Tabla de contenidos para February 2025 en AUTOSPORT

Welcome to the new-look Autosport monthly magazine, following our merger with sister title GP Racing. Autosport will celebrate its 75th birthday in many ways in 2025, and we hope that the magazine’s increased focus on in-depth and premium articles – including interviews, track tests, historic features, analysis and opinion – will be a fitting way of marking the milestone. The who, how and why of Formula 1 will be a key focus but, as this relaunch issue shows, we will continue to cover the vibrant wider world of motorsport, including sportscars, touring car competition, rallying, single-seaters around the globe, and the UK club scene. Whether you’re an F1 fan or a general motorsport enthusiast, Lewis Hamilton’s move to Ferrari is likely to be one of the biggest points of interest…

After being paid off by Red Bull to sit on the sidelines for the remainder of his contract, Sergio Perez says he will take six months out of racing to decide where his future lies. The Mexican was replaced at the team by Liam Lawson for 2025, despite having signed a two-year contract extension in 2024, which team principal Christian Horner stated was an effort to reduce pressure on Perez and attempt to stave off any mid-season drops in form. This ultimately failed to keep Perez performing, and his future remained under constant scrutiny while he was unable to raise his level over the course of the year. Lawson had been touted as an option to replace Perez during the middle of 2024, with suggestions that the Kiwi may well…

Spa has secured its long-term future on the Formula 1 calendar with a fresh six-year deal, but with the caveat that it becomes part of the championship’s expected collection of races on rotation. The Belgian Grand Prix is signed up for another four F1 races over the next six seasons – 2026, 2027, 2029 and 2031 – but will drop off the calendar in 2028 and 2030. Spa’s contract had been set to expire at the end of 2025 before a new agreement was reached. With wide interest from prospective venues to host a grand prix, and F1 particularly keen to expand into Asia and Africa, Spa has been expected to become one of several European rounds to enter a rotational system. The circuit, which depends on financial backing from…

‘The stopwatch never lies’ is a Formula 1 cliche for a reason. Every weekend, the emptied fuel tanks and top engine power modes engage in qualifying and, typically, the quickest car/driver combination will prevail. But the races in the modern age, with their fragile tyres and mandated fuel rules, are masked-up different contests altogether. Possessing the quickest car remains the key advantage, and so often the drivers with this X factor are victorious. But the need to manage the tyres and fuel while doing real and tactical battle means a car lacking the purest performance in qualifying can be coaxed to victory. The 2024 season summed this up well. Max Verstappen and Red Bull dominated early on, before the rest caught up – led by McLaren – and suddenly wins…

RIVALS COULD DRAW A FOUL JAKE BOXALL-LEGGE Verstappen is just four licence points short of a race ban, and none of his current accrual will disappear until 30 June. So he’ll have to go 11 grands prix without picking up too many points. That should be simple, as long as he keeps his nose clean. The less aggressive drivers usually manage it… You’d dare say that Verstappen is less likely to pick up penalty points in the opening half of the season; six of his eight penalty points were collected in the final five rounds of the 2024 campaign. If Red Bull starts 2025 as it did in 2024, then it will also be much easier for Verstappen to avoid the ire of the stewards; very few drivers receive penalty…

Porsche and Antonio Felix da Costa lead the way in Formula E after the opening two rounds of the season, despite having yet to taste victory even with arguably the strongest package on the grid. The German manufacturer’s Gen3 Evo machine has shown impressive pace, with reigning champion Pascal Wehrlein securing back-to-back pole positions, including Porsche’s first Formula E front-row lockout last time out in Mexico City on 11 January. Wehrlein and da Costa dominated proceedings at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit, leading 26 of the 36 laps between them, before a late safety car brought Oliver Rowland into contention. The Nissan driver had been in fourth place, several seconds off the leaders. Armed with the 350kW Attack Mode, which this season also offers all-wheel-drive and has proved incredibly effective,…

BMW’s new M4 GT3 EVO took victory on its race debut in the Dubai 24 Hours on 11-12 January. The marque wheeled out its big gun WRT for the event to run the Al Manar Racing #711 entry driven by Brits Dan Harper, Ben Tuck and Darren Leung as well as Max Hesse and Al Faisal Al Zubair. Here the winning car chases the fifth-placed Paladine Competition BMW, which Leung also drove with a crew that included Toby Sowery. WRT engaged in battle in the early hours with the Porsche 911 GT3-Rs of Pure Rxcing and Dinamic GT. A puncture for Harry King dropped the Pure car back, and Hesse passed the Dinamic machine to lead with four hours remaining. Pure, with 2023 DTM champion Thomas Preining also on board,…

