Innehållsförteckning för 25/02/21 från Autosport

Formula 1 launches, the new Formula E season and the World Rally Championship heading to fresh (very fresh!) climes. Despite all the usual caveats and restrictions posed by you-know-what, the motorsport season is beginning to really get under way. As Red Bull (see page 12), AlphaTauri (p14) and Alfa Romeo (p16) launch their new machines, Sky F1 pundit Karun Chandhok gives his views on some of the key storylines that are likely to unfold this year in our traditional Big Questions piece (p24). Some of the answers might seem obvious, but others are more surprising. There are plenty of questions surrounding the seventh FE season too, and Matt Kew delves deep into the health of the all-electric series on p34, before being your guide on the the things to look…

DTM BMW will be represented from the start of the DTM’s new GT3 era, with 2018 Spa 24 Hours-winning team Walkenhorst Motorsport fielding at least one of the marque’s venerable M6 GT3 machines this season. BMW pledged support last year for the DTM’s GT3 future. While the Munich manufacturer warned that it won’t officially get involved in the series until its new M4 is homologated in September, it did state that customer teams are free to contest the 2021 season with the outgoing M6, which was introduced for 2016. Walkenhorst, which took victories in the Indianapolis 8 Hours and Kyalami 9 Hours last year during BMW’s title-winning Intercontinental GT Challenge programme, made no mention of how many cars it would enter or who will be a part of its driver…

FORMULA 1 Williams completed a maiden shakedown of its new FW43B Formula 1 car at Silverstone last week. Williams announced earlier this month that it would launch its new car for the coming season on 5 March, but has opted to give it a first on-track test prior to its unveiling. In a teaser video posted to social media on Wednesday (17 February), Williams showed the FW43B running at Silverstone in damp conditions, making it the second team known to have conducted a shakedown with its 2021 car. McLaren held a shakedown with its 2021 car at Silverstone on Tuesday last week, the day after unveiling the MCL35M. Nicholas Latifiwas shown watching Williams team-mate George Russell (right) testing the FW43B, with teams limited to just 100km of running under the…

OBITUARY Cornish-born Chris Craft, who died last Saturday aged 81 following a long illness, was one of racing’s great all-rounders. Craft started one Formula 1 World Championship race – the 1971 US GP in Alain de Cadenet’s Ecurie Evergreen Brabham – and showed pace in 1000cc F3 in the 1960s and F5000 in the early 1970s. Transplanted to Essex with his bank manager father’s job, Craft found employment as a Ford post boy. He started racing a self-built Anglia 105E in 1961 and excelled in Superspeed and Broadspeed versions, Escorts, briefly a Mustang fastback, and eventually 3.0-litre Capris, winning BSCC rounds in 1977 and 1978. Sportscar racing anchored his successes. Craft won the 1970 Swedish GP in a DFVpowered McLaren M8C. He also piloted Lolas, Chevrons, McLaren-Chevrolet M8E and Porsche…

FORMULA REGIONAL BY ALPINE Formula Renault Eurocup race winner Alex Quinn has secured a berth in the newly merged Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine with the series’ only British squad, Arden Motorsport. The 20-year-old Cornishman looks set to lead the three-car attack of Arden after a highly promising rookie season at this level. Quinn, who had three rounds under his belt from the Renault Eurocup in 2019, struggled to raise a budget for 2020, but he was called up by Arden at the last minute to deputise for Australian Jackson Walls, who could not make it to Europe due to COVID-19 quarantine issues. Initially this was on a round-by-round basis, but Quinn eventually contested the full season and claimed fourth in the overall standings, and won the rookie title.…

FLOOR AlphaTauri has explored a design largely unseen within the confines of the 2020 end-of-season practice sessions in which a smattering of teams prepared for 2021. Here, towards the tapered-in back section, the floor’s edge has been raised – much as it has been further forward, where the exclusion zone does not apply. It’s only a small lip but, as the airflow will tend to drift outwards in that zone anyway, adding that lip may yield a little downforce boost. Further forward, it has a larger lip and a small deflector to kick airflow outwards and perhaps find downforce in the mid-section, before the floor squares off slightly ahead of the second scroll. POWERTRAIN The recent news coming from the Red Bull/AlphaTauri camps was the parent company’s decision to buy…

