Innehållsförteckning för 21/01/21 från Autosport

There has been so much talk about Formula 1’s important new regulations for 2022 that it’s been easy to overlook the fact that there are some changes for the teams to get their heads around this year. As well as the obvious seat-swapping, there are technical rule tweaks, particularly to the floors, that are now giving F1 designers some challenges to overcome. Our technical editor Jake Boxall-Legge is your guide as we outline some of the key elements that will make 2021 more than simply a repeat of 2020 (page 18). Amid the seemingly almost normal uncertainties we now live with, the Monte Carlo Rally should kick off the World Rally Championship this week. Elfyn Evans talks about his expectations for the campaign on p28, and we pick out the…

FORMULA 2/3 Red Bull will have no fewer than eight of its proteges across the grand prix-supporting FIA Formula 2 and Formula 3 championships this season. As has been widely tipped, Juri Vips and Liam Lawson will team up at Hitech Grand Prix in F2, while Jehan Daruvala will stay on for a second season at Carlin. Vips (above) impressed in a handful of F2 outings last season while standing in for the injured Sean Gelael at DAMS after his Super Formula programme bit the dust due to Japanese quarantine restrictions, while F3 race winner Lawson makes his debut in the category. Lawson remains with Silverstone-based Hitech for his step up, and it represents a return to the team for Vips, a race winner with Hitech during the 2019 F3…

OBITUARY Best known for failing to qualify for the 1978 Italian Grand Prix, ‘Gimax’ (real name Carlo Franchi), who has died aged 83, was a highly capable Italian sportscar racer of the 1970s. He began racing in Formula 3 in 1964, but under the name ‘Gimax’ (a combination of his sons Gigi and Max) he gained a reputation in endurance events of the 1970s. At the wheel of an Osella-BMW PA6, he became the champion of the two-litre class of the 1978 European Sports Car Championship. He usually drove solo, but combined with Giorgio Francia to win the round at Enna-Pergusa. He then attempted to make his F1 debut at the age of 40 at Monza, replacing the injured Rupert Keegan at Surtees (below), but failed to make the grid.…

INDYCAR The US’s greatest racing dynasty looks to be winding down behind the wheel – for now anyway – with the decision of Marco Andretti to step back from full-time IndyCar competition. Andretti, last year’s Indy 500 polesitter, announced last week that he will attack this year’s 500 in the #98 car run by father Michael’s Andretti Autosport team, plus possibly some other races in order to remain “car fit”. Other than that, he is keen to sample top-level sportscar racing, and spoke of his desire to share a car with second-cousin Jarett. “I’ll be looking into other sportscar opportunities as well in the coming months,” he said. “Marquee events like the 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring and Le Mans would be on that list. I am…

BTCC British Touring Car Championship star Tom Ingram will be racing a Hyundai this season at the start of “a multi-year agreement” with the Excelr8 Trade Price Cars team. Ingram’s departure from Toyota squad Speedworks Motorsport after seven years together was confirmed last month, and his destination was hotly tipped then to be Excelr8 Motorsport. The Suffolk squad entered the BTCC in 2019 with ageing MG6 machinery, before building its Hyundai i30 N contenders for 2020. Chris Smiley and Senna Proctor each scored reversed-grid second places with the new car last year, but development was hampered by the COVID crisis. Excelr8 was also not helped by the absence from most races of top BTCC engineer Kevin Berry, who was involved in the design of the car but who had to…

P48 DAKAR RALLY REPORT HAVE YOUR SAY, GET IN TOUCH Autosport editorial Autosport Media UK Ltd 1 Eton Street Richmond TW9 1AG E-mail autosport@autosport.com Visit our website autosport.com Twitter twitter.com/autosport Facebook facebook.com/autosport Instagram instagram.com/autosport YouTube youtube.com/AUTOSPORTdotcom…

2016 King (right) makes his car racing debut in Ginetta Junior and has an impressive first season, finishing eighth in the standings. The highlight is a maiden triumph at Snetterton, also a first win for his small Elite Motorsport team. 2017 Given his promise from the previous season, a title bid is expected from King. But in a strong field, which also includes fellow future sportscar aces Dan Harper and Seb Priaulx and McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner-to-be Tom Gamble, King struggles to take a step forward, finishing the year sixth. 2018 King continues with Elite as he makes the step to senior racing in the Ginetta GT4 Supercup. He shows flashes of speed across the season, triumphing three times, but bad luck means he is never really a title…

