Innehållsförteckning för 01/04/21 från Autosport

That’s what we wanted – and perhaps what Formula 1 needed. For the first time in the turbo-hybrid era, Red Bull has started a season on the front foot. Yes, Lewis Hamilton still managed to take a narrow victory for Mercedes last weekend, but it looks as though Max Verstappen has the car to take on the seven-time champion. It’s still early days, of course, and Bahrain hasn’t been the best track for Mercedes in recent years. You’d still have to be brave to bet against Hamilton at this stage. But Verstappen should have won and the Red Bull advantage in qualifying – nearly 0.4 seconds – was significant. Part of the turnaround is believed to be down to the new rules hurting the teams with a ‘low-rake’ philosophy, such…

FORMULA 1 The FIA has told Formula 1 teams it will routinely undertake more thorough technical checks after each grand prix. Finishing cars are always weighed, measured and have fuel samples checked before the results are made official. Now, the FIA will randomly select one car for a much more detailed examination, and potentially a stripping of components. For transparency, the FIA wants to make it clear the selection process is not based on any specific suspicions. Teams are expected to ensure their engineers are available to co-operate with any investigation if necessary. They may also be asked to sign a declaration that their second car is of identical specification to the one examined. The process also means that official results will be marked as being subject to technical checks…

BTCC A smorgasbord of British Touring Car Championship stars and race winners have been getting to grips with different machinery in recent days after a hectic 2020-21 silly season. Brands Hatch was the busiest venue, with Jake Hill having his first runout in the Ford Focus operated by the new MB Motorsport/Motorbase Performance alliance, Adam Morgan and Tom Chilton getting down to business in Ciceley Motorsport’s new BMW 330i M Sports, West Surrey Racing returnee Stephen Jelley sliding behind the wheel of a 330i for the first time, and Jack Goff and Aron Taylor-Smith putting mileage on the new-build Team Hard Cupra Leons. MB and Motorbase had already been pounding around with Ollie Jackson, Sam Osborne and Andy Neate. This trio was all present at Brands when Hill got his…

NASCAR CUP Joey Logano held off Ricky Stenhouse Jr in overtime for victory at the Bristol Motor Speedway, in the NASCAR Cup Series’ first dirt race in over 50 years. The contest was delayed to Monday following rain around the Tennessee track. Logano first picked up the lead towards the end of the second stage, as leader Daniel Suarez was pipped with seven laps remaining before the second interval by the Penske Ford driver. As Logano was cruising to victory, a late-race accident brought out a caution and sent the race into a two-lap overtime. JTG Daugherty’s Stenhouse was Logano’s main challenger over the final two laps, but the 2018 champion had little trouble holding on for his first victory of the season. Logano also became the seventh different winner…

He was suddenly on the outside line. He didn’t want to be, but circumstances had forced him here. Still, he had a chance to win a race he’d long led, if he got things right. The cars came close together, then, an unexpected jolt. It sent him wide over the kerbs on the exit of the right-hander. Although a few laps of the race remained, his victory hopes vanished. Formula 1 is at its best when it’s close, unpredictable and (whisper it) controversial. The stakes are even higher when wins are on the line. That’s why the race ending was so enthralling. A driver found themselves in a new situation – and they backed themselves to succeed based on their prodigious ability and successful track record. The slightest misjudgement cost…

Fond memories of Johnny Dumfries Saddened to learn of Johnny Dumfries passing at so young an age (Obituary, 25 March). I have fond recall of his enthusiasm for learning about the old Crystal Palace circuit as I drove him (slowly) for a lap in my Golf GTI back in 1984. We were attending the athletics track for a photoshoot and feature comparing ‘fitness’ in different professions – journalist, racing driver and cyclist – for publication in Motor magazine. I won the 100-metre sprint. Mike Burrows (the guru of British cycling) won the bike race and Johnny was really gracious in defeat – twice, having already won the British F3 championship. Rest in peace, a true gentleman. David Windsor By email The stars of Bahrain A thrilling race in Bahrain with…

