictures of the year (p54), and season reviews (p70), David Evans takes a look…

AUTOSPORT INTERNATIONAL Ferrari Formula 1 ace Charles Leclerc is the star guest on the final day of next month’s Autosport International show at the Birmingham NEC. Leclerc, winner of two grands prix this season on his way to fourth in the world championship, will be present on Sunday 12 January, and fans will get the chance to have their questions answered by the Monegasque on stage in a Live Q and A. He will be the first contemporary Ferrari F1 driver to appear at the show. Motorsport Network president James Allen said: “It’s always exciting for fans to see one of the top F1 stars close up and Charles Leclerc’s presence makes Autosport International a ‘must-attend’. He is a great personality in our sport. He has a mature racing brain…

BTCC The Team BMW attack in the British Touring Car Championship will expand to three cars next season in a deal that rescues the career of Andrew Jordan, who will join forces with reigning champion Colin Turkington and Tom Oliphant. Jordan, who lifted the BTCC title in 2013, had faced an uncertain future since his long-term backer Pirtek announced early in 2019 that it was pulling out of its motorsport commitments after nearly a decade supporting him. The WSR-run BMWs dominated the 2019 competition, with Turkington taking the crown by two points from Jordan, who missed two races due to an accident. Between them, the BMW 330i M Sport drivers won 11 of the 30 races. “I have been in a very fortunate position for the last 10 years or…

GULF 12 HOURS Attempto Racing gave Audi victory in the Gulf 12 Hours in Abu Dhabi last weekend, as MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi took a podium finish. Christopher Mies, Dries Vanthoor and Rinat Salikhov ended a run of five straight Ferrari victories by heading an Attempto Audi 1-2, despite serving a stop/go penalty for a pitstop infringement in the first half of the two-part race. Stablemates Mattia Drudi, Nick Foster and Murad Sultanov followed, while Rossi sealed Pro-Am class victory in the Kessel Ferrari 488 GT3 (left) he shared with Moto2 race-winning half-brother Luca Marini and Alessio Salucci, four laps down on the winner. The pole-winning HTP Motorsport Mercedes featuring Maxi Gotz and Dominik Baumann suffered an ignition coil issue that stranded it out on the circuit. British team Balfe…

KEVIN TURNER EDITOR Seeing any Formula 1 car up close is special, but to be able to arrange a track test with four title-winning racers was a career highlight. Thanks to Classic Team Lotus, Autosport celebrated the 1000th world championship race by putting resident racer Ben Anderson in to a Lotus 25, 49, 72 and a 79. We’d long wanted to get Ben in an F1 car and the grand prix-winning ex-Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson exotica meant the day at Hethel was better than we could ever have hoped for. Being a racing driver, Ben’s favourite was the quickest – the ground-effect 79 – but there was something even more evocative about the 72. MARCUS SIMMONS DEPUTY EDITOR A trip to Japan for the Super…

How does the same driver go from being a flop in the first half of the season to one of the success stories of the second? After being crushed by Max Verstappen at Red Bull, on average just over half a second quicker in qualifying, and too often struggling to beat the lead midfielders, Gasly rediscovered his magic once back at Toro Rosso. “Pierre adapted really quickly,” says Toro Rosso technical director Jody Egginton of Gasly’s return. “We knew him and it’s a strength of the mentality of the team that we’re quite good at driver changes. Pierre fitted back in but also put some very good performances in. He had a tough time at Red Bull, but I can only gauge him on what he’s done with us and…

With two titles and a Bathurst 1000 crown now under his belt, it’s time to ponder how long Scott McLaughlin will stay in Supercars. The 26-year-old has never made a secret of his NASCAR ambitions, but he also had a very clear list of objectives that needed to be checked off in Australia before he looked overseas. The first was a title, which he ticked off last season. With that in the bag, McLaughlin himself reiterated that NASCAR was his “obvious goal”, while team owner Roger Penske admitted a maiden crown had ‘opened the door’ for a Stateside move. But the door was more ajar than wide open. McLaughlin and Team Penske wanted a Bathurst 1000 win before committing the Kiwi elsewhere. That too has now been accomplished. “You don’t…