The past 18 months have been a whirlwind to say the least – and I’m not just talking about COVID! In the space of under a year and a half, we have gone from running an Esports operation to running an organisation with a stable of 10 Esports teams, 50-plus gamers and 35 digital media platforms, and launching a real-life racing team in the most exciting new series around. I come from a racing family – my stepfather, Julian Bailey, is an ex-Formula 1 and British Touring Car driver, and the rest of my family work in the sport. I spent nine years driving in multiple disciplines myself but, more recently, my focus has been on the business side and on co-driving Veloce to where it is today. Veloce Esports…

?CAN RED BULL – OR THE RULE TWEAKS – STOP THE MERCEDES STEAMROLLER? The boring answer, of course, is no. Mercedes has stability in terms of personnel, it stopped development of the 2020 car early to focus on 2021, and it has the reliability and momentum of success on its side. So why would the steamroller stop? But let’s take an optimistic view and look at the back end of last season when, in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, Max Verstappen was genuinely on the pace of the Mercedes drivers. Red Bull started the season further behind than it would have liked, with a car that seemed to have a much narrower operating window than the Mercedes. Rival aero people in the paddock seem to suggest that the higher-rake philosophy that…

Mercedes and Porsche want to topple incumbent king DS Techeetah in their second seasons in FE. This target has been placed knowing how hotly contested FE is, that consistency and incremental gains are the keys to a sustained title push. For Mercedes, it enters the new campaign with its house in order. It retains Stoffel Vandoorne, and Nyck de Vries after his starring rookie season. The goal is to pick up from where it ended the 2019-20 campaign. In the final Berlin race, polesitter Vandoorne led in comfort as de Vries progressed from fourth to deliver a 1-2 finish. It was a commanding maiden victory. Mercedes has introduced a new car from the kick-off but, aping the tactics that have borne so much fruit for the marque in F1, there’s…

When Audi customer team Envision Virgin Racing signed Nick Cassidy to replace Jaguar-bound Sam Bird, they billed their new recruit as a “rising star”. This was not true. As the 2016 Super GT and 2019 Super Formula champion, Cassidy is already an established star and one who should take the FE grid by storm. The wonderfully affable 26-year-old makes for a stellar rookie prospect and he enters with an FE record already under his belt. Topping last year’s Marrakech test, held in much warmer conditions than the preceding day’s race, he bagged the highest average lap speed ever clocked in championship history. From then on, the odds on him moving out of his home in Japan, shared with Jann Mardenborough, became shorter and shorter. Cassidy says: “Apart from adding multiple…

The deadline for teams to commit to the forthcoming Gen3 regulations is fast approaching. We know cars will be 120kg lighter, increase to 470bhp, and welcome rapid charging and massive increases to regenerative braking capabilities. What we don’t know is how FE will implement some kind of cost cap. It’s seen as a must from some quarters. But with teams already starting to develop their new cars, that spending can’t be undone. The FIA is revamping the FE supply model to improve the competitiveness of customer teams. Despite being billed as otherwise, it’s not unfair to view this as a reaction to Audi and BMW’s pending exits. A concept for the Gen3 car is due in late spring. Along with a formalisation of the new rules, that’s not long to…

“I think all of us were – and maybe some still are – in awe of both who Jimmie is and what he’s accomplished,” admits Chip Ganassi Racing managing director Mike Hull. “Jimmie’s won seven championships in an era where it’s actually more difficult to do that in most forms of motorsport. “And now we’ve worked with him, it’s easy to see why he found success. He’s very dedicated to detail, he’s very dedicated to getting himself ready, and he’s very open-minded about how to process information that will make him a better team member. “Right from the very first test at Indianapolis road course last summer, it felt like we’d been working with him forever. We could tell he came from a team system that must be very close…

