Innholdsfortegnelse for 14/03/24 i Autosport

No offence to the talented people at Red Bull, but another Max Verstappen victory wasn’t the biggest talking point from the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend. Instead, it was the efforts of a driver who was 10 when Verstappen made his Formula 1 debut. Ollie Bearman thought he was going to be kick-starting his F2 title campaign in Jeddah after qualifying on pole, but ended up being thrust into a Ferrari F1 seat thanks to Carlos Sainz falling ill (see page 4). He thus beat Lewis Hamilton (who was in F1 before Bearman was two years old!) to becoming a Ferrari GP driver. Few debuts could have been more challenging than driving for F1’s most famous team at one of the fastest and trickiest venues, with virtually no preparation time,…

FORMULA 1 Andretti Global has shown off plans for its new US-based HQ, where its Formula 1 operation in partnership with General Motors marque Cadillac will be based. Such a major infrastructure project sends a strong message to FOM, which at the start of this year denied Andretti’s application to create an 11th grand prix team. The new 90-acre site is due for completion in 2025 as the F1 programme continues at pace. Significantly, one of the partners involved in its design is Ridge, a British company that has worked on several UK F1 facilities, including the new Aston Martin campus at Silverstone. The Andretti Global base in Fishers, to the north-east of Indianapolis, will house the team’s IndyCar, Indy NXT and IMSA operations. But around 50% will be devoted…

It’s time to take a glance at the revised livery for the car that will have rival British Touring Car Championship squads quivering with fear. Alliance Racing has taken the wraps of its Ford Focus ST, which will feature an unchanged driver line-up of four-time champion Ash Sutton, Dan Cammish, Dan Rowbottom and Sam Osborne. An added splash of white ties in with title backer NAPA’s NASCAR theme, and takes it slightly away from the look that single-seater fans found highly reminiscent of mid-1980s F2/F3000 stalwart Tomas Kaiser’s Hello Sweden colours.…

GT WORLD CHALLENGE EUROPE Le Mans 24 Hours winner Alessandro Pier Guidi will return to the GT World Challenge Europe full time this season after a two-year absence. The Italian will race a factory AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 in a bid to follow up on his 2020 and 2021 titles in the Endurance Cup leg of the series. Pier Guidi (right), who contested one GTWCE enduro last year, will race in the five long-distance races alongside fellow works drivers Davide Rigon and Alessio Rovera in the Pro class. Rigon and Rovera were part of Ferrari’s 2023 GTWCE campaign, like this year mounted under the AF Corse-Francorchamps Motors banner, but raced different cars. The drive alongside his World Endurance Championship programme with the 499P Le Mans Hypercar also gives Pier…

“Precision and the risk you are willing to take,” says Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc on what it takes to nail a lap around the Jeddah Corniche Circuit. But while he acknowledges “I don’t think it’s much different than other tracks”, the proximity of the walls that line this super-fast layout means the drivers inevitably aren’t quite fully on it from lap one in practice. “You have to go through that step-by-step approach,” Leclerc adds about how he and his peers should be gradually building up to gaining proximity to the walls during FP1 at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Delightfully, Leclerc doesn’t appear to be following his own advice from Autosport’s vantage point for the start of the one-hour session on Friday. We’re perched at the pit exit, outside the Turns…

INDY NXT ST PETERSBURG (USA) 10 MARCH ROUND 1/12 Nolan Siegel led pole-to-flag to take victory in the opening Indy NXT race of the season on the streets of St Petersburg. The 19-year-old Californian, who will contest a limited IndyCar programme this season including the Indy 500, fended off an early challenge by Jacob Abel at the start, but seized control and established a lead of nearly seven seconds prior to the first caution after 32 of 45 laps. He was untroubled on either restart, and Siegel’s HMD Motorsports machine took the chequered flag by 1.396 seconds over Abel’s family-owned challenger. “It feels amazing,” Siegel said. “We’ve worked hard for this. First pole this weekend, led every lap. Should have won here last year – I made a mistake and…

MOTOGP LOSAIL (QAT) 10 MARCH ROUND 1/21 On a weekend that started with the spotlight firmly on Marc Marquez and rookie sensation Pedro Acosta, reigning champion Francesco Bagnaia showed why he is still the king of MotoGP with a dominant performance in Qatar. Ducati supremo Bagnaia faced several new challenges heading into the 2024 campaign: Jorge Martin remains keen to seek revenge for his narrow title defeat in 2023; Enea Bastianini had been showing flashes of his ‘2022 best’ in pre-season testing; and Marquez, perhaps the greatest rider of the generation, is now also on a Ducati, albeit a year-old bike. By winning the first grand prix of the year at the Losail International Circuit, Bagnaia issued a clear statement to his rivals both within and outside Ducati that dethroning…

HISTORICS Vastly experienced racer, journalist and driver coach Mark Hales is recovering in Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital following a serious accident while testing Guy Grant’s Jaguar E-type at Silverstone last Wednesday. Hales sustained nine broken ribs and a cracked vertebra when the car left the circuit on the Wellington Straight approaching Brooklands. “The brake pedal [a forging] snapped and I had nothing to pump,” said the 74-year-old. “Somehow, I managed to spin it before hitting the barrier. It was a mighty whack, but fortunately the impact was on the passenger side. Had it been my side or head-on, we might not have been having this conversation.” Hales, who has coached Grant in his TVR Grantura and the E-type over the past two years, said the big disappointment was that the…