WORLD TOURING CAR CUP SEPANG (MYS) 15 DECEMBER ROUND 10/10 For all the scenarios that could have played out during the World Touring Car Cup’s Sepang season finale, a two-way title showdown in a floodlit, damp decider, in which both contenders shared the front row, was as perfect as it could be. That felt particularly apt given how unlikely such a scenario had seemed after Friday’s first qualifying. Norbert Michelisz’s pace on his way to the race-one pole was such that his title rivals Esteban Guerrieri, Yvan Muller and Thed Bjork – who would start ninth, 16th and 28th respectively – barely stood a chance. Guerrieri did better come second qualifying, but even in securing second his Munnich Motorsport Honda was eight tenths off the BRC Hyundai of Michelisz, who…

Michelisz number one in WTCR’s second album WTCR The World Touring Car Cup gave itself plenty to live up to by self-styling its 26-car 2019 field the ‘supergrid’. But it delivered on its promise, as 13 drivers – including at least one from each brand – won races, with two of them fighting until the last to be crowned champion for a first time. Eventual runner-up Esteban Guerrieri set his stall out early by winning the season opener in Marrakech, and moved into an early points lead before the mid-season break as the Munnich Motorsport Honda squad hit the ground running. Title adversary and eventual champion Norbert Michelisz took longer to get going, but the BRC driver became a regular podium scorer after a disappointing Marrakech and, by mid-May, had…

PORSCHE SUPERCUP Last year, Michael Ammermuller clinched his second Porsche Supercup title purely down to his consistency. Although he’d won only one race, he whisked the crown away from under the noses of the battling trio of Nick Yelloly, Thomas Preining and Julien Andlauer. The 2019 season played out differently, but the net result was exactly the same – and Ammermuller added a third title win to his account. Andlauer, seeking retribution for the previous season, drew first blood at Barcelona and absorbed a race-long bout of pressure from highly rated rookie Ayhancan Guven, who factored heavily in the title fight in his first year in the series. While Ammermuller hit back in Monaco, Andlauer beat his Lechner Racing teammate to secure a second victory at the Red Bull Ring.…

NASCAR CUP In 2019, the NASCAR Cup was all about one team: Joe Gibbs Racing. Championship veterans Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin were joined at the Toyota Camry-speared attack by 2017 champion and Furniture Row Racing refugee Martin Truex Jr. Adding to the potent line-up was Erik Jones, who continued to add fresh blood into a squad that entered 2019 with a combined 102 Cup wins. By season’s end at Homestead, Busch, Hamlin and Truex Jr were all in contention to claim the crown, scooping 18 of the 35 race wins between them (Jones adding a solitary victory to the tally at Darlington), with Stewart-Haas Racing driver Kevin Harvick the only non-JGR interloper in the four-way title race. On championship night itself around the 1.5-mile oval in Miami, mistakes with…

EUROFORMULA OPEN For the fourth year in a row a driver dominated the Euroformula Open points battle, but that undersells the close action on track. Performance disparity was often the talk of the paddock, as the series became an open-engine formula. New team Motopark, with Spiess power, won 16 of the 18 races. Nine were scored by risk-averse Taki Inoue protege Marino Sato, a previously under-the-radar talent from FIA European Formula 3. He applied the teachings of his team to earn the title and an F2 graduation. His strongest team-mates were Red Bull juniors Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda. Lawson’s raw talent stunned, but his four wins were matched by his number of clashes. Tsunoda claimed the spoils once; a second being lost when he and Lawson collided at Spa…

EUROPEAN RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP Chris Ingram became the first Briton since Vic Elford in 1967 to claim the European Rally Championship title, despite ending the season without a win – a fact that should not lessen the significance of his achievement. With the ERC1 Junior crown – and the €100,000 for the champion – the priority for the first six events, outright victories simply weren’t top of the agenda. The strategy changed again on the Czech round in mid-August when local star Filip Mares beat him to the young driver prize by 0.3 seconds. While missing out on the money was another blow to Ingram’s depleted budget, he headed to the penultimate event in Cyprus leading the overall standings, such had been his consistency. Relying on vital budget generated through a…

