Indholdsfortegnelse for 11/24/2022 i Autosport

After the drama and excitement of George Russell’s first Formula 1 victory in Brazil, usual 2022 service was restored in Abu Dhabi. Max Verstappen never looked like losing, while Sergio Perez and Charles Leclerc battled for second in the race and the championship – a fight won brilliantly and deservedly by the Ferrari driver. As Alex Kalinauckas explains in our report on page 16, the differing strategies between Red Bull team-mates Verstappen and Perez contributed to Leclerc’s success. But Verstappen can hardly be blamed for that, particularly as it was his excellent tyre management that allowed him to be on a one-stopper – and there were several other factors that contributed to Perez falling short by 1.3 seconds. Verstappen’s victory moves his season-wins record to 15. We compare his year…

F1 ACADEMY Formula 1 has announced a new F4-level all-female series from 2023 known as F1 Academy to help women climb the junior single-seater ladder. The series is set to feature a 15-car grid, consisting of five teams each entering three drivers. These teams will be existing squads across Formula 2 and Formula 3, racing over seven triple-header rounds. Only one round is planned for an F1 weekend, maximising track time outside the confines of the grand prix schedule. F1 Academy will be based on the Tatuus T421 chassis, engines supplied by Autotecnica and capable of 165bhp, and Pirelli tyres, all of which are in widespread use across European F4 competition. It will be managed by Bruno Michel, the CEO of Formula Motorsport Ltd that oversees Formula 2 and Formula…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Chevrolet’s plan to take a Next Gen NASCAR Cup-based ZL1 Camaro to the Le Mans 24 Hours next year is taking shape. The car ran at Virginia International Raceway last week in what was described by Hendrick Motorsports, which is developing the car, as a “huge milestone” for the project aimed at filling the Garage 56 entry slot reserved for innovative machinery. The test was the second for the car run by Action Express Racing after an initial roll-out at Road Atlanta at the end of August. Both runs were undertaken by two-time Le Mans winner Mike Rockenfeller, who explained that the Camaro was now being moulded into the form in which, entry permitting, it will race at the French enduro. “It’s definitely a big step,”…

“Where is P2?” It was about the only thing that Charles Leclerc got wrong last Sunday in Abu Dhabi, missing where to park next to Max Verstappen in the smoky pitstraight parc ferme after their celebratory burnouts. After heading briefly towards the third-place finisher’s spot, he squeezed his Ferrari F1-75 around the Red Bull and ended up where he should have been. The same goes for the final result of Formula 1 2022. In beating Sergio Perez to second in the season finale with a flawless drive in circumstances that his Ferrari team have historically struggled with, Leclerc sealed the runner-up spot behind Verstappen as well. It was his target throughout the season run-in, allied with working with Ferrari to start addressing the issues that blighted the middle part of…

“It was all about tyre management.” Hardly the most exciting statement in the history of motorsport, but such is modern Formula 1 and, with it, dominant race winner Max Verstappen perfectly summed up the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. On his way to sealing a seventh 2022 pole, Verstappen had helped team-mate Sergio Perez lock out the front row for Red Bull with faultless tow tactics. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc trailed in third, and needed to defeat Perez in the race to beat the Mexican to second place in the drivers’ championship. Leclerc’s task looked tricky. Not only did Red Bull have the best possible starting positions for its drivers, but it had also comprehensively outshone its red rival in FP2 – as ever, the only comparable practice session for this…

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl was left to reflect that Daniel Ricciardo’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix performance “exemplifies the unflagging enthusiasm and determination he’s shown this year” as the Australian leaves the team. After being edged out by former Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel in Q3 to qualify 10th, Ricciardo started 13th due to a grid penalty for spinning Kevin Magnussen in the previous week’s Sao Paulo GP. Ricciardo recovered to pip Vettel to ninth. Both drivers were set on the one-stop strategy, but Riccardo stopping to go from the mediums to the hards six tours earlier on lap 19 meant he was on the edge for tyre life when Vettel came up behind him late in the race. Under pressure from the Aston Martin all the way to the…

FIA FORMULA 2 YAS MARINA (ARE) 19-20 NOVEMBER ROUND 14/14 As if Red Bull’s domination of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix wasn’t enough, two of its junior drivers secured wins in the supporting FIA Formula 2 season finale. Ayumu Iwasa held off a fierce challenge from Felipe Drugovich to secure his second win of the season in Sunday’s feature race, a day after Liam Lawson won the sprint, while Williams’s Logan Sargeant secured enough points to qualify for his F1 superlicence. DAMS driver Iwasa took pole on Friday, beating team-mate Roy Nissany late in the session. Once the Japanese had seen off a feisty Nissany over the first few corners, he faced little pressure in the early stages, while MP Motorsport’s already-crowned F2 champion Drugovich battled past the Israeli at…

