Indholdsfortegnelse for 06/07/23 i Autosport

It’s been a sad few days in motorsport. Former team bosses Bob Fernley and Steve Neal died in a short space of time, while Dilano van’t Hoff’s death in a horrible Formula Regional European crash once again shifted the focus to safety at Spa. As ever in such circumstances it’s not a time for knee-jerk reactions, but it’s only right that questions are asked. As Alex Kalinauckas shows on page 12, Formula 1 is already experimenting with possible solutions that could help reduce the risks in the wet. It was poignant that when the news of Neal’s passing came through, many of his friends and colleagues were together at Brands Hatch for the inaugural Super Touring Power, an event celebrating an era in which his Team Dynamics played such a…

OBITUARY Steve Neal, who has died aged 82 after illness, was best known as the founder and principal of long-time British Touring Car Championship giant Team Dynamics, but was also a leading driver in the series in his own right. The ebullient and ever-cheerful Midlander, the father of three-time BTCC champion Matt Neal, raced initially in Formula Junior, but it was in Minis that he came to prominence in the late 1960s. He drove for the factory Cooper team’s 1300cc-class effort in 1968 alongside John Rhodes, scoring an outright British Saloon Car Championship race win at Crystal Palace where the smaller classes formed a separate grid, then moved to the Britax Cooper squad in 1969, paired with Gordon Spice. Neal’s driving career wound down after he suffered an eye injury…

I expected my debut season in Formula 3 in 2022 to be one of learning, building and focusing, but it didn’t end up being that way. After Silverstone, which was round four, I had a turning point and I started to get some good results. At the end of the year, I was only seven points off the championship, which subsequently was enough to get me up to F2. Being with Prema for F3, if you get a decent result there’s almost always a seat for you in F2. I am quite confident in my management, Ferrari and Prema, in that whatever decision we took would be the right one. When I found out that I had the drive in F2, it was a surprise, but a very good one. This…

“I haven’t lost it. You don’t go from winning races to all of a sudden being a very bad driver.” Illness wasn’t holding Sergio Perez back from speaking his mind after the Austrian Grand Prix sprint race. Neither did it stop the Mexican being just as brutal in attack and defence against Max Verstappen as was the Dutchman against him. Their scrap ultimately decided the outcome in the championship leader’s favour, in what was a wet-to-dry thriller for almost everyone else. Perez had finally reached Q3 for the first time in five attempts, and he joined Verstappen on the sprint front row, albeit 0.5 seconds slower. Lando Norris and Nico Hulkenberg had brilliantly nipped ahead of the Ferrari pair, with Charles Leclerc forced to start ninth as punishment for impeding…

Over 1200 reports of track-limits violations were recorded by the FIA over the 71 laps of the Austrian Grand Prix. While track-limits strikes for going over the white line at Turns 9 and 10 were handed out, and penalties dished out accordingly, the result at the time of the chequered flag was conspicuously provisional. Aston Martin protested the result, suggesting that the FIA had missed more run-off exploration in the final two corners, and the team’s protest was subsequently upheld. The FIA handed out 12 further penalties in its post-race investigation. Throughout the race, multiple drivers resorted to reporting the driver ahead in a bid to get the FIA involved with investigating any potential transgressions; Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris in particular were vocal in their assertions that the other…

George Russell reckoned that Mercedes’ performance at the Austrian Grand Prix felt like a “big step backwards” as the team struggled for race pace throughout the weekend despite its continued work with its far-reaching W14 upgrades. The Briton suffered misery in both qualifying sessions, failing to break out of Q2 in either. His running in sprint qualifying was hindered by a “freak issue” with his hydraulics. He became the first to switch onto slick tyres in the sprint and earned a point with eighth place for his efforts. During the grand prix, Russell spent much of the early stages battling with Alex Albon, but moved past once the second VSC period had cleared and cycled into the top 10 once everyone had completed their first set of stops. But progress…

