Indholdsfortegnelse for 12/11/20 i Autosport

Thanks to the troubles of the McLaren-Honda partnership, Jenson Button’s Formula 1 career did not finish as well as it should have, although he did perform well alongside Fernando Alonso. Fortunately, Button’s enthusiasm for motorsport has not dimmed and he has taken on a number of new challenges since 2017. As he tells James Newbold in our exclusive interview on page 18, Button still wants to push himself and learn. That helps to explain why, as a driver, he has taken on events as diverse as the Le Mans 24 Hours and Baja rally, and has moved into GT team management. He even combined the two at Silverstone’s British GT finale last weekend. Button has never been afraid to put himself in a position where he could fail. Few expected…

MOTOGP The career of MotoGP star Andrea Iannone has been dealt a massive blow after his appeal to have an anti-doping ban overturned was rejected and increased to four years. Aprilia rider Iannone was banned by governing body the FIM at the end of last year when he was found to have tested positive for a banned steroid at the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Italian had this 18-month ban upheld after an FIM hearing in March, but was deemed to have ingested the substance accidentally through contaminated food. Aprilia and Iannone appealed this ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), believing the acquittal of other athletes over similar offences provided a precedent. But CAS rejected this appeal following a review of the evidence and has upheld the World…

FORMULA 4 British Red Bull Junior Jonny Edgar snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in winning the German Formula 4 title at Oschersleben last weekend with a drive that team boss Frits van Amersfoort said “showed the world he’s a fantastic racer”. Edgar, 16, went into the weekend with a 23-point advantage over fellow Red Bull protege and Van Amersfoort Racing teammate Jak Crawford. Edgar was leading the opening race when he misjudged a defensive move on the 15-year-old American. They made contact, sending Edgar to the pits with a puncture, while Crawford went on to win despite a broken front wing. That gave Crawford a two-point lead, and he extended that to nine by soaking up massive pressure from Edgar to take another victory in the second race.…

While Suzuki last weekend delighted in its first MotoGP 1-2 since 1982, and Joan Mir’s maiden victory put him within touching distance of the title thanks to a 37-point lead after the European Grand Prix, Yamaha wallowed in despair after a miserable Valencia weekend. Yamaha was forced to exceed Maverick Vinales’s season engine allocation, meaning he was hit with a pitlane start. After recovering to 13th, his title hopes are basically over. This came after five members of the team were forced into COVID-19 isolation, with Vinales missing crew for the weekend. Fabio Quartararo struggled in all conditions and crashed on lap one, rejoining to finish 14th. His title hopes are all but gone now. And, for the first time since Valencia 2007, not one Yamaha rider finished in the…

When Autosport sat down with Jenson Button, it came one day after Lewis Hamilton broke Michael Schumacher’s all-time Formula 1 wins record at the Portuguese Grand Prix. His crushing defeat of Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, by 26 seconds, was his 92st F1 victory and further strengthened his case to be considered as one of motorsport’s greatest drivers. Button acknowledges that his McLaren team-mate between 2010 and 2012 is currently “the best driver in the world”, but says the greatest-of-all-time debate is “a pointless conversation”. “How can you compare [Juan Manuel] Fangio who drove a car that had a stick-shift and no seatbelts to a guy that’s racing a car that does 230mph and can go through Copse flat-out, so they don’t even have to think?” says Button. “In Formula 1…

For decades, World Rally Championship and Dakar Rally teams have used the easily accessible Chateau de Lastours facility in the South of France as the roughest of proving grounds to put fledgling competition creations through their paces. Think Ford Focus WRC, Hyundai i20 WRC and Peugeot 2008 DKR to name but a few. Those machines have gone on to succeed in some of the harshest terrains on the planet, after first going through this very development school. It’s therefore fitting that the major initial running of the new ODYSSEY 21 E-SUV – the spec car that will be campaigned in the nascent all-electric Extreme E off-road racing championship – has been undertaken on those same gravel roads. The inaugural 2021 XE calendar will visit five locations: Saudi Arabia (Desert X-Prix),…