F3 ASIAN CHAMPIONSHIP YAS MARINA (ARE) 19-20 FEBRUARY ROUND 5/5 Guanyu Zhou fought back to snatch the title – and 18 Formula 1 superlicence points – from under the nose of Pierre-Louis Chovet at the F3 Asian finale. While Alpine F1 protege and Formula 2 race winner Zhou battled weekend-long with Formula Regional ace Patrik Pasma at the front, FIA F3 newcomer Chovet suffered his worst weekend of the quickfire Middle East campaign. Zhou claimed pole for all three races in his Abu Dhabi Racing by Prema car, but fast starter Pasma’s Evans GP machine led him all the way in the first two races. The unfortunate Pasma lost the first of those two victories, however, when he was one of a handful of drivers penalised five seconds for improving…

BIKESPORTS A man has been arrested on suspicion of arson after a fire destroyed Bridgwater and Taunton College’s motorsport workshop and a number of cars, including the 2019 Bikesports title-winning Radical PR6. The blaze, in the early hours of Thursday last week, was found to have been started deliberately, and gutted two trailers outside the building as well as all the equipment inside. The successful PR6 – known as Poppet – that the college runs for course leader Josh Smith was destroyed, as were three other Radicals run by the students and Smith’s RJ Motorsport squad for customers, plus a number of cars that were used as vehicles for the students to practise working on. In what has been a tough 12 months for the college, the fire followed the…

GT CUP Factory Aston Martin veteran Darren Turner is the latest big name to be announced for the GT Cup this year. Turner, a three-time class winner in the Le Mans 24 Hours, will race a GT4 Aston run by Feathers Motorsport in the category alongside his Base Performance Simulators business partner James Guess. It is Turner’s first British-based programme since 2018 with Beechdean in British GT. The news follows Adam Carroll and Oliver Webb being named earlier this month as part of new McLaren squad Greystone GT’s line-up. Turner is due to contest six of the planned seven events, skipping the September Donington Park round because it clashes with the Goodwood Revival. Guess finished runner-up in the GTH class last season in the GT Cup, racing a Ginetta G55.…

“I really wanted Mark Webber as a team driver in 2005,” says then-Renault engineering director Pat Symonds, “but Mark was absolutely adamant that Williams was the place to be and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.” On the face of it, Webber’s decision to join a Williams team in decline above a return to the Enstone squad on the cusp of a world championship double, and for which he’d tested in its Benetton guise in 2001, has to go down as a blunder. In his autobiography, Aussie Grit, Webber describes his two-year spell with Williams as “the lowest time in my entire F1 career”. While Giancarlo Fisichella grasped at the opportunity to trade a mid-pack Sauber for Renault’s R25 (the best all-round package of 2005, if not quite as…

FORMULA 1 Track-layout changes to Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit are set to be completed in time for November’s 2021 Australian Grand Prix in a bid to increase overtaking and alleviate many of the long-standing complaints against the venue. Race organisers originally planned to complete track resurfacing and corner reprofiling following the 2021 race, initially scheduled for March, but have now opted to bring the changes forward following the event’s postponement to a late-season date. The first phase of the track work featured a widening of the pitlane by two metres, which could allow for the speed limit to be raised. Work has now begun on the second phase of the track changes, with the biggest alterations coming to the Turns 9-10 complex. What used to be a heavy braking zone…

