Dell'Orco showed great pace and was a contender for wins throughout the weekend.

An exciting race prospect was in full swing for the Friday night American SoF race. An impressive qualifying performance from Dell’Orco put his car on pole ahead of Stergios, but the New Englander’s better launch saw him grab the lead and never look back en route to a comfortable win, despite an off-track excursion near the end of the race. Davy Decorps too produced an excellent performance, also advancing ahead of Dell’Orco at the start and holding on for a well-deserved second place. However, the main talking point of the online race involved an incident between A Class drivers Bryan Heitkotter and Phillip Diaz in the fight for sixth place on Lap 8 – the two tangled in the Turn 3 hairpin, sustaining damage to their cars and causing a multiple car pile-up close behind. David Martinez – despite a first lap crash – scooped the spoils to take a credible fifth position by the end of the race, closely following fourth placed Ryan Terpstra.

Reip (left) and Slocombe had quite a battle in Sunday's 6:15 SoF-race.

Despite taking the fastest qualifying time of the week, DWC sim racer Luke McLean did not show for this race or the European Sunday SoF races. In his absence, Laurent Beteille led the field away from pole-position on the 18:15 CET race.  However,the Frenchman’s luck turned bad at the start of the race as a poor launch from the grid saw him dropping down to fourth entering the tricky Turn 2. A slight miscalculation with his entry speed saw him put a wheel on the grass, spinning him out of contention. This put DWC entrant Andrew Slocombe in the lead followed by Belgian representive Wolfgang Reip and Finland’s Teemu Iivonen.

The two front-runners would pull away from the rest of the field and stage a race-long battle only to end up four tenths apart when the chequered flag waved with Slocombe earning the top step of the podium. Pierre Urbizu got around Iivonen for third in the early stages of the race.  However, the Finn got the position back after the pit-stops had cycled through. Jose Madrid cruised to 5th place after driving a clean and consistant race.

Probably not what Uusi-Jaakkola wanted to see in front of him in the first turn of the race. For that matter, it's probably not what the airborne Reip envisioned either!

Finally, in the last SoF race of the week at this high speed circuit, Dell’Orco led into Turn 1 followed by a fast-starting Stergios.  However, a huge incident behind them got most peoples’ attention and left Slocombe, Iivonen, Terpstra and Jason Lovett with damaged Williams-Toyota FW31s whilst an even less fortunate Wolfgang Reip had to retire with more severe damage from this crash. The duo of Dell’Orco and Stergios engaged in a ten minute scrap clear of the troubles behind them, followed by the pack of Slocombe, Martti Pietilä and Beteille.  As Lap 8 commenced, the leading two drove side-by-side through Turn 1 and continuing to Turn 2 – where Stergios misjudged his entry speed and met the gravel trap.   That provided Dell’Orco some breathing space and dropped Stergios to 5th place behind the three cars now battling for second place.

Pietilä and Slocombe prior to the accident that saw both of them DNF from second and third.

Lap 15 and DWC drivers Slocombe and Pietilä collided when Slocombe , struggling with damage sustained on the first lap, spun in the penultimate corner. Pietilä tried to avoid his rival’s spinning car to no avail as the two suffered excessive damage and were now out of contention, promoting Stergios back up to second and Beteille to third. Slowly but surely Stergios began to close-in on Dell’Orco, closely pursued by the strong pace of Beteille. The race reached its climax when Dell’Orco exited the pits just one second ahead of his rival. After a 10 lap scrap in the final stint, their fun was cruelly cut short when a fuel miscalculation caused Dell’Orco to stop at the last turn with just over a lap to go.  Dell’Orco’s misfortune handed the win to Stergios and promoted Beteille to second whilst an impressive performance from Marcus Caton saw him grab third place. Riku Alatalo managed to stay out of the mayhem at the start to take a strong fourth place finish.

In the standings, Stergios extended his lead to 100 points over his nearest rival and highest ranking Class A driver, Alatalo. Despite nursing damage in the strongest SoF race, Terpstra remains third ahead of high-scoring Beteille in fourth with Simon Cattell rounding up the top five. Bryan Heitkotter’s low-scoring week still sees him round up the top 10 in the 10th position needed to achieve the Pro license. Next week the iGPS moves to the legendary 7km Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium with even stronger competition promised at this popular track.

Nico Hulkenberg’s morning efforts were enough to ensure Force India topped the second day of pre-season testing.

With the sun at its zenith in the afternoon, teams opted to pursue long-run programmes rather than chase outright times, and there was therefore little change to the morning’s order.

Fernando Alonso in the F2012 was one of the rare movers, as a late 1m23.180s – set in the final 30 minutes – moved Ferrari up to fourth, ahead of Daniel Ricciardo in the Toro Rosso.

The Australian was not able to register a lap until the final minutes of the afternoon, when he banged in two mid-1m25s.

Valtteri Bottas and Charles Pic were the only other drivers to ostensibly improve – the Finn registering a 1m25.738s and the Frenchman a 1m27.343s. Neither improved in the order however, staying eighth and tenth respectively.

There was still plenty to be learned though, not least from the fact that Red Bull and McLaren were both able to complete almost full race simulations runs – a useful indicator that they are fairly comfortable with their 2012 challengers.

Red Bull’s performance was in stark contrast to the morning, where it managed just 31 laps, the least of any team. In the afternoon it completed a 67-lap run broken only by pitstops, with Vettel switching between tyre compounds throughout.

His run coincided with Hamilton’s, with the pair at one point the only two on track and separated by less than a second – Vettel eventually working his way past after spending several laps tucked up behind the MP4-27.

Hamilton ended the day with 127 laps completed, one of five drivers – Vettel, Nico Hulkenberg, Bottas and Pic the other four – to break into triple figures.

It was Hulkenberg who ended the day on top however courtesy of a late lap in the morning session, set on Pirelli’s super soft compounds.

Sergio Perez, who finished just four hundredths of a second down the road, and Ricciardo also set their best times on the red-painted rubber.

Vettel’s afternoon runs married with strong pace in the morning, with the German setting the pace until Hulkenberg and Perez’s late runs.

He ended the day third fastest, ahead of Alonso, Ricciardo and Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg was the last driver to get within two seconds of Hulkenberg as he got to grips with Mercedes W03 for the first time in public.

Bottas, Petrov and Pic rounded out the day’s order, with Lotus deciding to abandon the test after discovering chassis problems on the opening day.

Today’s times:

Pos  Driver         Team            Time                Laps

 1.  Hulkenberg     Force India     1m22.608s           112

 2.  Perez          Sauber          1m22.648s  +0.040   85

 3.  Vettel         Red Bull        1m22.891s  +0.283   104

 4.  Alonso         Ferrari         1m23.180s  +0.572   87

 5.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso      1m23.639s  +1.031   48

 6.  Hamilton       McLaren         1m23.806s  +1.198   120

 7.  Rosberg        Mercedes        1m24.555s  +1.947   82

 8.  Bottas         Williams        1m25.738s  +3.130   117

 9.  Petrov         Caterham        1m26.605s  +3.997   69

10.  Pic            Marussia        1m27.343s  +4.735   108

Formula 1 must do much more to bring down costs in the future, says Force India’s deputy team principal Robert Fernley, if the sport is to remain sustainable.

Although much focus from teams this year will be in trying to secure a greater share of revenues from F1′s Commercial Rights Holders in a new Concorde Agreement, Fernley thinks that the bigger issue is actually the expenditure of competing.

“From a personal point of view, I think the cost base of F1 is still wrong,” Fernley told AUTOSPORT. “You need to bring it down.

“I believe very strongly that when you cannot make profit based on your television income and your sponsorship income, then there is something wrong with the sport, and I still believe that is the case today. Our costs are too high.”

F1 teams currently share between them 50 percent of the commercial rights income – and are seeking to increase that to up to 70 percent under the new Concorde Agreement.

Should they be even that successful, which is unlikely, Fernley does not think it will ease the financial burden that many teams on the grid are facing at the moment.

“Even if you increased the income from the CRH it would still leave a deficit, and you would still need support,” he said.

“I would say today the average team is spending between 80 and 100 million dollars as a small team – and the FOM income will nowhere near cover that. So you have to have the commercial income top up and then make a profit.”

Last year, AUTOSPORT estimated that world champions Red Bull Racing earned $93.1 million from commercial rights income for its title success – which is almost less than it spent in capturing both titles.

Fernley said he hoped discussions about a new Concorde Agreement would start in the next few weeks, and that the process would be smoother than last time – when teams briefly agreed to a breakaway series for 2010.

“If we can collectively sit down with [F1 owners] CVC and Bernie [Ecclestone], that is always going to be win/win,” he said. “It should be a programme that benefits all.”

Campos Racing has signed Max Snegirev and Giuseppe Cipriani to race in the 2012 Auto GP World Series.

Russian Snegirev and Italian Cipriani will join Argentinean Facu Regalia, who had already been announced earlier this year.

Snegirev, 24, tested for the team at Estoril this week and moves to Auto GP from Formula 2.

Cipriani, 46, will be racing in the series for the second year, having competed with Durango in 2011.

“Lookingat the drivers chosen by Adrian Campos I’m really pleased to see such a varied line-up, both in terms of experience and provenance,” said series boss Enzo Coloni.

“When we opted for an intercontinental calendar we wanted to further improve the international trait of our World Series, and having Argentina, Russia and Italy represented in just one team is something we are really happy with.”

The 2012 season started off with another first as well. The Daytona race offered a cash prize to the winner, $500 to be exact, with second place also taking home $250 worth of iRacing credits. Changes to the cars’ aero package meant that for the first time in the NiSWC, the two car tandem style of drafting seen in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series would be the fastest way around the track. Whoever could master the art of the tandem while staying out of trouble throughout the 100 lap event would have the best shot to win.

Allen (14) was in the right place at the right time, edging Hall (13) and Davidowitz (20) for the win as chaos erupted in their wake.

In typical Daytona fashion, the online race came down to a shootout at the end with Jeremy Allen just nipping Robert Hall for the victory as the field crashed behind them on Lap 98.   The beneficiary of a timely push from teammate Richie Davidowitz on the final restart a lap earlier, and Allen outdueled Hall and his partner, Patrick Baldwin, across the stripe.

At the beginning of the race however, it looked as though the JRM cars were the ones to beat. In fact, they swept the top four qualifying positions with Thomas Lewandowski winning the pole by a .003 second margin over teammate Steve Sheehan with Derek Wood and Alfalla making up Row Two. When the green flew, the four quickly paired-up and tried to control the early part of the race. All that changed when Wood’s engine suddenly expired on Lap Eight, breaking-up the foursome and bringing many other drivers into the mix up front.

The demise of Wood’s engine so early in the race seemed to calm the whole pack down and many drivers looked content to ride it out until the final few laps. The battle for first was still fierce throughout though, with 18 drivers swapping the lead 45 times during the race. The first pit strategy occurred just 16 laps into the race when Davies and Josh Parker pitted in an attempt to run the race backwards, much like a road course race. They were joined on pit road by newcomers Matt Whitten and Michael Conti, and the foursome attempted to gain time on the pack of cars which had not yet pitted.

The plan worked, as they built a six second lead on the pack after everyone had stopped for the first time. Shortly after the cycle was complete, Davies lost his drafting partner when Parker began experiencing technical difficulties at the halfway point of the race, leaving Whitten and Conti alone up front. It appeared the two would be able to fight it out for the win unchallenged, but because of their early pit stop strategy, they needed to take more fuel on the final stop of the race, enabling the pack to catch up.

The new aero package produced frantic drafting action, as Whitten (3), Alfalla (4), Hudson (1), Lewandowski (25), Wood (8), Parker (28), Main (21) and Gorlinsky (12) attest.

The first yellow finally flew on Lap 72 when Warren tried to come to pit road and Jean Costa clipped him in the rear, sparking a small accident that resulted in serious damage to the cars of Brad Wright and Florian Godard. This allowed many drivers who had experienced problems in the pits to get back on the lead lap by taking the wave around, and also bunched-up the rest of the field for the final run to the finish. Now, it was ‘go’ time.

On the restart, drivers quickly started to form into tandems, attempting to get to the lead and away from the pack. The yellow flew for a second time on Lap 83 when Godard could not keep his damaged car on the apron and slid up into traffic in Turn Three,  sparking a multi-car incident that damaged many cars including the Impala of Alfalla.

That set up a restart on Lap 87, with Conti and Whitten still holding down first and second positions respectively. The two pushed clear of the pack, but had to switch with nine laps to go and got swallowed up by the pack behind them, handing the lead to Allen. The very next lap, the yellow flew again, this time for a crash on the back straightaway which sent Thomas Hazard for a wild ride on his roof and collected about a half dozen more cars.

Drafting tandems were the order of the day. Here Davies (2) and Parker (28) hook-up ahead of Whitten (3) and Conti (19).

The race thus came down to a three lap shootout, and who could push the best when it counted. As the field took the green, the two lead cars in the tandems, Allen and Hall, stayed neck and neck through Turns One and Two with helpful pushes from Davidowitz and Baldwin.  By the time the pairs got to Turn Four, they were still dead even when the pushers (aka Davidowitz and Baldwin) got together. This sent Baldwin up the track, disconnecting him from Hall and causing a pileup in his wake. This allowed Allen to inch just ahead of Hall when the caution flew, effectively ending the race.

With his win, Allen also earned $500 cash for his effort, while Hall collected the $250 in iRacing credit on offer. Davidowitz finished third ahead of Conti fourth with Baldwin slipping to fifth. Sixth was Whitten ahead of JRM teammates Towler, John Gorlinksy and polesitter Lewandowski, while Brian Shoenburg rebounded from his early crash damage to complete the top ten.

Week Two brings the series to its annual stop in Phoenix International Raceway for some flat track racing action. Kevin King won the Phoenix race last year and will be looking to improve on his twenty-fifth place showing at Daytona, while Allen and the rest of the front runners in the points look for another solid run to build some early season momentum. Who will conquer The Valley of the Sun? Find out in two weeks on PSRTV!

Nico Hulkenberg put Force India on top of the timesheets on the second morning of pre-season testing at Barcelona, setting the fastest time of the week so far at the Catalan circuit.

Tyre compounds proved decisive as the conditions improved on a morning also notable for the absence of Lotus – the team having elected to abandon the test after discovering chassis problems on the opening day.

Hulkenberg had been near the front for the majority of the session, but he moved well clear in the final 30 minutes when he switched to Pirelli’s super soft compound and clocked a 1m22.608s.

Sauber’s Sergio Perez – who had likewise run at the sharp end of the field and then elected to try the super softs – got to within four hundredths of Hulkenberg’s best, but couldn’t do enough to displace him.

For much of the morning it had been Hulkenberg’s compatriot and reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel who had set the pace, with the Red Bull RB8 proving especially strong in the final two sectors.

At one stage Vettel was more than 1.3s clear of the field as he repeatedly lowered his benchmark, eventually dropping down to a 1m23.056s – more than two tenths faster than he managed yesterday.

Hulkenberg and Perez both closed on his benchmark as the lunchtime interlude approached, before usurping him when they switched to the red-marked Pirelli compound.

Vettel did manage a late rally, getting to within three tenths of Hulkenberg in the final five minutes while using the soft compound. He completed the fewest laps of any driver however, managing just 31 – less than half Hulkenberg’s total.

Fourth was claimed by Daniel Ricciardo, who also set his best time – a 1m23.639s – on super softs.

The Australian’s late lap demoted Fernando Alonso to fifth, the Spaniard just one thousandth of a second down the road. Alonso had been the pace-setter with a string of mid 1m24s in the opening hour, before Vettel and then Hulkenberg took charge at the top.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were the last two drivers to get within two seconds of Hulkenberg – Hamilton finishing 1.4s down and Rosberg a further half a second down the road.

Hamilton set his fastest time early on in the morning, after which he completed only four flying laps.

Rosberg meanwhile completed several long runs in his first public day in the Mercedes W03, including an 18-lap run with an average of 1m27.208s at the session’s close.

Valtteri Bottas, who will participate in 15 Friday practices for Williams this year, put the FW34 eighth ahead of Vitaly Petrov’s Caterham and Charles Pic in the 2011-spec Marussia.

Petrov’s first day in the Caterham included work on his seating position and cockpit set-up, but he still managed 36 laps with a best of 1m26.605s.

Morning times:

Pos  Driver         Team            Time               Laps

 1.  Hulkenberg     Force India     1m22.608s           63

 2.  Perez          Sauber          1m22.648s  +0.040   51

 3.  Vettel         Red Bull        1m22.891s  +0.283   31

 4.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso      1m23.639s  +1.031   45

 5.  Alonso         Ferrari         1m23.640s  +1.032   52

 6.  Hamilton       McLaren         1m24.040s  +1.432   45

 7.  Rosberg        Mercedes        1m24.555s  +1.947   75

 8.  Bottas         Williams        1m25.858s  +3.250   69

 9.  Petrov         Caterham        1m26.605s  +3.997   36

10.  Pic            Marussia        1m28.092s  +5.484   47
All timing unofficial

British Touring Car race winner Mat Jackson believes he can fight for the 2012 title after being confirmed at Motorbase Performance for a third season.

Motorbase has confirmed its line-up will be Jackson and Liam Griffin, who both drove for the squad in 2011, and tin-top racer Aron Smith.

The team will prepare revised versions of the Mountune turbo-engined Ford Focuses it ran last season.

Jackson hopes the continuity of machinery will help him while other teams, including the works Honda and MG squads, get to grips with new NGTC racers.

“We showed last year that we have the car and skills in place to compete against the big boys,” said the 30-year-old, who finished fourth in the 2011 standings. “Hopefully the other teams will experience some teething problems that we can capitalise on.

“It’s fantastic to be back driving with Motorbase for the third year in a row – it feels like home now! We have the same core personnel in place for this season, which I believe is key to our challenge for the outright drivers’ title.”

Team Principal David Bartrum is also pleased with the team’s development over the winter. “We will be continuing with the same cars from last year, which we learnt a lot from in our first season.

“Mat will be starting in a car he knows well, which has been further improved, so there is no reason why we can’t mount a serious championship challenge as we did last year.”

Daniel Ricciardo is confident Scuderia Toro Rosso has produced a car that will enable it to move up the order in 2012.

After some positive early indications from the new STR7 during the first tests at Jerez and Barcelona, Ricciardo feels that the team can achieve its ambition of finishing in the top seven teams this year.

“It’s going pretty good,” Ricciardo said about testing of the new car. “I think we’re still going to be fighting the guys we were last year realistically, but even if we get one further spot up in the constructors’ championship, it is still a huge deal and accomplishment. I’d say we’re on the right track for making progress.

“I’m happy too. Jean-Eric [Vergne] and myself are really happy to be here, and for the team it’s another challenge to work with us, like a new motivation for the team. At the moment the vibe is very good, and I don’t expect it to change. It’s a good feeling inside the garage.”

Ricciardo feels that the new car has built on the positive aspects of last year’s car – which he tested regularly on Friday mornings during the first half of the campaign.

