Innholdsfortegnelse for 10/08/23 i Autosport

It’s summer-break time in Formula 1 – not that the staff of the seven UK-based teams would recognise it as they crank the heating up and gaze out at the latest dismal rainy day – so it’s time to present our half-term wrap-up of the season so far. Beginning on page 18, Alex Kalinauckas takes a look at the running themes of 2023 and how they might play out between now and the end of the season. Meanwhile, Jake Boxall-Legge – that’s Mr Boxall-Legge to you! – brings you his driver reports. Who does ‘Sir’ rank as top of the class, and who’s staying behind for extra tuition? One driver who was undoubtedly on top of the sport was Tazio Nuvolari. Pre-eminent motorsport historian Doug Nye returns to these pages…

FORMULA 1 Mercedes junior and Formula 2 title contender Frederik Vesti will take over George Russell’s car for his Formula 1 free practice debut at October’s Mexican Grand Prix. Mercedes has handed the 21-year-old Dane the run in the W14 at Mexico City as the first of its two mandatory FP1 rookie runs of the season. “I’m incredibly proud to be doing the FP1 session in Mexico City with the team – it’s a dream come true,” said Vesti, who is second in the F2 points. Mercedes chief Toto Wolff added: “Fred has executed an impressive Formula 2 campaign so far this season. Driving in an FP1 session is the next step in his development and we’re looking forward to giving him that opportunity.” It will be the second session…

INDYCAR The Nashville IndyCar track will get a new street circuit design next year, transferring most of its current layout from near the Tennessee Titans NFL team’s Nissan Stadium across the river to the downtown district. The Tennessean city, world-famous for its country music venues and bars, has signed a new three-year deal with IndyCar that includes a 2.17-mile, seven-turn track design. This was required because the Titans are to move to a new, $2.1billion, 60,000-seat stadium to be built along the east bank of the Cumberland River. “We had the situation where I think necessity is the mother of invention, the situation where the Nissan Stadium developed,” said Mark Miles, president and CEO of IndyCar Series owner Penske Entertainment Corp. “They came to us with a plan that just…

IMSA The Indianapolis Motor Speedway IMSA SportsCar Championship fixture will be a six-hour race on its second season back on the calendar in 2024. The new duration for the event on the combined oval-road course was announced when next year’s 11-race calendar was announced last week. The Indianapolis 6 Hours, scheduled for 22 September, will become a fifth race counting towards the North American Endurance Cup segment of the IMSA series alongside Daytona, Sebring, Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. They add up to a combined total of 58 hours of racing. The Detroit fixture, formerly held at the Belle Isle venue, will return on the revived street circuit used for the first time by IndyCar this year as part of a double-header weekend with the single-seater…

BTCC What do you do when the brother of a world champion has left your team? Why, you call up a world champion of course. That’s what Team Hard has done, with 2012 World Touring Car title winner Rob Huff set to return to the British Touring Car Championship in place of Nic Hamilton at Knockhill this weekend. Hamilton quit the Kent squad before free practice for the most recent round at Croft, too late for a replacement to be found that weekend, and Team Hard chief Tony Gilham needed to fill the seat of the vacant Cupra Leon for the visit to Scotland in order not to be at risk of forfeiting a TBL entrants’ licence. Huff, who lies fourth in the TCR World Tour in an Audi, was…

When Red Bull bought out Minardi at the end of 2005, it did so with a clear identity and goal as it metamorphosed into Scuderia Toro Rosso. In his official capacity as talentspotter-in-chief, Helmut Marko had put together a band of a few junior drivers who he thought could be worth a punt in Formula 1, but there weren’t enough seats on the grid for them all. By buying up Minardi, he had a ready-made ‘junior team’ that could serve as an apprenticeship for the drivers next on the conveyor belt with a view to moving up to the parent Red Bull Racing squad. Although the 2006 pairing of Vitantonio Liuzzi (who’d shared the second Red Bull drive with Christian Klien) and Scott Speed never made the move from Toro…