MOTOGP LOSAIL (QAT) 28 MARCH ROUND 1/19 Over the winter, Maverick Vinales promised to come back as a new and improved Yamaha rider for the 2021 MotoGP campaign. Armed with an M1 bike that’s clearly a step ahead of its predecessor, he delivered on that promise in emphatic fashion during the season-opening Qatar Grand Prix. The winner of the previous two editions of the race, Andrea Dovizioso, might not be on the grid anymore, but the Qatar GP was very much still expected to be Ducati’s to lose. This was further cemented by new factory signing Francesco Bagnaia’s lap record-busting pole time on Saturday. And with Ducati satellite team Pramac’s Johann Zarco setting an all-time MotoGP top speed record in FP4 of a staggering 225.1mph, while Yamaha’s power deficit remained,…

BRITISH F4 British Formula 4 race winner James Hedley is eyeing a title bid with Fortec Motorsport in the category this season, having previously considered a move up to BRDC British F3. The 2019 Ginetta Junior champion was second fastest during F4’s season launch test day at Silverstone last weekend, driving for the Fortec squad that powered Luke Browning to last year’s crown. Hedley had a mixed rookie season in single-seaters in 2020, taking four wins with the JHR Developments team and finishing fifth in the standings. “I’m trying to get the budget and hope to do F4,” said Hedley. “I’m still pushing for that and there’s still a month to go before the first round. “Fortec won the championship last year and have got a good team. Luke and…

HISTORICS The Le Mans Classic, one of the biggest events on the historic motorsport calendar, has been cancelled for 2021 in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in France. The biennial event was planned for July 2020 but postponed for a year as COVID took hold across Europe. The promoters have now confirmed that it has been further postponed until July 2022. A statement said: “Due to the more than capricious changes in the constraints applied to large-scale events, Peter Auto and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest were forced to postpone once again the 10th edition of Le Mans Classic to the first or second weekend of July 2022. “Indeed, it is totally impossible to organise a miniature of the event which normally welcomes 200,000 spectators who, moreover, will…

POWELL JOINS WITH MAXIMUM Will Powell will race a new-to-the-UK Hyundai i30 N TCR in the Touring Car Trophy this year, which will be run by Maximum Motorsport. The Motus One managing director was due to race one of his own team’s cars before switching to the Maximum entry. He said: “It’s an unexpected change this close to the start of the season but working with Maximum Motorsport, with support from Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing, is already proving successful.” RETURN FOR G-CAT RACING G-Cat Racing will return to the British GT Championship this year with a Porsche 911 GT3-R, which the team used in 2019. Amateur duo Shamus Jennings and team owner Greg Caton are set to compete in three rounds, including the opening event at Brands Hatch and the…

Aslight relaxing of lockdown restrictions, a spell of warm March weather and the English motorsport season beginning. There are certainly some reasons to be optimistic now after so many months where COVID-19 has led to negativity taking over. But the key word in that opening sentence is ‘English’. As we have seen throughout the coronavirus pandemic, not everyone across the UK has been affected equally – and that is true once again in a motorsport sense, too. Even with overnight leisure stays still banned and the government’s message being to ‘Stay Local’, English motorsport has been given the green light and a handful of circuit racing events are planned over the next few weeks. However, it is a very different picture elsewhere in the UK, where the red light remains…

Both under its current guise and as GP2 from 2005 to 2016, the FIA Formula 2 championship has a good track record when it comes to its champions shining in Formula 1. Inaugural champion Nico Rosberg and his 2006 successor Lewis Hamilton have won every world championship title between them since 2014, while of the current grid, Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly are established race winners and George Russell came close to joining them in Sakhir last year. That’s a clear improvement on the series it replaced, the International F3000 championship (1985-2004). None of its champions won a world title, and only three (Jean Alesi, Olivier Panis and Juan Pablo Montoya) won a grand prix. GP2/F2 also fares better than F3000 when it comes to champions graduating the following year…