EQUIPE CLASSIC Equipe Classic Racing organisers believe a switch from standing to rolling starts for the Equipe 50s and Pre ’63 categories will boost entries this season. The regulation change followed suggestions from drivers to avoid standing starts amid concerns that some of the machinery struggles to cope with the stress of these launches. “A lot of those cars are difficult to get off the line and a lot of the 50s drivers don’t like standing starts because the cars tend to break – they weren’t designed for it,” said ECR partner Rob Cull. “It may seem like a small change, but it’s a big change in attitude from the drivers. “We’ve got three new Lotus 11s that have come straight in. We should have three Lola Mk1s, and we’ve…

For a span of 62 Formula 1 events from the 1988 Brazilian Grand Prix to the 1991 Spanish GP, the Leyton House March team paired Ivan Capelli with Mauricio Gugelmin. Over those four years the pair shared plenty of heartache but weren’t without their triumphs. They logged four podiums, three from Capelli, who needs no second invitation to name Gugelmin as his favourite team-mate. “We were really sharing the project of Leyton House,” says the Italian. “We were fighting to achieve good results and get to the top. The four years that we shared together we were really sharing everything, in good and bad times. I remember very well how strong we were in terms of friendship and at the same time pushing each other to the limit.” Capelli had…

Another piece of the puzzle for the nascent Extreme H series fell into place last month as Symbio was announced as its official hydrogen fuel cell provider from 2025. The French manufacturer co-owned by Forvia, Michelin and Stellantis, will provide a 75kW hydrogen fuel cell for the new breed of cars built by Spark Racing Technology. A prototype has started testing and completed a shakedown before Christmas. The announcement follows Symbio commencing the mass-production of hydrogen fuel cells at its new SymphonHy gigafactory, based on the outskirts of Lyon, in December. “We believe motorsport offers a unique laboratory in extreme and real-life conditions that enables us to test and adapt our technology to the most intense and demanding uses,” said Symbio CEO Philippe Rosier. The all-electric Extreme E championship is…

Mattia Binotto has been hired as the new managing director of an Italian technology company, taking his first role since leaving the Ferrari Formula 1 team at the end of 2022. The former Ferrari team principal has been linked with several opportunities in F1, including with Alpine and Audi, but will instead help spearhead electric powertrain development at TEXA, the Italian acronym for Electronic Technologies for Automotive. The Treviso company, founded in 1992, is best known as a leader in vehicle diagnostic tools but has interests across multiple areas. Binotto has been entrusted with the strategic coordination of its E-Powertrain division, which is aimed at designing, producing and supplying new automotive components for electric vehicles. Binotto said: “What attracted me to TEXA was the strategic audacity of its project to…

“Over the past 12 months that Chat GPT has come out, people have put up their defences against AI,” said Dr Tom McCarthy on stage at ASI. The executive director of the ASPIRE company that is heading up the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League views the grasp of generative AI as “one of humanity’s greatest challenges” in the coming years and hopes that his nascent racing series – known as A2RL – will “be able to make some minor contribution to bringing people along with understanding, while at the same time having a bit of fun”. Driverless racing is nothing new, with the formative steps taken by the now dormant Roborace entity, followed up by the Indy Autonomous Challenge that has held events in North America and Europe using adapted…

For the past three years, Toyota has been the dominant force in the World Rally Championship, sweeping aside the opposition to win a stunning drivers’ and manufacturers’ treble. But this year the Japanese marque is taking on a new challenge and has entered the Rally2 customer sphere with the GR Yaris Rally2 – “the aggressive sibling of the GR Yaris Rally1”, according to Toyota WRC team technical director Tom Fowler. Rally2 cars are to rallying what GT3 and TCR cars are to GT and touring car racing; off-the-shelf vehicles built to specific FIA regulations available to anyone who can stump up €200,000-€300,000. Rally2 regulations have been overwhelmingly successful since the birth of the ruleset under the R5 name in 2012, with 1500 of these four-wheel-drive, 1.6-litre cars on the market.…

By the time you read this feature, a little bit of motorsport history will have been made. The 2024 MotoGP Qatar Grand Prix was the first in the series’ history to have been completed by a grid using fuels of part-non-fossil origin. As MotoGP celebrates its 75th anniversary, it’s a milestone moment a far cry from the first premier class grand prix completed on the Isle of Man back in 1949 by Harold Daniell on a 500cc Norton. The world is swaying into a crisis point, as global warming is fast reaching a catastrophic point for humanity. That poses an ethical question for motorsport. As the director of technology at Dorna Sports – MotoGP’s commercial rights holder – Corrado Cecchinelli tells Autosport, “it’s clear that if the goal was simply…

