Innehållsförteckning för 07/03/24 från Autosport

Well, for the neutral, that was pretty much the worst-case scenario. Formula 1 kicked off with a Red Bull 1-2 and victor Max Verstappen barely breaking sweat as he beat the field by over 20 seconds. You have to admire his and the team’s abilities but, as a sporting contest, last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix was distinctly lacking. So, are there reasons to be cheerful about the season ahead? Jake Boxall-Legge (page 18) and Alex Kalinauckas (p15) run you through how circumstances helped Red Bull and why Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren are better than they looked on Saturday. Things could be closer in Saudi Arabia this weekend… Sadly, the off-track developments at Red Bull (p4) seemed to attract more attention. Christian Horner was cleared of any wrongdoing last Wednesday (28…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE EUROPE Proton Competition has stepped in to ensure that Ford will be represented in GT World Challenge Europe this year with the Mustang GT3. The team, which is running the new car in both the World Endurance Championship and the IMSA Sportscar Championship, answered the call after the Italian Dinamic squad abruptly ended its relationship with the American manufacturer last month. Proton will field a single car in the Pro Cup in the Endurance and Sprint Cup legs of the GTWCE this year. That’s a reduction on the Ford representation planned by Dinamic, which had entered one car in Pro and one in the Bronze Cup. Team boss Christian Ried explained that he had been happy to further increase Proton’s workload this year when he received the…

BTCC There was a major surprise in the British Touring Car Championship this week when Team Hard boss Tony Gilham confirmed two cars for 2024. The Kent squad, which ran a gargantuan six-car effort last year, appeared to have bitten the dust during the winter, and gave up its three TOCA TBL entrants’ licences. But it will continue using the two TBLs belonging to Aiden Moffat, as it has done in recent seasons. No mention was made in the Hard announcement of which cars it will use, but take it as read that the plan is for a brace of its Cupra Leons to be dusted down, adding to the duo now being prepared by BTCC newcomer Restart Racing. “I have made many mistakes over the years, some poor business…

It’s the hope that gets you. Before last Saturday’s Formula 1 season opener in Bahrain, there was the hope that someone, anyone, might be able to make a stab at challenging Red Bull’s polesitting triple world champion Max Verstappen for victory. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, starting alongside, naturally had the best chance. And Leclerc had no constructors’ championship considerations to enter his mind, as he had when he started alongside Verstappen on the front row for the final two events of 2023. But, following Verstappen’s better launch, Leclerc’s speculative look around the outside of the Red Bull at Bahrain’s first corner was never going to cut it. Not even the new rule allowing DRS usage from lap two could save that race, the Ferrari’s brake cooling problem already apparent to the…

“We’re expecting probably a half-second deficit,” George Russell mused, moments after putting his Mercedes in third place on the Bahrain Grand Prix grid. Asked to estimate the advantage Red Bull would have in the race, Russell reckoned that it would be slightly larger than the 0.3s per lap difference seen on the timing boards between himself and Verstappen on Friday night. Max Verstappen looked slightly surprised by Russell’s assertion. “Half a second?!” he exclaimed with feigned indignance. “I think that’s way too big. But if you say that now, then if it’s better tomorrow, then you can say, ‘Oh, it’s unbelievable, the car is unbelievable.’” “Under-promise, over-deliver!” was Russell’s riposte, quietly hoping that Verstappen was right and Mercedes would find a stronger vein of performance in Saturday’s 57-lap race. Instead,…

Williams’s 2024 campaign got off to a tricky start, with its Bahrain testing reliability gremlins striking again. Alex Albon had produced another decent qualifying performance to line up 13th, while team-mate Logan Sargeant ended up starting in 18th. Williams head of vehicle performance Dave Robson put part of this down to “a brake balance issue” aboard the American’s car in Q1, something that occurred more visibly in the race. “[The steering wheel] was just doing things on its own, without my asking,” Sargeant explained of his Turn 4 off on lap 10, when his brake balance was suddenly shifted massively forwards. “We thought we fixed it [after qualifying], but obviously it came back. It didn’t happen again once we changed the steering wheel [at Sargeant’s first pitstop]. Sargeant, who had…

