Innehållsförteckning för 12/12/19 från Autosport

Lewis Hamilton won the 2019 Formula 1 World Championship pretty comfortably, but there were plenty of interesting storylines, dramatic races and fine performances. We delve into all of them – and some of the more problematic elements of the season – in this week’s bumper review, which kicks off on page 17. As has become tradition, we pick out our top 10 F1 drivers of the year (p28), a list that has some striking differences to the top 10 provided by the team bosses (p35), and Autosport readers… Jake Boxall-Legge and Giorgio Piola take a look at the technical developments of 2019 (p36) and Scott Mitchell explains how Charles Leclerc became number one at Ferrari (p42). We also cover Honda’s first campaign with Red Bull, the rise of the British…

P64 KUBICA’S F1 RETURN DTM Williams Formula 1 refugee Robert Kubica is driving for BMW in this week’s DTM rookie test at Jerez. Following a difficult F1 comeback season, Kubica has already outlined his ambition to combine an F1 simulator role with a racing programme elsewhere. As revealed by Autosport earlier this year, Kubica’s management had been in touch with Audi as it evaluated his post-F1 future, but Audi motorsport boss Dieter Gass has since indicated that the manufacturer is likely to retain its existing DTM line-up for 2020. But rival BMW is undergoing a review of its structure and driver line-up, potentially opening the door to a race seat after Kubica indicated that a DTM switch was likely. Kubica (pictured in the BMW simulator) has tested a DTM car…

SUPER FORMULA You usually have to wait until well into the new year for the Japanese manufacturers to unveil their motorsport programmes and driver line-ups for the season ahead, but December’s so-called Rookie Test at Suzuka for Super Formula always lets a few cats out of the bag. The 2019 running of the test took place last week, and the best of the rookies was Juri Vips. It’s long been known that the FIA Formula 3 Championship star and Red Bull Junior was heading to Japan for 2020 – he even did the last round of Super Formula this year – and he was bang on the pace for Honda-powered Team Mugen. Not only was Vips third overall, but he was in the top three in all four sessions across…

Nelson Piquet Jr, Sebastien Buemi, Lucas di Grassi and Jean-Eric Vergne have one particular thing in common – they are all Formula E champions. But, from the start of the 2020-21 season, they (plus another if someone else wins in 2019-20) will be separated from the rest of the electric championship’s history. From next season, the respective FE teams’ and drivers’ champions will officially be FIA world champions. Until then, only the title winners from Formula 1 and the World Endurance, Rally and Rallycross championships will be elevated to that status by the governing body. FE has fulfilled the criteria for having world championship status – four manufacturer competitors and races on at least three continents – since its second season. Indeed, had the opportunity to gain that lofty status…

Australia 1 Bottas 2 Hamilton 3 Verstappen Hamilton and Bottas lock out the front row for Mercedes, with the lead Ferrari of Vettel a massive seven tenths down. Bottas takes the lead at the start and wins comfortably, as Hamilton’s challenge is stymied by floor damage sustained hitting a kerb on lap five. Verstappen overtakes Vettel to secure third place. Bahrain 1 Hamilton 2 Bottas 3 Leclerc Maiden polesitter Leclerc slips to third on lap one, but battles his way past Bottas and Vettel to lead. Victory is certain before his Ferrari V6 drops a cylinder. He slips behind Hamilton and Bottas, but a late safety car triggered by the simultaneous stoppage of the Renaults prevents Leclerc losing third to Verstappen. China 1 Hamilton 2 Bottas 3 Vettel Hamilton dominates…

Alex Albon impressed in 2019 and is unlucky not to make the top 10, squeezed out thanks to too many crashes and the fact that he lagged just over four tenths behind Verstappen on pace in the second half of the season. But he proved he has the makings of a first-class grand prix driver. Nico Hulkenberg was close to Ricciardo over the season in qualifying, but too often not at the same level in the races. But despite throwing away a potential podium with an off at Hockenheim after losing it on the slick runoff, he put together another good season, even though he ceased to be Renault’s focal point. At Alfa Romeo, Kimi Raikkonen made an outstanding start to the season and arguably overachieved thanks to his consistency.…