NASCAR CUP PHOENIX (USA) 8 NOVEMBER ROUND 36/36 Perhaps Chase Elliott was destined to win the NASCAR Cup title in dominant style at Phoenix last Sunday, for there was a pleasing symmetry to when his father Bill lifted the crown in 1988. They both did so at the wheel of the #9 car, at a time when the NBA title was claimed by the LA Lakers, the LA Dodgers won baseball’s World Series, and an American vice-president was elected to the Oval Office. But to get to a position where Elliott could ensure history did repeat itself, his Hendrick Motorsports crew needed a big dollop of luck. Earlier this month at Martinsville, in a must-win eliminator for the Georgia native, Elliott had a penalty rescinded after his jackman had jumped…

MOTOGP VALENCIA (ESP) 8 NOVEMBER ROUND 12/14 As the drama of the MotoGP season has unfolded, it looked almost a dead cert that the championship would go down to the wire in Portugal at the end of November. A general lack of consistency throughout the field – in large part down to the 2020 Michelin tyres and the condensed schedule – left the door wide open for anyone to come through and take the crown. Except, while he was yet to win, from August onwards the most consistent force has been Joan Mir and Suzuki. And after he finally broke that duck last weekend in the first European Grand Prix since 1995, the title race looks all but a mere formality now with two rounds left to run. The first…

BRITISH GT Tim Bridgman, the 2009 Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion, is eyeing a full-time racing comeback next season after making his first race appearance in three years in the British GT finale at Silverstone last weekend. The 35-year-old, whose last race outing came in a HubAuto Racing GT3 Porsche in Blancpain Asia in 2017, joined Carrera Cup Pro-Am class regular Karl Leonard in a Team Parker Racing Porsche Carrera Cup car in the GTC class. His first British GT outing since 2011 ended in disappointment following contact on the opening lap with Mike Brown’s Ultimate Speed Aston Martin Vantage, before Leonard also collided with Lucky Khera’s Ferrari 488 Challenge. Suspension failure when Bridgman was at the wheel ended their day after 33 laps. Bridgman, who won his Carrera Cup…

WILKINSON’S F3 DEBUT Ginetta GT5 Challenge racer Jonny Wilkinson made his BRDC British F3 debut in the finale at Silverstone last weekend with Fortec Motorsport. The one-time F4 USA driver took a best result of ninth. Also in action was Ayrton Simmons, returning for the second time in 2020 after two wins at Brands Hatch with Chris Dittmann Racing, who took two podiums for JHR Developments. Wilkinson’s Fortec team-mate Roberto Faria will return to British F4 to contest the final round of the season this weekend at Brands. GRIMES’S TRIBUTE TO KIRK Ford Fiesta and Fun Cup racer Chris Grimes has paid tribute to former CNC Heads Sports and Saloons stalwart Les Kirk, who recently died of cancer. Grimes brought Kirk’s Fisher Fury out for the final rounds of the…

It could not be any closer. Unlike the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, where Harry King has already sealed the title with an event to spare, the two main British Formula 4 protagonists head to the Brands Hatch finale level on points. You can always guarantee there will be plenty of excitement in the British Touring Car Championship showdown in Kent, but there should be some intriguing title battles in the support series, too. Given how close it is, the F4 tussle is likely to be one of the highlights. Predicting a winner is not easy, although it is Carlin’s Zak O’Sullivan who heads into the weekend with the momentum. Fortec driver Luke Browning had built a strong 57-point lead mid-season, helped by his hat-trick of victories at Oulton Park, but…