FORMULA 1 Lewis Hamilton helped Mercedes to victory in the Formula 1 season opener in Bahrain, but it is Red Bull that has a genuine pace advantage. A combination of an aggressive strategy from Mercedes, plus some great tyre management and defensive driving from Hamilton, was enough for him to hold off Max Verstappen for the win at Sakhir (see page 18). Yet that success has not disguised the fact that Red Bull’s RB16B appears to hold the edge right now in speed terms – both on the straights and in the high-speed corners, where Mercedes has excelled in the past. “We don’t really have any strengths relative to them,” said Mercedes head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin. “We’ve had a lot of years where we’ve been able to rely…

WRC World Rally Championship manufacturers Hyundai, Toyota and M-Sport have committed to the hybrid future of the series in a deal announced by the FIA this week. Hybrid power will be introduced into the top tier of the WRC next season and a new three-year agreement means the system will be developed with the FIA and the three biggest competitors working together, funding work done by Compact Dynamics and Kreisel Electric. The announcement also confirms Hyundai’s continued participation, which is believed to have been a topic of discussion at board level. The main focus of the agreement for the Rally1 category, which has already received approval from the World Motor Sport Council, is “safety, cost management and sustainability”, according to an FIA statement. “In this joint initiative, the FIA and…

PURE ETCR The stunning Alfa Romeo Giulia electric touring car that will be entered by the Romeo Ferraris squad into the inaugural season of Pure ETCR has taken to the track for the first time at Vallelunga. Former IndyCar racer Stefano Coletti, hired as the team’s first driver, was tasked with the bulk of the running. The road car’s 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 produces 502bhp. But that pales in comparison to the racer’s 670bhp (500kW) of poke. Mario Ferraris, Romeo Ferraris’ technical director, completed the first shakedown in the circuit’s paddock. He said: “I was amazed to realise that the car is really fun to drive and also very fast. For me, it was kind of rediscovering the rear-wheel-drive touring cars of years ago, although the powerplant is very different.” DAKAR…

DTM Jenson Team Rocket RJN has backed out of its planned entry into the DTM’s new GT3 era to instead focus on the GT World Challenge Europe and British GT in 2021. The team co-owned by 2009 Formula 1 champion Jenson Button had planned to field a McLaren 720S GT3 in the revamped DTM series this year but, after what Button’s partner Chris Buncombe termed “a change of plans” understood to be linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, will no longer proceed with the entry. Plans to expand to a second base in Germany to assist with the running of the team were deemed unfeasible in the current climate. “For a British team like ours, the logistics are also challenging at the moment,” said Buncombe. “Running in that series…

Having worked in motorsport for two decades, I’ve crossed paths with many great minds and innovators. I’ve been very close to people such as Rory Byrne and Adrian Newey at work, and you can see they never stand still, constantly searching for a winning edge or performance breakthrough. You don’t often hear people inside racing teams being referred to as entrepreneurs. That’s usually reserved for those individuals running the business. But when I was approached to speak on a panel celebrating entrepreneurism at ASI Connect last month, those same engineering pioneers were exactly the names that came to my mind. Not as founders of organisations, but because they have an entrepreneurial mindset that’s crucial to their success. Engineers or mechanics might not always be the ones taking financial risks in…

Sergio Perez’s Bahrain race dramas began before his eventful formation lap, with his RB16B developing a “small electrical fault” ahead of the race, according to Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan. The team had also changed his control electronics and energy store pre-race, and it is unclear if this was related to his later issue, where his car simply switched off as he rounded the Turn 12 right on formation tour. “There was a cut-out on the car which protects it,” explained Monaghan. Perez had no drive, so coasted down the hill out of Turn 13 before eventually pulling over and waving the rest of the pack by. The Mexican removed his steering wheel and then replaced it (“Like your laptop’s gone wrong, switch it off and switch it on…

FIA FORMULA 2 SAKHIR (BHR) 27-28 MARCH ROUND ⅛ Three race winners, final-lap duels for victory, post-race controversy and rookies coming to the fore – FIA Formula 2’s new format delivered in spades at the Bahrain season opener. While rookies Liam Lawson and Oscar Piastri stole the show in Saturday’s sprint races, it was Guanyu Zhou who emerged with the championship lead after a superb drive to victory in Sunday’s feature race. The Formula 1 feeder series introduced an unconventional three-race format. Friday’s qualifying session set the grid for Sunday’s feature race, while the top 10 were reversed to form the grid for the first of two 45-minute sprint races on Saturday. The race-one results, with the top 10 inverted, would set the grid for the second sprint contest. There…

