Indholdsfortegnelse for 09/02/23 i Autosport

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were reviewing the 2022 Formula 1 season and rating the performances of the drivers and teams. And yet, here we are already in F1 2023 launch season, ignoring for the moment the fact that most teams have so far only really ‘launched’ new liveries (kudos to Alfa Romeo for actually showing us a fresh car!). Amid all the usual showings of confidence and target-setting, we’ve once again teamed up with F1 racer-turned-pundit Karun Chandhok for our traditional Big Questions piece looking at the campaign ahead (page 18). Chandhok takes on topics up and down the grid, from Red Bull’s likely challengers to how much work is needed at Williams, via the line-ups that could prove most explosive on and off track. Beyond…

FORMULA 1 Liam Lawson completed his long-anticipated Red Bull Formula 1 demo at Australia’s famed Mount Panorama circuit last Saturday. The Kiwi got behind the wheel of Sebastian Vettel’s title-winning RB7 from 2011 as part of the Bathurst 12 Hours weekend, but did not get close to the unofficial lap record. While Jenson Button clocked a time of 1m48.8s in a McLaren in 2011, Lawson did not get beneath the two-minute barrier. But the Red Bull F1 reserve was still buzzing. “Doing an official F1 session, free practice last year, is the biggest achievement,” said Lawson. “But doing something like this in a car that I grew up watching is more special.”…

WEC Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz have swapped back to the WRT team for their 2023 World Endurance Championship campaign. The duo, who won the 2021 European Le Mans Series with the Belgian squad (above), have moved over from Prema to share an ORECA-Gibson 07 with Angolan Rui Andrade. Mirko Bortolotti is going the other way in a reshuffle of the P2 pack in the WEC for the new season. The Lamborghini factory driver, who made his P2 debut with WRT at last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, will contest the full season with Prema as he gears up for the manufacturer’s entry into the Hypercar class with a new LMDh in 2024 to be run under the banner of the Italian team’s sister Iron Lynx operation. The 33-year-old is…

“I remember sitting there watching these GTs thundering around Spa and it was just hypnotic, and I think that’s the first time motor racing, and especially GT racing, just hooked me.” For Andrew Howard, becoming mesmerised by endurance racing at the famous Belgian circuit in 2003 proved to be a pivotal moment for several reasons. Not least because it came just a year after a “horrendous crash” at Eau Rouge in a Mini Miglia that resulted in him being taken to hospital with concussion. The pull of GT racing for Howard would have far-reaching ramifications in the following years for his Beechdean Motorsport squad – named after the successful ice cream company he co-founded with his wife Susie in 1989. After nearly two decades the outfit has become a stalwart…

Grand prix history is often written as though it began in 1950, with the inauguration of the Formula 1 world championship that is now very much the pinnacle of motorsport. That certainly keeps things neat, but GP competition started as far back as 1906, and the season that took place a century ago is a forgotten milestone. The 1923 campaign featured the arrival of a new technology that would revolutionise racing for decades, the appearance of a mid-engined design, and flirtations with other innovations, the potentials of which would not be realised for many years. And there was some controversy over a team copying the car of a rival… It might be hard to imagine now, but Fiat was the king of GP racing 100 years ago. A new two-litre…

FORMULA REGIONAL OCEANIA HAMPTON DOWNS (NZL) 4-5 FEBRUARY ROUND 4/5 Louis Foster arrived in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago just in time for round three – and the Brit won first time out. Laurens van Hoepen did the same for round four last week, and ended up scooping the big one: the coveted New Zealand Grand Prix. The Dutchman moved straight from karts into Formula Regional European in 2022 and scored points a few times. His deal in FR Oceania is for the final two rounds only with M2 Competition, and he moved straight into the battle at the front. Van Hoepen took a double pole, but lost the advantage in the first race to Kaleb Ngatoa, the local returning from Australian racing to the series with Giles…

