Indholdsfortegnelse for 11/11/21 i Autosport

How important was Max Verstappen’s Turn 1 pass for the lead at last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix? It was certainly a superb moment from the Dutchman, immediately overcoming the disadvantage Red Bull had managed to give itself in qualifying, but there’s a chance he’d have won the race anyway. What’s worrying for Mercedes is not so much that Verstappen won – that same combination came out on top in Mexico in both 2017 and 2018 (and arguably should have done in 2019), when Red Bull was less competitive than it is today. It was the margin of superiority that puts the pressure on Toto Wolff’s squad. Lewis Hamilton did well to hold off Sergio Perez, not something he’s had to do often in 2021. Wolff is making all the right…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 chiefs have extended the Chinese Grand Prix’s deal until 2025, even though the Shanghai race isn’t on next year’s calendar. The event was the first to fall foul of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and it also did not take place this year. With international travel restrictions still tight as the country bids to keep control of the impact of COVID-19, F1 has decided to again steer clear for 2022 to avoid any risk of a late disruption. Despite the ongoing absence, F1 has long been open about it being committed to racing in the country, and it has duly agreed a contract extension. F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said: “This is great news for all of our fans in China and we are delighted to announce…

INDYCAR Ex-Formula 1 driver Nico Hulkenberg has ruled out a move into the IndyCar Series following his maiden test last month, citing “personal reasons”. Hulkenberg has been without a full-time race seat since losing his F1 drive with Renault at the end of 2019. He retains an F1 role as Aston Martin’s reserve driver, and made two substitute appearances for the Silverstone-based team last season under its previous name of Racing Point. To evaluate a potential move into IndyCar, Hulkenberg took part in a test with the Arrow McLaren SP team at Barber Motorsports Park two weeks ago, completing more than 100 laps (right). The German told Autosport ahead of the test that IndyCar was “definitely interesting” to him, and that the racing looked “very enjoyable and fun”. But Hulkenberg…

FORMULA 4 Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award finalist Ollie Bearman has won a place on the Ferrari Driver Academy. The 16-year-old Briton last weekend clinched the German Formula 4 title at the Nurburgring. With the Italian crown already in his pocket, that means Bearman is the first driver in history to win both of the world’s two most prestigious series in the category. Bearman was also quick in last week’s FIA F3 test at Valencia (see right), and is expected to contest the series next year with Prema Racing. He is one of two drivers, along with Brazilian karter Rafael Camara, added to the FDA following recent assessments. “It is a great way to end what has been a really good season for me,” said Bearman. “Just spending a week…

There was one clear chance to get ahead, no guarantee that he’d get another. The move would require supreme skill and confidence, with a heavily scrutinised track-limit marker to worry about. Get it right and a crucial grand prix victory would be his. Max Verstappen got that exact scenario wrong at the end of March’s Bahrain Grand Prix. But he nailed it at the start of the Mexican GP last weekend, where his double pass on the front-row-sharing Mercedes pair was one of the overtaking moves of the season so far. There’s now something of a pattern developing with Verstappen and these small-yet-big, fine-margin moments, upon which world championships tend to hinge. He missed out on a pole that was there for the taking at Imola with a driving error…

Some motorsport moments are just magic. Bits of driving that are just spinetinglingly good, showcasing supreme skill, flair and sheer bloody-mindedness. Max Verstappen’s start to the 2021 Mexican Grand Prix had it all. So much of what the Dutchman displayed last Sunday at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on his way to victory was brilliant, but his breathtaking double pass on the Mercedes drivers will surely be what lives longest in Formula 1’s collective memory. Doubly so if, whisper it, this for-the-ages campaign ends in a championship victory… The whole Mexico City weekend was about Verstappen’s Red Bull squad, really. The team that was expected to be in command thanks to the track’s high altitude and high-downforce requirements had badly underperformed in qualifying. Getting caught out on the temperamental soft tyres…

AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost defended Yuki Tsunoda after the rookie got caught up in late Q3 drama when the Red Bull teams’ tow tactics backfired for the main squad. Tsunoda, who along with Lando Norris, Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll took grid penalties for getting new engines in Mexico City, was towing team-mate Pierre Gasly throughout qualifying, with Norris doing likewise for Daniel Ricciardo. Red Bull was also getting Sergio Perez to run in front of Max Verstappen, albeit with the Mexican completing his own flier ahead of his team-mate. On the final Q3 runs, the McLarens and AlphaTauris led the pack, with Tsunoda having a 12-second gap to Carlos Sainz Jr and then the Red Bull duo once he’d pulled over after giving Gasly a tow down the…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK (AUS) 6-7 NOVEMBER ROUND 9/12 There were three winners from three races at the second Sydney SuperNight, which culminated in a spectacular wet-weather affair under lights. The weekend got off to a fascinating start when pacesetter Anton De Pasquale was ruled out of Saturday’s first qualifying session with a gearbox issue. That left Will Brown free to take a maiden series pole. Brown led the first few laps after holding off Triple Eight Holden pair Jamie Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen at the start. But a faulty wheelnut dropped Erebus Holden driver Brown back in the pack after his stop, van Gisbergen running long on the hard Dunlop to set up an impressive win. Sunday’s opener was all about tyre strategy, polesitter De Pasquale starting…