“This is going in an Autosport Engineering supplement,” says Peter Thurston incredulously as he reveals his extraordinary Citroen 2CV8 racer, yet to turn a wheel. In place of a wheezing 602cc air-cooled flattwin engine making a whopping 45bhp in racing trim sits a gruff 4.6-litre Rover V8. Even in mild tune, developing 280-300bhp, this powerplant should propel the circa 700kg bolide at a fair lick in a straight line. “It’s anti-engineering really, something I’ve put together from parts lying around my workshop, purely for my own amusement,” he says. “Will it work? I don’t know, but I’ve always raced for fun and this is guaranteed to put a smile on spectators’ faces.” Societe Nationale des Escargots de Fer enthusiasts read on. Peter Thurston Racing in Faversham, Kent, is one of…

Peter Thurston grew up around motorsport. His NSU scooter dealer father, also Peter, raced a front-engined Elva-BMC 100 Formula Junior in 1961, then put a Heron Europa kit car body over it, naming it Prima GT. When Thurston Sr’s wife banned him from buying a Lotus 22, he made his own early Formula Ford, from which young Pete saw him ejected at Brands Hatch and hospitalised. Undeterred, Jr grass tracked as a teenager, then tried bangers “with a Ford Capri 3000GT. I was on £40 a week and in my third meeting won £36. But it wasn’t for me! “John Sabourin [winner of the 1974 Luanda 2 Hours sportscar race, sharing a March 74S he prepared] got me into circuit racing. He’d moved to Kent and worked for me. We…

FORMULA 1 An average speed of 155mph, 27 wall-lined corners. In the words of triple world champion Max Verstappen, the Jeddah Corniche Circuit is “super-hard to jump in on”, let alone with no testing in a new car, run by Formula 1’s most storied squad. But that’s the situation in which 18-year-old British Formula 2 star Ollie Bearman shone last weekend in Saudi Arabia. He had been called up by Ferrari after what was originally thought to be food poisoning for regular driver Carlos Sainz turned out to be appendicitis, with the Spaniard requiring surgery. Just two hours before FP3 for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was due to get under way, while he was on his way into the track expecing to race in F2 after topping qualifying the…

FORMULA 1 Ex-Ferrari Formula 1 driver Felipe Massa has filed a lawsuit in London’s High Court of Justice against the FIA, FOM and Bernie Ecclestone over the handling of the infamous 2008 Singapore Grand Prix crash scandal. The Brazilian’s pursuit to get the race result thrown out, which would retroactively crown him champion at the expense of Lewis Hamilton, follows a 2023 interview in which Ecclestone claimed there was sufficient information available at the time for an investigation, although Ecclestone later said he did not remember giving the interview. According to a statement from Brazilian law firm Vieira Rezende Advogados, “Mr Massa is seeking declarations that the FIA breached its regulations by failing to promptly investigate Nelson Piquet Junior’s crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and that had it…

WEC A switch of the North American World Endurance Championship fixture to the Indianapolis road course from Austin for 2025 is not on the cards. A round on the circuit of which series entrant Roger Penske took control in 2019 isn’t in the plan for the next two years, he has revealed. Penske declared an interest in hosting a WEC round at the former US Grand Prix venue as long ago as 2022. But scheduling issues that prevented it joining the calendar this year will remain an obstacle in 2025. “Right now I cannot say we are ready to do something in the next 24 months,” said Penske. “We have nothing on the ground. At the moment it is a scheduling situation, when Indy is available and their schedule.” Sportscar…

BTCC British Touring Car Championship boss Alan Gow has said that the World Rally Championship’s ditching of hybrid for 2025 will have no impact on whether his series continues with its take on the theme. The BTCC introduced a hybrid power boost system for 2022, and this has been much criticised as a major factor in rising costs. Under the existing NGTC ruleset, all control parts supplies are five-year deals, so the current hybrid contract with Cosworth runs until the end of 2026. And, in an exclusive interview with Autosport this week, Gow says that hybrid remains on the table for the next era of car rules. “Whatever World Rally do is absolutely immaterial to us,” said Gow. “Theirs was a really expensive hybrid unit, and we use low-voltage batteries,…

DTM Jack Aitken will continue in the DTM for a second consecutive season as part of an unchanged line-up at Emil Frey Racing. The 28-year-old Briton will again partner Max Verstappen protege Thierry Vermeulen in the Swiss squad’s Ferrari 296 GT3 line-up. Aitken told Autosport in January that he was still in talks about continuing in the DTM. The 2024 calendar features no clashes with his schedule in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, in which he has stepped up to a full-time seat this season with the Action Express Racing Cadillac team alongside Pipo Derani. “A second season of DTM is exciting,” said Aitken (below) at the announcement. “I loved last year’s series for how competitive and aggressive the racing can be. Our expectations are to fight more consistently at the…

“It’s a really pivotal moment for the sport, in terms of what we project to the world. How it’s handled. And it’s not been handled very well to this point.” Lewis Hamilton there, not for the first time on an important and sensitive subject, getting it spot on. The seven-time world champion was speaking last week ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Specifically, he’d been asked about the off-track controversies currently engulfing the championship. The Christian Horner/Red Bull situation has been running longest, but the question posed to Hamilton also concerned the investigations currently facing FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. In the championship’s hive brain, let alone the consciousness of the millions of fans watching on, neither is going to go away fast. And nor should they. The latter…