The Barrichello name will return full-time to world championship motor racing this year. Eduardo Barrichello will contest the World Endurance Championship with Aston Martin in LMGT3, 14 years on from his father Rubens’s final year in Formula 1. The elder of the Barrichello brothers will drive the Racing Spirit of Leman Aston Martin Vantage GT3 run by the Prodrive/AMR setup, two years after leaving Europe following his second season of Formula Regional. The 23-year-old will be teamed with Aston factory driver Valentin Hasse-Clot and Derek DeBoer, who both raced with Racing Spirit in the European Le Mans Series last year. For Barrichello the WEC drive represents a late change of plans. He has decided to turn his back on the Stock Car Pro Series in Brazil in which he was…

Double World Rally champion Carlos Sainz Sr’s 2025 Dakar Rally did not last long. The Spaniard rolled his Ford Raptor on stage two of the two-week Saudi Arabian marathon. Although Sainz (here wearing a race suit borrowed from co-driver Lucas Cruz) was able to return to the bivouac and finish the stage, the FIA conducted checks on his car later in the evening to determine whether he could take part in the remainder of the event. Following the investigation, the technical stewards decided that he could not continue due to damage to the car’s rollcage. Henk Lategan led the event as Autosport closed for press, ahead of fellow Toyota driver Yazeed Al-Rajhi. M-Sport Ford’s hopes were being upheld by two-time DTM champion Mattias Ekstrom in third. Where Dakar Rally, Saudi…

Ferrari will end its five-year hiatus from the British GT Championship, with AF Corse set to run a 296 GT3 for the 2025 season. AF Corse will run the car under its Spirit of Race banner for Matt Griffin and Duncan Cameron, who have six British GT race wins together and finished third in the 2010 standings. This team/driver combination started Ferrari’s most recent British GT races in 2020, when the pair contested six of the nine rounds aboard a 488 GT3. The duo are therefore set to have raced all five Ferrari GT3 models in the championship after using the 488, 458 Italia, F430 Scuderia and first-generation F430. The return to British GT coincides with Cameron’s son Henry racing in Ginetta Junior, which is one of the SROrun category’s…

Brian Redman and Ludovico Scarfiotti may have set the slowest representative qualifying times for the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, but the Cooper-BRM pair made it to third and fourth by the end of the race. The first European event of the Formula 1 world championship season was a sombre affair with a depleted field. This followed the recent death of Jim Clark in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim and that of his Lotus colleague Mike Spence at Indianapolis. Jackie Stewart was also missing after picking up an injury in an F2 race. But a crowd still flocked to Jarama for the first championship Spanish GP since 1954, at what was then considered a modern, state-of-the-art venue. The event was also notable for the first appearance of commercial sponsorship on…

The height of the matter The Yas Marina facility’s proliferation of different track configurations and associated fencing, along with its floodlights, contribute to the challenges of capturing a clean image in this environment. At ground level the photographers have to contend with plenty of background clutter; one workaround is to find some height and shoot downwards. Here Zak Mauger has positioned himself in the canopy of the W hotel and used the shadow of its lighting rig as part of his framing. The angle also affords an interesting perspective on the driver’s all-white garb as Carlos Sainz appears for the first time in a Williams. Photographer Zak Mauger/Motorsport Images Where Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates When Tuesday 10 December 2024 Details Canon EOS R3 RF100-500mm lens, 1/1600th @F8 Establishing Esteban…

LIAM LAWSON The Kiwi is not strictly a rookie, but he’s yet to complete a full season in Formula 1. Twice a replacement for Daniel Ricciardo at AlphaTauri/RB, Lawson now stands on the cusp of his first full campaign in F1 – with the added difficulty of being Max Verstappen’s team-mate at Red Bull. After the best part of two years of underperforming, Sergio Perez was let go by the Milton Keynes team, and Lawson was picked over Yuki Tsunoda. “Lawson is mentally the strongest of our juniors,” states Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko, “and we also see great potential for further development due to his limited grand prix experience.” It’s true that Lawson has been marginally more consistent on race pace than Tsunoda, but he has not been able…

