Indholdsfortegnelse for 04/03/21 i Autosport

There’s little doubt that Ferrari was the on-track disaster story of Formula 1 in 2020. From being Mercedes’ main rival and winning three races (which could have been more) in 2019, the famous Italian team slumped to sixth in the constructors’ championship. The reasons for that – the fallout from the engine controversy, a draggy car and Sebastian Vettel’s troubles – are well known, but solving them is rather harder. As Alex Kalinauckas explains on page 22, Mattia Binotto seems confident that the key problems have been solved. Ferrari won’t defeat Mercedes this season but, if it can recover to third in the constructors’ table while focusing on the new regulations due to arrive in 2022, it should give Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz Jr and fans some reasons to be…

OBITUARY Among the titans who put the World Rally Championship on the map through the 1970s and 1980s, few could challenge the versatility and leadership of 1983 title winner Hannu Mikkola, who has passed away at the age of 78 after a long illness. The first deluge of international success accrued by Nordic talent such as Rauno Aaltonen, Timo Makinen and Pauli Toivonen in the early 1960s helped pave the way for Mikkola to usher in a new generation on the cusp of the world championship era. Born in Joensuu in May 1942, Mikkola first entered a rally in 1963, and would remain on the national scene, balancing opportunities to compete with the demands of academic life. But after victory on the Tampere and Helsinki rallies of 1967, he elected…

BTCC What is going on at Team Dynamics? That was the question British Touring Car Championship fans were asking on Tuesday this week when the team announced a parting of the ways with Dan Cammish – third in the points in 2019 and 2020 – after one season of his existing two-year deal. Amid speculation that Honda is no longer supporting the Dynamics-run Civic Type Rs, the team said that it will announce one driver on Friday of this week, with the other ‘confirmed over the coming weeks’. Cammish’s 2018-20 team-mate Matt Neal, whose family founded Dynamics, said in a statement: “Dan is a fantastic guy and has been a great driver for us! We wish him all the very best for the future and will very much be keeping…

DTM Audi DTM star Nico Muller is to return to Team Rosberg, the team with which he began his career in the series, for the switch to GT3 rules in 2021. The Swiss, who was runner-up to Rene Rast last year with Abt Sportsline, will spearhead the line-up of Rosberg, which has, as expected, committed to running a brace of Audi R8 LMS machines. Muller, who will once again dovetail the DTM with his Formula E programme, will be joined by little-known American Dev Gore. The 23-year-old’s European CV amounts to a 2019 Blancpain Endurance campaign in a Strakka Racing Mercedes, plus some 2018 Euroformula Open outings. The BMW and Mercedes line-ups have also been bolstered in recent days. Top GT3 team Rowe Racing has emulated Walkenhorst Motorsport in committing…

FRONT END Mercedes pressed pause on its 2020 development early to steal a march on 2021, but it seems that the team is trying to keep a lid on any wide-scale updates for the time being. At the front, the car retains the split-end front-wing element that the team has used over the past couple of seasons, shortening the length of the top element to satisfy the five-element regulation mandated by the rules. The team made sporadic appearances with a more conventional front-wing design at selected events last year, so this can be generally interchangeable. The front-brake ducts also appear to have been flipped upside down, with the widest part of the inlet now having dropped to the bottom. GOODBYE DUAL-AXIS STEERING The W12 is shorn of DAS, which has…

A bright new future for the top flight of sportscar racing. Massively reduced costs. Prototype machines that can be made to look like their road-going brethren. And a surplus of resources from its Formula 1 programme becoming available. The stars have aligned for Ferrari’s long-awaited factory return to the pinnacle of sportscar racing. Everything came together for the decision that preceded Wednesday’s announcement of the Italian manufacturer’s bid from 2023 to add to its tally of nine outright victories at the Le Mans 24 Hours. It seems it is just a happy coincidence that Ferrari’s first factory assault with a prototype will come on stream half a century on from its last such campaign in 1973 with the 312 PB. This was an opportunity that was too good to turn…

The reasons behind Ferrari’s plunge down the Formula 1 pecking order came from two directions. But it could be argued that both had the same source: the team itself. Whatever Ferrari was doing with its previous engine design – the FIA has never stated that it was doing something illegal, but there is strong suspicion regarding its fuel-flow operation in 2019 – it got serious negative attention. The governing body conducted a lengthy investigation, and subsequently issued a string of technical directives aimed at closing ambiguities in the power-unit rules. These applied to all engine manufacturers, but hit Ferrari hardest. And it did so in two areas, as the aerodynamic developments on 2020’s SF1000, which were aimed at widening the range of tracks where the Italian team was competitive, suddenly…