NASCAR CUP PHOENIX (USA) 7 NOVEMBER ROUND 36/36 Kyle Larson has gone from watching the NASCAR Cup decider race on the sidelines a year ago to winning it last Sunday. He missed most of the 2020 season due to a suspension for using a racist slur before completing a comeback by winning Sunday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway and with it his first NASCAR title. After heading the most laps, Larson had fallen out of the lead late in the contest before a caution for a broken brake rotor on the track on lap 283 of 312 sent all the lead-lap cars down pit road for new tyres. Larson, who had won the pole on Saturday and had the first pit box, edged Denny Hamlin off pit road, his Hendrick…

MOTOGP ALGARVE (PRT) 7 NOVEMBER ROUND 17/18 Much of the Algarve Grand Prix weekend felt like a prologue to the 2022 MotoGP title battle, from new world champion Fabio Quartararo and Francesco Bagnaia battling for supremacy on the practice timesheets. Bagnaia’s crash out of the lead at the Emilia Romagna GP in October already meant the title had gone the way of Yamaha star Quartararo by the time MotoGP returned to Portugal last weekend. But it would prove to be a race that would pose a major ‘what if?’. Bagnaia dominated the Algarve GP, while a crash for Quartararo late on as he struggled in sixth would have blown the doors open in the 2021 title race had Bagnaia stayed mounted at Misano. It was a fact that wasn’t lost…

Qualifying for the opening round of the season is the single most significant session of the British Touring Car Championship year. Why? Because it’s the first of only two competitive outings in which no one is carrying any success ballast. The second is the opening race, but here random incidents can skew the formbook. Back in May at Thruxton, the field faced a damp track and it was a case of getting the slicks on at the right time as the surface dried out, so perhaps the significance of such an occasion was diluted. That’s what 28 of the 29 drivers and their teams would have preferred to think. But really, the fact that it was Ash Sutton who emerged on top proved to be an accurate barometer to the…

1 Bounced and lurched that soft-sprung Infiniti to his third BTCC title. For the first time, he led most of a season from the front, so this time he concentrated on maximising each weekend, where he inevitably started on heavy ballast. The class act. 2 While Sutton and the Infiniti look spectacular on an in-lap, the similarly rear-driven BMW appears to demand razorsharp precision. Turkington remains the master of this. Pulled his season around well after a bad early spell. 3 On so many occasions he appears beautifully at one with the BTC Honda, drifting it in fast turns. Won as many races as Sutton but was let down too often by things outside his control, without which he could have had a shot at the title. 4 Played a…

CSCC The Classic Sports Car Club has revealed its 2022 calendar, which includes a two-day Thruxton meeting and a return to Spa, while also announcing that it will run special events at Daytona and Sebring in November 2023 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The provisional schedule for next year begins with a two-day Snetterton fixture on 2-3 April before being “very honoured” to secure two of just a handful of race dates at Thruxton later that month. Also featuring on the calendar are trips to Anglesey, Brands Hatch Indy, Castle Combe, Oulton Park, Donington Park, Silverstone and Cadwell Park. It will be the club’s first time racing on Silverstone’s National layout for six years. The traditional early summer trip to Spa is also back, coronavirus permitting, on 23-26 June, having…

GINETTA JUNIOR Ginetta Junior race winner Tom Edgar will return to action in this weekend’s Winter Series at Brands Hatch after serving a three-month ban. Edgar, the son of ex-Formula Ford ace Michael, was one of the leading contenders in the main championship this year before picking up a 12th point on his licence at Oulton Park in August, which triggered an automatic three-month suspension. Northern Irish racer Edgar now returns to R Racing and is one of just two previous race winners among the 19-driver Winter Series entry, alongside 2021 championship runner-up Liam McNeilly (Fox Motorsport). Joining Edgar at R Racing – the team that powered Aston Millar to the crown – will be Josh Rowledge, who moves across from Elite Motorsport. Rowledge is the only driver aside from…

BRITISH RALLYCROSS Rising rallycross stars Roberts Vitols and Jack Thorne claimed a victory each in the British Rallycross Championship 5 Nations Trophy double-header weekend at Lydden Hill, but Derek Tohill was the big winner in the title fight as he took the series lead. Tohill entered the weekend 10 points behind Ollie O’Donovan but, by outqualifying his Irish compatriot, then finishing higher in both finals, the double European champion left Kent with a three-point advantage. With the planned final round at Spa cancelled and 5 Nations BRX bosses working on an alternative venue for the finale, that points swing could prove critical. O’Donovan’s Ford Fiesta led the final in round six from the start, chased by Tohill’s Fiesta and returnee Thorne (Peugeot 208) on the opening lap. But Vitols was…

