Innehållsförteckning för 28/06/18 från Autosport

Sebastian Vettel’s mistake at the start of last weekend’s French Grand Prix was not on a par with his Azerbaijan and Singapore errors of last year, but it could still prove costly. Lewis Hamilton has the odd ‘off’ weekend, but in recent years he has largely managed to avoid the sort of incidents Vettel occasionally still gets involved in. Mercedes will also be very happy that it has managed to get back ahead of Ferrari after a lacklustre Canadian GP. The fight at the front remains close – and will probably swing back and forth depending on the track in question and Pirelli tyre compounds – but it would be nice to see some wheel-to-wheel battling between the top cars. There was quite a lot of overtaking at Paul Ricard,…

FORMULA 1 Ferrari is ready to replace Kimi Raikkonen with rising star Charles Leclerc in its Formula 1 driver line-up for 2019, Autosport has learned. Raikkonen, who turns 39 in October, earned a one-year contract extension with the Italian team last year to cover the 2018 season. Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne said last December that the ’07 world champion needed more consistency and that “probably this [’18] is the last season to find the right key”. Raikkonen enjoyed a strong start to 2018, scoring three podiums in the first four races and performing much closer to team-mate Sebastian Vettel’s level than in previous seasons. But he finished off the podium in Monaco and Canada, while Vettel scored a second and a victory to take a championship lead he subsequently lost…

ELECTRIC GT The Electric GT organisation has delivered its first race-ready Tesla Model S P100DL to SPV Racing, the first team to confirm its entry into the 2018-19 Electric Production Car Series. The delivery, at the Barcelona circuit last week, consisted of the race-spec version of the P100DL road car, transformed to compete in the new category, which is scheduled to start its eight-round inaugural season at Jerez this December. When the series was first announced in March 2016, it was set to feature a grid of Tesla’s Model S P85 variant, but Electric GT has since decided to use the more-powerful P100DL type that the American manufacturer began producing nearly two years ago. “In August 2016, Tesla presented this P100DL, and it very quickly was proven to be the…

THE QUESTION AFTER FRIDAY PRACTICE WAS WHETHER THE seemingly dominant pace advantage of Mercedes was real, or if Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari would produce their now-traditional overnight turnaround to seize the initiative. Ferrari did make progress in time for qualifying, but not enough, and the result was a second front-row lockout of 2018 for Mercedes duo Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton’s path to a 75th pole position was serene, topping Q1 and Q2 before seizing the initiative on the first runs in the top 10 shootout. He banged in a 1m30.222s before the session was red-flagged thanks to Romain Grosjean spinning his Haas exiting Turn 3 and nosing into the Turn 4 barrier. After the restart, Bottas did grab pole for a few moments before Hamilton clinched it by…

All three French drivers finished their first home grand prix without points – and all picked up penalties for incidents during the race. Romain Grosjean, who started 10th but crashed at Turn 4 during qualifying before he was able to set a time in Q3, was first to get in trouble. On the run to the first corner, he jinked left and hit compatriot Esteban Ocon, with both sustaining minor aero damage but continuing. While the head-on view suggested Grosjean reacted to Charles Leclerc moving to the left, overhead replays proved the Sauber was comfortably ahead. That meant Grosjean had to serve a five-second penalty at his first pitstop on his way to 11th, seven seconds behind Monegasque driver Leclerc. Grosjean was also hit by Sebastian Vettel at Turn 3…

WTCR VILA REAL (P) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 5/10 Had Thed Bjork not “slipped out of my set-up window” between first WTCR practice and Saturday qualifying in Vila Real, he would unquestionably have stolen the headlines. But the true extent of Bjork’s advantage in Portugal was only briefly seen, and instead it was the accident his YMR Hyundai was caught up in at the start of race one – which briefly threatened his participation for the rest of the weekend – that the event will be remembered for After topping both practice sessions, Bjork’s slip meant he could only qualify fifth for the first race, allowing the Volkswagen Golf GTIs of Rob Huff and Mehdi Bennani to lock out the front row – cue celebrations in the Sebastien Loeb Racing garage.…

