Indholdsfortegnelse for 15/08/24 i Autosport

When Charles Leclerc won May’s Monaco Grand Prix, taking Ferrari’s second Formula 1 victory of the season and moving the Italian team 156 points clear of Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton’s 2025 decision looked pretty good. But in the six races since, the Briton’s current squad has taken three wins to Ferrari’s none, and Hamilton is now just 27 points behind his future team-mate in the drivers’ championship. It’s way too early for Hamilton to be panicking about his move from Mercedes to Ferrari, but the battle between the two teams – and their efforts to catch Red Bull and McLaren – over the rest of the season will be key to how 2025 shapes up. And how successful Hamilton’s time at Ferrari, surely his last chapter as an F1 driver, turns…

Remember the Trois Rivieres street race in Quebec, most famous as the launching pad to stardom for Gilles Villeneuve? It’s still going, but these days it’s headlined by NASCAR Canada. Last weekend ended in victory for Marc-Antoine Camirand, although Alex Tagliani led for a while. Here is Anthony Martella’s TCR Audi, which was a TCR class winner within the Sports Car Championship Canada. MORE FOR DE VRIES Nyck de Vries will follow his impending Super Formula debut at Motegi (reported last week) with Team Impul with a further outing in the October double-header at Fuji. The Dutchman will miss the finale at Suzuka in November, ostensibly due to its proximity to Formula E testing. Hibiki Taira, who has filled in at the wheel of the car also raced this year…

We all love to assess drivers and compare those in the same machinery. With Formula 1 in its summer break, now is a good time to look at the crop of 2024. There are plenty of ways to compare drivers, but one of the key ones is raw speed. And qualifying is, in theory, the least complicated indicator of pace. Autosport runs the qualifying head-to-head stats after each grand prix. Although a fine gauge for assessing who is winning the intra-team fights, the metric is rather crude. If a driver is consistently just a few thousandths of a second away from their team-mate, they are still doing a good job and are close to maximising their car, while another could regularly be half a second off but on a similar…

When Carlos Sainz signed for Williams, it said plenty about lots of Formula 1 teams. Red Bull’s bizarre driver line-up strategy; the alarming state of Audi’s nascent project; all the risk around Alpine. But it also showed that the path to Mercedes in a straight swap with Lewis Hamilton for 2025 is closed. The Silver Arrows squad wants to promote another of its juniors. Andrea Kimi Antonelli has had considerable attention in 2024. Given his ultra-successful junior career and fast-tracking to Formula 2, this is understandable. What made things very different was Mercedes boss Toto Wolff revealing Hamilton’s current contract had a split clause to give Merc the chance to revisit its F1 line-up should Antonelli continue to impress. Then there was the arrival of the new F2 Dallara and…

“We weren’t challenging to win races,” says Tino Belli of his three years as Larrousse’s chief designer in Formula 1, “but a small, low budget team is a challenge in its own right. The camaraderie is probably higher, everybody has to pull together.” As one of several teams fighting to escape from the F1 midfield in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Larrousse went under the radar during its eight seasons, often standing out more for its garish liveries than its results. In its vying for sponsorship with Ligier, France’s national team, it regularly struggled for money and never started from the front two rows of the grid, before bowing out at the end of 1994. But its total of 126 starts across three different guises – it ran both…

The Knockhill chicane has long been one of the most spectacular corners in UK motorsport, with cars flying over the left-right blind crest, frequently on two wheels, sometimes on one. Or occasionally even on none… This time, the teams arrived in Scotland to find a nasty red sausage kerb installed on the second apex. It meant that any short-cutting of the right-handed portion would risk serious damage to the car. But, of course, this being the BTCC, there was plenty of experimentation going on. “It was probably one of the best corners in the UK – it isn’t anymore,” summed up Josh Cook, a day before his spectacular exit from the final race at the same point. “It’s a bit of a shame. I understand why they had to change…

