Innehållsförteckning för 28/11/24 från Autosport

Congratulations to Max Verstappen on becoming a four-time Formula 1 world champion. It’s been an up-and-down season for the Dutchman and Red Bull, but it’s hard to argue that the crown has gone to the wrong driver. Even if Lando Norris wins the final two grands prix, he’ll still have ‘only’ five victories to Verstappen’s eight. It seemed a little unfortunate that Verstappen decided to suggest he’d have won the championship in a Ferrari or McLaren, on the very weekend that he clinched the title. We’d argue that would require some changes of team strategy and for him to have had a weaker team-mate than either Norris or Charles Leclerc faced in 2024 to be true, but the interesting part is that the 27-year-old felt the need to respond to…

FORMULA 1 Formula 1 has agreed a deal in principle with General Motors and its Cadillac brand to enter the series in 2026 as an 11th team. The deal will mean Cadillac joining as a customer squad in 2026, while developing its own power units for 2028, using the existing Andretti Global project in Silverstone as its backbone. GM officials were in attendance at last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix to discuss a deal with F1 and Liberty Media over an entry. The American manufacturer had long been working with Andretti Global on a prospective F1 bid, which was accepted by governing body the FIA, but was refused entry by F1 itself, which said the team would not add enough value to the series. There was also tension between the…

FORMULA 1 Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu reckons that “everybody” is against the planned cost cap offset for Audi for its 2026 entry to account for Swiss salary levels, because it risks opening a can of worms. The higher average pay in Switzerland means that the current Sauber team operates at a theoretical disadvantage regarding funds available for development compared to teams employing an equivalent-size workforce in the UK and Italy. This has prompted the FIA to table an amendment to the 2026 cost cap regulations to accommodate Swiss wage data and cost of living from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. Komatsu revealed that the cost cap offset had not been finalised, largely because the nine other teams are against the move, and suggested that the FIA had…

SPORTSCARS Rob Bell is drawing a line under his successful sportscar career at the age of 45. The winner of an overall Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup crown and two Le Mans Series class titles is hanging up his helmet to take up a management role with McLaren. The Briton will become sporting director of the motorsport arm of McLaren Automotive after 13 years on its books as a factory driver. Bell moves into the job as part of a management reshuffle in which Ian James will take overall control alongside his managing directorship of McLaren in Formula E. “I’m stepping down as a McLaren factory driver and definitely retiring from professional racing, though I’m not ruling out the odd one-off,” said Bell. “I’m really happy with my decision: I’ve…

SUPER GT Four-time Super GT champion Ronnie Quintarelli has announced that his glittering career in the series will come to an end after next month’s finale at Suzuka. The 45-year-old Italian is calling time on a 20-year stint in the Japanese series, the bulk of which he has spent as a factory Nissan driver. Quintarelli described his decision to step down as “very difficult” but added that he felt it was the “right moment to step back and let a new legacy begin with a new generation of drivers”. After taking the 2004 All-Japan Formula 3 title, Quintarelli made his Super GT debut in 2005 with the SARD Toyota team, which he initially twinned with Formula Nippon (now Super Formula) before being snapped up by Nissan in 2008. From 2009…

Losail Length 3.367 miles Number of laps 57 UK START TIMES Friday 29 November FP 1330 SPRINT QUALIFYING 1730 Saturday 30 November SPRINT 1400 QUALIFYING 1800 Sunday 1 December RACE 1600 CATCH THE RACE LIVE SKY SPORTS F1 BBC RADIO 5 LIVE SPORTS EXTRA Highlights CHANNEL 4 2100 TYRE ALLOCATION CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS Drivers Constructors LOSAIL STATS Previous winners 2023 POLE POSITION Max Verstappen 1m23.778s POLE LAP RECORD Max Verstappen 1m23.778s (2023) RACE LAP RECORD Max Verstappen 1m24.319s (2023) Podiums Max Verstappen 2 Lewis Hamilton 1 Oscar Piastri 1 Fernando Alonso 1 Lando Norris 1…

