Innehållsförteckning för 25/04/19 från Autosport

If there was ever a racing driver who divided the racing community during his lifetime, yet united it in grief in his death, it was Ayrton Senna. Chances are that most of you over the age of 30 can remember exactly where you were when his Williams crashed into the wall at Imola’s sweeping Tamburello curve on 1 May 1994 (in this writer’s case, at a scorching hot Snetterton to report on the BTCC-supporting junior single-seater championships). On the 25th anniversary of that tragic weekend at the San Marino Grand Prix, Autosport takes a look back at what made Senna so special – and also what made him such a controversial figure. Edd Straw’s assessment of his legacy on p26 strips away the veneer of what you could almost call…

DTM Audi topped the times on all four days of last week’s official pre-season DTM test at the Lausitzring, but the big talking point was the form of the Aston Martins. Robin Frijns geared up for his sophomore DTM season with the quickest time overall for Audi, as the series moves into a new era with turbocharged four-cylinder engines pushing out over 610bhp. Frijns’s time, set on Wednesday, edged out the Monday topper set by Mike Rockenfeller by 0.021 seconds. Loic Duval was quickest on Tuesday, ditto Nico Muller on Thursday, while Jamie Green and Rene Rast were second fastest on two days apiece. “Experience has shown that no one puts all their cards on the table in preseason testing,” said Audi sports boss Dieter Gass. “Even so, it’s nice…

LENGTH 3.730 miles NUMBER OF LAPS 51 2018 POLE POSITION Sebastian Vettel 1m41.498s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m40.593s (2017) RACE LAP RECORD Sebastian Vettel 1m43.441s (2017) UK START TIMES Friday 26 April FP1 1000 FP2 1400 Saturday 27 April FP3 1100 QUALIFYING 1400 Sunday 28 April RACE 1310 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA HIGHLIGHTS CHANNEL 4 1900 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP Drivers 1 Hamilton…………………………. 68 2 Bottas………………………………… 62 3 Verstappen……………………. 39 4 Vettel………………………………….. 37 5 Leclerc………………………………. 36 Constructors 1 Mercedes…………….130 2 Ferrari……………………… 73 3 Red Bull………………….. 52 4 Renault…………………… 12 5 Alfa Romeo………….. 12 TRACK STATS Previous winners 2018 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 2017 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 2016 Nico Rosberg Mercedes Baku masters Average points per race in Baku from the current…

A special event just not special enough For the attention of Liberty Media: I returned home from Shanghai disappointed. Not from the trip, the city or the race, but for what Liberty Media (again) didn’t do for the diehard Formula 1 fans. I’m not talking about the actual grand prix, but about what we as fans can take home after a race weekend. After all, this was the 1000th world championship grand prix! In the fan zone I was looking for special merchandise, but there were no special T-shirts, or keyrings, or lanyards, etc, for a race that you knew for almost a year was being held in Shanghai… and the price of the usual team merchandise was up 50% from the normal (already high) prices. And the action on…

During the quarter of a century since the sickening image of the blue-and-white Williams striking the Tamburello wall was broadcast to a global audience of millions, Ayrton Senna has been transformed. On 1 May 1994 he was already a racing superstar, regarded justifiably by many as the greatest of his generation, but since then the name Senna has grown into so much more. It’s a global brand, a name on countless T-shirts and caps in every corner of the globe that stands for something, even for those who’ve never so much as watched a racing car in anger. Those five letters, S-E-N-N-A, have become iconic, an idea, a philosophy of racing that transcends the name of a mere mortal. He has become less a man, more a god who walked…

It’s staggering to think that Sebastien Buemi’s last win in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship was at the Berlin E-Prix in 2017, and that was after on-the-road winner Felix Rosenqvist was penalised. Since then, 22 months have passed. Nine rival drivers have scored wins in the 23 races that have taken place during that time in 13 different cities. The reason this is so noteworthy is that Buemi still occupies the number-one spot in the FE win chart with 12. Lucas di Grassi is next up on nine. That, more than anything else, represents just how dominant Buemi was during the Renault e.dams heyday of 2015-17. Since then things have not run smoothly. Despite winning five times in the first six races of the 2016-17 season, Buemi lost that…