FORMULA E Formula E and the FIA will boost performance parity for customer teams under the future Gen3 rules by mandating that their cars receive the same software upgrades as their respective manufacturer teams for each race. Longer-lasting generational rules cycles have allowed the hardware to converge around single-motor, longitudinal configurations, which has increased the emphasis on optimising data to improve efficiency. So far, it has not been mandatory for manufacturers to supply up-to-date software to their customers, although Audi currently does for Envision Virgin Racing (below). It will now be required on a race-by-race basis. FIA director of FE and innovative sports projects Frederic Bertrand said: “Up to now, the car from the manufacturer was delivered and then additionally the team could provide some software and updates on the…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE EUROPE Auto Sport Promotion boss Jerome Policand has billed it as a “dream line-up”, and it’s difficult to argue. The French Mercedes squad is heading into the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup with a Mercedes-AMG GT3 to be driven by a trio of factory drivers in Raffaele Marciello, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella. Gounon and Juncadella, who have been added to the Merc GT3 pool for the new season, have returned to a team for which they both drove in 2017 to join Marciello for the five enduros. Gounon and Marciello will also contest the Sprint Cup segment of the series as ASP defends the overall GTWCE crown won by Timur Boguslavskiy in 2020. “I don’t think I could have better drivers unless I signed Hamilton,…

INDY LIGHTS For the past three years, the IndyCar Series’ designated feeder category from its Road To Indy ladder has been in dire straits. In 2018, Indy Lights grid sizes dipped to an average of 7.5 cars per round. In 2019, that improved to 9.1. In 2020, 10 cars had entered the opening round at St Petersburg, only for that event to be cancelled and then for the whole season to be axed amid the coronavirus pandemic. Things look much brighter for 2021. New IndyCar Series owner Roger Penske is right behind Lights, and already 12 drivers have been confirmed, with the entire quartet of Andretti Autosport’s battalion in place even before Christmas. Furthermore, British team Carlin is back in the fray for 2021. The team ran in Lights from…

FLOOR Given the angle of the launch shots, it’s hard to properly see the shape and composition of the floor. It seems that the team has opted for a small curl at the rear corner, perhaps to spit airflow from the underside outwards and rely on any expansion for a hit of extra downforce, but it’s difficult to decipher at this stage. This goes hand in hand with the reduced fence size of the diffuser, as part of the 2021 regulations to cut downforce. Everything else looks to be largely similar to how the C39 finished last season, even down to the bargeboard complexities, the ridiculously paper-thin mirror arrangement and bulbous shark-fin arrangements. NOSE The nose seems to have been on a diet over the off-season and now tapers in…

The story of this Formula E season won’t be anything like as clear cut as the years that have gone before. An inaugural term answered whether this fledging and disruptive series could make waves. The second campaign centred on the opening up of the technology to manufacturers. The year after, the main plot was what Techeetah could do with its customer Renault powertrain. Then, if Audi was the new dominant force. After, it was the arrival of the Gen2 cars. Last season, all eyes were on newcomers Mercedes and Porsche. As for the 2020-21 season lying in wait, the only ‘2020’ part stands as testing in Valencia. All races will take place this year, between now and late September, as the pandemic ensures that arranging a calendar remains the most…

You can’t mention Sam Bird without shortly following with the epithet: he’s the only driver to win a race in every FE season to date. But in his bid to go further and finally win the title, he’s departed his effective second home at Envision Virgin Racing to finally sign for Jaguar – having initially held talks with the squad in 2016. Jaguar looked as though it had finally found its swagger last year, with undisputed lead driver Mitch Evans on pole in Santiago, winning in Mexico and mounting a stunning recovery from last to sixth in Marrakech. All before his shot at the crown fell away with a loss of car performance in Berlin. The frequent chopping and changing of his team-mates, and outperforming all of them, has meant…

Kalle Rovanpera opens the door of his Toyota Yaris WRC, thinks about getting out, then pulls it shut. It’s February, it’s minus 28C and he’s within the Arctic Circle. Rovanpera is getting ready for the World Rally Championship’s latest addition, this week’s Arctic Rally Finland, and rarely has a new round of the series engendered so much enthusiasm, or attracted so many pullovers. But we should be clear here: the Rovaniemi-based event is a single-season stand-in for Rally Sweden, lost to the pandemic even before 2020 became 2021. The plan is for the WRC’s winter qualifier to move west back into Sweden (and/or Norway, as has been its cross-border nature in recent years) from next season. But the Swedes will be painfully aware that the bar is about to be…

