Motorsport on Monday: 05/10/15
It's Hunt with Lauda
Exact plans are to be confirmed; Hunt's crunch test is in pre-season, when it will be decided which division he'll race in, whereas Lauda has already competed (and won) in the series this year. Still, excellent work to the Austrian racing team, and also to the still-fledgling Euro NASCAR series which has already been buoyed this year when Dale Earnhardt's grandson Jeffrey raced at the Brands event in June. Will it work in helping us switch on to NASCAR in Europe?
Evans- now the most successful Welshman in motorsport
Elfyn Evans this weekend became the most successful Welshman ever in motorsport, by taking second place in the 2015 WRC Tour of Corsica. He actually led the event during a brilliant day's driving on Friday, and although he was ultimately reeled in by the dominant Volkswagen of Jari-Matti Latvala, he still finished ahead of a chasing Andreas Mikkelsen.
This result is the best-ever for Evans, although he was already actually joint record holder: his third place in Argentina placed him alongside the two third places of Ruthin-born 1970s F1 star Tom Pryce. Pryce did win the 1975 Brands Hatch Race of Champions, but this was a non-championship race. Here's to the 28-year-old now making the next step...
Where was World Champion Sebastien Ogier? Nowhere, after picking up a puncture and suffering a mangled gearbox, although he did rejoin under Rally 2 to win the powerstage. Robert Kubica also (surprise, surprise) had a troubled rally, but also fought back to take second in the powerstage. It's Spain next, in three weeks time, and then onto - where else - Wales! Evans above 'em all there?
Battling from the back of the grid
Nick Tandy has made it two outright endurance race victories in one year with a shock overall win in the Petit Le Mans alongside teammate Patrick Pilet (who, in the process, scooped the USC class title). Why shock? Because they were in a Porsche GTLM car rather than a full-on Prototype...
It was terrible weather that mixed things up, and cut the 10-hour Road Atlanta race to barely eight hours. But this didn't mean Tandy and Pilet lucked in - they actually came from the back of the grid after losing their second-place qualifying slot due to a ride height penalty. It was Pilet that got the wet-weather-friendly Porsche into the lead and, although it dropped to third after a fuel stop, Tandy muscled it back into the lead just before the final yellow caution flag came out. A winning couple of passes indeed.
A BMW Team RLL GTLM joined Tandy, Pilet and Richard Lietz (who, due to the shortened distance, didn't get to drive) on the podium in second place, leaving the Action Express Racing Chevrolet Corvette of Christian Fittipaldi, Sebastien Bourdais and Joao Barbosa in third. They didn't mind though: the points were still enough to help them retain the United SportsCar Prototype title.
A well-earned title for them. But not as much of a headline as 'GT beats Prototype at (Petit) Le Mans'...
Each point 'only' costs £355,000
The Mercedes-AMG F1 team won both championships in 2014 - and lost £76.9 million, its company accounts have revealed. And that's despite its sponsorship and winnings going up thanks to the successes it had in 2013; a rise in operating costs from £190 million to over £240 million are the reason why. Yes, to win an F1 championship, it seems you need to fork out a quarter of a billion pounds.
At least it's a good news story for Britain: the Brackley-based team now employs 765 people, meaning wages and salaries rose to £65m - remember, some of them will have win bonuses, and the more you win, etc... And it's a better value spend-per-point than Red Bull, some have pointed out - when it dominated the F1 World Championship, Red Bull Racing was spending £397,000 per point. Last year, Mercedes-AMG spent 'just' £355,000 per point.
Kinda shines a new light on those hard-fought scraps over ninth place, doesn't it?
Let's hope 2016 is a lot better
Honda's 'GP2! GP2! Aaaargh!' F1 engine has been woeful to say the least this year. But it's all in hand, Ron Dennis promises us: the company is committed to making architectural changes for 2016 that will fix some of the design concepts that Ron probably described as sub-optimal.
We've given them the benefit of the doubt all season and been left disappointed, but could 2016 be the year they start to get it together? If anyone will be hoping so, it's Jenson Button: after being ignored by Dennis over his contract option ('I had a cold', Ron said), McLaren's now put an arm around its Brit former World Champion and JB's agreed to stay on. Because 2016 can't be as bad as this year, right?
He had a week off school for eating what he thought were magic mushrooms in his garden, and it turned out they were just poiseness ones. (not sure if this was just a rumour or not, but was believable at the time!)
We had a fight in a French class once.
He was a year older than everyone in our year, and came to school on a moped while everyone else was 15 and on the bus.
His hair has got a lot longer!
I actually don't remember him being into racing at the time, but then we weren't exactly friends either so who knows. Looks like he's following his dad into motorsport so fair play to the guy - will be interested to see where he ends up.
He had a week off school for eating what he thought were magic mushrooms in his garden, and it turned out they were just poiseness ones. (not sure if this was just a rumour or not, but was believable at the time!)
We had a fight in a French class once.
He was a year older than everyone in our year, and came to school on a moped while everyone else was 15 and on the bus.
His hair has got a lot longer!
I actually don't remember him being into racing at the time, but then we weren't exactly friends either so who knows. Looks like he's following his dad into motorsport so fair play to the guy - will be interested to see where he ends up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V3Pcw-_wi8
Story was that Freddie Hunt borrowed this car, crashed it and refused to pay for the damage. The video has since disappeared from Facebook and I think Freddie is paying for the damage.
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