“If I look back at the last six, seven months, we are the team that have improved the most,” said Charles Leclerc after driving his Ferrari to third place behind the Red Bulls of dominant winner Max Verstappen and runner-up Sergio Perez in last Saturday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. “We are slowly closing the gap. The gap is still quite big. But if we keep working like that, I’m sure it’s a matter of time before we put Red Bull under a bit more pressure.” After a second dull race in a week to kick off the new campaign, F1 really needs Ferrari to reach that point fast. As it was, Leclerc ended up 18.6 seconds behind Verstappen, who notched up his 56th F1 win, his 100th podium appearance, and…

Lance Stroll produced the first safety car period of 2024 with his lap-six crash at Turn 22. It was a repeat of his FP1 clip with the Turn 21 inside wall, although this time he bent his Aston Martin’s front suspension and careened into the barrier on the other side of the road. This injected much-needed strategic variance into a straightforward one-stop race, although Aston Martin kept Fernando Alonso in step with the other frontrunners with a switch to the hard tyres in that period. Prior to that disruption Alonso had been passed by Oscar Piastri and was attempting to contain Lando Norris, but the Briton staying out ensured that the Spaniard’s fifth place was now going to court the attention of George Russell. Worried that the Mercedes driver was…

Sauber had to contend with a second slow pitstop in as many weeks, with Zhou Guanyu stationary during his final stop for an extra 25 seconds. The Chinese driver had been recovering from the legacy of his heavy FP3 shunt, which meant he was unable to set a lap in qualifying and started from the back. He stayed out during the safety car period and ran solidly in the midfield before his slow stop, costing him an outside shot at points. According to trackside engineering lead Xevi Pujolar, new pit equipment was suspected to be cross-threading the wheelnuts. Valtteri Bottas finished just ahead of Zhou after stopping twice and struggling to build tyre temperature on the hard compound. His qualifying had been compromised with a Q1 exit after encountering Alex…

FORMULA 2 JEDDAH (SAU) 8-9 MARCH ROUND 2/14 The Formula 2 weekend in Jeddah was a story of a poleman who didn’t start, a winner who didn’t win, and climaxed with a stunning maiden feature race victory for Enzo Fittipaldi. Victor Martins and Ollie Bearman, both among the pre-season title favourites, were looking to get their challenges back on course after poor showings in the opening round in Bahrain. But, for vastly different reasons, the duo left Jeddah still with nil scores to their names. This was particularly harsh on Bearman. The Prema Racing starlet should have scored two points for taking pole position on Thursday before his call-up to replace Carlos Sainz at Ferrari meant he was withdrawn from any further F2 action, and his tally was transferred to…

NASCAR CUP PHOENIX (USA) 10 MARCH ROUND 4/36 Christopher Bell breathed new life into Toyota’s chances of a NASCAR Cup title with his victory at Phoenix Raceway. The one-mile oval, where the crown is determined in November, has been a difficult one for the manufacturer – Toyota drivers had led a total of 15 laps in the track’s previous four races. Bell only led twice on Sunday, but they were timely occasions. He passed Tyler Reddick in the final laps to win stage two, then inherited the lead with 40 of 312 laps to go when Martin Truex Jr was forced to pit for fuel. Bell was among a group who had elected to pit on lap 218 during what turned out to be the final caution of the race.…

Of course the British Touring Car Championship has weathered storms over its existence. That’s inevitable, given it’s been going for 66 years. Think about some of the dire fields of the mid-1980s in Group A days; or the early 2000s when Octagon Motorsport took over the running of the series after buying out organising body TOCA, and the new BTC Touring era kicked off with eight cars on the grid at the 2001 opener. By comparison with that, what’s happened during the 2023-24 off-season has been more a passing shower than full-on thunder and lightning. From the 27 cars that fought out the BTCC in 2023, nine were lost for 2024 in the forms of Team Hard (six) and One Motorsport (three). But, thanks to the emergence of new team…

PORSCHE CARRERA CUP GB George Gamble has become the latest British Touring Car race winner to announce a return to the Porsche Carrera Cup GB for this year, where he will join 2021 British GT4 champion Will Burns in Century Motorsport’s line-up. Fellow BTCC victors Dan Lloyd and Stephen Jelley have already revealed plans to make Carrera Cup comebacks this season and they will now be joined by Gamble, who endured a frustrating tin-top campaign in a Speedworks Motorsport Toyota last year. Gamble only managed a best result of eighth, having starred in his rookie BTCC season in a Ciceley Motorsport BMW the previous year, when he scored a podium at his debut weekend. Gamble is now returning to more familiar rear-wheel-drive machinery, having finished third in the Carrera Cup…

