Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2025 in AUTOSPORT

The Monaco Grand Prix, Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans 24 Hours. It’s that ridiculous time of year when the three biggest racing events in the world take place close together and all three feature in this month’s issue. It’s somewhat ironic that, following several weekends during which he made small mistakes that proved costly, Lando Norris nailed things at the circuit that punishes errors more than anywhere else on the Formula 1 calendar. The two-stop rule certainly made for a different Monte Carlo contest, but further work is required to make it a little less random (see page 12). We’ve got special debriefs on both the Monaco GP and the Indy 500 (p66), which current IndyCar dominator Alex Palou added to his CV to underline his status as a modern…

Carlos Sainz Sr is weighing up whether to stand against current incumbent Mohammed Ben Sulayem in December’s FIA presidential elections, and will try to ascertain his level of support among the FIA’s member clubs before making a final decision. The two-time World Rally champion and father of Williams Formula 1 driver Carlos Sainz believes that “now is the right time” for him to give something back to the world of motorsport, following a 40-plus-year career across rallying and rally raid championships around the world. “If I do this it will not be to fight anyone, it will be out of passion and love for motorsport, because I believe I can help and improve certain things,” Sainz told Autosport. “I believe it is probably the right time for me personally and…

Max Verstappen drove GT3 machinery in May during a Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie test on the Nordschleife under the pseudonym of ‘Franz Hermann’ so as to not arouse suspicion. The four-time Formula 1 champion drove Emil Frey Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3, which the Swiss team usually races in DTM with Verstappen’s protege, Thierry Vermeulen, among the drivers. Suggestions were that Verstappen was on the pace from the get-go, and the Dutchman confirmed that he had beaten Norwegian Christian Krognes’s NLS GT3 lap record of 7m49.578s. Despite the headline result, Verstappen was typically unbothered by the lap time, stating that his intention was to help EFR prepare for a potential entry in the near future – and to help himself get acquainted should he wish to eventually contest the Nurburgring 24 Hours. “They…

Red Bull had ample reason to be concerned after the Miami Grand Prix. Max Verstappen may have successfully pounced for pole position, but there was a sense of inevitability that he would be leapfrogged by the two McLarens as the orange machines of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris hove into view. After introducing some minor floor updates for Miami, Red Bull followed up with new additions to the car at Imola. The floor trialled on Max Verstappen’s RB21 through the weekend in Florida was now fully minted with the inclusion of new sidepods, plus revised rear-wheel aerodynamics and duct work around the wheel hub. It took the full gamut of Emilia Romagna GP practice sessions to dial them in; it’s rare that anything simply works off the bat in F1,…

Oliver Rowland said sayonara to Japan with almost double the points tally of his nearest rival in the Formula E title fight after drivers old and new starred across double-headers in Toyko and Monaco in the past month. Rain lashing the Tokyo track on Saturday led to qualifying being cancelled, but the race went ahead and was won by Maserati driver Stoffel Vandoorne; his first since Monaco 2022. It was an inspired or lucky – depending which way you look at it – win for the Belgian, who’d run hard in the early laps to go first for a Pit Boost, leaving him to charge for glory after a red flag had followed. Sunday’s race was far more straightforward, with Nissan star Rowland fastest all through the day. Rowland didn’t…

Time was then the ‘Month of May’ in IndyCar parlance meant a whole four weeks at the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway leading up to the Memorial Day weekend. These days the month of May kicks off with two preceding IndyCar rounds, one at IMS itself, albeit on a derivative of the old F1 layout, the other in the rolling Alabama countryside of Barber Motorsports Park. But, for all the intervening rigmarole of 500 qualifying, Bump Day, illegal Penske cars in qualifying, illegal other cars in the race, there was one constant throughout May 2025: Alex Palou winning races. At Barber, he made it three wins out of four for the season; at Indy GP it became four out of five; and then of course five out of six at the…

Ferrari made it three out of three in this year’s World Endurance Championship at Spa. The 499P Le Mans Hypercar was on top again. Just. This was a race that Alpine or BMW could potentially have won. And to complete the hat-trick with a 1-2 result, the Italian manufacturer had to pull a ploy in the pitlane that didn’t impress race control. The Ferrari was once again the fastest car, though the advantage it enjoyed on race pace around the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in May was diminished from the previous month’s Imola round, just as it had been between Qatar in February and its home race. Alpine wasn’t far behind and neither was BMW. Their respective A424 and M Hybrid V8 LMDh contenders were able to race – and race…