750MC The Swift Sport Challenge has been launched by the 750 Motor Club for next season as the latest entry-level series with initiatives to help keep costs down. The new category will use Suzuki Swift Sport Mk1 models from 2006-2011, featuring a 1.6-litre engine, with two cars set to race this weekend at Silverstone in the Hot Hatch Championship in the hands of brothers Ryan and Scott Parkin. The cars will have a further outing at the Birkett Six-Hour Relay ahead of 2025, where either a standalone series will be created, or they will remain as a class within Hot Hatch depending on uptake. “We wanted to do something that was low-cost and accessible for people and, if you look around the marketplace, there has been a shift in the…

FORMULA FORD Nova Motorsport has conducted initial testing of the first Avon ACB9 Formula Ford tyres to be produced from its recently acquired Portuguese facility. There have been concerns about tyre supply in some areas of club motorsport since Goodyear decided to close the Avon factory and scrap the brand at the end of last year. Nova is a new company that has been subsequently formed, acquiring many of Avon’s assets and boasting numerous key Avon staff among its team. With Nova aiming to recreate many of the Avon tyres, Formula Ford ACB9s were one of the lines fast-tracked for production at the new facility. Intensive rig and track testing in Portugal have shown promising performance. The tyres are now set to be tested in the UK before full-scale production…

BRANDS HATCH Festival Italia reached its ninth anniversary at Brands Hatch last Sunday and, although a well-supported Ferrari Club Classic series again had top billing, the most entertaining action was in the early stages of Historic Racing Drivers Club’s Jack Sears Trophy. The race for pre-1966 saloons featured Pete Chambers’ Lotus Cortina, Nick Swift’s Mini Cooper S and Jerry Bailey’s Ford Mustang, but all three served penalties for yellow flag offences in traffic when the safety car appeared, which promoted the ex-Graham Hill Jaguar Mk2 of Grant Williams to an unexpected victory. Tristan Simpson lifted his 2024 score to five wins with victory in both Club Classic races in a 355. His winning advantage over James Cartwright’s 328 was 0.6 seconds in race one. The second confrontation looked even closer,…

HISTORICS McLaren CEO Zak Brown will pair up with nine-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen at October’s Estoril Classics. The duo will share two cars from Brown’s collection, which will be run by United Autosports. They are due to contest the Heritage Touring Cup in a 1974 Ford Cologne Capri that was once raced by Formula 1 champion Niki Lauda, as well as a 1981 Porsche 935 in one of the Classic Endurance Racing grids from Peter Auto. “Tom is a legend of the sport – I’m excited to be racing with him,” said Brown. “The Capri and the Porsche 935 are two of my favourite cars and we have a good record in Estoril following the win last year with my buddy Richard Dean. This will be…

PORSCHE CARRERA CUP GB The Porsche Carrera Cup GB season may be only just past its halfway stage, but the title race was blown wide open once more at Knockhill last weekend as Charles Rainford and George Gamble split the wins in Scotland. Before the trip north of the border, Will Martin held a healthy 19-point margin over Rainford, but the Eden Race Drive man’s weekend got off to a rocky start in the opener when he made contact with Andrew Rackstraw, which sent the South African into the Leslie’s gravel. Martin avoided a penalty for the opening-lap skirmish but twice fell foul of track-limits regulations, resulting in a combined 15 seconds added to his race time and leaving him 10th as Rainford took the win. Without a victory in…

BRITISH FORMULA 4 Deagen Fairclough probably couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend at Knockhill. Two wins from three races edged the Hitech GP driver closer to the British Formula 4 title. The runaway points leader looked just as serene fighting through the field in the reversed-grid second race as he did while leading from the front. He now holds a staggering 101-point margin over Alex Ninovic, whose own hopes were dented by a fuel pump failure in race two, heading into the final three rounds. Fairclough laid down a marker in qualifying by taking pole for races one and three, and duly led away at the start of the opener, which was red-flagged on the first lap after a frightening roll for Ella Lloyd before Duffus Dip. Rowan Campbell-Pilling’s…