BRITISH GT BMW factory driver Dan Harper will join Century Motorsport for a maiden assault on the British GT Championship this year alongside race winner Darren Leung. Harper, the 2019 Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion when he was the marque’s GB Junior driver, joins the British GT grid after spending the past few years racing in the Nurburgring Nordschleife-based NLS and GT World Challenge Europe with BMW. The 22-year-old competed with Century and Leung in a BMW M4 GT3 in the Gulf 12 Hours at the end of last year, and is relishing the challenge of racing as part of a Pro-Am pairing full-time. “This will be the first time in British GT for myself and I’m really looking forward to it,” said Harper. “For me it will be the…

MOTORSPORT UK Motorsport UK is set to launch a new carbon calculator tool that will enable clubs to help improve their sustainability. The governing body is working to make the sport more sustainable and its head of sustainability Jessica Runicles has spent recent years gathering data to work out the areas of priority. “We spent the whole of last year getting as much data as we can, crunching those numbers so we can fully understand where the impact is, what are the areas we really want to focus on,” she said at the Autosport International business forum last month. “So in spring, we will launch something called a carbon calculator for clubs. “This is a freely available tool that clubs will be able to use to measure the footprint of…

MGCC’S NEW GUEST SERIES The Classic Sports Car Club’s Magnificent Sevens series will appear at an MG Car Club meeting for the first time this year. The category for Caterham-style machines will feature at the Oulton Park MGCC fixture on 13 May. “Those marques fit well together – it’s a good new collaboration for the club,” said MGCC race competitions secretary Mark Baulch. HSCC REDUCES ENTRY FEES The Historic Sports Car Club is offering drivers discounted entry fees at its first three events of this year. The opening Snetterton, Cadwell Park and Silverstone meetings will all feature lower fees in a bid to boost grid numbers at a time of rising costs for racers. “I really hope that it will be a success and that we will be able to…

2022 Ginetta Junior drivers Luca Hopkinson; Josh Rowledge; Luke Watts; Sonny Smith (8 events); Ian Aguilera (5 events); Akshay Bohra (5 events); Freddie Slater (3 events) Team wins 11 Best-placed driver 1st (Rowledge) Teams’ position 2nd British GT drivers Jamie Day; Josh Miller Team wins 2 Drivers’ standings 3rd Teams’ position 3rd 2021 Ginetta Junior drivers Ian Aguilera; Aston Millar; Josh Miller; Freddie Tomlinson; Callum Voisin; Tom Edgar (4 events); Luke Watts (3 events) Team wins 16 Best-placed driver 1st (Millar) Teams’ position 1st 2020 Ginetta Junior drivers Aston Millar; Joel Pearson; Freddie Tomlinson; Bailey Voisin; Josh Rattican (6 events) Team wins 9 Best-placed driver 3rd (Voisin) Teams’ position 1st 2019 Ginetta Junior drivers Josh Rattican; Zak O’Sullivan (5 events); Aston Millar (3 events); Joel Pearson (3 events) Team wins…

5 MARK BLUNDELL Three times a runner-up in as many seasons of F3000, Blundell starred in just his third race. The Briton stormed his year-old Lola into the lead at a wet Spa in 1987, passing Roberto Moreno, before finishing second to Michel Trolle. A factory Lola driver in 1988, Blundell was the only one in the same postcode as Johnny Herbert at Jerez, and was narrowly denied at Zolder by 0.22s as Olivier Grouillard’s aggressive defence held up. 4 MAX WILSON The likeable Brazilian enjoyed a strong 1997 rookie year. He was Ricardo Zonta’s closest pursuer at Hockenheim, and hounded Jason Watt to the flag at Spa. Despite a dodgy gearbox, Wilson was second at Pau in 1998, and twice took pole after trading Edenbridge for Petrobras in 1999. But he…