TCR UK TCR UK driver Carl Swift has backed the decision to merge the category with the new Touring Car Trophy and will contest the first round of the season this year. Swift, the 2016 Civic Cup champion, was one of just 10 drivers to compete regularly in the category last year. A similar picture of slim grids seemed to be in prospect for this season until it was announced earlier this month that TCR UK would become a class within Stewart Lines’s Touring Car Trophy series. The opening round of the season will be at Oulton Park next month. “I will be doing the first round and play it by ear from there on,” said Swift, who will drive a SEAT Cupra. “I can’t do one of the rounds…

BRITISH GT Balfe Motorsport was forced to withdraw its new McLaren 720S GT3 from the British GT season opener at Oulton Park after it developed electrical problems on Saturday. Making its UK debut, the 720S completed only 14 laps across both free practice sessions, and sat out the majority of the second session as McLaren Automotive technicians worked to find the root of the problem. Shaun Balfe qualified only 1.7s off the pace in 11th, but team-mate Rob Bell did not appear in the second session and, after further diagnostic work on Sunday, the decision was taken not to race. “Unfortunately an ongoing intermittent electrical power-cut problem couldn’t be fixed in time,” said Balfe. “We decided it would be unfair and unsafe to present the McLaren 720S into its British…

TIN TOP STRUGGLES A new Tin Tops series run by BARC headquarters made a tentative start on day one of the Brands Hatch Easter extravaganza last weekend. It featured just seven starters, two of which were listed as guest entries. The series was created to replace the long-standing championship for mildly modified saloons run by the club’s South Eastern centre until it closed down. BREATHING EASILY AGAIN Reigning Mazda MX-5 champion Will Blackwell-Chambers has revealed an unlikely reason for his engine’s sluggishness in the Brands Hatch season-opening races. “Two latex gloves and a piece of paper in the airbox is never known for being great for performance!” he explained. Blackwell-Chambers took a close second place then a comfortable win in the first two races of round two at Pembrey last…

MX-5 SUPERCUP Triple Clio 182 champion Patrick Fletcher will contest the full Mazda MX-5 Supercup this season after making his debut at Snetterton last weekend. In his first experience of racing with rear-wheel drive, Fletcher (pictured below) qualified seventh on the 16-car grid, then finished fifth in the first and second races. He retired from race three after a clutch problem caused him to spin and collect another car. “It’s a new challenge, rear-wheel drive,” said Fletcher. “In the past 10 years, longer than that even, I’ve been competing with front-wheel drive. The only thing I’ve driven with rear-wheel drive is a kart. “I feel like adapting to rear-wheel drive is getting better. It was just a shame that after the first couple of laps, with my errors, the top…

After a dominant qualifying display put him a full second ahead of his nearest rival, it seemed inevitable that Formula 4 graduate Seb Priaulx would end his debut British GT weekend a winner, but he was made to sweat for it. On its championship debut, the Multimatic Motorsport-run Ford Mustang GT4 was the car to have in qualifying and the machine Priaulx shared with Scott Maxwell breezed to both pole positions, with only an ABS problem for the sister car of Chad McCumbee in the second session preventing a double 1-2. But a post-qualifying BoP tweak (see page 56) meant raceday would not be so straightforward. That was compounded in race one when Maxwell had to take to the grass to avoid Ian Loggie’s stranded Mercedes, which dropped him to…

Bucking the trend of modern club racing, in its 38th year the Alfa Romeo Championship continues to encourage multiple models to compete. Joining the fray at Snetterton last weekend was Jamie Thwaites’s 155, which has its roots in the Japanese Touring Car Championship. “It was built in Italy for Unicorse, the Japanese Touring Car team,” said Thwaites, who is also set to compete in the Ferrari Challenge this year. “It was going to be a spare car but then they stopped racing them.” After doing some club-level racing in Japan, the car came back to Europe where it was acquired by Thwaites alongside an ex-Robby Gordon NASCAR to join his collection, which also includes a Lancia Delta S4 and McLaren M8F Can-Am car. “We’ve got that many projects going on…

BOOK REVIEW 1994: THE UNTOLD STORY OF A TRAGIC AND CONTROVERSIAL F1 SEASON RRP £29 Conspiracy theories are endlessly interesting to consider, but are little more than a contrived waste of time created by those with an inability to accept what has happened. To apply Occam’s razor, it’s the simplest explanation that’s most likely to be true. In that sense, you come away from Ibrar Malik’s debut book 1994: The Untold Story of a Tragic and Controversial F1 Season with a feeling that Michael Schumacher was a talent that his team-mates simply couldn’t get near, especially when Benetton put everything behind his title charge. His exploitation of left-foot braking, with the departure of active suspension, meant his ability to manipulate the B194 and its exhaust-blown diffuser ensured he was the…