The British Racing Drivers’ Club grandstand at Silverstone for the Walter Hayes Trophy is one of the best places to watch motorsport in the UK – and one of the liveliest. After a year where spectators were banned, the stand was virtually full for the Formula Ford 1600 event on Sunday. Despite the cold, there were all the usual cheers for a great overtake, gasps when contact was made and enthusiastic applause at the end of races. But it was no exaggeration to say the loudest cheer, with the nearby marshals joining in, came when the engines fired up on the cars in the assembly area ahead of the final – after a 45-minute wait. The delay to the headline race was somewhat farcical. The Hayes builds towards a crescendo…

SILVERSTONE HSCC WALTER HAYES TROPHY 6-7 NOVEMBER It’s pretty much the last thing you want before starting on pole position for the Walter Hayes Trophy final in just your first full season of racing in the UK. As if the thought of keeping a field packed with previous event winners, Formula Ford Festival victors and a host of Formula Ford champions behind you is not pressureinducing enough, adding a tense 45-minute wait in the assembly area for the grid to be finalised amid ongoing protests takes the pre-race anxiety up to a whole new level. “It definitely didn’t help the nerves,” admitted that polesitter, Team USA Scholarship driver Max Esterson. Yet there was no need for the Low Dempsey Racing man to be concerned. He headed into the final in…

WALTER HAYES TROPHY Heat 1 Max Esterson (Ray GR18) Heat 2 Chris Middlehurst (Van Diemen LA10) Heat 3 Michael Moyers (Spectrum 011) Heat 4 Josh Fisher (Van Diemen RF99) Progression race Felix Fisher (Ray GR05, above) Last Chance race Felix Fisher (Ray GR05) Semi-final 1 Max Esterson (Ray GR18) Semi-final 2 Michael Moyers (Spectrum 011) Final (15 laps) 1 Max Esterson (Ray GR18); 2 Oliver White (Medina JL17) +0.249s; 3 Ben Mitchell (Van Diemen JL16); 4 Chris Middlehurst (Van Diemen LA10); 5 Josh Fisher (Van Diemen RF99); 6 Lucas Romanek (Van Diemen JL13). Class winner James Tucker (Van Diemen RF92). Fastest lap Matt Cowley (Van Diemen JL15) 1m01.321s (96.30mph). Pole Esterson. Starters 36. JANET CESAR TROPHY Heat James Tucker (Van Diemen RF92, above) Final Brandon McCaughan (Mondiale M89S) CARL HAMER…

VIDEO GAME NASCAR 21: IGNITION RRP £49.99 As a lifelong NASCAR fan, every NASCAR game release day was a holiday in this writer’s household when growing up. With NASCAR 21: Ignition, the first in a line of reconstructed games built from the ground up, the lead-up to the latest release has brought back those childhood times. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, NASCAR 21: Ignition doesn’t seem to be a vision realised. When it works, it might be some of the most fun racing I’ve had on a NASCAR video game in years. But, there’s a narrow operational window thanks to glitches, incomprehensible logic and missing features. One main takeaway from playing the latest officially endorsed release is the attention to detail. Every track looks, feels and drives as…

Had it not been for an out-of-the-blue phone call in early 2003, 1999 Macau Grand Prix winner Darren Manning believes he could still be racing in Japan to this day. The Yorkshireman was set to join Kazuyoshi Hoshino’s Team Impul for a joint campaign in Formula Nippon (now Super Formula) and the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (now Super GT) when he was invited by Champ Car boss Chris Pook and team owner Derrick Walker to drive the latter’s Reynard, Walker having attracted backing from the RAC with a British driver desirable. Manning had finished ninth in a one-off at Rockingham for Dale Coyne’s team in 2002 with RAC sponsorship, and was a natural choice – but was booked onto a flight for Tokyo the following day to sign…

FORMULA 1 Mercedes Formula 1 chief Toto Wolff believes there is still “all to win” for the team despite its defeat to Red Bull in last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, and has denied that the championship is slipping away. Mercedes entered Sunday’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez hopeful of converting its front-row lockout into a result to boost Lewis Hamilton’s title hopes. But Red Bull bounced back in the race, with Max Verstappen scoring a dominant win to extend his drivers’ championship lead over Hamilton to 19 points, while Red Bull, for which Sergio Perez finished third, drew to one point off Mercedes in the constructors’ standings. By failing to finish ahead of Verstappen in any of the past three races, Hamilton has seen a slender championship lead turn…

