Innehållsförteckning för 27/01/22 från Autosport

Getting to the top of Formula 1 can take a long time. The size of modern teams and the nature of the rules mean changes in the competitive order come along more rarely than they used to. The much-vaunted new rules should go some way to addressing that over the coming seasons, but it’s likely that the leading teams will remain at the front, even if they have to work harder for wins and titles. Ferrari and McLaren are the most likely candidates when it comes to selecting those with the best chance of challenging Red Bull and Mercedes. We will look at Ferrari in the next issue (3 February), but this week the spotlight is on McLaren. The legendary team’s recovery since it finished ninth in the 2017 constructors’…

FORMULA 1 United States Grand Prix host the Circuit of The Americas is undergoing further resurfacing work in an attempt to finally get rid of its bumps. Bumps have been an ongoing issue at the Austin venue, leading to complaints from Formula 1 drivers and MotoGP riders. After problems at the 2019 US GP, circuit boss Bobby Epstein told Autosport that heavy rains in 2015 had contributed to the issues. “We excavated nine feet deep to put the track here, and brought in special soils,” he said. “However, clearly the flood of 2015 caused some very serious heaving, and we haven’t fixed those areas since then, and it’s just gotten worse. “There’s been some washout around pipes. There are pipes under the track, and in 2015 the water followed those…

WRC The World Rally Championship will continue to support Rally Northern Ireland’s bid to bring top-tier rallying back to the United Kingdom for 2023 after plans for an event this year collapsed. Northern Ireland was tipped to fill the vacant 18-21 August slot on this year’s WRC calendar, after a failed bid in 2021, before it was confirmed last week that the event was no longer viable. The 2019 running of Rally GB in Wales remains the last time the UK hosted a WRC round. The Irish bid headed by Belfast businessman Bobby Willis had full support from the WRC to the point where a schedule was issued last year with a TBC to allow time for funding to be secured. UK governing body Motorsport UK supported the bid before…

OBITUARY Winning Indycar team owner Vincent Granatelli died last weekend at the age of 78 after contracting pneumonia and then COVID-19. Granatelli seemed initially destined to live in the shadow of his father, charismatic STP petroleum CEO Andy Granatelli. Vince started at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1961 as a mechanic on the Novis, and would go on to work on the legendarily unfortunate STP turbine cars. Both the Paxton machine of Parnelli Jones in 1967 and the Lotus 56 of Joe Leonard in 1968 would fail while leading the Indy 500, so he shared the family joy when Mario Andretti nailed Indy victory in the STP Hawk in 1969. Granatelli Jr was also involved in the STP team’s part-time flirtation with Formula 1 in 1970, during which Andretti score…

Call on the experience of others As someone who held the same race director qualification as Michael Masi, until his elevation to F1 status, I drafted the following letter before the Abu Dhabi fracas. It was written in conjunction with Steve Lydon, initiator of the very successful Thoroughbred Grand Prix series that became Historic Formula 1, and also an international race director. Our opinion is that Michael Masi should have another experienced clerk with him. An international clerk/race director will have spent a lifetime at the heart of things in racing, faced with instant decisions in the heat of the moment. The involvement of stewards and ex-drivers will have been much less frequent and somewhat at arm’s length. When operating at overseas circuits we always engaged the local clerk for…

Nyck de Vries cut through the most random of Formula E seasons last year to chalk two wins and a further brace of podiums, and he led the points for seven of the 15 races. He was a most deserving champion. But at a time when his Mercedes employer completed its ascent to the top of the teams’ standings, a coronation for stablemate Stoffel Vandoorne might have been the more fitting. The Belgian beat de Vries to making a full-time electric switch when he joined debutant HWA Racelab ahead of the 2018-19 campaign. From a squad that rose from the ashes of an axed DTM programme and was a Mercedes attack in all but name, there was total unfamiliarity with this new discipline. Vandoorne navigated the adjustment period, and persistent…