Before Kalle Rovanpera’s record-breaking run to become the youngest World Rally champion, the mantle had previously been held for 27 years by the late Colin McRae. The Scot lifted his maiden and only world title in 1995, driving for the factory Subaru operation, in what proved to be a tense and at times controversial campaign that has gone down in rallying folklore. Interestingly, both drivers were at similar points in their fledgling WRC careers when success arrived. McRae won two rallies, compared to Rovanpera’s six, in his title year, but the season comprised just eight events compared to the 13 in 2022. In contrast to Rovanpera, McRae was constantly playing catch-up after retirements on the opening two rounds of 1995 in Monte Carlo and Sweden. But like Rovanpera this year,…

It’s 10 rounds into the 2022 MotoGP season, and Francesco Bagnaia has retired from a grand prix for the fourth time this year. While running second, he has slid out of the German Grand Prix at the Sachsenring before chief title rival Fabio Quartararo goes on to register the third – and final – win of his campaign. He’s crashed out of the season-opener in Qatar while racing Pramac Ducati counterpart Jorge Martin; he’s gone out while battling Gresini’s Enea Bastianini for victory in France; and he’s been wiped out by Takaaki Nakagami at the first corner of the Catalan GP. After Germany, it seems that Bagnaia’s title hopes are already gone. After four breakthrough wins in the second half of 2021 repositioned him as a title favourite for 2022…

FRANCESCO BAGNAIA 1 Made too many early-season errors, but the way he rebounded in the second half of 2022 – and his race management of the final two rounds – make him a worthy champion. Needs to eradicate those mistakes though. FABIO QUARTARARO 2 Outscoring Yamaha counterparts (combined!) by 169 points shows how much better he was than his bike. Generally better than rivals, he paid for Assen mistake dearly and can’t repeat it if the bike doesn’t improve. ENEA BASTIANINI 3 Was easily the fastest Ducati rider early-season on the fully developed 2021 bike. His battles with Bagnaia hint at a fun 2023, but Bastianini cannot be as inconsistent as he was this year if he has title ambitions next season. ALEX RINS 4 What Rins could have done…

MASTERS GT TROPHY Masters Historic Racing will further develop its modern offering in 2023 with the creation of the Masters GT Trophy. The new race series, for GT4 cars from 2007 to 2018 along with suitable one-make challenge cars, builds on the two pilot races run at the Silverstone Classic in August. These attracted 16 entries for the half-hour contests. The GT Trophy will have six rounds in 2023, three in the UK – at Donington Park, Brands Hatch and the Classic – and three in continental Europe, and will sit beneath Masters Endurance Legends, which is for similar-generation sports-prototypes and GT3 machines. Different race durations are set to be trialled. Rachel Bailey from Masters said: “We want to focus on the GT4 cars that aren’t running to current homologation,…

GINETTA JUNIOR W Series champion Jamie Chadwick and her Ginetta GT5 Challenge title-winning brother Ollie were reunited with the Ginetta Junior racer in which they began their careers last month. The Chadwick family and the siblings’ Ginetta Junior engineer Nick Hart began attempting to track down the G40 in 2020 before restoring it, and the car was presented as a Christmas present to the pair last year. They were then able to get behind the wheel at Castle Combe. Ollie Chadwick had competed in the car first and, during a three-year Ginetta Junior spell from 2011, won three races before claiming the GT5 Challenge crown in 2016. Jamie was selected as the Ginetta Junior scholar for 2013 and took five podiums the following year, before enjoying success in British GT…

UAE F4 British Formula 4 race winner Louis Sharp put in an impressive performance to win both of the non-championship UAE F4 Trophy contests held in support of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last weekend. The Carlin Kiwi was on a charge at the start of the first race as he took the fight to British F4 champion Alex Dunne, who had started on pole. Sharp closed in on the Hitech GP racer and was able to squeeze ahead on lap four of 13 before pulling five seconds clear. Dunne held onto second from local driver Keanu Al Azhari. Fastest lap from the opener netted Sharp pole for race two, but Dunne was in determined mood and the pair made light contact into the first corner. Sharp held on, despite…