Jose Maria Lopez is on standby for the Le Mans 24 Hours as Toyota’s reserve driver. The role he played last June, when he replaced Mike Conway in the #7 entry, has been formalised for this year. Lopez was described as the “best choice for the role” by David Floury, technical director at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe, which against usual practice had not named a test and reserve driver for 2025. Jack Hawksworth is reprising the substitute role he fulfilled at Le Mans last year when he took Lopez’s place at the Auto Sport Promotion Lexus LMGT3 team. This time he has been brought in to replace the injured Ben Barnicoat in the French squad’s #78 entry.…

There’s no getting away from it. Ferrari is favourite going into the Le Mans 24 Hours. No other conclusion can be reached based on its wins in the blue riband round of the World Endurance Championship over the past two years and its clean sweep of victories in the opening three rounds of the series this year. But no one likes the favourite’s tag going into any race, let along the French enduro, and the best you will get from the Italian manufacturer is that it is “among the favourites”. Those words, from the mouth of Ferrari performance and simulation co-ordinator Mauro Barbieri, are not the cop-out they may seem. Allocating favourite status in the modern world of international sportscar racing isn’t as easy as it sounds – or as…

MORE HYPE FOR HYPERPOLE Hyperpole qualifying, introduced back in 2020, is changing for this year. It is now a three-round rather than a two-round affair in an attempt to increase the drama and jeopardy. There’s another twist, too. The Hypercars will run separately from the other classes on track: so no more excuses about traffic on a hot lap! First qualifying again takes place on Wednesday evening, but rather than an hour-long affair in which all 62 cars take to the track at once, the 21-car Hypercar field has been split off from the LMGT3 and LMP2 classes. Both sets of cars get 30 minutes each, with the top 15 cars in Hypercar and 12 each in P2 and LMGT3 progressing to round two on Thursday. Five Hypercars will be…

BTCC in Kent countryside Jake Hill leads through Druids as the British Touring Car Championship kicks off its second round at Brands Hatch. Jakob Ebrey, the doyen of photography for the series (and many others), has a crew of several snappers for each BTCC weekend. We had visions of one of his team dangling from a crane for this one, but no… It was taken with the use of a drone. “With the GP circuit not in use we had the amazing opportunity to capture the Indy Circuit from the air – a view we’d planned out in advance and turned out even better than we could imagine,” says Ebrey. Photographer Ryan Ellis/JEP Where Brands Hatch, Kent, UK When Sunday 11 May 2025 Details Hasselblad L2D-20c 24mm lens, 1/2500th @…

The 20th anniversary season of the birth of the FIA’s global touring car championship began at Mexico City’s Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with privateer Honda driver Esteban Guerrieri winning two of the three TCR World Tour races to lead the manufacturer efforts of Lynk & Co and Hyundai at the top of the points table. The Argentinian put his GOAT Racing Civic on pole, but was caught out by a fast-changing set of lights that played against the complex starting procedure of the Honda, and it was the Lynk & Co of Santiago Urrutia that led away. Urrutia was quickly chased down by team-mate Yann Ehrlacher, who had more pace than his Cyan Racing team-mates throughout the weekend. After a close battle, an impatient dive at Turn 1 with seven laps…

2 Seas pair rides British GT wave The 2 Seas pairing of 2021 DTM champion Maximilian Gotz and British GT regular Kevin Tse had endured a somewhat inauspicious start to the season. Instead, it was the sister Mercedes of rookie Kiern Jewiss and GT4 graduate Charles Dawson that was ruling British GT’s armada. But fortunes reversed at Oulton Park. A win and a second place for Gotz/Tse (pictured leading the field out of Lodge amid bank holiday rain) have catapulted the pair from 51 points adrift of their team-mates to now being just 10 behind. A penalty for contact in race one and an incorrect race-two stop for slick tyres hurt the #42 crew’s bid, and Optimum McLaren duo Marvin Kirchhofer/Morgan Tillbrook have also closed to within 18 points. Photographer…

The new supply of hillclimb tyres from Nova Motorsport is scheduled to start at the August Shelsley Walsh rounds of the British Hillclimb Championship. After the closure of the Avon tyres motorsport department at the end of 2023, the supply of tyres for the bigger single-seaters in the British Hillclimb series was under question until Nova Motorsport confirmed plans to take over production and move it to Palmeira in Portugal. However, the supply of tyres over the opening weeks of this year’s BHC has been a major topic of debate as the remaining stock of new Avons has dwindled. In a statement, Nova said: “We will begin production of BHC-specification tyres in Palmeira in July. However, it is crucial to understand that this does not mean the tyres will be…