BLANCPAIN GT SPRINT MISANO (I) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 3/5 They’d finished either second or third in all but one Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup race this season, so it wasn’t surprising that Christopher Mies and Alex Riberas left Misano as double victors in their WRT Audi. Both victories were convincing, even with Raffaele Marciello in the ASP Mercedes finishing less than a second behind in the first race of the weekend on Saturday evening. The following afternoon, 10 seconds separated Mies from second-placed team-mate Will Stevens when the chequered flag fell, a great result for Stevens and Dries Vanthoor after retiring due to a loose wheelnut in the first race. Audi locked out the top four positions on Sunday thanks to Sainteloc Racing pair Simon Gachet/Christopher Haase and Attempto Racing…

ENDURANCE LEGENDS Formula 1 designer Adrian Newey had a weekend to forget in the Masters Endurance Legends races at Paul Ricard after colliding with the race leader while being lapped. The Red Bull chief technical officer was taking part in the races – which were supporting the French Grand Prix – aboard a Ferrari 430 GTC that he shared at Le Mans in 2007 with Ben Aucott and Joe Macari, going on to finish fifth in the GT2 class. The 59-year-old collided with Kriton Lendoudis’s Peugeot 908X prototype on the penultimate lap of race two at the right-hander of Sainte-Baume, sending both cars spinning into the run-off. He would ultimately be classified 17th, to add to his 14th-place finish from race one. Alex Kapadia took both wins aboard an ORECA-Nissan…

BRSCC Former karter Jake Dawson completed his comeback from serious injury, which had left him in a coma, by making his car racing debut in the British Racing & Sports Car Club’s Fiesta Championship at Rockingham last weekend. Dawson was involved in a horrific accident at the Shenington circuit in 2012, putting him in a coma for nearly a month. “They were going to turn my life support off [but] they left it another night and I was just getting enough oxygen to breathe,” said Dawson, who was told he would remain in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Against the odds, and although unable to hold a driving licence for two years, Dawson returned to his first love of motocross while continuing his recovery. A chance encounter…

GINETTA GT4 SUPERCUP A tyre-management masterclass from Carl Boardley tightened the Ginetta GT4 Supercup title battle with a hat-trick of wins at Croft. Charlie Ladell remained in the lead of the championship – albeit narrowly, as Boardley completed the first treble since Tom Wrigley in 2016, although his final win landed in his lap when Harry King was stripped of victory in race three. Angus Fender claimed a maiden pole but Boardley beat him into the first turn. Boardley then survived a mid-race scare when his car briefly lost power after a wide moment at Clervaux to win. A lock-up for Fender resulted in a flat-spotted tyre, and he eventually finished in fourth place. Ladell picked up the pieces to limit the damage in second, ahead of King. Boardley won…

GINETTA JUNIOR Two wins gave Adam Smalley breathing space in the Ginetta Junior Championship, sharing honours with Elite Motorsport team-mate Fin Green at Croft. Smalley was promoted to pole position when top qualifier Ruben Del Sarte’s 10-place grid penalty from Oulton Park was applied, and enjoyed “perfect” lights-to-flag performances in races one and two. Tyre damage ended Luke Browning’s race one chase, releasing an intense four-car battle for the remaining podium spots. Clio Cup Junior regular Gustav Burton was among those and thought a Patrick Kibble mistake “opened the door to a first podium” at Tower Bend. The pair ran out of room, and Kibble continued in second while Burton spun, handing rookie James Taylor his maiden podium. Browning and Del Sarte recovered to podium finishes in race two, behind…

