Innehållsförteckning för 16/03/23 från Autosport

It’s not often that we get to do a non-Formula 1 cover at this stage of the season, but this week seemed a bit special. At last, the new era of sportscar racing is here as Ferrari, Porsche, Toyota et al prepare to go head-to-head for the first time, in the World Endurance Championship season-opener at Sebring this weekend. In this special WEC issue, Gary Watkins reports on the Prologue test (page 4), explains how we got to this point (p16), and takes a look at each of the seven teams that will fight it out in the top Hypercar class (p24). We also explain some of the key differences – and similarities – between the LMH and LMDh categories (p22), while pointing out that there should still be some…

FORMULA 1 Ferrari’s Formula 1 technical department is even thinner on the ground following the surprise departure of head of vehicle concept David Sanchez after a decade-long stint at Maranello. The team remains without a chief technical officer following the exit of former principal Mattia Binotto, who occupied both roles. Under the new leadership of Fred Vasseur, Ferrari has now lost Sanchez, who was effectively in charge of the current and 2022 car, straight after the Bahrain Grand Prix. The team will likely have to promote from within to fill the holes given the lengthy period of gardening leave senior figures elsewhere will need to serve. Sanchez joined Ferrari from McLaren in October 2012 as principal aerodynamicist, then replaced Dirk de Beer as chief aerodynamicist in 2016. The Frenchman was…

DAYTONA 24 HOURS The Daytona 24 Hours-winning Meyer Shank Racing Acura has been penalised for a technical infraction. But the team has kept the victory scored by Tom Blomqvist, Colin Braun, Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud in the opening round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship at the end of January and instead lost points and prize money. MSR was found to have manipulated tyre-pressure data on its Acura ARX-06 LMDh. Minimum pressures have been mandated in IMSA since the start of 2022, a rule change made in the name of safety. There is time to be made by running lower than the minimum, although it creates the risk of blowouts such as the one that cost the Chip Ganassi Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R in the closing stages at Daytona in 2021.…

GT3 British racer Tom Gamble has been added to McLaren’s factory GT driver pool ahead of the 2023 season as he reaches the ranks of GT racing professionals. Gamble, the 2018 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner, joins incumbents Rob Bell and Marvin Kirchhofer on McLaren’s factory roster, with Joe Osborne and Euan Hankey understood to no longer be works contracted. Since switching to sportscars in 2019, Gamble has won the European Le Mans Series LMP3 crown in 2020 with United Autosports, won two ELMS races outright across 2021-22 in United’s LMP2 squad, and contested the World Endurance Championship aboard a Gulf Racing Porsche in 2021. He made his debut aboard a McLaren 720S GT3 in the Asian Le Mans Series at Dubai Autodrome in February following a last-minute call-up from…

UK START TIMES Friday 17 March FP1 1330 FP2 1700 Saturday 18 March  FP3 1330 QUALIFYING 1700 Sunday 19 March  RACE 1700 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE TV Highlights CHANNEL 4 2215 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS Drivers Constructors JEDDAH STATS Previous winners 2022 POLE POSITION Sergio Perez 1m28.200s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m27.511s (2021) RACE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m30.734s (2021) Jeddah laps led Max Verstappen 37 Charles Leclerc 30 Lewis Hamilton 18 Sergio Perez 14 Esteban Ocon 1…

This is it! The start! It wasn’t the Daytona 24 Hours in January any more than it was the Spa 6 Hours nearly two years ago. The much-heralded golden era of sportscar racing finally begins with this week’s opening round of the World Endurance Championship at Sebring. There have been Le Mans Hypercars racing since the opening round of the 2021 WEC, and LMDh machinery came on stream with this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship curtain-raiser in January. But the Sebring 1000 Miles on Friday is the first time that they will race together. Convergence has finally arrived after more than three years of hype. That golden era, brave new world or whatever you want to call it is founded on the ability of racing cars built to two different cost-effective…

This is a swansong year for the supporting classes in the World Endurance Championship – probably. LMP2 is set to disappear as the Hypercar field grows. It’s not confirmed, but it’s probably inevitable simply because there won’t be room for them as the entry in the top category grows towards 20 cars or even beyond. What we do know, however, is that this is the last year of the GTE ruleset. WEC promoter and Le Mans 24 Hours organiser Automobile Club de l’Ouest isn’t turning its back on P2. It will remain an important building block in what it likes to call the pyramid of endurance and will continue as the premier class in both the European and Asian Le Mans Series. Together with the IMSA SportsCar Championship, they will…