When you stand roadside on gravel rallies, you grow accustomed to the sounds and sights coming your way. There’s the initial, split-second lock-up as the left foot stabs the middle pedal, the frantic anti-lag clatter as the right foot rises from the throttle, and the satisfying transmission clunk as cogs are descended on final approach. Finally, there’s a flash of revs or the drag of a handbrake-induced slide to rotate the car at the apex. Where to look? If you try to watch the approach, you’re going to miss what’s right in front of you. Neck muscles simply can’t compete with the sheer speed of a current-generation World Rally Car. You need to understand what the World Rally Championship can do to people; it engenders outrageous emotion. It moves grown…

The circuit comprising the runways and taxiways of Linden Airport, a few miles southwest of Manhattan and just off the New Jersey Turnpike, was flat. But – in NASCAR terms at least – it was far from featureless: one of its turns was right-handed. Its International 100 of 13 June 1954 – midpoint of the 37-round Grand National Series – broke new ground, therefore, and so provided a slew of firsts, as well as lasts. And not just for Jaguar. ‘Big Bill’ France’s racing empire was in its seventh year and threatened on its borders by the seaboards’ thriving sportscar scenes. Not yet sure of defeating them, he invited them instead. This wasn’t the first time that‘foreign jobs’ had gone wing-to-fender with NASCAR’s Detroit heavy iron. The grid for the…

BRDC BRITISH F3 BRDC British Formula 3 team Lanan Racing has recruited Australian Bart Horsten to its roster for the 2020 season. The 17-year-old Australian moves up from British F4, where he took a race win at Donington Park as well as nine additional podiums on his way to fifth in the standings this season. Horsten got his first taste of British F3’s Tatuus-Cosworth at Donington in October as part of Lanan’s evaluation day, where F1 driver George Russell – who raced with Lanan on his way to the 2014 BRDC F4 title – was on hand. “I’m very excited to be moving up to the BRDC British F3 Championship with Lanan Racing for 2020,” said Horsten. “They have an excellent track record at this level, and I’ve really enjoyed…

BRITISH GT British GT runner-up Sam de Haan will switch from Barwell Motorsport to RAM Racing as part of an expanded two-car Mercedes GT3 effort for the Silverstone squad next year. Dan Shufflebottom’s team will run two of the latest generation Mercedes-AMG GT3s, with Mercedes factory driver Yelmer Buurman returning to the series alongside Ian Loggie, while de Haan will share with Finn Patrick Kujala in an all-Silver line-up. De Haan was allowed to compete this season as a derogated Bronze because his entry for 2019 was accepted as a Bronze prior to the FIA upgrading his driver rating to Silver. But he has been unable to keep his Bronze grading for 2020 and thus continue his Pro-Am partnership with Gold-rated 2004 champion Jonny Cocker. As an all-Silver pairing with…

O’BRIEN AND JOHNSON AGAIN Michael O’Brien and Graham Johnson will resume their GT4 Pro-Am partnership in British GT next season in a Balfe Motorsport-run McLaren 570S GT4. Johnson, the GT4 champion in 2016, teamed up with O’Brien this season, when they finished second in the Pro-Am class. They managed two class victories at Oulton Park and Spa. THUNDERSPORTS TO EXPAND The Historic Sports Car Club’s Thundersports series will expand to a full six-event schedule in 2020 based on the success of this year’s three-event pilot series. With an average grid of 32 cars across the three events, the category hit the ground running and the series will now add the Oulton Park Gold Cup, Dijon and a Donington Park date for 2020. The high-profile Silverstone Classic 40-minute race will run…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Peugeot could be on the grid with its new LM Hypercar at the 2022 Le Mans 24 Hours. That’s the latest snippet the French manufacturer has let out since November’s perfunctory announcement of its return to front-line sportscar racing. Peugeot’s plans for its entry into the top division of the World Endurance Championship were clarified by Jean-Marc Finot, motorsport boss of parent company PSA, on a visit to last weekend’s World Endurance Championship round in Bahrain. The statement from Peugeot said it would be back in 2022, which was widely interpreted, including by WEC promoter and Le Mans organiser the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, as meaning the start of the 2022-23 season. But Finot has now revealed that it could be earlier. Asked if the‘2022’ wording…