OULTON PARK BARC JUNE 23 Kumho BMW champion Garrie Whittaker returned to winning ways with a double victory in his E36 M3. In race one, Piers Reid had started to build a lead over Darren Fielding and Whittaker, but after a swap for second place on lap three the gap gradually came down. Colin Wells also ousted Fielding into Old Hall a couple of laps later and the top three closed up. Exiting Deer Leap with two laps to go, Whittaker made his move as they lapped backmarkers and was ahead into Old Hall. Wells had shaken off Fielding, then closed on Reid and there was little between them at the flag. Whittaker took charge from the opening lap in race two, with Reid settling in second, as Wells began…

“WHEN I SAW THE CAR OF HUFF, I COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT” ESTEBAN GUERRIERI WTCR Having addressed journalists about his comeback from injury and expressed his disappointment at not being able to contest his home WTCR round, Tiago Monteiro was left eating his words after witnessing a monster pile-up on the opening lap at Vila Real last Saturday – undoubtedly the biggest in World Touring Cars for years. “That was crazy,” said the Portuguese, as the grid slowly began to reform. The accident, which led to Saturday’s race resuming two and a quarter hours after the initial start, was triggered by a coming together between the Sebastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTIs of Rob Huff and Mehdi Bennani. From pole, Huff made a slightly slower getaway than Bennani, which allowed the…

FORMULA 2 Formula 2 drivers are losing patience with the issues on the new-for-2018 car, with the top four in the standings entering last weekend’s Paul Ricard round all suffering clutch and reliability issues in France. Lando Norris (a stall), Artem Markelov (two stalls), Alexander Albon (two broken throttle sensors) and George Russell (one broken throttle sensor) all had troublesome weekends. The haloed car with its new turbocharged engine and wider wings was thrust into competition at the first round in Bahrain in April, having had its preseason testing hampered by poor weather. And while the series has to be credited for regularly running a test car and bringing upgrades to each subsequent round, it seemed to take a step backwards in Paul Ricard. “The issues this weekend are purely…

Traffic chaos at the French Grand Prix The organisation of the French GP was appalling. The FIA and Liberty should seriously consider whether the event should be held again as it is totally incapable of coping with crowds. The car parks were, in reality, cleared scrubland making a complete free-for-all. Exit from car park to asphalt road took almost three hours. Police stood by and let chaos reign. Inside, the circuit facilities were poor, with only one small food/drink outlet serving the grandstands at Ste Baume corner. And walking was dangerous inside the circuit with rocks and mud everywhere. The view on TV must have looked good, as was the view from the grandstand, but of the 80 GPs I have been to over the years this was the worst…

Carlos Sainz dropped from sixth to eighth in the final four laps of the French Grand Prix as a result of an MGU-K failure. The loss of 160bhp of electrical power cost him ‘Class B’ victory and allowed both Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas to get ahead of him – but it could have been worse but for the fact that almost two of those laps were under VSC conditions thanks to Lance Stroll’s off. “I owe that… it saved us the points finish,” said Sainz. “It’s very difficult to digest, this P8. It’s a good result, but when you are the whole race running P6, easily, comfortably, then suddenly five laps to the end this happens, I feel bad for the team and for myself. “It’s a shame, because…

Josef Newgarden became the first IndyCar driver to score more than two wins this year, scoring the 10th victory of his career at the season’s 10th round, and moving up to fourth in the championship with a decisive victory at Road America. In many regards, it was a very satisfying race at North America’s purest road course, whose 4.014-mile layout has gone virtually unchanged over its 60-year history. The race went caution-free for the first time since 2000 (although that includes the 2008-15 period, when the track wasn’t on the schedule) and unsurprisingly it therefore rewarded the racers. The podium was filled by three of the prime championship contenders – Newgarden, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Scott Dixon – from the three top teams of the moment – Penske-Chevrolet, Andretti Autosport-Honda and…