10 ROBERT BENOIST 1895-1944 Many drivers could have taken the 10th slot, not least Pietro Bordino, whose relatively modest list of successes did not do justice to his speed. Similarly, Guy Moll’s impressive abilities would almost certainly have got him onto the list had it not been for his untimely death at the 1934 Coppa Acerbo. Benoist had a longer impact and would have been 1927 world champion had there been such a title, given his domination of that season. Benoist, a First World War pilot, started competing after hostilities ended and showed promise with Salmson. He joined Delage and became one of its key drivers in a strong squad, finishing third in the 1924 French GP behind team-mate Albert Divo. Benoist and Divo teamed up to win the following year’s…

NASCAR CUP PHOENIX (USA) 12 MARCH ROUND 4/36 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team-mates William Byron and Kyle Larson battled for the lead late in the race for the second straight week, with Byron again coming away with the victory. Despite Byron and Larson dominating the first half of the race, Kevin Harvick was leading and in position to win when a late-race caution for a spin by Harrison Burton sent everyone to the pits. The first six cars off pitroad, including leader Larson and Byron, took only two new tyres. Shortly after the restart with three laps remaining, another wreck sent the race into a two-lap overtime. On the ensuing restart, Byron went to the outside of Larson and, with a shove from Tyler Reddick, powered into the lead with one…

MINI CHALLENGE The successful Jamsport Racing team will return to the Mini Challenge this season with Fiesta frontrunner Marlo Cordell. The squad, which powered Ant Whorton-Eales to the 2018 Mini title, last competed in the series with Bobby Thompson in the final two events of 2021, but team boss Jamie Going has since supported a number of drivers behind the scenes. For Jamsport’s return, Cordell will continue to receive coaching from Whorton-Eales. Going believes the move from Fiestas – in which Cordell debuted in 2021 with Jamsport – is the best option for his driver because it will enable him to benefit from the exposure of racing at British Touring Car events. “I think he’s got what it takes – he’s fast, understands all the data, analyses everything really well…

TYPE R TROPHY MG Trophy champion Joe Dalgarno is among the drivers joining an expanded Type R Trophy grid for this season. Dalgarno narrowly claimed the MG spoils last year after a Class B battle with Josh Bromley that went down to the final corner of the season, a tussle that Autosport named the top club racing rivalry of 2022. Following that success, Dalgarno eyed a move to TCR UK for this year but was unable to attract sufficient sponsorship. Instead, after seeing one of the Type R Trophy cars on display at the Autosport International show at the NEC, Dalgarno opted to move into the 750 Motor Club’s Honda series. “I thought the best thing to do was to try and move to a different championship and prove I…

AUTOSPORT 3 HOURS A special trophy will be awarded to the best-placed MGB in this year’s revived Autosport 3 Hours race. Eight MGBs have already entered the 23 April Snetterton contest, and the organising Historic Sports Car Club has decided to create an extra trophy to celebrate the best of the model in the manufacturer’s 100th anniversary year. “We’re delighted with how the grid is building for the return of the Autosport 3 Hours,” explained HSCC CEO Andy Dee-Crowne. “While we have a fantastic trophy for the overall race winners, we also wanted to celebrate the strong support we are getting from MGB racers and have decided to present a rather nice award to the leading MGB. It’s going to be like a race within a race.” Entries are still…

The UK is blessed with an abundance of championships and series that cater for a huge variety of machines, perhaps none more so than with GT racing. Three key championships – British GT, GT Cup and the British Endurance Championship – are not only surviving but thriving, despite occupying a similar space in the market. This year all of them are set to feature strong grids once again, as organisers capitalise on the unique appeal of each which, although not necessarily apparent on the surface, is the foundation of their success. Created in 1993 by the British Racing Drivers’ Club, British GT was known for the first two years of its existence as the National Sports GT Challenge. In 2003, it was acquired by Stephane Ratel’s SRO organisation and since…

Following the Super Aguri Formula 1 team’s 2008 collapse, Takuma Sato headed Stateside and has to date won two Indianapolis 500s, while Anthony Davidson became one of the most sought-after prototype drivers around. But after he’d impressed in a Champ Car test outing with Team Green at Road America in 2002, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Davidson could have reached similar heights in US open-wheel racing. Today Davidson has a nagging suspicion that he “would have had quite good feel for the ovals” but never pursued a race seat for 2003 as he “was always a bit fearful” of them. “It was alien to me,” says Davidson, who retired from racing in 2021. “As I always said back then, I just liked braking too much! I was…