Porsche enjoyed almost the perfect day in Qatar. It added victory in the new LMGT3 class by the Manthey PureRxcing entry to the clean sweep of the overall podium. Klaus Bachler, Joel Sturm and Aliaksandr Malykhin triumphed by just five seconds after nearly 10 hours of racing, but the truth was that the Lithuanian-flagged car was in the pound seats pretty much from the get-go. The car led 235 of the 299 laps the class leaders completed. Belarusian Malykhin, who lives in Surrey and races under a UK licence, made the difference on Saturday. He is the mandatory bronze-rated driver in the line-up and was the fastest of the ams around the Losail circuit, and by a good half-second. Malykhin, who has joined the WEC from the GT World Challenge…

BRITISH GT Aston Martin Formula 1 ambassador Jess Hawkins will make her British GT debut this season when she partners two-time champion Andrew Howard at Beechdean. The 29-year-old, who has been appointed Aston Martin’s head of racing for F1 Academy, won a round of the TCR UK Championship in 2022 before taking a W Series podium finish in Miami. The Briton also tested Aston Martin’s AMR21 at the Hungaroring last year, when she became the first woman since 2018 to drive a modern F1 car. Hawkins and Howard, whose British GT3 titles both came with Aston machinery in 2013 and 2015 with his Beechdean team, will share the new Vantage GT3. “British GT is a series I’ve seen close-up while racing in other series in this paddock and it’s made…

CIVIC CUP Two-time TCR UK champion Lewis Kent will contest this year’s Civic Cup, while also competing in the Britcar Trophy alongside younger brother Bradley in the family’s TCR-spec Hyundai Veloster. Kent spent 2023 largely on the sidelines but contested the Civic Cup’s final two rounds in an EP3 prepared by Area Motorsport, achieving a podium at Brands Hatch. He will now take up a full-time drive with the multiple championship-winning squad as he seeks to “fall back in love with the sport”. “I’ve had a couple of years now where I’ve just been slowly falling out of love with it,” said Kent. “I felt like in TCR I always had a target on my back and it took the enjoyment out of it. I really enjoyed driving the [Civic…

GOODWOOD Next month’s Goodwood Members’ Meeting will pay tribute to triple Formula 1 champion Niki Lauda, with his 1985 McLaren, the final F1 car he raced, set to be among the machinery being demonstrated. There are several significant anniversaries being earmarked for the Austrian legend in 2024, including 50 years since his first grand prix victory, 40 years since his third title win, and it would also have been his 75th birthday. In addition to the Members’ Meeting display on 13-14 April, Lauda will be commemorated at July’s Festival of Speed, with some of his cars taking to the Goodwood hill. “This year’s special moments will pay tribute to his outstanding racing career and celebrate his enduring legacy across the world of motorsport,” said the Duke of Richmond.…

LEGENDS Reigning Legends champion Will Gibson will defend his title this year and is among an initial batch of 19 drivers announced as competing in the category. The series is celebrating its 30th anniversary season this year and has also joined the MotorSport Vision Racing stable, while points scored in its three-event British Touring Car-supporting Elite Cup contest will also now count towards the main championship. Among the other established frontrunners who Gibson (below) will face are Robert Barrable and Jack Parker, who finished second and third in the Elite Cup table last year – Parker acting as a replacement for the injured multiple champion John Mickel. Barrable’s brother Peter is also set to continue, while 2011 champion Stephen Treherne plans a full campaign after making a series comeback last…

BOOK REVIEW HAPPY LUCKY DAYS – MY LIFE IN RACING Bob Evans RRP £32 Ask anyone to name a British driver who represented BRM and Lotus in Formula 1, and they’re probably going to instantly come up with the name of Graham Hill. Another is Bob Evans, but it was very much a case of ‘right place, wrong time’ for a racer who ended up as a footnote in grand prix history. Yet Evans, now 76, has a distinct advantage over many of those who enjoyed glory in different eras. His career spanned the late 1960s to the early 1980s – one of the most accessible, spontaneous and carefree times in motorsport history – and his enjoyment of and appreciation for his luck in playing his part oozes from every…

Tom Pryce presses on in characteristic style during the opening stages of the 1974 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. The Welsh Formula 1 rookie qualified his Shadow DN3 11th on the grid, then put in an impressive performance to cross the line in sixth place, claiming his first world championship point. In Pryce’s wake is the Williams FW02 (aka Iso-Marlboro FW) of F2 star Jacques Laffite, making his grand prix debut [at the Nordschleife, yikes! – ed]. Twenty-first fastest in qualifying, the Frenchman completed two laps before his rear suspension broke. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