It’s quite easy to marvel at the sight of a World Rally Championship car darting through narrow asphalt lanes, sliding between snow banks and surviving some of the world’s toughest rocky terrains. But exactly how are these machines built? Hyundai Motorsport has lifted the lid on the process with a behind-the-scenes look at how it constructs its €200,000 i20 N Rally2 car that competes in WRC2, and has won back-to-back European Rally Championship titles in the hands of Hayden Paddon. Regardless of discipline, race and rally cars are built meticulously – it’s a fine art to assemble a life-size Meccano or Lego set, featuring approximately 3000 parts. It’s a process that Hyundai has honed to enable it to produce 30-50 cars per year from its Alzenau workshop in Germany. “To…

SILVERSTONE FESTIVAL A race for Group C cars will feature as part of the Silverstone Festival for the first time in nearly a decade next year when Masters Historic Racing’s new Le Mans 80+ series joins the timetable. The mighty prototypes were a popular fixture of the Silverstone event up until 2017 when dwindling grid numbers led to just a few demonstration appearances. But the cars will now be back with a 40-minute contest on the Saturday evening of the 22-24 August meeting. “Group C has always been a massive crowd-pleaser at the Festival and, as soon as Masters announced this super-exciting new grid, we knew we had to squeeze it onto the bill,” said event director Nick Wigley. “Aside from possibly Le Mans, there can be no better place…

HISTORIC RALLYING Seb Perez and Dale Bowen mastered a truly challenging Rally Anglo Caledonian over the weekend, as Perez secured the British Historic Rally Championship. The arrival of Storm Bert made the new two-day event in the Scottish Borders a huge challenge, as heavy snow fell on Saturday morning across the stages in the Kielder forest. Perez and Bowen in their Porsche 911 mastered the conditions and took a resounding victory despite running first on the road in the two-wheel-drive pack. They ended the rally a massive seven minutes up on the Ford Escort Mk2 of Paul Thompson and Josh Davison, as Perez claimed two maximum scores in the BHRC division. However, the planned showdown between Perez and Mark Higgins for the title failed to materialise when Higgins injured his…

CSCC The Classic Sports Car Club’s Ramair BMW Championship will get standalone grids next season, having shared with the Open Series for much of this year. The category, formerly known as Kumho BMW, joined the CSCC’s ranks from the British Automobile Racing Club for this season and had struggled with small entries in recent years. These numbers rose following the switch and, with several Mini drivers expected to swell its ranks for 2025, the CSCC has opted to give the championship its own track time. “The number of people registered showed there’s a good interest in it,” explained CSCC director David Smitheram. “Secondly, a whole lot of Mini drivers have approached us – some we’ve talked to used to race in Turbo Tin Tops and some raced in Kumho BMW…

Max Edmundson’s two Civic Cup titles have extended Area Motorsport’s incredible record in the series to eight titles in 11 years. While Edmundson and multiple TCR champion Josh Files duelled for this year’s crown, Alistair Camp and Harvey Caton also contributed to an unprecedented clean sweep of race wins for the Staffordshire-based squad, whose drivers filled the championship’s top six. “I don’t think we’ve really done anything different to previous years as a team,” says Area boss Rob Baker, who himself won the Civic title in both 2014 and 2018. “We’ve certainly ensured that everything is identical across the board on the cars – set-up stuff down to a millimetre, down to a kilo on the corner weights, all that sort of stuff. So, when a driver is saying ‘my…

As the machine in which he achieved his greatest career successes, Ryan Hunter-Reay’s pick for his favourite car comes as no surprise. The more pertinent question is establishing the 2012 IndyCar champion and 2014 Indianapolis 500 winner’s preferred Dallara DW12 specification. Named after its late development driver Dan Wheldon, the DW12 can be considered as a family of cars that share the same name. Although its carbon fibre monocoque is unchanged, numerous facelifts have resulted in vastly different aero characteristics, while the extra weight due to the arrival of hybrid power means today’s iteration is “a completely different car” to drive. Hunter-Reay picks the Chevrolet-powered version he raced in 2012-13, above the Honda he drove to Victory Lane at the Brickyard, as his favourite DW12. That his ongoing Indy 500-only…

WEC Lamborghini has quit the World Endurance Championship – for the time being at least. The Italian manufacturer will contest neither the Hypercar class with its SC63 LMDh nor LMGT3 with the Huracan GT3 EVO2 next season in what it is describing as a “pause” in its participation at the highest level of sportscar racing. At the same time, its Iron Lynx factory team is to bring Mercedes into the WEC – and back to the Le Mans 24 Hours for the first time since its catastrophic appearance in 1999. A statement from Lamborghini followed the publication last week of the 2025 WEC entry list. It explained that for the SC63, co-developed by the Lamborghini Squadra Corse in-house motorsport department and Ligier Automotive, the focus next year will be the…