Jacky Ickx issues instructions from the cockpit of his Porsche 936/77 during the 1977 Le Mans 24 Hours. Ickx had started the race in the #3 Porsche, shared with Henri Pescarolo, but after the engine expired on lap 44 he was switched to the #4 Hurley Haywood/Jurgen Barth car. Ickx stormed back into contention, shattering the lap record in the process, and went on to score his fourth Le Mans victory (of an eventual six). All did not go smoothly, though: with 45 minutes left to run and the race seemingly in the bag, a broken piston forced the Porsche back to the pits. Then, 10 minutes before the flag was due to fall, and with Ickx having used up his permitted time at the wheel, Barth was sent out to…

FORMULA 1 Chief technical officer Paddy Lowe’s split with Williams does not mean that the team’s slump to the back of the Formula 1 grid should be attributed to a one-man problem, according to Robert Kubica, who says that it has left everybody a “victim”. Lowe joined Williams from Mercedes early in 2017, but the two cars designed and built under his technical leadership have been the slowest on the grid, and the 2019 Williams is even less competitive than its predecessor. The FW42 was also late to testing and required design changes to be legal for the season opener, which led to Lowe taking a leave of absence for “personal reasons” before the first race in Australia. Autosport understands that there is still no change in Lowe’s position, while…

DTM The R-Motorsport Aston Martin squad has obtained permission to catch up on its allocation of test days during the DTM season. While Audi and BMW both debuted their turbo Class 1 challengers for the 2019 season last year, the new Vantage DTM only made its on-track debut in March at Jerez before racking up further miles at a private test at Estoril. That meant R-Motorsport had six days of running under its belt ahead of the official pre-season test at the Lausitzring, three fewer than Audi and BMW. The team canvassed its rival manufacturers as well as series promoter ITR to be granted an exception to the rule that bans any testing during the season. “I have the agreement of the other two manufacturers that we can do the…

TCR EUROPE TCR Europe kicks off its second season at the Hungaroring World Touring Car Cup event this weekend, with TCR’s flagship series boasting a full-season entry of 31 cars. Part of its rollcall appears to have been plucked from IndyCar and its support package of the mid-2010s, with single-seater converts Luca Filippi and Santiago Urrutia among a host of established names to have signed up for 2019. Filippi, a runner-up in both Auto GP and the GP2 Series before he raced in IndyCar and Formula E, will drive a Hyundai i30 N run by the BRC Racing squad that took Gabriele Tarquini to the inaugural WTCR drivers’ title last year. The Italian has tested the car already, but this weekend’s event will mark his competitive tin-top debut. The seven-round…

‘Success breeds success’ is one of those aphorisms that encapsulates a more complicated truth than it presents. It superficially tells us much about the Mercedes Formula 1 team, which, far from stumbling in what was touted as its toughest season in years, has emerged from the first three races in a stronger position than ever before. But it’s more revealing to view Ferrari through this prism. The Italian squad has achieved much in recent years, recovering quickly from its slow start to the V6-turbo-hybrid era and emerging as a genuine title contender. While that is success of a sort, sport is fundamentally a binary question and Ferrari has not answered it by winning the world championship. As a consequence, it faces a tougher challenge than Mercedes would were their positions…

1988 BRITISH GP SILVERSTONE MC LAREN MP4/4 (1ST) 10 The domination of 1988 by Senna, Alain Prost and the McLaren-Honda MP4/4 was well-established by the time they arrived at Silverstone for round eight. Prost was four-three ahead on wins, but the British Grand Prix would mark the start of a run of victories that set Senna on the path to his first world title. For the first time that season a McLaren wasn’t on pole position. Ferrari locked out the front row, but Senna added to his burgeoning reputation in the wet race. He quickly swept into second and followed Gerhard Berger – making a race of it despite fuel concerns – for the first 13 laps. As conditions improved, Senna increased the pressure and forged past the Ferrari at…