HISTORIC MODSPORTS & SPECIAL SALOONS Race 1 Jack Harper (Triumph Spitfire-Honda) Race 2 Ron Cumming (AC ME3000-Ford) CLASSIC FORMULA FORD Races 1 & 2 Benn Simms (Jomo JMR7) HISTORIC FORMULA FORD Races 1 & 2 Callum Grant (Merlyn Mk20A) NORTHERN LIGHTS FORMULA FORD Benn Simms (Jomo JMR7) HISTORIC FF2000 Race 1 Samuel Harrison (Reynard SF79) Race 2 Ben Glasswell (Reynard SF77) 70s ROAD SPORTS Race 1 John Williams (Porsche 911SC) Race 2 Will Leverett (Lotus Elan S4) HISTORIC ROAD SPORTS/TOURING CARS Race 1 Rupert Ashdown (Lotus Elan S1, below) Race 2 Mark Godfrey (Lotus 7) GUARDS TROPHY Rob & Ben Tusting (Lenham-Ford t/c P69) For full results visit: tsl-timing.com…

SILVERSTONE JOHN DUFF TROPHY & FRANK CLEMENT CUP Clive Morley (Bentley 3/4½) AMOC ST JOHN HORSFALL TROPHY Alan Middleton (Speed Red Dragon) SPORTS CAR CHALLENGE & MORGAN TECHNIQUES TROPHY Roy Chamberlain (Triumph TR250) MORGAN CHALLENGE Races 1 & 2 Bill Lancashire (+8) FISCAR Jonathan Abecassis (Austin-Healey 100/4, above) TIMES CHALLENGE TROPHY RACE & PRE-WAR RACE Benjamin Eastick (Bentley ‘T’ Type) BENTLEY OPEN & ALLCOMERS RACE Steve Dickens (Mallock Mk29) DONINGTON PARK BRITISH TRUCK RACING CHAMPIONSHIP Races 1 & 2 David Jenkins (MAN TGS) Races 3, 4 & 5 Ryan Smith (Daimler Freightliner) INTERNATIONAL TRUCK PRIX Races 1, 2, 3 & 4 Jamie Anderson (MAN TGX) BRITCAR TROPHY Race 1 Jasver Sapra/Bryan Bransom (BMW E46 M3, below) Race 2 Lee Goldsmith (BMW E46 M3) MINI CHALLENGE CLUBSPORT Races 1 & 3…

FORMULA 1 The appeal against an investigation clearing Red Bull team principal Christian Horner of wrongdoing has not been upheld, and Red Bull now considers the case closed after a protracted whirlwind around the squad at the start of this year. On the eve of the 2024 Formula 1 season, Horner faced allegations of misconduct by a female employee of the F1 team, which prompted an internal investigation by Red Bull’s Austrian parent company led by an independent barrister. Following an eight-week probe, including multiple interviews with those involved in the allegations, the grievances against Horner were dismissed. The employee, who was suspended as a result of the findings of the investigation, then appealed the decision. Twenty-four hours on from Horner’s clearance from the initial investigation, a series of documents…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 owner Liberty Media has announced that it is facing an investigation from the US Department of Justice’s anti-trust division in the wake of its rejection of Andretti Global’s F1 bid, as confirmed by CEO Greg Maffei. In partnering with General Motors marque Cadillac, Andretti has been knocking on the door for an F1 entry as an 11th team, going as far as to set up a Silverstone base and recruiting heavily for its project, which now counts former F1 man Pat Symonds among its roster. The FIA had accepted Andretti Global’s bid on a technical level after its initial assessment of the prospective teams, which included bids from Hitech and Rodin Cars, but F1 itself has kept the door shut on Andretti’s entry plans. Part of…

FORMULA REGIONAL The FIA has named the 11 teams that will contest the Macau Grand Prix this November in its inaugural running for Formula Regional machinery. A total of 27 cars – with two or three from each team – will fight it out for what has been titled the FIA FR World Cup. FIA single-seater prime mover Francois Sicard outlined to Autosport earlier this summer the details regarding the selection of machinery from the FR category’s Middle East championship for the event, meaning the Tatuus chassis and Alfa Romeo turbo engine will be run. European championship teams selected for Macau are Prema Racing, ART Grand Prix, MP Motorsport, R-ace GP and Sainteloc Racing. Most of these also compete in the Middle East series, from which PHM Racing, Pinnacle Mororsport…