MOTORSPORT UK Motorsport UK has hailed the British government’s decision to exempt the UK from the European Union’s Vnuk law, which threatened to render motorsport insurance unfeasible, as “a hugely significant victory”. The EU’s interpretation of a 2014 court case, brought by Damijan Vnuk after he was knocked off his ladder by a tractor, resulted in changes to its Motor Insurance Directive that required all vehicles to be insured, even when on private land. The implications of the Vnuk case were significant for motorsport, because any collision between racing cars would be treated as a road traffic accident and involve police, threatening to make insurance policies prohibitively expensive. A crucial vote in January 2019 by an EU Parliamentary committee was positive as it excluded motorsport from the amended wording of…

OBITUARY The death of Les Ely last weekend has shocked the historic racing community, particularly its Jaguar fraternity in which he was entrenched as a driver and engineer, the latter through his CL Panelcraft body shop. Ely started stock car racing with a Singer Gazelle in 1970 and progressed to Hot Rods, becoming East Anglian champion in 1975. After a decade of racing Minis on the ovals, he ‘discovered’ long circuit racing when he acquired a Jaguar Mk2 from Rob Newall. After scoring his first race win at Castle Combe in 1986, Ely scooped numerous Jaguar Drivers’ Club championship titles and awards for best-prepared Jaguar. Subsequently, he tackled FIA Historic events throughout Europe with Rob Buck and Mike Cann. He won the Historic Sports Car Club’s final Classic Sportscar Championship…

BARTHOLOMEW TO REDLINE Former Lamborghini Super Trofeo Middle East champion Jack Bartholomew will contest a British series for the first time since 2016 this year as part of Redline Racing’s Porsche Sprint Challenge GB line-up. He has spent several seasons racing Lamborghinis, including taking the 2018 Middle East title, since racing in British GT. “The championship gives me a great opportunity to return to racing after a year off in 2020,” he said. PROCTORS TEAM UP FOR BGT Stewart and Lewis Proctor have been announced as a father-and-son Silver-Am entry in British GT this season, driving a McLaren 720S GT3 run by Balfe Motorsport. Proctor Jr raced for McLaren squad Optimum last year and finished second in the Oulton Park season opener, while his father Stewart took a best finish…

When I read Autosport’s special 70th anniversary publication, I realised how fortunate I have been during my 40-year involvement in national motorsport. The recent deaths of Pete Stevens, Ricky Parker-Morris and Brian Jones have focused my mind on a long association with British motorsport and the characters who are highlighted in the 70th anniversary edition. Tony Lanfranchi and Gerry Marshall, fed up with me continuously haranguing them in the Victoria pub in London W2 about racing, told me to stop talking about it and do it. By that time, in 1978, I knew the two of them well, and also Brian Jones and Barrie Williams from the old clubhouse at Brands Hatch (pre-Kentagon) and the Victoria, which was close to my office. Tony lent me an old pair of overalls…

When Le Mans winners making British Touring Car Championship cameos with Team Dynamics come to mind, the majority would immediately cite 1991 winner Johnny Herbert’s three-round stint in 2009. But back in the team’s early days in 1993, it had welcomed 1988 Le Mans winner Andy Wallace for a rare foray into tin-tops at Oulton Park. Toyota-contracted Wallace had been looking to supplement his racing activities after the cancellation of the world sports car championship left him with “not much going on” after Le Mans, and he duly found it in a third Dynamics-run BMW alongside future champion Matt Neal and Alex Portman. “I was always looking around for something to top the season up,” recalls Wallace. “I think it was a last-minute call-up too, because I didn’t have a…