GT3 (85 laps) 1 Rob Collard/Sandy Mitchell (Lamborghini Huracan EVO); 2 Ian Loggie/Yelmer Buurman (Mercedes-AMG) +7.669s; 3 James Baldwin/Michael O’Brien (McLaren 720S); 4 Al Faisal Al Zubair/Martin Kodric (McLaren); 5 Angus Fender/Dean Macdonald (McLaren); 6 Michael Igoe/Andrea Caldarelli (Lamborghini). Fastest lap Phil Keen (Lamborghini) 1m58.782s (110.94mph). Pole Collard/Mitchell. Starters 20. Points 1 Mitchell/Collard 168; 2 Sam De Haan/Patrick Kujala 148.5; 3 Keen/Adam Balon 134; 4 Baldwin/O’Brien 125; 5 Buurman/Loggie 111; 6 Igoe 103. GT4 (77 laps) 1 Rob Wheldon/Andrew Gordon-Colebrooke (BMW M4); 2 Dan Vaughan/Jamie Caroline (Aston Martin Vantage) -1 lap; 3 Connor O’Brien/Patrick Kibble (Aston Martin); 4 Jordan Collard/Patrik Matthiesen (McLaren 570S); 5 Gus Bowers/Chris Wesemael (McLaren); 6 James Dorlin/Alex Toth-Jones (Aston Martin). FL Sam Smelt (Toyota GR Supra) 2m10.997s (100.59mph). P Smelt/James Kell. S 12. Points 1 Caroline/Vaughan…

Amid all the uncertainties that 2020 has produced, some normality returned in the form of a Ginetta title being decided on the last lap of the final race of the season after a thrilling on-track battle. Ginetta GT5 Challenge title rivals Josh Malin and James Taylor came into the last two races of the season separated by just seven points, which was extended to eight when Malin grabbed pole for both races. But any thoughts that Malin would have everything his own way were immediately dispelled at the start of race one when Taylor muscled his way ahead on the opening lap into Maggotts as Malin ran wide and then had a huge moment exiting Chapel. The car was on the verge of spearing off left and then right before…

Francois Cevert’s Tyrrell-Ford 006 fills the frame in dramatic close-up during the 1973 Monaco Grand Prix. The Frenchman rocketed into the lead from his fourth-place grid slot, but his moment in the sun was short-lived as a front-right puncture caused by hitting a kerb on lap two forced him to pit. He fought back to finish fourth, his progress aided by spending a chunk of the race running behind, but a lap adrift, of team-mate and eventual winner Jackie Stewart, so when cars moved over to be lapped by the Scot, Cevert was able to nip through and take another place. For classic 1970s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP It’s a sad way to finish. The LMP1 era will go out with a whimper at this weekend’s Bahrain round of the World Endurance Championship: just the two Toyotas on the grid, and little or no chance of any kind of battle to rekindle memories of the glory days of the category. While the pair of TS050 HYBRIDs – the drivers of one with an arm tied behind their backs – play out the charade that Saturday’s Bahrain 8 Hours will surely be, it will be difficult to stop harking back to better times. And there really were some amazing moments over the quarter of a century of LMP1. LMP1 began in embryonic form in 1994, the year this writer started working for Autosport, so there may…

MOTOGP Outgoing Ducati rider Andrea Dovizioso is set to take a MotoGP sabbatical in 2021 and will not take on a test role at Yamaha. The 15-times MotoGP race winner made the bombshell announcement during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend in August that he would not be renewing his contract with Ducati beyond 2020, and admitted at the time that he had no Plan B. Autosport understands that Dovizioso held discussions with Honda, KTM and Yamaha to become its test rider in 2021, with the Yamaha option emerging as the most likely. But he has since changed his mind and will now leave the MotoGP paddock completely. The Italian will focus on his passion for motocross racing while keeping fully fit with a view to making a return to the…

WORLD TOURING CAR CUP Tin-top fans have got it made this weekend. If you thought the British Touring Car Championship’s five-way title showdown at Brands Hatch was something to get excited about, then consider the 11-driver shootout for World Touring Car Cup honours that will simultaneously take place at Motorland Aragon… Yann Ehrlacher, nephew and team-mate of four-time World Touring Car champion Yvan Muller, leads the way in his Cyan Racing Lynk & Co with a 26-point advantage over Munnich Motorsport Honda Civic Type R driver Esteban Guerrieri. Third is Muller, one point ahead of Jean-Karl Vernay in his Team Mulsanne Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Other contenders are Gilles Magnus, Nathanael Berthon and veteran Tom Coronel (Comtoyou Audis), Mikel Azcona (Zengo Motorsport Cupra), Lynk & Co pair Santiago Urrutia and Thed…