As I flashed past the chequered flag at Oulton Park and saw my team leaning over the pitwall, arms raised, it came home to me what a remarkable achievement we had just pulled off. It was remarkable for many reasons. Firstly, having started the UK Fun Cup race series 20 years ago, I was now back racing in it and managing a team that had just won the highly competitive 2022 championship. Who would have thought it? Also, because our little private team had just beaten a pitlane boasting many highly skilled professional teams and plenty of super-quick drivers over 34 hours of racing. Then, finally, it was remarkable because the car we had just won the championship with was the same car that won the very first Fun Cup…

“I loved the cars that gave you an advantage. Unfortunately, whenever I had one of those something seemed to go wrong and we didn’t win anyway!” Notwithstanding his 1970 Le Mans victory in a Porsche 917, Richard Attwood didn’t always have the best luck during a career that spanned Formula 1 and sportscar racing in the 1960s and early 1970s. And perhaps the best example is the story of the car that Attwood picks out when asked to select a favourite: the Ford F3L. The Ford P68, or F3L as it was better known, was a svelte sports-prototype designed by Len Bailey and built and run by Alan Mann Racing. The Cosworth DFV-powered machine proved fast, qualifying second on its debut at the Brands Hatch BOAC 500, but suffered from…

Jaguar Classic has begun work on a limited run of continuation C-type sportscars to mark 70 years since its 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours domination. Utilising revolutionary disc brakes that Jaguar introduced in 1952, Duncan Hamilton and Tony Rolt beat the sister car of Stirling Moss and Peter Walker by four laps to score the car’s second win at Le Mans in three years, while a third C-type for Ian Stewart and Peter Whitehead took fourth. The first two ‘70-Edition’ continuations to be completed at the Jaguar Classic Works in Coventry have been finished in Verbier Silver with Cranberry Red leather interior, and British Racing Green with a Suede Green leather interior respectively. Jaguar Classic began building C-type Continuations in 2021 after almost two years of data gathering to inform…

The FIA has launched a scholarship with Cranfield University to help an aspiring motorsport engineer who would otherwise be unable to study for a postgraduate degree. Cranfield is a leading postgraduate research centre, whose FIA-approved Impact Centre for crash-testing and AXSIM company work with teams and suppliers across the motorsport spectrum, with notable alumni including Mercedes F1 strategy director James Vowles. The scheme is part of a push to diversify the motorsport engineering scene, and the FIA will award the scholarship to the candidate who best fits its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) commitments. They will have living costs and fees covered while studying for a Master’s in Advanced Motorsport Engineering. Applications close on 15 February 2023. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem said: “This scholarship will allow a young person…

While most of the focus in endurance racing has been on the new LMDh offerings, that’s certainly not to say there’s no new developments in the world of GT4 competition, with the McLaren Artura and new BMW M4 set to race across the globe in 2023. McLaren’s previous model, the 570S, was released in 2016, with the British manufacturer selling more than 180 examples, the last being produced at the start of this year. Despite having achieved considerable success over a six-year period, culminating in last year’s GT4 European Series crown, the age of the model was beginning to show, according to McLaren Automotive’s director of motorsport Ian Morgan. “The 570S was done as a way of getting us into GT4 racing and I think it’s been very successful in…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 team bosses says it’s too late for the FIA to investigate Sergio Perez’s Q3 accident from May’s Monaco Grand Prix, despite the governing body’s president offering to do so. Perez crashed at Portier in the final moments of qualifying in Monte Carlo, causing a red flag that ended the session and gave him third on the grid, ahead of Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen. The world champion’s refusal to help Perez in the recent Sao Paulo GP was reported to be linked to concerns that the Monaco crash was deliberate to stay ahead on the grid, but Verstappen and Red Bull have refused to confirm that. Perez, who went on to win the Monaco GP, denied last weekend in Abu Dhabi that the crash was premeditated.…

IMSA Three-time IMSA class champion Colin Braun will return to North American sportscar racing’s front line with Meyer Shank Racing in 2023. The 34-year-old will contest the full IMSA SportsCar Championship in the GTP class alongside Tom Blomqvist in the team’s defence of its title with the new Acura ARX-06. The American has been chosen to replace Oliver Jarvis, who left the team after his option for 2023 wasn’t renewed. Braun was one of five hopefuls, including Neel Jani and Felipe Fraga, to test with Shank. The deal represents a resurrection for a driver who had raced down the class pecking order over the past years with CORE Autosport, with which he won the 2022 LMP3 title. Yet as long ago as 2006, he was a two-time winner in the…