“The team finished with a pretty good car last year from my understanding and what I saw, and I guess they’ve just refined that even more for this year,” he explained.

“I think everyone will start off with a similar car, so with that, plus myself and Jean-Eric eager to impress, I’m not too surprised. I’m happy, I’m happy to be competitive at least for now. It’s still early but it’s nice to be up there.”

Honda’s new Civic British Touring Car hit the track for the first time at Brands Hatch on Tuesday.

Defending champion Matt Neal, who will again be partnered at the Team Dynamics-run Honda Racing squad by Gordon Shedden this year, completed around 50 laps of the Indy circuit in the NGTC-spec machine, which is, like its predecessor, powered by a Neil Brown-prepared turbo engine.

Team principal Steve Neal told AUTOSPORT: “It was more of a shakedown than a proper test. We’d done a brief shakedown at MIRA last Friday just to make sure all was OK for Brands.

“Matt reported a few teething problems, but you expect that with any new car. We’ll test again probably on Thursday at Donington or MIRA and work towards straightening them out.”

Also present at Brands Hatch was Speedworks Motorsport with two-time BTCC champion James Thompson driving one of the team’s NGTC-spec Toyota Avensis. He was due to continue tailoring the car to the needs of Adam Morgan and Tony Hughes on Wednesday.

Ross Brawn believes the decision by four of his rivals to quit the Formula One Teams’ Association (FOTA) was short-sighted, and fears all the sport’s competitors may live to regret it.

With Ferrari, Red Bull Racing, Sauber and Scuderia Toro Rosso all having quit FOTA in the wake of ongoing wrangling over a Resource Restriction Agreement, there have been questions raised about the future of the organisation.

However, the remaining members of FOTA are wholly committed to it, and Brawn says he hopes that circumstances do not play out – such as in imminent talks over a new Concorde Agreement – where teams wish they had stuck together.

“We are very committed to FOTA, we believe it’s a great shame that we’ve lost some of the members from FOTA because I think we may live ultimately to regret that,” said the Mercedes boss.

“When there is outside pressure it pushed FOTA together. Now, there is not so much, the natural competitiveness of the teams is pushing it apart a bit.

“I think we’re very short-sighted with not recognising that FOTA has a very important role to play. I think it is unfortunately the nature of F1 that we all seem to find it difficult to come together with these much bigger issues.

“I am a great believer in FOTA, but I am disappointed with what has happened in the last few months. I hope we don’t regret it in Formula 1, because one of the objectives was to find the right solutions for F1, not just for individual teams.”

Mercedes has been involved in talks with Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull Racing to try and reach agreement on the RRA, following disagreements about various aspects of the deal teams are currently working to.

Those discussions have not produced a positive outcome, but Brawn thinks it vital efforts are ramped up to try and get the matter sorted.

“The RRA is very important,” he said. “We have to find some means of restraining the costs in Formula 1, as technical and sporting regulations can only go so far.

“The concept is very important, but it does need everyone to commit to it and work together to find the best solution to having an RRA system.

“We are committed to it, and we are going to persevere to try and make sure it is applied properly and is part of the future of F1, because without it we are at higher risk.”

British Touring Car squad Motorbase Performance has signed Aron Smith to complete its three-car line-up for this season.

Smith, who made his BTCC debut with Triple Eight Engineering at Knockhill last year, will drive alongside Motorbase regulars Mat Jackson and Liam Griffin. All three will drive the Ford Focus S2000 chassis, with Mountune turbo engines, that the team fielded in 2011.

Team boss David Bartrum has already been impressed with Smith after the former Renault Clio Cup ace tested at Brands Hatch and Snetterton.

“Aron settled straight in to the team and I’m sure he will be competitive very quickly this year,” he said. “We’ve been talking to him for a long time and he’s a great prospect.

“He was very quick and very positive [at the tests]. We’ve already spoken about 2013 and it’s nice to have the stability, and that buzz of a young driver who can work with Mat.”

Smith (22), who was the 2011 Motorsport Ireland Dunlop Young Racing Driver of the Year, added: “I couldn’t be more excited about this season. The past two years have literally been building up to this moment.

“Motorbase is the type of team I know I’ll feel right at home in, this all feels like a dream come true and I can’t wait for the racing to begin.”

Twenty-two drivers traveled to Belgium for the “Van Ophen 30 at the famous Circuit de Spa GP” in Francorchamps, Belgium during week six of the Red Sox Racing League’s 2012 Season One schedule.  After hearing about the photo finish between Chad Peterson and Les Turner in last week’s race at Okayama, race fans in Belgium were eager to see a repeat performance.  They would not be disappointed.

Pre-race practice and qualifying sessions at the 19 turn, 4.35 mile track gave everyone a hint of what was to come as Peterson and Turner once again battled for the top spot.  Peterson won the pre-race competition by earning his 2nd pole of the season with a qualifying lap of 2:06.356.  Turner posted the only other sub-2:07 lap and secured the outside position of row one.  Andrew Gantman, Jim Albertson, Terry Daul, Gary Jorgensen, Divina Galica, William Kabela, and Bill Pawluckie completed the grid.  HPD drivers Justin Kirby, Wilbur Gildersleeve Jr., and Kevin Kyle participated in the practice session but failed to start the race.

Dustin McGrew once again dominated the Corvette field during qualifying.  He won his 6th pole of the season with the only sub-2:15 lap of the event, crossing the line with an incredible time of 2:14.577.  Tommy Rhyne edged out Bruce Snelson for the second Corvette grid position.  They were followed by Dean Moll, Scott Husted, James Prostell, Jr., Jeff Thomas, Larry Krupp, Bill Hadden, and Ed Sutcliff.
 
Despite beautiful racing conditions, the race got off to a brutal start for several drivers.  Mechanical issues forced Bill Hadden to abandon the race before the field took the green flag, then a blown engine knocked Prostell out of the event as the field got up to speed.  While the back half of the field slowed for the smoke and oil coming from Prostell’s car, Rhyne made a sharp move to the left to avoid a slow starting HPD.  His decision to jump in front of the outside row could have proven disastrous had Snelson been unable to react to it.  As it was, Snelson was forced to the outermost edge of the track to avoid a collision with Rhyne.

While the rear of the field continued to jostle for position, the front half of the field brought fans to their feet in a hotly contested entry into Turn One.  Things got ugly fast though when Moll’s Corvette tagged the rear end of Pawluckie’s HPD.  Their collision started a chain reaction which eventually caused trouble for Galica, Kabela, and McGrew.  Galica got the worst of the fracas and was forced to retire with heavy damage before the dust settled.  McGrew went off track to avoid the carnage, but was collected by Galica as she careened into the outside wall.  Worse than the damage his car suffered was the fact that McGrew lost the lead in the Class B race.  Adding insult to injury, McGrew was rear-ended by Kabela at the top of Kemmell Hill as the two tried to catch the field.

Spa is the longest track on the 2012 RSR schedule.  It is also the most technically challenging.  Despite their reputation for clean racing, RSR members racked up an incredibly poor average of 6.2 incidents per driver as they collected 112 incidents in 221 laps of racing in Belgium.  Their combined 0.506 incidents per lap average was easily the worst performance of the season.
 
Fortunately, most of the penalties came from “off-track” and “self-spin” incidents which did not result in damaged vehicles.  Peterson, Turner, Daul, and Sutcliff were the only drivers to finish the race without collecting any incident penalties.

Class A results:

Peterson and Turner put on a remarkable show for the fans as they fiercely battled for the top spot throughout the thirty minute race. Even more impressively, both drivers completed the event without collecting a single incident penalty despite battling each other and lapped traffic during fourteen laps of heart stopping action.

Gantman tried to keep pace with the leaders on Lap One, but fell victim to the tricky cornering at Les Combes and spun out exiting Turn Five.   Gantman was never a factor in the race after the incident.

Turner stayed close to Peterson in the early going and moved into the top spot when the leader pitted for fuel on Lap Eight.  Peterson retook the lead when Turner pitted two laps later.  Peterson then held off Turner for the remainder of the race and earned his second victory by 4/10′s of second.  Most of the suspense in the HPD class was over after Lap One as Albertson, Daul, and Jorgensen locked down the 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions.  They tried hard, but were never able to mount a serious challenge to Peterson or Turner.

Albertson summed the race up this way; “Les and Chad are having an incredible season.  I don’t know what the rest of us can do to keep pace with them.  After the mechanical problems we had last week, I was just happy to be on the track again.  Congrats to Chad and Dustin for their respective wins tonight.”

Pawluckie, Gantman, and Kabela rounded out the scoring.  Galica’s early exit meant a last place finish for her.
 
Turner enjoys a twelve point lead over Gantman in the championship battle, while Daul, Jorgensen, and Kabela round out the top five positions.  “The last two laps of this race were epic”, said Turner afterwards.  “Chad was quick again tonight as usual.   I tried hard to stay with him in the early going hoping for a mistake.  When he short pitted on Lap Eight, I put my head down and clicked off some fast laps.  When I exited the pits a few laps later, we were right together again.  Things got interesting when we encountered heavy traffic in the last couple of laps.  Congratulations to Chad for another great win!”

Class B results:

Rhyne took advantage of McGrew’s Lap One troubles and led the first five laps in the Corvette class.  He was unable to hold off the hard-charging McGrew however, as the points leader ignored damage on the front and rear of his car and electrified the crowd with daring passes during his climb back into contention.  McGrew caught Rhyne on Lap Six.  He, Rhyne, Snelson, and Moll swapped turns in the lead during the pit cycles, but McGrew put a strangle hold on the top position and never looked back after Lap Nine.
 
Moll and Snelson locked horns for the second spot on the last lap, but only one would finish the race.  Moll bobbled exiting Turn One on the last lap, allowing Snelson to get past him on the long downhill straight leading to Eau Rouge.  Moll’s clean exit of the turns at the bottom of the hill meant he had the momentum climbing the uphill, but his pass attempt on Snelson was thwarted when Snelson moved right to protect the inside lane.  Still traveling in the faster car, Moll made a smart move to the outside to set up a pass on the high side approaching Les Combes.  Snelson mirrored the move at the last second, forcing Moll to leave the track surface to avoid a violent collision.  Moll’s car hit the wall hard and was heavily damaged as Snelson continued into the infield grass without losing the position.

Rhyne finished in third place.  He was followed by Husted, Thomas, Sutcliff, and Krupp.  Moll, Prostell, and Hadden rounded out the scoring.  Thomas was happy with his second top-5 finish of the season.  “It sure was nice to score another top five and move into 4th place in the championship.  We are practicing hard for the night race at Sebring!”

McGrew’s fourth win of the season gave him a solid five point lead over Rhyne in the championship battle while Moll, Thomas, and Husted round out the top five positions.

RSR drivers head to Florida for the “Hendricks Field 30 at Night Sebring” at Sebring International Raceway on February 23, 2012.

Race Results:
https://ileaguerace.com/champ/show_event_result/Red-Sox-Racing-League/1093

League Standings:
https://ileaguerace.com/champ/show_champ/Red-Sox-Racing-League/227

League Video Site:
http://www.youtube.com/user/draftin11

Nico Muller topped the timesheets for Trident Racing on the opening day of GP3 testing at Estoril on Tuesday.

The 19-year-old Swiss, who has yet to secure a race deal for the coming season, lapped the Portuguese circuit in 1m31.285s with just 15 minutes of the afternoon session remaining, knocking Mitch Evans off the top spot by just 0.015s.

Evans had set the fastest time during the morning session, despite the MW Arden driver completing only seven laps before the lunch break. He improved by just 0.071s during the warmer afternoon.

Antonio Felix da Costa was third quickest for Carlin to make it three GP3 racewinners in the top three positions. Lotus pair Aaro Vainio and Conor Daly completed the top five ahead of MW Arden’s Matias Laine.

New Manor signing Tio Ellinas was seventh quickest with Tamas Pal Kiss (Atech CRS), David Fumanelli (MW Arden) and 15-year-old Matheo Tuscher (Jenzer) completing the top 10.

Manor driver Fabiano Machado brought out the red flags during the morning with a spin into the gravel, while Carlin’s Will Buller did likewise during the afternoon. They were 14th and 17th overall.

The test continues on Wednesday.

Combined times:

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time     Laps
 1.  Nico Muller           Trident Racing        1:31.285   52
 2.  Mitch Evans           MW Arden              1:31.300   23
 3.  Antonio Felix da CostaCarlin                1:31.361   42
 4.  Aaro Vainio           Lotus GP              1:31.461   40
 5.  Conor Daly            Lotus GP              1:31.487   48
 6.  Matias Laine          MW Arden              1:31.498   31
 7.  Tio Ellinas           Manor Racing          1:31.640   45
 8.  Tamas Pal Kiss        Atech CRS GP          1:31.713   21
 9.  David Fumanelli       MW Arden              1:31.745   42
10.  Matheo Tuscher        Jenzer Motorsport     1:31.867   54
11.  Alexander Sims        Status GP             1:31.941   53
12.  Robert Visoiu         Jenzer Motorsport     1:32.043   56
13.  Daniel Abt            Lotus GP              1:32.089   42
14.  Fabiano Machado       Manor Racing          1:32.203   74
15.  Marlon Stockinger     Status GP             1:32.240   35
16.  Miki Weckstrom        Status GP             1:32.252   35
17.  Will Buller           Carlin                1:32.677   42
18.  Dmitry Suranovich     Manor Racing          1:32.831   49
19.  Antonio Spavone       Trident Racing        1:32.849   53
20.  Patric Niederhauser   Jenzer Motorsport     1:32.977   58
21.  Alex Brundle          Carlin                1:32.993   40
22.  Vicky Piria           Trident Racing        1:33.383   36
23.  Ethan Ringel          Atech CRS GP          1:33.535   50
24.  Robert Cregan         Tech 1 Racing         1:33.911   43
25.  Yuki Shiraishi        Tech 1 Racing         1:35.125   29

The new and improved iRacing Live debuts today on iRacing.com.  The landing page highlights iRacing.com’s upcoming broadcasts and includes complete NASCAR iRacing.com Series World Championship and iRacing World Championship Grand Prix Series schedules that automatically adjust time and dates to your time zone.

Other great new features include:

•        A live count of the number of spectators on iRacing Live
•        Live chat can now be popped out in its own window
•        An RSS feed for live broadcasts
•        Coming soon will be an Archive function enabling you to watch past iRacing broadcasts.

In addition, PSRTV has been working hard this “off-season” on the broadcast itself to make it better than ever.  Here are some of the highlights of the broadcast improvements:

•        720p (HD) HTTP dynamic streaming
•        Flash, HTML5 & iOS players
•        Mobile support for Android & iOS (iPhone/iPad)
•        Improved replay system
•        Picture-in-picture, side-by-side views
•        Animated overlays & transitions
•        Improved global coverage & error handling

Click here for a look at iRacing Live.

While Lambert won seven races during the first week at Lanier, the amount of races and strength of field in those races affected his point position in the standings. He only obtained 140 points over the week while Wide Open Racing’s Taylor Meyn sat atop the standings at the completion of the first round of racing. His 174 point performance came in a 2797 Strength of Field race on February 6th in which he went to victory lane in the 65-lap affair at Lanier. Meyn led 28 laps after starting third en route to the win over pole sitter Maxime Paquette, who led the most circuits in the event with 37. Third in the race belonged to Rick Ricketts with Thomas Fraser and Kyle Crump completing the top five.

Lambert put his real world racing experience in ARCA/CRA to good use in the iLMT.

One of the top split races of the week took place on February 2nd when Trevor Edwards went to victory lane in a 2961 SoF rendezvous at Lanier. Edwards started on the pole and led wire-to-wire in the race, finishing ahead of Brian Macklin, Ricketts, Brandon Hauck and Brad Mahar. The margin of victory was 4.7 seconds. Edwards went on to make three other starts and would wind up fifth overall for the week with 153 points while Macklin’s performance in this race vaulted him to second place overall for the week with 166 points.

Completing the podium at Lanier for Round One was Tony Dugan. The Dynasty Motorsports driver collected 165 points in a 2670 SoF race on the first night of the new season. He led the final 54 laps of the race, crossing the line over five seconds ahead of Benjamin Harste. Nick Ladyga was third, followed by Heath Smith (who led the first eleven laps of the race) and Jeremy Ahlum.

Fausto Bessa Gomes was the top driver when it came to the win column for the week, earning eight wins at Lanier. Eric Kocher made the most starts of the week with 15. Smith was the top driver in qualifying for the week with a 13.504 second lap, which was quicker than Lambert, Trey Jarrell, Paul Kusheba and Richie Davidowitz. Smith was also the quickest in the Time Trial competition at Lanier over Lambert, Gary Dangelo, Doug Heveron and Jarrid Boiros.

When it comes to South Boston Speedway in Round Two, Lambert lit the lamp four times and finished atop the weekly standings. His big win came on February 12th in which he went to victory lane after leading wire-to-wire in a 3074 SoF event. Lambert crossed the line first, eight seconds up on Scott Heckert with Johnny Vaughan, Macklin and Ricketts completing the top five in the 65-lap race. When Lambert’s other top finish was factored into his point picture, he would wind up the week with 185 points. Heckert’s 172 point outing in this race was good enough for the Connecticut native to lock down second place overall for the week.

On the podium for this week of racing was Johnny Housley. Housley went to victory lane on February 11th in a 2729 SoF race and scored 169 points for his win. Housley led all 65 laps from the pole and was over eight and a half seconds ahead of second place Paul McCollum when the checkers flew. Craig Pearson crossed the line in third, followed by Satoru Ohno and Late Model veteran Jeff Conover.

Branden Mall made the most trips to victory lane this week as he won five times. Adam Long made the most starts of the week with 23. Top honors in qualifying went to Peter Fisher with a time of 14.972 seconds around South Boston. Lambert, Housley, Christopher Hunt and Landon Huffman each posted top five times at the Virginia track. When it came to the Time Trial competition it was Lambert (who else?) besting Dangelo, Smith, Harste and Joel Skowron.

For all his success, after two weeks of racing in the iRacing Late Model Tour, Lambert holds just a slim six point lead on Meyn, 325 to 319. Third belongs to Dugan as he sits just one point up on Macklin. Division Three leader Housley holds down fifth overall with 309 points, just eight more than Division Two leader Austin Benson. Divisional leaders from skill matched Divisions Four to Ten include Vinny Troia, Chad Arnold, Sean Odea, Johnny Vaughan Jr, Darrell Phillips, Jackson Wellman and Nicholas Maxwell.

The iRacing Late Model Tour now heads to the Toyota Speedway at Irwindale for Round Three of the 12 week 2012 Season One. Who will step up to take control of the season at the quarter distance mark? Keeps tabs to inRacingNews to find out!

Until next week, keep the hammer down and we’ll see you at the track!

Week Two of the inRacingNews Challenge season, the first of 2012, saw a return to the Okayama International Circuit, this time on the track’s short course. While the Pontiac Solstice and SpecRacer Ford drivers should be quite familiar with the track in their cars, this marks the first time that the new Mazda MX-5 Roadster class hits this track in the iRNC. Many sim racers haven’t been shy about trying out the new car, and the points leaders frequently transcend multiple classes.