Unhappy with lack of accessibility at Spa I have just returned from three days at the Belgian Formula 1 Grand Prix with my son who’s in a wheelchair, and have to say that the help and assistance offered and given by the Spa-Francorchamps circuit was non-existent. In this day and age it is simply unacceptable to exclude due to disability, especially when Belgium claims to be inclusive to wheelchair users and travellers with limited mobility. We got no help from anyone at the circuit, despite asking – the Belgian Red Cross; other first aiders on site; the security people at the circuit; circuit staff; and the Belgian police. The real low point was when they closed an access/exit point on Saturday evening – after we had been using it for…

A new name will join the Hypercar grid in the World Endurance Championship next year, and you probably hadn’t even heard of it until quite recently. Unless, that is, you are a cinema aficionado. There hasn’t been an Isotta Fraschini road car built since the early 1950s, but its luxury limousines were once commonplace in Hollywood, on screen and off. One featured in the 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard and they were also the transport of choice of the likes of silent movie star Rudolph Valentino in the 1920s. The return of a marque whose racing heritage is buried in the mists of time – it won the Targa Florio in 1908 – with the new Tipo 6 LMH Competizione is a complicated one. But at its heart is a decision…

Lightning struck twice for Scott McLaughlin on the streets of Nashville last Sunday, when the three-time Supercars champion failed to convert a race win here for Team Penske from pole position by a tiny margin once again. This time, it was Andretti Autosport’s young star Kyle Kirkwood who got the better of him, by 0.7633 seconds, meaning McLaughlin’s cumulative losing deficit across two years here is 0.87s! And, while there was an intriguing battle for the win between those two, intensified by a late red flag and sprint to the finish, standout championship performers Alex Palou and Josef Newgarden battled to the chequered flag behind them too. McLaughlin repeated his pole position of 2022 in qualifying, which was delayed due to heavy rain by over three and a half hours,…

IMSA SPORTSCAR ROAD AMERICA (USA) 6 AUGUST ROUND 8/11 Unpredictability has become a theme in this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship, and it was prevalent once again during Sunday’s two-hour-and-40-minute race at Road America, where two of the top three GTP championship contenders hit trouble even before the green flag. Ultimately, the Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 of Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr bounced back from a mediocre couple of practice sessions on Friday to claim an emphatic first victory of the season. The Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R of Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims had seemed likely to extend its championship lead after Derani took full advantage of a productive test at the newly repaved 4.048-mile venue to claim pole position on Saturday afternoon. But their hopes seemed to have been dashed…

SUPER GT FUJI (JPN) 6 AUGUST ROUND 4/8 Nissan scored its second win of the Super GT season in another chaotic race at Fuji featuring mixed conditions and a red flag. This time it was the NISMO-run NDDP Racing Z of Katsumasa Chiyo and Mitsunori Takaboshi that prevailed, taking advantage of the superiority of their Michelin tyres in the wet. The pair had won the previous race at Suzuka on the road, only to be later penalised for having not completed their second mandatory pitstop when the race was abandoned, but this time there was no doubting who the rightful winners were. Takaboshi, who took over from Chiyo for the third and final stint, was already looking in a strong position when the race was suspended on lap 68 of…

TRUCK RACING Isle of Man TT legend John McGuinness is due to make his Truck racing debut at Donington Park this weekend. McGuinness, a 23-time TT winner, will compete in four races in the International Truck Prix during the Convoy in the Park meeting for Team Oliver Racing. The 51-year-old, who has competed on four wheels in the Fun Cup and Ginetta GT Academy, recently acquired a Scania truck that he will use this weekend. “I’ve been watching a bit on YouTube, there’s a bit going on,” said McGuinness of Truck racing. “It’s quite aggressive at times. I’ve done plenty of racing but bike racing isn’t really a contact sport. “I’ll give as good as we get, I’m going to be a rookie so I’ll have a target on my…