Sebastian Vettel started 2019 as Ferrari’s de facto number one driver, but ended it finishing behind Charles Leclerc in the championship. In between, Ferrari’s season rocketed between poor performance, reliability problems, stunning Leclerc highs, costly Vettel mistakes and rising tension between its drivers that reached a crescendo with them crashing out in Brazil. The underlying narrative through all of that was the shifting dynamic between four-time world champion Vettel and rising star Leclerc, and how Leclerc’s emphatic first season with Ferrari disrupted the status quo. Team principal Mattia Binotto’s logic in making the more experienced Vettel the team’s “guide” to the title in pre-season was justified, but his faith, it turns out, was not. Leclerc accepted Ferrari’s stance, given his newcomer status within the team, and considered it his “job”…

The focus on Red Bull’s season was undeniably its performance with Honda, but a mid-year driver swap cannot be ignored. And no matter how well Alex Albon did in Pierre Gasly’s place, Red Bull would rather have never found out how that change would work. Before the season began, a breakthrough podium finish would have seemed very likely for Gasly, not least because Red Bull and Honda started the season solidly. But it quickly became clear that this would be difficult. After crashing twice, heavily, in pre-season testing, Gasly’s season barely got going. One week into the summer break, after a particularly dismal weekend in Hungary, he was dropped to Toro Rosso, with Albon taking his seat. But Gasly came out swinging. Any lingering sulkiness on the first day back…

Renault’s objective this year was to finish, as team principal Cyril Abiteboul put it over the winter, “a better fourth”. It failed in that objective, finishing well behind McLaren and only just holding off Toro Rosso to retain fifth place in the constructors’ championship. The team did make a step forward in terms of pace, closing by almost 0.25% on the front compared to its average performance last season, but it only headed the midfield four times each in qualifying and the races, and lagged decisively behind McLaren. “It’s not what we hoped for,” says Renault executive director Marcin Budkowski. “It’s a combination [of factors]. We started a little bit backward in terms of missing our winter targets, not by a lot but by enough in the midfield to be…

The Williams FW42 was late, off the pace, and produced the worst season in the illustrious team’s history in terms of deficit to the front. Its sole point, courtesy of Robert Kubica’s 10th place in July’s German Grand Prix, came in a chaotic race after both Alfa Romeos were penalised. It was a disastrous year. As deputy team principal Claire Williams puts it: “It can’t happen again.” “It was a disastrous year. As deputy team principal Claire Williams puts it, ‘It can’t happen again’” Williams has certainly responded. The result was the departure of chief technical officer Paddy Lowe and a rigorous review that has led to widespread changes, including an improved system to track the design and manufacturing of all components. This is crucial not just because of the…

1 Hamilton responds to Rosberg age dig Following Nico Rosberg’s appraisal of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, in which the 2016 Formula 1 world champion also said Lewis Hamilton was “certainly already on a little bit of a decline in his natural human abilities”, Hamilton hit back in reply to his former team-mate – refuting the suggestion that his aptitude will lessen with age. 2 Lewis: Top driver called Wolff for Mercedes move Speaking at the FIA’s end-of-season awards earlier this month, Lewis Hamilton claimed the 2021 driver market was already in full swing, saying another of the drivers present – among whom were Max Verstappen and two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso – was chasing Mercedes’ team boss Toto Wolff about a drive. 3 Vettel steering inputs key to FIA’s penalty decision The…

PORSCHE SPRINT CHALLENGE Club racers Carl Cavers and Ian Humphris are the first drivers to sign up for the new Porsche Sprint Challenge GB series for next year. The Porsche-backed category features the 718 Cayman Clubsport GT4 and will run on the British Touring Car Championship and British GT support bills in 2020, as well as having one round alongside the Porsche Club series. Both Cavers and Humphris will stay with Valluga Racing. The team has run Cavers in a Lotus Elise in Club Enduro this season (he has also competed in Ferrari Formula Classic) and Humphris in Britcar, where he has been a winner in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup. “The championship is a great addition to the UK motorsport scene and Porsche have produced a fantastic, user-friendly race…