DTM Austria’s Salzburgring circuit is eyeing a return to the DTM calendar in 2025 for the first time in four decades. The chief of the Austrian venue believes all the “homework” has been done. “The ADAC [DTM promoter] will be with us in the next few weeks and will look at the Salzburgring with its current state of technology and the modification of the race control,” the circuit’s managing director Ernst Penninger told Autosport sister title Motorsport-Total.com. “All the requirements have been met and it is an issue for the ADAC. The only question is whether it will be in 2025, 2026, 2027 or 2028. But it is already possible to think about it for 2025. “Technically, we are on the same level as Spielberg [Red Bull Ring, a regular…

Imagine for a minute that motor racing could be added, retrospectively, to the 2024 Olympic Games. Each country would be able to send four drivers to compete across a range of disciplines. With this in mind, I am giving readers the chance to be a selector; who would you choose for Team GB? But before you nominate Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and George Russell as three-quarters of the next British Dream Team, here is the wrinkle I am adding to the mix; you can only choose one driver from any single category. Hmm… My crew? Being Australian, I’m going to start with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. Not a tough choice, given the form he is in. Next, come on down, IndyCar’s Will Power. A veteran, to be sure, but fast as…

What do Stoffel Vandoorne, Alexander Rossi, Alex Lynn, Michelle Gatting, Timmy Hansen and Macauley Jones have in common? There may be any number of links between that disparate bunch, but one common thread is that they were all part of a largely forgotten young driver programme that kicked off more than 10 years ago. It wasn’t run by a Formula 1 team or a manufacturer, and neither did it involve putting the participants’ bums in racing cars. Yet those who took part view it as an important staging post in their careers. And its legacy stretches beyond the successes – a Formula E title, an Indianapolis 500 victory and a World Rallycross Championship crown included – that the up-and-comers on its books went on to achieve. The scheme in question…

5 BERTRAND GACHOT Failed to qualify on his Larrousse debut at Adelaide in 1991 after release from prison, but led the line in 1992 and made the grid for every race. Outqualified just four times by Ukyo Katayama, and sixth in Monaco ensured the team didn’t go scoreless. Beats Yannick Dalmas onto this list because he established dominance over his team-mate, and fifth in 1987 Australian GP for Dalmas unfortunately didn’t count for points. 4 ERIK COMAS His record of three points finishes was no mean feat given the team’s financial situation in 1993-94. The last driver to qualify a Larrousse in the top 10, at Magny-Cours in 1993, was outpaced 8-6 by Alliot that year, but took sixth at Monza. Comas soldiered on into 1994 and scored a point…

Of the 107 Minis that raced at the Mini Festival at Brands Hatch earlier this month, there was one in particular that stood out from the crowd and really inspired. Unlike the variety of ‘saloon’ versions, Nick Paddy’s Mini Van was something completely different. It was making its race debut at the event and looked resplendent in its ‘tweed grey’ colour scheme. It had turned heads even before it arrived at Brands: the van’s builder, Mini racing supremo Bill Sollis, joked that it had caused chaos on the M25 when travelling to the circuit on an open-sided trailer because motorists were transfixed by it! For Paddy, the Mini Van is the latest creation inspired by his family’s long history in the motor industry. “Back in the beginning, my grandad had…

750MC Five Classic Clubmans cars will compete in the 750 Formula this weekend at Silverstone for the first time as part of a new initiative. The collaboration comes to help bolster numbers for the 750 Motor Club’s category, with the similar speed and technology of the Clubmans cars meaning the different machines should be competitive with one another. “Anything that puts more cars on the grid is beneficial if you want to keep your entry fees low,” said 750MC competitions manager Giles Groombridge. “There’s quite a lot of synergies between Clubmans cars and 750 Formula, if you trace their lineage and heritage. It sort of all goes back to the early days of the 750MC – they probably share the most in common. “The Classic Clubmans series 10 years ago…

