Autosport

It’s that time of year again. Autosport has taken on the near-impossible (and invariably controversial) challenge of ranking the best drivers in motorsport across the season. Many things have to be taken into account when putting the list together, i

Peugeot could be on the grid with its new LM Hypercar at the 2022 Le Mans 24 Hours. That’s the latest snippet the French manufacturer has let out since November’s perfunctory announcement of its return to front-line sportscar racing. Peugeot’s plans

McLaren still has aspirations to join the top flight of the World Endurance Championship, but only if it can run a Daytona Prototype international 2.0 in the LM Hypercar division. McLaren Racing chief executive Zak Brown has revealed that the LM Hype

Ferrari Formula 1 ace Charles Leclerc is the star guest on the final day of next month’s Autosport International show at the Birmingham NEC. Leclerc, winner of two grands prix this season on his way to fourth in the world championship, will be presen

Two-time Macau Grand Prix winner and ex-Red Bull Junior Dan Ticktum has joined the Williams Formula 1 team as a development driver. Ticktum spent much of the second half of 2019 on the sidelines after losing his Super Formula drive when Red Bull drop

The Team BMW attack in the British Touring Car Championship will expand to three cars next season in a deal that rescues the career of Andrew Jordan, who will join forces with reigning champion Colin Turkington and Tom Oliphant. Jordan, who lifted th

Toyota development driver Kenta Yamashita was the fastest of the three rookies to climb behind the wheel of one of the Japanese marque’s TS050 HYBRIDs at the official World Endurance Championship test in Bahrain last weekend. The 2019 Super GT champi

WRT Audi will run ex-IndyCar driver Ed Jones and FIA Formula 3 graduate Fabio Scherer in its privateer DTM line-up in 2020. They replace Pietro Fittipaldi, who is heading to Japan next season (see p11), and Jonathan Aberdein, who is highly rated by A

Kyalami will get its first world championship race since the 1993 South African Grand Prix when the World Endurance Championship visits the Johannesburg venue in just over a year’s time. The new WEC fixture, scheduled for 6 February 2021, will be the

Haas Formula 1 reserve Pietro Fittipaldi is returning to Japan’s Super Formula series in 2020 after landing a seat with the B-Max Racing with Motopark team. Fittipaldi switches back to single-seater racing full-time in 2020 after a year in the DTM wi

Seeing any Formula 1 car up close is special, but to be able to arrange a track test with four title-winning racers was a career highlight. Thanks to Classic Team Lotus, Autosport celebrated the 1000th world championship race by putting resident race

Lewis Hamilton was raised in a council house in the Shephall neighbourhood of Stevenage, as was I, his first home a half-mile away, albeit we were also a few years apart. We attended similar schools. We will have walked the same streets, shopped the

For extra content visit autosport.com/top50 7th in Formula 1 World Championship This was a season of two dramatically different halves. Gasly struggled in his half-season alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull and too often couldn’t decisively rise cle

How does the same driver go from being a flop in the first half of the season to one of the success stories of the second? After being crushed by Max Verstappen at Red Bull, on average just over half a second quicker in qualifying, and too often stru

“What Fernando did in that first rainy stint at the front was for me absolutely incredible. He was just driving around everyone. Holy mackerel, it was totally insane. I have worked with a lot of drivers who can find the limit very quickly in the wet,

1st in Formula 1 World Championship Lewis Hamilton’s 2019 Formula 1 campaign was ostensibly not as impressive as what he did last year. There were few of the attention-grabbing virtuoso performances of 2018 such as Monza, where he defeated both Ferra

Mike Conway repeatedly looked in his mirrors in the expectation that a rival or two might appear behind him some time soon. No one did, not the sister Toyota nor one or more of the LMP1 privateers. The Briton was never challenged over the course of h

Aston Martin and Ferrari swapped places at each of the final three pitstops in Bahrain. That was how tight it was between the best of the cars from the British and Italian marques in GTE Pro on Saturday, though the grandstand finish that looked on th