FORMULA 3 Newly crowned Formula Regional European by Alpine champion Gregoire Saucy has become the first driver confirmed for next season’s FIA Formula 3 Championship, hot on the heels of topping the series’ three-day post-season test at Valencia last week. The 21-year-old Swiss (above) will stay on with ART Grand Prix for his move up the ladder, continuing for a third season a relationship that dates back to their Formula Renault campaign in 2020. Saucy secured eight wins from the 30-plus FRECA grid this year, although had never previously scored a race victory in car racing. “After two years of a fruitful collaboration, ART Grand Prix was very keen to take another step forward with Greg,” said team boss Sebastien Philippe. “He showed the full extent of his talent and…

That wasn’t the way for two prestigious World Endurance Championship titles to be settled. The GTE Pro battle between Ferrari and Porsche at the Bahrain 8 Hours last weekend was a corker that deserved to be decided in a straight fight on track. Right now the drivers’ and manufacturers’ championships seem to be have been determined not out in the heat of the desert night but in an air-conditioned office. The important question about the messy business last Saturday was which office: race control or the stewards’ room? Porsche contended that the decision to make Ferrari driver Alessandro Pier Guidi give back the position after clouting its car driven by Michael Christensen wasn’t based on the correct procedures. The tenet of its rejected protest was that the sanction for the…

Qualifying in Mexico City ended with a shock result that was the flipside of the same phenomenon at Austin. Red Bull had dominated the practice standings since Mercedes had swept FP1. In Q1 and Q2, there was little to suggest its advantage was about to disappear. Yes, Valtteri Bottas topped the first segment and Lewis Hamilton the second – where the frontrunners switching to the mediums inevitably means a slightly different balance – but they had done more runs than Max Verstappen. But it all went wrong for Red Bull in Q3. On the first runs, Verstappen found “we were just really slow and just [had] terrible grip”, as evidenced by his big oversteer snap exiting the slow, double-apex Turn 6 right. His 1m16.225s was 0.350s down on Bottas’s 1m15.875s.…

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The second leg of the Bahrain World Endurance Championship double-header began in acrimony and ended in the same way as Ferrari and Porsche duked it out for GTE Pro honours on the track and in the stewards’ room. The shame was that the controversy bookended a fabulous motor race in which it was difficult to call a winner at any point, even after the title contenders came together with 11 minutes of the eight-hour race remaining. The clash between the Ferrari driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi and Michael Christensen’s Porsche has for the moment handed the crown to the Italian driver and team-mate James Calado in the #51 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo. Championship honours could, however, yet go the way of Porsche and Kevin Estre and Neel Jani in the…

SUPER GT MOTEGI (JPN) 7 NOVEMBER ROUND 7/8 Team Aguri Honda duo Nirei Fukuzumi and Tomoki Nojiri completed back-to-back Super GT victories in a dramatic conclusion to the penultimate round of the season at Motegi. Nojiri had been shadowing the Impul Nissan of Kazuki Hiramine in the closing stages but was unable to pass until Hiramine slowed on the final lap, having run out of fuel. Nobuharu Matsushita had put Impul in a winning position in the opening stint by battling his way from fourth on the grid into the lead, passing the pole-winning Bandoh Toyota of Yuji Kunimoto around the outside at Turn 3. The Nissan was able to keep the lead through the pitstop phase by virtue of Matsushita making an early stop on lap 23 of 63…

NASCAR XFINITY SERIES PHOENIX (USA) 6 NOVEMBER ROUND 33/33 Daniel Hemric couldn’t have picked a better time to earn his first NASCAR Xfinity Series victory – his last-ditch success last weekend snared him the support series crown. Austin Cindric appeared to be on the way to winning his second consecutive Xfinity Series championship when a late caution in the race at Phoenix Raceway on Saturday night bunched the field and sent it into a two-lap overtime. Cindric’s Penske Ford ran clear for the lead on the restart, but on the final lap Hemric was able to pull up alongside and door-slammed him as the two raced into the final turn. The pair crossed the finish line trading sheet metal, but Hemric’s Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota came away with the win…

“SO FAR WE HAVE ALREADY WON A RALLY WITH THE 2022 CAR” Those are the words of Hyundai Motorsport boss Andrea Adamo, delivered with a beaming grin as his team gets to work servicing the 2022 i20 Rally1 prototype at BRC Racing Team’s commandeered headquarters in northern Italy, after a series of asphalt stages. Although his proclamation comes under a veil of humour, Adamo is technically correct since Hyundai has undertaken a unique approach to prepare for the World Rally Championship’s new Rally1 era, by conducting a private 1500km three-day rally in Italy’s Piedmont region ahead of next year’s voyage into the unknown. The WRC is undergoing arguably its biggest shift in regulations for a generation as it adopts Rally1 rules designed to provide a more environmentally friendly future for…