SPA SIX HOURS A record 22 Ford GT40s – comprising a fifth of the 109-strong entry, eight with previous winners aboard – will make for a spectacular start to the 30th Spa Six Hours race for pre-1966 cars on 30 September. Sixteen of the 29 editions run since 1993 have been won by GT40s. Indeed, in what has become an increasingly one-sided battle, the past 11 have finished that way. Belgian veterans Jean ‘Beurlys’ Blaton and Willy Braillard, anchored by Pierre Dieudonne, took the chequer in 1994. Germany’s Christian Glaesel, victorious in 2003 and 2011, is the earliest of the GT40 winners saddling them again this year, sharing with Seb Perez. Dutchmen David and Olivier Hart, with Nicky Pastorelli, defend their 2022 crown, but immediate predecessors Olly Bryant/James Cottingham, Miles…

Plenty of anticipation and intrigue surrounded the ever-popular Fastest Mini in the World event at Brands Hatch last Sunday as competitors in the double-header meeting would not only be using synthetic fuels in their cars for the first time, but the absence of Harvey Death’s 380bhp, Rollcentre-built Cooper S V8 from the entry meant there would be a first new name claiming the title since 2018. In an agreement that is seen as a crucial step in securing the long-term future of motorsport, race organisers struck a deal with Coryton to supply drivers with around 40 litres of SUSTAIN Classic Racing 50 fuel for the race. The fuel is believed to produce 50% fewer carbon emissions than fossil fuels. Additionally, the fuel contains less than 1% ethanol and is reported…

Compared with his earlier career in touring cars that yielded titles in four consecutive seasons, the four World Endurance Championship GTE Pro class race wins Andy Priaulx scored as part of the Ford GT programme appear small fry. Yet the Gurnseyman regards the first three and a bit years of his ongoing relationship with Multimatic as one of the most enjoyable periods of his career, citing the “non-political environment”. It was refreshing after the relentless pressure Priaulx experienced during his 12-year BMW stint, which yielded a hat-trick of World Touring Car Championship titles after snaring the 2004 European crown. That goes some way to explaining Priaulx’s choice of Harry Tincknell as his favourite team-mate. Priaulx knew “the longest part of the career was behind me” when he arrived at Larry…

FORMULA 1 FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is pressing on with his plan to expand the Formula 1 grid and says he wants to attract works teams from the US and China. As motor racing’s governing body continues its evaluation of potential new entries from 2025, Ben Sulayem thinks that the arrival of manufacturers from the world’s two largest economies would deliver a huge uplift for F1’s commercial appeal. “My dream is a full American team from an OEM and I would like to also see an OEM from China,” Ben Sulayem explained in an interview with Autosport’s sister website Motorsport-Total.com. “You have 1.4billion people in China, and over 50% of your electric vehicles on the road are Chinese. That’s facts. It is a big market.” Ben Sulayem believes that…

FORMULA 1 Fashion house Hugo Boss is in talks with Red Bull over a title sponsorship deal for the AlphaTauri Formula 1 team from 2024. The Faenza squad is to undergo a complete overhaul for next year, overseen by new Red Bull investments chief Oliver Mintzlaff. He has opted against a sale, but instead wants the Italian team to be more competitive and commercially viable. As part of the overhaul, the team will increase its ties to its Red Bull parent operation with an expanded UK presence. It is also set for a rebrand, with its naming rights sold to become more financially sustainable. The team plans to drop its current name from 2024 and replace it with a new team and car title with Red Bull connections, although a…

NASCAR Chris Buescher sent a strong message of his playoff potential with his win in Monday’s rain-delayed NASCAR Cup race at Michigan International Speedway. Not only did Buescher win consecutive Cup races for the first time in his career, but he outduelled current series points leader Martin Truex Jr to do it. Buescher’s RFK Racing Ford emerged from a final round of green-flag pitstops in the lead with 18 of 200 laps remaining. The Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Truex, who won the first two stages, was close behind and gaining ground. With about 12 laps to go, Truex went to Buescher’s inside and edged ahead briefly for the lead. Buescher, however, used a lapped car as a pick and side-drafted Truex to pull back into the lead with 10…