Ralf Janiak was the story of the week, posting the best points totals in all three classes and never losing a race. He beat Michael Booth in Solstice, scoring 168 points in one perfect race (won from the pole and led every lap) while Booth went three for four and scored 140. In Ford, he beat Mitch Weatherley, 198-183, by winning from the pole and leading all but one lap. Finally, in Mazda, he edged Chris Hughson, 146-137, by going two for two and leading every lap from the pole, as Hughson won five of seven starts.

Solstice statistical leaders included John Duffy, who topped all drivers with 18 starts, scoring seven wins and 10 poles. Bryan J Miller ranked second in that category, starting 17 events, but he managed to win all of those races from the pole to lead both of those categories. No other driver had more than four wins or five poles. Miller also posted the fastest time trial lap (1:01.550), but Janiak’s 1:01.346 edged Miller for fastest qualifying lap by four thousandths of a second.

In SRF, Chris Hughson enjoyed a clean sweep of starts (19), wins (15), and poles (15). Sean Denver posted the second most starts with 16, but failed to win any races or poles. Peron Benjamin ranked third in starts with 14, as well as second in both wins (six) and poles (eight). Three drivers cracked the 61-second mark in time trials, with Frank Bloem (1:00.768) tops among them; 20 drivers managed the feat in qualifying, with Mogar DG Filho leading all with a 1:00.351.

Jonathan Keer’s 11 starts led the Mazda category, enabling him to share the lead in wins (six) and second places in poles (six). Adam Terry also posted six wins and six poles, doing so in eight starts, while Matthew Wright scored the most poles by going eight for eight in his starts. The only Mazda driver to break 62 seconds in time trials was Simon Palmer, with a 1:01.907; Janiak’s class-leading qualifying lap was nearly a second faster (1:00.934).

Week Three sees the iRNC at Summit Point Raceway for the second time in three weeks. This time, they will tackle the Jefferson Course, where Chris Hughson (Solstice, 130 points) and Gabriel Tobar (Ford, 169 points) are defending winners.

Sebastian Vettel has singled out McLaren as the rival team that he thinks is in the best shape at the start of the second pre-season test at Barcelona in Spain.

The double world champion made clear that while it is still too early to divine a pecking order from what had taken place so far in testing, he felt that McLaren appeared to have got an early handle on its MP4-27.

“I think McLaren looked very strong today,” Vettel told reporters after ending the session fastest of all with a time of 1m23.265s – some 0.3s quicker than Hamilton managed. “For the rest it is too early.

“I haven’t seen all the lap times yet, I have only had a couple of looks on the long runs that Lewis did today – they seemed to be quite interesting.

“At this stage we are not really talking about the championship for sure. I don’t think there is anybody here trying to do worse than last year, so we are trying to do what we did last year, but it’s a long way from now.”

When asked about whether he had a car to challenge for a third title, he added: “To be honest I haven’t seen much of other cars on the track.

“Obviously I can judge for myself that the feeling [on my car] is fine but I don’t know whether that is good enough or not. I think the McLaren looks quite competitive. I think they didn’t go for one lap at all but they did long runs etcetera and they looked fairly competitive, so I think they will be strong straight from the beginning of the season.

“I think we saw in Jerez Lotus was quite a surprise, whether they can keep it up or not, I don’t know. Today they didn’t run much.

“Ferrari is a bit of a secret at this stage and nobody knows whether they are really good or really bad – and I don’t know what other people think about us, so we will have to wait and see.”

AUTOSPORT’s technical correspondent Gary Anderson suspects that an engine mount problem could be behind Lotus’s decision to abandon the Barcelona test.

Lotus ditched plans to run chassis 1 in place of the new monoque that ran briefly at Barcelona before Romain Grosjean complained of a ‘strange’ feeling.

Speaking to AUTOSPORT about the Lotus situation, Anderson said: “The aerodynamic loads on the car are higher in Barcelona than in Jerez, so that could explain why the problem didn’t manifest itself at Jerez.

“Reading between the lines, I would say it was likely to be something to do with an engine mount rather than a front suspension, as if it was a suspension problem you could have a good go at patching it up at the track with a glue injection and fastenings to hold it in situ.

“The fact that Lotus has pulled out of the whole test rather than going back to the factory to patch it up and then run later in the week suggests it’s a serious problem.”

Anderson believes that the fact that Lotus also detected a potential problem that will require modifications to chassis 1, which completed almost 1,000 miles of testing at Jerez two weeks ago, supports the hypothesis that it is an engine mount problem.

“Pulling out of the whole test suggests that on the other chassis, the engine mount was also moving a bit, but not enough to cause problems at Jerez, where the loads are lower,” said Anderson. “Lotus wasn’t as quick on the final day of that test, though, so maybe there was a little deterioration.

“Barcelona is a very different challenge. There was a pretty vicious bump around the start finish line in the past, so it’s possible this has caused a problem. Alternatively, it could be the long right-hander at Turn 3, where there is a huge amount of torsional stress on the chassis.

“It could also be that chassis 1 was used for the torsion and bending tests that a team would do and then chassis 2 did the crash tests. But as you wouldn’t push to the absolute limit to see how stiff the car was, the problem might have been hidden on chassis one.”

Lotus plans to make modifications to chassis 1 and chassis 2 to allow it to continue testing in the second Barcelona test that kicks off on March 1.

Anderson suspects that this will be possible, as the engine mounts are inserts mounted inside the carbon fibre layup of the chassis. However, he fears that to fix the problem fully, it will require new chassis.

“They will be a solid insertion and could be made of carbon fibre, machined aluminium, titanium, all sorts of things. It’s basically to give a solid fastening,” he said.

“It’s the kind of thing that you can fix, ideally back at the factory in a controlled environment. But you could do that in one day so if they aren’t going to run this week, it suggests that they maybe need to do more than just inject glue and put fasteners in. So it could be a more dramatic problem and maybe it will need new chassis.

“Chassis 3 would likely be on its way for Melbourne and might be at the point in the manufacturing process where you could integrate the fix properly. If they did that, it’s possible that Lotus might have to have that chassis and one patched up one for Melbourne as it’s a tight turnaround to build a fourth chassis if it hasn’t started.”

Anderson adds that he feels the problem is more likely to be a manufacturing fault than a design error.

He also backed the team’s decision to pull out of the test.

“The engine specification and the mount positions won’t have changed with the Renault engine, so I doubt if there’s a design error,” he said. “There’s no point in re-inventing the wheel so it’s likely to be the same.

“I would have thought that either an error in the material or with the bonding or something like that has caught them out instead. But if it’s, for example, a glue problem, then what starts as a small problem could become a big one because there might be 50 inserts all over the chassis.

“The problem isn’t a huge safety issue, but if the car feels strange, as Romain Grosjean says it did, then it’s only going to get worse.

“It’s a dramatic enough problem to wipe the test out, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens from here.”

Bruno Senna believes Williams has to improve its consistency on slow corners following his first day of testing at Barcelona.

The Brazilian had another productive day in Spain on Tuesday, covering 97 laps on his way to the eighth fastest time of the session.

Senna said he was pleased with the car’s handling over medium and high-speed corners, but he reckons there is still room for improvement on lower-speed ones.

“I think we are learning about it,” said Senna at the end of the day. “Today I don’t think we managed to improve as much as I think we need to. There is still room for improvement.

“Our car seems to be consistent on the medium and high-speed corners, but on the slow speed we still need to work.”

Senna admitted he had run out of time to test solutions to try to solve the problem today.

“We’ll have to wait and see if the changes we make are going to be enough to mitigate the issue that we have. I didn’t have enough time today to try enough stuff to see.”

Despite that, he was still pleased with his day’s work after completing nearly 100 laps.

“We did a lot of laps today and again, reliability seems to be in a good place,” he said. “The tyres are behaving differently here than they were in Jerez so we need to understand what we are doing, but overall we have learned a bit about the car.”

Red Bull will still be the team to beat in 2012 – that is the view of Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn, whose team publicly unveiled its new W03 challenger to the world at the beginning of the first day’s testing at Barcelona.

Brawn insisted that it was still too early to say whether the new car will move Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg closer to the front of the field this season, but said that he expected Red Bull to be there whatever the order.

“I think we can see that naturally Red Bull are not going to deteriorate overnight so they will have a very strong car I’m sure,” he said. “McLaren will be good, Ferrari perhaps having a challenging time at the moment but I’m sure they will get their car together because they are a very strong and experienced team.

“I think it will be a similar group quite frankly. We have to break the mould and move up.

“I’m not sure who we can displace but I think we are all battling to match Red Bull, who have demonstrated over the last few years how strong they are.”

Brawn added that he had been reasonably happy with the car’s first day running in company – the W03 was shaken down at Silverstone last week and had a day’s running in private at Barcelona over the weekend.

Schumacher, the team’s nominated driver for Tuesday, completed 51 laps and ended the sessions sixth fastest with a time of 1m24.150s.

“I think it’s too early to judge, but we are reasonably happy, as much as you can be on the first day, trying to get your references,” Brawn said when asked about his first impressions of the W03. “The car seems to behave sensibly, nothing odd. It’s correlating with what we expected, and now we have to learn about the car and drivers have to learn how to use it.

“We had a small hydraulic problem which spoiled the running, which was a shame, so we’re just trying to understand that. Sure we will get that fixed for tomorrow. Reasonably happy with the first day, taking that into account.”

Double World Rally Champion Marcus Gronholm has been confirmed alongside British driver David Binks as part of a two-car Best Buy Racing team in the 2012 Global RallyCross Championship.

Gronholm, who won three GRC rounds last season, will drive a Ford Fiesta prepared by Olsbergs Motor Sport Evolution on every round of this year’s series.

“I am really pleased to be competing in the GRC with Best Buy Mobile and OMSE,” said Gronholm, who claimed a silver and bronze medal at X Games 17 in the Fiesta. “I won some races last year, but that is not good enough. I have always wanted to win every time I get in a car and I have some unfinished business in the GRC.

“I have had a demanding fitness routine over the winter and I know OMSE has continued development of the Ford Fiesta. The competition has stepped up both in the Best Buy team and the field in general. I can’t wait to take Best Buy Mobile to the top of the podium.”

Britain’s Binks is no stranger to the GRC, having competed on several rounds last season with his family team. He has also driven alongside Gronholm before, at the Lydden Hill event in Britain last season.

“This is a dream come true for me,” said Binks. “The GRC is where everyone wants to be and to partner with Best Buy and OMSE is a great opportunity for me to challenge for wins and ultimately the championship. I will have a little adjustment to US courses and to the jump, but Marcus was a great teammate at Lydden last year and I look forward to working with both him again.”

The two Best Buy drivers will face tough competition from Ken Block, who has confirmed his Monster Fiesta will be present throughout the championship as well.

The GRC includes seven rounds, starting in Las Vegas in April. Two rounds are run in conjunction with X Games in Los Angeles on June 30 and July 1.

Lotus has pulled out of the Barcelona test with immediate effect as a result of the problems it encountered with its chassis this morning.

The team has decided to abandon running in order to fully understand the problem with the chassis that manifested itself on chassis 2, which ran for the first time today.

This is despite chassis 1 completing the full Jerez test two weeks ago. The team said the problem requires modification to both chassis.

The car completed 1788 km of testing at Jerez, but the problem manifested itself at the higher-speed Barcelona configuration.

“Before we were due to fly chassis E20-01 out to Barcelona in replacement of chassis E20-02 – damaged this morning – we ran a series of simulations at the factory based on the data provided by our brief running on track today,” said technical director James Allison.

“As a result, we were able to identify an area which requires some additional work. It will be more productive for us to carry out these modifications to both chassis at Enstone rather than send E20-01 out to this week’s test. We’ll put the right measures in place and we will be able to fix the problem before next week.”

Team boss Eric Boullier added: “Not running this week has been a tough decision to take, but we feel that our choice is the right one. On the positive side, we have quickly identified the issue with the chassis and our design office has already devised a solution. We will be present at next week’s test in Barcelona.

“We draw faith from the fact that the E20 was quick out of the box in Jerez and showed its reliability there. We have a lot of work ahead of us over the next week but everyone at Enstone is ready for this challenge.”

Michael Schumacher is positive about the potential of the new Mercedes W03 after his first day of public running on Tuesday.

The German, who had already driven the car during a shakedown and during Sunday’s private test in Barcelona, managed 51 laps on his way to the sixth quickest time of the day.

Although Schumacher’s session was shortened due to a hydraulic problem, the seven-time champion was pleased with how the new car handles.

“Reasonably positive,” said Schumacher of his day. “It is the fourth day we are in the car and it’s the first time we had a little issue with the hydraulics.

“It has good potential. I had a good feeling inside the car. It’s difficult to say what that feeling is worth because of the rule changes, but the potential is good.”

He refused to judge the pace of the car compared to the opposition, however.

“I don’t want to be too precise right now, because I have not been able to overlay our running with the other guys and that is the important matter that can give me a direction, or at least confirm the feeling that I have.”

Schumacher also said he had no concerns about the looks of the new car as long as it’s quick.

“For us it’s very transparent. The main point is that the aero numbers are good and there are different ways of interpreting the rules. We’ll find out what is the better way. For us it’s not really anything special. The most important thing is what we see on the clock and that is what I’m looking at.”

And the Mercedes driver, whose contract with the team expires this year, said he is not thinking about his plans at the moment.

“There’s no reason to make any statements or comments about my future. I will make a decision when it’s the right time.”

Nico Hulkenberg has been pleasantly surprised how well-balanced his new Force India has felt around the Barcelona circuit, after an encouraging first day’s running this week.

The German, who was having only his second full day in the car, was second fastest behind Sebastian Vettel on the timesheets after completing 97 laps on the first day of this week’s Barcelona test.

“We had a good day, it was a positive programme,” he said. “We started with some aero gathering this morning, some tyre comparisons with different compounds, and then long runs this afternoon.

“Generally there were no reliability issues, so there was a very positive impression of the car and a good feeling today.”

With Barcelona demanding good aerodynamic performance from the car, Hulkenberg said he was encouraged by how good his car felt around the Spanish GP venue.

“It was pretty good, surprisingly well,” he explained. “Maybe it suits a little bit better here than Jerez. I am also getting better. It is my second day, as Jerez was my first day after a long time out of the car. Each day, each kilometre is better.”

He added: “Reliability wise, the whole picture just looks very good right now. We are bedding in right now. Today, after lunch, I got back in and felt comfortable again. It feels a bit more like home – I am going through the sensation of that feeling. So, so far so good.”

Monster World Rally Team has released pictures of two of the three cars which will be used in Ken Block’s motorsport programme this season.

The two cars pictured will be used on selected North American rallies – starting with this week’s 100 Acre Wood Rally America round in Missouri. The Fiesta with the green wheels is the machine which will be used in Block’s Gymkhana five film which will be shot in the summer.

Block will run three Fiestas this season, the final car being the World Rally Car he will drive on next month’s Rally Mexico. The livery for his car and the sister Ford of team-mate Chris Atkinson are expected to be revealed in the next couple of weeks.

Block’s 100 Acre Wood outing marks his Rally America return and while the Monster driver has won the Salem event previously, he will face tough competition from reigning Rally America champion David Higgins, who dominated round one – the SnoDrift Rally in his Subaru USA Impreza.

Sebastian Vettel put Red Bull on top of the first day of pre-season testing at Barcelona.

The German had risen to the top of the timesheets shortly before lunch, displacing compatriot and Force India pilot Nico Hulkenberg.

With warmer track conditions not as conducive to chasing times, many teams opted for longer run programmes, but Vettel was able to slightly better his time to end the day with a 1m23.265s.

That effort, set on Pirelli’s hard compound – rather than the medium on which he set his morning best – put him 0.175s clear of the field as the chequered flag brought the first day of testing to a close.

Vettel’s improvement proved the exception rather than the rule, with second through to seventh position not changing in the afternoon.

That meant Nico Hulkenberg ended the day second fastest for Force India, having set the pace for much of the morning until Vettel’s late lap.

The German managed nearly 50 laps in the afternoon, but did not get within a second of his previous benchmark.

The same was true of Lewis Hamilton, who completed several long-lap simulations in the second half of the day. The Briton trialled a variety of compounds, and was consistently in the mid to high 1m28s.

Daniel Ricciardo likewise set his best time in the morning, less than three hundredths of a second down on Hamilton. The Australian was the last man to break the 1m24s barrier.

Fernando Alonso ended the day fifth fastest in the Ferrari F2012, having also completed an 18-lap run with an average of 1m26.208s in the final hour.

The Spaniard ended just five hundredths clear of Michael Schumacher, who managed 51 laps in what was the first day of testing for Mercedes’ new W03.

Sergio Perez was the last driver to get within a second of Vettel, although the Mexican’s afternoon programme was disrupted by an issue with the rear anti-roll bar.

Heikki Kovalainen too suffered a truncated day, as a broken track rod left him stranded sideways at the final turn after just nine laps of running.

The team was able to fix the issue and he returned in the afternoon, eventually getting down to a 1m26.035s – enough for ninth, just behind Bruno Senna in the Williams FW34.

There were issues too for Lotus, with Romain Grosjean reporting a strange sensation from the team’s second chassis.

As a consequence the Frenchman completed just seven laps before the team decided to halt operations. It will fly the first chassis, which was used at Jerez, out to Barcelona and expects to take part tomorrow.

With HRT opting not to run, Marussia’s Charles Pic rounded out the day’s runners, 4.7s down on Vettel. The Frenchman racked up 121 laps – the most of any driver – on his first day in the car.

Today’s times

Pos  Driver         Team            Time                Laps

 1.  Vettel         Red Bull        1m23.265s           79

 2.  Hulkenberg     Force India     1m23.440s  +0.175   97

 3.  Hamilton       McLaren         1m23.590s  +0.325   114

 4.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso      1m23.618s  +0.353   76

 5.  Alonso         Ferrari         1m24.100s  +0.835   75

 6.  Schumacher     Mercedes        1m24.150s  +0.885   51

 7.  Perez          Sauber          1m24.219s  +0.954   66

 8.  Senna          Williams        1m25.711s  +2.446   97

 9.  Kovalainen     Caterham        1m26.035s  +2.770   31

10.  Grosjean       Lotus           1m26.809s  +3.544    7

11.  Pic            Marussia        1m28.026s  +4.761   121

The 2012 NASCAR iRacing.com Series World Championship kicks-off tonight with iRacing’s broadcast of the world’s top stock car sim racers going head-to-head at Daytona International Speedway.  iRacing and PSRTV have been working hard during the off-season to insure the NiSWC broadcasts are the best ever. Tonight’s broadcast will feature the debut of Hotlaps, an insider’s preview of the race hosted by NiSWC veteran Steve Sheehan.

In just two years, the Daytona round of the NiSWC has developed a remarkable history. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won the inaugural running of the event and last season, iRacer of the Year Ray Alfalla opened his run to the 2011 NiSWC crown with a win at Daytona.  Needless to say, Alfalla will be looking to open his title defense in similar fashion, and not just to get a jump on the 2012 points race.   Tonight’s race winner will receive $500 cash, with the runner-up collecting $250 iRacing credits as part of a season-long purse valued at more than $19,000.