Tribalism is par for the course in motorsport. That doesn’t just apply to social media keyboard warriors defending the cause of their favourite Formula 1 team, but also to propulsion methods as those with vested interests have lauded their preferred solution as ‘the answer’. But reality is often more complicated than a simple one-size-fits-all. Electric motorsport has truly taken off in recent years, with Extreme E, the World Rallycross Championship, FIA ETCR, and the Swedish Touring Car Championship following the full-EV trail blazed by Formula E. And the number of series that have adopted hybrid elements in their push to heed sustainability requirements is increasing all the while. Acceptance is growing that companies must keep their options open, and risk being left behind by turning their nose up at emerging…

Maserati has begun track-testing the new GT2 car that it hopes will become the spiritual successor to its all-conquering MC12 GT1 racer. Simply known as the GT2, the machine based on Maserati’s MC20 sportscar was shaken down at the Autodromo Varano de’ Melegari by Andrea Bertolini, who claimed two Spa 24 Hours victories and four championships across the FIA GT and GT1 World Championship eras aboard MC12s. The GT2 is set to be officially unveiled at July’s edition of the GT World Challenge Europe blue riband. “Early feedback is positive,” Bertolini said. “We’ve focused on developing a product that not only stands up to its competitors but is also an ideal car for our gentleman drivers in terms of handling, comfort and performance. We want them to experience a unique…

UPGRADES FOR DALLARA Dallara has revealed a limited edition version of its Stradale sportscar and the EXP trackday variant to recognise 25 years since its first victory in the Indianapolis 500. Both iterations, which will be limited to 25 examples apiece, boast a new livery inspired by Eddie Cheever’s 1998-winning IR8 model, and notable upgrades. The Stradale will be equipped with the AMT gearbox from the EXP to halve shifting times, and benefit from a new braking system and intercooler. FORMULA STUDENT ENTRIES CONFIRMED Over 130 teams will contest the 25th anniversary edition of Formula Student following the closure of entries, event organiser the Institution of Mechanical Engineers revealed. International teams from Germany, Sweden, Turkey, Serbia and Italy will go up against British universities at Silverstone in July, with more…

The title was beginning to slip away, but help was at hand in the form of a shiny new Dallara. Par for the course for Formula 3? Not in 1993, when a belated switch rescued Kelvin Burt’s season. “Yeah, I would say 100%,” he reflects when asked whether the arrival of the Italian machine 30 years ago was his salvation. “From that point forward we would have struggled to get any more wins.” The Dallara revolution in British F3 was one of the biggest hammerblows to the UK’s racing car industry. For all its success in Europe, Dallara’s products were untried (save for a brave, and brief, effort from Tech-Speed in 1989), and the conservative – some might say complacent – British scene was reluctant to take a punt. Former…

WORLD ENDURANCE CHAMPIONSHIP Toyota pretty much dominated the World Endurance Championship Prologue at Sebring last weekend. It was 1-2 in three of the four sessions at the test that led into race week for tomorrow’s (Friday) season-opener and ended up a couple of tenths clear of its nearest rival. But question marks remained ahead of the start of free practice on Wednesday – at least in the mind of the Japanese manufacturer. Jose Maria Lopez finished the Prologue with the quickest time, a 1m48.208s set aboard the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID during the opening session on Saturday morning, just 0.008s ahead of Brendon Hartley’s best in the #8 sister car from Sunday afternoon. Both Toyota’s Le Mans Hypercars were in the low 1m48s during each period of track running, but…

FORMULA 1 A multi-story pitlane at the ExCeL exhibition centre and grandstands bobbing on the Thames make up the more curious details of the latest proposal to stage a London Grand Prix for Formula 1. This version does away with the fantasy of ripping up speedbumps to race in the city centre past Buckingham Palace, as pitched in the early 2010s. The bid instead forms part of a wider redevelopment plan for the Docklands riverfront. Conceived by the LDN Collective – a group of built environment experts – and consultancy firm DAR, they want to make heavy use of floating modules on the river to form cycling and running tracks, but then disassemble them to reveal an FIA-grade track surface and seating for 95,000 spectators. The suggested 3.64-mile route would…