The 90th edition of the storied Monte Carlo Rally will be remembered for generations. It welcomed a new, unpredictable Rally1 hybrid era, but it was a couple of semi-retired elder statesmen who stole the show, as World Rally Championship legends Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier starred in an enthralling battle for the ages. Imagine Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher going head-to-head almost at their peak. Well, this was rallying’s equivalent. When it was announced that nine-time champion Loeb would be making a WRC comeback on the Monte with M-Sport Ford, it set tongues wagging, especially once newly crowned eight-time champion Ogier confirmed that the event would feature in his now scaled-down partial programme for Toyota. Sadly, rally fans have witnessed only fleeting tussles between Loeb and Ogier, the most notable…

FORMULA REGIONAL ASIAN YAS MARINA (ARE) 22-23 JANUARY ROUND 1/5 An unconventional safety car restart at Yas Marina is nothing unusual in recent weeks, but this time it arguably prevented a Red Bull victory and allowed Sicilian talent Gabriele Mini into an early Formula Regional Asian Championship lead. Mini had already had an eventful weekend. He’d prevailed in an entertaining tussle for second in the opening race with Arthur Leclerc and new Red Bull Junior recruit Isack Hadjar, and he’d followed that by shunting out of the second race in a clash with Ferrari protege Dino Beganovic. Mini had pole for the finale, but stalled at the start. He eventually got away, but was down in 16th when the red flags flew because of an enormous startline crash. Cem Bolukbasi…

GB4 Logan Hannah has become the first driver to join the new-for-2022 GB4 Championship and will compete with Graham Brunton Racing. The Scot has previously raced in Formula Ford machinery with GBR, in particular the National and Scottish series over the past few seasons, and makes the move to slicks and wings four years after a one-off UAE F4 outing. “I’m so looking forward to this coming season,” she said. “Having competed in the UK National and Scottish Formula Ford 1600 championships for three seasons, I feel that I am ready to move up to the more sophisticated formula. “GB4 is an exciting new championship that will progress aspiring drivers forwards in single-seater racing and, with Laser Tools Racing’s support, I’m very proud to be involved at this early stage.”…

GROUP 1 TOURING CARS A race for Group 1 touring cars of the British Saloon Car Championship’s pre-1983 epoch at September’s Castle Combe Autumn Classic will preview a planned four-to-five race invitation series for the charismatic crowd-pleasers from 2023, and cement an ongoing bond between promoter Automobiles Historiques and the Castle Combe Racing Club. The 45-minute pitstop intro, for the Vince Woodman Trophy, will celebrate the local hero who died last June. The dynamic Bristolian Ford dealer won 12 BSCC races in the era driving Equipe Esso Capris, and 27 at Combe between 1965 and 2008. Automobile Historiques’ Flavien Marcais, who runs the GT & Sports Car Cup series for pre-’66 machines with wife Vanessa, said: “The Gerry Marshall Trophy [Group 1] events at Goodwood always produce spectacular racing. Its…

OBITUARY Mike Kimpton, who succumbed to COVID-19 on 20 January, aged 73, having survived cancer and pneumonia, was a tour de force in the motor trade’s aftermarket accessories sector. Apprenticed at 18 to Godfrey Davis in Welwyn, he soon established Kimpton Marketing Ltd, selling products to big players Halfords and Gordon Spice. He later bought Mountney Steering Wheels and also added roof-bar manufacturer Summit Accessories to the group. Among 1977’s Sports 2000 pioneers, Kimpton finished ninth in the points, besting at fourth in Brands Hatch’s wet enduro in John Brown Wheels’ second Lola T490. Switching to Tiga for 1980, he was third to James Weaver and Geoff Farmer at Donington Park’s nonchampionship National Racing Festival. Kimpton saddled a Ford Capri 3.0S in the 1981 British Saloon Car Championship, claiming a…

DAYTONA 24 HOURS Wayne Taylor Racing claimed first blood at the Daytona 24 Hours last Sunday as it kicked off its bid for a fourth straight win – and fifth in six years – in the IMSA SportsCar Championship opener. Ricky Taylor and Filipe Albuquerque claimed victory in the team’s Acura to secure pole position for the big race this weekend and the first smattering of championship points. The WTR Acura ARX-05 Daytona Prototype international with Taylor at the wheel crossed the line at the end of the 100-minute race (named as the Motul Pole Award) with a clear margin over the JDC-Miller Motorsports Cadillac of Richard Westbrook and Tristan Vautier. But the eight-second gap gave few hints of a thrilling race in which WTR had to come from the…