For those either enfeebled by the post-Glastonbury blues, or those wanting to indulge in their own soundtrack of growling V6 turbo-hybrids, the British Grand Prix is set to deliver its yearly festival atmosphere to another sell-out crowd. Expect the aroma of burning fuel to coalesce with the umami wafts of smoke from the myriad barbecues peppered around the circuit’s vast campsites, as thousands of disciples make the pilgrimage to Northamptonshire to soak up the Great British summer. It’s a great time to be a Formula 1 fan. The championship’s continuing surge of popularity escalates to stratospheric heights, and the home support for the Brits on the grid will be just as rambunctious as it ever was. The 2023 edition of the F1 championship race has been one-way traffic, with Max…

Age 23 Silverstone GP starts 5 Best Silverstone GP finish 4th 2023 championship pos 10th (24 points) The Bristol flyer has needed to exercise much in the way of patience so far in 2023. McLaren understood that, while its MCL60 chassis was in development in the latter half of last season, there were serious deficiencies in its current philosophy that needed a change of course. Norris, who had got agonisingly close to his first F1 win in 2021, instead had to sit tight for another year while McLaren plotted a new course in its bid to remain semi-competitive in the short term. Rather than succumb to the frustration, Norris has diligently gone about his business and mucked in with trying to help the team turn the tide with its troubled…

The SunEnergy1 Mercedes didn’t look a likely class winner at Spa on Thursday evening. Kenny Habul was in hospital with back injuries that required surgery, and the Haupt-run car had been rendered hors de combat in the team boss’s high-speed accident at Raidillon in final free practice. That the team claimed the Pro-Am Cup victory owed much to the rival GetSpeed team. Not only did the German squad loan Haupt a chassis for the race, but its boss Adam Osieka ended up stepping in to race the car, even though his operation was running three Mercs itself. He came into the line-up as one of the two mandated bronzes alongside Nicky Catsburg, Chaz Mostert and Martin Konrad when the original replacement for Habul, Liam Talbot, couldn’t make it over from…

FORMULA 3 RED BULL RING (AUT) 1-2 JULY ROUND 5/9 Briton Zak O’Sullivan stormed from fifth to first in a blistering mid-race spell in Austria to take his third race win in the FIA Formula 3 Championship – and his first in a feature race. Williams F1 junior O’Sullivan lined his Prema Racing car up sixth and made up a place on the first lap before an early safety car, caused by title contender Gabriele Mini running off at Turn 4 after making contact with the rear of Hitech team-mate Luke Browning. From the restart, ART Grand Prix-run poleman Gregoire Saucy led from Prema’s Dino Beganovic, series leader Gabriel Bortoleto’s Trident car, and Saturday race winner Paul Aron in his Prema machine, while 2021 Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver…

WORLD RALLYCROSS HOLJES (SWE) 2 JULY ROUND 3/8 Johan Kristoffersson continued his unbeaten start to the World Rallycross Championship season on home soil in Sweden, taking his third clean-sweep in a row and a 38th career victory. He was untouchable in both dry and wet conditions across the two days at the ‘magic weekend’ event, which began with him topping Superpole. After triumphing in every heat, five-time champion Kristoffersson lined up at the front in the first of the semi-finals. He led away at the start in his Volkswagen RX1e from Timmy Hansen’s Peugeot 208, while the Lancia of Guerlain Chicherit came out on top in a feisty three-way battle behind with Niclas Gronholm and Klara Andersson, who was forced off track before taking her joker lap. Kristoffersson pulled clear…

BMW CAR CLUB The BMW Car Club will run another Ultimate BMW race this summer, which is open to all closed-wheel models from the German manufacturer, and this year’s will be held at Brands Hatch. The non-championship race was run for the first time at Donington Park last August and attracted 27 entries. The 40-minute contest is specially designed for those who have cars that do not conform to the club’s regular championship, and they can run on any tyres. Organisers intend for the race to be an annual feature that moves around different venues, with this year’s Brands event set for 26 August. “It’s going to be the same format as last year but we might bring in a few different trophies,” said BMW Car Club coordinator Neil McDonald.…

GOODWOOD Reigning MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia will be joined by nine of his rivals for this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed event. The Ducati rider will take to the hill on 13-16 July, as will fellow MotoGP riders Lorenzo Savadori, Raul Fernandez, Miguel Oliveira, Enea Bastianini, Michele Pirro, Augusto Fernandez, Pol Espargaro, Brad Binder and Mika Kallio. The event is set to be the biggest FoS celebration of the two-wheeled championship, with six MotoGP teams attending including Aprilia, Ducati, Honda and KTM. Legends of MotoGP will also be present, including Alex Criville, Casey Stoner, Freddie Spencer, Giacomo Agostini, Kenny Roberts Jr, Kevin Schwantz, Mick Doohan, Randy Mamola and Wayne Gardner, who combined hold 35 world championships between them.…