SEPANG (MYS) 15 DECEMBER ROUND 10/10 For all the scenarios that could have played out during the World Touring Car Cup’s Sepang season finale, a two-way title showdown in a floodlit, damp decider, in which both contenders shared the front row, was as

It wasn’t quite the start to the season he had in mind. After a tricky time in the Bahrain opener, ART Grand Prix recruit Nyck de Vries scored a second and a fourth in Baku to reduce the gap to early leader Nicholas Latifi. But when his laundry bag c

The 2019 Supercars season had almost everything – except a title fight. There was a bitter parity debate, question marks over tactics, accusations of cheating, a record-breaking fine for the aforementioned tactics, an illegal Bathurst pole-winning en

Nick Cassidy fell two points short of winning both major Japanese championships, and it was only a controversial mid-season race that led to him failing to add a second Super GT crown to his maiden Super Formula title success. Still, it was a banner

Last year, Michael Ammermuller clinched his second Porsche Supercup title purely down to his consistency. Although he’d won only one race, he whisked the crown away from under the noses of the battling trio of Nick Yelloly, Thomas Preining and Julien

Twelve months ago, Frederik Vesti would never have guessed that he’d dominate the inaugural Formula Regional European Championship with Prema Powerteam and then finish in the top 10 on his debut in the new FIA F3 category – in Macau. That’s because h

In 2019, the NASCAR Cup was all about one team: Joe Gibbs Racing. Championship veterans Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin were joined at the Toyota Camry-speared attack by 2017 champion and Furniture Row Racing refugee Martin Truex Jr. Adding to the potent

Cadillac’s stranglehold on the DPi category within the IMSA SportsCar Championship finally came to an end in 2019. After winning 11 out of the 20 races for which prototypes were eligible during the previous two seasons, Cadillac faced a far more leve

As far as debut seasons go, this year’s Blancpain GT Series campaign for Chinese outfit FFF Racing could not have gone much better. Owned by Fu Songyang and with the operation run by driver Andrea Caldarelli, the team many considered to be underdogs

As G-Drive Racing’s Roman Rusinov, Job van Uitert and returnee Jean-Eric Vergne romped to victory by one clear lap in Barcelona in July, few doubted that the team’s full-season drivers, Rusinov and van Uitert, would run away with the title. That they

The World Touring Car Cup gave itself plenty to live up to by self-styling its 26-car 2019 field the ‘supergrid’. But it delivered on its promise, as 13 drivers – including at least one from each brand – won races, with two of them fighting until the

For the fourth year in a row a driver dominated the Euroformula Open points battle, but that undersells the close action on track. Performance disparity was often the talk of the paddock, as the series became an open-engine formula. New team Motopark

As two of the most experienced World Rallycross drivers on the grid for 2019, Timmy Hansen and Andreas Bakkerud started the year as title favourites. But when Bakkerud miscounted his laps and charged his Audi S1 into the side of Hansen’s Peugeot 208

Renault Sport got the better of the 2019 ‘Regional Formula 3’ split, despite its rejection from the FIA, which assigned the European rights for the category to the Italian-run Formula Regional. Using the same Tatuus chassis as FRegional – but with a

Chris Ingram became the first Briton since Vic Elford in 1967 to claim the European Rally Championship title, despite ending the season without a win – a fact that should not lessen the significance of his achievement. With the ERC1 Junior crown – an

No driver had won back-to-back British Rally Championship titles since Keith Cronin in 2009 and 2010. That is, until Matt Edwards doubled up on his 2018 success this year to seal a second title in a Ford Fiesta R5. Edwards’ success came at the expens

How closely were you paying attention this year? Dig out your anoraks and put your knowledge to the test with Autosport’s Christmas quiz 1 Prior to a surprise 1-2 for Honda-powered cars in Brazil, with Max Verstappen leading Pierre Gasly, when and wh