Forty years ago this week, a little five-man team named West Surrey Engineering, thrown together over the previous month, made its debut in the opening round of the British Formula 3 Championship at Silverstone. And Jonathan Palmer, one of those five men, took victory on 1 March 1981 in his Toyota-powered Ralt RT3. This was the same chassis that, at the end of 1980, had won the last four races of the series in the hands of Stefan Johansson, carrying the Swede to the title with Ron Dennis’s Project 4 Racing. Project 4’s Dick Bennetts had engineered and run that late Johansson charge and, after rejecting an offer from Dennis to lead the McLaren F1 test team, the Kiwi was the man who would head up WSE. In 1982, basking…

The Arctic Rally is one of those mythical events in the sport’s history: a name that ranks alongside the Midnight Sun, the Tour of Mull and the Liege-Sofia-Liege. It’s always short, around 150 miles in competitive distance, and the 10 stages laid on for its WRC visitors amounted to this distance almost exactly. On the inaugural running of the event, back in 1966, the crews had to contend with temperatures as low as-54C. Fast-forward 55 years, and in general the thermometer stayed rooted a degree or two either side of freezing point. The main similarity between the Arctic Rally of 1966 compared to that of 2021 was that both were very strong events for Volkswagen drivers. Kari Sohlberg was crowned victor of the inaugural event at the wheel of a…

CORONAVIRUS A number of tweaks have been made to the club racing calendar following the announcement of the English government’s roadmap out of lockdown and Motorsport UK’s confirmation that the sport can resume from 29 March – but more changes could be afoot. Three English circuit racing clubs – the MG Car Club, the Classic Sports Car Club and the British Automobile Racing Club – had events planned in March that now cannot be run. The MGCC and CSCC are in talks over rescheduling those events, while the BARC has moved its Silverstone season opener to 24-25 April. MGCC competitions secretary Mark Baulch says it is understandable that no club motorsport can take place in March, and the club is now focusing on preparations for its next event at Brands…

MASTERS HISTORIC RACING Masters Historic Racing will run a series of demonstrations for 3.5-litre Formula 1 cars and other powerful single-seaters built after 1985 at five meetings in 2021, including its Donington Park and Brands Hatch events. The events, billed as Masters Single-Seater Demos, build on a trial last year at Brands aimed at 3.5-litre F1 machinery, which attracted only a handful of participants. The British-based organisation has now opted to widen the scope to include Formula 3000, GP2 and Indycars. Masters boss Ron Maydon said: “We tried it last year, which proved difficult in the present circumstances, but we definitely want to give it another go. We’re opening it up a bit because there are a lot of interesting things out there that aren’t 3.5-litre F1 cars and we…

Brian Redman leaps towards victory in the 1973 Nurburgring 1000Km aboard the Ferrari 312 PB he shared with Jacky Ickx. “This was the only Ferrari race in two years where we actually had [team] instructions,” remembers Redman, who also recalls ‘team-mate’ Arturo Merzario ignoring the orders to hold position and needing to be manhandled out of his car at the pitstop! Ferrari finished 1-2 anyway, taking the second of only two wins against its main 1973 rival, Matra. For more from Redman, look out for his 10 best races in next week’s issue. For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

LE MANS 24 HOURS/WEC Finally! Ferrari is returning to top-flight sportscar racing. The Italian manufacturer will make its first factory bid for outright Le Mans 24 Hours honours for half a century in 2023. Ferrari announced last week that it is developing a new Le Mans Hypercar for a step up to the top class of the World Endurance Championship in two years’ time. Its 2023 WEC entry will end a hiatus from the sportscar racing big time stretching back to the three-litre Group 6 312 PB of 1973 driven by, among others, Jacky Ickx, Carlos Pace and Brian Redman. The decision to build the first Ferrari prototype since the 333 SP was developed for privateers to race in IMSA’s World Sports Car class in 1994 follows what the manufacturer…

FORMULA 1 Silverstone is hoping that spectators can attend the British Grand Prix in July following the latest UK government announcements. The government last week unveiled its roadmap for easing the current lockdown measures, including plans for spectators to attend live sporting events by the summer. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament that “the turnstiles of our sports stadia will once again rotate” as he outlined the blueprint. Under the proposals, large outdoor seated venues will be permitted to allow up to 10,000 people or 25% of their total seat capacity – whichever is lower – from 17 May. This could be increased as early as 21 June, leading to suggestions that many of the UK’s major summer sports events, including the British Grand Prix, could enjoy capacity crowds amid…