LE MANS 24 HOURS The Spa 24 Hours-winning GPX Racing squad and 2016 British GT Championship title winner Optimum Motorsport were two of the teams that gained automatic entries for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours on the conclusion of the 2021 Asian Le Mans Series in the United Arab Emirates last Saturday. But only one of them will take up its guaranteed slot. GPX and Optimum won places on the Le Mans grid for respectively finishing second and fourth in the GT standings after the four races, two in Dubai and two in Abu Dhabi. The British Optimum squad has confirmed that it will be going to Le Mans for the first time this year, but Dubai-based GPX has revealed that it will not be doing likewise. The biggest…

Formula 1 design legend Gordon Murray has named the new trackday version of his forthcoming T.50 supercar in honour of three-time Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda. Gordon Murray Automotive unveiled the T.50s Niki Lauda on Monday on what would have been the 72nd birthday of the Austrian legend, who died in 2019. Murray said that Lauda, who drove Murray-designed F1 Brabhams in 1978 and 1979, “would have appreciated the innovation and engineering detail in our car”.…

MOTOGP Tributes to double 125cc world champion motorcylce racer and veteran team boss Fausto Gresini flooded in from the MotoGP paddock following the Italian’s death on Tuesday. Gresini was taken ill with COVID-19 just before Christmas. On Tuesday, the Gresini team announced that the Italian had lost his battle at the age of 60. Dorna Sports CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta led tributes to Gresini. “I’m deeply saddened by the loss of Fausto,” he said. “He was a very good friend and I liked him a lot. I have been following the news on his condition closely and I was lucky enough to be able to speak to him even as he was in hospital. “I am so very sorry to suffer a loss like this in the paddock and I want…

FRONT END If you were waiting for a glut of changes to be present on the RB16B’s launch model, then you will be disappointed. Everything is more or less as-was in the Abu Dhabi GP finale last year, barring the mandatory 2021 tweaks and a minor change to the front brake ducts. Red Bull ran with two different nose specifications last season: a squarer design that is seen on the launchspec car; and a rounder model that was used more sporadically across 2020. The latter shifted the frontwing mountings to the underside of the nose, cleaning up the flow to the cape behind, but only saw action during the opening and final weekends of the season. Team principal Christian Horner alluded to windtunnel correlation issues that hampered Red Bull’s progress,…

This time last year, Alex Albon knew his 2020 task was to save his Red Bull Formula 1 drive. What followed was a season that started with such promise, but quickly became ever more painful. It ended on a high and included two podium finishes, but that high merely brought Albon back to where he’d started. Red Bull gave its under-pressure driver a full season to prove he should be kept on for 2021. But, in the end, it opted to bring in an outside hiring in the form of Sergio Perez instead. Albon’s qualifying deficit to Max Verstappen underpins his 109-point and four-place gap to the Dutchman in the drivers’ standings. He was, overall, 0.7 seconds slower than Verstappen in his 17-0 qualifying head-to-head defeat, which becomes 0.6s with…

Sky’s missing a trick – just look to the skies Whether it’s petrol, diesel, kerosene, gas or even electricity, any motor racing fan is, let’s face it, a petrolhead. We all love grand prix weekends around the world, and when you can’t travel to far off locations TV is the next best thing. Sky F1 does a great job. But it misses one thing – the aerial displays before a GP. These are laid on at great expense and are hugely enjoyable for the public at the track, while we at home on the TV rarely get a glimpse. How fantastic would it be to have a few cameras on the ground and in the air to record these moments – Red Arrows at Silverstone, Dietrich Mateschitz’s aircraft collection in…

It’s a story we’ve told before. DS Techeetah was Jean-Eric Vergne’s team. He courted the services of Andre Lotterer and then, when the German left for Porsche, again it was Vergne entrusted to tempt eventual replacement Antonio Felix da Costa. In that time, Vergne won the drivers’ crown twice in a row – an FE first – and delivered as many teams’ titles to match. But he was thoroughly beaten by da Costa last season. The Portuguese’s three wins and runaway championship success played Vergne’s solitary triumph, which itself came rather late in the day. The French racer is also more abrasive than his team-mate and lost his cool over the radio on more than one occasion. Vergne seemed to suffer much more with the brakes in qualifying. Given a…