FORMULA 1 Sergio Perez’s future at the Red Bull Formula 1 team will be decided following a shareholder meeting after the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The beleaguered Mexican has hung onto his seat this year despite enduring a dismal season that has left him 251 points adrift of his team-mate, newly crowned 2024 drivers’ champion Max Verstappen. Despite a string of lacklustre performances, with Perez’s lack of points all but ending Red Bull’s hopes of the constructors’ title, he has publicly enjoyed the backing of the team, albeit with clear calls that results need to improve. Perez appears to have this weekend’s Qatar GP and the final race of the year in Abu Dhabi to prove he deserves a drive in 2025, with a number of options open to…

WRC Toyota will expand its World Rally Championship entry to five cars at selected events next year following confirmation that Sami Pajari will join the team for a maiden full-time Rally1 campaign. Pajari, who clinched the WRC2 title last weekend in a Toyota, will join the newly crowned 2024 WRC manufacturers’ champion in a line-up headlined by the full-time return of two-time world champion Kalle Rovanpera following his decision to contest a partial season this year. Elfyn Evans, winner of last weekend’s Rally Japan season finale, will stay on for a sixth consecutive year at Toyota alongside Takamoto Katsuta and eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier, who is set for another part-time campaign. Pajari had been tipped to land a role in Toyota’s Rally1 programme after impressing in three GR Yaris…

IMSA Robert Wickens will race in the IMSA SportsCar Championship next year in a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R equipped with hand controls. The Canadian will contest the five sprint rounds of the series with DXDT Racing. Wickens, 35, is graduating to the GTD class of the premier IMSA series after three seasons racing Hyundai TCR machinery with Bryan Herta Autosport on the support bill in the Michelin Pilot Cup. Wickens has taken the class title in 2023 since returning to the cockpit in the wake of life-changing injuries sustained in an IndyCar accident at Pocono in 2018. “This is the opportunity I have been seeking for quite a while now, and it wouldn’t be possible without the support from David Askew at DXDT, Bosch [which has developed the hand controls]…

British TCR battler Jenson Brickley was denied in his hopes for the Spanish title at Barcelona last weekend. Instead, it was highly rated Argentinian youngster Ignacio Montenegro (pictured) who added the crown to his recent Motorsport Games gold medal at the wheel of his ALM Motorsport Honda Civic Type R. Brickley took his Cupra to ninth in race one, with third place for Montenegro lifting him into the points lead. Montenegro clinched it with a fourth in race two, to Brickley’s 10th. Mike Halder won both races in his Honda. ROBB GETS JHR SEAT IndyCar nomad Sting Ray Robb will line up with his third different team in three seasons next year. The Idahoan, who raced with AJ Foyt Enterprises this season, has returned to Juncos Hollinger Racing, the team…

Something important happened for McLaren and Lando Norris at the end of last weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix. That’s in addition to conceding the world championship to Max Verstappen, which had really gone in the wild Brazilian wetness and the Dutchman’s brilliance there. This was Norris’s lifting of his pace in his final stint. His delta tracks remarkably closely with the charge that Lewis Hamilton produced to such acclaim while behind George Russell as the end of the race approached. Finally, Norris had got the MCL38 working around its tendency to be “killing the fronts” on low-downforce tracks. He did this by pushing the tyres harder from earlier, and at times bullying in oversteer to try to reach the critical tyre temperature window he’d hitherto generally not attained. His out-lap…

Las Vegas: a city defined by the intangible element of luck. Those who enjoy Lady Luck’s kiss of fortune bask in the sodium lights of the strip’s myriad casinos, while those unlucky souls are doomed to walk the cold, windy streets as the desert heat joins the sun in falling behind the horizon. And, as the competitive order of the 2024 Formula 1 season has become increasingly comparable to a slot machine, only luck seems to have any influence over the entropy. Sure, you make your own luck. Max Verstappen did that earlier in the year; he’d pounced on a once-competitive Red Bull RB20 in the early season and reeled off a string of victories. Seven wins from the opening 10 grands prix suggested that 2024 was set to be…