GT3 Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen says he is putting together his own GT3 team with the goal of reaching the highest level of endurance racing, with a two-car team under the Verstappen.com Racing name. “The first step is our own GT3 team and then we’ll see where we end up,” Verstappen said in an interview with Dutch magazine Formule 1. “Next year will be tight, but I would like to have it as soon as possible. Having a GT3 team in 2025 with a minimum of two cars should be possible.” Verstappen, who is a keen sim racer, is hoping to create a platform that can pick up talented Esport drivers and prepare them for a career in GT racing. “If I do something, I want to do…

Sport is built on rivalries. Think of Liverpool versus Manchester United. Federer versus Nadal. Senna versus Prost. In motorsport it’s harder to pick outdefining rivalries between teams given the constantly changing competitive landscape. But not so in the US, where the tussle for supremacy between two of IndyCar’s most successful operations has taken on a new dimension in an altogether different arena this year. Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing have been the dominant forces for the past 30 years and more. Over a decade has passed since anyone else won the IndyCar title, and this year a second crown for Alex Palou would put Ganassi equal with Penske on 15 open-wheel championships. Now the rivalry is staged on three fronts as they combine the World Endurance Championship with North…

RED BULL’S CLEAN SWEEP The 2023 Formula 1 title battles in both championships have long been over. Barring total and unforeseen disaster, Max Verstappen will take his third successive crown in the coming months. His latest coronation could come as early as Singapore in three races’ time. Red Bull will also surely wrap up the constructors’ title. The team holds a 256-point over Mercedes – 174 more than it enjoyed over Ferrari at this 12-race stage a year ago. Although a gripping title fight is always preferable, there’s something to be admired in watching excellence, and the Red Bull RB19 is surely destined to go down as one F1’s great cars. Its gap to the field was revealed as so big in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix that George Russell…

For any older-generation enthusiast, it’s pretty boring these days to see animated debate about what racing driver is the GOAT. That’s right, the so-called ‘Greatest Of All Time’. It’s particularly irksome when one sees a probably perfectly well-meaning fan, deeply immersed in internet racing history, loftily quoting irrefutable statistical evidence to support whatever case they might have to prove that Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda is that very man – standing there on that unique point of the all-time pyramid. In reality, of course such debate as a serious concern is effectively unprovable; modern sport is so different an activity from what it was even one generation ago, never mind more than a century and a quarter’s worth. But way back when I was a school kid,…

After a five-week hiatus in the 2023 MotoGP world championship, the British Grand Prix proved that predictability has yet to invade the series. Two years on from his breakthrough Aprilia MotoGP podium at Silverstone, Aleix Espargaro breathtakingly held his nerve during a late rain shower and executed a daring raid for the lead on the last lap to secure a second career victory. Little had gone right for Aprilia or Espargaro during the first half of the 2023 season. After becoming race winners in 2022 and challenging for the title almost to the end, expectations were considered high on the veteran Spaniard taking this a step further. As he sat, flanked by championship leader Francesco Bagnaia and Brad Binder, in the post-GP press conference, he conceded that, perhaps, he was…

INDY NXT NASHVILLE (USA) 6 AUGUST ROUND 8/12 Christian Rasmussen dominated last Sunday’s Indy NXT race at Nashville via multiple late-race restarts to extend his points lead. After qualifying was rained out, Rasmussen started from pole thanks to the grid being set by championship order. Title rival Nolan Siegel, who suffered a hefty crash in the sole practice session on Friday, fell back from second place to fifth in the early stages, passed by Hunter McElrea, Jacob Abel and Louis Foster. Rasmussen raced into a big lead from McElrea, while Abel and Foster clashed twice on the high-speed approach to Turn 4. The first full-course yellow flew after half distance, the first of a sequence of cautions for crashes that led to a four-lap sprint to the finish. Rasmussen held…