Silverstone has featured many different guises down the years. But to Bertrand Gachot, who drove several of them while ascending the UK racing ladder, the British Grand Prix venue is no less appealing for it. A winner at the circuit in British Formula 3 in 1987, F3000 polesitter in 1988 and points finisher in F1, Gachot’s racing education featured Formula Ford slipstream-fests at Silverstone on his way to scooping back-to-back FF1600 and FF2000 titles in 1985-86. “I always liked Silverstone, it’s the heart of Formula 1,” says the Dubai-based Belgian. “This is the track that shows the potential of an F1 car with those high-speed corners and it’s just a very special place. “Even today’s version is interesting. It’s very high-speed, a beautiful layout. When you see Copse Corner, then…

FORMULA 1 The battle at the top of Red Bull increasingly looks as though it will end with the Formula 1 team losing at least one of its highest-profile assets. At the end of an eight-week independent investigation called for by the energy drinks company, team principal and CEO Christian Horner has been cleared of any wrongdoing after a woman made allegations of inappropriate behaviour against him. But the storm is seemingly far from over. Only a day after that verdict, when the paddock might have switched focus back to the 2024 season kicking off in the Middle East, FIA, F1 team and FOM chiefs plus members of the media were emailed by anonymous accounts with files purportedly containing images and messages at the heart of the case. It seems…

FORMULA 1 FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is reportedly under investigation for allegedly trying to interfere with the result of the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. According to the BBC, a whistleblower has informed the governing body that Ben Sulayem attempted to get the race stewards to overturn a penalty that initially cost Fernando Alonso third position. The Aston Martin driver was punished after the race for not properly serving a five-second penalty, handed out for lining up incorrectly on the grid. A subsequent 10s reprimand, announced soon after the finish of the race in Jeddah, relegated Alonso to fourth. That was overturned several hours later. The FIA stewards determined that Alonso’s in-race penalty had not been served properly when video evidence appeared to show the rear jack briefly touching…

WEC The Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the FIA have vowed to “let the manufacturers race” under the World Endurance Championship’s new system of Balance of Performance in Hypercar introduced for 2024. The series organisers will set a window in which they want all nine manufacturers competing in the class to fall, and adjust the performance of the cars that lie above and below it. But crucially, they did not reveal the size of that window when they offered an explanation of the new system ahead of last weekend’s Qatar 1812Km season-opener. They have hinted that it will be determined by the gaps they see between the cars fielded by each manufacturer. “We have looked at last year and there are differences between two identical cars from the same manufacturer…

WEC Peugeot is set to run just two drivers in at least one of its 9X8 Le Mans Hypercars at the Spa World Endurance Championship round in May, when Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne (both pictured) will be on Formula E duty for sister marque DS in Berlin. New test and reserve driver Malthe Jakobsen is a candidate to fill the vacant seat in one car, but otherwise the French manufacturer is not looking beyond its existing squad of pilots. Jean-Marc Finot, who is motorsport boss for all the brands within the Stellantis group, has stressed that no decisions have been made on how Peugeot will shuffle its drivers for the Spa 6 Hours on 11 May. But he has insisted that bringing in someone from outside is not in…

OBITUARY Hugh Chamberlain’s name will remain synonymous with sportscar racing in perpetuity. His plucky and sometimes ultra-successful efforts as an underfunded privateer made him a fan favourite, while his admirers also included the organiser of the Le Mans 24 Hours; the Automobile Club de l’Ouest understood a contribution to endurance racing across three decades. Chamberlain, who has died aged 82, was in his pomp as a team owner in the days of Group C2 in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His little Chamberlain Engineering team from Buntingford, Hertfordshire took C2 honours in the 1989 World Sports Prototype Championship with Fermin Velez and Nick Adams driving a Spice-Cosworth SE89C, and repeated the trick in the 1992 Sportscar World Championship with Ferdinand de Lesseps and an SE89C. Both successes were achieved…

After a tough few years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Super Formula re-emerged as a viable stepping stone to Formula 1 last year thanks to the exploits of Liam Lawson. Although Lawson wasn’t quite able to convince Red Bull to give him a race seat at the team now known as Visa Cash App RB, success in Japan helped put him firmly on the F1 radar even before his five standin appearances for Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri last year. This season, another high-profile gaijin with clear F1 aspirations is hoping to make a similar impact in Super Formula: reigning F2 champion Theo Pourchaire. Pourchaire finds himself in a slightly different position to Lawson, however. For one thing, unlike the Kiwi, he comes to Japan with the F2 title under his belt,…