WEC Chevrolet has given the clearest indication yet that it will be back at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year by entering the 2021 World Endurance Championship opener at the Algarve circuit next month. Corvette Racing will field a solo C8.R in the eight-hour race in Portugal over the Easter weekend to be driven in GTE Pro by Oliver Gavin and Antonio Garcia. It looks set to be the first of two appearances in the WEC ahead of Le Mans in June. A rejig of the IMSA SportsCar Championship calendar means that the mid-engined ’Vette will not be in action in North America after this month’s Sebring 12 Hours until the end of June. That would appear to leave the way clear for at least one Chevy to race…

BARGEBOARDS The A521 bargeboard package isn’t wildly different to those on last year’s Renault RS20, and retains the shutter-blind structure on the side of the car, which leads into a fairly short-chord boomerang. But the team has elected to part the two vanes looping over the sidepod inlet, moving away from the decision it made midway through 2019 to unite the two. The freed-up horizontal winglet curls up at the tips, meaning that the team can build a tip vortex where it needs to and send it down the car to help the floor. The vertical piece now extends down to the floor, given that the team has had to discard the floor slot that previously occupied that space. FLOOR Like its rivals, Alpine has kept the floor relatively concealed,…

When Formula 1 was put on hold last spring as the COVID-19 pandemic began to surge, drivers were left stepping into the virtual world to get their racing fix. Although it may not be a substitute for the real thing, it was a gateway for some to other forms of racing. In the case of Charles Leclerc, the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual organised by Motorsport Games was all the excuse he needed to add another career goal to his list: racing at Le Mans for real one day. “It’s a legendary race in motorsport,” says Leclerc, who was part of a virtual Ferrari squad including Alfa Romeo F1 driver Antonio Giovinazzi and F1 Esports champion David Tonizza. “Definitely one day, I would like to be part of it.”…

NASCAR CUP HOMESTEAD (USA) 28 FEBRUARY ROUND 3/36 In the build-up to the 2021 NASCAR Cup season, many of the major talking points were based off-track. Whether it be the most radical calendar shake-up in championship history or household names entering as team owners, attention was directed away from the Gen6 car that was given a stay of execution as it was decided switching to an all-new machine in the middle of a pandemic probably wasn’t the best idea. Moreover, a 2019 freeze on car development in certain areas, such as aero and limiting engines (designed to keep costs down for 2020), was rolled over to 2021 for the same reason. The result has been a very open start to the 2021 term, with two first-time winners in the first…

CASTLE COMBE RACING CLUB The Castle Combe Racing Club has decided to press on with plans to run its season opener on Easter Monday, and this is therefore set to be one of the first club events to take place this year. The 6 April meeting falls a week after Motorsport UK has said club motorsport can restart in England. The event was due to also feature races from the Historic Racing Drivers Club, but these have now been postponed until August to avoid the need for competitors to travel to the Wiltshire venue from across the country. Instead, double-headers will be held for the CCRC’s four categories – Formula Ford 1600, Saloons, GTs and the Hot Hatch Challenge – and this not only reduces the number of competitors, but…

GT5 CHALLENGE Ginetta racer Chris White is moving to a third rung of the Ginetta motorsport ladder in three years by progressing to the GT5 Challenge series this season with Raceway Motorsport. White made his competitive debut in the Ginetta Racing Drivers Club before graduating to the G40 Cup last season with Raceway. He was a regular frontrunner, taking four podiums. Despite the GT5 Challenge still being based around the G40, he says joining the series marks a significant change with the different specification of car. “I [originally] wanted to go straight into GT5 because of the sequential gearbox – GRDC and G40 Cup are both manual,” said White. “But I didn’t want to run before I could walk and started off at a lower level. “Although they look the…

DOUGLAS REVEALS F3 DUO Douglas Motorsport has announced Dexter Patterson and Reema Juffali as two of its drivers in BRDC British F3 this year. Patterson won the 2017 CIK-FIA Junior World Karting Championship and spent last season in Italian F4, where he took a best result of eighth. Juffali graduates from British F4, in which she raced with Argenti Motorsport in 2020. HILLS STEPS UP TO GT5 Mazda MX-5 Supercup race winner Aidan Hills will graduate to the Ginetta GT5 Challenge this year. Hills will run his own Ginetta G40 in the series after taking a break from driving last year to focus on building his own team. Hills Motorsport will field at least four cars in the MX-5 Supercup for championship podium finishers James Cossins, Adam Bessell and Michael…