LENGTH 3.317 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 58 MOST RECENT POLE POSITION Sebastian Vettel 1m25.049s (2011) POLE LAP RECORD Sebastian Vettel 1m25.049s (2011) RACE LAP RECORD Juan Pablo Montoya 1m24.770s (2005) UK START TIMES Friday 13 November FP1 0800 FP2 1200 Saturday 14 November FP3 0900 QUALIFYING 1200 Sunday 15 November RACE 1010 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE HIGHLIGHTS CHANNEL 4 1600 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVERS CONSTRUCTORS RACE STATS TURKISH GP WINNERS ISTANBUL PARK MASTERS Top 10 points scorers for grands prix at Istanbul Park. All races converted to current points system.…

Another of Jacky Ickx’s great drives I’ve just read the article on Jacky Ickx’s top 10 by Gary Watkins (Autosport Plus) and ask that you could pass on my appreciation for that and the top 10 LMP1 races. Among his top 10 drives could have been added his win in 1977 at Bathurst. Ickx was co-driver to Allan Moffat in a Group C Ford Falcon XC Coupe, a massive lump of metal that despite being the best-prepared XC Coupe on the track would have been an evil thing to drive at the speeds that were achieved. The XC had a 500bhp V8, with a four-speed gearbox. The brakes and tyres were barely up to the task and the car was derived from a road car with homologation requiring the sale…

Well, we made it. During the painful year of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic saw to it that the British Touring Car Championship season couldn’t kick off until August, and at no point have crowds been admitted to circuits due to the series’ status as Elite Sport. But, with eight rounds down, that status has saved the day regarding the season finale. Elite Sport events are exempt under the November lockdown, and that means five drivers can fight it out this weekend on the Brands Hatch Indy Circuit. Four-time champion Colin Turkington leads the way in his West Surrey Racing-run BMW 330i M Sport, but Ash Sutton is just nine points adrift in this, his first campaign with the Laser Tools Racing Infiniti Q50, run by his old pals at the…

That Extreme E has committed to addressing the climate crisis as an intrinsic part of its concept is what’s responsible for attracting Formula 1 world champions Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg into the fold as team owners with X44 and Rosberg Xtreme Racing. Hamilton’s efforts in highlighting diversification in the sport have made the headlines this year while, since his shock departure from F1 after his title-winning campaign in 2016, Rosberg has become an environmental entrepreneur. They’re not the only big names. Volkswagen Group member Cupra becomes the first manufacturer directly involved by giving technical support to the Abt concern. Zak Brown and Michael Andretti are in partnership at Andretti United, while Chip Ganassi and Jean-Eric Vergne are also heading up XE squads. In addition, the XE paddock will be…

SUPER GT MOTEGI (JPN) 8 NOVEMBER ROUND 7/8 Honda dominated the penultimate round of the Super GT season at Motegi, as Team Aguri pairing Tomoki Nojiri and Nirei Fukuzumi scored their first win of the year. For the second race in a row, the safety car played a large role in determining the outcome, as a caution was called on lap 24 of 63 – after only two GT500 cars, the Aguri Honda NSX-GT and the similar polesitting Nakajima machine of Takuya Izawa and Hiroki Otsu, had pitted. They were effectively given a minute’s advantage by the time the others stopped, and duly came home 1-2. Best of the rest was the Kunimitsu Honda of Naoki Yamamoto and Tadasuke Makino, while the cars of the Mugen and Real Racing squads…