Designer Adrian Reynard drove one of his own Formula 3000 machines at Donington Park last week – the Camel-liveried, ex-Eddie Jordan Racing 89D that took Jean Alesi to the 1989 title. “It was my first time ever driving an F3000 car, the opportunity just never arose before,” Reynard said after stepping out of the Colin Sowter-owned car. Alesi was Reynard’s second F3000 title winner, following Roberto Moreno, and from 1991-95 his machines proved unbeatable, with Christian Fittipaldi, Luca Badoer, Olivier Panis, Jean-Christophe Boullion and Vincenzo Sospiri taking titles. RACING RETURN FOR SHANLY Double National Supersports champion Stephen Shanly is planning a comeback to UK circuits after a 19-year absence with outings in the Radical Cup. Shanly, a former Atlantic rower, won Supersports titles in 2003 and 2004, before taking sixth…

CLIO CUP GB The latest, fifth-generation Renault Clio Cup car ran on track in the UK for the first time earlier this month, although the opening round of the new Clio Cup GB category has been pushed back. Former Mini Challenge Trophy driver Ben Jenkins shook down LDR Performance Tuning’s new Clio at MotorSport Vision Racing’s launch day at Brands Hatch recently, after delays in the manufacture of the facelifted cars. LDR team boss Lawrence Davey said that first impressions of the car, which features a five-speed sequential stick-shift gearbox, were good. “The cars are really well built, they seem quite reliable and very easy to work with and set up,” he said. “It was just bringing everything in and running the engine in and making sure there weren’t any…

MODSPORTS/SPECIAL SALOONS Registrations are building for the Historic Sports Car Club’s Historic Modsports and Special Saloons category ahead of next month’s Snetterton season-opener. Joining the period cars of Joe Ward (Baby Bertha), Andy Wilson (DAF V8) and Tony Davies (Vauxhall Firenza), Andy Willis’s Ford V8-powered Austin A302 and Craig Percy’s Morris Minor-Chevrolet are expected to be in the thick of the slugfest. Series chairman Steve Watton will race his Turner Evo until his five-litre Rover P6 is ready, facing Myles Castaldini (Davrian-Ford) among the Modsports set. Matt Digby aims to join them and quick MG Midgets in father John’s long-dormant Ginetta G4 twin-cam. Meanwhile, Steve Barnard is confident of making Snetterton in his lock-up find Ford Escort Mk1-BDA. Ray Rowan’s Delta-based Stiletto and Paul Knapton’s Maguire version should ruffle feathers…

BEGINS 1 APRIL An epic line-up in British GT Returning champions, a plethora of factory drivers, and new machines to tame throughout a sell-out grid – the British GT Championship has all the ingredients to provide another thrilling year of action. A total of 36 full-time entries – with further one-off additions likely – are due to take part in the nine-race, seven-round calendar, which gets under way at Oulton Park on 1 April before taking in the usual venues of Silverstone, Donington Park (x2), a return to Spa after a one-year absence, Snetterton, and the season finale at Brands Hatch. Four-time champion Jonny Adam returns with fledgling team Blackthorn, father-and-son duo Rob and Ricky Collard team up at Barwell Motorsport, while Aston Martin Formula 1 ambassador Jessica Hawkins will…

Had things played out differently in early 2004, Tomas Enge could have joined the exclusive club of drivers to have competed in both Formula 1 and the World Rally Championship. The Czech, who made three grand prix starts for the moribund Prost team in 2001, believes it’s entirely realistic that he could have switched codes permanently to rallying, such was his passion for the discipline. “The only thing I was playing on PlayStation was Colin McRae Rally,” he says. “I didn’t play Formula 1 or anything else. It was only offline so you would play against yourself. I beat my records constantly. I knew the roads without pacenotes, that’s how crazy I was.” But when his manager Antonin Charouz reached a deal with the start-up Ma-Con team to bring the…

No, we haven’t been given a first look at a futuristic new autonomous racing series. The cover image was created by artificial intelligence, an idea that not long ago might have been deemed fanciful. Use of AI is growing rapidly in society at large (although this writer has yet to jump on the bandwagon with automated transcription software!) and the automotive/motorsport industries are no exception. You don’t have to be an autonomous racing aficionado to recognise the direction of travel. Stellantis brands DS and Peugeot will have ChatGPT installed to complement voice-recognition software in their cars later this year, while AI companies are starting to replace crypto as fashionable sponsorship partners. IndyCar squad Ed Carpenter Racing’s deal with askROI, an AI tool for small- and medium-sized businesses, is just the…

Aston Martin formally presented its upgraded Formula 1 safety car days before the latest iteration of the Vantage was put into action for the first time in Jeddah last weekend. Having been put through its paces at F1’s pre-season test, the new Vantage was given a maiden outing in Saudi Arabia after the Mercedes AMG GT Black Series it shares safety car duties with was deployed in Bahrain. The outgoing Aston model was almost 200bhp less powerful than the Mercedes, produced less downforce and was 45kg heavier. But the latest version, heavily updated with revised bodywork, modified underfloor aerodynamics and a new grille as part of a mid-life refresh, also boasts a power increase of 150bhp to 656bhp. This is courtesy of bigger turbochargers, more cooling and new camshafts for…