“The fact that you can do something – this is true across so many other areas of life – doesn’t mean you should.” It may not be one of the more memorable quotes from a medical officer from one of the English government’s coronavirus briefings, but these words from Professor Chris Whitty carry a very important message. And they have become especially pertinent to the issue of the resumption of club motorsport. Last week’s release of the government’s roadmap for emerging from lockdown in England contained the welcome news that grassroots outdoor sport can restart from 29 March. Governing body Motorsport UK swiftly followed with confirmation that it would begin issuing permits for non-elite events from that same date. But, as with so many things, the situation is not quite…

Polesitter John Surtees (in the bewinged Honda RA301) leads Bruce McLaren (McLaren-Ford M7A), Chris Amon (Ferrari 312), Graham Hill (Lotus-Ford 49B), Jacky Ickx (Ferrari), Denny Hulme (McLaren) and Jackie Stewart (Matra-Ford MS10) at the start of the 1968 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Hulme went on to win the race ahead of Johnny Servoz-Gavin (Matra), who pipped Ickx, affected by fuel vapourisation issues, for second place across the line. None of the other drivers in this picture were among the three remaining, and lapped, classified runners. For classic 1960s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, photographs visit motorsportimages.com…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE Ferrari Formula 1 test driver Callum Ilott will contest the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup with the Iron Lynx team in 2021. The Briton (below) will be part of a two-car factory attack on the five-round endurance leg of the GTWCE in 2021 by Iron Lynx as Ferrari bids to repeat the drivers’ title it won last year with Alessandro Pier Guidi and the AF Corse team. Ilott will share one of the team’s two Ferrari 488 GT3s with Ferrari F1 development driver Antonio Fuoco. The two members of Ferrari’s Academy junior programme will be partnered by Davide Rigon, who has moved over from the marque’s World Endurance Championship GTE Pro line-up. Pier Guidi will be joined in the sister entry by fellow factory driver Nicklas…

WEC The new Glickenhaus Le Mans Hypercar is up and running – but not in time to be on the grid for the opening round of the World Endurance Championship opener at the Algarve Circuit next month. The US manufacturer has opted to miss the race to focus on testing and development. The Glickenhaus-Pipo 007LMH hit the track at Vallelunga last week, completing more than 100 laps with Romain Dumas and Franck Mailleux driving. That left little more than a month for development and then homologation of the car prior to the Portuguese event scheduled for 4 April. Marque boss Jim Glickenhaus explained that his team had “learned a lot” over the course of the two-day test. The focus on the opening day on Thursday was calibrating the car’s electronics,…

INDYCAR Ex-Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean feels that he’s learning what it takes to be fast in an IndyCar after his first two days of testing with his new team Dale Coyne Racing. The 34-year-old Frenchman got his first taste of IndyCar action in DCR’s Honda-powered car at Barber Motorsports Park last week. A spin into the sandtrap at the tricky downhill Turn 1 caused him to lose some track time as repairs were carried out, and he finished the day last, albeit within one second of the pacesetter, Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing. Grosjean then took part in an eight-car test at Laguna Seca on Monday this week. He was less than 0.25s behind the Chevrolet-engined Arrow McLaren SP machine of Pato O’Ward, who topped the times, and…

It was intriguing to watch Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne collide during the second Formula E race in Riyadh last weekend and wonder how their DS Techeetah team had not solved its team-mate racing tensions. Rewind 12 months, and the sparks of a flashpoint were already flying after Vergne had aggressively edged his team-mate towards a wall in Santiago, before a team-orders flare-up occurred in Mexico City. DST went on to secure a second title double come the end of that marvellous run of Berlin races, with da Costa extending its run of drivers’ titles to three, and all was well. Until, again, it wasn’t last weekend. The day before the black-and-gold team-mates needlessly flirted with disaster, the Formula 1 squad most recently grappling with intra-team war was…

As a means to fill some of this seemingly endless lockdown void we’re currently observing, I recently rewatched the 2020 Spanish motorcycle Grand Prix. Last year’s MotoGP season opener has now, of course, become a day of infamy that effectively ended Marc Marquez’s bid for a seventh title. But it was so very nearly a day that would have been remembered as one of Marquez’s best. After shooting off-track at Jerez’s Turn 4 left-hander while leading on lap five of 25, Marquez began a comeback that displayed all his devastating talent as he carved back from 16th to podium contention by the 21st tour. A lap later, he crashed chasing Maverick Vinales and broke his arm. Now, MotoGP in 2020 was utterly breathtaking, arguably the best season in grand prix…