BRDC BRITISH F3 Leading Ginetta team Elite Motorsport will enter the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship next season with cars acquired from Lanan Racing, which could potentially be ending its involvement in motorsport. Two Tatuus-Mountune machines have been bought by Eddie Ives’s Elite operation, with the possibility of a third car being added ahead of its maiden campaign in single-seaters next year. Elite has been successful in a number of Ginetta championships since it moved into Ginetta Junior in 2015. Last year it carried James Hedley and Harry King to the Junior and GT4 Supercup crowns respectively. The squad expanded into the Mini Challenge for the first time this year, with the series’ addition to the TOCA support package, and Ives admits a move into a single-category has been on…

BRITISH GT Jenson Button has said he would do more testing if he were to return to GT3 racing in the future after finishing 14th in his British GT cameo at Silverstone last weekend. Both GT3 debutant Button and Jenson Team Rocket RJN team-mate Chris Buncombe were left mystified on Saturday by problems generating tyre temperature on their McLaren 720S. This left them only 18th fastest on combined times, with Button reporting there was “something fundamentally wrong” with the car. Although he felt it was more stable in high-speed corners on race day, after the dampers were changed overnight, there was still room for improvement. “I still think there’s something not quite right with the car that we need to find,” said the 2009 world champion. “As the fuel came…

BARC The planned British Truck Racing Championship finale at Brands Hatch last weekend was cancelled on the eve of the event, despite it being granted ‘elite’ status. The British Automobile Racing Club meeting was recognised by both the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and governing body Motorsport UK as ‘elite’, but it was cancelled last Thursday after discussions with the local council over additional preparations needed in the wake of the second national lockdown in England. The decision does not affect this weekend’s British Touring Car finale at the circuit. As well as the Trucks, last weekend’s meeting was due to feature the last action of the Legends and Junior Saloons seasons, along with the only Pickup Truck races in 2020 and a grid for the Classic and…

BERKELEY CARS British sportscar brand Berkeley is to return with a new version of its Bandit model. The small constructor produced a limited number of cars in the second half of the 1950s, some of which competed. Stirling Moss drove one at Goodwood in 1956, four years before the firm was forced to close the doors to its Bedfordshire premises. Aviation and automotive industrial designer Martin Rees and former RML and Lotus engineer Simon Scleater have now joined forces to bring Berkeley back. In the 1950s, Berkeley pioneered the use of fibreglass bodies with recycled aircraft components, and the new composite chassis will use plant-based materials: flax replaces carbonfibre, while resins from trees take the place of glue-like chemicals. A range of powertrain options will be available, from conventional V6…

SILVERSTONE BRITISH GT 7-8 NOVEMBER Time and again, Barwell Motorsport has seen its superb starts to British GT campaigns unravel when it really counts. But, at the Silverstone finale, Rob Collard and Sandy Mitchell drew a line in the sand and the Lamborghini Huracan pair overturned their deficit to Sam De Haan and Patrick Kujala to wrap up the title in fine style with pole and victory. The memory of the seatbelt blunder that cost them a potential win at Snetterton was firmly cast aside as Collard put together a confidence-boosting pole lap at a track where he has twice suffered heavy accidents in recent years, then assertively passed Ian Loggie’s RAM Mercedes in a move that set the crew up for their second win of the year. Unlike Brands…

SILVERSTONE BRSCC 7-8 NOVEMBER Kaylen Frederick made certain on the destination of the BRDC British F3 Championship title, as an imperious display at Silverstone, which included two wins, secured the American the coveted crown. The Carlin driver entered the final round of the season with a 13-point lead over main rival Kush Maini, with both title protagonists qualifying on the front row for races one and three on the Grand Prix layout – Frederick fractionally quicker than Maini both times. As Maini tried to pull alongside on the run to Copse in the opening race, Frederick swept across the bow of the Hitech GP machine and the resulting loss of momentum dropped Maini behind Ayrton Simmons, who was returning to the series for a second 2020 outing, this time with…