EQUIPE CLASSIC RACING Equipe Classic Racing is introducing prize money for the final winners of its innovative Super Sprint event at Silverstone in October. The meeting’s unique format was first used in 2021 and features a series of short 10-lap sprint races – in contrast to the mini-enduros that make up the majority of Equipe’s regular calendar – open to pre-1966 GT and tin-top machinery. From each of these races, the top half of the drivers progress in one direction and the bottom half in another. After a series of such heats, four finals will be held with the intention that each of these will comprise a group of cars and drivers that are evenly matched. But it is not a knockout competition, so each driver gets the chance of…

HISTORIC TOURING CARS Former single-seater ace Dave Coyne says that his half share in the Ford Mustang he jointly owns with Mark Wright is the first time he’s owned a racing car since his early Formula Ford days in the 1980s. Wright and Coyne have bought the car built and raced by the late John Miles and are contesting a range of pre-’66 touring car races with the Mustang (left). Coyne previously raced it with Miles and said: “We were going to race it as a three-man team in the Spa Six Hours before John became unwell. It was put away for two years, so we’re just getting it sorted now. I’d only ever owned two racing cars before this – my first Merlyn Mk20 Formula Ford and then the…

NEW MILLENNIUM Versatile GT and touring car racer Lucky Khera spent Sunday night in hospital following a second heavy impact of the day in team-mate Jasver Sapra’s BMW M3 E36 during the Classic Sports Car Club’s New Millennium race at Donington Park. The 48-year-old was disputing fourth place with Dominic Malone on lap 19 of the 40-minute event when they arrived abreast at the left-handed Goddard corner onto the start/finish straight. There was no contact between the cars but Khera’s, on the outside, did not slow as expected and slammed into the barrier driver’s side first. The chequered flag was flown a lap early as marshals tended the shaken Khera, who reportedly climbed out unaided. Three hours earlier, Khera’s qualifying ended abruptly with the grey M3 embedded in the tyre…

OULTON PARK EQUIPE 5 AUGUST Mark Wright took both victories as the MG Car Club’s Cockshoot Cup returned to home territory at Oulton Park for the second and final time this season. Wright – campaigning the ex-Vince Martin MGF Cup car, complete with a recreation of its period livery – did not have complete control over proceedings, however. In the opening race, David Morrison made a sensational start from row three in his Midget to get alongside the polesitting MGF, but narrowly lost out into Old Hall. Ray Collier’s MG ZR 190 pushed Morrison back to third at the start of the second lap, before he took the lead on lap three. Wright narrowed the gap before retaking the place at Cascades on lap six of 10 and easing out…

DONINGTON PARK CSCC 5-6 AUGUST “There’s nothing quite like racing a Lotus Cortina in the wet at Donington – it’s so much fun,” beamed Josh Cook after planting Mike Gardiner’s on pole for Saturday’s one-hour Classic K race on the Grand Prix circuit. “The Craner Curves were fine one lap, but had a river running across them the next,” added the touring car ace, who had pipped Michael Simpson in Peter Smith’s machine. First-lap leader Gardiner could not keep the Jaguar E-types of Steve Osborne and Mark Russell behind, but made his compulsory stop as the window opened, relaying Cook from third. But Osborne spun into the Coppice gravel on lap 12 of 26 and needed towing under safety car cover. When Russell completed the pit sequence, still under caution,…

FORMULA 1 Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes Formula 1 contract renewal is said to be in its final phase, with lawyers from both parties now poring over the finer details before it can be signed. The new agreement will commit the seven-time world champion to Mercedes for the next few years. But delays in putting pen to paper have prompted speculation on any last-minute hurdles for both parties to overcome. One suggestion was that Hamilton wanted to finalise some kind of ambassadorial role with Mercedes for his life after retirement. But Mercedes F1 chief Toto Wolff has said that the focus of the new contract is entirely related to Hamilton being a driver and that the renewal is now a matter of “cleaning up” the fine print. “We’re not talking about an…