Comin' at ya! Catch the broadcast of the 2012 NiSWC opener tonight on iRacing.com!

There will be plenty of competition for the points (and cash) from NiSWC veterans like ‘10 champion Richard Towler, John Gorlinsky and Brad Davies as well as from an ambitious gang of newcomers who battled their way into the competition via the 2011 NASCAR iRacing.com Pro Series headed by NiPS champion Alex Warren.

Veterans and rookies alike will take to the newly-rescanned track for 100 laps of NiSWC action tonight. Catch all the action on iRacing.com beginning at 9 pm eastern (02:00 GMT).

Romain Grosjean has described the feel of his new Lotus chassis as “strange” after the team was forced to abandon today’s running.

The Franco-Swiss driver completed only seven laps this morning on the shakedown of Lotus chassis number two.

When the problem was detected the team decided to send it back to its Enstone base and fly out chassis one, which was used at Jerez, to build up for tomorrow.

Although Grosjean did not want to be drawn on the details of the problem, he did confirm that it was obvious when he took to the track.

“It felt quite strange on the steering wheel,” said Grosjean. “Both myself and the team picked up the problem at the same time.

“It was a small chassis issue. We sent the chassis back to Enstone to analyse and we will have a new one ready for the morning.”

Grosjean is confident that the team will not suffer too much from losing today’s running.

Lotus completed more miles than any other team in the Jerez test two weeks ago and he has no doubts that it will still be able to complete its programme at Barcelona.

“Hopefully from tomorrow we can go into our programme,” said Grosjean. We got some good mileage in Jerez and still have three days here and four days next week.

“We can still work on the car. I will still have some good time driving and we will be as ready as we can be for Melbourne.”

Jarno Trulli has revealed he was offered a seat at the Ferrari team while he was racing for the Toyota team in Formula 1.

The veteran Italian is set to be absent from the grid this year after losing his seat at Caterham following a grand prix career that started in 1997 with the Minardi team.

Trulli, a one-time grand prix winner with the Renault team, raced for Toyota from the end of the 2004 season until 2009, when he moved to Lotus, now Caterham.

Speaking in an interview with Autosprint magazine, the Pescaran says former Ferrari boss Jean Todt offered him a seat to drive for the Italian squad, but he turned it down because he had committed to Toyota for the long term.

Trulli did not specify the year in which he was offered the drive, but said he felt like a Ferrari driver briefly.

“Nobody knows this, but at this point I think I can publicly thank Jean Todt for having been one of the few top team managers to consider me during my career. No one knows this, but Todt offered me a seat at Ferrari,” Trulli was quoted as saying by Autosprint.

“I won’t tell you when exactly: I was racing for Toyota and I was doing very well. But I had signed a rather long contract with the Japanese, and in my career I’ve always honoured my commitments. In 15 years of F1 I’ve never needed lawyers.

“I thank Todt not only for having offered me a drive at Ferrari, a chance that unfortunately I couldn’t accept, but also for every time I asked for advice and received fine indications with a friendly approach.

“He has always been very honest with me. I’ve always kept this thing for me, but since today it’s thanking time, I’ve felt like doing that. Regardless how things went, for a moment I felt I was a Ferrari driver.”

Toyota is returning to Le Mans this year with an LMP1 programme and Trulli, who said he had a series of offers on the table, admitted he would like to return to the Japanese squad in another series.

“Toyota remains for me unfinished business,” he said. “With them I started in a great way, with provisional pole in Japan. In 2005 at the second race I got on the podium, the team’s maiden one, and in the first part of the season I was second in the standings behind Alonso.

“However we still lacked that development capability that was achieved later, so we lost ground. In 2009 I did everything in order to win the first race, but for many reasons we didn’t manage to. Since I didn’t manage to in F1, it would be nice to win a race for them in another series.”

Nico Rosberg believes it is now time for Mercedes to start delivering improvements on track this season.

On the back of the restructuring that has taken place at the Brackley-based outfit since Mercedes-Benz took over, plus the recruitment of high-profile technical figures like Bob Bell, Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa, Rosberg thinks the time has come for the team to show it is heading in the right direction.

“For me it is very clear that we need to start our progress on the upward trend now,” said Rosberg at Barcelona on Tuesday.

“We are on a very good path towards that, especially in the factory you can feel that the whole organisation is strengthened.

“Things are working better, people are working better together and the whole atmosphere is much more positive now. There is a good feeling in the factory, so you can feel the upward trend is now starting.

“What that will be in terms of results and positions I don’t know yet, but it needs to be progress. I am confident that we can make that happen.”

Rosberg says his early impressions of the new W03 car have been encouraging, even though it is hard to gauge its competitiveness because of the change in regulations this year.

“We did quite a few laps on Sunday, and the impressions were positive in general but difficult in terms of pace to get a real feel,” he said. “It was more just the general impression of the car, how it was put together – the general feel of it.

“It is agile, easy to drive, and looking at it also, everything is working as expected, so generally it is a much more positive start. That was the first impression.”

Bahrain Grand Prix organisers have received a major boost after winning the support of a leading United Nations war crimes expert for this year’s race to go ahead.

Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, who headed up the critical report of last year’s political troubles in Bahrain, believes it vital that the event goes ahead this season after it was cancelled 12 months ago.

Writing to Bahrain circuit’s chairman Zayed R Alzayani, Bassiouni explains that hosting the event would provide an important stepping stone in helping the Gulf state to move forward.

His views on the matter are important because Bassiouni has in-depth knowledge of the political situation in Bahrain, having last year compiled the Bahrain Independent Commission on Inquiry that looked into the causes of the political troubles, and the way in which the security forces handled the situation.

In the letter, a copy of which has been seen by AUTOSPORT, Bassiouni writes: “This is an important initiative, which gives another opportunity for the People of Bahrain to come together again after all that has happened in the last year.

“The Grand Prix is a significant national event, which is of great interest to a substantial percentage of the population and all of its communities. It is therefore an event of deserved national pride, which you have used in this year’s launching as a way of promoting national healing and reconciliation.

“Aside from the economic, publicity, and public relations advantages that the Grand Prix brings to Bahrain, it is, on this one year anniversary of the February/March events of
last year, an important point of departure for the People of Bahrain to forge ahead in their national efforts towards reconciliation.

“You and the respective organizations involved are to be commended on this initiative. I hope there will be many in Bahrain, during this year and in the years to come, who will
consolidate the processes of national reconciliation, and that all elements of society will add their support and positive encouragement to this and other similar endeavors designed to enhance national reconciliation.”

Bassiouni copied the letter to Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and FIA president Jean Todt.

The Bahrain Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on April 22, with tickets for the event having gone on sale last week.

Dodge will reveal its 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup car on the morning of the third round of the series at Las Vegas on March 11.

The manufacturer confirmed on Monday that the new-spec Charger model is almost ready to break cover, and it has promised that the appearance will surprise people.

“I’m very pleased with the way the car turned out,” said Ralph Gilles, Dodge’s president and CEO of street and racing technology and motorsports. “I think people will be shocked.

“They won’t believe their eyes when they look at what basically looks like a street car with some flat rubber on it. It will be interesting to see what the response is.

“It’s been tough to keep the covers on this car. We’ve been working on it for over two years, developing it.”

NASCAR’s 2013 Cup regulations allow the manufacturers to apply more of their own styling cues to the cars to help fans identify them. And Gilles added that the similar approach taken to the new cars in the second tier Nationwide Series proved that it was a good decision.

“When we did the Nationwide Challenger in 2010, the response was ‘Hallelujah, finally the race car is looking a lot like the car we buy and drive,’” he said. “We’ve got two rear-drive muscle cars in the Challenger and the Charger, so it really fits NASCAR well.”

The Lotus team has been forced to wrap up its first day of testing at Barcelona early because of a problem with its car.

Romain Grosjean managed just seven laps with the second E20 chassis in the morning session before the team decided to stop running.

Lotus said it had to send the chassis back to Enstone to carry out checks.

“This morning was our first shakedown of our second chassis,” said Lotus’s Alan Permane. “Once the car was on track it was soon evident that everything wasn’t quite as it should be.

“As a precaution we are returning the chassis to Enstone for further investigation. Chassis E20-01, which we used in Jerez, is being sent over and we expect to be on track with that chassis tomorrow.”

Team boss Eric Boullier downplayed the issue, saying it was a “minor setback”.

“This is a minor setback to our overall test programme. Fortunately we accumulated good mileage in Jerez. If this is the only issue we have during testing then we will still be well prepared for the start of the season.

“We’ll be back on track tomorrow with chassis E20-01 and assessing chassis E20-02 back at Enstone.”

Sebastian Vettel posted the quickest time on the opening morning of Formula 1′s second pre-season test of 2012 at Barcelona.

A late surge from the reigning champion established the Red Bull RB8 as the morning pace-setter, with Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg – who had been quickest for much of the morning – dropping to second.

After a slow opening hour – in which track activity mirrored the frosty conditions – times steadily fell as the session wore on, with Hulkenberg the first to dip below the 1m24s bracket.

The German improved that benchmark several times, eventually getting down to a 1m23.440s – which looked good enough to seal top spot at lunch.

Vettel however had other ideas and, with 15 minutes of the morning remaining, he rose to a seemingly customary position at the top of the timesheets with a 1m23.343s, less than one tenth clear of Hulkenberg.

Lewis Hamilton, who had traded fastest laps with Vettel earlier in the morning, finished third fastest. His best was less than a quarter of a second slower than Vettel.

Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo was the only other driver to break into the 1m23s, although his best time of the morning – a 1m23.618s – was set on Pirelli’s soft compound. Vettel, Hulkenberg and Hamilton all set their bests on the medium option.

Fernando Alonso managed 36 laps for Ferrari, ending the session fifth fastest, three quarters of a second down on Vettel.

Michael Schumacher, piloting Mercedes’ W03 for the first time in testing, was just five hundredths of a second down the road in sixth. He managed 41 laps in the team’s new car, which was officially unveiled this morning.

Sauber’s Sergio Perez was the last driver to get within one second of Vettel, the Mexican finishing seventh fastest despite completing a relatively light 28 laps.

There was no such issue for Williams, which managed 56 laps with Bruno Senna at the helm. The Brazilian wasn’t able to break into the 1m25s however, ending the morning 2.8s down on Vettel in eighth.

That still put him ahead of Lotus’s Romain Grosjean and Caterham’s Heikki Kovalainen, both of whom experienced severely truncated sessions.

After a fantastic opening in Jerez, Grosjean’s Lotus managed just seven laps, the lowest total of any driver. His team has been forced to stop running today as it had to send its chassis back to Enstone for checks.

Kovalainen meanwhile managed nine before stopping sideways on the final corner, bringing out the only red flag thus far at Barcelona. He has thus far been unable to get going.

Charles Pic rounded out the running order, finishing more than 5s down after completing 65 laps. HRT chose not to run at Barcelona after their 2012 car failed a crash test.

Morning times:

Pos  Driver         Team            Time                Laps

 1.  Vettel         Red Bull        1m23.343s            38

 2.  Hulkenberg     Force India     1m23.440s  + 0.097   47

 3.  Hamilton       McLaren         1m23.590s  + 0.247   45

 4.  Ricciardo      Toro Rosso      1m23.618s  + 0.275   45

 5.  Alonso         Ferrari         1m24.100s  + 0.757   37

 6.  Schumacher     Mercedes        1m24.150s  + 0.807   42

 7.  Perez          Sauber          1m24.219s  + 0.876   29

 8.  Senna          Williams        1m26.188s  + 2.845   56

 9.  Grosjean       Lotus           1m26.809s  + 3.466    7

10.  Kovalainen     Caterham        1m27.537s  + 4.194    9

11.  Pic            Marussia        1m29.248s  + 5.905   65

Michael Schumacher believes it is too soon to know whether the new Mercedes W03 can be a winner but says that it did give him the right messages when he shook it down for the first time at Silverstone last week.

Mercedes unveiled its 2012 challenger at Barcelona on Tuesday morning, having completed a private test with it at the circuit on Sunday.

And Schumacher says he can’t wait to get a better picture of its true potential this week.

“Already last week, when we were driving the F1 W03 for the very first time, it instantly gave us good feedback and sensations,” said Schumacher.

“Starting today, we will work intensively to make it a competitive runner.

“Obviously, we will only see over the next couple of weeks how big the step is that we have made, but I can say already that the guys and girls back in the factories at Brackley and Brixworth were brilliant in putting in so much effort.

“For my part, I am eager to fight again, looking forward to the new season, and I can’t wait for it to begin.”

Team-mate Nico Rosberg was also positive about his initial reaction to the new car: “We have had a good start to our 2012 testing programme, and it was a great feeling to drive the first laps in the new F1 W03.

“The car looks good, and is very nicely packaged under the bodywork – all the parts are in harmony, which reflects how well the different departments of our team are working together,” he added.

“From the beginning of our running, we have been able to focus on understanding the car and making good progress with our test programme.”

Volkswagen Motorsport has released images of its full-specification Polo R WRC testing for the first time in Norway last week.

After running a mule Polo labeled the ‘zero’ car, last week’s test was the first running at competitive speed for the complete World Rally Car built to 2013 specification.

The ‘zero’ car was driven for around four months, used as a test bed for various components in various conditions on both asphalt and gravel. The Polo which ran last week has been labeled ‘car one’.

VW test driver Dieter Depping drove the car for the first morning, before handing over to Sebastien Ogier, who completed in excess of 650 miles on the roads around Kongsvinger.

The team’s first test was run in snow for logistical reasons, with much of the team already in place following Rally Sweden. Ogier’s Skoda Fabia S2000 was also driven on the test to provide benchmark timing – having competed against the Citroen DS3 WRC and Ford Fiesta RS WRC in Sweden – for the Polo R WRC.

No official comment was made on the test, but it was described as successful by a spokesperson. Much of the week was spent putting miles on the clock rather than making specific set-up changes. Changes which were made to the car came in the suspension and transmission department.

The team will now shift its attention to Spain next week, when the Polo will run on gravel for the first time.

Ross Brawn believes Mercedes GP must move up the Formula 1 grid this year, following two consecutive seasons where it finished fourth in the standings.

After officially unveiling its new W03 at Barcelona on Tuesday, Brawn said that the Brackley-based outfit has the ingredients it needs to deliver improved form on track – which means regularly fighting for podium finishes.

“We have to go forward,” he said. “None of us are happy with a recurring fourth place. That is not why any of us are here. We have to go forward, but I am quietly confident with the strength we have got, the resources we have got and the team we are building that we can do that.”

Brawn says that the one factor that has encouraged him about Mercedes GP’s prospects was the bolstering of the technical department that occurred last year – and specifically the arrival of Bob Bell, Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa.

“I think the important thing for me is the strengthening we have done of the team,” he said. “We have much more depth in the engineering team that we had 12 months ago, especially with Bob Bell joining, and Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa.

“We had a great, very bright team of engineers, but adding that maturity and that strength gives me the confidence that we are going to react more strongly to anything we face. I don’t know where we are going to be with the car, I feel reasonably comfortably with what we have done but wherever we are, I am sure we are going to have a much stronger response that we ever had in the past.”

When asked if the team was now mature enough to go for top three finishes regularly, Brawn said: “We are definitely ready to go for podiums. Any team that has not won the world championship has to look at how it can improve, how it can strengthen and how it can achieve better results. Even if you win the world championship you still look at that.

“And if you are not winning races and not winning a championship then perhaps you have to look at even stronger improvements. But the key is not to ruin what you already have to build something stronger, and that is what we have been very focused on.

“We have some great people in the team already and I was comfortable in adding Geoff, Aldo and Bob because they are people I know would fit in with the existing structure, but also enhance the structure and make it stronger.”

Brawn says he remains comfortable with the team’s decision to skip the opening pre-season test at Jerez, even though it means the outfit has less time to prepare its W03 for the first race.

“For us at least (Jerez) was quite important, because we wanted to correlate the new car, the old car, the new tyres and the old tyres and understand where we are,” he said.

“With the old car being so reliable it meant we did a solid three days of testing, and we did almost as much mileage in that as many people did in four. That meant we just did lots of useful tyre testing, so we could get that out the way and now focus on new things on the new car.”

The W03 features the now common stepped nose, and Brawn says the outfit has learned lessons from last year in its design – when some radical concepts on the W02 did not deliver the steps the team had hoped for.

“Notwithstanding the distinctive nose design, which is certainly an acquired taste, the F1 W03 is an elegant interpretation of the current regulations, and a clear step forward over its predecessor in terms of detail design and sophistication,” he said.

“Last year, we produced a very bold car and, although its more radical elements didn’t always deliver the results we had hoped for, the experience we gained has been invaluable to the design of the 2012 car.”

Mercedes GP is making the steps that are needed to eventually get itself to the front of the Formula 1 grid.

That is the view of Mercedes-Benz motorsport boss Nobert Haug, who feels that the outfit has learned valuable lessons over the past two seasons that should help it make good progress.

“We are in the building up process,” said Haug as his team unveiled its new W03 at Barcelona on Tuesday. “We have been two times fourth in the last two years and our ultimate goal is to move up the ladder and go in the ultimate direction of first place.

“It takes time and a lot of effort, but we are working very hard and ultimately we can achieve it.

“We want to climb up the ladder. To beat Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren-Mercedes is quite a task, but ultimately we want to achieve that. We are still a young team, we need to learn and I think our learning process is underway. My feeling is we are heading in the right direction.”

The W03 features the stepped nose that is common in F1 this year, but is more sculpted than other designs.

“I think our designers did a good job,” he said. “With these stepped noses you need to get used to it, but wait and see. After a while the car that is winning races looks good, and I think our new Silver Arrows is a pleasant and nice car.”

Mercedes GP elected to skip the first pre-season test at Jerez in order to give itself more development time for the W03, which has already had a shakedown test at Silverstone and a full day of running at Barcelona. It joins the second pre-season test at Barcelona this week.

Mercedes became the last of the frontrunning Formula 1 teams to officially unveil its 2012 car, when it rolled out the W03 at Barcelona prior to the start of the second week of testing today.

The new car has already shaken down the car at Silverstone last week, and conducted a private test at Catalunya on Sunday – which Mercedes was permitted to undertake because it had only been present for three of the four days of running at Jerez earlier this month.

Mercedes chose to stick with its 2011 car for Jerez in order to gain data on this year’s Pirelli tyres, and was quickest on two of the days it was present – though it was running to full ’11 specification, including the no-longer-permitted exhaust-blown diffuser.

Mercedes’ motorsport chief Norbert Haug told AUTOSPORT earlier this week that the W03 would not feature any radical innovations – contrary to speculation that the team had waited until the second test to reveal the car because it featured technical breakthroughs it did not want rivals to copy.

The most obvious outward change is the move to a stepped nose, in common with the majority of rival teams.

Having been unable to beat rivals Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari to race wins in its first two years, Mercedes GP is hoping to get among the top three on a more regular basis this year.