British club racing lost one of its stalwarts when Pete Stevens died earlier this year. He was best known for his years in Thundersaloons, winning four titles, and in particular for the mighty Chevrolet-powered Vauxhall Carlton in which he claimed his last two crowns. It’s 35 years since the birth of the series, which featured some of the most powerful saloon cars ever to race in this country. Like so many successful categories of the era, it was dreamed up by Brands Hatch supremo John Webb and, as the moniker suggests, drew inspiration from the Thundersports series that had been running since 1983. While Special Saloons, and the Super Saloons offshoot, had captured the imaginations of racers and fans alike in the 1970s, grid sizes were waning in the 1980s.…

A hard-fought RAC Rally and a celebration of recently crowned F1 world champion John Surtees were the main features of Autosport this week in 1964. Our interim RAC report stated that 158 competitors had taken the start, but that many had hit trouble in the early stages. As the magazine closed for press it was the Mini Cooper S of Rauno Aaltonen/Tony Ambrose that led, from the Volvo PV544 of Tom Trana/Gunnar Thermanius. In third sat the Mini of Harry Kallstrom and Ragnar Hakansson that made our cover. The Mini challenge would not last. Kallstrom and Aaltonen both suffered transmission failures, while Paddy Hopkirk crashed his Cooper. Trana came through to win the gruelling event “with a performance of sheer brilliance”, according to the following week’s Autosport. Timo Makinen’s Austin-Healey…

FORMULA 1 The inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on the streets of Jeddah will be a night race, while the Vietnamese GP has been dropped in a provisional 23-round calendar announced this week. The street race in Jeddah will take place on 28 November as the penultimate round of the 2021 season, starting a 10-year deal between F1 and Saudi Arabia. The event will become the second full night race on the F1 calendar after Singapore. The announcement was followed by confirmation of the provisional 2021 calendar that features 22 races, as speculated last week in Autosport, with one TBC slot following the late dropping of Vietnam. Autosport understands that F1 officials decided to scrap the race due to ongoing political issues in Vietnam. The former mayor of Hanoi, Nguyen…

The DTM’s vision for an electric support series hit the track at last weekend’s Hockenheim season finale, in the hands of ex-champions Hans Stuck and Timo Scheider, Formula E refugee Daniel Abt and Formula 3 racer Sophia Florsch. The DTM Electric has been developed by long-time Audi partner Schaeffler, and pushes out over 1000bhp thanks to battery-electric power. It includes Schaeffler’s Space Drive steer-by-wire technology (electronic steering operating without conventional mechanical steering). Apparently, rather than a typical race car layout, the car features ‘a puristic design’ (answers on a postcard please). DTM Electric is set for introduction in 2023 to a package that will include the headlining series (which is switching from Class 1 machinery to GT3 for 2021), the GT4-based DTM Trophy, historic exotica in DTM Classic, and DTM…

INDYCAR SERIES Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves will join Meyer Shank Racing for a part-time 2021 IndyCar Series campaign. Castroneves’s deal with MSR is understood to be for six races – Long Beach, Barber Motorsports Park, the Indy 500, the new-for-2021 second race on the Indy road course in August, Portland and Laguna Seca. The 45-year-old has not competed full-time in the series since 2017, and has only raced at Indy since then, alongside his IMSA commitments with Penske. MSR, which in the last off-season switched its technical alliance from what was previously known as Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports to Andretti Autosport, became a full-time IndyCar team for the first time this year, running one car driven by Jack Harvey, who stays on for 2021. Castroneves has become available…

MACAU GRAND PRIX TCR Scandinavia champion Rob Huff is the only non-local driver entered for next week’s Macau Grand Prix event, which has been heavily shaped by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Huff, who clinched the 2012 World Touring Car crown on the famous street circuit, has a record nine wins at the track, and will bid for honours in the Macau Guia classic – which doubles up as the TCR China finale – in an MG 6 (above). “The MG 6 has been really strong in its first full season in the TCR China championship,” said Huff, who is serving a 14-day isolation period in a Macanese hotel room. “I think we’ve got a very good chance, although it’s not going to be easy. This is a new car for…