BRAZILIAN MOTORSPORT JOURNALIST Ayrton Senna da Silva first caught my eye as a teenaged kart driver. The way he committed to every race, every corner, was much too intense. It was clear he was there to beat everyone, no matter what it took. He was different. After beating all the established stars, he
felt ready to cross the wall that separates the Interlagos kart circuit from the grand prix track. At that time, he visited us at the office of Brazilian magazine Auto Esporte. He had two paths ahead of him: start his single-seater career in Brazilian 1300cc Formula Vee or head straight
to British Formula Ford. I remember telling him to take the airport route, because he was capable of much more than the national racing scene could offer. He smiled…

WHILE SEBASTIEN BUEMI’S ABB FIA Formula E slump goes on, in his other racing category things are going very well indeed. Along with co-drivers Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima he’s leading the 2018-19 World Endurance Championship superseason, and won the most recent edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours. This made up for the last-lap heartbreak he suffered there in 2016 with Nakajima and Anthony Davidson. The #8 Toyota crew has also scored wins at Spa and most recently at Sebring. With just two more rounds of the current campaign to go, Buemi and co lead the standings by 15 points. Chasing them hard are Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez in the sister #7 Toyota. Although they are realistically the only other LMP1 title contenders, Buemi says that…

SUPER FORMULA SUZUKA (JPN) 21 APRIL ROUND 1/7 In his four years to date with TOM’S, Nick Cassidy had won Japanese Formula 3 and Super GT titles. Newly ensconced in the Toyota powerhouse team’s Super Formula line-up, the 24-year-old Kiwi won the inaugural race for the new Dallara SF19 chassis at Suzuka last weekend. Cassidy, the runner-up last season with Kondo Racing, was left with plenty of work to do after qualifying down in 12th, the slowest of those who made Q2. That followed a messy Q1 in which Dan Ticktum was a notable victim. Sho Tsuboi spun at the first corner, then ex-Formula 2 driver Artem Markelov went off at Degner, and finally Harrison Newey suffered a half-spin and made contact with Kazuki Nakajima at the exit of Spoon.…

MINI CHALLENGE Former British GT campion James Gornall has confirmed a full season in the Mini Challenge JCW class in his own Jiggy Racing team for 2019, following occasional outings last year. The series represents the 34-year-old’s first time in a front-wheel-drive car in 24 years of racing. The 2008 British GT champion said: “If I am going to be truly versatile and if I want to do touring cars then the best is the Mini.” Gornall said he was eyeing a progression path into the British Touring Car Championship even before it was confirmed that the Mini Challenge would join the TOCA package for 2020. “It’s just understanding what’s happening with the car,” he said. “I like to have a car on edge and everything else I’ve done I’m…

BRITISH GT Aston Martin technical director Dan Sayers says the manufacturer is happy with the performance of its new Vantage GT3 on its British GT debut at Oulton Park last weekend, despite struggling for pace relative to its rivals. Although Optimum Motorsport pair Bradley Ellis and Ollie Wilkinson and Beechdean’s Marco Sorensen and Andrew Howard took a podium apiece, several Aston teams were unhappy with their allotted Balance of Performance. The best Vantage in qualifying – the TF Sport entry of Mark Farmer and Nicki Thiim – was eighth on the grid for race one and sixth for race two. But Sayers told Autosport the drivers were pleased with the balance of the car and he was optimistic for the remainder of the year. “It’s the first event in British…

HISTORIC FORMULA 2 An entry of more than 50 cars will make the Historic Formula 2 FIA International Series races at the Silverstone Classic the biggest ever grid of such cars. The Historic Sports Car Club has already taken 53 entries for the pair of races and expects the 54-car grid to be filled this week. Support for the championship is running at unprecedented levels and an entry of 54 cars will far surpass any previous grid, either in period or as a historic category, for a field of Formula 2 and Formula Atlantic single-seaters from the late 1960s and 1970s. The line-up for the Silverstone Classic, on 26-28 July, includes several chassis with significant histories including the ex-Emerson Fittipaldi Lotus 69, ex-Eddie Cheever and Clay Regazzoni Ralt RT1s, and…

Hindsight is unerringly precise, but has there ever been a more retrospectively embarrassing line in a championship bulletin than this one? “There will be no upper limit on the number of entries… Should the number of entries exceed the maximum grid numbers allowed at a particular circuit, our potential ‘Plan B’ would be qualifying and then two heats plus ‘A’ and ‘B’ finals.” That was from TCR UK officials back in August 2017. It was still over seven months before their championship was due to begin – long before entries had opened – and organisers had got swept away by the enormous amount of hype surrounding the initial announcement of the series, already thinking about how the category could cater for oversubscribed grids. Sadly, that just looks hopelessly optimisitic now…