Lando’s ups and downs The McLaren MCL39 of Lando Norris takes to the air, kerb-hopping at the Imola circuit’s Curva Gresini during qualifying for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. The Briton’s initial three-way fight for pole position with team-mate Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen in an increasingly well-fettled Red Bull (see page 38) fizzled out in Q3 as he was bumped into fourth place by Mercedes’ George Russell with a last-gasp push. Norris later lamented his drop-off in pace in characteristically candid self-critical style: “It was good until the final two laps… Not quick enough – that’s all. The lap time doesn’t come. Same answer as every weekend, it’s a regular thing. I need to work on it a lot, it’s just not good enough.” There was some solace to…

Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes left the team following May’s Miami Grand Prix, effectively placing executive advisor Flavio Briatore in control in the interim. A rift between Oakes and Briatore was rumoured but denied by both parties, with personal reasons cited by Oakes in his decision to depart. The Briton was installed as team principal in mid-2024, following Bruno Famin’s decision to step down from the Renaul-towned operation. It emerged that in the days prior, Oakes’s brother William – a director of Oakes’s own Hitech Grand Prix team – was arrested at Silverstone Park and charged with ‘transferring criminal property’; a statement from the Metropolitan Police stated that he was “in possession of a large amount of cash” and was remanded in police custody. Oakes is not under any criminal…

Who cares if Flavio Briatore isn’t recognised as Alpine team principal? The important point is that he’s there. You may not approve of the wild-haired man who gabbles in unintelligible English, but the controversy that surrounded him in the past is also part of his F1 credentials today. He’s been there and done it – in every sense. Some of his methods may have been outlandish but, for a team losing leaders as often as Ferrari replaces one tacky livery with another, Briatore is as good as it gets. In some ways, he’s better than that. His CV, covering world championships for Michael Schumacher (with Benetton) and Fernando Alonso (Renault), turned into a charge sheet when Briatore allegedly signed off Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashing during the 2008 Singapore Grand…

America’s greatest race gets under way The IndyCar field prepares for the start of the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500, led by Prema’s surprise poleman Robert Shwartzman and fellow front-row qualifiers Takuma Sato (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. The day wouldn’t end particularly well for any of the three, although O’Ward eventually came away with third, while Sato was ninth and rookie Shwartzman classified 26th after too much drama. Ahead of them was Alex Palou, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver taking his Dallara-Honda to victory to cement his place as one of the series’ great drivers. Turn the page for our special report. Photographer Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images Where Indianapolis, Indiana, USA When Sunday 25 May 2025 Details Canon EOS R6m2 RF24-105mm lens, 1/1600th @F6.3…

Silverstone Autosport BRDC Award finalist Freddie Slater took his maiden Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine victory at Spa, but two non-finishes over the first two rounds mean he is down in fourth in the points. Prema Racing-run Slater won his battle in race one with Enzo Deligny, the French R-ace GP charge taking the sequel with Slater forced out in an early collision. At the Misano opener, Slater was second to Evan Giltaire in race two, after Matteo De Palo (Trident) had taken first blood.…

Toyota is paying homage to its GT-One contender of 1998-99 at the Le Mans 24 Hours in celebration of the 40th anniversary of its first campaign at the French enduro. The #7 GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar driven by Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries will run a copycat livery from the GT1 contender’s maiden assault on the race. Toyota was represented at Le Mans in 1985 by a pair of Dome-built Group C chassis, one run by the Japanese constructor and one by the TOM’S team, which had combined to mastermind the factory-supported programme.…

So, you might ask, what’s new in the IMSA SportsCar Championship? Not much, it would appear. The first ‘regular distance’ event of 2025, at two hours and 40 minutes, began and ended in precisely the same way as the previous three. Dries Vanthoor once again started his BMW M Hybrid V8 from pole at Laguna Seca and, when the chequered flag fell, the pair of Porsche Penske Motorsport 963s emerged clearly ahead of the field, albeit this time with Matt Campbell and Mathieu Jaminet beating Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy. But as is usually the case in IMSA competition, that doesn’t tell the full story. For starters, the rulemakers attempted to spice things up a little. The 963s’ minimum weight remained unchanged at 1049kg, but maximum power was trimmed from…