LE MANS 24 HOURS Former DTM champion Maximilian Gotz is looking increasingly likely to make his Le Mans 24 Hours debut with the Glickenhaus squad in June. The Mercedes driver has been talking to the American World Endurance Championship entrant for several months and has been with the team at Sebring as a guest since last weekend’s Prologue test. The deal, should it happen, would likely involve Gotz joining the team for one of the next two WEC races to drive alongside Romain Dumas and Olivier Pla in place of Ryan Briscoe. He would then stay in the #708 Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 for Le Mans, with the Australian moving over to the team’s additional entry for Le Mans alongside Franck Mailleux. “I’ve been interested in doing Le Mans for a long…

BEN SULAYEM JR LOSES LIFE The son of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem lost his life in a road accident last week in Dubai. Saif Ben Sulayem competed in the Formula 4 UAE series of 2016-17 but did not pursue a career internationally. PADDON WINS IN PORTUGAL Hayden Paddon won last weekend’s Fafe Rally, the opening round of the European Rally Championship, after final-stage heartbreak for Mikko Heikkila. Finn Heikkila’s Skoda was leading by 2.8 seconds, only for a puncture to drop him to eighth and hand victory to Hyundai pilot Paddon by 10.7s from Mads Ostberg (Citroen). Hyundai’s Craig Breen overcame a damaged tyre and power-steering problems to rise to sixth. GILKES IN F1 ACADEMY… GB4 race winner and ex-W Series driver Megan Gilkes has completed the Rodin Carlin…

“It might sound like a broken record, but it’s a fight that I’m going to keep on having.” Lewis Hamilton there, speaking at the 2023 Formula 1 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver was discussing the new clampdown on where exactly the racing drivers can express their personal feelings on much more important, non-racing matters. A day later, Hamilton revealed a tweaked helmet livery, which he would wear in the race where he finished a frustrated fifth, his new fluorescent yellow topped with a rainbow flag. Once again, Hamilton was expressing his solidarity with the global LGBTQ+ community. You might be wondering why this ground is being covered again. Well, for a start, there’s Hamilton’s point – that the required meaningful change on discrimination won’t happen just by something…

WHEELS AND TYRES LMH allowed for two different options for wheels and tyres when it was opened up to non-hybrid cars. An option for 12.5in rims and 13.5in tyres at the front and 14in/15in at the rear was introduced alongside the same size 13in wheels and 14in tyres all round in the 2018 LMH rulebook. This was the option taken by Toyota and Peugeot for its all-drive hybrids. Toyota subsequently went to the narrower fronts and wider rears for 2022 because the weight distribution of the GR010 HYBRID had been compromised by a reduction in the minimum weight from 1100kg as part of the convergence process in mid-2020. Peugeot stuck with the same size wheels and tyres all round because it is a key component of its wingless concept. All…

Thirty years ago this week, the Sauber team made its grand prix debut in South Africa and announced a stunning fifth place for JJ Lehto. No new team had made the top six on its debut since Wolf won in Argentina in 1977. The Formula 1 world was surprised by the form of the newcomer, whose sleek black car carried only a few logos, including one that proclaimed ‘Concept by Mercedes-Benz’. The fact that the Swiss squad’s first F1 car was designated C12 was a good clue as to why it had come out of the blocks so strongly. Peter Sauber had been manufacturing racing cars for over two decades, and had won the world sportscar championship with works Mercedes support in 1989 and 1990. With a well-equipped factory in…

EXTREME E NEOM (SAU) 11-12 MARCH ROUND 1/5 A revamped format delivered two first-time Extreme E winners as Acciona Sainz XE and Veloce Racing starred at the Desert X-Prix season opener in Saudi Arabia. The all-electric off-road series began its third season on Neom’s sandy shoreline with a new look designed to prioritise racing. The single-car qualifying time trials of the previous two years were ditched in favour of two pairs of four-lap, five-car qualifying heats. The fastest five crews progressed to the Grand Final to compete for the top honours, while the slowest quintet filled the grid for the Redemption Race. The move achieved its desired goal of providing more drama, all played out on a bumpy and technical 2.1-mile dune-filled course. Rosberg X Racing pair Johan Kristoffersson and…