SUPER TOURERS Races 1, 2, 3 & 4 Jake Hill (Nissan Primera GT) PRE-’66 TOURING CARS Races 1 & 2 Grant Williams (Jaguar Mk1) PRE-’66 & PRE-’83 TOURING CARS Races 1 & 2 Charles Rainford (Ford Capri Mk3) PRE-’83 & PRE-’93 TOURING CARS Races 1 & 2 Stuart Waite (BMW M3 E36) PRE-’93 & PRE-’03 TOURING CARS/BOSS Race 1 Paul Mensley (Ford Sierra RS500, below) Race 2 Martin Reynolds (Ford Escort Mk2) PRE-’03 TOURING CARS/BOSS Races 1 & 2 Paul Mensley (Ford Sierra RS500) CLASSIC THUNDER/JAGUAR CHALLENGE Races 1 & 3 Sam Wilson (Aston Martin V8 Vantage) Race 2 Alex Sidwell (Holden Commodore VF) Race 4 Nick Vaughan (Audi A3) MX-5 CUP Races 1 & 2 Ben Short UNITED FORMULA FORD Lucas Romanek (Van Diemen JL13) TRACKDAY CHAMPIONSHIP John Lamaster…

OULTON PARK MSVR 1 JULY A three-hour delay to repair a damaged barrier dramatically shortened the action at Oulton Park on Saturday, but it didn’t stop the venue becoming the ‘backyard of billionaires’ with thousands of supercars heading to the circuit for the Supercar Pageant. In what was originally billed as two 40-minute races, the headlining GT Cup Championship was only able to complete two laps of race one and a reduced 30-minute sprint at the end of the day. The pivotal moment in the opening race, and ultimately the entire meeting, came as conditions worsened and the left-rear of Richard Mason’s Lamborghini Huracan GT3 touched the grass on the exit of Druids. The loss of control speared him into the barrier under the Warwick Bridge on the other side…

For a charitable organisation that has been helping support UK motorsport for over 45 years, the British Motorsport Training Trust has not exactly been a well-known name. Every year it gives grants totalling six-figure sums to fund training and safety initiatives, and yet it has been operating somewhat behind the scenes. Until now, that is. A rebrand to become the British Motorsport Trust, in addition to highlighting its work outside of the training sphere, is being used to help raise awareness of its important duties and enable it to assist more clubs and organisations. “Originally the trust was set up to train people, particularly in safety,” explains current chairman Rod Parkin, an experienced clerk of the course and steward. “But the remit has, for quite a while now, extended beyond…

Tomas Enge’s long stint as part of Prodrive’s sportscar operation yielded great success, including a Le Mans GTS class win with the Ferrari 550 Maranello and Le Mans Series title with the Lola-Aston Martin B09/60 LMP1. Two fourth places in the FIA GT1 World Championship and a Petit Le Mans class win with the Aston Martin DBR9 aren’t as weighty in the history books, but it’s not a difficult decision for the Czech to select it as his favourite car. Enge describes the Aston that first appeared in 2005 as “a step higher than the Ferrari” in terms of refinement. After taking the similarly V12-motivated Ferrari to class pole position at Le Mans every year from 2002 to 2004, Enge continued the run with the Aston in 2005 and 2006.…

FORMULA REGIONAL Eighteen-year-old Dilano van’t Hoff died during the second of the two Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine races at Spa last weekend. The MP Motorsport driver succumbed to his injuries sustained in an accident on what was scheduled to be the penultimate lap of the race held on Saturday morning ahead of the Spa 24 Hours round of the GT World Challenge Europe. His death was announced by FRECA approximately two hours after the end of a race that was red-flagged immediately following a multi-car incident. The short statement from FRECA offered no details of the accident. The FIA has been contacted about the crash, which happened in one of its certified categories. The accident happened on the Kemmel Straight after the Eau Rouge/Raidillon sequence in wet and…

