Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says he feels sympathy for Sebastian Vettel after Lewis Hamilton’s championship rival suffered misfortune for the second successive Formula 1 race weekend. Vettel will start from the back of the grid for Sunday’s race at Sepang, with title rival Lewis Hamilton on pole, after a turbo pressure issue meant he
Month: September 2017
Formula 1 drivers struggle to overtake thanks to the negative effect the turbulent aerodynamic wake of a car has on the one behind. In this latest clip from weekly programme The Flying Lap, race-winning F1 car designer Willem Toet explains the problem with the help of new animations produced by Motorsport TV. This remarkable visualisation
Citroen technical director Christophe Besse says an all-time confidence low is a bigger problem for its World Rally Championship programme than any technical issues on the C3 WRC. The firm amassed 17 WRC titles in a decade, but has struggled to find form in its return this season. Kris Meeke’s Mexico success in March is
MotoGP riders have given a positive response to Barcelona’s plan to reinstate the corner where Luis Salom was killed on the circuit layout for 2018 and beyond. Moto2 rider Salom’s death in a practice crash during the 2016 Catalan Grand Prix weekend resulted in MotoGP switching to the Formula 1 layout for that year’s race,
Red Bull says it will take “major issue” with the FIA if its former Formula 1 technical department head Marcin Budkowski ends up working for Renault. Leading teams have already discussed the potential impact of Budkowski joining a rival, amid growing suggestions that he resigned from the FIA to take up a Renault job offer.
KTM has given test rider Mika Kallio an extra race opportunity in the MotoGP season finale at Valencia. The 34-year-old Finn said after his third appearance of 2017 at Aragon last weekend that he doubted he would get another race chance before next season. The decision to field Kallio again after all puts additional pressure
Rally Poland clerk of the course Jaroslaw Noworol has blamed “human error” for his event losing World Rally Championship status and is working to get it back on the calendar. The Mikolajki-based event has been replaced on the 2018 WRC schedule by Rally Turkey, with the FIA and WRC Promoter pointing to repeated breaches of
Josef Newgarden was crowned 2017 IndyCar Series champion earlier this month, completing his rise from young hopeful to American superstar. A key player in his success is former Autosport journalist Jeremy Shaw, whose Team USA Scholarship allowed Newgarden to race in Formula Ford in the United Kingdom. In this video from Motorsport.tv’s weekly programme The
Suzuki’s 2017 MotoGP season has been hampered by Andrea Iannone choosing the wrong specification of engine to be homologated in winter testing last year, Autosport has learned. After winning its first race since 2007 at Silverstone with Maverick Vinales last season, Suzuki has endured a difficult ’17 season, with new riders Iannone and Alex Rins
Lewis Hamilton says he does not want to call on Mercedes team orders to help his 2017 Formula 1 championship bid, and hopes to be ahead of Valtteri Bottas anyway. At the Hungarian Grand Prix in July, Bottas let the faster Hamilton through to see if he could attack the leading Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel
Felipe Massa believes the Williams Formula 1 team is split over whether to keep him for 2018. Massa reckons Williams engineers favour him but suggested other factions might not. “The team knows 100% my points to stay another year,” he said. “I was always a professional driver, and I stay and I will finish as
Andreas Mikkelsen has secured a two-year deal with Hyundai that keeps him at the team through the 2018 and ’19 World Rally Championships. Mikkelsen is making his debut for Hyundai at next week’s Rally Catalunya, having made a late-season switch from Citroen. Autosport understands that was always intended as the precursor to a full-season drive
Equalising competition in Formula 1 to allow shock results like Leicester City winning the Premier League is part of a five-point plan created to improve grand prix racing. Leicester was tipped for relegation in the 2015/16 season but instead its shock title triumph made it only the sixth club to win the league in 24
Ott Tanak is likely to stay with M-Sport for the 2018 World Rally Championship despite Toyota’s efforts to sign him. The two-time WRC event winner is being chased hard by Tommi Makinen’s Toyota team. But Tanak said he was willing to reject the potentially favourable financial package on offer from Toyota as he thinks the
Red Bull boss Christian Horner says his Formula 1 team is “absolutely open” to running an Aston Martin engine if the British carmaker decides to enter as a supplier. Aston will become Red Bull Racing’s title sponsor in 2018 as part of an enhanced relationship that has already yielded the Valkyrie hypercar. Aston is taking