KW’S DEBUT PODIUM SWEEP German suspension specialist KW automotive enjoyed a World Endurance Championship debut to remember in Qatar, locking out the top four spots in LMGT3. The supplier of five-way adjustable heave dampers to GT3-spec Porsche, Aston Martin and BMW machinery also celebrated a finish on the competition debut for Lamborghini’s SC63 Hypercar that features KW’s three-way adjustable roll dampers. ADRIAN REYNARD AWARD British Touring Car Championship organiser TOCA and its technical partner Cosworth Electronics were recognised with the Adrian Reynard Motorsports Medal by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) last month. Its joint application of hybrid power into the BTCC from 2022 was honoured with the first prize for outstanding achievement in motorsport engineering at Silverstone. BREMBO GROUP’S LOCKOUT Italian braking manufacturer Brembo has retained its market dominance…

Backlash to the virtual female influencer introduced by Mahindra on the eve of the current Formula E season that resulted in it being swiftly scrapped showed how artificial intelligence in motorsport is a long way from gaining universal acceptance. Criticism directed at the short-lived PR campaign fronted by ‘Ava’ (above), described as a ‘Sustainable Tech Queen & Racing Rebel Robot’, largely coalesced around the decision not to ‘employ’ a human for the role and ultimately rendered its continued existence untenable. Team boss Frederic Bertrand explained that its intention was “just to add one tool to our toolbox for communication and to have one additional possibility for people to ask questions and get answers”. Its value, he added, was “as an addition to what we are doing and then it’s not…

FORMULA 1 The storm engulfing the Red Bull Formula 1 team hierarchy shows little sign of abating, with world champion Max Verstappen very heavily implying that he could quit the squad should advisor Helmut Marko be forced out. Amid allegations that Marko has been involved in leaking material to the press regarding team principal Christian Horner being accused of inappropriate behaviour by a female employee, the 80-year-old implied that he could be suspended in time for next week’s Australian Grand Prix. That claim was dismissed following an eight-week independent investigation, and the employee has since been suspended. At last weekend’s Saudi Arabian GP, Marko met with Red Bull CEO Oliver Mintzlaff and came away telling people that he would indeed be seeing out the remaining three years of his contract.…

Digital renders have shown the new Speed Park Track in Qiddiya, which is set to eventually replace the Jeddah Corniche street circuit as host of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Penned by ex-Formula 1 driver Alex Wurz and famed track designer Hermann Tilke, the standout feature is the so-called ‘Blade’ (top right) – a 20-storey-high opening corner. In fact, the whole anti-clockwise lap is notable for its elevation – there’s a 108-metre climb over the 21 corners. The venue aims to combine the best elements of permanent and street layouts, so includes multiple configurations and a blend of high-speed and slow sections.…

WRC The Canary Islands will host a round of the World Rally Championship in 2025 with a new two-year deal. First run in 1977, Rally Islas Canarias has been a mainstay of the European Rally Championship since 2016. The asphalt event’s switch to the WRC calendar is subject to World Motor Sport Council approval, and emulates the WRC’s move in elevating Rally Latvia and Rally Poland from the ERC to the WRC for this year. The news ensures the return of Spain to the WRC after Rally Catalunya dropped off the calendar following the 2022 edition. “We are enthusiastic about having Spain back on the WRC calendar and are encouraged to see our clearly defined strategy to have an opportunity for ERC events to have a pathway to WRC coming…

MONO CUP A new Middle East-based series for the Mono supercar is to take place over the 2024-25 winter, with organisers claiming that it will be ‘the world’s fastest one-make championship’ for production-based machinery The Mono Cup will be run on an arrive-and-drive basis on behalf of the Briggs Automotive Company, constructor of the Mono. Brothers Neill and Ian Briggs, co-founders of the Liverpool-based concern, are pledging an ‘extensively re-engineered’ version of the car, which in road trim weighs just 580kg and produces 305bhp from a 2.5-litre engine, driven through a Hewland gearbox. For the brothers’ first foray into motorsport, they have joined forces with the Saudi Arabian Motor Federation for a series that will visit its ‘home’ circuit of Jeddah, as well as venues in Bahrain, Qatar and the…

EUROPEAN LE MANS SERIES Briton Alex Quinn has landed a full-time European Le Mans Series LMP2 drive. The 23-year-old’s deal to contest the six-round series with Algarve Pro Racing comes three months after he lost a seat in the IMSA SportsCar Championship because he had been upgraded to gold status. The Formula Renault Eurocup race winner in 2020 had been due to continue the relationship with Ben Keating that yielded the Michelin-sponsored IMSA Endurance Cup class title in Quinn’s first year of prototype racing last year. But the drive with United Autosports was scuppered when he was belatedly moved from silver to gold under the FIA’s driver categorisation system. Quinn’s chance as a gold comes in the ELMS P2 pro-am ranks. He will share the Algarve Pro ORECA-Gibson 07 with…

Marc Marquez’s first MotoGP outing on a Ducati went as well as it could have. That might not seem like much when taken at face value. Fifth in the sprint and fourth in the grand prix last weekend at Losail are not the results many were hoping for when the six-time MotoGP champion jumped on the all-conquering Ducati. But let’s put that into context. For 11 years, Marquez rode the Honda RC213V. His riding style has developed around it. On the Ducati, he’s had just nine days, so fourth is not too shabby. “We analysed a lot of things to try to manage the start, it was better today,” he said after the Qatar Grand Prix. “Then I was able to manage the tyres. The thing was yesterday I struggled…