FORMULA 1 AlphaTauri is set to be rebranded for the 2024 Formula 1 season. A return to its old Toro Rosso identity is improbable since a lucrative title sponsorship deal will likely decide all. But the squad could turn back the clock in another way by rehiring Daniel Ricciardo if none of the Red Bull junior drivers are considered ready for the job. Following the late-2022 death of Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, new management has ruled that the Faenza-based team has not done enough to boost the profile of the fashion brand from which it takes its name. The renaming for next year is part of a drive to make the squad more financially sustainable. Team principal Franz Tost ruled out a return to its 2006-19 Toro Rosso moniker.…

NURBURGRING 24 HOURS The Nurburgring 24 Hours will become a round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge next year. It means that all the big GT3 enduros will finally be on the IGTC calendar next season when it joins the Spa 24 Hours and the Bathurst 12 Hours. IGTC boss Stephane Ratel explained that the idea of bringing the Nordschleife event into the IGTC had first been floated by BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos during this year’s Kyalami round, which attracted just 13 cars. He admitted that he had been sceptical because the Nurburgring 24 Hours “is such a German affair”, but he said that victory for the new Ferrari 296 GT3 in this year’s race changed his mind. “Victory for Ferrari [above] was like a present from the sky,”…

OBITUARY Former Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley has died aged 70. A close associate of team owner Vijay Mallya, Fernley held the role at the Silverstone squad from its first season under the Force India name in 2008 until the summer of 2018, when Lawrence Stroll bought the assets and relaunched the team as Racing Point. The son of a joiner, Fernley was proud of his humble origins in Lancashire. At one point a career in football beckoned, but after contact with scouts from Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers that dream faded. After school he studied engineering in technical college. That led to working in car dealerships and an association with Bob Howlings, whose AMCO organisation sold second-hand F1 cars via ads in this magazine, and had close…

Really, the thing that went most wrong for Red Bull last Sunday at the Austrian Grand Prix was its pre-race jetpack demonstration. After blasting at irritating volume around the track pointlessly wasting energy, one pilot lost control between the two final corners of the Red Bull Ring and wiped out on the course. But he was soon back on his feet and waving to the crowd. Much the same could be said of Max Verstappen having to chase down and pass Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to take his fifth successive win. The Dutchman’s fifth victory at his team’s home track provided another homage to the late Dietrich Mateschitz and was sealed in front of the Red Bull co-founder’s son Mark and the company’s new marketer-in-chief Oliver Mintzlaff. It may only have…

The Red Bull Ring is a terrific place to see the new generation of Formula 1 cars in action. It’s just such a shame that some idiots are intent on ruining the spectacle by still bringing banned flares into the circuit, which then end up either imperilling the action or spoiling the view. Autosport gets a good view of both aspects at Red Bull’s home race in the sole practice session. For the start of Friday afternoon’s one-hour period, we’ve walked to the final corner – the critical plunging right-hander and its heavily policed hefty exit kerb. Immediately it’s clear again how hard this section is, with the drivers having to rapidly adjust from shooting wide out of the penultimate corner up ahead of us and then hit their preferred…

Nico Hulkenberg was unable to double up on his impressive sprint race performance when he suffered an early retirement from the Austrian Grand Prix, grinding to a halt on his 13th lap with smoke pluming from his Haas. An apparent Ferrari power unit failure forced the German to pull up at Turn 3, producing the race’s second virtual safety car period. Hulkenberg had not long pitted for the hard tyres – his early successful efforts to cling onto seventh place came at the cost of tyre life, a factor Haas has struggled with in 2023. “Thankfully we got some points [on Saturday] when we had the opportunity,” mused team principal Guenther Steiner. Hulkenberg’s sixth place in the sprint race (he ran as high as second) yielded three points from the…

Age 38 Silverstone GP starts 17 Silverstone GP wins 8 2023 championship pos 4th (106 points) “It’s right up there with all the best circuits, but it has the best layout.” As an eight-time winner of the British Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton’s love for Silverstone is clear. That it’s his home race, in front of passionate, knowledgeable and loyal fans, is always worth an extra tenth or two. But after his dramatic win here in 2021, the Mercedes driver has endured a frustrating start to Formula 1’s new ground effect era. That ethereal home boost will be the help he needs behind the wheel of a W14 in 2023… That car, returned to the black paint scheme Hamilton used in his 2020 and 2021 Silverstone wins to save weight, isn’t…