Sebastian Vettel retires from Formula 1 with 53 victories from his 299 world championship starts, and four titles to his name. Those statistics automatically put him into an elite group, but where exactly does he sit in the pantheon of F1 legends? Vettel is third on the all-time wins list, behind Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, while his 57 poles place him fourth, with Hamilton, Schumacher and Ayrton Senna on more. Vettel’s tally of four world titles has only been surpassed by Schumacher, Hamilton (both on seven) and Juan Manuel Fangio (five). Of course, careers are longer now, so strike rate provides a better way of comparing drivers. Excluding the Indianapolis 500, which counted for points from 1950-60, only 15 drivers have a wins strike rate of 15% or better…

He stood on the track and addressed the crowd before him – more than 100 paddock personnel wearing identical T-shirts commemorating his Formula 1 career and achievements. After a few words of thanks and encouragement, Sebastian Vettel joined the masses – including Mick Schumacher – for a farewell run around the Yas Marina track. This was two hours after he’d equalled his best qualifying position of the season with ninth. “It was a bit emotional before getting in the car,” Vettel said after qualifying. “But once I was in the car it was all thoughts into qualifying. It was coming alive, I was coming alive.” Vettel had two Q1 runs to escape – not guaranteed given Aston Martin’s fluctuating 2022 form. But he felt the car was “doing what I…

Sebastian Vettel ended his final Formula 1 race with a point for 10th place. He should have walked away with even more to help Aston Martin climb the constructors’ table at the finale, but the four-time world champion was hurt by his squad’s questionable strategy. A one-stop run plan had plenty of merit, as Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc showed. But when the undercut proved so strong, ninth-starting Vettel was hurt by stretching his medium tyres to lap 25 – four tours longer than anyone else in the opening stint – before running a set of scrubbed hards to the flag. Prior to pitting, Vettel had been all over the back of seventh-place finisher Esteban Ocon. But the call to nurse his rubber meant he was dropped behind Daniel Ricciardo…

MACAU GRAND PRIX MACAU (CHN) 19-20 NOVEMBER Maro Engel took his third Macau GT Cup victory as big international names finally returned to the Guia circuit. The German was one of a number of stars to brave quarantine for a shot at glory along with Raffaele Marciello and Edoardo Mortara. These three were the main protagonists, with Audi pilot Mortara leading the two Mercedes drivers in qualifying. But ‘Mr Macau’s’ weekend took a turn for the bizarre at the start of Saturday’s qualifying race when he took off for the formation lap before the lights went green. He completed a lonely lap on his own before he was forced to start from the pitlane. That left the Mercs to battle it out alone out front, Engel leading Marciello, while a…

America’s biggest form of motorsport, NASCAR, is very traditional. There’s a staid way of doing things and, even if the unexpected occurs every now and then, the rule of thumb is that the powerhouse teams always win. What doesn’t happen is a start-up operation arrives at its top level, bragging a co-owner who’s a Grammy Award-winning megastar. It then buys an entire team from one of American racing’s most successful owners, just a matter of months into its debut NASCAR Cup season, and puts both its cars into the Playoffs at the first proper attempt a year later. Subsequently, it makes the Championship 4 decider thanks to its driver Ross Chastain deliberately driving into a wall at top speed and creating an internet sensation that even Formula 1 champions were…

HSCC The Autosport Three Hours endurance race is due to return for the first time in eight years in 2023 after the Historic Sports Car Club reintroduced the contest for its Snetterton season opener. The Autosport name will be in the title of the race over the 22-23 April weekend, as it was when the sports-racing and GT car contest ran annually from 1957-64 on the original East Anglian airfield circuit. Its winners’ list is topped by Jim Clark, who triumphed in 1959 and 1963, in Lotus Elite and 23B respectively. Motorsport luminaries Ken Rudd (AC Ace), Mike Salmon (Jaguar D-type), Mike Parkes (Ferrari 250 GTO) and ultimately Jack Sears (AC Cobra coupe) were also among those who took the chequered flag in the race. The HSCC reintroduced the three…

BRITISH GT Successful GT squad Optimum Motorsport is eyeing a full-time return to British GT next year with the new McLaren Artura GT4. The team powered Jonny Adam and Flick Haigh to the overall British title in 2018 at the wheel of an Aston Martin Vantage GT3 and has been a fixture in the series for over a decade. Optimum has not competed regularly in the GT4 class since 2019, when it ran the Artura’s predecessor, the 570S GT4. Its most recent British GT outing came with a GT3 McLaren entry in this year’s Silverstone three-hour event. Optimum has been active in international GTs of late, running Brendan Iribe’s Inception Racing squad. “The new Artura GT4 is an exciting addition to the fleet and having enjoyed many successful years in…