24 HOUR SERIES DUBAI 24 HOURS (UAE) 15-16 JANUARY ROUND 1/8 GPX Racing, a team based on the business park that nestles within the confines of the Dubai Autodrome, scored Porsche its record sixth victory in the Dubai 24 Hours. The two factory drivers Mathieu Jaminet and Julien Andlauer, young hotshot Axcil Jefferies, and the two French stalwarts Frederic Fatien and Alain Ferte led for some 522 of the 600 tours, claiming the spoils with a one-lap advantage over the Belgian WRT squad’s Audi R8. The 16th running of the Dubai 24 Hours, the season opener of the 24H Series organised by Dutch agency Creventic, was a sharp contrast to the race in 2020. Last year, torrential rain stopped the action after seven hours, but this time around, conditions were…

BRITISH GT Team Parker Racing will no longer run a Bentley Continental in British GT this season, following the conclusion of the manufacturer’s factory GT3 programme. The squad, which powered Seb Morris and Rick Parfitt to the 2017 title at the wheel of a Bentley, has instead decided to switch to new machinery for this year. Last season it fielded Scott Malvern and Nick Jones in the Bentley, with the pair taking a victory in the hour-long race at Donington Park. In a statement, the team said: “Our entry for the 2021 British GT season is in and we are awaiting delivery of our new car. The Bentley was a fan favourite, but we are confident that our new car will have a lot of appeal when we unveil it…

TCR UK GT squad Motus One will contest the Touring Car Trophy for the first time this season with three Honda Civic TCR machines. Motus One managing director Will Powell, saloon racing stalwart Dave Scaramanga and newcomer Danny Krywyj will compete with the squad over the scheduled 14 races. “We’ve made no secret of our ambition to add touring cars to the team’s activities and the Goodyear Touring Car Trophy has made that viable for us in 2021,” said Powell. “Our strong relationship with Goodyear – who I’ve raced for and we work closely with on our Brabham BT62 programme [Powell won on the car’s debut at the 2019 Britcar Into the Night Race at Brands Hatch] – along with the plans to promote and grow the TCR package in…

PETER BLOND 1929-2021 A Jaguar racer throughout the 1950s, Peter Blond, who died on 10 January, graduated from an XK120 to the C-type that placed fourth at the 1953 Le Mans 24 Hours, finishing second to Captain Michael Head’s similar car first time out at Goodwood in 1955. Blond won in a new D-type bought from Bernie Ecclestone, and achieved a win in a works HWM-Jaguar at Brands Hatch when he pressured Graham Hill into a last-lap spin. Blond shared the works Tojeiro with Tommy Bridger at Le Mans in 1958. F4 DRIVERS MOVE TO F3 British Formula 4 graduates Christian Mansell and Frederick Lubin are the latest drivers to be announced as competing in BRDC British F3 this year. Both will continue to drive for their respective F4 teams:…

For a year that seemed to carry a lot of hope, 2021 has not got off to the most encouraging of starts. After words like ‘cancelled’, ‘postponed’ and ‘revised’ became horribly common in our vocabulary during 2020, it’s worrying that they are starting to return in a motorsport context. Really, it should be no surprise. The coronavirus pandemic is now at a vicious new peak in the UK, with the numbers of hospitalisations and deaths far surpassing the figures reached when the virus first took hold here last March and April. Yes, new cases are on the decline, but they are still at a very high level. Yes, vaccines are – at the moment – being rolled out at impressively quick speed, but it will still take many months for…

Harry Schell (#16 BRM P25) and Juan Manuel Fangio (#34 Maserati 250F) are pursued by Stirling Moss (#8 Vanwall VW10) in the 1958 French Grand Prix at Reims. American racer Schell surprised himself with his pace in practice, started third on the grid behind the Ferrari Dino 246s of Mike Hawthorn and Luigi Musso, then led briefly on the first lap before Hawthorn took control of the race. Schell retired with an overheating engine; Fangio was fourth on his swansong; Moss finished in second place; and Musso died from injuries sustained when he crashed. For classic grand prix DVDs head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