The 0.228-second gap between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc did not accurately reflect the closeness of 2024’s opening qualifying bout, a tense encounter in which a handful of drivers could have realistically made an attempt for pole. It was Leclerc who actually set the fastest time across the whole of qualifying, a 1m29.165s that he’d logged in Q2, but the Monegasque was unable to replicate that lap when it really mattered. Verstappen, on the other hand, was a slowburner throughout the weekend’s practice sessions and built up to his qualifying lead bit by bit. When it came to the Q3 showdown, the first efforts hinted at a continuing close battle; Leclerc, George Russell and Carlos Sainz were all within two tenths of Verstappen’s initial 1m29.421s benchmark. Fernando Alonso, choosing to…

McLaren came away from the season opener feeling it had gained “1.8 seconds” year on year in Bahrain qualifying, according to team boss Andrea Stella, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri then finishing the race either side of Lewis Hamilton behind the top five. All three had to battle past Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin in the opening stint, having all underperformed in qualifying. This set them in the sixth, seventh and eighth places they would hold to the end, all having shed their starting soft tyres for hards on laps 12 (for Piastri and Hamilton) and 13 (Norris). In the second stint, a gap grew between the McLaren pair, with Mercedes then able to undercut Hamilton ahead of Piastri with a lap 33 second pitstop for more hard tyres, while…

Alpine pair Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly qualified on the back row for the Bahrain GP and only beat two drivers who encountered major dramas in the race – Valtteri Bottas, who lost 52 seconds at his second pitstop with a threaded wheelnut, and Logan Sargeant (see far left). After qualifying, Gasly had said “unfortunately, it doesn’t come as a surprise to us that we are lacking performance”, and he confirmed “there is some weight to be [lost], there’s some performance to come on the chassis”. But based on Alpine’s awful showings in the two sessions that really mattered last weekend, it will require a lot to turn its season around. At the start, both Ocon and Gasly launched past Sargeant, but Gasly’s line behind the Turn 1 chaos meant…

Porsche dominated the Qatar 1812Km last Saturday on the way to a maiden win in the World Endurance Championship for the 963 and a first series victory for any LMDh prototype. Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer were never headed from late in the second hour of a race that hit its full distance four minutes short of the 10-hour cut-off. But it wasn’t all plain sailing for the drivers of the #6 car. A late unscheduled pitstop after the car sustained body damage set doubts racing in Estre’s mind. When the Frenchman was instructed to pit with seven laps of the 335 to go, his reaction was “ahh, come on”. A series of clashes with LMGT3 machinery over the final quarter of the race had damaged both the…

FORMULA 2 SAKHIR (BHR) 1-2 MARCH ROUND 1/14 Zane Maloney banished memories of a difficult 2023 Formula 2 campaign, which ended with his dropping off the Red Bull Junior programme, by joining an exclusive club of drivers to win two races on the same weekend in the series. The Rodin Motorsport driver, now a protege of Sauber, put in a pair of drives in Bahrain that showcased a wide range of skills. After polewinner Kush Maini was disqualified from the session when his left undertray’s front external strake was found to be below the required height on his Invicta Racing entry – this blamed on a heavy kerb strike – Maloney was promoted to third for the feature race grid. The negative was that this pushed the Barbadian back in…

PALOU VERSUS EVERYBODY Alex Palou was in a class of his own in 2023, locking up the IndyCar title at the penultimate round – which last happened in Champ Car days in 2007 with Sebastien Bourdais – after putting together a historic run with Chip Ganassi Racing that featured an average finish of 3.7 courtesy of five wins, five further podiums and no finish worse than eighth in 17 races. Now the Spaniard, who has hoisted the Astor Cup Trophy twice over the past three seasons, is hoping to replicate a different type of history by becoming the first driver to successfully defend his crown and go back to back since Dario Franchitti pulled off his wondrous hat-trick from 2009-11. With rivals lurking around every corner, though, it’s obviously easier…