WEC Rally legend Sebastien Ogier has undertaken a second test aboard the Toyota Le Mans Hypercar as he gears up for a move into endurance racing in 2022. The winner of eight World Rally Championship titles was at Motorland Aragon for the GR010 HYBRID’s first test of the year at the start of this week. Ogier travelled to the Spanish track after finishing second in the Monte Carlo Rally WRC opener at the weekend to take part in a test that ran from Sunday to Tuesday. It followed his first run in the GR010 in last November’s official World Endurance Championship rookie test in Bahrain. But his programme on the race circuits and the rally stages this year is still a few weeks away from being confirmed. He explained in…

GT Nurburgring specialist David Pittard has joined Aston Martin Racing’s factory roster. The 29-year-old Briton has been named as a works driver two weeks after he was listed in the NorthWest AMR Vantage GTE for this year’s World Endurance Championship. Pittard has been picked up by the British manufacturer after regular successes on the Nordschleife, including winning the NLS endurance series in 2020 with the Walkenhurst BMW team. “My goal is to win the biggest endurance GT races and with Aston Martin I have the platform to achieve this,” he said. “AMR is one of the best organisations in the business.” Pittard will race the works-run NorthWest Vantage in the GTE Am class of the WEC with two-time Pro title winner Nicki Thiim and car owner Paul Dalla Lana. His…

FORMULA 2 There are still almost two months until the new Formula 2 season kicks off, yet 19 of the 22 seats have already been filled, including three in the past few days. It had not long been announced that he was leaving the Ferrari Driver Academy when Marcus Armstrong was named at Hitech Grand Prix, where he will join Red Bull Junior Juri Vips. This is an interesting one: the duo were team-mates at Prema in Formula 4 in 2017, when Armstrong won the Italian title and Vips the German. Both then looked very good in Formula 3 in 2018 and 2019, with Armstrong finishing runner-up in the latter season. But it’s fair to say that Armstrong’s momentum has stalled in his two F2 seasons to date. With ART…

Has everyone calmed down now? The 2021 Formula 1 season finale has gone down as one of the most controversial in the championship’s history, overshadowing Max Verstappen’s triumph and leaving Lewis Hamilton disillusioned (Toto Wolff’s word) with the series in which he is statistically the greatest ever competitor. Over a month on from the Abu Dhabi farce and with pre-season testing for the new campaign now just under a month away, this is where F1 stands: the championship is finally on the verge of seeing whether its latest attempt to improve racing quality through regulation overhaul will work, but its benchmark champion is not certain to return. Now, it is still highly unlikely that Hamilton will walk away from F1 for good ahead of the 2022 campaign. But the fact…

Any time you visit the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, it’s impossible to come away without being deeply impressed by the team’s rich and successful history. Lining the main boulevard on the ground floor are cars that have amassed victories and championships across Formula 1, IndyCar, Can-Am and Le Mans. If you walk a little further towards the canteen, the walls are lined with trophy cabinets, ensuring that every McLaren employee can see the success the team and company have been built upon. But for a long time, the trophy cabinets didn’t need to be opened for any new additions. McLaren went through an incredibly lean period, failing to record a single F1 podium finish between the 2014 Australian Grand Prix and Carlos Sainz Jr’s run to third at Interlagos…

ABU DHABI 6 HOURS YAS MARINA (ARE) 22 JANUARY Austrian Ferrari team Baron Motorsport took victory in the Abu Dhabi 6 Hours in convincing fashion. Danish sportscar gun Mikkel Mac joined locally based Zimbabwean Axcil Jefferies to lead the line-up in the Ferrari 488 GT3 Evo, which won by over a lap. Early-2000s F3 Euro Series regular Philipp Baron was also at the wheel, along with Ernst Kirchmayr and Roman Ziemian. For Jefferies, the success came just a week after playing his part in the WRT Audi Dubai 24 Hours triumph. There was a battle for second place, with ex-Super Touring Honda hero Peter Kox joined by daughter Stephane and Nico Pronk in their Porsche 911 GT3-R to fight with the JR Motorsport BMW M6 GT3 of Ted van Vliet…