BRSCC Former multiple CNC Heads Sports/Saloon champion Paul Dobson made a one-off return to the championship at Cadwell Park in his Ford Fiesta ST150 Challenge car. Dobson last raced in the championship in 2021 with his Mazda RX-7, and scored a seventh overall and two second places in class from the weekend’s two races. “It was really a test for the car as my son Louis will make his race debut in it at the next CNC Heads round at Anglesey,” said Dobson. “He has recently passed his ARDS test so I am handing the car over. I’m planning to come back into the championship myself, though, with a converted Mazda RX-7 road car in 2026.” Also making a racing return at Cadwell last weekend was Harry Deane, who made…

SHELSLEY WALSH BRITISH HILLCLIMB 10-11 AUGUST Matthew Ryder was the toast of the British Hillclimb Championship for the second weekend on the bounce as he took a mighty double victory at Shelsley Walsh. As the championship battle between Ryder and Alex Summers intensifies, Ryder returned to Shelsley for the first time since his high-speed accident there in June. However, the Gould GR59 driver was immediately on the pace and, in the first of the championship run-offs, was within six hundredths of a second of the outright record set by Sean Gould in the same car three years earlier. Later, as shadows started to cast over the Worcestershire hill, the pace was fractionally slower but Ryder was still victorious, with a 22.62s shot. Summers chased hard all weekend and two second…

LEGENDS CARS ELITE CUP Tyler Read had seemingly snatched the Legends Cars Elite Cup title from under the noses of Jack Parker and Will Gibson, following a sensational drive from the back of the grid in a chaotic final round of the season, only for late drama to deny him. Pre-weekend points leader Parker and reigning overall champion Gibson were favourites to be crowned on Sunday, with each taking a heat win earlier in the day. Parker arguably had the easier task of shadowing Gibson during the final 12-lap encounter but, when both hit separate dramas, it was Read who picked up the pieces, taking the race win from Andy Bird by just 0.028 seconds, and he looked to have snared the title by a mere five points. “Starting from…

SILVERSTONE BDC 10 AUGUST There were plenty of glorious cars and thrilling races to see during last weekend’s Bentley Drivers Club Silverstone meeting. A 40-minute John Duff Trophy and Frank Clement Cup race was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bentley’s first win at Le Mans and it was Clive Morley, whose family has a long association with the marque, who took victory in a 3/4½ litre machine. A French tricolour flag was waved to start the race, and Morley built a 14-second lead before the mandatory pitstops began and eventually finished 52s clear. Matt Walton was the only other driver to remain on the lead lap in his misfiring 3/8, while James Morley joined his father on the podium by resisting late pressure from Jock Mackinnon’s Tourer for…

MONDELLO PARK MPSC HISTORIC FESTIVAL 10-11 AUGUST The annual Historic Festival was held at Mondello Park last weekend and topping the bill was the highly anticipated return of Formula Ford 1600, known to be a much-loved category of former circuit owner, the late Martin Birrane. Jordan Dempsey started the opening race of the weekend from pole position in his Van Diemen RF92, but it was Kevin O’Hara who put himself into the lead on the opening lap. An early safety car neutralised the field of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s machinery before racing resumed three laps later. O’Hara’s Mondiale led the restart, and now the real battle was between Darwin Smith (RF90) and Dempsey for second, with Smith finding a way past on lap 10 of 13. O’Hara looked set for…

GT3 The German RMG squad will drop off the roster of factory BMW teams at the end of this year after 14 seasons. It means that none of the four works teams that flew the flag for the Munich marque in the DTM in 2012-20 before its switch to GT3 rules remain on its books. Reinhold Motorsport GmbH, winner of the 2014 and 2016 DTM titles with Marco Wittmann, is parting ways with BMW because, said the German manufacturer’s motorsport boss Andreas Roos, “our plans for our future set-up do not provide a common perspective”. He went on to wish the team well after the conclusion of its programme this year. RMG moved over to GT3 racing after the DTM’s enforced shift in direction, and since 2021 has been a…