FORMULA E Lotus has put Formula E back among the positive headlines after revealing that it and fellow sportscar manufacturer Alpine are evaluating a collaboration to enter the series. The Renault and Lotus groups have signed a memorandum of understanding to “study a number of areas of cooperation”. This will be fronted by the co-development of a new electric road car in addition to assessing various motorsport categories, including the World Endurance Championship. Although Lotus is working on the 2000bhp flagship Evija EV supercar and is expected to receive a £1.5billion investment from owner Geely, the Alpine name would likely lead a possible FE entry. Along with renaming the Renault Formula 1 team for 2021, it comes as part of a plan to “leverage Alpine’s motorsport platform”, according to a…

DTM Red Bull Formula 1 reserve Alex Albon will be racing a Ferrari when he joins the new-look DTM this year under the flag of his employer. The decision for the Red Bull-backed squad to run the Ferrari 488 GTE Evo has been made, Autosport has learned. But what isn’t so clear is if the operation behind a two-car team that will also field Red Bull junior and FIA Formula 2 rookie Liam Lawson has been fixed. Speculation suggests that Red Bull will go route one and place its cars with AF Corse, the team that runs the factory Ferraris entered in the World Endurance Championship. But AF has denied that it is about to join the DTM field. “Never say never, but it would be very difficult because we…

EXTREME E Veloce Racing will look to Stephane Sarrazin to combine his experience of three Formula E podiums and myriad World Rally outings for the inaugural Extreme E season. The 45-year-old Frenchman, who contested the 1999 Brazilian Grand Prix for Minardi, completes the Veloce line-up with W Series champion Jamie Chadwick. It leaves Techeetah as the only one of the nine squads yet to reveal its drivers. “This is a hugely appealing new series that has already attracted a lot of attention,” said Sarrazin. “I’ve driven a lot of different types of car during my career, but the ODYSSEY 21 really is something special.” XE has pushed back its opening round in Saudi Arabia by a fortnight to 3-4 April in response to the pandemic.…

EUROPEAN LE MANS SERIES The British Jota LMP2 squad is set to return to the European Le Mans Series for the first time since winning the title in 2016. According to team boss Sam Hignett, Jota is closing on a deal to rejoin the series it won five years ago under the G-Drive Racing banner with Harry Tincknell, Giedo van der Garde and Simon Dolan at the wheel of a Gibson 015S. It is planning to run a solo ORECA-Gibson 07 alongside a continued two-car assault in the World Endurance Championship. “It looks like we will have a car in the ELMS again and we would want to run that car at the Le Mans 24 Hours,” said Hignett. “Interest in P2 is up, which I put down to all…

SUPER FORMULA/SUPER GT A Super Formula team switch for three-time champion Naoki Yamamoto and a Super GT exit for Jann Mardenborough have become the two big developments of the off-season so far in Japan. Honda star Yamamoto, who won his third SF title last year with Dandelion Racing, is moving across to Nakajima Racing in 2021 following his post-season test appearance with the squad at Fuji. He is swapping drives with his Super GT team-mate Tadasuke Makino, who recently left hospital after being struck by meningitis. Makino will partner Nirei Fukuzumi at Dandelion, while Toshiki Oyu stays on alongside Yamamoto at Nakajima. Honda has maintained an almost unchanged Super GT line-up for 2021, with the only tweak being Oyu’s promotion to a GT500 seat with Team Mugen at the expense…

It’s no surprise that Mercedes heads into the 2021 Formula 1 season as the overwhelming favourite. By winning the past seven world title doubles, the team has already shown that it can cope with major and minor regulation changes during that run. But there are pitfalls it must nevertheless avoid in 2021. Of the four races it lost in 2020, two can be put down to operational mistakes, which set up the Italian and Sakhir Grand Prix thrillers. The other two, Max Verstappen’s two wins for Red Bull at Silverstone and in the Abu Dhabi season finale, can be considered the team’s only ‘on merit’ losses. In both of Verstappen’s wins, tyre performance was the biggest single factor. At the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, the W11’s high downforce peaks on…

Formula 1 should have been graced with an entirely new technical ruleset for 2021. The complex bargeboard packages and overreliance on external aerodynamics were set to be dropped for the venturi-effect underbody tunnels and simplified wings for the new year. But, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the delay of those regulations. Instead, the 2021 cars will be largely the same as those used last year, barring aero tweaks and the structural changes to the chassis and suspension allowed by a token system. The retention of the regulations was largely a response to the hit that the teams took financially, as the first half of the year was laid to waste by the marauding virus around the world. Things only picked up in July, but the mandatory factory closures last…