McLaren suffered its worst race result in the dry since it upgraded the MCL38 for May’s Miami Grand Prix. Lando Norris finished sixth in Las Vegas, with Oscar Piastri claiming seventh. “When the track grip is low, our car suffers a little bit; it’s not generating much grip from the tyres in these conditions,” said team principal Andrea Stella. McLaren feels this is down to not spending much of its development time overall in this rules era on optimising a low-drag configuration, with the team also having to adapt its ‘mini-DRS’ skinny rear wing after it won in Baku in September – the last track dominated by long straights before Vegas. Stella also claimed that “Lando is a driver that is quite demanding on the front tyres”, and so this…

Haas left Las Vegas back ahead in its tight scrap with Alpine and RB for sixth place in the 2024 constructors’ championship, thanks to Nico Hulkenberg overhauling Yuki Tsunoda late on. With Alpine’s promise disappearing, Haas’s main challenge was to catch Tsunoda, who had started two places ahead of Hulkenberg in seventh on the grid. After initially battling Oscar Piastri and Lewis Hamilton behind the RB driver, as well as Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly, Hulkenberg had a two-second deficit to make up on the hard tyres for the final two stints. A later first stop meant he climbed through the order initially with Alex Albon, before he got ahead of the Williams driver on lap 22. In the third stint, Hulkenberg cleared Liam Lawson and Esteban Ocon on their…

To be a world champion in motorsport requires skill, resilience and mental fortitude. All of those attributes were in abundance at Rally Japan, where Thierry Neuville finally realised his childhood dream of being crowned as king after one of the most dramatic season finales in World Rally Championship history. The 2024 WRC season has been turbulent and somewhat complex, thanks to its controversial new points system. But in terms of drama and unpredictability, rallying’s top tier has been off the charts, and Japan provided the perfect illustration. Neuville and co-driver Martijn Wydaeghe were tested to the limit and forced to again dig deep to lift rallying’s most coveted prize. “We made it,” proclaimed the Hyundai star, who finally laid to rest his ‘bridesmaid’ tag earned through five times finishing as…

FORMULA FORD Ma7da champion Ben Powney says he will only contest selected rounds next year and instead focus on a campaign in Formula Ford machinery. Powney has raced in Ma7da since its inception in 2020 and, after finishing runner-up on two occasions, finally clinched the title with Team Sellars Racing this season. He also entered the Formula Ford Festival in a 1992 Jamun M92, and intends to race the car in the British Racing & Sports Car Club’s Super Classic Pre-’99 series. “I’ve raced in Locost and Ma7da for what feels like ages, it’s probably nearing 10 years – now I’ve done it and won the championship,” said Powney, who also intends to race a 1971 Jamun T3 in Historic FF1600. “I’ve built a good relationship with Peter Alexander of…

ROADSPORTS The 750 Motor Club’s popular Roadsports series will become a championship next year following requests from drivers. The category caters for a wide variety of cars and features a mini-enduro format. It has been one of the 750MC’s best-supported series in recent seasons, with its grids averaging 38 entries for the past two years. “It’s something we’ve thought about for the last few years and it’s very much a case of listening to feedback from drivers,” said the 750MC’s James Winstanley. “Some people in it have got Club Enduro to focus on but, for people with Roadsports as their main thing, especially for those in the lower classes, it’s something they really wanted. “Roadsports is a really good paddock with lots of family teams and people are friends within…

HILLCLIMB Leading British hillclimber Damien Bradley is planning to take his 800bhp Subaru Legacy to Pikes Peak next June to tackle the world’s most famous hillclimb. Bradley has been a leading contender in the Legacy over several seasons in UK hillclimbing, but now plans to take on the ultimate event in the car that started out as a £500, 87bhp, two-wheel-drive shopping car. Bradley said: “It’s the ultimate dream and what I’ve set my sights on to achieve with the Legacy. I’m hopeful that we will get selected for the event and an opportunity to go to Pikes Peak is something I need to grab with both hands.” Bradley is currently having the Legacy reworked to cope with the altitude, as the 12.4-mile Pikes Peak climb in North America rises…

Coming out of GB3 at the end of last season, I wanted to have a chance to prove myself against some of the best drivers in closed-wheel racing, something I hadn’t driven before. The Porsche Carrera Cup GB appealed to me because it’s a hard car to drive and a lot of people said to me, ‘If you can drive that, you can drive anything.’ That was the main thing, because it allows me to pick up experience in one of the hardest cars out there, and in the long run it’s great experience to take with me. It was difficult to learn how to drive the car, so the technique when I first got in was hard to apply. Throughout the year things got better, and that was proven…