BRITISH F4 Ginetta Junior podium finisher Joel Pearson got back behind the wheel of a British Formula 4 car last week for the first time since his cancer diagnosis and is now targeting a full-time return to racing this year. Pearson, who was eighth in the 2020 Ginetta Junior standings, had agreed a deal to drive for Argenti Motorsport in British F4 last season before those plans had to be put on hold when it was discovered that he had bone cancer in his pelvic area. This was later found to be a particularly rare form of the disease, meaning Pearson needed additional specialist treatment. The 17-year-old says this has been “going to plan” and he is “feeling very well and feeling ready to get back”. Pearson linked up with…

OBITUARY John Lancaster, who died last week aged 84, lived an interesting and full life. Apprenticed to the hallowed Royal Aircraft Establishment, he forged an impressive career in aeronautical and production engineering, ultimately with British Aerospace and the MoD. He started racing in 1958, in a very tidy Austin 7 Special in 750 Formula, and was the 750 Motor Club’s final 1172 Formula champion in 1966. Driving his self-built ORVA 3 (AVRO backwards, mirroring the Lancaster bomber), an innovative spaceframe chassis with stressed aluminium sideskins, he beat 1964 title winner Brian Small by a point. Lancaster and his brother Reg, a gifted machinist, went on to contest the Monoposto championship, driving JCM cars designed by John’s RAE chum John Clarke, who penned F2 cars for March, Frank Williams (the 1973…

HSCC The Historic Sports Car Club is planning to introduce a new Historic Modsports and Saloons series and will run two pilot events later this year ahead of a possible full campaign in 2023. The category will cater for modified versions of road cars built before 1980 with an emphasis on entries being in the original specification they raced in period, in a bid to encourage cars back onto the circuit that have not been raced in years. Eligible cars must have their original material bodies and be powered by the same engine that was used in the period road car they are based upon. No spaceframe or kit car replicas will be allowed and motorcycle engines will not be permitted. Trial races for the concept are due to be…

DOCUMENTARY GROUP B: RIDING BALLS OF FIRE Stream at Motorsport.tv A thrilling battle between Sebastien Loeb and Sebastien Ogier for victory at the fabled Monte Carlo Rally last weekend grabbed the attention of fans across the globe, and was the perfect launch for the new hybrid era of the World Rally Championship in 2022. Only time will tell how popular the new machinery will be with drivers, teams and fans, but to many they will be hard pressed to surpass those from the ‘golden age of rallying’: Group B. These cars captivated fans in the mid-1980s with their immense power and speed, as well as the drivers who would push them to the very limit – and sometimes beyond. “IT DOESN’T GLOSS OVER THE DARK SIDE, BUT DOES SHOW WHAT…

2013 Williams-Renault FW35 The Williams-Renault partnership produced some highly successful Formula 1 cars. But it’s perhaps the least-remembered of the family, the FW35, that resonates with Daniel Juncadella as his favourite car. The most recent Williams-Renault was the final V8 machine to roll out of Grove, and scored just five points in the hands of Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado. Juncadella sampled it over two days during the Silverstone rookie test. “It was an absolute rocket,” he recalls. “For me, the V8s were the ultimate experience.” In the early phases of a career that has been closely intertwined with Mercedes for the past decade, the then-DTM rookie’s appearance at F1’s 2013 Silverstone test with a Renault-powered squad wasn’t without risk. But because Mercedes was banned from participating after revelations of…

FORMULA 1 Disputes over Formula 1 technical staff have been settled in the past few days, with the result that Red Bull loses its head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows to Aston Martin, but gains Mercedes High Performance Powertrains head of mechanical engineering Ben Hodgkinson. Aston Martin announced last year that it had signed Fallows to be its new technical director, but the matter went to court, with Red Bull insisting that it would hold Fallows to the terms of his contract, which ran until 2023, and Fallows and Aston Martin pushing for an early release. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said last July that the team had little interest in letting Fallows go early. “Our situation with Dan is really clear,” he said. “He’s working on the [2021] car,…