Last season it revamped its technical team with the addition of former Renault man Bob Bell, ex-Ferrari design chief Aldo Costa, and Geoff Willis, formerly of Williams, BAR and Red Bull.

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher continue in an unchanged driver line-up at Mercedes. With Schumacher coming into the final season of what was initially planned as a three-year comeback deal, speculation about whether the seven-time champion will stay on into 2013 and beyond is likely to be one of the biggest stories around Mercedes this season.

Alex Wurz will return to the Williams team as a driver mentor, the Grove-based squad announced on Monday.

Austrian Wurz raced for Williams during the 2007 season, and he will be reunited with his old team when he starts his new role in the upcoming Barcelona test.

Williams said Wurz will travel to races this year, helping race drivers Bruno Senna and Pastor Maldonado.

“This is a great initiative by Williams and highlights just how hard the team is pushing to optimise its performance,” said Wurz.

“Throughout my career as a sportsman, which started at the age of 12 in BMX racing, includes over a decade in Formula 1 and is still ongoing (racing in the World Endurance Championship), I am lucky to have gained so much experience.

“I grew up in a family business of driver training and naturally I enjoy helping fellow athletes to operate at their best.

“I’m really looking forward to using my expertise to help Williams at this important stage in its history.”

Engineering chief Mark Gillan added: “I am delighted to be working once more with Alex and look forward to his valuable input with the drivers as the whole team strives to continuously improve in all aspects of its operation.”

Martin Brundle believes he will be a better commentator for Sky in 2012 thanks to the experience he gained from leading the BBC’s television commentary during Formula 1 races last season.

Brundle became lead commentator for the BBC in 2011, standing alongside his former rival David Coulthard in the box, after Jonathan Legard was dropped from the line-up the previous winter.

Brundle has switched to Sky Sports this year and will now revert to his preferred ‘expert’ co-commentary role for qualifying and races on the satellite service, alongside former BBC 5 Live radio presenter David Croft.

“One thing is absolutely for sure, having now done a year of lead commentating,” Brundle said when asked by AUTOSPORT at a media briefing for Sky’s new F1 HD channel, “I will now be a better co-comm.

“I have now realised some of the challenges there are being a lead which I hadn’t experienced before. I’d kind of sensed it, but hadn’t it experienced it, so when Murray [Walker] used to look at me as if to say ‘Shut up!’ I now know why.”

Brundle added that he is much more comfortable in the co-commentator’s role, a job he took up for ITV in 1997 after quitting driving in F1, and then continued when BBC took over the coverage for 2009.

“I much prefer being the co-comm,” he said. “I realised halfway through last year when I was lead comm – which I enjoyed doing, and I think it worked well with DC. I got a lot of nice comments; I mean there were a lot of people who said we couldn’t carry the comm box as well, but we had a four hour and four minute race [in Canada] where we carried it just fine. But I prefer to be the co-comm.

“And then when I did the rehearsal the other day [for Sky], it just absolutely cemented that in my head. I had to force being lead commentator whereas I don’t have to do that with co-comm.”

Jarno Trulli admits that he is surprised by the number of offers he has received since being dropped by the Caterham Formula 1 team.

The 37-year-old is keen to continue his racing career, and has not ruled out continuing in F1 even though such a possibility appears unlikely.

But despite the opportunities that have already arisen to race outside of F1, Trulli insists that he will take his time before deciding on his future.

“I was very surprised by the fact that one or two days later, I had already received some offers,” Trulli told AUTOSPORT. “I didn’t think that it would move so quickly.

“But I don’t want to take any decisions now. I want to put all of the offers on the table and see what is the best for me.

“At the moment, I have no plans.”

Trulli insists that he is not limiting his horizons as to where he will race. As well as not ruling out continuing in F1 in some capacity, he confirmed that America could be of interest when asked about the prospect by AUTOSPORT.

He is also likely to evaluate opportunities in sportscar racing.

“I’m open to any possibilities as far as top level and professional racing is concerned,” he said. “I’m happy to work hard, to go testing, to develop a project but I want something with a structure that at least gives me the potential for performance.

“NASCAR and IndyCar could be a possibility, but obviously I don’t have sponsors. I’ve never had that in my career so I’ve had to deal with my talent and nothing else.”

The Italian is hopeful of reaching a deal to race somewhere, but is focusing on finding an opportunity that will allow him to compete at a higher level than he was able to with the team then known as Lotus in 2010/11.

“We would like to do something at a higher level than what I’ve been doing for the last two years,” he said. “I spent the last two years at the back of the grid and it was a bit frustrating after spending my entire career fighting for the top.”

Click to read Tony Dodgins’ AUTOSPORT Plus column on why Jarno Trulli deserved more from his Formula 1 career

NASCAR could review its regulations regarding teams taking on other squads’ points to ensure their drivers can qualify for Sprint Cup events.

Under NASCAR rules, the top 35 in the owners’ standings from the previous year are guaranteed qualifying spots in the opening five Cup rounds. This has led to various deals being struck and partnerships created between teams to get drivers into the field, including this year an alliance between Stewart-Haas Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing that saw the former’s rookie driver Danica Patrick transferred to a Baldwin entry to ensure qualification for the early races.

NASCAR’s senior vice president for racing operations Steve O’Donnell said he accepted fans had concerns about the practice.

“We know it’s a challenging one for us,” O’Donnell told reporters at Daytona. “We’re aware of what the fans think. We’d rather be talking about what’s going on on the racetrack. The Daytona 500 is a huge thing for the sport, but it has this piece attached to it.”

O’Donnell said the series organisers were looking at ensuring such deals were arranged further in advance.

“These deals have come together later and later, which is more and more challenging to explain,” he said. “So do you look at a deadline at the end of the season where we put things in place?

“Again, that could be challenging for some owners, but that may be something we need to look at to have that be one of the stories going into the off-season, and then as we go into Daytona, we’re talking about racing.”

But he insisted that alliances that that between Baldwin and Tony Stewart’s squad could be positive for the sport.

“If you go back into history, there have been a lot of partnerships that have been put together that have allowed teams to get back on their feet a little bit. This is part of that as well,” O’Donnell said.

“I would say helping Tommy as well was a part of this. Obviously, we can’t show favouritism. But that’s part of the best interest of the sport, having an owner like Tommy Baldwin be healthy. For us, that’s a good thing.”

Andreas Mikkelsen says he does not feel any extra pressure to perform now he is coming into the Intercontinental Rally Challenge season as defending champion.

The Skoda UK driver swept to the title with wins in the final two rallies last year, despite a difficult start to the season.

Mikkelsen has retained his IRC seat for 2012 as well as getting World Rally Championship outings with Volkswagen’s Skoda S2000 programme, and will start his IRC defence with Rally Azores this weekend.

He insisted being champion made no difference to his mindset coming into the season-opener.

“I don’t feel under any pressure starting this year’s IRC as champion and I won’t change my mindset entering each rally,” said Mikkelsen.

“The competition will once again be strong, so I need to do what I did last year – stay focused, keep calm and do my best behind the steering wheel.”

Mikkelsen also feels the continuity of going into a second year with Skoda UK will allow him to hit the ground running.

“The 2011 Rally Cyprus was my last event with Skoda UK Motorsport, and although we’ve all seen each other since then, it’s a long time since we’ve done a rally together and I’m really looking forward to that,” he said. “The continuity within the team will be one of our strong points this year, as we all know what’s expected.”

Leading NASCAR drivers expect the Daytona 500 and the Duel qualifying races to be much calmer affairs than Saturday night’s destructive Budweiser Shootout.

The non-championship, random grid event last weekend was disrupted by three massive multi-car crashes, one of which ended up with former champion Jeff Gordon rolling for the first time in his NASCAR career.

Adjustments to the technical package for the restrictor plate races have led to the return of racing in large packs instead of the unpopular tandem drafts of recent years. But Shootout winner Kyle Busch said Saturday night’s carnage was more because of the nature of the Shootout rather than the pack racing, and said the Sprint Cup opener will be less destructive – at least until the final laps.

“It will be a little bit calmer. It’s all in the drivers’ hands, how boring or how exciting we want to make the race,” he said. “I think [the Shootout] was pretty exciting, the reason being because it’s a non-points race.

“When you get to the Daytona 500, there’s going to be some moments there where you’re pushing, trying to see what your car is going to do. You have to keep your water temperatures in check, the front and back bumpers on your car, you got to keep the sides on your car, you have to be there at the end.

“When it comes down to the last 50 miles, 25 miles, 10 miles, it’s going to get hectic.”

Reigning Cup champion Tony Stewart, who was narrowly defeated by Busch in the Shootout, reckoned drivers were pushing the limits in the Shootout to see what would be safely possible in the main event.

“Historically you’ve always seen this race be a scenario where everybody sees what they can get away with and they use it for a practice session,” he said.

“You can always push harder in this race than the 500 because we always run this at night and it’s a lot cooler. We’ll have most likely a lot warmer conditions a week from tomorrow. That will eliminate some of the stuff that guys were really trying to push the envelope on.

“When it comes to Sunday, you have to race 500 miles, you have to make it last until the end. It’s not that they’re not conscious of the fact you have to make it to lap 75 [of the Shootout], but you have the flexibility of not worrying about points standings and not worrying about the 500 title and losing it if you make a mistake.

“The competition is so tight, you have to try things [in the Shootout]. If you don’t, somebody else is and they’re going to learn from it whether it’s right, wrong or indifferent. You had to be aggressive and you had to see what you can get away with. It’s a great opportunity for trial and error.

“It worked out sometimes and it didn’t work out a lot of times. The guys that crashed, it didn’t work out [for], [but] there’s something they took away from it and said, ‘That didn’t work out so well.’”

But Dale Earnhardt Jr, who was caught up in one of the Shootout’s crashes, reckons the big race will be “a lot of the same” as the pressure to win will mean hard racing from the outset.

“Maybe being 500 miles guys might use a little better judgement, but I wouldn’t count on it,” he said. “It is a heavy duty race. It is a pretty big deal to win and there’s going to be a lot of guys pretty excited about their prospects of winning it. Still pretty much any car can win. The lottery’s still there for the whole field.”

Nick Yelloly will race in Formula Renault 3.5 with Comtec this season after his impressive partial campaign in 2011.

The 21-year-old Briton made three FR3.5 appearances for Pons Racing alongside his GP3 programme last year, and qualified sixth on his debut at Silverstone then finished second at Catalunya.

Comtec team manager John Barnett said those drives had put Yelloly high up the team’s shopping list.

“Nick burst onto the World Series scene last season and immediately made an impact; surprising and impressing everyone with his pace,” said Barnett. “Since then, it was our aim to secure Nick as part of the team for 2012.

“During winter testing he immediately gelled with his engineer, Paul Heath, and we all appreciated his professional and controlled approach to testing. I believe that together we can develop Comtec’s new World Series 3.5 car into a championship winning package.”

Yelloly said his form in FR3.5 last season had left him full of confidence for 2012.

“There are a number of excellent drivers in this year’s WSR 3.5 championship, but when competing in the last three rounds last year there were also some highly regarded prospects, as there is every year in the championship, so that’s no real worry to me,” he said.

“I recently visited Comtec’s facility to have a look around and after my initial visit, I’m very confident in what they have set in place for the 2012 season and the development work that has already been completed at this stage.”

Dani Sordo will lead Prodrive’s Mini team on next month’s Rally of Portugal, with Patrik Sandell again alongside him in the second John Cooper Works WRC.

Sordo will miss the next round of the series, Rally Mexico, but is expected to contest up to seven rallies in this year’s World Rally Championship for the Banbury-based team. The original plan for Sordo and Kris Meeke to enter the whole series ran into trouble amid the dispute between Prodrive and Mini owner BMW that led to Prodrive losing its full factory status.

The Faro-based event will be Sandell’s second Mini outing of the season after Sweden, with the former Junior champion benefiting from backing from the Sweden World Rally Team.

“I’ve done this rally twice before, so I know the roads and have an idea on what awaits me,” said Sandell. “But it still feels a bit special to know that I will be sitting in a WRC car this time.”

Sweden World Rally Team manager Jan Pettersson said Sandell’s eighth-place on his home event earlier this month was the main reason for his speedy return to the car.

“We have reasoned together with Prodrive, and concluded that Portugal is a perfect next step for us in the WRC investment we are making,” said Pettersson. “It is also important for Patrik to get back into the car as soon as possible, while he has the momentum going from the Swedish Rally.”

Alex Tagliani believes that his planned test at Texas Motor Speedway tomorrow will be critical in helping Lotus to bridge the gap to IndyCar Series rivals Honda and Chevrolet as it scrambles to recover from the late arrival of its engine.

The Bryan Herta Autosport driver is scheduled to run alongside Penske’s Ryan Briscoe and KV Racing’s Tony Kanaan at the 1.5-mile oval, and while the main purpose of the outing is to evaluate aero and mechanical updates to the DW12, the Canadian said that it was also an important day for Lotus.

“I would say [Texas is] quite important because it’s a logical step to continue the development of the car and to make sure we give all the information to IndyCar for improving the racing and making sure we’re where we need to be when we get to that sort of track,” Tagliani told the official IndyCar website.

“For Lotus it’s important too because we have not had the same amount of time in the car with the engine to play around as the others.

“Going to an oval is good for Lotus for the development and to see where they want to be. It seems as if there’s a new development every week, but when you’re not in the car every week it’s ‘OK, how many more developments have we had since we tested in Homestead?’”

Lotus’s development effort is spread across the three single-car teams run by Herta, Dreyer & Reinbold, and HVM Racing. Tagliani’s last test was on the road course at Homestead in January.

Last year’s Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne said securing a spot in the 2012 field without having to rely on a Duel result was a huge relief – and now hopes he can find more sponsorship to prolong his 2012 season.

The Wood Brothers driver did not have a guaranteed Daytona start as his car was not within the top 35 in last year’s Sprint Cup owners’ points standings. But he secured one of the three spots available for the fastest non-guaranteed drivers in qualifying when he went ninth quickest yesterday.

“It’s a lot of relief,” said Bayne. “Now we’re back to the same position we were in last year. We started the Duel knowing we were locked in and it was just wherever we finished, and now we’re back right there, so I’m ready for it.”

Bayne currently lacks the funding to contest either the NASCAR Sprint Cup or Nationwide Series full-time, and his Nationwide team boss Jack Roush hopes ensuring a Daytona appearance will entice sponsors.

“Certainly it helps. Trevor is the reigning Daytona 500 champion and we have not managed to put together full sponsorship for either the Cup programme or Nationwide programme, but we do have ongoing conversations,” said Roush.

“I don’t know that there will be any great improvement in our prospects based on this, but it would certainly have been a downer if we had failed to qualify or if we would have had a problem with our car on that lap.”

Bayne admitted he was surprised how tough it had been to raise money for 2012.

“I thought we’d be full-time Nationwide and full-time Cup this year, to be honest, right after the 500,” he said. “But as the season wore on and nothing was really happening, this [current uncertainty] is kind of what I figured [would happen].

“I’d hoped to run full-time Nationwide this year. We have the first three races right now and then we’re going to go from there. I figure if we can maybe be leading the points by then, then it would be hard for them to stop racing, but you would hope you could accumulate some kind of funding or some kind of sponsorship after the year that we had last year.”

Duel one line-up:

Pos  Driver                Team/Car

 1.  Carl Edwards          Roush Fenway Ford

 2.  Dale Earnhardt Jr     Hendrick Chevrolet

 3.  Marcos Ambrose        Petty Ford

 4.  Ricky Stenhouse Jr    Roush Fenway Ford

 5.  Trevor Bayne          Wood Brothers Ford

 6.  Tony Stewart          Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

 7.  Aric Almirola         Petty Ford

 8.  Paul Menard           Childress Chevrolet

 9.  David Ragan           Front Row Ford

10.  AJ Allmendinger       Penske Dodge

11.  Brad Keselowski       Penske Dodge

12.  Kevin Harvick         Childress Chevrolet

13.  Jeff Burton           Childress Chevrolet

14.  Juan Pablo Montoya    Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

15.  David Stremme         Inception Toyota

16.  Jamie McMurray        Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

17.  Danica Patrick        Baldwin Chevrolet

18.  Terry Labonte         FAS Lane Ford

19.  Michael Waltrip       Waltrip Toyota

20.  Denny Hamlin          Gibbs Toyota

21.  Michael McDowell      Parsons Ford

22.  Landon Cassill        BK Toyota

23.  David Gilliland       Front Row Ford

24.  Mike Wallace          Max Q Ford

25.  Robby Gordon          Gordon Dodge
Duel two:
Pos  Driver                Team/Car

 1.  Greg Biffle           Roush Fenway Ford

 2.  Casey Mears           Germain Ford

 3.  Jeff Gordon           Hendrick Chevrolet

 4.  Martin Truex Jr       Waltrip Toyota

 5.  Mark Martin           Waltrip Toyota

 6.  Jimmie Johnson        Hendrick Chevrolet

 7.  Matt Kenseth          Roush Fenway Ford

 8.  Ryan Newman           Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

 9.  Joey Logano           Gibbs Toyota

10.  Kasey Kahne           Hendrick Chevrolet

11.  Tony Raines           Front Row Ford

12.  Kyle Busch            Gibbs Toyota

13.  Kenny Wallace         RAB Toyota

14.  Dave Blaney           Baldwin Chevrolet

15.  Kurt Busch            Phoenix Chevrolet

16.  Elliott Sadler        Childress Chevrolet

17.  Joe Nemechek          NEMCO Toyota

18.  Regan Smith           Furniture Row Chevrolet

19.  Bobby Labonte         JTG Daugherty Toyota

20.  Bill Elliott          NEMCO Toyota

21.  David Reutimann       BK Toyota

22.  Robert Richardson Jr  R3 Toyota

23.  JJ Yeley              Robinson-Blakeney Toyota

24.  Clint Bowyer          Waltrip Toyota

IndyCar is hoping to finalise its new car’s aero package for ovals at Tuesday’s scheduled test at Texas Motor Speedway ahead of next month’s open test at the 1.5-mile track.

KV Racing’s Tony Kanaan, Penske’s Ryan Briscoe, and Bryan Herta Autosport’s Alex Tagliani are all due to run tomorrow, and IndyCar vice president of technology Will Phillips said that the outing would be a crucial one in the continuing development of the new DW12 chassis.

The DW12 proved difficult to handle on ovals in its early tests, but has since been modified by constructor Dallara.

“We’re going to Texas to make sure of and define what specification we should run the car in aerodynamically, but also it’s the first opportunity that IndyCar has had to look at the suspension to change the weight distribution,” Phillips told the official IndyCar website.

“The intention is to run the cars in similar configurations. They’ll have different set-ups because I’m not specifying a set-up, but similar aerodynamic specification and then step through an agreed programme with all three groups.”

Phillips also plans to use the session to give the first track test to the new aero parts that Dallara trialled in the windtunnel last month, as well as giving an oval debut to the new lightweight spool for the Xtrac transmission.