There are many corners that have gone down in Formula 1’s folklore with significant adjectives attached: ‘famous’, ‘fabulous’, ‘fearsome’. For Eau Rouge, Peraltada or Parabolica you can add ‘evocative’ to the descriptive cliche list. But that’s only because they have proper names, something seemingly eschewed in current track construction. Now, though, F1 is heading to another distantly familiar venue, which has a corner that has gained all the right adjectives despite its utterly uninspiring name. During Istanbul Park’s initial seven-year stint on the F1 schedule, its ‘Turn 8’ complex understandably grabbed attention. This bumpy, four-apex, ‘sweeping’ section severely tests the drivers. As Istanbul Park is an anti-clockwise layout, it placed tremendous stress on their necks throughout this high-speed, left-hand ‘blast’. This weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix will be F1’s first since…

Four years have passed since the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, a race that is widely remembered for Max Verstappen’s charge to the podium in horrendous conditions and Felipe Nasr battling into the points to save his Sauber team, while effectively sinking the Manor squad. Jenson Button’s drive to finish 16th and last at the track where he had clinched the 2009 world championship, as McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso salvaged a point for 10th, barely registered as a footnote. But the penultimate race of his swansong F1 season (he would return for a final time at Monaco in 2017, subbing for Alonso when the Spaniard was given permission to skip F1’s grandee race for the Indianapolis 500) served as proof to Button that he’d made the right decision in stepping away…

THERE ARE FOUR MORE TITLES UP FOR GRABS AT BRANDS Even if Colin Turkington doesn’t win the British Touring Car Championship title, there should be some celebrations at Brands Hatch this weekend within the pit garage of BMW squad West Surrey Racing, which is in the box seat to win the manufacturers’ and teams’ crowns. There have been only three manufacturer BTCC teams in 2020, and one of those – Toyota – is represented by just a single car, so kudos to Tom Ingram for Toyota’s points score, which is just a smidgen under half of BMW’s total. As it is, Turkington and Tom Oliphant have racked up a 48-point advantage going into Brands over Honda duo Dan Cammish and Matt Neal. There are 111 points on the table here…

DTM HOCKENHEIM (DEU) 7-8 NOVEMBER ROUND 9/9 Rene Rast cemented his position as Audi’s most successful DTM driver in history by clinching his third title in four years with a convincing display at Hockenheim. After winning four races on the trot over the previous two rounds at Zolder, Rast headed into the decider 19 points clear of chief title rival Nico Muller, with Robin Frijns 41 behind in third as a rank outsider. Rast and Audi stablemate Muller qualified on the front row of the grid for last weekend’s opening race, setting the stage for a nailbiting battle. Muller got the jump on polesitter Rast at the start as the two title contenders banged wheels, but Team Rosberg driver Rast reclaimed the lead with an easy pass on lap nine.…

BRITISH GT Newly crowned British GT champion Rob Collard said he was “re-energised” by switching codes after two decades in the British Touring Car Championship. The 52-year-old claimed the GT3 crown alongside Barwell Motorsport team-mate Sandy Mitchell by winning at Silverstone last weekend in his maiden GT season. Collard became disillusioned with tin-tops at the Power Maxed Racing Vauxhall team last year, his first winless campaign since 2013, and considered hanging up his helmet before making the successful switch to GT3. “Touring cars got a bit too monotonous and I think I probably got a bit lazy in my approach to it because it just felt flat, whereas here I’ve had to come in and really focus myself to get on the pace,” he said. “I still feel I need…

WALTER HAYES TROPHY A fundraising page set up to help Colin Turner’s recovery, after both of his legs were amputated following a crash in the Walter Hayes Trophy earlier this month, has attracted a wealth of support. Scottish Formula Ford driver Turner suffered serious injuries in the incident during the Last Chance race of the Silverstone event, which was triggered when Dean Forward spun out of Woodcote in tricky, wet conditions and hit the pitwall. His stricken Vector was then collected by Ken Finneran and Turner. While Finneran and Forward were soon released from hospital, Turner’s injuries were far more severe. Surgeons at University Hospital Coventry battled to save his legs, but both had to be amputated below the knee. He has also suffered broken vertebrae in his lower back,…