2014 LMP2 win Jota Zytek 2020 GTE Pro win Aston Martin Racing 2025 Hypercar Aston Martin THOR Team HARRY TINCKNELL When Harry Tincknell was about to walk out onto the podium after winning LMP2 at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2014, he received some sage advice from his manager, Allan McNish: “Be prepared for the best view in the world.” Those words from a three-time Le Mans winner didn’t ready a raw 22-year-old Le Mans debutant for the scenes he was about to witness. “You go out there on the podium over the pitlane, and it’s like being a rock star on stage at Wembley Stadium,” recalls Tincknell, who’d just taken class honours aboard the Jota Zytek-Nissan Z11SN shared with Oliver Turvey and Simon Dolan. “There are people as…

Few racing cars divide opinion like the Audi R8. Some regard the German manufacturer’s LMP prototype as the all-time great to which its record attests. Others have labelled it a boring winning machine that did as much harm as good to international sportscar racing. The irony is that they are probably not contradictory opinions of a car that this season celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first of its five wins at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Audi’s second stab at a prototype, developed for year two of what would end up being an 18-year adventure at the pinnacle of endurance racing, was perhaps “too good”. Those are the words of Emanuele Pirro, a driver forever associated with the R8. Good enough, certainly, to win 63 of the 80 races…

While Tom Ingram, Adam Morgan and Tom Chilton were all taking British Touring Car Championship podium finishes over the Snetterton weekend, it was the fourth Excelr8 Motorsport Hyundai that was the subject of much conjecture over the course of the Norfolk event. Michael Crees, the 2020 Jack Sears Trophy title winner, was behind the wheel for the opening two rounds on his latest return to the BTCC. But he relinquished the seat for Snetterton to Ryan Bensley, a TCR UK competitor who is a backer of Crees through his Mortgage Synergy company. The inference was that this was to be a one-off for Bensley, with Crees intending to return for the next rounds at Thruxton and Oulton Park before Senna Proctor, as already announced, fills the seat for the second…

Motorsport in the UK suffered a double tragedy over the late May bank holiday weekend when two competitors died in two very different disciplines within the space of three hours on 24 May. Leading rally co-driver Dai Roberts died in an accident on the Jim Clark Rally in the Scottish Borders when the Hyundai i20N Rally2 he was sharing with James Williams crashed off the stage and into a solid structure. Less than three hours later, Vintage Sports-Car Club driver Julian Grimwade lost his life when his 1913 Romano Special crashed on the opening lap of a race at Donington Park. Both competitors were hugely popular members of their very different motorsport communities and countless social media posts showed just how well-respected each was in their respective field. Roberts, aged…

Veteran team boss, engineer and driver Ed Abbott is gearing up for the challenge of tackling this year’s Roger Albert Clark Rally in an unusual choice of car: a 5.3-litre V12-engined Jaguar XJS. Abbott fielded the unlikely Jaguar on three smaller forest rallies in 2024 and successfully finished all of them as he learned about keeping the XJS on gravel forest roads and out of the ditches. Now, the 50-year-old sportscar is being rebuilt ahead of being the first Jaguar to tackle the gruelling five-day forest rallying marathon in November. Abbott first rallied in the 1970s in his native south-west of England in a 1275cc-engined Austin A40, but was better known for running the Abbott Racing team in production saloon cars through the 1980s, with his brother Lionel racing on…

FROM MODERN F4 TO HISTORIC CORTINA It’s fair to say that no one had ever before jumped from racing a modern British Formula 4 single-seater one weekend to starring in an historic Lotus Cortina the next. Yet Harri Reynolds did so with aplomb when he scored a remarkable Jack Sears Trophy win at the Donington Historic Festival. Driving Pete Smith’s Cortina, Reynolds was instantly at home and stormed through to triumph, despite a chaotic Old Hairpin melee on the first lap that left him 18th. He grabbed the lead on the final lap when the Nigel Greensall/John Spiers Mustang faltered. RED BULL GIVES YOU WINS Ginetta Junior has a justified reputation for producing close, unpredictable races. But there’s no disputing who the current star of the series is – Red…

1994 FERRARI 333 SP The 499P has successfully taken the works Ferrari team back to the top class of sportscar racing, but the 333 SP went some way to filling the gap between the 1973 312PB and the current Le Mans Hypercar. Originally designed in partnership with Dallara, the 333 SP was meant for privateer use and ran a four-litre V12 derived from the engine that powered Ferrari’s 641 Formula 1 car of 1990. The 333 SP arrived in 1994 and remained active for nearly a decade, scoring successes on both sides of the Atlantic. This chassis, 003, appeared at the 1994 Geneva Motor Show before being delivered to Scandia Motorsport. It won at Laguna Seca and then took the 1995 Sebring 12 Hours, with Andy Evans, Eric van de…