DTM/WTCR WRT Audi will run ex-IndyCar driver Ed Jones and FIA Formula 3 graduate Fabio Scherer in its privateer DTM line-up in 2020. They replace Pietro Fittipaldi, who is heading to Japan next season (see p11), and Jonathan Aberdein, who is highly rated by Audi following a starring rookie season. Both Emirati Jones (right, above) and Swiss Scherer took part in last week’s DTM young drivers’ test at Jerez, which also featured a hotly anticipated run for Williams Formula 1 refugee Robert Kubica with BMW. After being dropped from Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of 2018, Jones spent this year racing for Ed Carpenter Racing, finishing 20th in the drivers’ standings. Scherer had a promising 2018 season in the Formula 3 European Championship, before taking 17th in the FIA…

SUPER FORMULA Haas Formula 1 reserve Pietro Fittipaldi is returning to Japan’s Super Formula series in 2020 after landing a seat with the B-Max Racing with Motopark team. Fittipaldi switches back to single-seater racing full-time in 2020 after a year in the DTM with customer Audi team WRT. He was due to contest a Super Formula season in 2018 with Team Le Mans, but ended up only taking part in the opening race before breaking his legs in a World Endurance Championship crash at Spa. “I am very happy to have signed with B-Max Racing with Motopark in Super Formula, one of the fastest categories in the world,” said Fittipaldi. “It’s a very competitive championship, so I need to stay very active over the next few months and I’m sure…

What’s the secret of Lewis Hamilton’s success? Lewis Hamilton was raised in a council house in the Shephall neighbourhood of Stevenage, as was I, his first home a half-mile away, albeit we were also a few years apart. We attended similar schools. We will have walked the same streets, shopped the same shops, used the same chippy at The Hyde. We both left the town in our late teens: I set out to earn a living, Lewis to conquer the world. He did. Thus far times six. So what made him the man he is? I haven’t a clue. He is surrounded by people of great intellect and huge expertise, PhDs in the likes of fluid dynamics and thermal combustion, yet as they observe and analyse Lewis there is an…

“If I have to choose between the Nurburgring 24 Hours and the Spa 24 Hours, I’d have to go for Spa. We got the result we wanted [a victory] and I think it probably was my best performance of the year. “There wasn’t much pressure on us before the race, because we were there as a bit of a joker for Porsche. But in a race in those conditions, there is always a lot of pressure. It was a very hard race mentally because it was about finding the right risk level: you can look like a hero very quickly and then look extremely stupid just as quickly. “I believe I found the right compromise for the conditions at the right time. We had a clean race and didn’t make…

Lewis Hamilton isn’t an easy taskmaster. Like all the great drivers he focuses far more on his failings, such as they are, rather than his strengths, and that’s at the heart of his success. “On the team side, I think we could say we’ve done 9.6 out of 10 maybe,” says Hamilton when asked how he rates his and the Mercedes team’s season. “Just because there’s always room to improve and we’ve not been perfect all year, we’ve not won every single race, and there’s just areas where we could definitely do better. “It’s really important to be critical of yourself; never say that you’re perfectly happy with the job that you’ve done. You always know there’s areas that you can improve on. For myself, I don’t ever really judge.” “There’s…

Aston Martin and Ferrari swapped places at each of the final three pitstops in Bahrain. That was how tight it was between the best of the cars from the British and Italian marques in GTE Pro on Saturday, though the grandstand finish that looked on the cards for much of the final half of the race never materialised. The Aston Martin Vantage GTE driven by Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim ended up triumphing by an unrepresentative 14-second margin after the chasing AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE shared by Davide Rigon and Miguel Molina was penalised. Molina had spun up the wheels for the briefest of moments as he left the pits for the final time, an offence in the WEC that was inevitably followed by a drivethrough. It was a…

F2 A laundry error that defined the season It wasn’t quite the start to the season he had in mind. After a tricky time in the Bahrain opener, ART Grand Prix recruit Nyck de Vries scored a second and a fourth in Baku to reduce the gap to early leader Nicholas Latifi. But when his laundry bag containing his race suit was binned erroneously, it looked like the Dutchman’s season could be marred by bad luck. But, with the help of similarly diminutive Formula 3 driver David Beckmann, who loaned him his spares, de Vries took the following rounds by storm as he won back to back races in Spain and Monaco to reassert his title aspirations. A win next time out at Paul Ricard meant he leapt Latifi into…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS The 2019 Supercars season had almost everything – except a title fight. There was a bitter parity debate, question marks over tactics, accusations of cheating, a record-breaking fine for the aforementioned tactics, an illegal Bathurst pole-winning engine, social-media name calling and more. All that was missing was an actual scrap for the big prize. With 18 wins, more than any Supercars driver had achieved in a season before, Scott McLaughlin had the title wrapped up with a round to spare. It was a remarkable display of dominance, particularly as he didn’t start two races – one after his warm-up lap clash with Cam Waters at Albert Park and another after his spectacular run-in with the wall in qualifying on the Gold Coast. McLaughlin’s rampant winning streak in the…