BRITISH GT McLaren Automotive has announced four new drivers for its Driver Development Programme who will be placed with McLaren partner team Tolman Motorsport in British GT next year. The sole British driver, Ginetta GT5 Challenge graduate Katie Milner, will be joined by Australian Harry Hayek, who suffered a back-breaking testing shunt in BRDC British F3 in 2017, and two drivers with experience of the McLaren 570S GT4 in ADAC GT4 this year: Morocco’s Michael Benyahia and Swiss Alain Valente. The quartet were selected after a two-day shootout at Snetterton featuring 14 other drivers. In addition to fitness and media sessions, the drivers were given two free practice sessions, a qualifying run and a race run to simulate a British GT weekend. Milner, the 2016 Junior Saloon Car champion, says…

FORMULA 1 New Renault Formula 1 signing Esteban Ocon got the day he had been waiting “months” for when he drove the team’s 2019 car in the post-season Abu Dhabi test last week, an outing he called “crucial” ahead of his racing return. Ocon, who replaces Nico Hulkenberg alongside Daniel Ricciardo in Renault’s line-up for next season, got behind the wheel for the first time on Tuesday. Although he has tested Mercedes’ 2019 car this year in his role as reserve driver, Ocon’s on-track opportunities have been limited. F1 has cut its pre-season test days from eight to six for 2020, further reducing Ocon’s track time as he returns to the grid after one year on the sidelines. Ocon’s mileage on the first day of the test – topped by…

WEC Peugeot told us that it would reveal more details of its 2022-23 World Endurance Championship entry in the new year. It jumped the gun last week when it announced that it will be forging a relationship with top WEC privateer Rebellion Racing for its return to top-flight sportscar racing. But once again it didn’t go into detail. The hypercar programme will be based out of PSA Motorsport headquarters in Versailles-Satory in suburban Paris and “will be a single entity”, said group motorsport boss Jean-Marc Finot. The “roles will be divided as a function of our respective competencies”, he explained. Asked for elaboration on that, a PSA Motorsport spokeswoman said that the “partnership has not been defined yet”. She stressed that the new Peugeot hypercar would be “conceived and built”…

WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP World Rally champion Ott Tanak began his bid for a second successive title last week, when he drove a Hyundai i20 Coupe for the first time in the French Alps. Tanak joined his new team-mates Thierry Neuville and Sebastien Loeb in their preparations for next month’s Monte Carlo Rally opener, with each driving the car for a day. After dry asphalt running, Hyundai Motorsport will be back in France early next year running roads higher up the mountains in search of some snow and ice. Tanak’s current Toyota contract precludes him from being overly talkative about his new motor. But at last week’s FIA press conference he was able to say that he felt comfortable in the Hyundai. Talking to Autosport about the wider implications of his…

Missing the days of driver line-up speculation Can anyone remember when next year’s driver line-up was fixed before the last race of the year? Wait, I’m talking to Autosport readers, of course someone will! However, my point is, isn’t it odd, and slightly depressing? Where’s the excitement, the speculation and the tension? I remember long debates and flights of fancy trying to work out which mercurial newbie Ken Tyrrell or Eddie Jordan would pluck out of the junior formulas, or which earnest but plodding pay driver would buy their way out of obscurity into a March or an Ensign and the like, but who might just surprise everybody. This businesslike orderliness may be good news for souvenir programme printers, but is it good news for the sport? I can’t help…

The shock loss of Charlie Whiting on the eve of the Australian Grand Prix weekend cast a long shadow over the 2019 season. F1 lost not only a race director, safety delegate, head of the technical department and permanent starter, but also a universally liked and infinitely knowledgeable character who had done as much as, if not more than, anyone else in shaping GP racing today. Whiting’s association with F1 cars stretched back to 1976, when he worked on Divina Galica’s Surtees TS16 running in the ShellSport Series. He then worked for Hesketh in F1 proper before joining Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team, taking up a role with the FIA after the sale of the squad in 1987. For over 30 years, his ever-expanding role made him a crucial part of…