There were two main storylines to Jeddah qualifying: the fight for first; and Ollie Bearman’s efforts to qualify Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, which had pole potential, as high up as possible, only hours after he’d been informed that he’d be driving it. In the pole fight, yet again it came down to Charles Leclerc in the other Ferrari versus Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. There was much intrigue and expectation at Ferrari, given GPS data indicated that the team hadn’t run anywhere near its top engine modes in Friday practice, particularly FP2, the sole relevant night preparation session. But, right from the off in qualifying, Ferrari already knew it was in trouble. “The feeling wasn’t quite right from Q1,” explained Leclerc, who suddenly found his car was jittering with oversteer when running…

Nico Hulkenberg ensured that Haas was the first team from the bottom half of the field to get off the points mark for 2024 with 10th place, but with more than a little help from Kevin Magnussen’s hold-up play in the lower midfield. A fuel system issue had precluded Hulkenberg from qualifying any higher than 15th, but he came into play when he stayed out during the safety car period, which lifted him to eighth place. This became 10th after George Russell and Ollie Bearman made their way past, but further threats to a potential points finish had to be dealt with by Magnussen. The Dane had earned a grand total of 20 seconds in penalties, one 10s hit for passing Yuki Tsunoda off-track, the other 10s through avoidable contact…

Josef Newgarden was nearly untouchable as the IndyCar Series kicked off its season on the sunny streets of St Petersburg last weekend. The 33-year-old double champion surged to pole on Saturday, and that proved to be the primer. Newgarden established dominance in Sunday’s contest with his Team Penske Dallara-Chevrolet, leading 92 of 100 laps en route to claiming victory by 7.9s over the Arrow McLaren machine of Pato O’Ward. It was Newgarden’s 30th career IndyCar victory, which broke a tie with Penske legend Rick Mears for 13th on the all-time wins list, and his third on the 1.8-mile, 14-turn temporary street circuit. Although the Tennessee native won’t confess to winning in IndyCar being easy, this latest drive, which was also his first non-oval win since June 2022 at Road America,…

F1 ACADEMY JEDDAH (SAU) 8-9 MARCH ROUND 1/7 Alpine Academy driver Abbi Pulling left the Saudi Arabian F1 Academy season-opener as the championship leader, despite crossing the line behind Mercedes protegee Doriane Pin in both of the two races. The pair positioned themselves as the class of the field, pulling away in both races and fending off the competition during the various safety car restarts. While Pin was faultless from lights to flag on both outings, her downfall came in race two in a bizarre fashion. She failed to spot the chequered flag and was not informed that the race had ended by her Prema team, who were celebrating the victory on the pitwall. After she completed an additional lap at full racing speed, officials displayed red flags to get…

SUPER FORMULA SUZUKA (JPN) 10 MARCH ROUND 1/7 Tomoki Nojiri eased his way to a straightforward win at Suzuka to open his bid for a third Super Formula title in imperious style. With 2023 title rivals Ritomo Miyata and Liam Lawson both moving on, Team Mugen Honda driver Nojiri lived up to his billing as the pre-season favourite. He jumped from third on the grid at the start to take command and never looked back. There was a moment after Nojiri’s pitstop on lap 13 of 31 when he came under pressure from an early-stopping Kenta Yamashita, with the chilly conditions making tyre warm-up a challenge. But Nojiri hung onto the lead during this critical phase and from there was never seriously challenged, earning his 12th career victory just under…

Tuesday, 2 June 1970 should have been like any other day; it was warm and sunny outside, a little girl played happily while her mother made plans for the evening. Her father had left home for work early but would be returning early too, allowing time to change before all three travelled to a friends’ house for dinner: the phone call that followed changed everything. Amanda McLaren was just four years old when her father Bruce died in a testing accident at Goodwood. She remembers very little of that day, other than leaving the family’s Burwood Park home to still visit friends (as had been planned), and being given a new doll set, which surprised her, since it was neither her birthday, nor Christmas. Now, more than 50 years on,…

RETRO GT4 CHALLENGE A new four-round series for older GT4 machinery is being launched for this season. The Retro GT4 Challenge is the idea of Vector Motorsport GT4 racer John Jackson and is being run in partnership with long-term GT4 team Stratton Motorsport. The series of four 45-minute one or two-driver races will cater for GT4s built between 2008 and 2018 after Jackson found that these cars are no longer competitive against newer models. “I own an Aston Martin GT4 (pictured), and myself and my son were racing in other series and we found we were either too fast or too slow,” said Jackson about the current marketplace. He estimates that the older cars are around 1-1.5 seconds per lap slower than newer models. “What we tried to find is…

GB3 McLaren Formula 1 young driver Ugo Ugochukwu will race in a partial GB3 Championship campaign with Rodin Motorsport this season. The 16-year-old American finished third overall in his rookie season of British F4 in 2022 with the team, then known as Carlin, before winning the Euro 4 title and finishing runner-up in Italian F4 last term. It is expected that Ugochukwu will contest four GB3 events in 2024, including the Oulton Park season opener at the end of this month, the Silverstone visits in April and July, and the trip to Spa in June. His priority is the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine with Prema Racing. “I’m very pleased to be racing in the GB3 Championship with a team as prestigious as Rodin Motorsport,” said Ugochukwu. “I am…