PORSCHE CARRERA CUP GB From the moment Dan Cammish lost his Team Dynamics British Touring Car drive and elected to return to the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, many were eagerly anticipating a thrilling battle with last year’s series dominator Harry King. But, away from the spotlight, another driver was aiming to steal the duo’s thunder. And Lorcan Hanafin did exactly that by qualifying his JTR-run Porsche on pole for the Snetterton opener by 0.4 seconds. “It set the tone, showed my intentions and showed the world I’m not here to mess around and the focus shouldn’t be just on Harry and Dan,” recalls Hanafin, who hadn’t been able to challenge King in 2020 but stepped up a gear for this term. Yet, sadly for Hanafin, Snetterton also set the tone…

HSCC The Historic Sports Car Club has revealed that it has offset all of the carbon emissions produced during its 2021 racing season. At a time when the issue of global warming and protecting the planet is firmly in the spotlight thanks to the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, the HSCC has decided to play its part by offsetting the carbon emitted from its race meetings via a tree-planting scheme. “We’ve offset 100,000 miles of carbon emissions,” said HSCC CEO Andy Dee-Crowne. “We know the number of cars we’ve got, we know the length of the circuits and we know how many laps they’ve done. We worked that out and added in our officials travelling to and from meetings. “We then added a margin for error and have offset…

750MC CLIOS The 750 Motor Club will introduce a new model to its Clio 182 Championship next season, while also renaming the series as the Clio Sport Championship. The popular category has been running for the past eight seasons as a standalone series solely with the Renault Clio 182 variant but, from 2022, it will be joined by the more modern 197 chassis. The new car has been tested by technical partner K-Tec Racing, with an example competing in the 750MC’s Hot Hatch Championship this season, and the newer and older models are expected to be evenly matched on performance. “It’s a new era for the championship,” said 750MC commercial manager James Winstanley. “It’s not intended as a replacement for people that are currently racing 182s, it’s just another option.…

HISTORIC TOURING CARS Three continuation Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworths will be built for historic touring car racing this winter. They will be created by Alan Strachan, founder of CNC Motorsport AWS, and endorsed by Andy Rouse, who headed development of the car in the British Touring Car Championship in period. The cars will be built from original shells to the specification used by Andy Rouse Engineering and will have a £185,000 price tag. Strachan worked for Rouse in the RS500 era, and the build programme will have access to drawings and data to produce Rouse-specific parts, including the Rouse-designed steel rollcage. Each car will use a fresh 575bhp Cosworth YB unit with input from original engine builder Vic Drake, who produced over 100 RS500 powerplants. “The RS500 was lots of…

RALLYING Frank Bird and Jack Morton took their Ford Fiesta to a dominant win on the Neil Howard Stages at Oulton Park last weekend, the first round of the Motorsport News Circuit Rally Championship. Bird was fastest on all eight stages, and Joe Cunningham/Josh Beer (Fiesta) proved to be an equally comfortable second, albeit over a minute down on Bird. Kevin Procter/Derrick Fawcett were third after the first two tests, but a jumpstart penalty on stage three preceded their disqualification for taking the wrong route. Fiesta crew Neil Roskell/Shaun Layland gradually consolidated third over the rest of the day, with former champion Barry Morris’s Darrian T90 GTR+ fourth. Having entered his Escort rather than his Fiesta R5, defending champion Mark Kelly started well, but retired from sixth on stage three…

MONDELLO PARK MPSC 7 NOVEMBER It was a Murray Motorsport front-row lockout for the Mondello Park Fiesta 6 Hour Endurance race, with team owner Eoin Murray just pipping 2013 British Touring Car champion Andrew Jordan to pole. Experienced saloon racers Johnny Whelan and Barry Rabbitt shared row two, with many expecting an early attack to stop the Murray cars making a break. As the safety car pulled off and the 24-car train headed toward the rolling start, the ever-opportunistic Rabbitt made his move. He crossed the line almost level with the front-row occupants and managed to scrabble round the outside to take the lead out of Turn 1. He was a little too enthusiastic at Turn 3, however, and when he slid a touch wide, Murray took the place back.…

Max Esterson’s path to Walter Hayes Trophy glory got off to the strongest possible start by winning the first heat of the weekend from pole, but it was the most competitive contest in the opening round and he faced stiff opposition from British GT4 frontrunner Matt Cowley. Although the American made the best getaway, Cowley presented an immediate threat and he dived ahead at Becketts to lead on lap two. Esterson retaliated at Brooklands on the following tour and there were a couple more exchanges before Esterson capitalised when Cowley went wide there on the penultimate lap. Cowley almost struck back on the run to the line, with Esterson finding oil at Luffield, but Esterson prevailed by 0.015 seconds over Cowley, who was pleased to make a rare direct progression…