INDYCAR Ex-Red Bull Formula 1 reserve and F2 race winner Juri Vips will return to the IndyCar Series for next week’s round at Portland. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing will expand to a fourth entry, as it did for the Indianapolis 500 with Takuma Sato, in order to run the Estonian alongside regulars Christian Lundgaard, Graham Rahal and Pietro Fittipaldi. It will be Vips’s (left) third IndyCar start, following outings with RLLR last year at Portland and Laguna Seca. “I have been working closely with the team on the simulator programme and it has been a year since I have been in the car,” said Vips, “but I’m confident that the experience gained last year will help me to get up to speed quickly.” There will also be a change in…

“It’s the first time in Haas’s history that we brought upgrades to the car that made it faster.” That’s Kevin Magnussen there, quietly damning with faint praise the Haas squad he will leave at the end of this season. But actually, this is something of a boon for Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu. He’s now spent over half a season in charge of what is still F1’s newest squad. Given how bad 2023 was, with a car that chomped its tyres in races, and how some within Haas feared that 2024 might somehow be even worse after former team boss Guenther Steiner was axed, this season has been quite the surprise. Haas sits in a position it would have envied last year – up three places in the constructors’ table…

Louis Foster has been an absolute livewire with Andretti Global in Indy NXT during the past two seasons. He’s scored seven wins, seven poles and a total of 14 podiums from 24 starts on the final rung of the ladder to IndyCar. Inconsistency meant that the 2022 Indy Pro 2000 champion placed fourth in last year’s standings, behind Christian Rasmussen, Hunter McElrea and Nolan Siegel – all of whom have gone on to make IndyCar Series starts during 2024. Foster’s worst finish of this season, however, has been seventh at the Indianapolis road course, when he went a lap down after being forced to pit for a new nose. And the 21-year-old from Hampshire bounced back to win the next day. Going into the final four races, the two-time Aston…

A young driver cutting a swathe through junior single-seaters might ponder the value of going out on a slippery track in a relatively low-powered road car shod with semi-slicks. Yet Alex Wurz insists that it’s obvious for a simple reason: the laws of physics remain the same whether a car is doing 25km/h (15mph) or 250km/h. “You can have very talented drivers who don’t understand the science behind driving,” he says. “If you have a not very decisive or clean steering input, you can’t process what is going on at high speed because it’s all happening so quickly. But if you are going much slower in a normal road car on a slippery track, it all happens much slower and you can figure it out. “You can then go back…

WALTER HAYES TROPHY The Ginetta Junior Winter Series will be held at the traditional end-of-season Walter Hayes Trophy Formula Ford 1600 event at Silverstone this year. The Ginetta contest did not run in 2023 and had been part of a November Brands Hatch British Automobile Racing Club meeting in previous years. But Ginetta’s championships are now administered by the British Racing & Sports Car Club and a new home for the Winter Series has been found. Support races at the WHT have often been allcomers-style contests for a mixture of single-seaters and tin-tops promoted by either the Historic Sports Car Club or Silverstone itself. But WHT founder James Beckett believes the addition of Ginetta Junior brings many benefits, including helping to ensure the popular fixture is livestreamed. “I’m very pleased…

BRC The Grampian Forest Rally is often dubbed the ‘gravel grand prix’ of Scotland thanks to its high-speed forest tests, so it was perhaps no wonder that it took a European Rally champion to conquer them during round four of the British Rally Championship. Chris Ingram gave his Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 a perfect BRC debut by taking a valuable win to keep his title hopes firmly alive, all achieved via just a single stage win from nine tests as his rivals faltered around him, the brutal Scottish stages taking their toll over two days of action. Fresh from competing in Finland in the World Rally Championship, it was William Creighton who was fastest out of the blocks on Friday night. But that was immediately followed by a puncture on…