1 Sebastien Ogier’s final campaign And now the end is near, and so he faces the final curtain. The world is looking down the barrel of its first Sebastien-free World Rally Championship of the century in 2022, so it would be as well to make sure that we all enjoy this last hurrah. Don’t think for a minute that Ogier will suddenly mutate into a different person as he prepares to step down from the role of ‘defining talent of the era’ that he has held since 2013. We won’t see a relaxed, easy-going chap with a witty quip for every occasion. Let’s hope that we do one day, when he is able to look back on his achievements and maybe share a little more of ‘behind-the-scenes Seb’. But for…

It looks like a Toyota, and to the untrained eye it could be an LMP1. Yet the machine that will carry the Japanese manufacturer’s hopes in a brave new era for the World Endurance Championship starting this year is a very different beast to the line of prototypes that preceded it. The Toyota GR010 HYBRID developed to the new Le Mans Hypercar regulations is all new, save for the odd switch and sensor. It had to be, because there’s a new ruleset with a new philosophy. The aero rules are different, and so are those governing the technology that has been the selling point of the top class of the WEC since the rebirth of the series in 2012. The GR010 couldn’t retain much from its predecessor, the TS050 HYBRID…

CORONAVIRUS British GT has joined the British Touring Car Championship in delaying the start of its 2021 season amid the continuing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, while the British Racing & Sports Car Club has become the first club to cancel March events. BTCC organiser TOCA revealed last week that it was pushing back the start of its campaign by five weeks and announced a heavily revised schedule, which begins at Thruxton on 8-9 May and concludes at Brands Hatch on 23-24 October, in a bid to try to enable fans to attend as many events as possible. British GT has now followed suit and, instead of beginning with its traditional Easter event at Oulton Park, the season is now set to start at Brands Hatch on 22-23 May, seven…

GINETTA JUNIOR Leading Ginetta Junior squad R Racing has assembled a strong six-car line-up for this season, which includes promising 2020 rookies Josh Miller and Tom Edgar. Both race winner Miller, who was 11th in the final standings, and Edgar, who was sixth, showed impressive speed as last season progressed. They have moved to R Racing from Elite Motorsport and TCR respectively. They join Freddie Tomlinson (below) and Aston Millar, who are continuing with the team for a second season after being regular frontrunners last year. The line-up is completed by rookies Callum Voisin – the 14-year-old brother of 2020 title contender Bailey – and Mexican karter Ian Aguilera. “Each year, our aim is to become stronger, and picking our line-up for 2021 took lots of consideration,” said team boss…

SPORTS PROTOTYPE CUP Le Mans prototypes will be allowed to compete in the Sports Prototype Cup’s double-header on the Silverstone Grand Prix layout later this season. The event, scheduled for 29 May, will consist of two 30-minute races and will be open to a plethora of machines, including historic LMP cars, Ginetta G58s and LMP3s. The Unlimited class will also be open to cars such as Jades, Junos, Clubmans, other Radical models and Sports 2000-type cars, which will race alongside the category’s regular Revolution A-Ones and Radical SR3s. With no rounds of the World Endurance Championship or European Le Mans Series scheduled to take place at Silverstone in 2021, the Silverstone Open will be one of the few times this year when powerful, high-downforce endurance racing cars can race at…

Seven modernised examples of the Jaguar C-type sportscar will be built by Ecurie Ecosse to mirror the seven chassis raced in period by the famed Scottish team. Ecurie Ecosse, most celebrated for its 1956 and 1957 Le Mans 24 Hours victories with the D-type, has openly developed the new C-type, unlike some exact-copy continuation cars. The new models feature a wider and stiffer laser-cut steel spaceframe chassis than the originals, while the engine, gearbox, suspension and brakes have all been uprated.…

When a new model from a car manufacturer with a 114-year history begins racing in the UK, you would expect that the company would be a well-known marque. But that was not the case when Praga’s R1 began competing on these shores in 2019. And there’s a simple reason why: communism. Praga was very successful during the 1930s, at a time when there were dozens of car manufacturers in Czechoslovakia. It dwarfed Skoda, for example, and didn’t just build road cars, but also trucks, buses, tanks, tractors and more. But that all changed after the Second World War. “Communism came to Czechoslovakia and there was a political decision made that Praga will stop manufacturing cars, that will shift to Skoda, and Praga will concentrate on buses and trucks,” explains Praga…