In a move mooted before the 2025 season had even begun, Franco Colapinto replaced Jack Doohan at Alpine for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and beyond, with the Australian demoted to a reserve role at the team. Doohan had endured six difficult race weekends; the Queenslander showed flashes of one-lap pace, but struggled to deliver consistent race weekends overall. He outqualified Pierre Gasly at the Miami Grand Prix, but was then caught up in a Turn 1 tangle with Liam Lawson, ending his race on the spot. Alpine’s announcement of the shuffle stated that Colapinto’s entry at Imola was the start of an initial five-race deal, although executive advisor Flavio Briatore later denied that there was any particular timeframe applied to his tenure. The Argentinian impressed in his nine-race spell…

IF FERRARI’S CURRENT supremacy in the World Endurance Championship wereto represent the Prancing Horse at something approaching its fleetest gallop, then its F1 team currently seems to be operating at a steady canter. Contrary to popular belief, 2025 does not represent Ferrari at its worst – total implosions across its history are rare but, when they do occur, they tend to resemble all-encompassing maelstroms that threaten to pull everything that surrounds them into the vortex. The waters are choppy at the moment, but not at the cadence that sinks ships; the Ferrari boat is ‘merely’ rocking at the moment. It looked so good last year. After a mid-season wobble, instigated by a floor update that led the team up a development dead-end, Ferrari rallied over the second half of the…

Running world motorsport’s governing body is often a thankless task. Formula 1 alone has been a febrile web of commercial challenges, political dissent and clandestine manoeuvrings for decades now. And yet, despite the criticism faced by every recent president going back to the days of Jean-Marie Balestre, rarely has an incumbent candidate been opposed (see panel, pages 50-51). All of them have stepped aside at the end of their terms. Balestre himself was manoeuvred aside into a different role rather than defeated in a vote by Max Mosley, who then enjoyed four terms – unopposed each time. That may be about to change now Carlos Sainz, twice a world rally champion, has announced his intention to run against Mohammed Ben Sulayem in the next presidential election this December. It’s understood…

PROBABLY NOT, BUT HE HAS A POINT OLEG KARPOV You do have to give Alonso a bit of leeway for calling himself “the unluckiest driver in the world” – that comment came over team radio, in the heat of the moment. And he’s probably right in saying that the context matters. Still, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong to assume that the two-time world champion does sometimes feel that way. Remember that image from the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix, just seconds after he stepped out of his Ferrari? Raindrops on the open visor, eyes staring into the void – the look of a man who hadn’t just lost a title fight to a rival in superior machinery after delivering an almost flawless season. Those were the eyes of Alonso, who’d just…

The Formula 2 title race is brewing up nicely. McLaren junior Alex Dunne, who is putting in by far the most concerted attack on an FIA F2 crown by an Irishman since Derek Daly in 1979, moved to the top at Imola. And then Williams protege Luke Browning leapfrogged him to strike a blow for Cheshire on a chaotic weekend in Monaco. The standout performance over the May rounds was arguably Dunne’s at Imola. The Rodin Motorsport driver qualified fifth and ran fourth early in the race, then leapfrogged Leonardo Fornaroli in the pits as the leading contenders exchanged their supersoft tyres for softs. Browning pitted a lap later and this gave the Hitech GP ace the overcut on team-mate Dino Beganovic, the Ferrari-backed Bos-no-Swede who had led up until…

Sparks but no luck for Lambo at Brands International sportscar racing returned to British shores with the opening weekend of the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup at Brands Hatch at the start of May. This was the 11th running of the event at the Kentish venue, but there was no luck for the Grasser Racing Team and Lamborghini, winners of the inaugural fixture back in 2014. Both its Huracan GT3 EVO2s were thrown to the back of the grid for a Balance of Performance infringement. Despite the use of every inch of road, the drivers of the #19 Silver Cup entry, Baptiste Moulin and Ivan Ekelchik, failed to make an impression in either of the two one-hour races. They went home with a 29th-place finish and a DNF. The…