Daytona 500 pole-winner Carl Edwards is not ruling out pushing for victory in Thursday’s Gatorade Duel qualifying race, even though his pole position is secure.

Edwards guaranteed his top spot for the NASCAR Sprint Cup season-opener in yesterday’s qualifying session, and will retain it wherever he finishes in his Duel heat.

But despite the return of fully-fledged pack racing seeing more crashes in Saturday’s Budweiser Shootout event, the Roush Fenway driver said he is open to taking risks in the Duel even though there is nothing at stake for him.

“That’s one way to look at it, but the other way is that I know how good our back-up car is and I also know that you can’t give these other guys any advantage and if I were to not race and not understand the dynamics that are going to happen during the daytime here at this racetrack with this package, I’d be giving them something,” he said.

“So I’ve got to go out there as a driver and mix it up and race and see how our car handles, but there is a little bit of a, ‘Man, there might be something really special about this car,’ so I’ll talk with [crew chief] Bob [Osborne] and I’m sure [team boss] Jack [Roush] will have some words for me before that race.”

Edwards suggested his risk strategy for the Duel might only be decided mid-race.

“Even if we make a change halfway through the race and say, ‘Hey, things look smooth. Let’s just go for it,’ or ‘Things are looking insane, let’s save the car,’” he said.

The 2011 Sprint Cup runner-up does not think starting from pole necessarily gives him an advantage in staying out of trouble in the pack, but does think having team-mate Greg Biffle starting alongside him will be an advantage.

“We’re likely to wreck up there in the front too,” said Edwards. “I was running second [in the Shootout] behind Greg and Clint [Bowyer] was third and he got turned sideways coming out of the tri-oval, so I truly don’t know there’s a safe place on the racetrack with this style of racing, but the thing that’s really good for me is that Greg, a guy who has been my partner at these restrictor plate races, is starting right there with us. Him and I can work together.

“I know Greg has my best interests and Roush’s best interests in mind, just as I do for him, so that kind of makes me feel better, that we’ll be together at the start and we don’t have to go find each other to help one another later.”

Although Edwards acknowledged that qualifying will hold little relevance when the 500 gets underway, he said pole was an important boost for his Roush Fenway team coming into the new season.

“It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me the first time I came down here or the second time, but now after seeing how hard everybody works all winter and how much pride the guys take in how these cars qualify, it does mean something to me,” Edwards said. “It’s a sign of the strength of your team and it’s not that we just have one car up there, to have that whole front row says a lot about Roush Fenway Racing, about Ford. It’s huge for our sponsors.”

Duel one line-up:

Pos  Driver                Team/Car

 1.  Carl Edwards          Roush Fenway Ford

 2.  Dale Earnhardt Jr     Hendrick Chevrolet

 3.  Marcos Ambrose        Petty Ford

 4.  Ricky Stenhouse Jr    Roush Fenway Ford

 5.  Trevor Bayne          Wood Brothers Ford

 6.  Tony Stewart          Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

 7.  Aric Almirola         Petty Ford

 8.  Paul Menard           Childress Chevrolet

 9.  David Ragan           Front Row Ford

10.  AJ Allmendinger       Penske Dodge

11.  Brad Keselowski       Penske Dodge

12.  Kevin Harvick         Childress Chevrolet

13.  Jeff Burton           Childress Chevrolet

14.  Juan Pablo Montoya    Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

15.  David Stremme         Inception Toyota

16.  Jamie McMurray        Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

17.  Danica Patrick        Baldwin Chevrolet

18.  Terry Labonte         FAS Lane Ford

19.  Michael Waltrip       Waltrip Toyota

20.  Denny Hamlin          Gibbs Toyota

21.  Michael McDowell      Parsons Ford

22.  Landon Cassill        BK Toyota

23.  David Gilliland       Front Row Ford

24.  Mike Wallace          Max Q Ford

25.  Robby Gordon          Gordon Dodge
Duel two:
Pos  Driver                Team/Car

 1.  Greg Biffle           Roush Fenway Ford

 2.  Casey Mears           Germain Ford

 3.  Jeff Gordon           Hendrick Chevrolet

 4.  Martin Truex Jr       Waltrip Toyota

 5.  Mark Martin           Waltrip Toyota

 6.  Jimmie Johnson        Hendrick Chevrolet

 7.  Matt Kenseth          Roush Fenway Ford

 8.  Ryan Newman           Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

 9.  Joey Logano           Gibbs Toyota

10.  Kasey Kahne           Hendrick Chevrolet

11.  Tony Raines           Front Row Ford

12.  Kyle Busch            Gibbs Toyota

13.  Kenny Wallace         RAB Toyota

14.  Dave Blaney           Baldwin Chevrolet

15.  Kurt Busch            Phoenix Chevrolet

16.  Elliott Sadler        Childress Chevrolet

17.  Joe Nemechek          NEMCO Toyota

18.  Regan Smith           Furniture Row Chevrolet

19.  Bobby Labonte         JTG Daugherty Toyota

20.  Bill Elliott          NEMCO Toyota

21.  David Reutimann       BK Toyota

22.  Robert Richardson Jr  R3 Toyota

23.  JJ Yeley              Robinson-Blakeney Toyota

24.  Clint Bowyer          Waltrip Toyota

Mattias Ekstrom believes that the DTM’s new tyre regulations will pose a bigger challenge to drivers this year than any of the other rule changes coming into force.

Under all-new technical regulations for this year, all DTM cars will use larger wheels and wider tyres than the previous generation of machinery.

This, coupled with reduced aerodynamics, means that the balance of grip generated by each car will be more mechanical than aerodynamic. And Audi ace Ekstrom says the change of driving style this requires in the new A5 DTM has taken time to adapt to.

“The car is definitely a bit different to drive than the A4,” said the two-time DTM champion. “The biggest difference is made by the new Hankook tyre which is a bit wider – that changes the driving style to some extent.

“We’ve also got the gearshift on the steering wheel now [as opposed to a stick]. That also makes a bit of a difference, although there are many things you can’t judge at the moment because we haven’t driven the final version yet.”

Ekstrom, who has been heavily involved in the A5′s test programme, said that the car was at the point in its development where only small tweaks will be needed to it ahead of the March 1 homologation deadline.

“But principally speaking there’s only fine-tuning work left at this stage. The key decisions were made a long time ago,” he added.

“Every manufacturer will now try and guard their little secrets up to the last moment. After March 1 the cards will be revealed a little more – also during the track tests.”

Russian Sergey Sirotkin is to contest the Auto GP World Series with the Euronova Racing team of 1995 Formula 3000 International champion Vincenzo Sospiri.

Sirotkin, who is just 16 years old, graduates as the reigning champion of the European Formula Abarth series, which he won after switching to Euronova mid-season. He is a member of the Lukoil Driver Development programme.

As well as Auto GP, Sirotkin will also contest the Italian Formula 3 Championship with Euronova.

“Sergey did an amazing job last year and has a talent and maturity that are outstanding for a driver of his age and experience,” said Sospiri. “This will be an intensive year for Sergey, who will compete in two championships with us, but it is an opportunity that will give him valuable experience as he continues his single-seater career.”

Sospiri guided the initial career of Sirotkin’s countryman Vitaly Petrov, who was a race winner in Formula 3000 Euroseries (the forerunner to Auto GP) with Euronova.

The FIA has concluded its first major agreement for the World Rally Championship since the series promoter North One Sport went into administration last month – with Stage 1 Technology confirmed as the timing and tracking supplier for 2012.

After being forced to miss the season opener in Monte Carlo for legal reasons, British firm S1T made a single-event agreement for Rally Sweden and has now concluded a deal to provide the systems to track cars from the start to the finish and the timing and results to classify them from every remaining event. The deal was signed by the FIA and S1T on Friday evening after a week of negotiations.

S1T managing director Simon de Banke said: “This is great news. Everybody’s had quite a stressful start to the season, so to get this deal across the line in what is an exceptionally short space of time is a fair reflection on how much everybody wants it to work.

“I would like to pay tribute to the speed and ability with which everybody in the FIA has worked to expedite this. And for their foresight and support of the championship in taking the leadership to get our systems back online.”

For the first time this season, S1T is providing timing to the millisecond for the qualifying and powerstage elements of the WRC.

Former world champion Petter Solberg had called for a quick agreement after running without complete coverage of the tracking system on the Monte Carlo Rally.

“This is about safety, it’s that simple,” said Solberg. “When we are going into the stage, we have to know that the teams know where we are going to be. We need the plane, the [S1T] system and we need the FIA to have the safety helicopter everywhere.

“We’ve been without this system for one rally and we can’t go back to that, this needs to stay now, for sure. It’s too much of a risk for the WRC to be without these kind of systems.”

S1T will return to business as usual on Rally Mexico next month.

Norbert Haug has warned that the new Mercedes MGP W03, which will break cover tomorrow, will not feature any dramatic innovations.

Glimpses seen of the car so far show that it features a stepped nose, in common with eight of the other teams to have launched 2012 machinery. But despite speculation that Mercedes’ decision to skip the first test might be motivated by a desire to hide an as-yet unseen technical innovation, Haug insists that the priority has been to come up with a well-packaged car rather than pursing any eye-catching new concepts.

“I don’t think that your eye will be caught by any big surprises when you see the car during the unveiling,” Haug told AUTOSPORT. “But I certainly hope that we have some clever solutions and we have some good ideas incorporated on the car.

“It’s a good base to work from and certainly we will not turn the world upside down, but we do need to make a good step [with this car].”

The new car has already taken to the track twice, once during a filming day at Silverstone last Thursday and in a private test at Barcelona yesterday. Haug is hopeful that the W03 will prove the effectiveness of the changes that have been made at the team over the past year, but stopped short of saying it marked a new beginning for Mercedes.

He is determined for Mercedes take on the top three teams, but admitted that this has to be viewed as a long-term project given the intensity of competition.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s a new start,” said Haug. “This car is the product of what we have learned in the last two years.

“We had three podium finishes in the first year, but last year we did not head in the right direction. We had some highs, like the Chinese Grand Prix when the track was front-tyre limited and the performance was a little better. But over the course of the year it wasn’t good enough.

“To be a regular contender with Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren is quite a task. We need to learn, we need to develop our team in that direction and I’m sure that we can do that.”

The new Mercedes will break cover at Barcelona on Tuesday morning ahead of the start of the second pre-season Formula 1 test.

Arena Motorsport is aiming to fight for the World Touring Car Championship within three years, according to team principal Mike Earle.

The team is moving up from the British Touring Car Championship to the WTCC this year with drivers Tom Chilton and James Nash, and will run each in a newly-built S2000-spec Ford Focus ST.

After completing four days of testing at Estoril and Guadix last week, with each driver undertaking back-to-back running in both WTCC and BTCC machinery, Earle said that he was delighted with progress so far.

“Everything is going well as we had planned,” Earle said. “Our aim for this first WTCC season is to gain experience. We then expect to be competitive next year and fight for the world title in three years.

“I think we have a great potential, especially because we can count on two young and fast drivers like Tom and James.”

Earle did not rule out running a third Focus later in the year for an experienced driver in a bid to help the two British racers adapt to a number of the circuits that are new to them.

GP3 veteran Nico Muller will spearhead Trident Racing’s line-up at this week’s official test at Estoril.

The 19-year-old Swiss driver, who has won races in both of the past two seasons, and took third place in the 2010 standings, has been brought in to set a benchmark for the other three drivers the team will field.

Trident, which has taken over Addax’s entry in the series, will also field Italian Vicky Piria – who signed a race deal with the team last week.

Formula Abarth graduate Antonio Spavone and Japanese driver Yuki Shiraishi, who raced in Asian Formula Renault last year and has previously tested a GP2 car.

The 37-year-old Italian won the WTCC independents’ title with the BMW squad in 2009, but only made three appearances in the series last year as he instead focused on his GT4 European Cup campaign in a Lotus.

Despite this, he still equaled his career-best WTCC result with sixth place at Oschersleben, and is hungry for more of the same this year.

“I’m very happy to be back in WTCC with Wiechers-Sport,” D’Aste said. “I missed the championship a lot as racing with Lotus in GT4 was nice, but WTCC is another world.

“I know it will be tough and that I will need some races to be back on top. We will arrive at Monza without any testing and it won’t be easy, but we have a good car, a great technical support and I trust the team.”

Wiechers will continue to run the BMW 320 TC machine this season.

Eric Forster: Can I call you Muggo?

Joshua Muggleton: Of course! That’s what everyone else calls me.

EF: The season is off to a bit of a rough start for you: two races down and it’s pretty clear that your finishes aren’t level with your ability.  How do you stay focused between races?

Muggo: I’m going through a bit of a rough patch these last few seasons with a bit of bad luck, and a few/lot of unforced errors on my part. It is really hard to stay focused at the moment and prepare for the next race. I am trying to do all the practice I can in between rounds to prepare the best I can. But as with any sport, when your confidence is down, it is really hard to pick yourself back up. That is where I am at the moment, and trying to figure out how to pick myself back up and get up the pointy end of the field.

“As with any sport, when your confidence is down, it is really hard to pick yourself back up.”

EF: What about during a race, when things go wrong early—you had a tremendous run at Okayama (ending up last after spinning out of the lead 6), where you managed to come all the way back to 9th place against guys wheeling around in 1:32 (no small feat). How did you keep it together? Adrenaline? Red mist? Laughter? Zen?

Muggo: That was a really tough race for me. I made a silly mistake, which some might see as bad luck, but I call a lack of concentration. After I re-gathered the car, I put the in-game chat on mute, along with our Team Speak server (what TT-R [Trans-Tasman Racing: Muggo’s team] use for race updates and spotting), and the red mist well and truly came down. I was really angry at myself for the mistake and put my head down and drove the wheels off the car to try and get back in to a respectable position. I was driving so hard that I knew the tyres weren’t going to last, so the last few laps I was really trying to concentrate on keeping the car pointed the right way. There were a few eye-opening corners there, but all in all I was pretty pleased with the recovery I made. Now I just have to stop making those mistakes in the first place!

EF: What’s it like racing against a guy like (Shane) van Gisbergen, who races the physical V8SC Ford Falcon all over Australia?  Is there some deference to a guy like that, or is he just another fast fella?

Muggo: It really is an honour. That might sound silly to some people, but from an early age the V8 Supercar drivers have been my idols all the way through until now [he’s 24 now]. To look up to these guys and watch them every other week driving real Supercars around the globe, and then to be able to chat to them, and bang virtual doors with them is a real blast. They are excellent people with great personalities. But when we are in a race, you are mindful of who they are and what they do, and they are every bit as fast virtually as they are in real life. Speaking for myself, I tend to make sure that I don’t make that desperate dive under brakes on them, or block too forcefully when they are coming up behind. It adds another level of realism to iRacing for me to race against these guys online.

"Muggo" battles to keep van Gisbergen at bay at Silverstone. "To look up to these guys and watch them every other week driving real Supercars around the globe, and then to be able to chat to them, and bang virtual doors with them is a real blast."

EF: What are your goals for the season? Have you revised these from your goals before the run of hard luck or are you “staying the course.”

Muggo: My goals now are different from the beginning of the season. I am really focusing hard now on consolidating results and making sure that I get rid of these driver errors that are costing me each race. With the way the drop weeks work (taking your best 8 results out of 12), I have to make sure that I have more good results than bad for the rest of the season. This means a bit of extra practice every week, and extra concentration during races. Qualifying I am pretty happy with, and I seem to have good pace each week and getting closer to the times at the top. I just need to work on piecing a full race together, and hopefully then I will be able to claw my way back up that championship ladder somewhere in the top five. That is my goal.

“This translates directly into iRacing . . . it adds another level of realism to the game.”

EF: What’s the deal with the Watts Linkage? I can’t keep the Falcon straight unless I drop that thing all the way down.  How do you set yours up?

Muggo: The Watts Linkage is a vital part of how you set up the V8 in iRacing, and in real life. In the real world, you constantly see the teams making adjustments mid-race to add a bit more turn (increasing the Watts Linkage height), or to add a bit more drive out of the corners (lowering it). We don’t have that luxury in iRacing to make adjustments on the move, so we need to predict how the car will be mid-race and towards the end, and compensate for that at the beginning. If this means starting with a tail-happy car to ensure we have enough turn, and not understeer at the end, then so be it. These cars require a lot of patience on the throttle also. If you look at real life pedal cameras on the drivers, they wait so long before applying full throttle coming out of a corner. This translates directly into iRacing, which is great! Again, it adds another level of realism to the game.

Together with teammates Madison Down and Troy Cox, Muggleton proudly sports the Trans-Tasman Racing livery.

EF: Does it bug you to get bumped? Do you think iRacing should modify Safety Rating in top-class events, like V8SC, where a little rubbing is just part of the racing?

Muggo: It doesn’t bug me when I get hit by other drivers—if it’s just a harmless bit of contact here and there. If I get spun, or forced off the track, that’s another story! What does bug me is the way we get penalised for those minor contacts, which affects our Safety Rating. I think it does need to be reviewed to reflect the V8’s real life counterparts, where contact and rubbing panels is par for the course.

EF: I’m all about Rugby, mate, and I even enjoy Aussie Rules (and I know enough to know that they are not similar in any way), but Cricket, mate, really? I’ve seen you ANZAC types drooling over it, and I try to understand, really I do, but man . . .

Muggo: Haha, me too mate: if you search my last name in Google you’ll find out where I am coming from!! Yeah cricket is one of those take it or leave it sports. I have played it at a representative level but had to give it up due to time restraints. It’s just too long!

Carl Edwards secured pole position for the Daytona 500 as Fords dominated qualifying for the NASCAR Sprint Cup season-opener.

Last year’s championship runner-up will share the front row with his Roush Fenway team-mate Greg Biffle.

Only the top two starting positions were set by today’s qualifying session, as the remainder of the starting order is decided by Thursday’s Gatorade Duel heat races.

Edwards set a time of 46.216 seconds at an average speed of 194.738mph to beat Biffle to the top spot by 0.155s.

Fords filled four of the top five places, with only Hendrick Chevrolet driver Dale Earnhardt Jr interrupting the marque’s sweep by going third quickest.

Petty Ford’s Marcos Ambrose and Germain Ford’s Casey Mears completed the top five, followed by Jeff Gordon in another Hendrick Chevy.

Last year’s shock winner Trevor Bayne showed good form again by going ninth quickest for Wood Brothers, just ahead of reigning Cup champion Tony Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet). Kyle Busch, winner of last night’s Budweiser Shootout, was only 28th in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Quickest Toyota driver was Michael Waltrip Racing’s Martin Truex Jr in seventh.

Danica Patrick was 30th-quickest in her first Cup qualifying session.