SNETTERTON BRSCC 20-21 APRIL Honours were even in the opening round of the National Formula Ford 1600 Championship as the wins were shared by three drivers representing three different constructors. Victories for B-M Racing’s Rory Smith in his Medina and the Kevin Mills Racing Spectrum of Neil Maclennan bookended a success for debutant Spike Kohlbecker at the wheel of a Cliff Dempsey Racing Ray. Second and fourth places in the other races mean Kohlbecker holds a narrow advantage over triple podium finisher Ross Martin in the early points standings. Smith started only seventh on the grid, having twice fallen foul of track limits in qualifying. He quickly jumped to fifth, passed Maclennan when the Scot ran wide at Brundle on the opening lap, then picked off Kohlbecker and dived inside…

BRANDS HATCH BARC 20-22 APRIL The ‘big three’ of British truck racing fought rather too literally for the honours in the flagship class of the national championship at the first meeting of the year. Given the size of these machines and the nature of the Brands Hatch Indy layout, the races were always going to be dictated by opportunism and incident. Ryan Smith, David Jenkins and Stuart Oliver lapped in close company in their first Division 1 race until Smith surprised Jenkins with a lunge at Paddock and then motored clear. After this relatively polite encounter the second was a more brutal affair, although Oliver broke clear early on and won by 12 seconds. Team-mates Smith and Mark Taylor collided and ploughed the Paddock gravel trap and were lucky to…

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WHO IS THIS? This glory hunter is probably even better than his highly decorated career suggests. From Gothic roots, his moods could fluctuate, but his performances seldom wavered as he ruled the roost at home and attracted a future kingmaker. He stepped up to continue his national domination and made a big impression as a backmarker gave him a taste of the big time. He reached for the stars with a move abroad, but it was only in the dying embers that he made his mark. The colours united to find him a role, while a new broom in an old home gave him his big break. After a year on the sidelines he set a new standard upon his return as a diamond in the rough. He ended an…

WORLD ENDURANCE It appears that we can say with certainty that Fernando Alonso won’t be driving for Toyota when the 2019-20 World Endurance Championship season kicks of in September. What we don’t know is why. Is it a case of mission accomplished after his Le Mans 24 Hours victory last June, or is he keeping his options open for 2020? Toyota isn’t denying speculation that the Spaniard will not continue beyond the end of the 2018-19 superseason. It will only say that it expects “to announce its drivers for next season relatively soon”. It has to. The first season of the WEC run to the winter-series format is little more than four months away, less if you include the official pre-season ‘prologue’ test. Decisions have to be made. Two-time F1…

EUROFORMULA OPEN With the arrival of the new FIA Formula 3 Championship, the retuning of the Formula Renault Eurocup and the introduction of the near-identical Formula Regional European and W Series, Europe has never been so awash with continental F3 championships. But what about what many regard as the ‘real’ F3? The departure of the DTM-supporting Formula European Masters has meant that Euroformula Open is flourishing the most, unsurprising given that it has introduced open-engine regulations for the ever-popular Dallara F312 chassis and has taken the Pau Grand Prix slot. Mercedes, Volkswagen/Spiess and Toyota-sourced engines will all be in use, with parity ensured by a GT-style Balance of Performance. A 20-car grid is expected for this weekend’s season opener at Paul Ricard, with some familiar names from FEM. The biggest…

#1 GIANNI MORBIDELLI A rotten half-season in WTCR when the Romeo Ferraris-built Alfa Romeo Giulietta was at its worst was not an accurate representation of Morbidelli’s abilities. Discounting his WTCR woe, the 51-year-old has won a race in every TCR campaign he has contested. All of those were with the WestCoast Racing Volkswagen squad to which he has returned for 2019. #2 JOSH FILES Files’ record with the Target Competition squad with which he will race in 2019 reads three titles in two years, which no doubt makes him a favourite. He won TCR Germany in 2016 and 2017 and has a Middle East title too. His sixth position in TCR Europe last year proved his credentials. The only slight unknown is a switch from Honda to Hyundai machinery. #3…