Zak O’Sullivan is heading East for this year, with the 2021 Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award winner lining up a drive in Japan’s Super Formula series. As a Williams junior, O’Sullivan finished runner-up in Formula 3 in 2023 before winning twice in his rookie season of F2 last year, only for a split with ART Grand Prix before the final three rounds. He took part in the Super Formula test at Suzuka in December with Toyota-powered team Kondo Racing and has now replaced Kazuto Kotaka at the team alongside Kenta Yamashita. Elsewhere in the Toyota line-up, ex-Formula E racer Sacha Fenestraz has been confirmed as Sho Tsuboi’s team-mate at TOM’S, the Franco-Argentinian taking on a double programme that means he will return to the marque’s Super GT roster with Team…

DEAGEN FAIRCLOUGH AGE 18 2025 GB3 with Hitech 2024 British F4 champion with Hitech He says: “I’m still really happy about it and feel the test went well. It was exciting and is a memory that will stay in my mind for a long time. “The Formula 2 car was mega fun. You’re trying to be on the limit without crashing, because that gets you disqualified. I hadn’t been able to drive anything faster than an F4 car beforehand, so it was a big jump and I didn’t know if I’d be able to do the physical side, but it was all good.” ARVID LINDBLAD AGE 17 2025 F2 with Campos Racing 2024 4th in F3 with Prema Racing He says: “The two days were really cool – getting to…

Jota and Cadillac have taken the wraps off the livery in which the two factory V-Series.R LMDhs will race in the World Endurance Championship this season. The Cadillac Hertz Team Jota entries will hit the track in the same ‘Hertz Racing Gold’ colours as the British team’s customer Porsche 963s of 2023-24. The livery was launched in Paris on 13 January, at Cadillac’s flagship electric-vehicle dealership in the French capital, but it was not revealed how the six drivers announced in mid-November will line up across the #12 and #38 entries.…

Gianmaria Bruni may no longer be a Porsche factory driver, but he’ll still be turning out at the wheel of one of the German manufacturer’s prototypes in 2025. The four-time Le Mans 24 Hours class winner will race full-time for the JDC-Miller MotorSports squad in the IMSA SportsCar Championship. Bruni, who departed Porsche’s factory roster at the end of last year after eight seasons, will race the solo JDC-Miller Porsche 963 LMDh alongside Dutchman Tijmen van der Helm, who is staying with the team for a third season. The Italian is moving over from the Proton Competition squad with which he raced in 2023 and 2024, after failing to land a berth with Porsche Penske Motorsport in either IMSA or the World Endurance Championship. The recruitment of the 43-year-old Italian…

Following Adrien Fourmaux’s decision to join Hyundai, M-Sport Ford has once again gambled on youth by handing a surprise topflight World Rally Championship opportunity to Irishman Josh McErlean, starting with this week’s Monte Carlo Rally. M-Sport has become renowned for developing young talent, helping the careers of Elfyn Evans, Ott Tanak and Fourmaux, who have gone on to earn factory drives elsewhere. Several names were linked to the Ford Puma drive vacated by Fourmaux, and few would have predicted that 25-year-old McErlean would secure the seat alongside Gregoire Munster, who will now lead the team for his second full season. “It’s been a crazy few weeks to be honest,” said McErlean, who will be joined by co-driver Eoin Treacy. “It’s incredible, a dream come true for me. “I said last…

Another win, another new lap record. Dave Brodie, who died in December, was a colossus of Special Saloon racing in 1971 at the wheel of his famous ‘Run Baby Run’ Ford Escort. Here the BDA-powered machine leads at Crystal Palace on the way to what appeared to be a routine win, until the rear trailing rod sheared off its axle exiting the final corner of the last lap, and Brodie nearly lost it as he veered to the line. He was still 20 seconds clear of the second-placed Escort (chasing here) of John Bloomfield. Behind the Fords is the all-Mini 1300cc battle led by Dick Ferris from Bernard Bird and eventual class winner Ian Bax. Brodie then headed north to Mallory Park, where the following day he got the better…

British Touring Car Championship regular Aiden Moffat has joined West Surrey Racing to pilot a BMW 330i M Sport in 2025. The 28-year-old, a five-time race winner, has as expected taken one of the two WSR machines backed by LKQ Euro Car Parts, his sponsor for the past two years. WSR also has 2024 champion Jake Hill and Daryl DeLeon, with four-time title winner Colin Turkington one of those in the frame for the other LKQ car.…