The high point of the Vintage Sports-Car Club’s 90th anniversary celebrations took place last Friday with what will probably be the last ever running of a hillclimb at Chateau Impney before a redevelopment of the site. Nicholas Topliss headed the practice times in ERA R4D, but an unfortunate oversteer slide on his first timed run led to a heavy impact with the straw bales. The ever-exuberant Patrick Blakeney-Edwards (above) subsequently proved the class of the field in his Frazer Nash Shelsley, eventually stopping the clocks in 44.60s, a second clear of the rest. SOUTHPORT TO SUPPORT Next month’s Southport Classic and Speed closed-roads event will support those affected by the shocking recent stabbings and subsequent violence in the town. Mike Ashcroft, chairman of the Aintree Circuit Club, which organises the…

MINI CHALLENGE In case there was any doubt, Dan Zelos’s reputation as the Mini Challenge driver to beat was proven once more as he stormed to his third title in four years last weekend. The Excelr8 Motorsport racer was made to work hard for his early title glory, however, courtesy of his in-form team-mates Dominic Wheatley and Nathan Edwards, both of whom took a win apiece. But it was the misfortune of another Excelr8 driver, Zelos’s closest rival Max Hall, in the third race that ultimately settled things, when a suspected driveshaft failure on lap one curtailed the rookie’s hopes early doors. The day before, former Scottish Mini Cooper Cup regular Wheatley finally got the monkey off his back by claiming his maiden victory in the JCW class, superbly leading…

CROFT HSCC 10-11 AUGUST Modsports and Special Saloons were fans’ favourites at the scary fast Croft Autodrome from 1964 to the 1980s, when wilder Special GTs joined the fun. The spectacle of them rampaging five abreast towards Clervaux from Saturday’s opening race start was thus particularly poignant, setting the tone for the annual Historic Sports Car Club Historic Weekend, over which Formula Ford 1600, FF2000, Road Sports and sports-racers recreated a golden era. Memories of tough rivalries between Newcastle’s Andy Barton – with 68 wins, the venue’s top gun by far – and Sedric Bell in Minis and Alex Clacher (Imp) came flooding back. Borders farmer Doug Niven’s Boss Escort V8 and ex-Mick Hill VW Beetle-Chevrolet exploits then sprang to mind when the old-school hybrids hit the challenging circuit, very…

DONINGTON PARK BARC 10-11 AUGUST The British Truck Racing Championship provided incredibly close battling with non-stop action through all five races at Donington Park last weekend. The first two races were won by David Jenkins, who provided a robust defence from reigning Division 1 champion Ryan Smith. Smith was out of place due to mechanical problems in qualifying and charged his way from the midfield in each contest. Yet Jenkins held his ground both times, even though Smith tried every trick in the book to get past. “I was waiting for him to catch me,” explained Jenkins. “He gave me some nudges, but I was just parking him up. I was even using a gear lower than usual for some corners. It’s OK though, it was all within the rules!”…

MODEL REVIEW F1 CAR COLLECTION “It’s finally over!” That was the sentiment this writer’s wife gleefully whispered as an eight-year commitment came to an end. No, this was not the death nail being hammered into our marriage. It was the final piece of the F1 Car Collection falling into place. Starting in 2016 with Ayrton Senna’s championship-winning 1988 McLaren MP4/4, the collection meandered through the years with 1:43 scale examples from 1950 to 2019 before ending with Michele Alboreto’s 1982 Tyrrell 011. The F1 Car Collection was launched with one of those typical advertising pushes often seen around New Year, with the initial issue going for a cut price £2.99 and then a handful of freebies thrown in should you subscribe. In this instance, there were three extra cars on…

Marshals in deerstalkers? Now there’s an idea surely ripe for revival. This stylish duo are coming to the aid of a stranded John Surtees, who is risking the wrath of a local farmer on the Reims-Gueux road circuit by abandoning his Ferrari 156/63 on the edge of a ploughed field. Fuel pump problems had already interrupted his 1963 French Grand Prix and led to a pit visit, before Surtees gave up the struggle out on the circuit. Note the scoops behind the cockpit, a Ferrari experiment to ram air down the intakes of its 1.5-litre V6 and increase power – at the obvious cost of aerodynamic drag. Jim Clark’s Lotus 25 won the race to complete a hat-trick in the wake of victories at Spa and Zandvoort. In all, he’d…