FAIRBAIRN TO GB4 WITH KMR American Jeremy Fairbairn will compete with Kevin Mills Racing in the GB4 Championship next season. The 18-year-old raced with the squad, which took the inaugural GB4 teams’ title this season, in the Formula Festival Festival at Brands Hatch, finishing ninth in the curtailed final. He previously raced in United States Formula 4 in 2020. MINI CHALLENGE CHARITY The Mini Challenge has launched a new charity initiative that it intends will raise £10,000 over the course of the next year. Drivers who enter the series for 2023 will be able to vote for the organisation they would like to receive the money, with the three most popular charities set to benefit. The fundraising kicked off at the annual awards ceremony, when series promoter Antony Williams, title…

HILLCLIMB Students from Oxford Brookes University are set to build an electric hillclimb single-seater that they intend to take to Pikes Peak as part of a three-year plan. Oscar McEntee has previously run cars in hillclimbs and sprints and, after joining up with fellow students, has spent the past couple of years planning the new Roughshark car, which is based upon a design from former Red Bull and Mercedes engineer Callan Trump. McEntee Racing has since secured funding and is now almost at the stage of beginning to build the first example, which it is hoped will be ready for testing by next April. “Motorsport has always been a passion of mine,” said McEntee. “I bought my first racing car when I was 18, a 600cc single-seater hillclimb car. I…

“No matter how talented you might be, the simple truth is that, without the right connections and a whole heap of cash, it’s nigh on impossible to crack.” Paddy McGuinness’s introduction to the most recent episode of Top Gear highlighted a simple truth about motorsport. The popular BBC programme has used national racing as a playground before (see Finishing Straight, Autosport 14 July), but it did something different last Sunday – taking two drivers and two mechanics who would normally have no possible means of reaching the heights in UK racing, and throwing them in at the deep end. Essentially trying to prove that talent is out there in all walks of life, even if they don’t have the money to realise their ambitions. The lucky four were selected from…

BOOK REVIEW SHELBY AMERICAN Preston Lerner RRP £35.00 Best known for its role in delivering Ford endurance racing’s biggest prize by beating Ferrari at Le Mans, Shelby American’s story is a remarkable one. The speed of its rise in becoming a winner on the international stage, just one year after its first production cars were sold in 1962, was matched by its sudden decline as founder Carroll Shelby became increasingly worn down by Ford corporate interference and exited the car business altogether by the end of the decade. To mark 60 years since Shelby founded his company with a view to knocking Corvette off its perch as America’s top sportscar builder, prolific author Preston Lerner has teamed up with Octane Press to release a new book that aims to tell…

Homologation papers have been submitted. Testing is well under way, with several manufacturers completing long-distance endurance runs having ironed out teething troubles. The wait, for what many anticipate will be a golden age of sportscar racing, is almost over. LMDh may not immediately spur the same warm response from sportscar aficionados that the GTP nomenclature does, which goes some way to explaining why the IMSA SportsCar Championship revisited its past when it came to naming the class that replaces Daytona Prototype international. But the huge wave of manufacturer interest that the four-letter acronym has heralded, attracted by the prospect of competing for outright honours in major races on both sides of the Atlantic for a justifiable cost, surely means that will only be a matter of time. When the green…

Alpine has selected the engine concept for the LMDh challenger it will race in the World Endurance Championship from 2024, and is already running it on the test bench. Bruno Famin, executive director of Alpine Racing, explained it “never considered” taking the 1.6-litre V6 engine used in its Formula 1 car as the starting point for the LMDh hybrid’s internal combustion engine for reasons of cost and complexity. He said: “We can find the 500kW-plus in a much easier and much cheaper way, much easier in terms design and maintenance as well”. Famin revealed that the concept was “finalised quite a long time ago” and has been testing at Alpine’s Viry-Chatillon facility in Paris “for some time already”, but would not reveal any technical details of the engine, nor whether…

ZF HITS MILESTONE German manufacturing giant ZF has reached a production milestone of two million electric motors, the company announced this month. The powertrain partner to Formula E squad Mahindra has continually expanded its capacity to meet demand since its first electric motor for commercial vehicles was released in 2008, with a new North American plant set to open in 2023. SUPERCARS TEST DELAY Plans for Supercars teams to begin testing their new Gen3 cars next month have been shelved. The off-season programme has been reorganised and the build phase extended into January. Teams will have six weeks from the shakedown of their new cars to the opening round of the season in Newcastle, with just two dedicated test days for each team in between. SCHAEFFLER’S BUYOUT Schaeffler Technologies AG…