UK START TIMES Friday 7 July FP1 1230 FP2 1600  Saturday 8 July  FP3 1130 QUALIFYING 1500  Sunday 9 July  RACE 1500 CATCH THE RACE LIVE CHANNEL 4 SKY SPORTS F1 TV Highlights CHANNEL 4 2350 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS Drivers Constructors SILVERSTONE STATS Previous winners 2022 POLE POSITION Carlos Sainz 1m40.983s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m24.303s (2020) RACE LAP RECORD Max Verstappen 1m27.097s (2020) Laps led Lewis Hamilton 352 Jim Clark 210 Alberto Ascari 175 Alain Prost 159 Fernando Alonso 155 Sebastian Vettel 155 Froilan Gonzalez 149 Michael Schumacher 147 Nigel Mansell 146 Mika Hakkinen 135…

INDYCAR MID-OHIO (USA) 2 JULY ROUND 9/17 The IndyCar paddock is facing a superlatives crisis to describe the current form of Alex Palou, who at Mid-Ohio scored his third consecutive race win in what’s supposed to be the most competitive open-wheel series on the planet. As at Road America, the Chip Ganassi Racing star’s closest challenger was Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta, and once more his bid for a first victory of the year fell apart in the pitlane. This time it was finger trouble on the steering wheel, after Herta suffered a huge slide at pit entry, which resulted in a speeding penalty that consigned him to finish 11th. Not that he truly had the race pace to beat Palou anyway… Palou started ‘only’ fourth on the grid, after failing…

NASCAR CUP CHICAGO (USA) 2 JULY ROUND 18/36 NASCAR’s newest Cup Series star could be an international one after Shane van Gisbergen took a shocking victory on his debut last Sunday in the inaugural Chicago Street Race. With NASCAR celebrating its 75th anniversary, the win by New Zealand’s three-time Supercars champion put an exclamation point on NASCAR’s global motorsport reach. With darkness looming over the 2.2-mile, 12-turn course traversing the Grant Park area in downtown Chicago, NASCAR shortened the originally scheduled 100-lap event to 75. Running 16-lap fresher tyres than leader Justin Haley, van Gisbergen ran him down to take the lead late in the race, but a late caution for a two-car wreck set up a two-lap overtime. Van Gisbergen got an excellent restart and had little trouble holding…

GT4 EUROPEAN SERIES SPA (BEL) 30 JUNE-1 JULY ROUND 3/7 Ex-Formula Ford Festival winner Ricardo van der Ende claimed a dramatic victory in the GT4 European Series at Spa. The Dutchman took over the BMW M4 GT4 started by Benjamin Lessennes in third place, and a safety car moved him onto the tail of the leading duo. Among this pair, Julien Briche had taken the lead at the start before handing his Aston Martin over to son Florian, and Christophe Hamon was at the wheel of the Sainteloc Audi qualified on pole by Gregory Guilvert. In a brilliant move, van der Ende swept ahead of Hamon and Briche after the restart to take the lead. Gabriele Piana was also on the move in the BMW started by Michael Schrey and…

British rally ace Chris Ingram was the star of the annual Rally Day at Castle Combe last Saturday. Fresh from finishing a mighty second on the Ypres Rally a week earlier, Ingram wowed the fans by driving the Toyota Celica GT4 (below) of Nicky Grist on the feature rally stage at the Wiltshire track. Other stars included Jimmy McRae, Stig Blomqvist and Louise Aitken-Walker, while star cars included an ex-Colin McRae Ford Focus WRC and two Subaru Impreza WRCs previously driven by McRae and Juha Kankkunen. Ingram said: “I’ve got massive respect for the heritage of the sport. For me, the 02 Focus was iconic because that’s when I started watching rallying when I was eight years old.”…

Super Touring cars were amazingly sophisticated and expensive, which helps to explain why getting a consistently strong grid of them for a historic championship has always been a challenge. But it is possible to relive one of the true heydays of tin-top competition, as last weekend’s Brands Hatch Super Touring Power event proved. A fine field of 20 cars qualified for the first race on the Grand Prix layout on Saturday, and 15 lined up for the fourth and final contest on the Indy circuit on Saturday. The races were short and sharp – sensible given the exotic machinery – but long enough to make the right sights and sounds, and evoke many memories. The celebration went far beyond that, with displays and on-track demonstrations that included more Super Tourers…