RALLYING World Rally squad M-Sport is offering a prize test in one of its top-tier Puma Rally1 machines to the highest-placed Ford driver in this year’s Asphalt Rally standings, while it has also confirmed that it will run Max McRae and Garry Pearson in this season’s British Rally Championship. The Asphalt series has enjoyed strong competitor interest in recent seasons, and the Ford-aligned team is now offering the private Rally1 test at its Cockermouth facility alongside a systems check and shakedown for the chosen driver’s own Fiesta Rally2 machine. “The popularity of asphalt rallying in the UK is developing at a fantastic pace, and the Asphalt Championship this year is made up of the best events the nation has to offer, each unique but very challenging,” said M-Sport managing director…

BRITISH GT Reigning British GT4 champion Matt Cowley is to defend his crown at the wheel of a Mercedes-AMG run by Paddock Motorsport. The 26-year-old claimed the GT4 title last year alongside Erik Evans aboard a Ford Mustang operated by Academy Motorsport. But after four seasons with Academy, his move to Paddock comes as part of a Pro-Am partnership with Ed McDermott. “It’s a big change for this season, switching teams, cars, and even classes, but I’m really looking forward to the challenge,” said Cowley. “When the chance to join Ed and Paddock Motorsport came about, I had to take it.” Paddock will also run a McLaren 720S GT3 Evo for team co-founder Martin Plowman and Mark Smith, with a second GT4 entry for a McLaren Artura due to be…

CSCC SLICKS SERIES Former British Touring Car Championship production class racer Alan Blencowe and experienced tin-top pedaller Claire Norman have teamed up to race the former’s TCR Cupra in the Classic Sports Car Club’s Slicks Series this season. For Wiltshire scaffolding contractor Blencowe, who recently acquired the car in which Mark Havers contested 2022 TCR events with his T4 Motorsport team, the programme ends a long sabbatical. “It’s my first time on slicks in 16 years,” said Blencowe, who debuted in the 750 Motor Club Stock Hatch championship with a Peugeot 205 GTI in 1999 and finished runner-up in the SEAT Cupra Cup in 2006. “I’ve known Claire for a long time. I coached her for an hour at Thruxton when she was competing in the VW Cup in 2004.…

Not so long ago, having a female driver on a grid was considered something of a novelty. Now, with increasing numbers of women taking up the sport, it’s becoming a little more commonplace. Whether as the result of all-female categories like W Series or F1 Academy, or a variety of grassroots initiatives, the idea of attracting more women into motorsport is in the spotlight now more than ever. And governing body Motorsport UK is determined to play a leading role in this. Its CEO Hugh Chambers says the organisation has progressed a long way in the past five or six years since efforts to increase female participation began in earnest. “We’re now into a far more exciting period, which is a maturing of those programmes,” he explains. “What I mean…

There can be no denying that 2023 was a very successful year for Motorsport UK Academy drivers. GB3 conqueror Callum Voisin, GB4 dominator Tom Mills, Radical Cup UK champion Theo Micouris, Mini Challenge Trophy title winner Tom Ovenden and European Rally class victor Jon Armstrong, alongside British Rallycross champions Patrick O’Donovan (Supercar) and Max Langmaid (Mini), are just some of the Academy members to achieve notable accolades last season. Add in the likes of Formula E champion Jake Dennis and British GT title winner Dan Harper who have graduated from its various programmes in recent years, and it’s clear how many careers the Academy has played a part in. But what exactly is the Academy and what does it do? “Motorsport UK Academy is a talent development pathway for young…

INDIANAPOLIS 500 One of motorsport’s most revered traditions appears to be under threat, with the IndyCar Series aiming to have a charter system finalised before this May’s Indianapolis 500. If it comes to pass, it could mean that cars no longer need to be among the fastest 33 in qualifying in order to make the field for the flagship race. Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles met with a small group of reporters last Thursday, saying: “Yesterday, we aired another kind of high-level starting point for the concept of charters that maybe will have more traction. And we’re going to work with a smaller group of team owners to get that developed. We’d like to see it fully developed and adopted before the 500 in coming weeks.” When asked…

WEC Cadillac has ruled out supplying its V-Series.R to customers in either the World Endurance Championship or the IMSA SportsCar Championship in the immediate future. And there is no word yet on whether its WEC squad could expand beyond the current one car. “It doesn’t make sense to go down that path at this point,” said Laura Wontrop Klauser, sportscar programme manager at Cadillac parent company General Motors. “Customer cars are not happening as of now, but you never use the word ‘definitely’ in this sport.” The concentration on its factory squads represents a departure from Cadillac’s previous strategy with its DPi-V.R Daytona Prototype international of 2017-22. Customer cars were raced in IMSA by the Spirit of Daytona/Flis Motorsports, JDC-Miller and Juncos squads. To the question as to why it…