OBITUARY A key player behind Mercedes’ move into Formula 1, Jurgen Hubbert has died. He was 81. It was on the watch of Mercedes executive Hubbert that the marque joined forces with McLaren, creating a partnership that would win two drivers’ world championships with Mika Hakkinen in 1998 and 1999, and a third with Lewis Hamilton in 2008. Born in 1939, Hubbert graduated in engineering from the University of Stuttgart in 1965, and joined Daimler-Benz that year. He moved through the ranks quickly, and by 1987 he had become a deputy member of the board of management of Mercedes cars. On reviewing the state of the company, Hubbert decided that motorsport was the way forward. It became officially involved with the revamped DTM in 1988, in parallel with increasing support…

FORMULA 1 The new contract for Formula 1 to stage a grand prix at Interlagos from 2021 has been suspended by a judge over the use of public funds for the race. F1 had originally planned to move the Brazilian Grand Prix to Rio de Janeiro from 2021 after Interlagos staged the race for free in recent years thanks to a deal late in Bernie Ecclestone’s tenure. But after the Rio project fell apart amid planning difficulties, F1 announced in November that it would be keeping the race at Interlagos after agreeing terms with a new promoter, who would run the event as the Sao Paulo Grand Prix. The name change was intended to reflect the support offered by the city to the race, but the extent of that has…

P28 WRC PREVIEW WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP The World Rally Championship will pay its first visit to the Arctic Circle at the end of next month. Arctic Rally Finland will run on 26-28 February as a direct replacement for Rally Sweden, which was cancelled last month due to troubling coronavirus case numbers in the Varmland region. Based out of Rovaniemi, and taking place in temperatures that can dip to -30C, the event is almost guaranteed snow. Its inclusion means the WRC will visit Finland twice this season, with the traditional Rally Finland taking place on 29 July-1 August. WRC Promoter managing director Jona Siebel revealed that his team had its work cut out finding a like-for-like replacement for Sweden in such a short space of time. “Since it was confirmed in…

DTM/SPORTSCARS Long-time Audi works drivers Loic Duval and Jamie Green have parted ways with the German manufacturer for 2021. Their contracts with Audi have not been renewed after the end of its factory engagement in the DTM at the end of 2020. They have left Audi’s employ along with fellow DTM refugee and Virgin Formula E driver Robin Frijns and three-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Benoit Treluyer, who has had a reduced role with the marque since its withdrawal from LMP1 at the end of 2016. No room has been found for them on Audi’s roster of GT3 drivers, but out-going DTM racers Mike Rockenfeller and Nico Muller have been retained and are expected to race the Audi R8 LMS in 2021. A spokesperson for Audi said that Duval,…

After a hectic year for Formula 1, featuring 17 races in just over five months, most of the paddock felt in need of a holiday. Despite various travel restrictions, a number of drivers have managed to get away, incorporating some rest and recreation into their off-season preparations. Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly are three drivers to have got away, all recently spending time in Dubai. Travel from the UK is permitted on work grounds, meaning a training camp – which Norris was jetting away for – is technically an acceptable reason for leaving the country. But Norris has spent a bit more time in Dubai than planned. A positive test for COVID-19 in early January, after he’d reported a loss of taste and smell, forced him to self-isolate…

Welcome to the start of the 2021 World Rally Championship… we hope. Last year the WRC came through the eye of the storm in the global coronavirus pandemic to deliver a fiercely competitive season that lifted the spirits of beleaguered fans around the world. Barely six weeks after Sebastien Ogier claimed his seventh drivers’ title, the WRC is ready to do it all again, including the uncertainty. At the time of writing, the Monte Carlo Rally was expected to usher in the start of the season today (21 January), but the odds were lengthening every day. What we do know about 2021 is that this will be the last year of running the hugely popular and astonishingly fast RC1 class of cars in the top category, before they give way…

It takes a pretty special performance for someone other than a British Touring Car Championship racer to be voted as Autosport’s National Driver of the Year. In the past decade, only two non-BTCC drivers have scooped the award – and, of them, one was Lando Norris after his Euro F3 title-winning season. Never has a driver competing in one of the BTCC’s support series landed the prize. Therefore, for Porsche Carrera Cup GB star Harry King to win shows how special his season was. “I certainly didn’t expect to pole it [at Donington] and neither did I think I would be winning at the first race” There have been some dominant performances in the Carrera Cup GB in recent years – Dan Cammish (twice) and Dan Harper completely trounced the…