FORMULA 2 PAUL RICARD (F) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 5/12 “It’s not even a championship, it’s who is the luckiest guy having the least amount of problems,” said Formula 2 points leader Lando Norris. “It’s not a pure drivers’ championship, it’s not like this guy won because he drove better. This guy’s won because the car has failed on him the fewest number of times.” The current F1 heir apparent couldn’t have summed up the situation better. The F2 championship is in a reliability crisis that it’s struggling to solve. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the current issues is that they are overshadowing some brilliant racing from a car that is safer than its predecessor, and can follow other cars in traffic effectively. The latter is more than can be…

EUROPEAN FORMUL A 3 NORISRING (D) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 3/10 Dan Ticktum’s gripping photo-finish win in the weekend’s final race – when a few hours earlier he’d been on his way to hospital, glanced at his Motopark Dallara and thought it was wrecked beyond repair – was the headline story of the Formula 3 European Championship’s visit to the Norisring. But the underlying theme was the form of two rookies who were both team-mates last year, when they fought tooth-and-nail for the same Formula 4 title: Juri Vips and Marcus Armstrong. The word was that last year’s Germanbased ADAC F4 series was extremely high in quality; champion Vips and narrowly defeated runner-up Armstrong have proved that beyond doubt as F3 rookies. Vips, all spectacular car control and barrier-brushing bravado, scored…

“SILVERSTONE HAS SO MANY MEMORIES FOR ME FROM MY FF 1600 DAYS” MASTERS HISTORIC F 1 Ex-Formula 1 racer and British Formula 3 champion Tommy Byrne will make a return to European racing at the British Grand Prix next month. Byrne, now 60, will race Irishman James Hagan’s Hesketh 308/1 in the pair of FIA Masters Historic Formula 1 races that will support the British Grand Prix. Byrne graduated to F1 in 1982 with Theodore – the same season he won the British F3 title with Murray Taylor Racing – but he qualified on just two of his five F1 outings. He failed to finish after spinning in the Austrian and Las Vegas GPs, and did not qualify for the German, Swiss and Italian GPs. A McLaren test followed, but…

DONINGTON PARK VSCC JUNE 24 Tom Waterfield scored his maiden race victory at Donington Park on Sunday, 80 years after the venue hosted the club’s first race meeting. Waterfield qualified stepfather Simon Blakeney-Edwards’s 1929 Frazer Nash Super Sports on pole for the Owner Driver Mechanic series contest, but first had to overcome Marcus Black’s 1939 Talbot Lago T23, then Chris Chilcott’s Nash. “Unbelievably this is my fifth season, but to win here at Donington with all its history is very special,” said Waterfield.…

FROM THE ARCHIVE The March-Ford 721Gs of Ronnie Peterson and Niki Lauda line up in the pitlane with the rest of the field ahead of the fog-delayed start of the 1972 Canadian Grand Prix. Peterson qualified third, and led the race for the first four laps after a rocketship start, but was disqualified for receiving outside assistance in the pitlane later in the race. His team-mate lined up 19th on the grid, lost 15 laps due to a blocked throttle caused by dirt kicked up at the start, then he too was disqualified, in this case for a push-start after a spin. FOR MORE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS, VISIT MOTORSPORTIMAGES.COM…

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN? (#19) WHO IS THIS? This laid-back legend of touring and sportscars was initially taken on by the blue oval for the first step on the single-seater ladder. He was a winner on the third tier, but had already shown such flair in a tin-top that he was called upon by a four-ringed circus. Success quickly followed at home and abroad, where he took on the best and prospered in style. When weighty issues brought this chapter to a close, he became an integral part of a bold new adventure. Although there were initial growing pains, he easily passed the test of endurance, scoring a fantastic hat-trick at the highest level. There would be a bit of a wait for a fourth, but he was part of…

motorsport.tv TRACK STATS LENGTH 2.683 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 71 2017 POLE POSITION Valtteri Bottas 1m04.251s POLE LAP RECORD Valtteri Bottas 1m04.251s (2017) RACE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m07.411s (2017) PREVIOUS WINNERS 2017 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 2016 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 2015 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 2014 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 2003 M Schumacher Ferrari 2002 M Schumacher Ferrari 2001 David Coulthard McLaren 2000 Mika Hakkinen McLaren 1999 Eddie Irvine Ferrari 1998 Mika Hakkinen McLaren THEMES TO WATCH RED BULL ON HOME SOIL Back-to-back podiums on power-sensitive circuits have put Red Bull in a fine position to attack at its home grand prix, where it has good history. Max Verstappen is back on form, but Daniel Ricciardo needs to recover after not finishing on the podium since his win in the Monaco Grand…