WRC The World Rally Championship will abandon hybrid-powered Rally1 cars from next season as part of the FIA’s extensive plan for the future of top-level rallying. Following months of discussion, led by the FIA’s working group, the concept for the series’ future was approved at last week’s World Motor Sport Council. The move has been made to address spiralling costs and declining entries in the Rally1 class, which was introduced in 2022 but will now not see out the planned five-year homologation window. The current Rally1 cars will continue, but will run without their control 100kW hybrid units, despite the FIA agreeing a deal with supplier Contract Dynamics until the end of 2026. As well as the drop in performance from the removal of hybrid, the cars will undergo a…

Jeddah Length 3.836 miles Number of laps 50 UK START TIMES Thursday 7 March FP1 1330 FP2 1700 Friday 8 March FP3 1330 QUALIFYING 1700 Saturday 9 March RACE 1700 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 TV Highlights CHANNEL 4 2130 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS Drivers Constructors JEDDAH STATS Previous winners 2023 POLE POSITION Sergio Perez 1m28.265s POLE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m27.511s (2021) RACE LAP RECORD Lewis Hamilton 1m30.734s (2021) Podiums…

Andretti Global driver Jamie Chadwick is adamant that podium results are possible in her sophomore Indy NXT campaign, which gets under way this weekend in St Petersburg. Chadwick finished 12th in last year’s drivers’ standings and was the fourth-best-placed rookie, recording a best finish of sixth in Portland towards the end of the campaign. After a slow start to the year, the three-time W Series champion established herself as a regular in the top 10, finishing five of the last eight races in the higher points-paying positions, albeit well behind team-mates Hunter McElrea (second), fellow Briton Louis Foster (fourth) and James Roe Jr (seventh). “The thing that I like most about Indy NXT is that you know you’re rewarded if you have success,” says the 25-year-old. “It’s quite clear that…

We’ve remembered to bring the suncream for this one; after all, it’s ‘scorchio’ outside for FP1, with nary a ‘nimbo cumulos’ in sight. Protected by the power of Factor 30, we begin our trackside musings for the year at Turn 11. After all, this writer had spent some time observing the cars during testing here, at least on occasions when the drain cover had not persistently refused to stay in its moorings. You can tell who’s pushing straight out of the gate, depending on who brushes over the kerbs on the right-hand side the most before hooking the steering wheel left. Nico Hulkenberg is first on the scene, but he’s not going all-out as Haas spends the session focusing on its longer runs. Lando Norris, however, is going for it…

Several drivers had their races immediately compromised at the start when Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin was turned around by the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg at the apex of Turn 1. Hulkenberg had made a slow start and was overtaken by Stroll, who appeared to jink right just as the pack was braking for the tight right-hander. Hulkenberg then somewhat clumsily knocked into Stroll’s rear and, in the slow-speed chaos that followed, the German was struck in turn by Valtteri Bottas’s Sauber. Several others, most notably Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo, had to take avoiding action. “I had a good getaway, but got tagged by Nico,” said Stroll, who would go on to show strong pace on an attacking undercut-heavy two-stop strategy that meant he rose up the field…

Alpine notched up a notable achievement as first of the Hypercar newcomers home in Qatar, doubly so because it got one of its A424 LMDhs into the points. It was nip and tuck between the Renault brand and BMW for unofficial class honours, the deciding factor being some drastic fuel saving by Ferdinand Habsburg, Charles Milesi and Paul-Loup Chatin that ultimately yielded them eighth because they were able to complete the race on one pitstop fewer than their immediate rivals. The #35 was one of only two cars in Hypercar to go through the race on nine stops. Unlike Cadillac, however, Alpine didn’t set out with that aim. “It was just that I saved a load of fuel over the first stint and we decided to carry on like that,”…