BRITISH GT Reigning GT World Challenge Europe and ADAC GT Masters champion Raffaele Marciello will make his British GT debut this year alongside John Ferguson in a RAM Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3. The Swiss-Italian is a former member of the Ferrari Driver Academy and was a Sauber Formula 1 test and reserve driver in 2015. He claimed the FIA Formula 3 European Championship in 2013 and went on to become a GP2 race winner. After a switch to GT racing in 2017, Marciello became a Mercedes factory driver one year later, going on to win the 2018 Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup. The 28-year-old also won the Spa 24 Hours last term alongside Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon, who will also remain in British GT alongside reigning champion Ian Loggie, this…

MASTERS HISTORIC RACING Historic racers Jamie Thwaites and Dean Forward will step up to compete in LMP2 cars this season in Masters Endurance Legends, while brothers Lukas and Niklas Halusa are set to race the Audi R8 that finished second at Le Mans in 2000. Thwaites raced a Chevron B19 last year and also won the Bowler Defender Challenge rally and off-road series. Now he has acquired two LMP2 sports-prototypes, including the Oak Racing Morgan that finished second in LMP2 at Le Mans in 2013. “We bought it from the Ligier factory and it’s not been raced since 2016,” said Thwaites. “The amount of corner speed blows your mind!” Forward will prepare the Morgan and a 2013 ORECA LMP2, and they plan to start their MEL season at Donington Park…

BRSCC The British Racing & Sports Car Club has enjoyed huge interest in its season-opening Silverstone event this weekend with entries approaching 350. As well as the large numbers of guesting Minis (see story, right) and the capacity Clubsport Trophy entry previously reported in Autosport (23 February), other categories are also well-subscribed. Over 50 Modified Ford machines are due to take to the track, while there is a similar number for the Mazda MX-5 Supercup. The four-hour C1 Endurance Series race also has over 40 entries, despite the season-opener’s early date. “It’s looking great and the team has worked tirelessly to get the subscriptions to where they are – it sets us off for a good start,” said BRSCC chief operating officer Paul McErlean, who added that the interest is…

MINI 7 RACING CLUB The Mini 7 Racing Club has introduced clerk-to-driver radios for its season-opening event at Silverstone this weekend aimed at keeping racers better informed on what is expected to be a capacity grid. All four of the club’s Mini categories – headlined by the Miglia and Se7en (below) classes – are due to share a grid on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, with 60 cars expected to create a “big spectacle”. The new radio receivers will allow the club’s permanent clerk of the course Luke Caudle to keep all drivers informed about the procedure for any red-flag periods and alert them to the precise location of yellow-flag areas. “If he can, he would like to keep us racing under yellow flags in certain areas and not put…

Lined up in the Le Mans pitlane ahead of the 1978 24 Hours, the #7 Porsche 936-77 shared by Hurley Haywood, Peter Gregg and Reinhold Joest forms the perfect foreground to frame the sister works cars (albeit these being new, improved 936-78s) of Jacky Ickx, Henri Pescarolo and Jochen Mass (#5), and Jurgen Barth, Bob Wollek and Ickx (#6), the Belgian switching machines mid-race when the #5 was hit by a succession of problems that culminated in its retirement. The #6 and #7 finished second and third respectively behind the Renault-Alpine A442B of home heroes Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

Extreme E gave a debut to an upgraded tyre from Continental that is lighter and more sustainable than its predecessor at last weekend’s Saudi Arabia curtain-raiser. The CrossContact Extreme E tyre is specially designed for the electric off-road series’ Odyssey 21 chassis and is reported to include “around 43% recycled and renewable materials”, according to a statement. This includes silica obtained from the ash of rice husks, which would ordinarily be wasted because they cannot be used as food or animal feed, with polyester yarn from recycled PET plastic bottles integrated in the tyre construction. The 2023 tyre’s size, diameter and width are unchanged, but it is 2kg lighter than last year, which is expected to reduce emissions in transportation. Continental’s technical manager for Extreme E, Nels von Schnakenburg, added…

Hydrogen has long been touted as the silver bullet to answer motorsport’s sustainability problem. Water is the sole byproduct of fuel cell vehicles using green hydrogen – that is, hydrogen produced by a process of electrolysis using renewable energy sources, rather than derived from natural gases where carbon monoxide is also emitted in its production – and a growing number of programmes are seeking to exploit its credentials. They range from internal combustion engines (ICEs) converted to run on hydrogen, which still emit some nitrogen oxides (NOx), to fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) that use hydrogen to power electric motors. The first racing championship to run on fuel cell technology, Extreme H, will kick off next year, but there is little consensus on whether hydrogen will become widely used in…