Ballymena 17-year-old Brandon McCaughan topped his rookie FF1600 season with victory in a hugely competitive Janet Cesar Trophy for Pre-’93 cars, in which the top nine were covered by 2.6 seconds at the end. Driving a Mondiale M89S, McCaughan was having just his second race event away from Kirkistown, where he finished fourth in the Northern Ireland championship. He started the final in third by finishing on the podium in Saturday’s heat, which in its own right was a brilliant result because he had started on row six and been 14th at the end of lap one. He overtook five cars on the second lap and then made steady progress until the final circuit when he made contact with Cam Jackson’s Van Diemen RF90 when going for second at Becketts,…

INTERNATIONAL MOTORSPORT Sao Paulo Grand Prix Formula 1 World Championship Round 19/22 Interlagos, Brazil 14 November TV Live Sky Sports F1, Sun 1655 TV Highlights Sky Sports F1, Sun 2300 Channel 4, Sun 2300 Australian Supercars Round 10/12 Eastern Creek, Australia 13-14 November TV Live BT Sport 1, Sat 0530, Sun 0215, Sun 0530 Petit Le Mans IMSA Sportscar Round 12/12 Road Atlanta, America 13 November MotoGP Round 18/18 Valencia, Spain 14 November TV Live BT Sport 2, Sun 1230 TV Highlights ITV4, Mon 2230 UK MOTORSPORT Anglesey BRSCC Clubsport Trophy, Race of Remembrance Brands Hatch BARC 13-14 November Britcar Trophy, C1, Ginetta Junior, Intermarque Silhouettes, Mini Challenge, Super Saloons/Tin Tops…

FORMULA 1 Andretti Autosport’s proposed takeover of Sauber’s Alfa Romeo Formula 1 operation fell through due to “control issues” at the eleventh hour, according to team principal Michael Andretti. Andretti had been pursuing the takeover to expand his racing portfolio and land an F1 drive for his IndyCar star Colton Herta. But the deal collapsed in recent weeks, prompting Andretti to deny that it was due to financial reasons. “That couldn’t be further from the truth – it had nothing to do with that,” said former Indycar champion Andretti. “It basically came down to control issues in the final hours of the negotiations. That’s what killed the deal. I’ve always said if the deal is not right, we’re not going to do it, and in the end it wasn’t right.…

WEC Kazuki Nakajima’s long career with the Toyota World Endurance Championship team came to an end in Bahrain last weekend – at least as a driver. He is leaving Toyota Gazoo Racing’s line-up after 10 years and nine seasons, but is set to take a new role within the sportscar squad. Toyota announced in the run-up to Saturday’s Bahrain 8 Hours that the three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner was standing down. The truth is that he has been stood down in favour of Toyota development driver Ryo Hirakawa, who should be announced as part of the two-car line-up of GR010 HYBRIDs as early as next month. That announcement is expected to contain news of 36-year-old Nakajima’s new job, which is likely to include working with Hirakawa and other young…

WORLD TOURING CAR CUP Veteran tin-top hero Gabriele Tarquini has announced that he will retire at the end of the current World Touring Car Cup season, bringing down the curtain on a professional racing career spanning almost 40 years. The 59-year-old made the revelation ahead of last weekend’s penultimate round of the WTCR campaign at Adria, and will bow out following this month’s season finale at Sochi in Russia. The Italian is best known for his tin-top exploits, winning World, European and British titles, but also contested 38 Formula 1 grands prix from 1987-95 and made one Le Mans 24 Hours start in 1985. “I feel very sad – after a long career that felt like it would never end, you think this moment will never come,” said Tarquini. “In…

The early-season European Formula 2 rounds at Silverstone and Thruxton always gave British enthusiasts their tantalising first view of talents we’d often only read about in the back pages of Autosport through their exploits in foreign F3 races. When F2 was dropped for 1985 and replaced by Formula 3000, the field that assembled for the very first race at Silverstone included John Nielsen and Claudio Langes (at least we’d seen them in European F3) and reigning Italian champion Alessandro Santin. How would they get on? Nielsen did well, of course, but the emerging star of that weekend was a curly haired 23-year-old Italian who no one had ever heard of. Gabriele Tarquini finished fifth at the wheel of a Sanremo Racing March, and it’s no exaggeration to say that he…

Pierre Gasly starred to finish best-of-the-rest with what he called a “lonely” fourth place in Mexico City, keeping clear of both Ferraris despite their strategy-switch attack. After qualifying fifth behind the Mercedes and Red Bulls, aided by a tow from AlphaTauri team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, Gasly avoided the first-corner tangle to move up to fourth. Then he effectively held station until the chequered flag to take his best result since September’s Dutch Grand Prix. In a race notable for its lack of action, Gasly only had to be mindful of Ferrari’s late threat when it switched Charles Leclerc, struggling on the hard tyres in the second stint, and Carlos Sainz Jr, who had run long in the first stint, to allow the Spaniard to try to close with his fresher hard…