Sebastian Vettel gives a downbeat assessment of his Formula 1 season. The four-time world champion won just one grand prix in 2019 and finished fifth in the drivers’ championship, his worst result since joining Ferrari in 2015, and fronted up with an admission that he was not as good as he could have been. “I know that there’s more from my side so clearly I look at myself first,” he says. “There’s things that I can do better, that I know I can do better.” Vettel made several mistakes that cost him significant results at a number of grands prix this year, resulting in his defeat to young team-mate Charles Leclerc in the championship. He spun while battling Lewis Hamilton in Bahrain, a race Leclerc was leading from pole position…

Since the glory days of Sebastian Vettel, Toro Rosso has been a bit-part player in Formula 1. But in 2019 it had its most successful season since that famous year, matching its 2008 best of sixth in the constructors’ championship and twice claiming podium finishes. The departure of technical director James Key last season ahead of his arrival at McLaren led to a switch in the philosophy of the team. Jody Egginton took his place, initially as de facto technical director in his role as deputy before picking up the real title, and focused on leaning as much as possible on the kit available from Red Bull. With a car built around the Red Bull 2018 suspension and gearbox, plus other non-listed parts, there were fewer problems and therefore more…

Driver supertimes Hamilton 100.250 Bottas 100.400 Leclerc 100.483 Vettel 100.568 Verstappen 100.707 Gasly 101.810 Norris 101.829 Sainz 101.857 Albon 101.915 Ricciardo 102.004 Hulkenberg 102.184 Magnussen 102.209 Raikkonen 102.285 Grosjean 102.402 Perez 102.442 Kvyat 102.564 Giovinazzi 102.597 Stroll 102.929 Russell 104.301 Kubica 105.080 Driver supertimes are based on taking each driver’s fastest single lap of each weekend, expressed as a percentage of the overall fastest time, averaged over the 21-race season. 40 For the second year in a row, Stroll scored the highest number of first-lap overtakes with 40 50  Giovinazzi was hit with 50 seconds of race penalties 3165 Hamilton completed the most laps in race-weekend sessions during this season Fastest laps DRIVER Hamilton 6 Leclerc 4 Bottas 3 Verstappen 3 Gasly 2 Vettel 2 Magnussen 1 CONSTRUCTOR Mercedes 9…

FORMULA FORD 1600 The life of the late Jim Russell will be celebrated in a new two-day Historic Sports Car Club meeting at Snetterton next spring. Russell, who died in March aged 98, started racing at Snetterton in 1952. He won the BRSCC National Formula 3 Championship three years in a row from 1955-57, but stopped competing after being injured when he crashed his Cooper Monaco at Le Mans in 1959. In 1956 he set up the first motor racing school at Snetterton and played a key role in the early careers of Emerson Fittipaldi, Derek Bell and Jacques Villeneuve. A display of cars relevant to Russell’s life is planned, and the Historic Sports Car Club is keen to hear from anyone with a suitable machine. The HSCC’s Jim Russell…

Setting up a young driver academy is a proven method for Formula 1 teams to get their hooks into once-in-a-generation-talents before they get snapped up by their rivals. And in recent years, automotive manufacturers McLaren, Aston Martin and now Bentley have jumped onto the bandwagon and set up schemes for youngsters looking to get a foothold on the professional ladder in GT racing. Since 2017, McLaren’s Driver Development Programme (DDP) has run two 570S GT4s via partner team Tolman Motorsport in the British GT Championship. Headed up by 2001 Renault Clio champion Danny Buxton, DDP drivers are assigned an experienced mentor from McLaren’s pool of coaches who travel to every round, receive a modest salary and have all their expenses covered. Although the disciplines are poles apart, the end goal…