DAKAR RALLY JEDDAH (SAU) 3-15 JANUARY There were renewed calls from the Toyota camp to address the performance gap between rear-driven buggies and the 4x4s in the T1 class after the 2021 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. But that didn’t overshadow another fine showing by the most-celebrated driver in cross-country rallying. Competing for the X-raid Mini buggy team for the third year in a row, Stephane Peterhansel fought off the four-wheel-drive Toyota Hilux of Nasser Al-Attiyah to clinch a record-extending 14th title in the world’s most prestigious rally raid, 30 years after his first triumph in the motorbike class. Peterhansel won only a single stage after 12 days of running, his lowest tally since 2015 when he drew a blank while leading Peugeot’s return to the Dakar. However, this time…

BRITISH FORMULA 4 British Formula 4 will introduce a full-reversed-grid race this season – the first major format change for the series since FIA F4 rules were adopted in 2015. Instead of the grid for its second race of a weekend being determined by 50% of the race-one finishers being inverted, now the entire grid’s fastest qualifying times will be reversed. As a result, the number of points on offer for this race has been reduced from 25 to 15, and they will only be scored by drivers finishing in the top eight instead of the top 10. The series has also decided to introduce a point for fastest lap in each of its three races per event. Championship promoter Sam Roach says the change to a fully-reversed grid was…

PICKUPS Pickup Truck Racing Championship organisers have revealed a provisional calendar that features rare trips to Knockhill and Lydden Hill, and are encouraged by the amount of new interest in the series for this year, despite it not running during 2020. Organiser Sonny Howard took the decision to run just one event last year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but that one meeting – due to be at Brands Hatch in November – was cancelled. A full 10-event schedule has been revealed for this season and, alongside the Knockhill and Lydden rounds, it also includes two visits to the Mallory Park oval. Howard says a number of trucks have changed hands in recent months, leading to a high number of series registrations. “Knockhill was there a few…

BOOK REVIEW TOM PRYCE: MEMORIES OF A WELSH F1 STAR BY THOSE WHO KNEW HIM RRP £35 The tale of Tom Pryce, like those of his fellow taken-too-soon 1970s contemporaries Tony Brise and Roger Williamson, is one that prompts misty-eyed reverie among those who saw him race. And his story is perhaps even more romantic, as he came from a humble background in the wilds of North Wales to make his way in the sport. It’s also a tale that’s been told before. The definitive biography of Pryce, intertwined with those of Williamson and Brise, has already been written in the form of David Tremayne’s fantastic The Lost Generation. Therefore it was a wise idea by superfan-turned-writer Darren Banks and co-author Kevin Guthrie to tackle a project on Pryce from…

Stephane Ratel declared the entry list for the 2013 World Challenge FIA GT Series finale around the streets of Baku as “the best GT sprint grid since the days of the FIA GT1 World Championship”. He was “bang on with his assessment”, wrote Autosport at the time. Sebastien Loeb and Ricardo Zonta counted among the high-profile names. Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Rene Rast were among those bound for international success in the coming years. For its one-off outing in the series that season, the Boutsen Ginion Racing squad – founded by Olivier Laine, brother-in-law of three-time Formula 1 race winner Thierry Boutsen – had played its part in packing the grid with talent. One of its McLaren MP4-12C GT3s was shared between Alexander Sims and Stef Dusseldorp. The other…

The 1966 Monte Carlo Rally is probably the most debated result in rallying history: an Anglo-French contretemps to rival Hastings, Agincourt and Trafalgar. Possibly. The traditional view in the UK is to assert that the British Motor Corporation was denied victory in Monte Carlo by Gallic skulduggery. Yet motorsport is a French invention, its laws sanctioned on the Champs Elysees. The foundations of success in every discipline rely on teams finding and exploiting every regulatory loophole. Here, Britain has a fine tradition. In the early 1960s, Stuart Turner brought a new era of management style to BMC, matching rigorous intellect with a poacher’s eye. Thus did his team rise to supremacy with that most unlikely of supercars: the Mini. With an array of specifications, including six different engines, a blizzard…