FORMULA E Multiple Formula E race winner Nick Cassidy will compete for Jaguar next season alongside childhood friend Mitch Evans after moving across from customer team Envision Racing on a multi-year contract. Kiwi Cassidy finished runner-up to Jake Dennis in this year’s drivers’ standings after taking four wins across the season. The last of those victories, in the London finale, helped Envision snatch the teams’ title from the works Jaguar squad. Cassidy has raced for Envision across three seasons in FE, but spent 2023 working closely alongside Jaguar, with the teams using the same powertrain in the Gen3 cars. “We always saw his capability and then obviously we’ve seen that closely now this year with him being in our customer team,” Jaguar team principal James Barclay told Autosport. “I’ve seen…

WEC Robin Frijns has joined BMW’s roster of factory drivers for 2024. His programme has yet to be announced, but it can be taken as read that he will race an M Hybrid V8 LMDh for the WRT squad in the World Endurance Championship. The announcement from BMW made last week confirmed only that Frijns, who won the Formula BMW Europe title in 2010, will be part of WRT’s test programme as it gears up for its graduation to the Hypercar class in the WEC next year. But the Dutchman is already part of WRT’s prototype squad in LMP2 and their relationship goes right back to the start of his sportscar career in 2015: he won the overall title in the GT World Challenge Europe (then known as the Blancpain…

OBITUARY Engine builder Neil Brown, who has died just a few days short of his 75th birthday after suffering a stroke, was a figure of colossal importance in motorsport. After his early days at BRM and Vegantune, he set up the Lincolnshire-based Neil Brown Engineering in 1973. The company became inextricably linked with Formula Ford 2000 from the category’s inception in 1975, winning numerous British and European titles, and was also contracted by Ford in the late 1970s to prepare the 3.0-litre V6 engines in the Group 1 Capri, claiming class crowns in the British Saloon Car Championship. As FF2000 faded, Brown moved into British Formula 3, preparing the Toyota engine with which JJ Lehto and Pacific Racing won the 1988 title. NBE was then chosen by Mugen Honda as…

When it was announced in March that I was going to be a McLaren factory driver, I was already in full swing doing testing and development. And I’d already done my first race of the year in the Asian Le Mans Series when I filled in for Marvin Kirchhofer. It was a few weeks before the announcement when I found out I was going to be racing, and I was doing a shakedown at Dunsfold airfield on a Friday in February. I was checking the car was OK when the engineers told me to pit. When I got out of the car they said, “You need to go to Dubai now” because Marvin was ill. I got on a plane that night, landed in Dubai the next morning and headed…

Two years ago, Elfyn Evans joined an exclusive club of eight drivers heralding from outside the Nordic nations to have conquered the revered Rally Finland. Last weekend, the Welsh Toyota star proved that was no fluke as he ignited his World Rally Championship title aspirations with a dominant victory to sit alongside Finnish rallying royalty Ari Vatanen and Timo Salonen as two-time winners of the event. After reigning world champion and points leader Kalle Rovanpera had delivered a Sebastien Loeb-like domination in Rally Estonia a fortnight before the ‘Grand Prix on Gravel’, the script seemed set, and maybe the title race over. Surely Finland’s first world champion for 20 years would end a six-year wait for a home-grown Rally Finland winner and take another step in his WRC title defence……

From last weekend’s British GP onwards, MotoGP riders must run to minimum tyre pressures of 1.9 bar for the front and 1.7 for the rear in races. This rule has been in place since the start of the year, but was only officially regulated at Silverstone. It has been a point of concern all year, with riders noting during the British round that they have around a 0.1-bar window to play with before the front balloons too much and causes grip issues. The system is supposed to be fully automated, but isn’t for the time being. The race director therefore selects bikes at random after the sprint and the GP to check the spec Tyre Pressure Management System. Any transgression results first in a warning, then a three-second, six-second and…