In May 1923, a lone Bentley left London and headed for the ferry en route to France. Canadian John Duff was at the wheel and sitting alongside was fellow racer Frank Clement, while behind, cramped together with tools and spares, perched mechanics Arthur Saunders and Jack Besant. Their destination: Le Mans – the first edition of a new race for production cars to be held over 24 hours. One hundred years later, the same #8 machine was back in London, standing proudly at the head of an assembled group of over 30 others, all members of the Benjafield’s Racing Club, ready to remake the crossing and return to France. Duff and Clement had been the sole British entry in 1923, and remarkably finished fourth overall after losing time to a…

ANGLESEY CSCC 24 HOURS 1-2 JULY The Classic Sports Car Club held its first 24-hour race meeting last weekend using a format of four races per category, all of which featured compulsory pitstops, with the final results determined by the aggregate times. The opening race featuring Tin Tops, Puma Cup and Turbo Tin Tops did not exactly promise 24 hours of exciting action, though, with numerous cars either retiring or losing time due to problems. Adam Brown and Andrew Windmill encountered issues even before the rolling start, handed penalties for overtaking under yellow flags during qualifying. Both recovered well, but Windmill was one of those who had their race compromised by reliability issues and he retired his Honda Civic Type R. Brown, meanwhile, won by almost 29 seconds in his…

HAREWOOD BRITISH HILLCLIMB 1-2 JULY A year after his maiden British Hillclimb Championship victory, Matthew Ryder was back on top in the second run-off at Harewood last Sunday. On a day when changeable weather conditions and a course lacking in grip caused numerous moments, Ryder rose to the occasion on the very last run of the weekend to take victory. Earlier in the afternoon, reigning champion Wallace Menzies had won the first run-off with a typically classy performance, and it was Menzies and Ryder who locked out the top two positions at the Yorkshire hill during each round. Scott Moran, Alex Summers and Sean Gould packed out the rest of the top five. It was a weekend when both Moran and Summers were left struggling to find the right balance…

OBITUARY Dilano van’t Hoff was a terrific talent who was on the rebound from a historic karting injury when he suffered the tragic accident that claimed his life at Spa last weekend. A damaged left shoulder had not proved much of a problem in his rookie season of car racing in 2021. He was pipped to the UAE Formula 4 title by one point, then dominated the Spanish F4 Championship with MP Motorsport, while current FIA F3 runner-up Pepe Marti was third. Van’t Hoff stepped up to the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine in late 2021 with MP in preparation for a full campaign in 2022, but the physical demands of the FRECA car’s heavy steering proved too much for his injury, and he was forced to sit out…

WEC Ferrari has been handed a double Balance of Performance hit for this weekend’s Monza round of the World Endurance Championship. The Le Mans 24 Hours-winning 499P Le Mans Hypercar will have to run heavier and with less power than at the French enduro last month. The minimum weight of the 499P has been increased by a further 5kg above the 24kg it received ahead of Le Mans, while the maximum power output allowed from its hybrid powertrain has been reduced by 12kW (16bhp) for Sunday’s Monza 6 Hours. Toyota’s GR010 HYBRID LMH, which ran Ferrari close at Le Mans, will race at an unchanged weight of 1080kg, though with power decreased by 5kW (6.7bhp). The manufacturer BoP in the Hypercar class for the remaining rounds of the series has…

The accident that claimed Dilano van’t Hoff’s life happened nearly 600 miles from the Red Bull Ring. But the Formula 1 drivers were united in their reaction last weekend. Any motorsport fatality is terrible and requires proper investigation and assessment. But, with F1 heading back to Spa in three weeks’ time and the memories of Anthoine Hubert’s death there in 2019 still so fresh, that track is now under a specific focus. The F1 drivers had three overarching reactions to van’t Hoff’s death, all aimed at ensuring the same conversations aren’t required again, at least any time soon. They cover three areas for further improvement that would benefit categories across the sport: barrier placement, race control decision-making in wet races, and the visibility problem in those conditions. Spa has taken…