WEC Two-time Le Mans 24 Hours class winner Harry Tincknell will race Aston Martin’s new Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar in the World Endurance Championship next year. The Briton has been confirmed by its The Heart of Racing factory squad along with team regular Alex Riberas. Tincknell has joined the Hypercar class attack run by a team to be known at Aston Martin THOR after playing a key role in development of the Valkyrie AMR-LMH since its first run in July. He fulfilled testing duties in his role as a driver contracted to Multimatic Motorsports, which has co-developed the AMR-LMH and will also be a key component of the Brackley-based operation running the cars in the WEC. The Briton, 33, described the chance to return to a manufacturer with which he…

Who’s this promising Hypercar rookie, then? In the build-up to clinching his fourth successive Formula 1 title last weekend, Max Verstappen ventured to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway ‘roval’ last Tuesday for half an hour of running in an Acura ARX-06, as part of Honda’s ‘Hybrid Heroes’ celebration. It was his first taste of GTP machinery from the IMSA SportsCar Championship, and Verstappen said that he would like to race in the Daytona 24 Hours: “I know that when I want to do it, I want to go there and try to win it, be really competitive. The only way to do so is by doing some proper testing and get really well prepared, which is not possible at the moment. But, who knows? Maybe in a few years’ time.…

FORMULA 2 Recently crowned Formula 3 champion Leonardo Fornaroli is to get an early F2 debut when he steps up for the final round of the 2025 season at next week’s Abu Dhabi finale. The Italian (left) will slot into the vacant seat at Rodin Motorsport in place of Zane Maloney. The Barbadian will have his swansong F2 event in Qatar this weekend before heading to Brazil for his Formula E debut with Lola-Yamaha Abt in Sao Paulo, which clashes with the Yas Marina F2 finale. “It will be a big challenge for me because this is my first time in the F2 car without any practice so I have a lot to learn, but I can’t wait for it,” said Fornaroli, who already has a deal with Invicta Racing…

BTCC The gripping 2024 title fight notwithstanding, the British Touring Car Championship has copped some flak of late for declining grids and a perceived barrier to entry to promising young talent. The latest liaison confirmed for 2025 hints at a reversal of fortune on both fronts. Exciting Mini Challenge runner-up Max Hall is stepping up to race a Cupra Leon for Un-Limited Motorsport as that squad expands from its single-car BTCC bow in 2024 to field two entries. The West Country racer will be just 18 years old when he lines up for the first race, after a single season in the elite JCW series of the Mini ‘pyramid’. The deal has been put together following two test sessions, both at Brands Hatch. “I am so excited,” said Hall. “The…

OBITUARY As head of the British Saloon Car Championship team that carried his name, Malcolm Gartlan, who has died at the age of 85, was a highly respected figure among aficionados of the hairy Group 5 and Group 2 tin-tops of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Malcolm Gartlan Racing was synonymous with the late Australian Brian Muir, who drove the team’s Chevrolet Camaro Z28 to the title in the big class of the BSCC in 1971 and was a mainstay of the squad until it pulled out at the end of 1973, at the dawn of the production-based Group 1 era. Gartlan, a builder and property developer from Pershore, had competed in rallies and sprints before turning team owner, initially in sportscars with Lotus Elan and then Ford GT40…

Formula 2 and Formula 3 exist to supply a constant feed of up-and-coming driving talent to motorsport’s top tier, Formula 1. But with some of the most promising names fading into other categories after brief stints, or not making the grand prix scene at all, is the system broken? The health of the ladder to F1 is a constant topic of debate, with those who pay close attention to the junior levels often up in arms when the F2 champion misses out on a seat or, like the rare case last winter, no drivers are promoted whatsoever. Twelve months later, what many would have described as a broken system could now be termed as flourishing, with Ollie Bearman, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Gabriel Bortoleto and Franco Colapinto all making the direct…