It was a historic moment. The great and good from the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and IMSA sat on stage and told the racing world what it had wanted to hear for years: that the same cars would battle it out for the overall victory at the Le Mans and Daytona 24-hour endurance classics and right across the two series. An announcement, you might think, deserving of a 21-gun salute from the National Guard or a ticker tape parade through the streets. Yet for all the euphoria on the eve of the 2020 Daytona 24 Hours when the convergence between the top-class prototype rules of the two governing bodies was revealed it was just a staging point – perhaps a flag-in-the-sand moment – on a long and winding road. There…

It’s not just McLaren and BMW that will begin the season with new GT4 cars, as the Nissan Z (left) and Lotus Emira will also hit the track in 2023. The Nissan Z, which was unveiled at the SEMA show in Las Vegas earlier this month, will be provided to pilot customer teams in the SRO’s Pirelli GT4 America series and Japanese Super Taikyu Series. Nissan has completed extensive testing of the twin-turbo V6 racer, which will be capable of 450bhp subject to Balance of Performance, and comes fitted with a SADEV six-speed sequential gearbox and Ohlins two-way dampers. Speaking at SEMA, Nissan’s global programme director Michael Carcamo said: “We’re in the throes of preparing for the 2023 season – testing here locally – and we look forward to continuing…

FORMULA 1 Post-season testing got under way on Tuesday morning at Yas Marina following the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. First onto the track was the old man of the grid, Fernando Alonso, getting in his first mileage as an Aston Martin driver ahead of his switch to the team in 2023. Pierre Gasly, meanwhile, got onto the circuit with Alpine, where he has replaced Alonso for 2023 following his release from AlphaTauri to form an all-French line-up with Esteban Ocon. Or you could say that Gasly has replaced Oscar Piastri, not that the Australian and his management would ever agree… The ex-Alpine protege and 2021 FIA Formula 2 champion got down to business with the McLaren team, which secured his services for next season. The beneficiary of all these driver-market…

FORMULA 1 Spa and Baku are set to host Formula 1 sprint races next year as the format expands to six race weekends. After debuting the Saturday races in 2021, F1 held another three sprints this year at Imola, the Red Bull Ring and Interlagos, with varying levels of action and overtaking. The expansion to six sprints for 2023 has already been agreed with teams and the FIA. F1 conducted analyses into which tracks were likely to offer the best action for sprint races, creating an overtaking index that informed the decision. Autosport learned at last weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that the six circuits in the frame to host a sprint next year are Baku (Azerbaijan, right), Red Bull Ring (Austria), Spa (Belgium), Losail (Qatar), Austin (USA) and Interlagos…

WRC Craig Breen is to rejoin Hyundai for next season’s World Rally Championship after parting ways with M-Sport halfway through his two-year contract. The Irishman has agreed a deal to contest a partial campaign next year, sharing the third i20 N alongside the experienced Dani Sordo, who has been retained by the South Korean marque. The move means that Breen (above) reclaims a role he held with Hyundai from 2019-21. He has endured a difficult full season with M-Sport, which yielded podium finishes in Monte Carlo and Sardinia in its Ford Puma machinery amid a campaign plagued by incident. Confirmation of Breen’s return to Hyundai has ended suggestions of a comeback for former Citroen and Toyota driver Kris Meeke, who was among the manufacturer’s shortlist of options. “Joining Hyundai Motorsport…

A new home for W Series? Embracing the concept and vision of the W Series and its many values, I think it’s a shame that financial struggles appear to have scuppered the championship this year and potentially its future. I met Jamie Chadwick prior to the Brands Hatch finale in 2019. She is a great ambassador for the championship, as are all the drivers, and as delighted as I am that Jamie is now a triple champion, the series needs to move on and be financially independent. Initially the plan would have meant that the champion would move on to new ventures and allow for the next generation to thrive… However (and absolutely in no way any disrespect to the champion), if being part of the Formula 1 support is…