It proved to be a temporary pause given what happened to Charles Leclerc in Saturday’s sprint shootout qualifying (see page 18), but Ferrari finally shook off its shambolic streak in grid-setting sessions last Friday evening in Austria. It had looked like business as usual after the first runs in Q3, as Max Verstappen led by a margin of 0.206 seconds, but over Leclerc and not Sergio Perez. Perez hadn’t adjusted his approach to the final corners in Q2, losing three laps as a result of twice going too wide in Turn 9 and once doing likewise at the final corner, and getting dumped out without a representative time established. Verstappen had also been pinged for the same Turn 9 infraction on his first Q2 run, where he claimed he was…

Age 25 Silverstone GP starts 5 Best Silverstone GP finish 12th 2023 championship pos 7th (72 points) You really do expect Formula 1 drivers to be enjoying themselves, living life at 200mph, travelling the world, being adored. But that’s not always obvious – not for hyper-competitive athletes often frustrated with media and sponsor engagements taking them away from what they truly love: racing. But in George Russell in 2023, there is a clear sense of a driver thriving, even amid recent tough moments. His second season at Mercedes currently features a respectable 4-5 team-mate head-to-head qualifying record against F1 legend Lewis Hamilton, plus another podium appearance coming after a brilliant drive in Spain. Without his engine failure in Australia, which followed Russell sensationally blasting past polesitter Max Verstappen before he…

BMW had the fastest car in the all-important closing stages of the Spa 24 Hours last weekend. Nick Yelloly, Marco Wittmann and Philipp Eng always looked in control over the final four hours or so as they swept to victory in the blue-riband round of the GTWorld Challenge Europe. Yet the Rowe Racing crew and their BMW M4 GT3 didn’t look like potential winners early in the race. A car that had started down in 26th after rain jumbled the order in first qualifying on Thursday night failed to take on the correct amount of fuel at either of its first two pitstops. Suddenly, the BMW was a lap down and round three of the Endurance Cup segment of the GTWCE had barely got going. Rowe got creative in the…

FORMULA 2 RED BULL RING (AUT) 1-2 JULY ROUND 7/13 Richard Verschoor took a stunning Formula 2 victory in the feature race in Austria when a well-timed safety car played into his hands while on the alternate strategy. The Dutchman gave Van Amersfoort Racing its first F2 win after lining up 11th on the grid on the soft Pirelli – the harder of the two compounds used over the weekend. Verschoor dedicated the win to compatriot Dilano van’t Hoff, the 18-year-old Formula Regional driver who died at Spa on Saturday and who the victor counted as a good friend. Championship leader Frederik Vesti seemed in control of the 40-lap feature race in his Prema Racing machine after getting ahead of poleman Victor Martins at the start. The Danish Mercedes F1…

INDY NXT MID-OHIO (USA) 2 JULY ROUND 6/12 Brit Louis Foster scored his maiden Indy NXT victory with Andretti Autosport at Mid-Ohio thanks to a stunning pass on polesitter Christian Rasmussen. The reigning Indy Pro 2000 series champion, son of former BTCC racer Nick Foster, started from second on the grid after Rasmussen had snatched pole by 0.01s. After leading Foster from the start, Rasmussen got spooked when rain intensified with 10 laps to go. Foster got alongside going into Turn 4, where he made an audacious later-braking move around the outside. “It was starting to rain a little bit, so it was slippy around the back [of the track],” said Foster. “That made Christian make a mistake, and the move was good but it destroyed my front-right tyre.” Foster…

FORMULA REGIONAL EUROPEAN SPA (BEL) 30 JUNE-1 JULY ROUND 4/10 Rafael Camara and Andrea Kimi Antonelli claimed maiden Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine victories on a sad weekend for the series. Eighteen-year-old Dilano van’t Hoff was killed on Saturday morning in the second of the two races on the bill of the Spa 24 Hours. Prema driver Camara took a lights-to-flag victory in a processional opening race on Friday, controlling affairs through two safety cars to take the win by a shade under 0.8 seconds. The Brazilian Ferrari protege converted pole into the lead from fellow front-row starter Tim Tramnitz, and edged away by more than a second from the R-ace GP driver before each of the cautions. Championship leader Martinius Stenshorne took third in his R-ace car, a…