Honda’s rise to respectability in Formula 1 with Red Bull and Toro Rosso has posed a new question: how to get a Japanese driver to the top level. It’s a tricky task. For every Naoki Yamamoto, Hiroaki Ishiura or Yuhi Sekiguchi who stars at home in the top domestic classes, there is a long and enduring story of broken dreams of drivers who headed west but couldn’t quite cut it. Honda has now taken its next step to resolving that predicament, and you can see the logic. Its Suzuka Racing School is broken up into three divisions – SRS-Formula, SRS-Kart and SRS-Moto – each with the aim of honing young motorsport talents into the complete article. Since the inception of SRS-F in 1995, Japanese racing hero Satoru Nakajima was the…

There was a dominant winner when we asked you for your top Senna race on social media. The 1993 European Grand Prix at Donington Park (above) received twice as many votes as the second best. From people’s comments it was clear that many witnessed the race first-hand and it was certainly Senna’s most memorable event on UK soil. It would be interesting to see if its dominant position would be different in other countries, particularly Brazil. The battle for second was tight. In the end, Senna’s 1991 victory in front of his home crowd at Interlagos, against both car and physical problems, took the spot. It was an emotional victory, for Senna and the Brazilian fans. Senna’s breakout race at the 1984 Monaco GP was third, with many highlighting it…

It was a freezing cold December evening in 1980 in the Austrian ski resort of Saalbach-Hinterglemm. Local hero Sepp Haider and his neighbour Walter Rohrl were, together with multiple Austrian rally champion Franz Wittmann, the frontrunners of the Ice and Snow Rally, a national winter event. I was waiting for the cars to come back to the service point near the Zwolferkogel cablecar station when two young lads approached me. “Are you the journalist of Salzburger Nachrichten?” they asked. “Yes,” I replied. “We need your help. We are high school students, but we want to become racing drivers. How do we manage this?” I was kind of surprised, as I had never been confronted with that direct but simple question before. “The only recommendation I can give you is to…

NATIONAL FORMULA FORD 1600 Double Formula 1 Esports champion Brendon Leigh is weighing up a career in car racing after competing in the National Formula Ford 1600 Championship at Snetterton last weekend. The 19-year-old had only completed three days of testing before his first competitive outing in a Kevin Mills Racing Spectrum. He qualified fifth, then finished the first race fourth on the road, before a post-race penalty for nudging Jonathan Browne into a spin in the closing stages dropped him to 10th. “I was quite happy with my pace,” said Leigh. “I had second fastest lap of the race and I finished fourth on track. I had just a bit more confidence in the car towards the end of the race and I was able to start closing up…

BRITISH GT Multimatic Motorsport boss Larry Holt says he was “pretty happy” with his team’s race-winning British GT debut at Oulton Park last weekend and conceded that a pre-race Balance of Performance change made by championship officials to reduce its qualifying advantage was legitimate. The Multimatic-built Ford Mustang GT4, which has campaigned successfully in the US since 2017, took pole position for both races, with Seb Priaulx over a second ahead of his nearest rival in the second session. But the addition of 45kg and 10mm of ride height meant both cars struggled with tyre degradation in race one, although the #19 Mustang of Jade Buford and Chad McCumbee still set the fastest lap. The US duo slipped back from the lead to fourth behind a trio of McLarens, which…

BRDC BRITISH F3 Reigning British Formula 4 champion Kiern Jewiss endured a tough debut weekend in BRDC British F3 at Oulton Park, but banked important points for his title fight. The right rear of Jewiss’s Douglas Motorsport-run car clipped Manuel Maldonado’s front wing at Avenue early in the first race, spinning the Venezuelan around and collecting Pavan Ravishankar, Lucas Petersson and Benjamin Pedersen. A 10-second penalty handed to Jewiss for the contact dropped him from sixth to ninth. “I just didn’t see him whatsoever – I just came out and… contact,” said Jewiss. “I was focusing on [Hampus] Ericsson in front. It’s a shame and it is what it is, but if he had backed out we would have been OK. “It’s disappointing but it’s not all won after the…

OULTON PARK BRITISH GT 20 & 22 APRIL Rick Parfitt Jr and Seb Morris gave JRM a dream return to sportscar racing with victory in the opening British GT race of the season at Oulton Park, but came away frustrated after a spin in race two cost them a likely podium. The 2017 champions had only completed one test with their new-generation Bentley Continental GT3 before the weekend, but came through from fourth to win race one after a lapse in judgement from Ryan Ratcliffe (Team Parker Racing Bentley) at the Hislops chicane took both himself and Ian Loggie’s leading RAM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 out of the race. Parfitt, who had planned to take a sabbatical from racing before JRM informed him of its plans during the winter, passed Sam…