WHEN DRIVERS CROP UP IN UNEXPECTED PLACES Versatility across various racing categories has once more become a fashionable trait among top-flight drivers, typified by Fernando Alonso winning the Le Mans 24 Hours for Toyota in 2018 and again this year. Yet, contextualised, the circuit-racing debut of World Rally Championship star Mads Ostberg in 2017 is perhaps an even more impressive feat (depending on how double Formula 1 champion Alonso gets on in the Dakar Rally next year). It’s mid-September at a windy and overcast Mantorp Park in Sweden. Thanks to a gap in his calendar, Ostberg is able to swap his four-wheel-drive Ford Fiesta World Rally Car for a 911 GT3 Cup car ahead the final round of the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia season. With just one shakedown completed and…

We’ve got used to the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne marking the start of the Formula 1 season. Of course Adelaide had previously held the honour of hosting the final race of the year, and here the drivers (plus FIA panjandrum Jean-Marie Balestre) pose for the traditional end-of-year ‘class photo’ in 1986. We considered listing them all, but where’s the fun in that? Think of it as a few moments’ distraction from pre-Christmas prep. The race itself is now part of F1 lore for the dramatic deflation of Nigel Mansell’s left-rear Goodyear, along with his championship hopes. For classic 1980s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

FORMULA 2 Louis Deletraz set the fastest time of the Formula 2 post-season test in Abu Dhabi last week as the driver merry-go-round continued for the 2020 season. Deletraz (above) has driven for Carlin in 2019 but is evaluating whether to stay in F2 for next season. If he does, it would likely be with the Charouz Racing team he drove for in 2018. The five-time podium finisher was joined at Charouz for the test by FIA Formula 3 race winner Pedro Piquet, who was eighth fastest overall. The only day Deletraz wasn’t fastest was the final day, when Nikita Mazepin topped the charts for Carlin. The 2019 ART Grand Prix driver set the best lap on Saturday morning, although he is its driver line-up is believed to be confirmed…

SPORTSCARS Two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Timo Bernhard is hanging up his helmet at the age of 38. The long-time Porsche driver will move into an ambassadorial role with the marque as he concentrates on building up the Team 75 Bernhard squad he runs with his father, Rudiger. Bernhard explained that the move, announced last weekend at Porsche’s annual prizegiving, was “the end of my professional career”. He’s not ruling out contesting the odd rally or hillclimb for fun, but says he won’t don his helmet in anger again, not even to drive for his own team. “I always said I wanted to stop when I was about 40, and I’m 39 in February,” he said. “The double role of driving and running a team is very difficult, so…

BTCC British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington has targeted becoming the first man to win five titles in the series as he stays on with the WSR-run works BMW line-up for 2020. The 37-year-old Northern Irishman first joined the WSR squad to race a Team Atomic Kitten-branded MG ZS in 2002 (right) and has spent all but three of his 15 seasons in the BTCC with the Dick Bennetts-run team. Forty of his 51 race victories have come at the wheel of WSR-run machines. “Remaining with the team was never in doubt and we’re excited to be defending our titles together,” said Turkington. “Becoming a four-time champion was a very special moment, but I’m motivated to keep striving for more.” Tom Oliphant will also remain with WSR for a second…

Speed. There are many attributes that a successful modern racing driver needs, but it’s clear that they won’t get far if they’re not fast. That’s why pace remains the single most important factor in the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award. Plenty of elements are assessed, from fitness to simulator work via the finalists’ ability to work within a team. They are useful for feedback and to separate really close contests, but can’t overcome a lap time advantage. Judging that isn’t always as clear-cut as you might think, particularly when assessing four finalists across three different cars, but there’s normally enough running around the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit for a clear pattern to emerge. Having four identical MotorSport Vision Formula 2 cars on track at the…

The facts of the 2019 Formula 1 season were substantially the same as the previous five in the V6-turbo-hybrid era. Mercedes won both championships with Lewis Hamilton its star, Ferrari flattered to deceive, and Red Bull sniped for victories without ever threatening to fight for the title. Despite the new front-wing regulations, designed to make it easier for cars to follow each other, the naysayers moaned that grand prix racing needed to change the record. But this wasn’t the same old story, not by a long shot. It was a profoundly different tale, with performance swings, surprises and purple patches for all three of Formula 1’s big teams – not to mention whispered accusations about the legitimacy of Ferrari’s engine supremacy. Even though there was no title fight to speak…