BRITISH GT Former GB4 and National Formula Ford frontrunner Alex Walker is due to make his British GT debut this year in a Paddock Motorsport McLaren Artura GT4 as the series has revealed its 36-car entry list. Walker first made the switch from single-seaters last year, initially contesting the DTM-supporting BMW M2 Cup before a few GT Cup outings with Paddock later in the season. He will now pair up with former Ginetta racer Blake Angliss. “It’s been a step we’ve been trying to make for a few years,” said Walker, who will be reunited with his old FF1600 engineer this season. “I think it’s come at a good time – I did a little bit of GT Cup last year so I have a bit of experience of this…

PHILLIP ISLAND CLASSIC New Zealander Codie Banks proved unbeatable in the big single-seater races – topped by the Formula 5000 Historic GP feature – at the Phillip Island Classic Festival of Motorsport last weekend. One of 10 visiting Kiwis, Banks (Lola T332) beat father David (Talon MR1) in qualifying. Vince Holland (ex-Roberto Moreno F3000 Ralt RT21) upheld Aussie honour with second place in the first two races, finishing ahead of Todd Willing (ex-Francois Cevert March 722) and Tony Galbraith (T332) in the second encounter. Versatile local Bryan Sala (Matich A50/51) improved to sixth, between overseeing the Formula Vee exploits of sons Brenden and William. Galbraith and Simon Gardiner (Maurer MM83) joined Banks Jr on race three’s podium, with David Hardman a strong fourth in father Jim’s AF2 car. After a…

VIDEO GAME REVIEW LE MANS ULTIMATE PC (Steam Early Access) RRP £24.99 Le Mans Ultimate is Motorsport Games and Studio 397’s official game of the FIA World Endurance Championship, showcasing the 2023 season and its eclectic line-up of cars and circuits. Studio 397, which took its name from Audi’s record 397-lap run to victory in the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, has form in terms of creating realistic motorsport experiences, having produced 2013’s critically acclaimed rFactor 2 – replete with an impressive line-up of British Touring Car, IndyCar and sportscar content. Plans for publisher Motorsport Games to spearhead standalone BTCC and IndyCar games fell through dramatically, however, leaving LMU as its main focus. LMU was released as an Early Access PC title initially, allowing Studio 397 the flexibility to…

The one-off, four-wheel-drive Porsche 961 had impressed with a seventh-place finish in the hands of Rene Metge and Claude Ballot-Lena on its debut at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1986. But when it returned the following year in Rothmans livery it suffered a dramatic fate. Mid-morning on Sunday, Kees Nierop – who had only joined the crew of Metge and Claude Haldi after the works 962 he’d been due to drive was destroyed by Price Cobb in a fiery practice crash – lost control and hit the barriers, triggering a ruinous conflagration that required a two-year rebuild for the now-museum piece. For classic motorsport DVDs and downloads head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…

The FIA has presented its vision for future hydrogen fuel technologies and plans to focus development efforts on storage in its liquid form. Following the latest meeting of the World Motor Sport Council, it was announced last month that in the context of hydrogen combustion applications “development and promotion of solutions based on hydrogen stored in liquid form” would be prioritised over gas storage. No reference was made to fuel cell applications, but this is not understood to indicate that the technology’s potential is being discounted by the governing body. An FIA statement said: “Given the [liquid] tank’s characteristics, lower volume and weight compared to compressed gas tanks, liquid storage form is better suited to the demanding environment of motorsport competitions, where optimisation is key. This also allows the powertrain…

Prestigious scholarships at Cranfield University and Aston University have been opened up for aspiring engineers. Applications for the second iteration of the FIA’s Motorsport Engineering Scholarship in partnership with Cranfield will close on 1 April. Created to promote opportunities for underrepresented groups, the inaugural winner selected in 2022 was Argentinian Jesica Salvini (pictured below), who said the prize had “completely transformed” her career. The successful candidate will receive fully funded tuition to obtain a Master’s in Advanced Motorsport Engineering at Cranfield, as well as living expenses. Aston University meanwhile announced that members of the winning team in the F1 in Schools 2024 UK National Finals will have the chance to interview for a full mechanical engineering scholarship. Held at the Magna Science Adventure Centre in Rotherham, the Finals concluded on…

“It does everything else for us; it writes your social media posts, it does your emails, your photoshop images, but how do we make it applicable to us, to work in our industry? It’s fascinating and something that, because we don’t understand it, makes it more interesting.” Tom Ingram’s presence among the audience at Autosport International’s Business Forum session on AI was notable as a sign that drivers are taking notice of its growing role in motorsport. In the case of the 2022 British Touring Car champion, machine learning isn’t just about improving performance – although that clearly is his biggest focus. Ingram says that there’s a strong desire to “make it work for what we need to do with it, which fundamentally is how do we make the car…