Ducati is adamant it can still beat Marc Marquez and Honda to the 2017 MotoGP championship with Andrea Dovizioso because Marquez takes so many risks. As Marquez won in Spain, Dovizioso – who had previously been level on points with him – trailed home seventh and fell 16 points adrift. But Ducati’s sporting general manager
Sebastien Loeb feels he still has the pace to compete in the World Rally Championship despite the five years that have passed since his last full-time rally programme in 2012. Loeb tested Citroen’s C3 WRC on gravel for the first time in Spain last week and after that day of running – his first on
The new universal aerokit for 2018 has completed its IndyCar-led testing at Sebring, with six drivers taking part. Regular testers Juan Pablo Montoya and Oriol Servia were joined by 2017 champion Josef Newgarden, Scott Dixon, Spencer Pigot and James Hinchcliffe for Tuesday’s running. Next year’s car will be lighter than the current machinery and a
Hyundai has selected 23-year-old Finn Jari Huttunen for its World Rally Championship driver development programme and will enter him in a programme of 2018 WRC2 rounds in an i20 R5. Huttunen edged Emil Bergkvist, Gus Greensmith, Karl Kruuda, Pepe Lopez, Pierre-Louis Loubet, Rene Mandel and Kalle Rovanpera for the prize after impressing Hyundai representatives on
Hendrick Motorsports’ Dale Earnhardt Jr fears it would be easy for him to get complacent in his last NASCAR Cup races before retiring as he is not in the playoffs. Earnhardt has had a difficult final season in NASCAR, having failed to win a race or make it into the title shootout. His best result
KTM test rider Mika Kallio says he expects his third MotoGP race appearance of the year at Aragon to be his final one of 2017, despite his strong performance. Off the back of a strong ride to 10th in Austria in August, Kallio was offered an extra wildcard outing aboard the RC16 for last weekend’s
Pierre Gasly’s imminent Formula 1 debut in this weekend’s Malaysian Grand Prix is the topic of the latest edition of The Autosport Podcast. On Tuesday, Toro Rosso announced Daniil Kvyat would be benched for Sepang, with reigning GP2 champion Gasly stepping in ahead of a possible full-time drive next season. Marcus Simmons and Glenn Freeman
Marc Marquez took a “big step” towards the 2017 MotoGP title with victory at Aragon, according to Valentino Rossi. Marquez’s fifth win of the season has given him a lead of 16 points in the championship over Andrea Dovizioso, with whom he was tied prior to the weekend. The Honda rider has won four of
Jorge Lorenzo feels his first MotoGP victory with Ducati is “very close”, following a strong run to third place in the Aragon Grand Prix. Lorenzo won 44 races in his nine-year premier-class stint with Yamaha but he is yet to stand on the top step of the podium since joining Ducati for 2017. His first
Danica Patrick says she will not consider offers to race outside of the NASCAR Cup Series in 2018, as her “only goal” is to win Cup races. Patrick has spent five seasons in NASCAR, but Stewart-Haas Racing opted against retaining her services for 2018 and current team boss Tony Stewart said he could see Patrick
Aston Martin’s new deal with the Red Bull Formula 1 team is all about title sponsorship, rather than engine manufacturing or branding – the chassis won’t be known as Aston Martins. In that sense this is a very similar deal to the one Red Bull had with another luxury carmaker, Infiniti, during its dominant years
Maverick Vinales fears catching Honda’s Marc Marquez to win this year’s MotoGP title will be “impossible” with Yamaha’s current level of competitiveness. Vinales scored a second-straight pole position at Aragon, but his championship hopes were dented in the race as he finished fourth while Marquez collected his fifth win of the season. Yamaha rider Vinales
Trevor Carlin says it is increasingly likely that his Carlin team will step up to IndyCar in 2018, amid suggestions the outfit has held talks with McLaren about a project. Carlin launched an Indy Lights project in 2015 with an eye to eventually graduating to America’s top tier, and took Ed Jones to the support
Joey Logano says the penalty that forced him to sit on pit road for a full practice session at the NASCAR Cup Series’ New Hampshire round was “a total joke”. Logano and Team Penske failed inspection four times on Friday and as a result Logano became the first Cup driver to sit out an entire
Valentino Rossi’s rivals praised the injured Italian’s “incredible” performance in MotoGP’s Aragon Grand Prix after he finished the race fifth. Rossi broke his leg in a training accident at the end of last month but, after missing his home round at Misano, returned to MotoGP action just 22 days after his accident when he took
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