FORMULA 3 SAKHIR (BHR) 1-2 MARCH ROUND 1/10 Luke Browning took an early lead in the Formula 3 championship standings after following up fellow Briton Arvid Lindblad’s sprint race victory with success of his own in Saturday’s Bahrain feature event. After his success in last November’s Macau Grand Prix, Williams F1 junior Browning entered the 2024 season as one of the favourites to top the order. And despite a rocky ride in Friday’s sprint race, the Hitech driver stamped his authority on the feature event. Browning’s qualifying position of second for the feature race meant he lined up 11th for the sprint. It is not uncommon for the jeopardy of a midfield placing to catch out drivers quicker than those around them, and this was the case for the 22-year-old.…

The greatest rider of his generation is now on machinery from the dominant manufacturer. Is Marc Marquez ready to banish his recent struggles for Honda and reclaim his crown? As Orwell once wrote, ‘there’s time for everything except the things worth doing’. In Marquez’s case, the thing worth doing is being competitive again on a MotoGP bike. And time is not something he has infinite amounts of. At 31 years old, Marquez is at least halfway through his MotoGP career, and for the past four seasons he has found himself facing myriad adversity. The badly broken arm in 2020 gave way to a season on the sidelines, and he was injury-plagued in 2021 and 2022, while his massive personal risk to go for a fourth major operation on his arm…

BRITISH GT Four-time British GT champion Jonny Adam will remain in the championship for another season after joining fledgling team Blackthorn to race the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3. The 39-year-old Scot, who took BGT titles in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019 and jointly holds the record for the most overall wins in the series, will partner Giacomo Petrobelli for Blackthorn’s first full-time campaign in the championship. The squad was founded in 2022 by Dan Jeal and David McDonald and has become an Aston Martin partner team. “I’ve never worked with them before but I was out with them last week in Portimao and already it’s a nice relationship,” said Adam, who raced with James Cottingham in a 2 Seas Mercedes-AMG last year, taking three wins and emerging as championship…

CIRCUIT RALLYING Michael Igoe and Will Atkins scored their fourth Circuit Rally Championship win in a row at Anglesey last weekend. By topping the times on five of the six stages of the Lee Holland Memorial Rally, the Citroen C3 Rally2 pair came home 48 seconds clear of reigning champions John Griffiths and Emma Morrison with their Ford Fiesta R5. Rob Hughes and Sion Cunniff, also in a Fiesta R5, had been in second place from the start, but a sheared front-wheel flange left them parked on the grass just yards from the finish of the final test. A first-stage spin had left Griffiths playing catch-up but, by the end of stage three, he was back into fourth and challenging Paul Murro/Craig Simkiss (Fiesta R5). It was level pegging for…

MASTERS HISTORIC RACING New Masters Historic Racing boss Fred Fatien says 2024 will be a “transition” year where drivers will be consulted to determine whether any new series or changes will be introduced for the following season. Fatien’s GP Extreme organisation, which operates a fleet of historic machinery and has run the Gulf Historic Dubai Grand Prix Revival event, merged with Masters at the end of last year amid a desire from MHR founder Ron Maydon to step back from day-to-day control. All of Masters’ existing series, which span Historic Formula 1 to tin-top and sportscar contests, will continue this year, but Fatien says tweaks could be made thereafter. “This year is to understand what the driver wants and see what they feel needs improving and what they like,” said…

The path to forging a career in motorsport is a difficult one for aspiring drivers, and even for those with bags of talent it can all count for nothing without the necessary budgets or the proper opportunities at the right time. This is why scholarships, particularly on the national scene, can be such an important part of a young driver’s career, and one that can offer a vital boost as they look to climb the ranks. Championships such as Ginetta Junior and Junior Saloon Cars have established, well-respected scholarships that attract lots of hopefuls, but a relatively new venture that’s hoping to become a mainstay was held for only the second time last month. The Dragon Sport Scholarship is the brainchild of Rhys Lloyd, the 2008 Welsh Sports and Saloon…

One of the many success stories from the Motorsport UK Academy last year was the way in which Theo Micouris made an instant impression upon switching from karts to cars. He not only won the SR1 class title in his rookie season against some strong opposition, but he also claimed the overall Radical Cup UK honours. Micouris’s first connection with the Academy came in 2020, when he was selected to represent the UK in the CIK-FIA Karting Academy Trophy, and he subsequently joined the Futures scheme last season. He says the support and guidance he received played a significant part in his title-winning performances. “It’s taught me everything I need to know going forward in my career, both on and off track,” Micouris says. “It’s opened lots of doors to…