OULTON PARK MSVR 20 & 22 APRIL The result sheets may have recorded two wins for the Carlin squad on the opening BRDC British Formula 3 weekend of the season, but that belies a close fight behind in a championship that almost all of the drivers have acknowledged is anyone’s to win this year. Carlin pair Clement Novalak and Kaylen Frederick laid down the early markers at Oulton Park, with Novalak getting his season off to the perfect start with victory on Saturday. Frederick secured pole for the first race but was passed by his team-mate into Old Hall. US driver Frederick looked like he was still in the hunt in the early stages of the race until a meeting of Neil Verhagen’s front wing and Frederick’s right-rear tyre out…

NATIONAL FORMULA FORD 1600 Race 1 Rory Smith (Medina JL18) Race 2 Spike Kohlbecker (Ray GR18) Race 3 Neil Maclennan (Spectrum 011C) CIVIC CUP Race 1 Lee Deegan (EP3, below) Race 2 Danny Hobson (EP3) MAZDA MX-5 SUPERCUP Race 1 Luke Herbert Race 2 Aidan Hills Race 3 Jack Harding PORSCHE CHAMPIONSHIP Race 1 & 2 Rick Styrin (Boxster) Race 3 Garry Lawrence (Boxster) ALFA ROMEO CHAMPIONSHIP Race 1 Barry McMahon (156) Race 2 Richard Thurbin (Lancia Delta HF Integrale) For full results visit: tsl-timing.com…

PEMBREY BRSCC 20-21 APRIL John Langridge bounced back from a frustrating Brands Hatch season opener by taking two Mazda MX-5 Championship wins and a third place in Pembrey’s round two. Langridge had crashed in race two at Brands after contact with reigning double champion Will Blackwell-Chambers, and the pair contested victory again in Wales. Langridge held off the more cautious Blackwell-Chambers to win race one, then in race two Blackwell-Chambers quickly passed Langridge for a lead he refused to yield. Langridge later fell to third behind Ben Short. Blackwell-Chambers buzzed his engine early in race three by accidentally selecting first gear. He dropping to sixth place then pulled in to retire, leaving Langridge and Short to contest victory. Short passed Langridge at Brooklands Hairpin towards the end of the final…

CASTLE COMBE CCRC 22 APRIL Brothers Felix and Josh Fisher emerged atop two stunningly fast and clean Castle Combe Formula Ford races, which celebrated 50 years of the circuit’s championship before a posse of past champions and a large and appreciative spectator turnout at Easter Monday’s ‘Howard’s Day VII’. Felix earned the Guards Trophy prize on aggregate from Josh by 0.445 seconds! Felix won the opener in which he, Josh, Roger Orgee and Luke Cooper broke clear. When Josh’s last-ditch effort to unseat his sibling at Quarry failed, Orgee and Cooper relegated him to fourth. Double champion Josh retaliated with a superb drive in race two, restarting brilliantly after a safety car to beat the inspired Cooper and Felix by less than 0.7s. Ben Tinkler (Van Diemen RF80) won both…

INTERNATIONAL MOTORSPORT Azerbaijan Grand Prix Formula 1 World Championship Round 4/21 Baku, Azerbaijan 28 April TV Live Sky Sports F1, Sunday 1130 TV Highlights Channel 4, Sunday 1900. Sky Sports F1, Sunday 2100 Formula 2 Round 2/12 Baku, Azerbaijan 27-28 April TV Live Sky Sports F1, Saturday 0855, Sunday 1000 Rally Argentina World Rally Championship Round 5/14 Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina 25-28 April TV Live BT Sport 1, Thursday 2300. Red Bull TV, Saturday 0550 TV Highlights Red BullTV, Friday 0200, Saturday 0200, Sunday 0200. BT Sport 1, Saturday 0400. BT Sport 2, Sunday 0400. BT Sport 1, Monday 0230. 5Spike, Monday 1900 Live coverage on wrc.com All live service via WRC+ Formula E Round 8/12 Paris, France 27 April TV Live Eurosport 2/Quest, Saturday 1430, BBC Red Button, iPlayer,…