SILVERSTONE FESTIVAL A V16-engined BRM will return to Silverstone at this year’s Festival, 70 years after one of the cars last raced at the Northamptonshire circuit in period. The Silverstone Festival is the latest destination for the first of three continuation models of the BRM Type 15 V16, with the Hall & Hall-built car set to conduct demonstration laps on the Sunday of the event. It has already appeared at Shelsley Walsh, Prescott and last year’s Goodwood Revival. The notorious V16 has plenty of history at Silverstone, where it was due to make its debut in the British Grand Prix in 1950. After unsuccessful subsequent appearances, Juan Manuel Fangio and Ken Wharton finished second and third in the machines in a Formula Libre race held at the 1953 British GP.…

Last raced at Spa in 2004, the Nasamax LMP1 car, which originally competed as a Reynard 01Q, had a test run at Donington Park at the end of last month in Sam Hancock’s hands. The car tackled the 2003 Le Mans 24 Hours with Robbie Stirling, Romain Dumas and Werner Lupberger using bioethanol, and set the fastest time of the weekend through the Mulsanne speed trap. The car was the first ever to be homologated for LMP1 in 2004 and now sports a 5.5-litre, 650bhp, Judd V10. Stirling still owns the car, which was also driven by his son Dean later in the test. Hancock also had a run out in the ex-DAMS Lola B98/10 that took four wins in the 1999 Sports Racing World Cup, and has been in…

GOODWOOD Goodwood has confirmed the dates for two of its three main motorsport events next year. The Members’ Meeting will be held on 13-14 April, while the Festival of Speed is scheduled for 11-14 July – and tickets for this are due to go on sale on 6 November, with Goodwood members able to buy them a week earlier. Spectators who held tickets for the Saturday of this year’s event, which was cancelled due to heavy rain, have had their passes rolled over to the equivalent day next year, meaning there will be limited new tickets available. Next year’s Members’ Meeting, meanwhile, will represent a decade since the event was first revived and details of the celebrations are due to be announced in the coming months. Before then, the 2023…

BRANDS HATCH MSVR MINI FESTIVAL 6 AUGUST Historic Formula 1 ace Nick Padmore emerged as the star of the show in the Mini Miglia double-header that headlined Brands Hatch’s annual Mini Festival last weekend, claiming two hard-fought wins in a pair of races that look set to be his final appearance in the series this season. A huge field of 32 cars took to the grid for the opening race on Sunday as Padmore lined up on pole ahead of Andrew Jordan, but it was the 2013 British Touring Car champion who led the field into Paddock after Padmore “screwed up the start”. Padmore seized back the initiative on the run up to Druids on lap four, but Jordan’s attempt to regain the lead at Paddock just after half distance…

Two promising showings with one of American racing’s grandee names in 2005 hinted at a bright IndyCar future for ex-Formula 1 driver Giorgio Pantano. The former Jordan racer did turn out again for Chip Ganassi Racing, but had to wait seven years to do so for what proved to be his sixth and final outing in the series. Pantano shone in 2005 despite Ganassi being saddled with uncompetitive Toyota engines, and the Italian is baffled that “after what I showed, I didn’t have a proposal for 2006”. “I think I did something well in two races without knowing any circuits over there, without knowing the cars,” reflects Pantano, now a successful kart constructor. Ganassi had dropped Darren Manning midway through 2005, the first season the Indy Racing League had incorporated…

Appearing as if marooned in a sea of super-enthusiastic humanity are Jackie Oliver and Jacky Ickx, winners of the 1969 Le Mans 24 Hours. Those crowds had just witnessed one of the most exciting races in the event’s history. For the final three hours the Oliver/Ickx JW Automotive Ford GT40 fought the Porsche 908 of Hans Herrmann/Gerard Larrousse – the winning margin just 120 metres. Twenty-four hours earlier Ickx had walked instead of run to his car, taking his time to fasten his safety belts in protest at the lethally antiquated start procedure, and as a result began the race in last place. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…