Speaking at the Autosport International show about future propulsion methods for motorsport, Hypermotive strategy director Jonathan Brown made some telling remarks. “Hydrogen is not necessarily the answer to everything and that’s one of the key things we need to understand as we move forward away from the ubiquitous ICE,” he said. “In the future, we’re going to have to be very much more willing as a society to understand that there will be much more specific solutions to different applications.” It’s clear therefore that development of hydrogen technologies will not come at the expense of battery electric vehicles. AVL Racetech’s Ellen Lohr agrees that the two approaches “serve different purposes and both will exist in the near future and in the far, far future too”. Where short, sharp sprint races…

NASCAR Jenson Button will make his stock car debut in the NASCAR Cup Series next week at Austin, the first of a three-race programme for the 2009 Formula 1 world champion. Button, who is also part of the driver line-up for NASCAR’s Garage 56 entry for the Le Mans 24 Hours, will drive a Ford Mustang in the 26 March race at Circuit of The Americas. This will be followed by the inaugural Chicago Street Race on 2 July, before he competes on 13 August at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. Rick Ware Racing will run the car with support from Stewart-Haas Racing. Sponsor Mobil 1 has facilitated the deal, after Button raised the idea with its global motorsport manager Mark Humphries in the F1 paddock towards the end…

MOTOGP Ducati ended MotoGP pre-season testing for 2023 in fine form, as reigning world champion Francesco Bagnaia topped last weekend’s running at the Algarve circuit with an unofficial lap record. Of the five days of official testing, Ducati riders have topped all of them – a serious statement of intent from the reigning world champions. Bagnaia (above) felt during the test that “at the moment, Ducati and Aprilia are unbeatable”. Ducati hasn’t revolutionised its challenger from 2022, but has seemingly made gains in all the right places. Aprilia stole the headlines for its Formula 1-style aero concept in Portugal, but has generally looked good throughout testing with a bike the riders feel has improved in all areas. Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro did have his test cut short by a fibrosis issue…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE EUROPE The GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup has attracted a record entry for the 2023 season. A 40-car field, with 13 in the Pro class and representation from eight manufacturers, has been assembled for the five-weekend championship that kicks off at Brands Hatch on 14 May. The announcement last week of the bumper field for this season is significant because the Sprint Cup has always struggled for entries in comparison to the more prestigious Endurance Cup segment of the GTWCE, which has been at or near capacity for multiple seasons. It represents a massive increase on the 25 cars that registered for the full series last year, although the field was bolstered through the season by race-by-race entries. Series boss Stephane Ratel said: “I am delighted…

The Newcastle 500 should have gone down as a great success for Supercars. The Aussie category last weekend pulled off something that just weeks ago seemed impossible. Its teams delivered 25 reliable, beautiful, and actually quite fast Gen3 cars for the first round of the new season. The racing was good. The weather was great. People flocked through the gates… But instead, off-track controversy took over with two major storylines. The first was the two Triple Eight Chevrolet Camaros being disqualified after a historic 1-2 in the first race. The cars were found to be carrying a dry ice radiator on the driver’s side of the cockpit to cool air to a helmet fan. The system itself was perfectly legal. But all cooling systems must be mounted to the passenger…

TOYOTA Toyota is returning to the WEC for its 11th straight campaign with a clear target in front of it – and one on its back as well. It has swept to five consecutive Le Mans victories and four championship drivers’ and manufacturers’ doubles in the absence of any proper factory opposition, so continuing that run will go a long way to legitimising those successes. And as the incumbent king of the WEC with a proven car and an established driver line-up, the odds look good for it to be able to do just that. An all-new LMH was on the drawing board as Toyota cast an eye on the arrival of Ferrari, Porsche et al for this year, but it opted instead to evolve the GR010 HYBRID that came on…

Mike Gascoyne insists that the Sauber C12 had more potential than it was able to show in 1993 because the team didn’t keep up in the development race, despite the pace of bringing new parts to the track being much slower than it is now. “The first thing I said was, ‘We are going to be making 50 to 60 undertrays a year, because we’ll wear them out’,” says Gascoyne. “And Mr Sauber said, ‘On the sportscar we used to glue the undertray to the chassis and never change it all year.’ He couldn’t get his mind around it. “We designed the car, we had done winter testing with it, and it was pretty quick. I then came up with a load of modifications for the first race, and Mr…

AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS NEWCASTLE (AUS) 11-12 MARCH ROUND 1/12 The Gen3 Supercars era got off to an explosive start, with the new low-downforce Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros put to a brutal test across two 250km races on the bumpy street circuit. Saturday’s race was initially a historic result for the powerhouse Triple Eight squad, which played a pivotal role in the development of the new car. Shane van Gisbergen led home Broc Feeney in a T8 Chevrolet 1-2, the pair easily cruising away from third-placed Cam Waters in his Tickford Ford. But Triple Eight found its cars subject to a post-race protest from Tickford Racing and Walkinshaw Andretti United after TV cameras spotted dry ice being poured through the driver’s side door during stops. It turned out that T8 had…

BRITISH GT Daniel Vaughan, the 2020 British GT4 champion, will return to the series this year at the wheel of a Team Parker Racing Porsche. Vaughan, who took the GT4 title alongside Jamie Caroline in a TF Sport-run Aston Martin Vantage, will partner this year’s youngest driver, Zac Meakin. The 16-year-old has a Ginetta Junior background, but also competed with Team Parker in the Porsche Sprint Challenge Southern Europe this winter. Now Meakin will drive the team’s 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport RS (below) alongside Vaughan, who has not competed full-time since his 2020 title. “I’m really excited to be back racing and I can’t wait to get going,” said Vaughan. “The British GT Championship is really competitive, so it will be nice to be back in the paddock and there…

BRITISH F4 Virtuosi Racing will field an expanded three-car line-up in British Formula 4 this season, its second in the category. The squad has enjoyed success higher up the single-seater ladder, including winning the F2 teams’ title in 2017, before joining British F4 last year when the series introduced a new car. While former drivers Michael Shin and Edward Pearson managed only two podiums in that maiden campaign, team manager Mark Salmon says the squad is “upbeat” for 2023 and it was “always the plan” to expand for its second F4 season. It will now run Ginetta Junior podium finisher Aqil Alibhai alongside karting star Douwe Dedecker and rookie Kai Daryanani, whose first racing experience came in the recent UAE F4 series. “Last year, being our first year in the…

STEWART STEPS UP TO GB3 British Formula 4 race winner Oliver Stewart will step up to GB3 this season with Elite Motorsport. He triumphed in the partially reversed-grid race at Thruxton in F4 with Hitech GP last year and finished 10th in the standings in his first season of single-seater competition. XENTEK JOINS JUNIOR RANKS Successful Ginetta GT5 Challenge squad Xentek Motorsport plans to contest a full season of Ginetta Junior for the first time this year and has announced Felix Livesey, who competed in last year’s Winter Series with the team, as its first signing. “We’ve been looking to enter Ginetta Junior for the last couple of years, so we’re delighted to have got this programme together with Felix to join the grid full-time,” said team manager Sarah-Jayne McKenna.…

RALLYING Successful rally driver Frank Bird has been banned from taking part in any rallies for a year after admitting to forging a ‘competition licence confirmation’ document when attempting to enter an event at Brands Hatch earlier this year. Bird, who is a GT racing regular and took part in the Asian Le Mans Series in February, has enjoyed plenty of success in circuit-based rallies in the past few years after moving out of single-seaters. In a recent National Court disciplinary hearing, it was revealed that the 23-year-old was renewing his licences in January but did not apply for them to be granted in a three-hour timescale. With the deadline for entries to the Brands Hatch Winter Stages approaching, he falsified the confirmation document. This was “immediately identified as being…

PHILLIP ISLAND CLASSIC Briton Martin O’Connell (Shadow DN8) took four races to eclipse top qualifier Tim Berryman’s Lola T332 pace in their five-round Formula 1 vs F5000 contest, but it was the howl of six Cosworth DFV-engined UK-based F1 cars for which spectators will remember last weekend’s 34th Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motorsport. A regular at the Victorian Historic Racing Register’s blue-riband event since 2016, Australian Berryman is a tough nut to crack in father Keith’s ex-Guy Edwards/Alan Jones/Jon Davison car. Berryman Jr won the first three encounters from Tom Tweedie (Chevon B24/28), before O’Connell broke through to assert himself over Berryman in Sunday’s pair. The sight of them mixing it with returnee Guido Belgiorno-Nettis in his 1500cc Ferrari F156 turbocar, James Hagan (Hesketh 308/1) and Josh Kean (Benetton…