It’s 31 months since Formula E co-founder Alejandro Agag and Indianapolis 500 victor Gil de Ferran had their lightbulb moment. Finally, this weekend Extreme E and its RMS St Helena ‘floating paddock’ dock for a maiden Desert X-Prix event in Saudi Arabia. Their brainchild is built around three core elements, and truth be told you can pick fault with each one. First off, the cars. Each of the nine teams signed up to this inaugural five-round season will race one of the 550bhp all-electric Odyssey 21 E-SUVs. The niobium-reinforced steel alloy tubular frame has been built by French firm Spark Racing Technology, which is responsible for the construction of the Formula E cars. Despite an initial deal with McLaren Applied, Williams Advanced Engineering has been given the contract to produce…

PORSCHE CARRERA CUP GB Former British Formula 4 champion Kiern Jewiss will switch to sportscars in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB this season, partnering reigning champion Harry King at Team Parker Racing. Jewiss will make the move having raced in single-seaters, taking the F4 title in 2018 with Double R – and being selected as a McLaren Autosport BRDC Award finalist (now known as the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award) – before graduating to BRDC British F3 in 2019 with Douglas Motorsport. The 18-year-old finished fourth in the standings in his first year in the championship and had ambitions of taking the title in 2020 but, after securing a win at the opening event, Jewiss left Douglas with three rounds remaining having failed to reach the podium again. He will…

MINI CHALLENGE Mini Challenge frontrunner Max Bird has moved to the Excelr8 Motorsport squad for his third season in the category. Bird drove for Elite Motorsport in 2020, as the team joined the Mini field for the first time, and finished fourth in the points. The former Ginetta GT5 Challenge racer scored three wins over the shortened season – the equal most with eventual champion Nathan Harrison. Bird is now targeting a full title bid this year after moving to the Excelr8 operation that took Harrison to the crown. “I had a successful season in 2020, but I wanted more than just podium finishes and race wins so, for 2021, I’ve joined up with Excelr8 as I believe that they are the right team to help unlock the championship for…

SCOTTISH MOTOR RACING CLUB The Scottish Motor Racing Club has revealed plans to launch a junior motor racing championship for 2022 that will be open to 14-17 year-olds, the first of its kind north of the border. Motorsport UK permits just four junior championships in order to prevent saturation of the driver pool and confirmed that the SMRC’s proposal had been approved in principle last week. Final approval of the championship is likely to come following a second, more detailed proposal in the coming weeks, as will the confirmation of technical details. Recently announced SMRC chairman Vic Covey Jr believes the plan for a new grassroots championship is a positive step for the club. “This is fantastic news for our club and for Scottish motor racing in general,” Covey Jr…

CORONAVIRUS This year’s opening car circuit racing events at Anglesey and Pembrey have been either cancelled or postponed amid continued uncertainty over when motorsport can restart in Wales. While the green light has been given for the sport to resume in England from this weekend, there has been no clear indication of when the same can happen in Wales. It follows the cautious approach the Welsh government also adopted last year, which meant coronavirus restrictions limited racing activity to just one small trial meeting at Anglesey. Against this backdrop, the British Racing and Sports Car Club meeting at Anglesey planned for 5-6 June has been cancelled. “It’s based on a risk assessment of the vulnerability of the date and the difficulty we had was, if competitors weren’t prepared to commit…

Finally, there are some positive developments in the world of national motorsport. After months of uncertainty, the green light has been given for track action to start in England this weekend and plenty of organisers are reporting pent-up demand to get back racing. And there is no shortage of things to look forward to in 2021. From exciting events to fascinating title battles and eye-catching new series, here are some of the elements we are most eagerly anticipating for the year ahead. Of course, more than anything else, we just want to be back at circuits, watch some great competition and see spectator banks bustling once more. But, with a third wave of COVID-19 sweeping Europe, the UK’s successful vaccine programme possibly slowing down and so much still up in…