FORMULA REGIONAL EUROPEAN Twelve months ago, Frederik Vesti would never have guessed that he’d dominate the inaugural Formula Regional European Championship with Prema Powerteam and then finish in the top 10 on his debut in the new FIA F3 category – in Macau. That’s because he was looking likely to race in the putative DTM-supporting series for ‘old’ F3 cars with Van Amersfoort Racing. But Prema snared him away, and Vesti proved easily the class of a small field – an average of 13 starters compared to 20 in FRenault – on his way to victory in 13 of the 24 races. At first it looked quite equal between Vesti and his team-mates, Ferrari Driver Academy prospect Enzo Fittipaldi (grandson of Emerson) and young Brit Olli Caldwell, but the 17-year-old…

BLANCPAIN GT SERIES As far as debut seasons go, this year’s Blancpain GT Series campaign for Chinese outfit FFF Racing could not have gone much better. Owned by Fu Songyang and with the operation run by driver Andrea Caldarelli, the team many considered to be underdogs at the start of the year claimed a clean sweep in 2019 – winning the overall, Sprint and Endurance titles, as well as the teams’ championship to boot. The squad’s main rival throughout was defending Endurance champion Black Falcon Mercedes which, with drivers Maro Engel and Luca Stolz, was narrowly pipped to both the Sprint and 0verall crowns. The Sprint defeat came on countback in Hungary and the latter following a dramatic final round at Barcelona. Engel and Stolz began the year as firm…

WORLD RALLYCROSS As two of the most experienced World Rallycross drivers on the grid for 2019, Timmy Hansen and Andreas Bakkerud started the year as title favourites. But when Bakkerud miscounted his laps and charged his Audi S1 into the side of Hansen’s Peugeot 208 at the joker merge in Q3 at Yas Marina, the pair’s title aspirations took a huge early blow, while Hansen’s brother Kevin and Niclas Gronholm battled for opening-round victory. Timmy bounced back to win round two in Barcelona. While the consistent Bakkerud racked up solid points at almost every round – including victory in Canada – Timmy Hansen won another three times, but failed to make the semi-finals in Trois-Rivieres. That gave Bakkerud a single-point lead entering the final round. In a movie-like script for…

BRITISH RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP No driver had won back-to-back British Rally Championship titles since Keith Cronin in 2009 and 2010. That is, until Matt Edwards doubled up on his 2018 success this year to seal a second title in a Ford Fiesta R5. Edwards’ success came at the expense of fellow Welshman Tom Cave, whose wait for a BRC title goes on. The pair locked horns throughout the six-round championship and each took three victories, but two non-scores for Cave to Edwards’ one ultimately decided the title. Cave’s Cambrian and Ulster adventures did the real damage. Second on the road in Wales looked to be a strong start, but two punctures in the final test led to retirement on the road section back to the finish. Edwards had the edge over…

Forget the switch to 1600cc engines nine years ago, the last regulation change on the magnitude of what’s coming for 2022 was the introduction of World Rally Cars in 1997 (including the Subaru Impreza WRC 97, above). Overnight, the FIA opened up the World Rally Championship to everybody. Gone were the days when Group A demanded rally cars born out of costly production specials like Ford’s Sierra RS Cosworth, Toyota’s Celica GT-Four or Mitsubishi’s tweaked Lancers – in a multitude of evolutions. From 1997 onward all you needed was a steel-bodied, front-engined, four-seater and a production run of at least 25,000. And a base engine of no more than two litres in at least 2500 of those cars. It didn’t matter if your car was front-wheel drive and non-turbo, both…