Pos  Driver                Team/Car                     Time     Gap

 1.  Carl Edwards          Roush Fenway Ford            46.216s

 2.  Greg Biffle           Roush Fenway Ford            46.371s  + 0.155s

 3.  Dale Earnhardt Jr     Hendrick Chevrolet           46.385s  + 0.169s

 4.  Marcos Ambrose        Petty Ford                   46.392s  + 0.176s

 5.  Casey Mears           Germain Ford                 46.429s  + 0.213s

 6.  Jeff Gordon           Hendrick Chevrolet           46.439s  + 0.223s

 7.  Martin Truex Jr       Waltrip Toyota               46.472s  + 0.256s

 8.  Ricky Stenhouse Jr    Roush Fenway Ford            46.472s  + 0.256s

 9.  Trevor Bayne          Wood Brothers Ford           46.484s  + 0.268s

10.  Tony Stewart          Stewart-Haas Chevrolet       46.486s  + 0.270s

11.  Mark Martin           Waltrip Toyota               46.511s  + 0.295s

12.  Jimmie Johnson        Hendrick Chevrolet           46.524s  + 0.308s

13.  Aric Almirola         Petty Ford                   46.540s  + 0.324s

14.  Paul Menard           Childress Chevrolet          46.542s  + 0.326s

15.  David Ragan           Front Row Ford               46.572s  + 0.356s

16.  Matt Kenseth          Roush Fenway Ford            46.573s  + 0.357s

17.  Ryan Newman           Stewart-Haas Chevrolet       46.578s  + 0.362s

18.  AJ Allmendinger       Penske Dodge                 46.603s  + 0.387s

19.  Brad Keselowski       Penske Dodge                 46.634s  + 0.418s

20.  Kevin Harvick         Childress Chevrolet          46.653s  + 0.437s

21.  Joey Logano           Gibbs Toyota                 46.664s  + 0.448s

22.  Clint Bowyer          Waltrip Toyota               46.670s  + 0.454s

23.  Jeff Burton           Childress Chevrolet          46.686s  + 0.470s

24.  Juan Pablo Montoya    Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet  46.729s  + 0.513s

25.  Kasey Kahne           Hendrick Chevrolet           46.733s  + 0.517s

26.  Tony Raines           Front Row Ford               46.745s  + 0.529s

27.  David Stremme         Inception Toyota             46.884s  + 0.668s

28.  Kyle Busch            Gibbs Toyota                 46.906s  + 0.690s

29.  Jamie McMurray        Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet  46.914s  + 0.698s

30.  Danica Patrick        Baldwin Chevrolet            46.939s  + 0.723s

31.  Kenny Wallace         RAB Toyota                   46.981s  + 0.765s

32.  Terry Labonte         FAS Lane Ford                46.992s  + 0.776s

33.  Dave Blaney           Baldwin Chevrolet            46.996s  + 0.780s

34.  Kurt Busch            Phoenix Chevrolet            47.031s  + 0.815s

35.  Elliott Sadler        Childress Chevrolet          47.054s  + 0.838s

36.  Michael Waltrip       Waltrip Toyota               47.076s  + 0.860s

37.  Joe Nemechek          NEMCO Toyota                 47.081s  + 0.865s

38.  Denny Hamlin          Gibbs Toyota                 47.089s  + 0.873s

39.  Regan Smith           Furniture Row Chevrolet      47.105s  + 0.889s

40.  Michael McDowell      Parsons Ford                 47.123s  + 0.907s

41.  Landon Cassill        BK Toyota                    47.218s  + 1.002s

42.  David Gilliland       Front Row Ford               47.357s  + 1.141s

43.  Bobby Labonte         JTG Daugherty Toyota         47.363s  + 1.147s

44.  Bill Elliott          NEMCO Toyota                 47.381s  + 1.165s

45.  Mike Wallace          Max Q Ford                   47.405s  + 1.189s

46.  David Reutimann       BK Toyota                    47.560s  + 1.344s

47.  Robert Richardson Jr  R3 Toyota                    47.761s  + 1.545s

48.  Robby Gordon          Gordon Dodge                 47.814s  + 1.598s

49.  JJ Yeley              Robinson-Blakeney Toyota     47.884s  + 1.668s

The stage for some fierce competition in the main race (10:45 GMT Monday, February 13th) was set by two earlier races: the first (08:45 GMT Sunday; Strength of Field 3334) saw two professional drivers in a back-and-forth duel, as International V8SC driver, Shane van Gisbergen, beat New Zealand Touring Car and Fujitsu V8 Supercar driver, Scott McLaughlin, by less than a second, with Justin Ruggier taking the final spot on the podium. Then, just two hours before the big race, Mitchell McLeod won from the pole over both van Gisbergen and McLaughlin, further setting fastest lap to complete the triple (SOF 3305). So, when the main race (SOF 3779) came to grid, with McLeod sitting on pole ahead of McLaughlin and van Gisbergen, the excitement was palpable, that is, until the impossible happened: McLeod jumped the start. It was an unfortunate and costly error, and race control issued the Tatts Racing driver a stop-and-go penalty. He left little doubt as to what might have been, however, leading the first two laps convincingly.

McLeod jumped into an early lead that would vanish after his penalty.

Meanwhile Rens Broekman, having started fourth, was reeling backwards from the green flag, losing spots to Richard Hamstead and Ruggier; Paul Rogers was shunted onto the grass by Mitchell Boulton, dropping Rogers to the back before he even reached Copse; then George Fullerton missed his braking marker into Stowe, dropping him to last behind Rogers.

Back at the front, Hamstead had made a big move on van Gisbergen into Stowe, but the pro saw it coming and pulled a canny over/under on Hamstead to get the better exit velocity. Undaunted, Hamstead battled on, willing himself into third position by the exit to Vale. Broekman too was on the move, gaining fifth back from Ruggier. It was just then that the track marshals again intervened.

Van Gisbergen got his centerline across the boundary at Woodcote and he was ordered to slow. This early, with this level of competition, the order proved disastrous: he dropped to 10th position as Broekman, Ruggier, Simon Madden, Scott U’Ren, Joshua Muggleton and Stuart Wood all carried better momentum into Copse and got by him.

Mclaughlin leads, ahead on Hamstead and Broekman into Stowe on Lap 4.

With McLeod and van Gisbergen penalized, by Lap 4 the race had settled a bit, with three drivers up front — McLaughlin, Hamstead, and Broekman—covering about two seconds.  They were followed at some distance by a tight pack of four—Ruggier, Madden, U’Ren, and Muggleton—then a pair of pairs: Wood/van Gisbergen; and John Emerson/Shaun Kelly to round-out the top 11. By Lap 5, Wood and van Gisbergen had made-up some ground on the quartet in front of them when van Gisbergen made a specky of a pass on Wood into Priory, following it with heavy pressure on Muggleton into Woodcote.

I asked Muggleton, or “Muggo,” as he is widely known, about racing full-on professionals like van Gisbergen, to which he replied:

“It really is an honour. That might sound silly to some people, but from an early age the V8 Supercar drivers have been my idols, all the way through until now. To look up to these guys and watch them every other week driving real Supercars around the globe, and then to be able to chat to them, and bang virtual doors with them, is a real blast. They are excellent people with great personalities; but, when we are in a race, you are mindful of who they are and what they do, and they are every bit as fast virtually as they are in real life. Speaking for myself, I tend to make sure that I don’t make that desperate dive under brakes on them, or block too forcefully when they are coming up behind. It adds another level of realism to iRacing for me to race against these guys online.”

Muggo slid a bit coming out of Stowe, and this was all van Gisbergen needed to wrest seventh spot from him.

Muggleton struggles to keep van Gisbergen at bay.

Up front, Hamstead’s speed was showing: his new silver Direct Clutch Services car was filling McLaughlin’s mirrors.  Hamstead nearly got by to take the lead at Bridge, but McLaughlin held-on dearly through Priory to maintain the lead. Meanwhile, van Gisbergen was still charging: At the end of Lap 7 he was able to grab sixth, when Madden pushed up on the outside of U’Ren in Luffield and lost a position to van Gisbergen for his trouble. It got worse when Muggleton subsequently touched Madden’s rear corner in Maggotts and Madden lost even more ground as the resulting slide cost him valuable momentum.

Madden (#12) has a go at U'Ren (#3) in Luffield while van Gisbergen lies in wait.

On Lap 9, van Gisbergen and U’Ren were moving as a pair, as both overtook Ruggier into Stowe, putting him back to 6th, and thenceforth under increasing pressure from Muggleton. On lap 11, disaster struck again as Muggo lost the rear while braking into Stowe, put his left side hard into Ruggier’s right, and knocked both cars off track. Having managed his spin onto the paved runoff area with aplomb, Ruggier was able to get going again after losing only four spots.  In contrast, Muggo had the business end of his Falcon facing the wrong direction, so the gaff cost him seven places. Things weren’t right with the car either, and Muggo spun again in Vale, losing four more positions.

Up front on Lap 12 and Hamstead, who had been applying serious pressure to McLaughlin, got sideways into Copse and allowed Broekman into second place. Around this time, tires seemed to be going away a bit, and the lap times showed it. Nonetheless, by Lap 15, McLeod was back up to 10th position and reeling-in Emerson by more than one second per lap. With McLeod the best on worn tires, Hamstead had dropped away from McLaughlin and Broekman a bit, with van Gisbergen and U’Ren still together trying to find a way onto the podium.

Pancho Carter once said "If you can't win, be spectacular." Better yet, McGlaughin might say, "Win spectacularly."

Over the final few laps, McLaughlin’s car became progressively looser.  In fact, Broekman nearly had him into Copse on Lap 19, but the young pro held on, sliding sideways over the finish to take the victory. McLeod had quickest lap (1:51.243).

Madison Down, three-time defending champion, was noticeably absent. When I caught up with him this week, he explained that his studies—and F1—are taking a considerable slice of his time this season, so he’s having to moderate his racing activity in V8SC.

In an altogether different time zone, V8SC Americas managed good attendance at events on both Thursday and Friday nights (9:45 EST, or 02:45 GMT Friday/Saturday for those of you on the metric system). Canadian Curtis Chippeway won both events, with Ray Butcher just 0.5s behind in the first race.

Thomas van Bussel had a win in the popular European time slot of 18:45 GMT Sunday, while Mick Claridge won a strong race at 10:45 GMT the same day.

Mercedes completed a private test of its new W03 at Barcelona today, ahead of the next full-field test at the track, which starts on Tuesday.

Because Mercedes only used three of the four days of the opening test at Jerez, it was able to complete 200 kilometres of private running today. Michael Schumacher drove in the morning, before Nico Rosberg took over for the afternoon.

Mercedes used its 2011 car at Jerez earlier this month, focusing on getting data about this season’s Pirelli tyre specifications before rolling out the new car this week.

The W03 will be officially unveiled just before the start of testing on Tuesday morning.

Next year’s NASCAR Shootout will return to the traditional format of featuring pole-winners from the previous season.

NASCAR’s non-championship curtain-raiser, held at Daytona the weekend prior to the track’s 500-mile Sprint Cup season-opener, has used a variety of different eligibility formats in recent years. The 2012 system saw last year’s top 25 in the championship plus past Daytona race winners invited.

From 2013, the race will return to being open to pole winners from the previous Cup season, plus past Shootout winners who attempted to qualify for at least one race in 2012, as was the basis of the Shootout eligibility format from 1979-2008.

NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing operations Steve O’Donnell said the change was in response to fan requests.

“Fans have expressed their desire to see this event return to its original eligibility rules,” said O’Donnell. “We listened and decided it would be best to return to the eligibility rules of years past adding further meaning to pole qualifying for each NASCAR Sprint Cup race.”

Kyle Busch won the 2012 Shootout last night in a close finish with reigning Cup champion Tony Stewart.

British Touring Car rookie Adam Morgan had his first test in an NGTC Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Avensis last Friday.

The 23-year-old, who earned his BTCC place by winning the 2011 Ginetta GT Supercup that supports the series, drove alongside team-mate Tony Hughes in the latter’s 2011 machine at Donington Park.

“I spent most of the day in a road car with my driver coach, Paul Taft, getting a feel for front-wheel-drive and learning the best lines, and then at the end of the day I had an hour in the Toyota,” said Morgan, whose 2012-specification Avensis is still in build.

“I absolutely loved the car. I covered about 30 laps to get a feel for it, and every lap I gained confidence and some pace. I’m very pleased with how things went.”

Speedworks team director Christian Dick added: “Adam quickly got a handle on things. We put no pressure on him but he soon found his feet with the Toyota.

“We have a solid testing schedule prepared for the period up to the start of the season and everything is going according to plan.”

The team’s testing plan includes two days at Brands Hatch this week, when double BTCC champion James Thompson will drive the car on the first day.

“I can’t wait for Brands,” added Morgan. “The opportunity to work with James Thompson is just fantastic.”

Kyle Busch escaped several incidents to beat Tony Stewart to victory in a wild Budweiser Shootout as the NASCAR season got underway at Daytona.

The non-championship race saw three large multi-car accidents, the first as early as lap nine, and the last prompting a green-white-chequered finish after Jeff Gordon’s Hendrick Chevrolet was sent rolling following contact first with Busch, then with his team-mate Jimmie Johnson. No one was hurt in any of the accidents.

The sprint finale saw Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet) and Busch (Joe Gibbs Toyota) charge back to the front of the pack after initially being shuffled back, with Busch then going around the outside of the reigning Sprint Cup champion at the final corner of the race and inching ahead to win by just 0.013 seconds.

Richard Petty Ford driver Marcos Ambrose was third despite being involved in the second of the three major crashes, with Penske’s Brad Keselowski and Gibbs driver Denny Hamlin completing the top five.

The race showed that NASCAR’s efforts to eliminate the recent practice of tandem drafting had been successful, with the field racing in large multi-car packs throughout the event.

41 drivers took to the field for Round 1 of the inaugural Continental Endurance Sports Car Series (CESCS) at Daytona International Speedway – Road Course on February 11th (just prior to the much anticipated resurfacing of the circuit).  The mixed class online racing competition features the Ford Mustang FR500S in the GS Class and Mazda MX5 of the ST Class.

Practice and Qualifying

Trace McRae was quickest in the Mustang in final practice with a 2:04.190, .1s faster than Brian Strodtbeck. But it was Strodtbeck who managed to put his car on pole with a blistering qualifying time of 2:03.910. Coincidently, Brian currently holds a Top 10 spot in the list of all-time Mustang qualifiers at this track.

James Stevenson was quickest in the Mazda MX5 in both final practice and qualifying and managed a time of 2:14.491 to take pole in the ST class.

Drama prior to the race saw resident CESCS Marshall Mike Perry caught up in an off-track incident, leaving Wes Earick to take-up marshalling duties for the duration of the race.

Opening lap, Turn 1: Brian Strodtbeck followed by Trace McRae and the rest of the field.

Race Review

With final set-ups made, cars formed-up behind the pace car for a formation lap prior to the start of the race. As the green flag waved it was Strodtbeck leading the field down into a relatively incident-free Turn 1.  The first altercation occurred exiting Turn 3 when David Waters got alongside Jady Baumgardner for seventh place.  Baumgardner appeared to move over into Waters and the resulting contact sent both cars onto the infield grass and plummeting down the running order. The end of Lap 1 saw the first of the pit stops with the ST leader James Stevenson bringing-in the #11 MX5 for what he hoped would be a class-winning strategy, dropping him all the way to last in the field by the time he returned to the track, but also into some much-needed clear air.

Anthony Castro with nowhere to go as Ricky Dalton (#42) loses control in the bus stop.

Lap 5 saw Ayrton Ellis and Anthony Castro catching seventh place Ricky Dalton.  As Ellis went up the inside into the Bus Stop Dalton got sideways, leaving the trailing Castro with nowhere to go but heavily into the tyre wall.  Although Dalton and Ellis were able to continue, Castro could only limp his massively damaged car back to the pits for some major repairs, relegating him to the back of the pack.  In the ST class Eric Biggs (who had inherited the lead a few laps after Stevenson’s early pit stop), watched rivals come and go, until he also pitted on lap 11, enabling Stevenson to retake the class lead.

Lap 13 saw the front runners make their mandatory pit stops, and thanks to fast work by McRae’s pit crew, he found himself leaving the pits ahead of Strodtbeck to take the lead.

Lap 15 brought-out the pace car for the first time when Jarret Lawson lost control of his Mazda entering Turn 3 while running in an angry pack of MX5s and he subsequently ran into the side of Stian Johansen.  Exiting the turn, Johansen (now with damaged steering) and Giancarlo Lenzi touched lightly resulting in steering damage to Lenzi’s car.  With almost ¾ of the circuit still to negotiate with their damaged cars, there was no option but to bring out the pace car.  Under pace car conditions those drivers one lap down on the leaders were given “Wave Arounds” to bring them back onto the lead lap (one of the many rules especially implemented by the CESCS to enhance competition).

Opening laps back under green conditions saw McRae defending heavily from Strodtbeck, back to Russell Klaesson in third.  The end of Lap 21 saw the leaders go three wide across the start/finish line approaching the slower MX5 of Michael C. West, with Klaesson and Strodtbeck coming into contact into Turn 1, but holding it together. The battle continued down into Turn 3, where Klaesson tried to go inside McRae for the lead.   But McRae closed the door ever so slightly and they touched, sending Klaesson into the grassy infield on the way back to tenth place and promoting Baumgardner to third.

Stevenson was still well out in front for the ST class, with Eric Biggs, Ryan Worley and Jason Bryfogle having their own battle for second.  On Lap 30 a touch between the GS class cars of Alexis Molina and Bill Daily for (yet again) seventh spot (appearing to be the bogey race position), sent Molina into the Turn 1 tyre barrier.  Thus, the Pace Car appeared for the second time, giving fans a five lap shoot-out to the end of the race!

During the final caution period McRae decided to pit from the lead, along with three other GS drivers. Unfortunately, McRae’s pit crew was unable to repeat their early feat, and he actually lost a position in pit lane alone. Upon rejoining the track, McRae found himself down the field in tenth position, with all the work to do in the final laps, just to make it back on the podium (let alone the lead).

As those drivers one lap down got the “wave-by” once again, the positions at the front were Baumgardner, Strodtbeck and Klaesson in the GS class with Stevenson, Worley and Bryfogle at the top end of the ST class.  On the race restart Stevenson was baulked exiting Turn 1 by a couple of MX5s running a few laps down, enabling Worley to get the run on him down the inside into Turn 3 as they went three wide with the first of the lapped cars.  Worley exited the turn in front, but Stevenson was having nothing of it and seemed to get the better exit, and as they came up to the next lapped MX5s they went three-wide again into Turn 4.

Stevenson finally reclaimed his position in Turn 6, with Worley right behind. But just ahead of them the GS car of Bruce Lawson got loose in the Bus Stop.  Stevenson snuck by, but Worley got baulked this time, ending any chance of a class victory.  Back in third another ST class battle was brewing with Bryfogle, Antti Tuominen and Michael Morrison all vying for last podium spot.

Ryan Worley (#33) down the inside of James Stevenson (#11) in Turn 3.

Out in front the three leading Mustangs had managed to break away, and coming into the notorious Turn 3, Klaesson missed his breaking marker and went straight into Baumgardner, dropping Jady back to the “coveted” seventh position.