FORMULA 1 Red Bull boss Christian Horner reckons top F1 teams need the series cost cap to be lifted in order to afford to run the planned sprint races at Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos. At these three events, conventional qualifying will be shifted to Friday afternoon, with a 62-mile sprint race on Saturday deciding the final grid for the main race on Sunday. F1 chiefs are offering an extra payment to cover potential costs, including damage. But big-spending teams want as much as $1million extra and a lift in the cost cap. This idea has not got universal support from teams, with some outfits fearing that lifting the restrictions will open the door to bigger outfits using the extra finances to fund performance gains. Horner said: “If you divide $145m…

FIA Ex-rally driver Mohammed ben Sulayem has launched a campaign to become the next president of the FIA after Jean Todt’s final term ends in December. The move comes eight years after ben Sulayem, 59, planned to challenge Todt in the 2013 election, only to withdraw at a late stage. He was involved in the creation of the Abu Dhabi GP and is an ally of Max Mosley. No other contenders have come forward yet but the Emirati, a 14-time Middle East rally champion, may face a candidate endorsed by Todt, who is keen to ensure his legacy is continued. Ben Sulayem has picked Robert Reid, the 2001 WRC title-winning co-driver to Richard Burns, as deputy. Ben Sulayem promises a “fresh approach” and says “the FIA must encourage a culture…

FORMULA E Only two races into its second season in Formula E, Porsche has pledged its future to the championship until at least 2026 after signing up to the new Gen3 rules that will introduce lighter, smaller and more powerful cars. It becomes the fourth automotive manufacturer – alongside Mahindra, DS Automobiles and Nissan – to back the new rules as the grid for Gen3, arriving for the 2022-23 campaign, begins to take shape. This guarantee to remain in the electric series comes despite the German sportscar firm recently placing a “huge investment” in the development of synthetic fuels. Fritz Enzinger, vice president of Porsche Motorsport, said: “With our entry in 2019, we made a clear commitment to Formula E. From our point of view, it offers the most competitive…

INDYCAR IndyCar’s test to simulate the effects of the hybrid engines has provided plenty of questions about the system’s introduction. Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Alexander Rossi and Pato O’Ward ran at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last Friday, using the push-to-pass system at 1.5-bar to simulate the burst of energy from a KERS unit. IndyCar will replace the current 2.2-litre twin-turbo V6s with KERS-supplemented 2.4-litre twin-turbo V6s in 2023, with the target being a combined 900bhp by 2025. IndyCar president Jay Frye admitted the test had not been completely satisfactory but had offered some “good learning”. “We came thinking this would precipitate more questions than answers, and that’s probably what happened,” said Frye. “So that’s fine. We’re looking at how this could work with the new hybrid system. “If you think about…

Even after Max Verstappen had topped all three practice sessions, an air of inevitability remained. Mercedes had never been defeated in a season-opening qualifying session in the turbo hybrid era, and, thanks to the single engine mode rules not applying until qualifying, it remained possible that the Black Arrows would rescue its record. Trepidation increased in Q1 when Verstappen, who topped the segment, urgently asked his team to check his floor for possible damage after clattering the Turn 2 exit kerbs. Replays revealed pieces of carbon-fibre flying off the RB16B on the following straight and the team reckoned the damage cost him a tenth of a second per lap thereafter. Mercedes had its opening and Lewis Hamilton duly drove right through it in Q2, ending up four places ahead of…

Yuki Tsunoda’s impressive start to life in Formula 1 continued, as he scored two points on his race debut after being a shock Q2 knockout. Tsunoda was second-fastest in Q1 but his attempt to make it into Q2 on the mediums failed and he started 13th. He also lost two positions off the line to wheelspin. From there though, Tsunoda put in a strong drive to rise back up the order, with a series of passes aiding his cause. He said his lap 26 move on Fernando Alonso was “a little bit emotional” after watching the Spaniard as a child fan at Fuji “12-13 years ago”. AlphaTauri was pleased he achieved its target of a clean first lap – the flatspot incurred avoiding Esteban Ocon at the Turn 8 hairpin…