TRYING NOT TO GET MURDERED Justin Keen’s short-lived exploits in Formula 3000 in the early noughties were funded by a small group of private backers intent on living what the Brit calls “the James Hunt motor racing lifestyle”. That’s how he ended shooting a movie that — his words again — “bordered on soft porn” in New York. Keen’s patrons had bought into a business in the USA and thought they could bottle the experiences they were enjoying as they travelled Europe watching their driver compete on the international arena. The film was planned as a marketing tool for a venture that involved fast cars and, if you believed the hype, beautiful women. “I played the role of a racing driver hanging around with rich blokes who came draped in…

HISTORICS The Jaguar Le Mans victories of 1988 and 1990 will be celebrated at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting next March with high-speed demonstration sessions for up to 16 Group C and IMSA machines. In what is likely to be the biggest ever on-track gathering of Jaguar sports-prototypes from the 1980s and early 1990s, the spectacular cars are due to run sessions at the West Sussex track on both days of the 78th Members’ Meeting on 28-29 March. The cars, developed and built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing, will be represented by models ranging from the 1985 XJR-6 to the XJR-16 of 1993. Jan Lammers, Andy Wallace and Johnny Dumfries won the 24 Hours in 1988 in the XJR-9, and two years later Martin Brundle, Price Cobb and John Nielsen took honours…

There was never a dull moment on my 2019 historic and club racing travails, made more enjoyable by new elements. Sweden’s longest-established classic car race meeting at Knutstorp, the Historic Racing Drivers Club’s splendid Lydden Hill debut and the Historic Sports Car Club’s first visit to Anglesey all left lasting impressions. But it was also a season of long-anticipated and unexpected happenings. The realisation of years of promise for Historic Formula 2 – which showcases the stunning cars of my youth and trumped diluted three-litre F1 across the board this term – and a heroic drive in the Spa Six Hours made indelible memories. Bathurst record-setter a car to behold Tony Longhurst’s sensational 1990 Bathurst 1000 qualifying lap record-setting Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500 turned heads at Brands Hatch in June.…

10 BEN STILES HSCC CLASSIC FORMULA FORD 2000 Schooled in racing in New Zealand where his British father – long-time Crossle FF1600 racer Trevor – is based, Ben Stiles impressed when he tasted Classic FF2000 at Silverstone in June 2018. Two seconds to benchmark Ian Pearson made Stiles resolve to return with the Van Diemen RF82 this season. He did, winning eight races and the URS title, the Pinto class running alongside Classic F3 or Historic FF2000. Tenacious Stiles’s crowning glory was a double outright victory at Anglesey. 9 TOM HILL BRSCC ALFA ROMEOS Formula E engineer Tom Hill became the first driver to win the Alfa Romeo Championship three times as he continued to dominate the Twin Spark Cup class. He took his trusty Bianco Auto Developments-prepared 156 to class honours…

WEC Toyota development driver Kenta Yamashita was the fastest of the three rookies to climb behind the wheel of one of the Japanese marque’s TS050 HYBRIDs at the official World Endurance Championship test in Bahrain last weekend. The 2019 Super GT champion (above) ended up quicker than both Thomas Laurent and Nyck de Vries on his first run in a TS050 at the WEC rookie test the day after the Bahrain 8 Hours. Mercedes Formula E racer de Vries was also driving an LMP1 car for the first time after being nominated by the WEC organisation, while Toyota test and reserve driver Laurent was making a second appearance in one of the hybrid machines. Yamashita’s 1m44.075s compared with Laurent’s 1m44.514s and a 1m44.561s from de Vries. Each of the drivers…

WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP Kyalami will get its first world championship race since the 1993 South African Grand Prix when the World Endurance Championship visits the Johannesburg venue in just over a year’s time. The new WEC fixture, scheduled for 6 February 2021, will be the first world series sportscar event at the track since 1984 (pictured is the 1983 race-winning Porsche 956 of Stefan Bellof and Derek Bell). The return of international motorsport to Kyalami, which began with last month’s Intercontinental GT Challenge finale, follows a major upgrade of the venue in the wake of its purchase in 2014 by Toby Venter, owner of Porsche South Africa. “Kyalami is an historical circuit, an amazing place with a long story with sportscar racing,” said WEC boss Gerard Neveu. “I had a…