In the history of racing, Ferrari and Formula 1 have always appeared to be the two faces of the same medal. Their endeavours have inspired and changed many lives, including the life of this writer. It was a privilege to start my F1 career there (in 2000), where I learned the potential of a worldwide marketing, technology and business platform. I was also incredibly lucky to start working in a company such as Ferrari where my eyes could appreciate and learn what human, strategic and operational excellence look like. But it is not only a matter of tech and business. Before everything, F1 is a sport and an entertainment. For this important reason, a fairly balanced turnover of winners has to be guaranteed. There are active and passive levers to…

Finland’s Arctic Rally, drafted in at the last minute to replace Rally Sweden as the second round of this year’s World Rally Championship, allowed Hyundai star Ott Tanak to kickstart his 2021 season with an assured win after scoring no points on last month’s opener in Monte Carlo. With Sweden abandoned in the face of a dramatic increase in the number of coronavirus cases this winter, the WRC grabbed with both hands this opportunity to move north into the Arctic Circle, with the promise of snow. The pre-event form book tilted strongly towards Toyota being the dominant force. For one thing, the team is Finnish to its core. For another, its young star Kalle Rovanpera won the event in 2020. You could also add that the team’s talent manager, former…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS MOUNT PANORAMA (AUS) 27-28 FEBRUARY ROUND 1/12 Shane van Gisbergen made a dream start to the 2021 Australian Supercars campaign with a pair of wins at Mount Panorama. The overwhelming title favourite wasn’t peerless in terms of pace across the weekend, but two well-executed races and a slice of luck last Saturday helped him stretch his Bathurst winning streak to three on the trot, including last October’s Bathurst 1000. Saturday’s opening 154-mile heat started out as an enthralling three-way battle between Tickford’s Cam Waters, van Gisbergen, and new Dick Johnson Racing recruit Anton De Pasquale. That was until De Pasquale ran wide at The Cutting on lap seven and clobbered the wall, prompting the first caution of the race. The field scrambled into the pitlane, early leader Waters…

BRITISH GT McLaren’s Driver Development Programme will return to British GT in 2021 after a year’s absence, with Team Rocket RJN taking over the running of its pair of 570S GT4s from Tolman Motorsport. Christopher Tolman’s team had run the DDP operation since it began in 2018, finishing just 1.5 points shy of that year’s teams’ title and missing out by a single point in 2019. It also suffered near-misses in the drivers’ standings, with Michael O’Brien and Charlie Fagg losing out to Jack Mitchell by two points in 2018. McLaren Automotive’s head of customer racing Danny Buxton told Autosport that the marque had put out a tender for all its customer teams to run the DDP programme – which was put on hiatus last year when the pandemic hit…

BRX Electric cars will join the Supercar field in the British Rallycross Championship 5 Nations Trophy this year, as the series becomes the first category in the UK to run electric and internal-combustion-engined cars together in the same races. Electric vehicles using the powertrain developed by former World Rally Championship podium finisher Manfred Stohl’s STARD firm in Austria will now be adopted by British RX pending final approval from Motorsport UK. The governing body outlined new technical and safety regulations for the use of electric vehicles in the UK last year. The same machines were used in 2020 in the all-electric Projekt E support category to the World Rallycross Championship. Electric cars built by STARD and machines retro-fitted with the same four-wheel-drive, three-motor, 450kW powertrain will be eligible. “Rallycross itself…

There were some very important messages promoted through motorsport during 2020. Mercedes switched its Silver Arrows to black to showcase its commitment to tackling racism; many of the Formula 1 teams carried #weraceasone branding, and some rainbows, as part of the championship’s initiative to promote diversity; while other cars featured NHS stickers to highlight the tremendous work the health service has done during the coronavirus pandemic. And Andrew Cohen-Wray’s Ginetta in the Ginetta Racing Drivers Club series was also adorned in stickers, raising awareness of an issue that has become even more significant amid the struggles of the pandemic. On the side of his Ginetta were stickers for the Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide charity. Cohen-Wray has a strong bond with the organisation, since his brother committed suicide. It was…

Back in 1998 when I was at the Benetton Formula 1 team, we had Nick Wirth as the chief designer. He was always trying to think up innovative ideas, and one was the FTT system – a differential between the two front wheels that would transfer torque from the loaded outside wheel. In theory, it would help the drivers to brake later and improve cornering stability. Because the restricted space prohibited a mechanical-style diff, the designers came up with a cylinder packed with sintered plates in a viscous fluid. After extensive R&D work, the first unit was fitted to a modified B198, mounted on the front bulkhead. Such was its complexity, it took two guys to fit the top steering-arm bolts. We tested it with Giancarlo Fisichella at Magny-Cours, and…