FORMULA 1 Ford will return to Formula 1 in 2026 after 21 years away via a partnership with Red Bull to develop engines. The Blue Oval got out of F1 when it sold the Jaguar team to Red Bull in 2004, and its return coincides with the debut of the next generation of power units. Red Bull had been looking for a technical partner for its powertrains division since Honda made its F1 exit at the end of 2021, and was close to entering a partnership with Porsche last summer. But talks broke down due to concerns about the amount of ownership and control the German manufacturer would take in Red Bull Racing, and the door opened for a tie-up with Ford that was announced in New York last Friday.…

The Alfa Romeo Formula 1 team has unveiled its striking new C43, the last Sauber-built car to carry the name of the Italian manufacturer before its deal ends. The car features an eye-catching red-and-carbon-black livery designed by Alfa Romeo’s main styling department, without the white that has been part of the established look since the company first joined forces with Sauber, initially just as a sponsor, in 2018. The new livery reflects the switch of title partner from Orlen to Stake. The real car will run for the first time on a filming day at Barcelona tomorrow (Friday). Tuesday’s launch was based on a show car, and the team released computer-generated images of the C43 itself. Alfa Romeo describes the C43 as an evolution of its predecessor. But as well…

“I hope not, they come out of the cost cap!” Dave Robson, Williams’s head of vehicle dynamics, was relieved to hear that Alex Albon has no plans to be “throwing laptops around” as part of his work with the Formula 1 team in 2023. That is set to be one of the storylines to follow in the coming campaign: can Albon galvanise a squad that lost its previous upward momentum with a tricky start to the new ground-effects era? His hiring at Williams for 2022 was a wonderful reprieve following his Red Bull demotion – and it was one Albon grabbed brilliantly and decisively to earn a long-term contract with the Grove-based team, which revealed its 2023 livery on an FW44 on Monday. The Red Bull drop for 2021 focused and…

Prema boss Rene Rosin has overseen Dino Beganovic’s entire career in car racing, and he’s been impressed with what he’s seen. First off, in 2020, his third place in Italian Formula 4 came as fellow rookie and Prema team-mate Gabriele Mini won the crown. “He was fighting constantly for the win and podium in the final rounds,” recalls Rosin. “Honestly, his progression was pretty good. Then he moved with us in Regional. The first year, he did some good stuff at the beginning, then I must say maybe we were not on top of the game ourselves. We were struggling a bit, not really as we want it. “And after that, he stuck with us and we really put our feet down trying to understand where to improve, how to…

FORMULA REGIONAL MIDDLE EAST KUWAIT MOTOR TOWN (KTW) 31 JANUARY-1 FEBRUARY ROUND 3/5 Mercedes F1 protege Andrea Kimi Antonelli broke his duck to take his first two Formula Regional race wins and extend his series lead during the midweek event in Kuwait Motor Town, but he had to fight for both. Then his chance to make it a hat-trick was undone by an inspired Taylor Barnard. The MP Motorsport-run Hyderabad Blackbirds team appeared to have pace to spare in qualifying, and took a 1-2-3 wipeout of the grid for race one. But only Mari Boya emerged from the first lap unscathed, and he led the Prema-run Mumbai Falcons car of Antonelli for a few laps. The Italian had just got through when there was a safety car. After the restart,…

GB3 British Formula 4 race winner Joseph Loake will move into the GB3 Championship this season, remaining with JHR Developments. The 17-year-old, who was the Fiesta Junior champion in 2020, has spent the past two years in British F4, in which time he took seven wins and finished a best of fifth in last season’s standings. “I’m looking forward to the start of the season – it should be good coming off the back of a strong end to the F4 season,” said Loake. “Last year we started on the back foot and only came good in the second half of the season, which was a positive way to end and hopefully we’ll be fighting for the championship.” He joins Matthew Rees at JHR, the 2021 British F4 champion staying…