A fourth career pole position came as a surprise to George Russell, who admitted that Mercedes had been caught off guard by its surprisingly strong one-lap performance at Las Vegas. Although it had been theorised that a cold track would give Mercedes’ W15 a leg-up, given its frequent problems with tyre overheating in warmer climes, the Brackley squad did not anticipate leading all three practice sessions before Russell’s run to pole. Q3 had been delayed by Franco Colapinto’s heavy shunt at Turn 16, which required repairs to the barrier, but this scarcely put Russell off his stride. The Briton took the advantage in the opening laps of the top 10 shootout, setting a 1m32.811s to sit clear of Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen. This, however, fell nearly three tenths short…

Williams was another team leaving Las Vegas wondering what might have been after Franco Colapinto crashed in Q2 and Alex Albon retired with an engine issue while running in points contention. Colapinto’s 14th-place Q2 result after he whacked the Turn 16 inside wall and crashed hard on the exit – triggering additional medical checks before he was cleared to race – was lost when he started from the pitlane after Williams changed his brake cooling duct specification, as well as fitting a new gearbox. He scrapped with the Saubers, particularly Zhou Guanyu, who got ahead for 13th on the final lap when Colapinto slid luridly in Turn 3 and was left with little defence. “I was really struggling with the balance,” he said afterwards. Albon had risen from starting 17th…

Sami Pajari rounded off a breakthrough season by securing the WRC2 crown before graduating to Toyota’s factory World Rally line-up for next year. To seal the title, Pajari and co-driver Enni Malkonen needed to finish either first or second in Japan to deny Oliver Solberg, who headed the standings but was absent from the entry list having already completed the required seven points-scoring rounds. A puncture on stage two threatened to drop the duo out of second spot behind early leader Nikolay Gryazin. The pressure was eased when Gus Greensmith found a rock face in stage three, which halted the Brit’s hopes of leapfrogging Pajari. From there, Pajari delivered a calculated and error-free drive to finish second, 1m46.5s behind winner Gryazin’s Citroen, which was enough to seal the WRC2 crown…

GB3 British Formula 4 squad Argenti Motorsport has entered into a partnership with Italian single-seater powerhouse Prema Racing for an expansion into GB3 next year. The Argenti team’s roots lie in karting but it moved into car racing for 2020 in British F4. It has been a mainstay of the series since then, alongside continuing in karting, and guided Matias Zagazeta to second in the 2021 points. Now it has formed a “full technical partnership” with Prema, which has enjoyed success across a swathe of European and international categories, and this involves Prema engineers working with the team and the sharing of data. The new arrangement has enabled Argenti to join GB3 for 2025, when a new car – featuring DRS and improved aerodynamics – is introduced. “We’ve worked with…

CLUB TIME ATTACK Club Time Attack is planning to increase its circuit racing offering next year by launching a new championship for under two-litre turbocharged touring cars built since 2011. The organisation is celebrating its 20th birthday next season and has spent much of that time focused upon its Time Attack sprint-style competition and drifting, but has started to organise conventional circuit racing in recent years. Its Racing Hondas series enjoyed a surge in popularity for its second campaign this year after sponsor Tegiwa heavily subsidised entry fees. Now Time Attack chief Andy Barnes, who previously ran the JRM Nissan GT-R FIA GT1 squad, believes there is an opportunity to move into multi-marque touring car racing with the new Ultimate Racing Championship. He wants to create a low-cost category that…

MIGHTY MINIS The Mighty Minis Championship will adopt a single-class structure for next season when it joins the 750 Motor Club’s ranks. The series has been administered by a variety of different clubs in the past, most recently the Castle Combe Racing Club, but will now join the 750MC for its 30th season in 2025 after appearing at several of the club’s meetings over the past few years. “All of the [750MC] events we’ve been at have been very well subscribed and had quite a variety of cars that were entertaining when we’re not watching Mighty Mini racing,” said coordinator Rodger Tello. “It seemed like an obvious choice.” At the same time, the poorly supported and more expensive Super Mighty division will be dropped. Instead, all drivers will use a…

The Civic Cup has developed a reputation over the years for being a hugely competitive championship. The cars are closely matched and there’s always a cluster of star names at the front. Take a look at this season’s grid – the likes of 2019 TCR Europe champion Josh Files, 2021 TCR UK conqueror Lewis Kent, past victor Alistair Camp and Liam McGill, a multiple title winner in Fords, are just a few of those on the entry list. But, despite the quality of the opposition, it’s the same driver who has ultimately prevailed in each of the past two years: Max Edmundson. The category may not have the highest of profiles, but such results have marked the 19-year-old out as a rising star of the tin-top world. Especially when you…