24H SERIES MUGELLO (ITA) 26-27 MARCH ROUND 2/8 Herberth Motorsport blows out 25 candles on its birthday cake this year. It marked this silver jubilee by scoring a slice of history in Italy last weekend. The Porsche squad became the first team to score a hat-trick of wins in the Mugello 12 Hours as drivers Ralf Bohn/Daniel Allemann/Robert Renauer/Alfred Renauer added to the successes of 2015 and 2020. Organised by the 24H Series, the Mugello round was split into two bouts – a fourhour race on Friday, the remaining eight hours running on Saturday. For a series that could only muster 15 entries at times last season, a much-improved 41-car field took to the Tuscany Tarmac. The lead #91 Porsche 911 GT3-R from Herberth Motorsport lined up a sound sixth…

ABT CUPRA Extreme E has, by accident rather than design, become the default headline motorsport programme for Abt this year. After winning five DTM teams’ titles between 2002 and 2009, the tuning company will stay put in the German tin-top series with a three-car charge. But this comes as the halo Class 1 regulations make way for less inspiring GT3 kit. Abt then missed out on a 125th birthday present to itself in 2021. It guided Lucas di Grassi to the 2016-17 Formula E drivers’ crown while fronting Audi’s entry. In response to the marque’s decision to quit the championship at the end of this season, Abt submitted a bid over the winter to buy the team licence, but the paperwork wasn’t signed in time. That leaves Extreme E. Partnering…

GT CUP Jon Lancaster will make his debut in the GT Cup this year at the wheel of a McLaren 570S GT4 in the opening round of the season at Donington Park. The 2015 European Le Mans Series champion and GP2 race winner will compete alongside rookie Rich Mason on a part-time basis with Greystone GT, which will also field full-time entries featuring sportscar aces Adam Carroll and Oli Webb. Lancaster and Mason will compete in the opening round at Donington next weekend with other outings in the GT Cup planned but yet to be announced. “I’m pretty excited to be racing in a UK series for the first time since 2006, and in the McLaren too, which is such an iconic name in motor racing and one that most…

CLASSIC F3 British Touring Car Championship team boss Shaun Hollamby is to make a return to single-seater racing in the car raced by his late father in 1980. Hollamby, who runs the Motorbase Performance and MB Motorsport Ford Focus squads in the BTCC, has bought a March 803 to compete in the Historic Sports Car Club’s Classic Formula 3 Championship, beginning with the opening round at Donington Park on Good Friday. The car was originally raced by Volkspares impresario Olly Hollamby in Formula Super Vee in 1980 as a March 80SV, but was converted into 803 F3 trim in the late 1980s by Mark Bailey. As an 803, it carried Adrian Langridge to the 2019 Classic F3 title. Hollamby Sr, who died in 2009, was a leading light of British…

DOCUMENTARY REVIEW ELECTRIC KINGDOM For the second time within the space of a month, this Autosport writer is quarantining in a hotel room in Saudi Arabia. That’s not a complaint – I’m very fortunate to be travelling and to have escaped the monotony of lockdown back home. First time around it was in Riyadh for the Formula E season-opener. Now the confinement comes on the West Coast in Jeddah, whiling away the time as the excitement builds for the first Extreme E race. By virtue of being in Saudi Arabia, there’s no access to the BBC iPlayer to catch up on Line of Duty. And I’m not comfortable, particularly here, with downloading one of those VPN apps that pretends you’re logging on from the UK, which means making do with…

Denny Hulme (McLaren-Ford M7A) leads Ludovico Scarfiotti (Cooper-BRM T86B), Dan Gurney (Eagle-Weslake T1G), Lucien Bianchi (Cooper-BRM T86B) and Jackie Oliver (Lotus-Ford 49) into Portier at Monaco in 1968, past a trackside area that even by the safety standards of the time could be considered sub-optimal. Just five of the race’s 16 starters made the finish. Bianchi took the final podium spot, four laps down, as was Scarfiotti in fourth; then came Hulme, seven laps adrift of first and second-place finishers Graham Hill (Lotus 49B) and Richard Attwood (BRM P126). For classic 1960s Formula 1 DVDs head to dukevideo.com/F1 For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…