NASCAR CUP DAYTONA (USA) 21 FEBRUARY ROUND 2/36 In recent times, a NASCAR Cup road course race has meant a Chase Elliott victory. Prior to last Sunday’s event on the full Daytona track, the reigning champion hadn’t been beaten on such circuits since 2018, racking up four consecutive wins. This event seemed to be going much the same way. Elliott eased to stage one victory and maintained the lead after the final green flag stops with around 20 of the 70 laps left. However, a silly decision to throw the caution flags for a brief sprinkling of rain turned the race on its head. Elliott elected to pit for fresh slicks like most of the field but was left mired in the midfield upon the restart with 10 laps to…

CORONAVIRUS Club motorsport in England will be able to restart from the end of March, after the government outlined its planned roadmap for the easing of lockdown measures. Since the turn of the year, only elite sport has been able to take place in the UK as a third national lockdown was implemented to combat a surge in coronavirus cases attributed to a new strain of the virus. The ban on grassroots sport will continue until at least 29 March, and governing body Motorsport UK will not grant any event permits until after this date. March traditionally represents the start of the UK club racing season, and a number of events had been scheduled for next month. The MG Car Club, British Automobile Racing Club and Classic Sports Car Club…

BRITISH GT Team Parker Racing has swapped its Bentley Continental GT3 for a Porsche 911 GT3-R for British GT this year, and will also expand into the Porsche Supercup. The 2017 GT3 title-winning squad has moved to align its operations with a single manufacturer to tie in with its activities in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB and Sprint Challenge GB, thereby completing the “boxset” of levels on the Porsche motorsport pyramid. The GT3-R will be driven by team regulars Scott Malvern and Nick Jones, who won the 2018 GT4 Pro-Am title in a Parker-run Mercedes. “We decided at the end of last year that we would try and simplify the business – rather than having different brands in different championships, we would consolidate and stick with the one brand all…

HISTORIC F1 Jean Alesi is poised to join fellow ex-Ferrari Formula 1 driver Rene Arnoux in racing a 1974-spec Ferrari 312B3 in the Monaco Grand Prix Historique event in April. Arnoux was scheduled to contest the event in 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic led to its postponement, and the delay has allowed German entrant Methusalem Racing to get Alesi in a car too. The duo will take part in the Serie F event, for three-litre F1 cars from the 1973-76 era. The 312B3 was originally raced during the 1974 season by Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni, and it was the pacesetter for much of the year. Lauda scored his first F1 win at Jarama and triumphed again at Zandvoort, while also logging nine pole positions, including in Monaco. Regazzoni scored…

NETFLIX SERIES REVIEW THE CREW Television executives must have fielded pitches for every conceivable workplace comedy by now. Following the success of The Office (on both sides of the Atlantic), the likes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Parks & Recreation have both commanded legions of fans and airtime across the world. Adding to the extensive list of workplaces, a down-on-its-luck NASCAR operation now gets its own send-up in Netflix’s new series: The Crew. Set within the workshop of the fictional Bobby Spencer Racing team, a once-successful NASCAR Cup squad now swimming in its own mediocrity, The Crew follows the exploits of crew chief Kevin Gibson (played by Kevin James), who runs the shop floor for the retiring Bobby Spencer. Spencer, a caricature of a NASCAR veteran in his bolo tie and…

Two Lotus 81s (with a curious choice of rubber) and three Williams FW07Bs line up in the Osterreichring pitlane at the 1980 Austrian Grand Prix. It was Lotus that entered three cars in the race, for Elio de Angelis, Mario Andretti and F1 debutant Nigel Mansell. Williams’s Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann finished second and third behind the Renault RE20 of Jean-Pierre Jabouille. De Angelis was the only Lotus finisher in sixth. Andretti was the race’s first retiree half a dozen laps in and Mansell made it to lap 41 of 54, despite fuel burns, before his engine also died. For classic 1980s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…