Peugeot appears ready to extend its commitment to the World Endurance Championship. The Stellantis marque’s top brass has suggested that it is in the series for the long haul and has dropped heavy hints that it could develop a new car to replace the existing version of the 9X8 Le Mans Hypercar. New Peugeot CEO Alain Favey insisted that Peugeot was in the WEC’s Hypercar class “for the long term”. Meanwhile, Jean-Marc Finot, motorsport boss of the Stellantis group, stated that “it is very likely that we will keep on [in the series]”. Favey wouldn’t elaborate on what long term means. “We are here to demonstrate the strength of the brand over a long period,” he said. “We are looking for step by step improvement that will lead to success.…

Wayne Taylor has been talking about taking his eponymous team to the Le Mans 24 Hours for years. With victories at the Daytona, Sebring and Petit Le Mans enduros under its belt, a win at the French race is the next box to be ticked by Wayne Taylor Racing. But taking a successful operation over from the IMSA SportsCar Championship to compete at the World Endurance Championship blue riband isn’t as simple as it might sound, even with common regulations across the two series. WTR won’t be rolling one of its Cadillac V-Series.R LMDhs straight from an IMSA event onto a plane destined for France. The schedule involved in the team’s maiden Le Mans assault and subtle differences in the specification of the cars racing in IMSA and the WEC…

Flying Tanak is denied once more Rally Portugal 2025 will be another one of those victories that slipped away from Ott Tanak in incredibly unfortunate circumstances. The 2019 world champion was the class of the field in Portugal, winning 12 of the 24 stages, and was seemingly on course to claim a 22nd career win until drama struck. For the third time in his career the Amarante stage came back to haunt the Estonian. It had previously derailed him in 2017 and 2021, and this time a power steering failure ended a likely first win of the year for Tanak and Hyundai. He proved he was the driver to beat by winning both passes through the famous Fafe stage (pictured) on Sunday to recover to second overall, 8.7 seconds behind…

A trim figure is standing in the Brands Hatch pitlane, watching the West Surrey Racing crew getting assembled for end-of-day photos – and is that a wistful look in his eyes? The team is in celebratory mode, as well it might be: three British Touring Car Championship race wins with a trio of drivers; a pair of 1-2s. “Get in the picture, Colin,” exhort a couple of well-meaning WSR folk. “No, no,” he replies with a modest chuckle. “I’ve been in far too many photos.” Colin Turkington this year finds himself in a new role: coaching Aiden Moffat as the Scot gets to grips with the BMW 330i M Sport alongside reigning champion Jake Hill, rookie sensation Charles Rainford and star up-and-comer Daryl DeLeon. As a four-time champion of the BTCC,…

Talks are progressing to return car racing to the Scottish Ingliston track for the first time in 30 years. The circuit, located just outside Edinburgh, held its last race meeting in October 1994 (above) and its closure left Knockhill as Scotland’s sole circuit. But, following a change in management of the Highland Society that operates the Ingliston site, there is renewed optimism about racing making a comeback. “The Highland Society are keen to expand their activities and they’re very keen for us to get going with this,” said Scottish Motor Racing Club president Hugh McCaig, who is involved in the discussions having previously run the circuit in the 1980s. “We would like to get the circuit open as a circuit for club motorsport and historic racing. With modern technology and…

In the early 1970s, Fife farmer Tom Kinnaird had an idea. The landowner and racing enthusiast couldn’t resist the temptation of creating his very own circuit within the natural contours of the Scottish countryside. Along with friend David Brown, Kinnaird devised an eight-turn track, joining old service roads with a disused colliery railway line to create a circuit that – unbeknown to them – would eventually become one of the most popular and demanding race venues in the UK. Having officially opened a year prior to bikes only, 1975 marked the eagerly anticipated debut of car racing at the track. Fifty years later, Scottish motorsport icons past and present recently gathered to celebrate half a century of four-wheeled action at Knockhill. But it is perhaps the lesser-known name of Edward…

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Lewis’s peace of the inaction Lewis Hamilton is a vision of calm contemplation in the cockpit of his McLaren as he composes himself awaiting the start of qualifying for the 2010 Japanese Grand Prix. The session had been repeatedly delayed due to very heavy rain, Hamilton remaining in the car throughout, and when conditions failed to improve was postponed until race-day morning. What Autosport described as “a heroic effort” on “a typically dramatic and skilful lap” got the then one-time world champion to within 0.38 seconds of the front-row dominating Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, although a gearbox change meant a five-place grid drop. Photographer Steven Tee/Getty Images Where Suzuka, Japan When Saturday 9 October 2010…