Motorsport on Monday: 12/10/15
Flash wins title, Hamilton is odds on for it, WEC teams put the orders in for their champ
After his race three drive through the field, Gordon Shedden was undoubtedly a deserving title winner. Sure, the other guys he passed from 19th on the grid clearly didn't want to get involved in a title-changing challenge, but this still shouldn't undermine what an inspired performance it was. With Matt Neal as rear gunner (making Honda Racing's 2015 team title all the more valid), the thrilling climax to BTCC 2015 was the stuff of Alan Gow's dreams. Beat that, 2016...
So Lewis actually had it easy for once, after it was Nico's Mercedes-AMG that this weekend belied the 30-year anti-breakdown warranty all its road cars are offered with. In winning the race, Lewis also beat Senna's total race win tally (and matched third-placed Vettel's tally as well), and surely all but sealed the 2015 World Driver's Championship, which will seem him equal Senna's haul.
Rather unexpectedly, there was plentiful action behind him, from Grosjean startlingly catching Maldonado's crashitus, to Kimi briefly starring before driving like an amateur, to Jenson actually scoring points, to a very well-deserved podium indeed for Sergio Perez and Silverstone's favourite F1 team.
The diplomatic incident on the podium was pretty gasp-inducing though. Lewis, spraying Putin with champagne? Obama, Merkel, Cameron et al surely all watched it and cowered. Quick, Lewis, get on the plane to Austin pronto...
A McLaren driver has swept to a championship title in 2015 - albeit in GP2 rather than F1. McLaren junior Stoffell Vandoorne eased to the title with a canny fourth place in the Sochi sprint race, won by Status Grand Prix driver Richie Stanaway.
Now McLaren wants to get him a race seat for 2016, with Haas F1 perhaps the most likely berth for a driver who's been staggeringly competitive this year in the F1 feeder series. Which would be a smart move: get him grounded for a year, then slot him into a 2017 race seat vacated by Jenson, just as Honda hopefully comes good. Alonso could have some unexpected competition for the third world championship he so desperately craves...
The World Endurance Championship is brewing up nicely after Porsche imposed team orders in Japan to give Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard their third race victory in a row. Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Mark Lieb were half a minute up the road, but Webber et al have more championship points and are in with the best chance of lifting the title, so Porsche bosses made the call.
It means the Porsche trio are now one point ahead of the Audi R18 e-tron Quattro of Marcel Fassler, Andre Lotterer and Benoit Treluyer - who themselves have team orders to thank for their third position in the Fuji Six Hours.
Neat initiative from Strakka Racing, who let fans sign a tyre and wheel before then using it in the race; the exact opposite of keeping everything race-related strictly out-of-bounds. The neat-looking Gibson 015S Nissan continues to make progress in LMP2 too, setting quick times in the race, albeit hampered by technical gremlins.
Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards won the Bathurst 1000 in a Red Bull Racing Holden Commodore in a lively race that we'd be talking about for all its weather-related drama and incidents - if it weren't for two colossal accidents in practice. First was Chaz Mostert whose innocuous-looking front-end wall-nudge had sickening consequences as his Ford Falcon went through the most remarkable crash sequence, hitting a marshal's hut along the way.
He suffered a broken leg and wrist in the crash, which will rule him out of Australian V8 Supercars for the rest of the season - more worryingly, seven other marshals and onlookers were caught up in the incident, three suffering minor injuries, although luckily none are serious.
The second crash was even more dramatic, when Damien Flack's Ford was nudged into the wall (apparently by his brother Adrian) and barrel-rolled 12 times with almost ridiculous drama, leaving just a driver's cell and a luckily conscious although shaken Flack intact. He was quickly and understandably airlifted to hospital, leaving Bathurst organisers breathing another sign of relief. Get ready to gasp and cringe when you watch footage of both incidents...
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