ASIAN LE MANS SERIES New Porsche recruit Yifei Ye will make his race debut with the German manufacturer in next month’s Asian Le Mans Series ahead of a return to the LMP2 class in which he starred in his maiden season of sportscar racing in 2021. The 21-year-old, who was named as a Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific selected driver in November, will contest the two-weekend, four-race Asian series, which he won last year with G-Drive Racing, at the wheel of a Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3-R (pictured). That will be a precursor to a P2 assault on either the World Endurance Championship or the European Le Mans Series in which he scored his second title success of 2021 with WRT. Ye’s programme for the season is being devised to give…

WEC Ferrari Formula 1 development driver Antonio Fuoco will replace Daniel Serra in the Italian manufacturer’s GTE Pro World Endurance Championship squad this year. The 25-year-old will share the team’s second 488 GTE Evo with Miguel Molina, while reigning champions James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi are paired together for a fifth season. Fuoco moves up to one of the factory-run AF Corse cars after a GTE Am assault with the team in the Cetilar Racing entry (top) last year and a campaign in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup with the works-blessed Iron Lynx squad. His graduation comes in his fourth season of GT racing and is another change of driver in the underperforming second GTE Pro Ferrari, after Davide Rigon was replaced by Serra for 2021. “I’m…

DTM Mercedes and BMW look set for a thorough reshuffle of their DTM drivers and teams as preparations mount for the series’ second season as a GT3-based formula, and that includes 2021 champion Maximilian Gotz. Gotz (right) is poised to leave HRT, despite the two parties having previously been keen on continuing their partnership. The 35-year-old is now expected to join Team Winward to partner seven-time race winner Lucas Auer, who gave up the lead at the Norisring to allow Gotz to snatch last year’s title from Ferrari driver Liam Lawson. Gotz’s 2021 team-mate Vincent Abril has already left Mercedes in favour of GT World Challenge in a McLaren, paving the way for an all new line-up at Hubert Haupt’s HRT squad. Luca Stolz, the 2018 Blancpain Endurance champion who…

There have seen some major changes at the top of the Alpine Formula 1 team in recent weeks, just a year after the previous management reshuffle. At the start of 2021, team principal Cyril Abiteboul was ousted, just as the former Renault squad began its transition to its new identity. Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo named Laurent Rossi, his erstwhile director of strategy and business development, as Alpine’s new boss, in overall charge of both the F1 team and road car division. Abiteboul’s number two, Marcin Budkowski, was promoted and MotoGP veteran Davide Brivio, well known to de Meo, was brought in as racing director. Officially neither man was team principal, although as his LinkedIn profile points out, Budkowski actually held the FIA licence for the position. Budkowski seemed…

Robert Wickens returned to active competition at the Roar Before the 24 at Daytona, testing his Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai Elantra N TCR ahead of his racing comeback in the 24 Hours support race, the Michelin Pilot Challenge, tomorrow (28 January) afternoon. The 32-year-old Canadian will make his first start since his hugely promising rookie IndyCar campaign in 2018 came to a violent halt at Pocono. His Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Dallara was launched over Ryan Hunter-Reay at north of 200mph, catapulting it into the debris fence, where he spun wildly before landing heavily back on the track. Given the life-threatening potential of his crash, we should be grateful that Wickens’s rehab has allowed him to get back to a starting grid, rather than be angry over the spinal cord injury…

Daniel Ricciardo’s radio message following his emphatic win last year at Monza was a perfect sign-off to a shock weekend where McLaren successfully took the fight to Mercedes and Red Bull. While the defining image of the Italian Grand Prix will be Max Verstappen’s Red Bull parked on top of Lewis Hamilton’s helmet following their crash at the first chicane, that was not a factor in Ricciardo’s win. He’d already been leading the race and was bound for a comfortable victory, answering back to his critics after a miserable first half of the season with McLaren. “I felt like the summer break gave me what I needed,” reflects Ricciardo. “I truly did feel different getting into the car at Spa, I just felt light again. The first half of the…

ALEX LYNN CASHING IN WITH CHIP Alex Lynn has a burning ambition to write his name in history. Already an outright winner at the Sebring 12 Hours and a Le Mans 24 Hours class victor, he’s now targeting more ‘overalls’, as the Americans like to say, in the big enduros around the world. “A while back, I sat down and thought, ‘What do I want to achieve in my career?’” says the Briton. “I realised what motivated me most was winning the big sportscar races overall. We’re heading into what we all think will be a great era for sportscar racing with LMDh and Le Mans Hypercar and so many manufacturers coming. I wanted to be part of that and grabbed an opportunity when it came along to be able…