Ben Keating did most of the hard work for the Project 1 Porsche squad as it took its first GTE Am victory of 2019-20. He opened with a three-hour stint, topping the battle of the bronzes in hour one before hanging in among the pros. The tactic of keeping Keating out beyond the 140-minute minimum driving time for each crew’s bronze-rated racer saved the car a pitstop and made the #57 911 RSR difficult to beat. Larry ten Voorde and Jeroen Bleekemolen, who subsequently cycled through the car, both agreed it was the boss who had done the hard work on Saturday. Darren Turner, Ross Gunn and Paul Dalla Lana were best of the rest in the works-run Aston Martin Vantage GTE. They led on more than one occasion as…

SUPER FORMULA AND SUPER GT Nick Cassidy fell two points short of winning both major Japanese championships, and it was only a controversial mid-season race that led to him failing to add a second Super GT crown to his maiden Super Formula title success. Still, it was a banner year for the New Zealander, who was promoted by Toyota to its spearhead TOM’S operation for Super Formula – and gave the rejuvenated squad the championship. That was despite a general lack of pace in SF for the Toyota teams compared to the Honda squads, which are reckoned to have more power, but that’s at the expense of fuel economy, meaning they spend slightly longer in the pits. Indeed, Cassidy’s SF crown was a masterpiece of strategy, good racecraft in the…

IMSA SPORTSCAR Cadillac’s stranglehold on the DPi category within the IMSA SportsCar Championship finally came to an end in 2019. After winning 11 out of the 20 races for which prototypes were eligible during the previous two seasons, Cadillac faced a far more level playing field due to the IMSA technical team’s innovative use of the oft-maligned ‘Balance of Performance’ criteria. The American V8s still won more races than any other manufacturer – four to the three apiece for Acura and Mazda – but that wasn’t enough to prevent Acura Team Penske from clinching both the driver and manufacturer championships following a thrilling season finale at Road Atlanta. In truth, the momentum shifted dramatically during the course of the 10-race season. That led IMSA to acknowledge it still has to…

EUROPEAN LE MANS SERIES As G-Drive Racing’s Roman Rusinov, Job van Uitert and returnee Jean-Eric Vergne romped to victory by one clear lap in Barcelona in July, few doubted that the team’s full-season drivers, Rusinov and van Uitert, would run away with the title. That they didn’t was the result of some misfortune at the next round at Silverstone – a cut tyre on the TDS-run ORECA with two laps to go handed a first category victory to the IDEC Sport ORECA of Paul-Loup Chatin, Memo Rojas and Paul Lafargue – and an over-opportunistic move by van Uitert on Rojas at Algarve that yielded a drivethrough penalty. But that’s not to take anything away from IDEC, which still had to win the final race to ensure that sixth for G-Drive…

FORMULA RENAULT EUROCUP Renault Sport got the better of the 2019 ‘Regional Formula 3’ split, despite its rejection from the FIA, which assigned the European rights for the category to the Italian-run Formula Regional. Using the same Tatuus chassis as FRegional – but with a turbocharged Renault engine instead of the Alfa powerplant – the French-organised series had more competitive teams, bigger grids… and a title fight that went down to the wire. Australian Oscar Piastri and French Renault F1 junior Victor Martins, both of whom had shone during the swansong season for the much-loved Tatuus that had served Renault so well from 2013-18, fought a gripping battle. Piastri, with the French R-ace GP team, went on a mid-season winning spree that put him into a very solid position in…

Markku Alen tells the story far better than most could. And it comes as a salutary lesson to those who think stepping down to an R5-based World Rally Car would be the end of the world in performance terms. It wouldn’t. If it’s the end of the world you want, rewind to the WRC’s very own winter of deep discontent in 1986. Group B was gone. And Group A was coming, in Lancia’s case in the form of the Delta HF (below). Running a pre-event test for the Delta S4 late in 1986, Alen watched suspiciously as the mechanics wheeled out a plain white Delta from the back of a truck. What was this thing? “The boys told me to take it out and test it,” says Alen. “I did…