COMBE OFFERS SUPPORT The Castle Combe Racing Trust has put money towards a humanitarian convoy that has been sent to Ukraine to help in the war against Russia. A £500 donation was made to help cover the cost of a Mitsubishi 4x4, which was one of eight vehicles sent as part of the convoy at the end of January, and which will be used for military and medical use. COST-SAVING MEASURES The CNC Heads Sports/Saloon Championship will celebrate its 40th season this year and has decided to lower its entry fees to £400 per meeting in a bid to reduce costs. It has also introduced a new guest initiative where new drivers will benefit from a further reduction in entry fees for their first event. Another cost-saving measure is to…

“It’s stirred up a lot of emotion,” says one club chief of Motorsport UK’s proposal to toughen the regulations surrounding track limits. And that is an enormous understatement. The plans (outlined on page 57) to not only tighten the rules of what is permitted but also introduce penalties for the very first offence and ban drivers from protesting others over missed track-limits abuses have proven highly controversial. Quite understandably, there have been furious reactions from everyone from organising clubs to clerks of the course and, of course, racers. But, before examining the completely unenforceable proposals, let us take a step back. These changes are part of a wider review of driving standards from the governing body and it is good to see Motorsport UK taking a proactive approach in this…

BOOK REVIEW DRIVEN TO CRIME Crispian Besley RRP £40 Throughout the history of motorsport there has been no shortage of ‘characters’ who have brought their own charm and unique qualities to the sport, and generally made it a better place for one reason or another. The flipside of that is there are also those who have committed crimes and wreaked destruction in one form or another. It’s happened more often than you’d think, and a collection of 90 of these stories are the subject of Driven to Crime by first-time author Crispian Besley. It’s something of a niche subject, but certainly of interest to motorsport fans and a wider audience who find the concept of crime and how the lawbreakers were caught intriguing. The full gamut of motorsport is covered…

The two remaining Jaguar XJR-12s take a brief stop in a heaving pitlane during the closing stages of the 1990 Le Mans 24 Hours for a splash of fuel and a quick once-over with a wet chamois before what looked to be an uneventful run to first and third. Then, with 15 minutes to go, the Brun Motorsport Porsche 962C driven by Jesus Pareja (and shared with Oscar Larrauri and Walter Brun) expired, sealing a 1-2 for John Nielsen, Price Cobb and Martin Brundle (who’d been swapped into the leading #3 Jag from the long-retired #1, replacing Eliseo Salazar), and Jan Lammers, Andy Wallace and Franz Konrad in car #2. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

For all his 69 Formula 1 starts – and 31 laps led – Bruno Giacomelli is probably best remembered for his exploits over the course of the 1978 European Formula 2 Championship with March. And his domination thereof. He looks back on that year as the highpoint of his career, and certainly the most satisfying season. “That car is very much in my heart all these years later,” says Giacomelli of the BMW-engined 782 he drove for the works March team. “It was one of the best cars I ever drove, and I own two of them today, though not my championship-winning chassis. “After I’d won the championship in 1978, I told a TV interviewer in Italy that I was actually unlucky that year. The guy didn’t understand what I…

P17 OPINION FORMULA 1 Williams unveiled its livery for the 2023 season on Monday, and welcomed famed motorsport sponsor Gulf Oil as a new backer. The launch took place using a model of the 2022 Williams, with its new challenger, the FW45, set to hit the track for the first time next Monday when it completes a shakedown at Silverstone. The team has largely retained the blue-and-black design from last year, with Gulf branding featuring on the rear-wing endplate and nose. Alex Albon appeared at the launch alongside new team-mate Logan Sargeant, who graduates from Formula 2. Incoming team principal James Vowles was not present, since he does not start in the role until 20 February. Williams said this year’s car would be an evolution of the FW44, focusing its…