When you stand roadside on gravel rallies, you grow accustomed to the sounds and sights coming your way. There’s the initial, split-second lock-up as the left foot stabs the middle pedal, the frantic anti-lag clatter as the right foot rises from the

Forget the switch to 1600cc engines nine years ago, the last regulation change on the magnitude of what’s coming for 2022 was the introduction of World Rally Cars in 1997 (including the Subaru Impreza WRC 97, above). Overnight, the FIA opened up the

Markku Alen tells the story far better than most could. And it comes as a salutary lesson to those who think stepping down to an R5-based World Rally Car would be the end of the world in performance terms. It wouldn’t. If it’s the end of the world yo

DIRECTED BY ROGER DONALDSON In the mass media, McLaren did not fare well, receiving a host of three-star reviews. They claimed it was too one-note: a story of success without adversity. That seems harsh, especially given Bruce McLaren’s battle with P

@AS_National @AutosportNational Britcar will support the World Endurance Championship for the first time next season with a visit to Spa. Two non-championship races will take place at the Spa WEC weekend on 23-25 April next year. Qualifying will be o

Ginetta Junior frontrunner Will Martin will switch to the Porsche Carrera Cup GB next season. Martin, who took the most Junior wins of any driver in 2019 with nine, will make the step up alongside his Junior team Richardson Racing, which will compete

The circuit comprising the runways and taxiways of Linden Airport, a few miles southwest of Manhattan and just off the New Jersey Turnpike, was flat. But – in NASCAR terms at least – it was far from featureless: one of its turns was right-handed. Its

Fiesta champion Isaac Smith will step up to the Mini Challenge JCW series next year, when the category joins the British Touring Car Championship bill. The teenager took the Fiesta title this season (below) in his first year out of junior racing, hav

British Touring Car Championship team Speedworks Motorsport is eyeing a move into the British GT4 series next season with the new Toyota Supra. Speedworks runs the factory supported Team Toyota GB Corolla in the BTCC, which claimed four wins in Tom I

British GT runner-up Sam de Haan will switch from Barwell Motorsport to RAM Racing as part of an expanded two-car Mercedes GT3 effort for the Silverstone squad next year. Dan Shufflebottom’s team will run two of the latest generation Mercedes-AMG GT3

The Jaguar Le Mans victories of 1988 and 1990 will be celebrated at the Goodwood Members’ Meeting next March with high-speed demonstration sessions for up to 16 Group C and IMSA machines. In what is likely to be the biggest ever on-track gathering of

Michael O’Brien and Graham Johnson will resume their GT4 Pro-Am partnership in British GT next season in a Balfe Motorsport-run McLaren 570S GT4. Johnson, the GT4 champion in 2016, teamed up with O’Brien this season, when they finished second in the

In a week where one club series has secured a plum Spa World Endurance Championship support slot (see p128), it seems right to remember two other series that had the chance to shine on the big stage. The Mini Miglias and Se7ens starred at the May Thr

Schooled in racing in New Zealand where his British father – long-time Crossle FF1600 racer Trevor – is based, Ben Stiles impressed when he tasted Classic FF2000 at Silverstone in June 2018. Two seconds to benchmark Ian Pearson made Stiles resolve to

Qualifying sanction proves key in the battle between two Dallara F301 drivers for the Monoposto F3 spoils Just two points separated racing returnee Ashley Dibden from Alex Fores after a qualifying sanction at the season finale played a key role in th

The emotion surrounding this book is unmissable from the word go. The opening chapter describes Michael Schumacher’s tragic skiing accident, just five days before his 45th birthday – with even a reference to the Pope’s activities at the time of the i

This camel-crazy caricature had the best of times and the worst of times. From a key port to the garden of England, he would become synonymous with passing water. After scoring a hat-trick in the UK scene, he moved onto the world stage with the class