SUPER TOURERS Bathurst legends Greg Murphy and Steven Richards contested the Super Touring races at Brands Hatch last weekend and hope to return for future events. Four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Murphy drove an ex-Team Dynamics Nissan Primera at Super Touring Power, while five-time victor Richards raced the Volvo S40 campaigned by his father Jim Richards in Australia in 1998. Murphy qualified seventh in the 20-car field for his circuit debut on Saturday and finished race one in the same spot with the Peter Sturgeon-owned Nissan. Richards finished fifth in his first race on the Grand Prix layout before going one place better in race two, from which Murphy retired. On the Indy circuit on Sunday, Richards qualified fifth and Murphy sixth. Murphy beat Richards’s Lindsay O’Donnell-owned Volvo to sixth by…

HISTORICS The Ford Sierra RS500 raced by four-time British Touring Car champion Andy Rouse during the 1989 season has been put up for auction having been ‘lost’ for more than 30 years. Rouse took the car to six wins during the 1989 season and finished third overall in the standings as well as winning Class A, before the RS500 competed in the Group A Saloon Car race in support of the Macau Grand Prix later that year. It was then sold to a Japanese team that used it for seven races across the next two years, before it is believed to have been sold to a private collector. Recently acquired by a new owner, the car was then sent to Andy Rouse Engineering, where it was confirmed by Rouse himself…

BRITISH DRAG RACING The Wallace Motorsport Pro Modified juggernaut thundered on as Bobby Wallace added another win to his tally last weekend. He has now reached five final rounds in a row and won three of them, his two defeats dealt by Sweden’s all-conquering European champion Jan Ericsson in Santa Pod’s combined FIA/Motorsport UK races in September and May. But last weekend, the third round of the 2023 Motorsport UK British Drag Racing Championship, he ‘ran the table’ by scoring pole position, clocking the lowest elapsed time and top speed of the event (5.861s/246.37mph), and then winning it. Wallace’s final-round opponent was Wayne Nicholson, who faced off for the second time this season. Nicholson’s Yorkshire team had failed to register a time in Saturday’s first two qualifying sessions and only…

LE MANS CLASSIC PETER AUTO 1-2 JULY Jointly organised by Peter Auto and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, the 2023 Le Mans Classic continued the 24 Hours centenary celebrations set in motion just a few weeks ago when Ferrari scored a dramatic comeback win at the famous Circuit de la Sarthe. The 11th edition of the Classic featured six age-related Plateaux (grids), each grid racing three times over 24 hours, and six ‘support’ races. It attracted a record-breaking crowd of 235,000, despite heavy rain and prolonged drizzle early on before sunny conditions took over on Saturday. The Endurance Racing Legends, featuring the most modern machines of the 1990s and 2000s, kicked things off and attracted nearly 80 cars, including the likes of Porsche 911 GT1 Evo, Bentley Speed 8, McLaren…

BRANDS HATCH MSVR SUPER TOURING POWER 1-2 JULY Current British Touring Car Championship star Jake Hill was just five years old when he watched Laurent Aiello win the BTCC title in 1999, but Hill himself became a Super Touring winner by securing a clean sweep at the inaugural Super Touring Power meeting. The 20-car Super Tourers entry, including five machines from New Zealand, contested a pair of races on both of Brands Hatch’s Grand Prix and Indy layouts, with Hill, at the wheel of Richard Wheeler’s ex-Aiello Nissan Primera, pipped to Saturday pole by Stewart Whyte’s ex-Tom Kristensen Honda Accord. But the eight-time BTCC race winner led from the rolling start and was barely headed for the rest of the weekend, although Whyte came closest to usurping him. The former…

Jochen Rindt stands by as his mechanics examine his Cooper-Maserati T81, stranded by a serious fuel leak – liquid appearing to pool beneath the car – during Friday practice for the 1967 Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport Park. With a new engine fitted, the next day the Austrian secured eighth place on the grid, but come Sunday’s rain-affected race couldn’t make it further than four laps when his car failed to restart after an early pitstop due to moisture in the ignition. The race was won by Jack Brabham (Brabham-Repco BT24), who finished more than a minute ahead of team-mate Denny Hulme. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…