Williams’s George Russell called the 2021 Mexican Grand Prix “probably our toughest race of the year” after he fell from ninth behind the safety car to finish 16th, two laps down. Russell reached Q2 after considerable practice disruption from two damaged gearboxes, including the one he was supposed to race, which meant he dropped five places on the grid for taking a new one. He rose up the order at the start, where he hit the wingless Daniel Ricciardo at Turn 6 further around lap one. During the safety car, Russell “peered over the cockpit to check the front wing and in doing so I pulled my drinks tube out”. After the restart he battled rivals defensively but fell steadily down the order as the Williams required considerable management to…

WORLD TOURING CAR CUP ADRIA (ITA) 7 NOVEMBER ROUND 7/8 Yann Ehrlacher has one hand on a second consecutive World Touring Car Cup title after stretching his points lead with a dominant victory from pole position at a revised and lengthened Adria circuit in Italy. The Frenchman, still just 25, has a huge 36-point lead over Comtoyou Audi’s Frederic Vervisch with just the last races to come at Sochi in Russia at the end of the month. Ehrlacher scored a maximum points haul in qualifying on Saturday in his Cyan Racing Lynk & Co, drove conservatively but sensibly in the partially reversed-grid first race to 10th, then blitzed race two from pole position. His only concern was making a decent start, which has been a rare weakness for Cyan’s Lynk…

WORLD TOURING CAR CUP ADRIA (ITA) Race 1 Santiago Urrutia Cyan Performance (Lynk & Co 03 TCR) Race 2 Yann Ehrlacher Cyan Racing (Lynk & Co 03 TCR) AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK (AUS) Race 1 Shane van Gisbergen Triple Eight (Holden Commodore ZB) Race 2 Anton De Pasquale (below) Dick Johnson Racing (Ford Mustang) Race 3 Jamie Whincup Triple Eight (Holden Commodore ZB) SUPER GT MOTEGI (JPN) Tomoki Nojiri/Nirei Fukuzumi Team Aguri (Honda NSX-GT) ADAC GT MASTERS NURBURGRING (DEU) Race 1 Ricardo Feller/Christopher Mies Land Motorsport (Audi R8 LMS) Race 2 Michael Ammermuller/Mathieu Jaminet SSR Performance (Porsche 911 GT3-R) POWERED BY For full results visit motorsportstats.com…

NASCAR TRUCK SERIES PHOENIX (USA) 5 NOVEMBER ROUND 22/22 Ben Rhodes didn’t win the season finale, but he didn’t have to in order to capture the 2021 NASCAR Truck Series title. Chandler Smith passed Sheldon Creed with 17 of the 150 laps remaining last Friday night at Phoenix Raceway and held on to earn his second victory of the 2021 season. Rhodes finished third but was the top performer among the Championship Four drivers, which gave him his first series title. He got around Zane Smith to put himself into that position with eight laps to go after the pair had briefly made contact. Rhodes had kicked off the 2021 season by winning the first two races, at Daytona International Speedway and on the Daytona road course. He didn’t triumph…

While it hasn’t been as public as Hyundai with its rally simulation and M-Sport Ford with its Rally1 test programme, Toyota has been quietly beavering away to prepare its all-new 2022 WRC weapon. The Japanese marque completed its first test with its new-look GR Yaris in May, but has been ramping up its programme ahead of the car’s final homologation before the end of this year. Initially testing began in Finland, but the team has since conducted runs in several European destinations, with its most recent outing coming on Portugal’s gravel roads prior to last month’s Rally Spain. The car has been seen running with eye-catching air intakes on the side of the car, designed to assist its cooling package. Toyota has elected to divide its resources into two teams…

Colin Turkington only just scraped home in second place in the championship this season to repeat his 2020 position, and there were a couple of errors from the four-time title winner, but dig deeper and it’s apparent that he is still at the peak of his form. West Surrey Racing entered its third season with the BMW 330i M Sport, and since that car made its debut in 2019 there is no doubt that the level of competitiveness in the BTCC has increased massively: that year, one second bracketed the top 10 qualifiers at Donington; this season, it was 26… WSR is a proper purist’s team. First, it goes racing with rear-wheel-drive machinery, which any racing fan will tell you is the correct driven axle; second, while the majority of…

The 36th edition of the Autosport Awards represents a move back to the event’s traditional location of the Grosvenor House Hotel on London’s Park Lane on Sunday 19 December. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that last year the Grosvenor’s red carpet remained untrodden by the stars of motorsport, with the event taking place online. But now it will be unfurled again. Before that, we’ve got a little request for our readers. We need you to vote, and over the following pages you will see the nominees for International Racing Driver of the Year, British Competition Driver of the Year, UK National Driver of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Racing Car of the Year, Rally Driver of the Year, Rally Car of the Year, plus the Esports Driver of the Year.…