Mick Schumacher’s final Formula 1 race with Haas ended in ignominy when he was penalised for crashing with Nicholas Latifi, who also now exits the championship. The pair were fighting over 16th place as the Abu Dhabi race approached its closing stages when two-stopping Schumacher turned Latifi’s one-stopping Williams around at the Turn 5 hairpin. Both were able to drive out of the barriers, but Latifi had to then pit for repairs. His final F1 race ended two laps early when an electrical issue that arose following the crash left him with an intermittent dash display and Williams decided to retire the car. When asked about the crash post-race, Schumacher said: “You don’t really have a big overview of what is happening in your surroundings [with the new F1 cars].…

Max Verstappen has pointed out that Formula 1 seasons are longer now than they used to be and, like most active sportspeople, he’s not too bothered about breaking records. But his new benchmark of 15 wins from a single world championship season is still remarkable and deserves to be compared to some of the finest campaigns in F1 history. Working out the strike rate is an easy way of minimising the impact of the ever-growing F1 schedule. Verstappen’s tally from 22 races gives a 68% success rate. Yes, Ferrari’s strategy blunders and unreliability have boosted this figure, but Verstappen still had to get the job done. And he did that despite various challenges along the way, such as grid penalties at Spa and Monza. The bald statistics are impressive, but…

Dubbed a talent that comes along once in a generation, Kalle Rovanpera has not only rewritten the World Rally Championship record books but has already changed rallying forever. It has previously been perceived that to conquer the WRC requires a wealth of wisdom and experience of competing at the top level. Arguably the sport’s two greatest drivers, nine-time world champion Sebastien Loeb and eight-time title winner Sebastien Ogier, claimed their first crowns aged 30 and 29 respectively. The previous youngest world champion was Colin McRae, who scaled the heights of the WRC aged 27 in 1995. Ironically, 27 years later, Rovanpera has now broken the mould, smashing that record by claiming his maiden world title aged 22 and one day, after a dominant 2022 campaign that yielded six wins. While…

Trackhouse Racing made more headlines in the summer when it gave Kimi Raikkonen his Cup Series debut in its ‘Project 91’ third car at Watkins Glen. Raikkonen, who raced almost 100,000km in Formula 1, hadn’t driven a racing car in anger in the 251 days since the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The 2007 F1 world champion only got a couple of hours in a Next Gen test car at Virginia International Raceway beforehand, so the fact that he qualified back in 27th was no surprise. In a wet/dry race, however, he charged up to 14th before pitting for slicks. In the second stage, he peaked in eighth before pitting again, which put him back in the pack but on a promising fuel strategy to contend for a top 10.…

Any hopes of 2022 representing an end to Marc Marquez’s injury woes were dashed at round two in Indonesia when he crashed heavily in the warm-up and suffered the same vision problems that had ruled him out of the final two races of 2021. A quick recovery meant he was back for the Americas Grand Prix, but it was clear in those early rounds that Marquez wasn’t himself. The radical overhaul that Honda had made to its bike to try to find more rear grip robbed Marquez of his front-end confidence. But the right arm he badly broke in 2020 was still the biggest limitation. A fourth surgery to rebreak the arm and rotate the bone back over 30 degrees to its original position following May’s Italian GP forced him…

HISTORIC FF2000 A quadruple-header spanning Brands Hatch’s Indy and Grand Prix circuits will form a centrepiece to next season’s Historic Formula Ford 2000 championship. Following the twinning of the Kent venue’s Historic Sports Car Club meetings for 2023 over 14-16 July – the separate Indy circuit fixture had been dropped in a rationalisation drive due to the financial climate – registered competitors voted for this option over a Donington Park double-header. Running qualifying and two races on Brands’ 1.2-mile track on the Friday, then repeating on the 2.4-mile layout on the Saturday offers track time benefits and maximises the opportunity for social gatherings. In addition to the Brands races, the Thruxton Historic event in June also appears on the category’s 2023 calendar. Races as part of the Snetterton, Cadwell Park,…

MG CAR CLUB The MG Car Club will organise two standalone single-day meetings next year, while the rest of its calendar will comprise fixtures alongside Equipe Classic Racing. After previously appearing at MGCC events – and with various other clubs – Equipe decided to branch out for 2022 and promote its own race meetings, leaving a significant gap in MGCC timetables. It opted to largely run single-day events this season but will now take track time at Equipe’s two-day Brands Hatch and Snetterton dates, and the organisers will collaborate on the blue-riband June Silverstone meeting. “After discussions during the year, we’ve decided to come back together for 2023,” said MGCC race competitions secretary Mark Baulch. “We’ve also got Oulton Park and we’re very pleased to be going back in May…