Experienced historics racer Andy Newall returned to his roots by taking part in the curtailed Plum Pudding Sports Car races at Mallory Park on Boxing Day. The 56-year-old was a Star of Mallory Formula Ford 1600 combatant in the late 1980s. Associated with historic motorsport for decades, Newall was keen to take in one of the Boxing Day meetings and arrived with his original Chevron B6, CH-DBE-02 (at the head of this mixed pack of machines), which competed in multiple world championship events. Unfortunately, only two racing laps were possible before fog brought an early halt to proceedings in Leicestershire, with Newall running fourth at the time in the ex-Peter Taggart and Tony Goodwin B6. Where Mallory Park, UK When Thursday 26 December 2024 Details Nikon D500 180-400mm lens, 1/500th…

Two special events celebrating SHP Engineering cars, including races for its spaceframe Ford Escort RSR, are set to take place this year. SHP has built nearly 50 of the lightweight Escort Mk1-inspired RSRs over the past decade and the car has become increasingly popular – and successful – in categories such as Modified Fords. But it has never had its own race series due to the variety of engine options available. Races will take place at Lydden Hill on 19 July and the Ford Power Live event at Brands Hatch on 14 September. The latter is expected to include visitors from Ireland. “There’s going to end up being 20 RSRs racing in one go,” said SHP founder Sonny Howard. The Lydden event, featuring further action from SHP’s Pickup Trucks as…

A famous Formula Ford that was raced by future Formula 1 champions Emerson Fittipaldi and Jody Scheckter is set to return to action for the first time in over 30 years this season. Fittipaldi piloted the Merlyn Mk11A in 1969 and won three races, before Colin Vandervell – son of Vanwall F1 team founder Tony – enjoyed title success the following year. Scheckter (below) and tin-top star Frank Sytner also raced the car, nicknamed Magic Merlyn. Scheckter bought the car back in 1997 and it remained with the South African until he decided to sell his collection of machines last year. The Merlyn was then bought by former successful bike competitor Greville Ball, who plans to make his car racing debut in Historic FF1600 this year. Ball had originally been…

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Sonny Howard has had an immeasurable influence on national motorsport. But, despite a list of non-racing clients including Top Gear, the Fast & Furious franchise, Jaguar and the king of Jordan, he does not seek the limelight. Instead, he has nurtured others while prioritising the show. “We’ve altered people’s lives, without a doubt,” he admits. “But it’s not about Sonny Howard.” From hot rods to rallying, junior T Cars to crowd-pleasing Eurocars, Howard’s CV is as innovative as it is varied. Stunt cars for films, live shows and manufacturer launches – and even producing the Desert Iris military vehicle – have also been major parts of SHP Engineering’s business. But providing opportunities for drivers from grassroots disciplines is his real passion. The…

Alpine has ladled the pressure upon its Formula 1 rookie Jack Doohan with the capture of Franco Colapinto as one of its reserve drivers, after snaring the Argentinian from Williams. In a move not likely to be viewed as a vote of confidence in Doohan, who is understood to be on a short-term race deal with Alpine, Colapinto’s signing on a multi-year deal ensures that chiefs Flavio Briatore and Oliver Oakes have a proven insurance option in case the Australian does not perform in the opening handful of races. “I want to say thank you to Williams for all their support from the moment I joined the Academy until the last race in Abu Dhabi,” said Colapinto. “They turned my dream of racing in Formula 1 into reality, and I…

Out of a once-successful but now-broken partnership with a storied squad, and into the welcoming, generally jolly arms of Fred Vasseur at the helm of another. Lewis Hamilton has been here before. Rewind 20 years, and Ferrari’s new Formula 1 superstar was merely a highly rated up-and-comer, with considerable McLaren backing. It was still early days in his single-seater career. Hamilton had won the Formula Renault UK title at the second attempt with Manor Motorsport in 2003. Manor then opted to switch its successful Formula 3 team out of the British championship and into the F3 Euro Series, to which it graduated with its young prodigy. But things hadn’t panned out the way either party wanted. Hamilton scored only one win and finished a distant fifth in the standings, feeling…

Did you find the Formula 1 Friday interviews hard work during the final six races of 2024? Scarcely a week went by without Tom Clarkson gamely attempting to inveigle interesting answers from team principals who gave the impression of wishing they were doing something else – even reading the FIA so-called ‘Vision’ about diversity, accessibility, sustainability and box-ticking. The problem is that more and more team principals are engineers. I’m not saying engineers are dull. But they’re unlikely to take a pop at each other in the same way as Toto Wolff compared Christian Horner with a “yapping little terrier”. Now we’re talking! Being the owner of a Border Terrier, I understood Horner’s cheerful response when expressing admiration for the feisty breed. Silly stuff, maybe, but it made a change…