GB3 Ginetta Junior star Callum Voisin will make the jump up to GB3 next season with leading team Carlin. Voisin was the driver to beat during the opening half of the Ginetta campaign, despite being a car racing rookie and going up against more experienced rivals, taking seven victories. But a combination of a 70-point penalty for a technical infringement, bad luck and other drivers taking notable steps forward meant he slipped to sixth in the final standings. It was while Voisin was assessing his options in the wake of the points deduction that he first considered the possibility of switching to single-seaters. “After Snetterton, when we had that problem [penalty], we were trying to see what our options were for the rest of the year,” said Voisin. “We tried…

HISTORICS Former British Touring Car racer Sam Tordoff made his AC Cobra debut in the Pall Mall Cup at Silverstone at the end of last month as part of his new association with the Jordan Racing Team. Tordoff joined Michael Cullen and Paddy Shovlin to help take the Irishmen’s JRT Daytona Cobra Coupe to third overall in the three-hour race. Tordoff’s Ford Falcon will be rebuilt this winter by the Jordan squad ahead of a full Masters Historic Touring Car campaign next season. “JRT is looking after a couple of my cars now so that’s where the relationship started and already I’m being given opportunities like this, so I’m supergrateful and we’ll see where it takes us,” said Tordoff, who only drove the Cobra for the first time on the…

NEW DATE FOR McRAE RALLY Knockhill will host the McRae Rally Challenge on the opening weekend of July next year, two years after its original date to mark 25 years since Colin McRae’s only World Rally title success. The event had been scheduled to take place in October 2020, before being postponed by a year due to COVID-19. It was then pushed back a further 12 months because of travel restrictions between the UK and Australia, where McRae’s brother Alister is based. AMAZING AMAZON DUO WINS Paul Dyas and Martyn Taylor took victory on the 2021 RAC Rally of the Tests aboard their Volvo Amazon, after battling through 29 tests and 22 regularities over three and a half days. The duo beat father and daughter Darell and Nicky Staniforth, who…

DONINGTON PARK BRSCC 6 NOVEMBER Enduro Motorsport’s Morgan Tillbrook and Marcus Clutton were winners last time out in British GT at Donington Park, and their return to Fun Cup action at the Leicestershire circuit proved equally successful. Newly crowned champions UVio/Hofmann’s Lotus, with Scott Fitzgerald and Fabio Randaccio, led PLR’s Neil Plimmer/Ben Pitch by nine seconds with 20 minutes of the four-hour race to go. But, when Randaccio had a trip across the Old Hairpin grass, it tore off the splitter and reduced the gap to 5.3s, with Clutton closing on both. He soon grabbed the lead and his advantage suddenly grew when Randaccio and Plimmer collided at the chicane. Randaccio was out, stuck in the gravel, and Plimmer received a drivethrough penalty, which left MakeHappen Racing’s Greg Evans duelling…

Some of the best racing of the weekend – and some of the most notable collisions – occurred during the semi-finals. While Max Esterson and Michael Moyers were again winners, their triumphs were far from straightforward and the pair enjoyed a combined winning margin of just 0.247 seconds. Esterson got the jump on polesitter Chris Middlehurst at the start of the first semi-final, but the pair remained glued together for the rest of the race. Middlehurst made a couple of attempted moves before diving ahead on the inside of Becketts on lap five of 10. But his lead only lasted two laps before Esterson blasted back ahead around the outside of Brooklands, while Middlehurst briefly dropped behind Tom Mills, but ultimately finished just 0.138s back from Esterson. Mills was third…

BRANDS HATCH BARC 6-7 NOVEMBER A sell-out crowd at Brands Hatch on Sunday witnessed Ryan Smith fight back from a points deficit to claim his sixth British Truck Racing title in a row after a frantic finale. The return after two years of MotorSport Vision’s fireworks spectacular helped ensure a bumper turn-out, with the headline truck races supported by a packed programme on and off the track. In a season dogged by reliability problems, Smith came to Kent third in the Trucks table behind David Jenkins and Martin Gibson. Smith qualified fastest and Stuart Oliver was second despite only one flying lap. Jenkins was next, but Gibson’s third-row spot was left empty after he struggled to the pits with a gearbox problem. He was given a reprieve, though, when Shane…

There’s a hint of a wry smile on John Cooper’s face as he watches Jack Brabham push his car to the finish line at Monaco in 1957. But the future three-time world champion seems less amused. He’s lost a first podium finish because a fuel pump bracket fracture left him running dry. Now he has been forced to put his shoulder to the two-litre Climax-engined T43 to at least be classified as a finisher, five laps down in sixth. But world championship points only went as far as fifth back then, so it was still a no-score. Two years later the little cars with the engine in the ‘wrong end’ turned F1 on its tail. For classic Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/f1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…