PORSCHE CARRERA CUP GB Ginetta Junior frontrunner Will Martin will switch to the Porsche Carrera Cup GB next season. Martin, who took the most Junior wins of any driver in 2019 with nine, will make the step up alongside his Junior team Richardson Racing, which will compete in the Porsche series for the first time. “Getting the opportunity to race in such a prestigious championship so early in my career makes me so excited and I am extremely humble,” said Martin. “It’s a big step into the Carrera Cup GB for a new driver and new team to the series and we’ll have a lot to learn, but I’m confident that we can all work together to improve even more and make our mark on the series across the upcoming…

BRITISH GT British Touring Car Championship team Speedworks Motorsport is eyeing a move into the British GT4 series next season with the new Toyota Supra. Speedworks runs the factory supported Team Toyota GB Corolla in the BTCC, which claimed four wins in Tom Ingram’s hands in 2019. Ingram and team boss Christian Dick went to Jarama in Spain last week to test the GT4 car and learn more about it. Dick said that the squad was assessing its options ahead of the 2020 season. “The car is such a nice bit of kit, and I was able to quiz all the engineers and get a really good look around it,” he said. “It would be great to introduce the Toyota to the British GT Championship and it would fit really…

STEPHEN LICKORISH SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR In a week where one club series has secured a plum Spa World Endurance Championship support slot (see p128), it seems right to remember two other series that had the chance to shine on the big stage. The Mini Miglias and Se7ens starred at the May Thruxton British Touring Car Championship meeting and put on a brilliant slipstreaming show. They regularly ran four or five abreast and all four races were thrillers, where it was very difficult to predict a winner. Another highlight, featuring machines at the opposite end of the power spectrum, was my long-overdue first visit to Santa Pod for the FIA European Drag Racing Championship finale. STEFAN MACKLEY SPECIAL CONTRIBUTOR As I congratulated Jonny Adam on a fourth British GT3 title shortly after…

10 ASHLEY DIBDEN V ALEX FORES Qualifying sanction proves key in the battle between two Dallara F301 drivers for the Monoposto F3 spoils Just two points separated racing returnee Ashley Dibden from Alex Fores after a qualifying sanction at the season finale played a key role in the destiny of the Monoposto F3 title. The margins were tight between the pair throughout 2019 as they claimed 10 of the 14 class wins between them in their similar Dallara F301s. At the Brands Hatch decider, Fores beat Dibden to pole in race one, only to see his time disallowed for failing scrutineering. That, followed by a fuel-pump problem in the race itself, handed Dibden a narrow title triumph. 9 LUKE HERBERT V JACK HARDING Hotly fought Mazda MX-5 Supercup title ends with Harding…

BOOK REVIEWS MICHAEL SCHUMACHER – A LIFE IN PICTURES RRP £44.00 The emotion surrounding this book is unmissable from the word go. The opening chapter describes Michael Schumacher’s tragic skiing accident, just five days before his 45th birthday – with even a reference to the Pope’s activities at the time of the incident. It ends with the words ‘Silence as a deafening act of love that allows us to be closer to him’, referring to the family’s choice of keeping Schumacher’s rehabilitation very private. Michael Schumacher – A Life in Pictures is written by an Italian journalist who was so excited when Schumacher joined Ferrari in 1996 that he organised a meal out for all his‘press’ friends to welcome the young German to Italy, and completely misread the bill and…

Ah, the days before the globe got warmer… Or so you might think. Just five years earlier, competing on this frozen lake near Karlstad would have been impossible after the 1990 Swedish Rally was lost to the absence of winter. This is Marcus Gronholm enjoying himself and his Toyota Celica Turbo 4WD in a long, drifty, left-hander. The big Finn’s fun was halted a few stages later when the gearbox failed, forcing him into retirement. Kenneth Eriksson won from fellow Mitsubishi driver Tommi Makinen, but only after the soon to be world champ was slowed down. For classic rally DVDs head to dukevideo.com…

1) Who, what, where, when? 2) Who is this? This camel-crazy caricature had the best of times and the worst of times. From a key port to the garden of England, he would become synonymous with passing water. After scoring a hat-trick in the UK scene, he moved onto the world stage with the classiest team on the grid. The finest Formula Five racer of his generation, the public took him to their hearts, as he overcame stiff competition from John Parrott to claim a coveted readers’ vote, while he drove the charts crazy. With his foot to the floor he suffered terribly as he left for pastures new, but defied the odds to make a return. Having seen the light, but lost his back hair, he shifted his focus…