RAM Racing will return to the Gulf 12 Hours next month with a famous retro livery on its Mercedes-AMG GT3. The car, which will be driven at Yas Marina by 2022 British GT champion Ian Loggie and fellow Am racer Morgan Tillbrook, as well as Pro Mikael Grenier, will sport the colours of the D2 mobile phone company. The livery was used on the CLK GTR that competed in the FIA GT Championship during the GT1 era of the late 1990s, and the CLK DTM of the early 2000s.…

BRANDS HATCH MSVR 19-20 NOVEMBER After more than eight hours of action in both wet and dry conditions, the fourth running of the EnduroKa IndyKa 500 at Brands Hatch was won on the road by just 0.590 seconds on Sunday. The two most successful teams of the season fought a late duel, Adam Blair bringing IP Racing’s car to the flag just ahead of Chris Weatherill in AxiaMetrics’ example. Tense final laps might have been even closer but for a late caution period, which allowed Blair to build a buffer before Weatherill could pass a backmarker at the green flag. Blair was supported by co-drivers Daniel Silvester and Scott Parkin, while Weatherill shared the cockpit with Dominic Jackson and Chris Dovell. Third place, one lap behind, was taken by Nick…

The irresistible force that was Michael Schumacher in his pomp (here in a Ferrari F310B) gives Jean Alesi (Benetton-Renault B197) little option but to yield second place at Spa’s La Source hairpin on lap five – the first three having been run behind the safety car due to the sodden conditions – of the 1997 Belgian Grand Prix. Schumacher immediately set off after polestarter Jacques Villeneuve (Williams-Renault FW19), mugged him for the lead and then disappeared into the distance. It was one of his greatest drives, characterised by insightful preparation, a smart gamble (starting on intermediates) and relentless pace. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

M-Sport will continue producing Fiesta-based rally cars following the news that Ford will cease production of the popular hatchback next year. The Cumbrian outfit currently produces Rally2, Rally3 and Rally4 specification Fiesta rally cars, which have become a core part of the World Rally Championship squad’s business. Until the move to Rally1 rules this year prompted a switch to the Ford Puma body shape, M-Sport’s top-level WRC cars from 2011 have employed the Fiesta body. Ford announced last month that the Fiesta will be withdrawn from production next year, but this won’t halt the production of Fiesta rally cars at M-Sport’s Daventry HQ or at its Krakow site. M-Sport recently developed an all-new Fiesta Rally3 model that forms the foundation of the Junior WRC, which is set to continue into…

The 1063bhp Mercedes-AMG ONE hypercar, which uses Formula 1 hybrid powertrain technology, broke the lap record for road legal production cars at the Nurburgring Nordschleife last month. With DTM ace Maro Engel at the wheel, the car posted a 6m35.183s lap to beat the previous record held by a Porsche 911 GT2 RS by almost eight seconds – despite the track being damp in patches. Engel said that utilising the car’s DRS system and deploying its electrical energy from the F1-derived MGU-H and MGU-K units, which work together with a 1.6-litre V6 turbo engine developed with Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, was key to the four-wheel-drive car’s record lap as he peaked at 210mph on the Dottinger Hohe. Mercedes-AMG CEO Philipp Schiemer said: “Even though the AMG ONE is certainly more…

There are an almost infinite number of set-up combinations available to competitors in motorsport that can be tailored for track conditions, driver preferences and car characteristics. The exact same solution is unlikely to be found between two cars from the same one-make series, let alone between factory teams in international GT racing and an amateur racer making their start at grassroots level. However, the process of establishing base set-ups is surprisingly similar, starting with accurate measurements of the camber, toe, corner weights and rideheight. And depending on how serious the club racer is, they can use the same equipment to set-up their Sports 2000 machine or Mazda MX-5 as a top GT3 customer racing outfit. This was something considered impossible in past years as cars typically required bespoke set-up equipment…

From a humble truckie’s mate to mechanic, race engineer and now experienced team manager, Chris Mower has filled just about every position going on a race team in a career spanning more than 30 years across single-seaters and sportscars. He followed in the footsteps of father Derek by working as a Formula 1 mechanic for Team Lotus in 1992, before they linked up to run the family’s Nordic Formula 3000 team that scooped the title in 2001. After stints working for US open-wheel teams and manufacturer programmes in sportscar racing, today he’s a senior motorsport programme manager at engineering giant Multimatic, assisting Sebastien Metz with overseeing the Porsche 963 LMDh project. The young Mower spent much of his youth Stateside as his father took in stints at several Indycar teams,…