THE FRENCH GRAND PRIX WAS A MIRROR IMAGE OF CANADA TWO WEEKS EARLIER. In Montreal, Sebastian Vettel was dominant while Lewis Hamilton struggled to fifth, but at Paul Ricard the roles were reversed. A zero-sum world championship game, you could say, but in France last weekend there was a significant difference. In Canada, Hamilton had a lacklustre weekend, but at Paul Ricard Vettel was the architect of his own downfall. Sliding into the back of Valtteri Bottas’s Mercedes at the first corner was the biggest mistake of the Ferrari driver’s otherwise superb season. With the initiative being passed between the big three teams on a race-by-race basis even five points, the difference between Vettel’s result and the third place he should have taken, could prove to be vital. Vettel’s was…

Marcus Ericsson suffered a heavy impact during Friday’s first free practice session, spinning into the wall at the long Turn 11 Le Beausset right-hander. After hitting the wall with the right-rear corner of his Sauber, the car caught fire and the right side of the engine cover was burned away. Although Ericsson was uninjured, he missed Friday’s second session. “I wasn’t going any faster,” said Ericsson. “I just lost the rear end completely. It was one of those strange crashes that you don’t really find a good explanation for. “We analysed it and couldn’t really see anything apart from the wind being different on that lap compared with previous ones. On that lap I had a lot less headwind so I had less downforce.”…

History will tell you that Croft has traditionally been a circuit that favours rear-wheel-drive cars in the British Touring Car Championship, and it proved to be the case once again as the series hit the halfway stage in North Yorkshire. What few would have expected was that it would be the Team BMR-run Subarus that would come away from the weekend having picked up two of the three victories to add another intriguing twist to the championship fight. The travails of defending champion Ash Sutton and team-mate Jason Plato were well documented during the first four meetings of the year, as the team struggled to extract maximum performance from the newly developed Swindon engine being run in the Levorg this season. With a series of updates made to the car,…

He’s said to be (by far) the best-paid driver on the grid, he has a 45-point lead in the 2018 championship, he’s won four titles and an Indianapolis 500, and when his Chip Ganassi Racing contract runs out this season, he’s likely to have his pick of teams – probably including the much-rumoured McLaren IndyCar squad. Life doesn’t suck for Scott Dixon. But last weekend at Road America, he deserved sympathy. Notwithstanding mechanical strife for Will Power and Sebastien Bourdais, Dixon advanced from eighth on the grid to finish third despite a caution-free race, by saving fuel and driving hard. He was able to match Ryan Hunter-Reay for speed, and might too have had good enough speed/fuel mileage to jump winner Josef Newgarden. It was therefore a mediocre showing in…

GP3 SERIES PAUL RICARD (F) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 2/9 It was a fairytale storyline last Saturday afternoon for home favourite Dorian Boccolacci, as the man from an hour’s drive down the road scored a dominant victory from pole in the GP3 Series feature race at Paul Ricard. But just a few hours later, it became a nightmare when he was excluded as the car couldn’t cough up the one litre of fuel stipulated by the regulations for a sample. “We have a fuel pump where the fuel goes in the car and everything was OK with that,” said Boccolacci, who had apparently scored MP Motorsport’s first win on only its second appearance in GP3. “But the machine that pumps the fuel had a failure and it missed one litre. Nothing…