10 Sebastian Vettel Down 6 How can a driver who consistently ran at or near the front, finished fifth in the world championship and won a race be ranked so low? The answer is simple. In 2019, Vettel made too many mistakes – five significant race-ruining ones – and was outperformed by new team-mate Charles Leclerc. Time after time, he cracked under pressure. In Bahrain, he spun his Ferrari dicing with Lewis Hamilton and cost himself a potential win. In Canada, while being chased by Hamilton, he went off and earned a penalty for rejoining dangerously – and however you view that penalty, the mistake was clearly his. At Silverstone, he crashed into Max Verstappen. At Monza, he spun early on then rejoined rashly. And at Interlagos he took out…

When McLaren targeted a return to Formula 1 domination with Honda ahead of the revival of its famous partnership in 2015, it would have been inconceivable that the Japanese manufacturer would have to wait until 2019 to taste victory again. Oh, and it would be with Red Bull, not McLaren. Honda’s path to redemption, first by rebuilding its respectability in 2018 with Toro Rosso and then by returning to winning ways this year, is an expensive feel-good story. Its underestimation of the complexities of the V6 turbo-hybrid engine era and its incompetencies compared to rivals were brutally exposed in three dismal seasons with McLaren, and it became hard not to sympathise with Honda. After all, it was not the brash half of that relationship. Yet through fiery failures, an insult…

McLaren’s nightmare finally came to an end in 2019. Its comfortable fourth place in the constructors’ championship represented the best-possible result considering where the team was coming from. New driver line-up Carlos Sainz Jr and Lando Norris excelled and the green shoots of recovery were clear for all to see. There’s a long way to go before it can return to the glory days, but the fug of the Honda era has now cleared and the lessons of last year’s rude awakening have clearly been learned. Eight times in qualifying and on nine occasions in the race McLaren ended up as the best of the midfielders, and it would have happened more frequently but for reliability problems and the occasional on-track incident and pitstop errors. “It’s been a much, much…

Missing out on a point in potentially his last Formula 1 race serves as a sad microcosm for Nico Hulkenberg’s career: he did a good job in underwhelming machinery, but ended without the result his ability and effort deserved. “As others snapped up the remaining seats, Hulkenberg found himself standing when the music stopped” When the Renault driver got mugged for a point on the final lap of the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, it cost him what might well have been his final point in Formula 1. The driver with the record number of grand prix starts without a podium finish will not be adding to his tally of races next year, as he has lost his seat to Esteban Ocon. Hulkenberg barely bothered to conceal his frustration during…

There were two Robert Kubicas in Formula 1 in 2019. One was the underachiever, obliterated by rookie team-mate George Russell, regularly hinting at dark forces working against him. The other was the sensational comeback story after an injury that left his right arm and hand permanently damaged, and a repair and rehabilitation process that took more out of Kubica than most of us can ever know. One story is a tragedy, a once-great driver returning as a ghost of his former self; the other is a triumph of human spirit. It’s the second story that really matters and will long live in the memory. Forget the details, the lap times, the results: this was a victory for Kubica – the biggest of his career. “I was kind of split,” says…

One subject dominated Formula 1’s political landscape this year and will continue to do so as we head into next season. Since Liberty Media took over as commercial rights holder in January 2017, the focus of the new management has been on 2021 and the unique opportunity to perform a major reset after the expiration of the current Concorde Agreement. With it goes the complex system of governance that has often strangled attempts to promote change. F1 reached the end of 2019 with the future road map well defined, bar one crucial element. No teams have signed up to a new commercial agreement and there are still question marks over the long-term commitment of some of the power unit manufacturers. Having said that, there is no specific pressing deadline and…