FORMULA 1 The FIA has formally opened the process for new teams to join the Formula 1 grid in the next few years. Following president Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s statement earlier this year that he wanted the governing body to evaluate the idea, documents have now been published for interested parties to express their interest. In a statement issued last week, the FIA said that it would evaluate the potential of new teams based on “rigorous financial and technical analysis” as well as “sustainability and positive societal impact criteria”. The earliest a new team would be able to join the grid would be 2025, with prospective entrants needing to pay a non-refundable $20,000 admin fee when expressing interest. The deadline for applications to be submitted to the FIA is 30 April.…

DTM Three-time DTM title winner Rene Rast will partner reigning champion Sheldon van der Linde at the Schubert Motorsport BMW team this season. Rast, who parted company with Audi after his long-term employer canned its mooted LMDh project, is expected to be a part of BMW’s return to the World Endurance Championship in 2024 with WRT and the M Hybrid V8. In the meantime, the 36-year-old will continue in the DTM, replacing IMSA-bound Philipp Eng in Schubert’s line-up. Van der Linde took the M4 GT3 to the title in its maiden season in 2022, and Rast is on board for all but one round – the Zandvoort event, which clashes with his McLaren Formula E programme. He will be replaced in the Dutch dunes by fellow Audi refugee Dries Vanthoor.…

Martin Truex Jr took victory in last Sunday’s Clash at the Coliseum season curtain-raiser in Los Angeles. The 2017 Cup champion got his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota around leader Ryan Preece with 24 of 150 laps of the quarter-mile oval remaining, thanks to a nudge from behind. Truex (leading in pic) held on through two late-race cautions to defeat the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolets of Austin Dillon and Kyle Busch. Dillon knocked Bubba Wallace into the wall with six laps remaining to trigger the last caution, under which Wallace hit back at Dillon in retaliation. The NASCAR circus now heads to Daytona for the 500.…

OBITUARY Jean-Pierre Jabouille secured his place in motorsport history at Dijon in 1979 when he became the first driver to win a grand prix in a turbocharged Formula 1 car. Yet his stint at Renault was just one chapter in a long and varied motorsport career that included the design of the chassis in which he took the title at the end of a hard-fought campaign in the 1976 European Formula 2 Championship. Jabouille, who has died aged 80 after a long illness, was an engineer by trade rather than training: he’d briefly studied modern art at the Sorbonne. His intuitive mechanical skills made him the perfect choice to lead Renault’s entry into F1 with its turbocharged 1.5-litre V6 engine, which joined the grid midway through 1977. Gerard Larrousse, who…

“Max has now added experience and the confidence that world championship success brings” Can anyone stop Max Verstappen and Red Bull? It’s going to be very hard to look beyond Max Verstappen and Red Bull as the favourites heading into 2023. As a driver, I thought that Max raised his game in 2022 to a new level where there really was a calmness and a methodical approach we hadn’t seen before. From when I saw him race in F3, it was abundantly clear that this guy is one of the most gifted drivers on the planet, but he’s now added experience and the confidence that the world title brings. The 2022 Max knew that he didn’t need to win the race on the opening lap. He knew that if he…

Porsche has made no bones about its new 963 prototype being the heir to its ultra-successful 962 of the 1980s and 1990s, with its plans involving a factory team and customer cars on both sides of the Atlantic. So far, it’s proving to be a tribute act in more ways than one. To remind you, the 962 itself was a successor to the 956, designed to fit IMSA’s GTP demands with a longer wheelbase, extended by 12cm at the front so the driver’s feet were behind the front axle. A steel roll cage, instead of aluminium, and a single-turbo engine, rather than the pair that the 956 boasted, were also required. The 962 made its debut in the Daytona 24 Hours in 1984, with Mario and Michael Andretti driving a…