DTM NORISRING (D) JUNE 23-24 ROUND 4/10 Marco Wittmann grew up within a few kilometres of the Norisring, and when he was a kid he used to visit the Nuremberg streets with his family to watch the DTM cars tanking down Zeppelinstrasse and around the famous old 1930s grandstand. But he’d never had any luck on his home ground: his third place last Saturday represented the first time that BMW’s two-time champion stood on the podium on his home ground. His win on Sunday raised the excitement to fever pitch, Wittmann rushing over to his fan club to celebrate after a race he proclaimed as the best of his life. It was a superb performance from seventh on the grid, and came after a weekend hitherto replete with Mercedes domination.…

SMRC Scottish Saloon and Sports Car driver Ron Cumming is planning to be back behind the wheel at the Scottish Motor Racing Club meeting this weekend, despite his frightening 145mph crash last month. Nemesis kit car driver Cumming clipped the BMW Z3 of Scott Duthie when attempting to overtake in the second race at Knockhill on May 6 on the approach to the hairpin – which was the first corner with the circuit being run in reverse formation. This sent Cumming out of control onto the grass, with his car rolling multiple times before coming to rest upside down in the hairpin gravel. He was taken to hospital but suffered no serious injuries. “It was just a racing incident,” said Cumming. “I just happened to catch him when I was…

RENAULT UK CLIO CUP Local man Max Coates returned to the top of the Renault UK Clio Cup standings for the first time since Donington in April following a win and a second place at Croft. A poor start from pole prevented a double victory for the Team Pyro driver as WDE Motorsport’s Paul Rivett claimed his second win of the year in a largely processional opening encounter. Coates’s championship rival James Dorlin endured a torrid weekend. Sixth in the opening race following contact with third-placed Daniel Rowbottom, and a first-lap retirement in race two, meant the erstwhile points leader came away from the weekend with slim pickings. Race two followed a similar pattern, this time with Coates beating Rivett off the line. The pair remained close throughout the 12-lap…

KIRKISTOWN 500MRCI JUNE 22?23 Niall Murray may or may not appreciate the music of Meatloaf, but the singer’s hit Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad certainly sums up Murray’s visit to Kirkistown against the rest of the National FF1600 contenders. Having placed his Bernard Dolan-run Van Diemen RF99 on pole for the first of the three races, run on Friday evening, the championship leader made no mistakes once he’d found a way past Luke Cooper (Swift SC16), who had made a better start from the front row. The safety car made an appearance when Nico Gruber’s Ray had to be removed from the Hairpin run-off, but as soon as that was cleared Murray took control, shadowed by Cooper all the way to the finish. Michael Eastwell (Spectrum) completed the podium…

ROCKINGHAM BRSCC JUNE 23-24 Jack Harding narrowed the Mazda MX-5 Supercup’s three-way title fight with a double success at Rockingham. Race one was a close affair as Harding duelled throughout with polesitter and title rival James Blake-Baldwin, enabling Luke Herbert – also a protagonist in the championship battle – to latch on and threaten to the last. Just 1s covered the three drivers at the chequered flag. The same trio battled throughout race two, in which Blake-Baldwin triumphed and Herbert spent the closing stages fending off Harding’s advances. A lightning start and some deft opportunism enabled Harding to move from fifth on race three’s reversed grid to a second-corner lead. As the pack then concertinaed on the run to Yentwood, Herbert and Blake-Baldwin made contact, and Blake-Baldwin rotated into the…

“THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE COMMENTARY IS THE ENTHUSIASM” World Rallycross may have a dedicated core group of followers, but its intention in securing a Channel 4 slot for its highlights package was to attract a new, wider audience. With coverage returning to terrestrial television after a year off, the aim is to push WRX into the mainstream. Channel 4 has been praised for its Formula 1 content over the past few years, so a move into a new form of motorsport coverage makes sense, especially since the channel’s free-to-air F1 contract is coming to an end this year. But rallycross requires a completely different kind of coverage. The RX show isn’t a bespoke programme for Channel 4 – which simply takes the ‘world-feed’ coverage as shown live on…