The 2024 winner of the Silverstone Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award will be announced at the Autosport Awards in London’s Roundhouse next week. It’s been a long wait for rising stars (front row, left to right) Deagen Fairclough, Freddie Slater, Louis Sharp and Arvid Lindblad, who were put through their paces at Silverstone in October. Here they are joined by the RLR M Sport Ligier, MotorSport Vision Formula 2 and Beechdean Motorsport Aston Martin GT3 machinery in which they were assessed, plus the judges, engineers, mechanics and key Awards personnel and stakeholders at the end of the first day of running. Turn to page 80 to learn more about the 2024 process and finalists, and visit autosport.com on 29 January to hear from the victor. Where Silverstone,…

Former L MP2 World Endurance champion Roman Rusinov has become a constructor. The Dubaibased Russian unveiled a supercar to be known as the Rossa with an attack on this month’s Dubai 24 Hours. The Rossa LMGT, which competed in the GTX invitational class of the Creventic-run event, is the effort of two years’ work. The carbon-chassis car has been developed in Dubai and is powered by a normally aspirated V10 of so-far-undisclosed origins. “When I was racing I was doing a lot of car development, so I thought why not build a supercar?” said Rusinov. “A lot of people show a concept first, but we decided to build a car and start racing straight away to develop it, just like in the good old days.” Rusinov expressed satisfaction with the…

To underline that his batteries are recharged after his partial season last year, two-time World Rally champion Kalle Rovanpera embarked on his maiden 24-hour race in Dubai this month. The Finn was making his GT3 debut, and took the start from 18th on the grid in Proton Huber Competition’s Porsche 911 GT3-R. He moved up two positions on the opening lap but was shuffled back to 19th by the end of his first stint. The car Rovanpera shared with Jukka Honkavuori, Jani Kakela, Joel Monegro and Bashar Mardini ultimately took fifth in the GT3 Pro-Am class and 17th overall. Numerous well-known faces appeared in the twice-around-the-clock contest as the traditional start to the endurance racing calendar. Among these were ex-Formula 1 drivers Vitaly Petrov and Sergey Sirotkin as part of…

The future looked as bright as the Swabian day for Allan McNish. It was early November 1999. Already a Le Mans 24 Hours winner, he’d just completed the first test of the new car he believed he’d be racing at the French enduro the following year. It was clearly a step forward on the machine in which he had triumphed in 1998 and, with a three-year contract in his briefcase, sportscar superstardom beckoned. McNish did go on to become an all-time sportscar great, but he never got to race the car he tested that day at Porsche’s Weissach test track after a brief shakedown the previous evening. For him there would be only one more race in a car built by the marque with which he had been victorious at…

When Dave Brodie succumbed to his long battle with aggressive blood cancer before Christmas at the age of 81, British motor racing lost one its great characters. Generally known as ‘the Brode’ or simply ‘Brode’, David started racing with his road car – a humble Austin A30 – in 1963, winning his first race, at Silverstone. A couple of Special Saloon Ford Anglias and a Turner followed, before the influence of his flatmates – Chris Irwin, Richard Attwood, Charles Lucas, Frank and Jonathan Williams among others – persuaded him to acquire for 1968 one of Lucas’s Titan Mk3 1000 cc Formula 3 cars. Brodie decided that his future lay in cars with a roof over his head, and so the famous ‘Run Baby Run’ Ford Escort Mk1 was created. Much…

TCR UK is to stage races overseas for the first time this year, with a date at Spa added to its schedule. The 17-18 May event replaces the Silverstone round after the championship was offered an opportunity to join TCR Europe for its regular event at the Belgian Grand Prix venue. In a further tie-up between the two series, this year’s TCR UK champion will be rewarded with a full-season entry to TCR Europe in 2026. Stewart Lines of championship promoter Maximum Motorsport said: “This new incentive means that the championship-winning driver can then make the next step up the TCR ladder to one of the longest running regional TCR series and take on the best touring car teams and drivers Europe has to offer.” Following a warning issued by…

The Classic Sports Car Club plans to run a special race at its August Castle Combe meeting to celebrate 50 years of BMW’s 3 Series. The 33-minute one or two-driver contest is open to any 3 Series or 4 Series model – cars that frequently compete with the CSCC – except for silhouettes. The BMWs can run any tyre, engine or gearbox but will be split into classes using an innovative points system across these three categories where, for example, having a sequential gearbox scores two points and a manual/H-pattern scores one. Drivers can benefit from a heavily reduced entry fee for the 3 Series race of £133 if they also enter another of the CSCC’s series across the 3-4 August event. “Anniversary races are something we’ve done on and…