GINETTA GT5 CHALLENGE Newly crowned Mazda MX-5 champion Oliver Allwood made his Ginetta GT5 Challenge debut at Silverstone last weekend. Allwood secured his maiden Mazda crown last month at Brands Hatch by beating Mike Comber to the Mk1 title by just two points, and remained with AB Motorsport for the step up. Allwood finished 11th in the first race around the Grand Prix Circuit and improved to eighth in race two, in which he finished just 0.2 seconds behind Dan Budd, a result he said he would have been “really happy with” prior to the race. “ABM have got the car and I had the opportunity to do this round,” said Allwood, who first raced Mazdas in 2013 and has since competed in five full seasons. “They are planning to…

Andrew Gordon-Colebrooke and series debutant Rob Wheldon took advantage of a strategy blinder to end a tough season for Century Motorsport on a high, as a tense battle for the GT4 title was decided in favour of TF Sport’s Jamie Caroline and Dan Vaughan. Wheldon started down in ninth, but his BMW M4 was kept out during the early safety car period until lap five, when he followed leader Jordan Collard’s HHC McLaren in. Crucially, while the Pro-Am BMW had a 14-second shorter pitstop and didn’t lose a lap to the safety car, HHC’s longer stop meant Patrik Matthiesen arrived at the pit exit when the light was red and had to wait another 23s, dropping him to last. “We were patient when the safety car came out,” explained Century…

BRDC BRITISH F3 Race 1 (10 laps) 1 Kaylen Frederick; 2 Ayrton Simmons +2.608s; 3 Kush Maini; 4 Roberto Faria; 5 Louis Foster; 6 Oliver Clarke. Fastest lap Frederick 1m54.406s (115.18mph). Pole Frederick. Starters 19. Race 2 (10 laps) 1 Benjamin Pedersen; 2 Bart Horsten +0.737s; 3 Nazim Azman; 4 Clarke; 5 Carter Williams; 6 Sasakorn Chaimongkol. FL Chaimongkol 1m56.877s (112.74mph). P Max Marzorati. S 19. Race 3 (10 laps) 1 Frederick; 2 Faria +4.121s; 3 Simmons; 4 Clarke; 5 Chaimongkol; 6 Maini. FL Frederick 1m54.564s (115.02mph). P Frederick. S 19. Points 1 Frederick 499; 2 Maini 448; 3 de Pauw 392; 4 Foster 388; 5 Azman 370; 6 Skelton 320. PORSCHE SPRINT CHALLENGE GB Race 1 Theo Edgerton Race 2 James Dorlin GINETTA GT5 CHALLENGE Race 1 James Taylor…

BOOK REVIEW ASTON MARTIN: MADE IN BRITAIN RRP £20 By the normal standards of the reviews that grace these pages, this one’s a touch personal. This James Bond-loving Autosport writer spent the early part of the first national lockdown distracted by the build of a gadget-laden LEGO Aston Martin DB5, complete with ejector seat and wing-mounted machine guns. A beer-inspired late-night eBay purchase then meant disassembling many of the 1295 bricks to retrofit an aftermarket light kit. Winding on a couple of months, this writer paid a visit to their childhood home in Lincolnshire to see their parents on the eve of Boris Johnson belatedly announcing the second lockdown. A day later, news came that Sean Connery had died aged 90. On the return car journey, the title songs of…

Everything was going right for Adam Carroll in June 2009. The Northern Irishman had wrapped up the A1GP ‘World Cup of Motorsport’ title for Team Ireland, was being linked with one of the mooted new Formula 1 teams for 2010 and even got to appear on a chat show with Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz. That his Lola F1 shot didn’t materialise mattered little though, because he had attracted the attention of A1 Team USA seat-holder Michael Andretti, and an IndyCar debut in 2010 was a real possibility. It was a long time in the making for a driver who had always raced “on a Formula Renault budget”. In 2005, he had been the reserve driver for Champ Car outfit RuSPORT at Mexico City, when Justin Wilson was nursing a…