MALCOLM WILSON RALLY BRC 11 MARCH On-form Frenchmen have been dominating the World Rally Championship for decades, so perhaps it was no surprise that M-Sport Ford factory driver and cross-channel ace Adrien Fourmaux glided to a win at the British Rally Championship opener, last weekend’s Malcolm Wilson Rally. A shock BRC registration by the Dovenby Hall squad for the WRC2 frontrunner meant Fourmaux and Alex Coria tackled the curtain raiser in a Ford Fiesta Rally2. On paper their winning margin of 54 seconds over four-time champion Keith Cronin looked like a comfortable one, but in reality it was far from simple. Out in the stages, event organisers were working flat-out to deliver any sort of rally after heavy snowfall made the Whinlatter stages impassable. A new itinerary was hastily drawn…

INTERNATIONAL MOTORSPORT Saudi Arabian GP Formula 1 Round 2/23 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 19 March TV Live Sky Sports F1, Sun 1655 TV Highlights Sky Sports F1, Sun 2200, Channel 4, Sun 2215 Rally Mexico World Rally Rd 3/13 Guanajuato, Mexico 16-19 March TV Live BT Sport 2, Fri 0200, BT Sport 3, Sat 1600, BT Sport 2, Sun 1800 TV Highlights BT Sport 4, Sat 0500, Sun 0430, Mon 0330, Red Bull TV, Fri 0400, Sat 0400, Sun 0400, ITV4, Tue 2000 Sebring 1000 Miles World Endurance Rd 1/7 Sebring, America 17 March TV Live Eurosport 1, Fri 1530 Sebring 12 Hours IMSA SportsCar Rd 2/11 Sebring, America 18 March Formula 2 Round 2/14 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 18-19 March TV Live Sky Sports F1, Sat 1505, Sun 1330 NASCAR Cup Round 5/36 Atlanta,…

It feels fitting that one three-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Porsche should choose another as his all-time favourite team-mate, although Hurley Haywood and Al Holbert only won it together once, in 1983. By the time of the fabled race, when Holbert barely made the finish with their 956’s engine billowing smoke, Haywood already had a Le Mans victory to his name from 1977. Haywood claimed his third in 1994 after Holbert’s death in a 1988 aircraft accident at the age of 41, whereas Holbert scored his trio of Le Mans wins across just four years. “Porsche has always had a really good way of putting like-minded personalities together,” says Haywood. “I believe it made their combinations very secure in their own right. Nobody needed to…

MotoGP will introduce a new ECU for use in 2023 by factory teams that will develop the system ahead of the series’ sustainable fuels switch in 2024. MotoGP has used standardised electronics since 2016 in a bid to make the grid more competitive, with Magneti Marelli supplying both hardware and software. According to MotoGP, the typical lifespan of an ECU in the series is three to five years, but Magneti Marelli extended this. As part of its push towards a greener future, MotoGP will introduce part-sustainable fuels across all three classes of the world championship (MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3), which will be 40% non-fossil. Then from 2027 it plans to run 100% non-fossil sustainable fuels. As such 2023 will be used as a data gathering year for Magneti Marelli on…

Safety equipment and racing seat manufacturer Sabelt has announced that its product range will soon include an offering made using natural fibre composites, in collaboration with Bcomp. The Swiss company has pioneered the use of flax-based fibres as an alternative to carbon to improve sustainability. It supplies OEMs in GT racing with non-performance-inducing bodywork and interiors, while the McLaren Formula 1 team already uses a seat and timing stand devised by Bcomp. Sabelt, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022, supplies several F1 teams including Ferrari and Alfa Romeo. A company statement said that it is “currently validating” the flax fibres as part of its Carbogreen Project initiative to produce a new line of sustainable seats. “The Carbogreen Project is an important initiative for Sabelt as a first step,” it…

Cost efficiency is right at the heart of the LMDh rules that have helped to fuel the boom of manufacturer interest in sportscar racing. We were given a taste of what to expect from the new breed of hybrid-assisted prototypes in January’s Daytona 24 Hours round of the IMSA SportsCar Championship, where LMDhs are known as GTP cars, and this weekend it’s the turn of the World Endurance Championship as it kicks off at Sebring. Economic frugality of LMDh cars, a necessity given their use by works teams and customer squads alike, is assisted by a spec hybrid system and the requirement to base the chassis on one of four approved LMP2 ‘spines’. But it is also a fundamental tenet of leading suppliers such as brake and clutch manufacturer AP…