The Autosport Awards has an outstanding pedigree when it comes to attracting the biggest names in motorsport to Grosvenor House on Park Lane each year. But having three-time Formula 1 world champion Sir Jackie Stewart present an award to Albert II, Prince of Monaco, in recognition of the principality’s famous grand prix might just be the most glamorous combination to take to the stage in the history of the ceremony. Across the four decades since the Awards began, WSR team principal Dick Bennetts has established himself as one of the pre-eminent engineers, scoring success in British Formula 3, A1GP and the British Touring Car Championship. His lifetime’s achievement was celebrated on a night hosted by Natalie Pinkham and Tom Clarkson. Lewis Hamilton was voted International Racing Driver of the Year…

RENAULT CLIO CUP UK A brand-new team called Student Motorsport will enter the Clio Cup UK for the first time next year, plotting a two-car entry. The team will be the racing arm of Student Motorsport, which runs an online network to connect students and graduates with educators and motorsport companies. Founder John Paul Latham says he was offered the opportunity to get involved in the Clio Cup for 2020 and believes it is a good chance to help promote the network as well as to help the next generation of mechanics. “The Clio Cup is a very professionally run series – it’s a great starting point,” he said. “It’s very accessible and it’s a great place not just to develop drivers but to develop the next mechanics, engineers and…

CLUBMANS SPORTS PROTOTYPE Clubmans Sports Prototype Championship organisers have decided to end the category’s long association with the British Automobile Racing Club to run with MotorSport Vision Racing next year. The Clubmans Register investigated buying track time from other clubs when MSVR made an offer to take the championship under its banner. Clubmans Register chairman Mike Evans says that the category’s southern competitor base made the calendar the BARC offered unattractive. “It’s a championship that people dip in and out of – it’s not a championship where everyone does every round,” said Evans. “We have a core of a dozen who do every round and then there’s about 15 to 16 that come and go, and nearly all of those guys are from the south Midlands or south-east so we…

750 MOTOR CLUB 750 FORMULA CHAMPIONSHIP Mark Glover (Racekits Falcon) ARMED FORCES RACE CHALLENGE Chris Slator (Peugeot 306 Rallye) BIKESPORTS CHAMPIONSHIP Joe Stables (Radical SR3 RS) BMW CAR CLUB RACING CHAMPIONSHIP Matt Page (325 Ti) CLASSIC STOCK HATCH CHAMPIONSHIP Lee Scott (Ford Fiesta XR2i) CLIO 182 CHAMPIONSHIP Ryan Polley CLUB ENDURO CHAMPIONSHIP Steve Cheetham (Porsche Boxster) F1000 CHAMPIONSHIP Matthew Booth FORMULA VEE CHAMPIONSHIP Graham Gant (WEV) HOT HATCH CHAMPIONSHIP David Drinkwater (BMW Compact) LOCOST CHAMPIONSHIP Tom Gadd MX-5 CUP Ben Hancy RGB SPORTS 1000 CHAMPIONSHIP Chris ‘Chippy’ Wesemael (Mittell MC-53) SPORT SPECIALS CHAMPIONSHIP Andy Hiley (Chronos HR1S) TOYOTA MR2 CHAMPIONSHIP Shaun Traynor BRITISH AUTOMOBILE RACING CLUB 2CVs Peter Sparrow BRITCAR ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP Paul Bailey/Andy Schulz (Ferrari 488 Challenge) BRITISH TRUCK RACING CHAMPIONSHIP DIVISION 1 Ryan Smith (MAN TGA) BRITISH TRUCK RACING CHAMPIONSHIP DIVISION 2 Luke Garrett (MAN TGX)…

1) Who, what, where, when? 2) Who is this? This free-spirited joker could tame the biggest beasts the sport had to offer. A late starter by modern standards, he washed off the soap and was soon taking aim at the big time. When the colours united, he was rewarded in style and a call from a downtrodden giant soon followed. He ended their barren run, but didn’t fit into the lion’s den, so moved to the home of the most fearsome rival of all. Despite a flying start he was never a match. He made a return journey to break a hoodoo and then completed the cycle, marking an emotional occasion in style. After moving upstairs he took the ultimate driving machine into new territory, played a key part in…