Sebastien Ogier could easily have bemoaned the misfortune that denied him victory in Monte Carlo, but simply chose to take joy and pride in being part of one of the World Rally Championship’s greatest ever duels. Ogier was hugely magnanimous in defeat to Sebastien Loeb and, like the hordes of fans watching on, even he had to marvel at what had unfolded. “What a fight and what a joy it was to make this rally one we will remember forever and one very special for me,” said Ogier. “OK, this weekend we have not come out as the winner, but I think we can definitely keep our head up and keep smiling because we have done the job and fate decided differently today. “I’m still smiling and still enjoy this…

SUPER TOURERS Four-time British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington is set to join former BTCC stars John Cleland and Anthony Reid in the Classic Touring Car Racing Club’s new Super Tourers series. The fledgling category is open to machinery from the popular era of the BTCC as well as more recent BTC-T and S2000-spec cars. While Cleland and Reid will be competing in the exact cars they raced during the Super Touring days, Turkington will be back behind the wheel of an MG ZS (the model in which he made his BTCC debut) owned by Jason Hughes for the Silverstone season opener at the end of March. “I’ve known Jason since back in the days when he raced in the BTCC in the MG, and obviously I know the car,”…

UAE F4 Three British drivers stood on the podium at last weekend’s opening round of the UAE Formula 4 Championship. After Aiden Neate lost out on his first car racing victory by just 0.003 seconds, Taylor Barnard scored a reversed-grid win and Oliver Gray claimed a rostrum. Neate qualified on the front row for the opening race, and took the lead when poleman and 2021 British F4 rival Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak stalled at the start. A lengthy safety car period left just three laps of racing at the end where Neate came under pressure from Mercedes F1 junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and the Italian pulled off a pass around the outside into the Turns 6/7 chicane just before the finish line, which was on the alternative support race pit straight. Antonelli’s…

CSCC STORY CORRECTION Autosport wishes to clarify incorrect statements in a story last week (20 January) about the Sports Racing and V8s series. It was reported that the category would team up with the Classic Sports Car Club’s Special Saloons and Modsports Series at a number of events this year, which is not the case. While Sports Racing and V8s drivers with cars that are already eligible for the CSCC series are welcome to compete in its races, only at the October Silverstone event will there be a dedicated class for Sports Racing and V8s competitors. Autosport apologises for the error. PEARSON TO VIRTUOSI FIA Formula 2 frontrunner Virtuosi has recruited Ginetta Junior graduate Edward Pearson as its first driver for its expansion into British F4 this season. Pearson was…

BRITISH GT Assetto Motorsport will step up to the GT3 class of the British GT Championship this year with a Bentley Continental for Andy Meyrick and team regular Mark Sansom. The squad run by Simon Traves and Jim Edwards Jr has predominantly raced Ginettas, winning back-to-back G40 Cup titles in 2018 and 2019. It stepped into British GT’s GT4 class last season, with Ginetta factory driver Charlie Robertson joining Sansom. The pair almost won on the G56 GT4’s competition debut at Brands Hatch, but were denied by a late puncture. Sansom, who finished third in the GT4 Pro-Am standings last year, is making the step up to GT3 alongside Meyrick, who raced as a Bentley factory driver in the Blancpain GT Series in 2014 and 2015, and has experience of…

CTCRC The Jaguar Enthusiasts’ Club has decided to focus its sporting activities away from circuit racing and will no longer run its Saloon and GT Championship. Its former competitors are now set to join the Classic Touring Car Racing Club’s new Jaguar Challenge series. The JEC, which began organising racing series and championships in 1998, has launched a new Tracksport initiative focused on non-competitive trackdays, hillclimbs, sprints and navigational events. Club director Richard West said: “We discussed it at board level and we said, ‘It’s been fantastic, but it involves such a small number of the JEC’s membership that, really, should we be spending time on that or should we be looking for something more inclusive that all members can benefit from?’” Having hosted the JEC championship last year, the…