Holden’s involvement in top-level professional motor racing is officially over. In a quirk of timing, the marque’s presence on track outlasted its existence in the showrooms by two years. It was back in early 2020 when General Motors announced that its famous Australian manufacturer would cease to exist at the end of that year. While it was a shock given Holden’s longevity, it wasn’t given the sales numbers. Local manufacturing had been dead since 2017, and people had abandoned rear-wheel-drive, four-door sedans for SUVs. The Commodore had become a rebadged version of the German-made Opel Insignia. The flow-on effect was that the days of the Ford-versus-Holden rivalry in Australia’s top-level Supercars series were suddenly numbered. While people had stopped buying Holdens, they hadn’t stopped supporting them at race tracks around…

BATHURST 12 HOUR MOUNT PANORAMA (AUS) 5 FEBRUARY INTERCONTINENTAL GT CHALLENGE ROUND 1/5 Jules Gounon became the first three-time Bathurst 12 Hour winner in dramatic fashion at Mount Panorama. For the second year running the win went to the SunEnergy1 Racing Mercedes driven by Gounon, Luca Stolz and car owner Kenny Habul. This time, however, there was no Pro-Am asterisk given Pro line-ups were welcomed back to the race, and the car ran as an outright Pro entry despite Habul’s amateur status. On sheer pace, the fastest car across the weekend was the GruppeM Mercedes of Maro Engel, Raffaele Marciello and Mikael Grenier. Engel in particular was in sparkling form, the German twice lowering the unofficial lap record for GT3 cars at Mount Panorama on Saturday. First there was his 2m01.0536s…

MOTORSPORT UK Motorsport UK has revealed controversial plans to overhaul the regulations surrounding track-limits infringements for this season, making rules tougher and introducing additional penalties. The governing body has launched a consultation surrounding proposals originally put forward by its race committee – changes that include redefining what constitutes an abuse of track limits. Under the existing rules, drivers are judged to have left the track if “any wheel of the car goes completely beyond either the outer edge of any kerb or the white line where there is no kerb”. But the new plans would make this stricter and rather than being a whole wheel, “any part of tyre” going beyond the line or kerb’s edge would be considered a breach. A new suite of punishments for track-limits infringements has…

MINI JCW Mini Challenge Trophy champion Nelson King will step up to the top-tier JCW category this season, remaining with the Graves Motorsport squad. King won 11 of the 19 races in the packed Cooper class in 2022 and only finished off the podium three times all season in a dominant display during his second year in the series. “I am delighted to retain my place in the Graves Motorsport line-up and look forward to my third season with the team,” said King. “Coming from a highly successful Cooper campaign last year, I’m looking forward to adapting to the Mini JCW, and with a great team behind me we can achieve some strong results.” Team manager David Graves added: “We are delighted to be continuing to work with Nelson into…

OBITUARY Nobody has done more for Formula Ford at club level, and for longer, than Ian ‘Diz’ Smith, who died on 31 January, aged 74. Treated for oesophageal cancer in recent months, he soldiered on stoically. The proud Scouser, for whom Aintree and Oulton Park became his ‘constituency’ homes – although he was almost as fond of Mondello Park, Kirkistown and Anglesey – had a lifelong passion for cars and found his true calling in helping others race them. In his teens, Smith was hooked by the irresistible lure of engines on the breeze from nearby Aintree Circuit Club’s legendary Tuesday evening test sessions. Soon he was invited to wield a blue flag and was named marshal of the year in 1969. Like stalwarts of small organisations do, Smith fulfilled…

Launching a new team can be a daunting process. After all, it can take years for a fledgling operation to grow and for success to be achieved. But that was not the case for frontrunning Ginetta Junior squad R Racing. The Norfolk team went from a tiny single-car outfit to a slick five-car operation in less than a year. Two drivers’ titles, a pair of teams’ championships, two Winter Series crowns, and a rookie championship win later and R Racing has now rapidly established itself as a successful Ginetta Junior frontrunner. Perhaps unsurprisingly, team founders Jamie Ross and Nathan Read describe their squad’s journey so far as a “whirlwind”. But the pair had tackled a lot in their careers even before R Racing was formed. Having initially carried out his…