Last lap and Strodtbeck was still out in front with McRae (now in 3rd) right in behind Klaesson and ready to pounce. Exiting the Bus Stop with the slipstream helping him and Klaesson maintaining the inside line, Trace pulled to the outside to complete the move approaching the finish line only to miss-out by .07s. Meanwhile, in the MX5s, Stevenson (still in first) had yet again pulled a gap on second place man Tuuminen.  However, Worley had by now recovered enough to catch Tuuminen’s slipstream down the home straight and pulled-out as they crossed the line to take second place by .2s..

GS Class Podium

1. Brian Strodtbeck

2. Russell Klaesson

3. Trace McRae

ST Class Podium

1. James Stevenson

2. Ryan Worley

3. Antti Tuuminen

The Round 2 of the CESCS will be at Barber Motorsports Park on February 25th.

——————————————————————————–

The CESCS is an official iRacing league which mirrors the Grand-Am Continental Tires Series. It features the Mazda MX-5 Cup competing in Street Touring (ST) and the Ford Mustang FR500S competing in the Grand Sport (GS) class. It was established to provide a proper mixed-class racing experience for drivers of the MX5 and the Mustang beyond what is currently offered and especially to provide a true endurance series for drivers of both vehicles. The schedule aims to replicate the real-world series featuring timed endurance race distances run at the same tracks as the real series including Daytona, Mid-Ohio and, this season, Indianapolis!

The league will feature multi-driver race teams in anticipation of driver swaps as soon as iRacing implements the feature. Until then, everyone will drive a shortened full race distance on their own lasting 90 minutes in duration.

You can follow our races streaming live over the internet through GlacierTV or via our Live Timing & Scoring app. Both links are located on our Schedule page here: http://www.wix.com/contienduranceseries/cescs#!race-schedule

Tony Gilham will race a turbocharged Honda Civic in this year’s British Touring Car Championship.

The 32-year-old has acquired the ex-Team Dynamics works Civic that racked up six wins with championship runner-up Gordon Shedden last year.

The deal also allows Gilham to receive technical advice and support from Dynamics.

The car will continue to use the turbocharged engine tuned by Neil Brown Engineering that proved so potent last year, although Gilham did not reveal which team will run the Civic.

“Obviously I’m massively excited to have got my hands on one of the title-winning Hondas,” he said. “Last year was a huge learning curve for me with a number of low points, but now I’ll be in a proven car and can’t wait to get going.”

Gilham scored 12 points with a best result of eighth during his rookie season last year, driving a Triple Eight Vauxhall Vectra and then a turbocharged BMW for Geoff Steel Racing after a brief financial struggle mid-season.

Sebastien Buemi had his first run in Toyota’s TS030 Hybrid Le Mans car as the team completed a 30-hour endurance test at Paul Ricard across Thursday and Friday.

The Red Bull Formula 1 reserve driver joined team-mates Hiroaki Ishiura, Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima at the test.

“It was nice to discover more about the endurance racing environment,” said Buemi. “I have been in the driving simulator at TMG so I had an idea of what to expect but the reality is always a bit more complex.

“From a technical point of view the car is very impressive although we still need to make progress in some areas, which is normal at this stage of testing.

“I did some long stints and learned about new aspects of endurance racing, like driving at night, managing fuel consumption and adapting my driving style. I can see that every detail is important in order to be fast in this discipline.”

Hisatake Murata, the team’s hybrid project leader, said the test had been a valuable experience.

“This was the first time we have run the Toyota Hybrid System – Racing over such a long test session so we never expected a trouble-free week and we did experience a few issues, but nothing major.

“Thanks to a large amount of data and the detailed feedback of all the drivers we have a lot of information about how the THS-R powertrain behaves. We have been able to use this already to refine our systems and before the next tests we will work more on some of the issues raised.”

Michael Shank Racing may have to delay its IndyCar Series debut or only contest a limited 2012 schedule as it looks for further sponsorship.

The team has an engine deal with Lotus and hopes to run Paul Tracy, but has yet to begin testing, and admitted that a potential sponsorship option fell through last year.

“We’ve got the car in the shop and the people we need to go run the car, but at this point we are still working to have the full budget in place to go racing,” said Shank. “I don’t want to be in a position to just go out and make up the numbers. We want to show up and have a competitive presence.

“My main goal is to make this thing work, and if that means working with a technical partner to make it happen or just focusing on particular races then so be it.

“Obviously, there are folks out there testing right now, and that is the best-case scenario to be in. We’ve got a little bit bigger hill to climb at the moment, but we are not giving up by any stretch.”

The IndyCar move marks a return to single-seater for Shank’s team, which began in the Atlantic series but came to prominence in Grand-Am, recently winning this year’s Daytona 24 Hours. MSR Indy has been formed as a partnership between Shank, NASCAR driver AJ Allmendinger and businessman Brian Bailey.

Johnson claimed every Cup championship from 2006 to ’10, but finished third in the standings behind Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards last year. He admits that an element of complacency had crept in.

“I didn’t realise that over the five years or six years that we didn’t change as much maybe as we needed to and evolve,” he said.

“It’s tough to leave a successful road map and [crew chief] Chad [Knaus] and the team and I have been good at reinventing ourselves each year. But until the streak was broken, looking back at this off season what we have been through and trying to rebuild the team and make sure we are looking at everything we can, we have a different depth.

“I’m focusing on my interaction with the team, how I provide information with the team, what information I’m looking at, there are a lot of things I haven’t done in the past and I felt like I was one of the most in depth drivers out there. I’m trying to even take that steps further now, so because of the loss we have been able to dig deeper and get away from the road map we’ve built and challenge ourselves more.

“At the same time the garage area has been extremely focused on everything the #48 car has done over the last six years, so maybe years three or four a lot of guys came our direction and really paid attention to what we were doing and they caught us and we got beat. We have to reinvent ourselves in some ways this year and we are ready for it.”

Johnson feels that he let last year’s title slip through his fingers, rather than being purely outperformed.

“I’m just upset at the way we lost the championship last year,” he said. “At points within the Chase we had momentum and things going our way.

“When I look back on it I find the way in which we lost it is the tough thing. If we get beaten, we get beaten and I just don’t want to, we beat ourselves, and I just don’t want to do that again.”

Daniel Ricciardo says the fates of past Red Bull proteges who have not lived up to expectations do not put any added pressure on him – as he is already extremely hard on himself.

Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne are moving into the Toro Rosso race seats this season after predecessors Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari became the latest Red Bull young drivers dropped for not making the grade, as Tonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed had been before them.

But asked by AUTOSPORT if Red Bull and Toro Rosso’s reputation for ruthlessness awed him, Ricciardo insisted it did not create any pressure that he would not have been putting on himself already.

I feel pressure to deliver yes, but it’s not only pressure from Red Bull, it’s pressure from myself. And not only this year, but since I joined with Red Bull four or five years ago,” he said.

“But even before that I put pressure on myself to try and get spotted by Red Bull. So I guess for my whole career. Basically every driver, to get to this level, has put pressure on themselves.

“Maybe there is some added pressure from Red Bull but if you want to be world champion then you know you have got to perform, and they only reason they kick you out is if you are not performing and then you don’t probably deserve to be world champion. That’s just the business we’re in.”

Having started 2011 racing in Formula Renault 3.5 while also being a Red Bull reserve, before adding an HRT F1 race deal from the British Grand Prix onwards, Ricciardo said he was glad that Toro Rosso could be his sole focus this season.

“Since Christmas I have been able to prioritise this and only this,” he said. “And particularly last year was pretty intense when I was juggling Toro Rosso, World Series and then HRT. And there was a lot of travelling involved so…

“This year I will definitely be better prepared and devote a bit more time to the job, to training and to focus with less interruptions.”

Formula 1 legend Stirling Moss believes current world champion Sebastian Vettel is the modern equivalent of Juan Manuel Fangio.

Moss, who was one of five-time champion Fangio’s biggest rivals in the 1950s and his team-mate at Mercedes in 1955, said Vettel’s current superiority over the F1 field was comparable to Fangio’s.

“Vettel is a modern Fangio, really, in Formula 1. I can’t see, other than his natural ability, how he is that good, how he can be that good,” Moss was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“I think Vettel is quite outstanding, but then he has got the best car, which is fair enough because normally the best driver gets the best car.

“Fangio went around and took what he wanted and one took whatever was left.”

Asked how he felt Britain’s current leading duo Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton compared, Moss said he did not believe the McLaren pair were on Vettel’s level.

“Vettel is outstanding. They are up there, but not as far as he is,” he said.

“Lewis does funny things, so one can’t be sure. I would put my money on Jenson. Yes I would. Lewis is terrific, he really is exceptionally quick, but Jenson thinks about certain things better than Lewis will. Like when it’s raining and whether or not to go in for a change of tyres.

“For all those sorts of things he has a better understanding of it, and experience is a lot of it.”

The 82-year-old added that he admired Vettel’s personality and approach to the champion’s role as well as his driving talent.

“Where we’re lucky is that Vettel has a great sense of humour,” Moss said. “He is a damn good world champion. I can think of a lot of other people who get to that position and they don’t give back as much as they get out, but he really does.”

Martin Truex Jr drew pole position for NASCAR’s non-championship Budweiser Shootout curtain-raiser at Daytona.

This year the top 25 drivers from the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup standings plus any other Daytona race winners are eligible for the Saturday night event, which features a random grid.

Truex will start on pole for Michael Waltrip Racing, with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch alongside in an all-Toyota front row. Busch’s brother Kurt makes his first appearance for new team Phoenix Racing from sixth on the grid, with his Penske replacement AJ Allmendinger in ninth.

Reigning champion Tony Stewart drew 15th place.

Pos  Driver              Team/Car

 1.  Martin Truex Jr     Waltrip Toyota

 2.  Kyle Busch          Gibbs Toyota

 3.  Brad Keselowski     Penske Dodge

 4.  Jamie McMurray      Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

 5.  David Ragan         Front Row Ford

 6.  Kurt Busch          Phoenix Chevrolet

 7.  Greg Biffle         Roush Fenway Ford

 8.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Hendrick Chevrolet

 9.  AJ Allmendinger     Penske Dodge

10.  Joey Logano         Gibbs Toyota

11.  Carl Edwards        Roush Fenway Ford

12.  Jeff Burton         Childress Chevrolet

13.  Ryan Newman         Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

14.  Jeff Gordon         Hendrick Chevrolet

15.  Tony Stewart        Stewart-Haas Chevrolet

16.  Denny Hamlin        Gibbs Toyota

17.  Clint Bowyer        Waltrip Toyota

18.  Jimmie Johnson      Hendrick Chevrolet

19.  Kasey Kahne         Hendrick Chevrolet

20.  Michael Waltrip     Waltrip Toyota

21.  Marcos Ambrose      Petty Ford

22.  Kevin Harvick       Childress Chevrolet

23.  Matt Kenseth        Roush Fenway Ford

24.  Paul Menard         Childress Chevrolet

25.  Juan Pablo Montoya  Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet

Former Subaru star Chris Atkinson will contest next month’s Rally Mexico in a Ford Fiesta RS WRC, driving for the Monster World Rally Team.

Atkinson has been close to concluding a deal to partner Ken Block for some time and is delighted to have reached agreement for the third round of the World Rally Championship on 8-11 March 8-11.

The Australian, who drove a factory Subaru for four years, has not competed at the highest level of the sport since finishing fifth in a one-off outing in a Citroen C4 WRC on Rally Ireland in 2009. The Queenslander tackled the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship with Proton last year, winning three rallies and narrowly missing out on the title to his team-mate Alister McRae.

“I’m stoked to be back in the WRC and teaming up with Ken and the Monster World Rally Team for Rally Mexico,” said Atkinson. “I’ve finished second in Mexico in 2008 and this year I’ll be competing in the same spec car that won the last round in Sweden so I’m really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with the best gear and guys around me.”

What’s a nice guy from Algeria doing at Lanier and South Boston?  Well if you’re speaking of Farid Laggoune the answer is: winning sim races.  Lots of them.  Laggoune (who sports the red, white and green colors of Algeria on his helmet despite having since moved to France) finds himself in familiar territory these days, namely leading the iRacing.com Legends Cup midway through the third week of 2012 Season 1 on the strength of 15 wins in 28 starts.  That’s right where he finished 2011 Season 4C, by the way, atop the Legends Cup standings (ahead of some guy named Scott Speed) after a Season 4B that saw him visit Victory Lane no less than 30 times in 66 outings.

Laggoune isn’t ALL about Legends.  Of late he’s dipped his toe into the Street Stock, Mazda MX5 Cup and NASCAR iRacing.com Class C Series waters, and sampled everything from the Ford Mustang FR500S to the HPD ARX01c and, of course, the Dallara IndyCar and Williams FW31.  Although he has sampled the road racing side of life, Laggoune’s sim racing career – like his vicarious racing energies — seems destined towards the oval side of life, NASCAR in particular.

Q:    How long have you been sim racing?
A:    Since I discovered iRacing (Feb 2011), one year.

Q:    What attracted you to iRacing?
A:    I wanted to know if there was a good simulation and discovered iRacing; to let me know if I had my place in the world of simulation.

Q:    What are favorite iRacing cars/tracks?
A:    Ford Legend, Impala, Mustang, F1; South Boston & Lanier, Charlotte, Lime Rock Park, Spa-Francorchamps

Q:    What do you like most about iRacing?
A:    Everything! Because every time I choose an answer another comes to mind.

Laggoune (#3) battles with Paul Kusheba at Lanier National Speedway.

Q:    What would you change about iRacing
A:     May be – TIMEZONE in practice session.

Q:    How many hours a week do you spend on iRacing?
A:    Too many (at least 10h), because I learned the world of simulation :p

Q:    Do you do any “real world’ racing? If so, do you use iRacing to practice or prepare for your real world races? If so, how?
A:    No. Unfortunately for me, from when I was young (I raced) with my personal car against other drivers on the roads but it was irresponsible.

Q:    Tell us about the paint schemes on your helmet/car(s)
A:    These are the colors and “almost symbol” the flag of my origin country of Algeria (North Africa).

Q:    What other sim racing activities (Forza, Gran Tourismo, etc.) do you do?
A:    I play a few times in Forza 3 and 4.

Q:    What are your favorite video games?
A:    Formerly Counter Strike Source, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to ride with the police car, the bike modified Yamaha YZF R1 and Airwolf!!

Q:    What is your most memorable iRacing moment?
A:    When I went below 17.200s Ford Legend of the qualification of South Boston and my path in the Legend Cup since my enrollment at the start of 2011 season.

Q:    What is the iRacing moment you’d love to forget?
A:    All Week 13! Because I could not resist the temptation to play and every time a disaster for my SR!

I could not resist the temptation to play and every time a disaster for my SR!

Q:    What car/track would you like to see iRacing add to the service?
A:    Italian and German Models: Lamborghini, Porsche…

Q:    What person, living or dead, do you most admire? Why?
A:    In real world Racing? Maybe Sebastien Loeb.

Q:    What’s your favorite real world racing series?
A:    WRC and F1, soon Nascar!

Q:    Name the title of the most recent book you read.
A:    Shame on me! I cannot remember. . .

Q:    Name of your favorite movie/TV show?
A:    Rocky/Alien/MadMax/My Name is nobody/Predator.

Q:    How many of your close friends are iRacing members?
A:    One or two soon coming.

Q:    Has competing with iRacers all around the world influenced your opinions/outlook on life/world events? How?
A:    Not for the moment.

The green flag waves on the Intel GT European Finals at Spa.

First came the European Finals which produced a race full of drama and not a little controversy. Lap 7 saw second place Jesse Nieminen (Finland) get a run on leader Atze Kerkhof (Netherlands) going into a corner. There was contact (first place claiming “ghost” contact) which took the European Regional Series winner and race leader out of contention, while Nieminen went on to finish 7th. Raymond Mooney (Scotland) had a clean, incident-free race which found him in the lead with nine laps to go.  He never looked back en route to the victory, the spoils of which include an Intel Core i5 processor and motherboard courtesy of Intel and $50 of iRacing credit.

Kerkhof (left) and Nieminen spar for the lead.

The top eight finishers including Mooney, Davy Decorps (France), Rudy van Buren (Benelux), Thomas Arends (Benelux), Dániel Sinka (Central-Eastern Europe), Aleksi Elomaa (Finland), Nieminen and Tomas A Klopp (DE-AT-CH) move onto the Intel GT Series World Finals next month (details to follow).

Mooney grabs the lead from Nieminen.

South America had its turn this past week with the Intel GT Series South American Regional Series. To nobody’s surprise, 2011 Nvidia Series GP World Champion Hugo Luis took top honors. The all-Brazilian Regional Finals will take place this Sunday (Feb 19) at 23:00 GMT. The Top 20 in points from the Regional Series (who hail from South America) will compete for the final eight spots on the world stage. Those drivers include:

1    Hugo Luis    Brazil
2    Denis Valjean    Brazil
3    Ricardo Goncalves Silva    Brazil
4    Sergio Roda Junior    Brazil
5    Fred Tavares    Brazil
6    Mogar DG Filho    Brazil
7    Alexandre Sene    Brazil
8    Sergio Calizario Sobrinho    Brazil
9    Fabian Ventura    Brazil
10    Felipe Andre    Brazil
11    Marcel Fachini    Brazil
12    Bruno Biazetto    Brazil
13    Junior Guimaraes    Brazil
14    Afranio Florence    Brazil
15    Fernando Zakir    Brazil
16    Renan Macedo    Brazil
17    Jose Telmo     Brazil
18    Gustavo Cianfarani     Brazil
19    Samuel Mesquita     Brazil
20    Luis Antonio Piccolo     Brazil

Super Nova will no longer be part of the GP2 field in 2012, with its place taken by Auto GP squad Lazarus.

Tancredi Pagiaro’s Lazurus team will run with Venezuelan backing and will make its GP2 debut in the official tests later this month. No drivers have been announced so far.

GP2 chief Bruno Michel said: “They are a great addition to our competitive field of 13 teams. Tancredi Pagiaro and most of his staff have been involved in GP2 in the past years and I am sure they will be able to be on pace very quickly.”

Pagiaro added: “We know this will be a big challenge but we are ready for it and cannot wait to get started.”

Super Nova Racing had been in GP2 since the series’ inception in 2005, winning races with Adam Carroll, Luca Filippi, Alvaro Parente and Marcus Ericsson. It previously took Vincenzo Sospiri, Ricardo Zonta, Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais to titles in GP2′s predecessor Formula 3000.

Tio Ellinas will step up to GP3 this season with the Manor team.

The 20-year-old from Cyprus completes an all-rookie Manor line-up alongside Dmitry Suranovich and Fabiano Machado.

Ellinas has spent his car racing career so far in British junior racing, finishing fourth in Formula Ford in 2010 and third in Formula Renault last year.

Manor team boss Pete Sliwinski said Ellinas had immediately impressed the squad in winter testing.

“He did a very good job at the tests at the end of last year, demonstrating that he has the potential to be fighting at the top,” said Sliwinski.

Ellinas added: “It’s a winning team and I am really looking forward to building on the progress made during the two tests.

“I felt immediately at home in the team and now I can’t wait to get back in the car again and race in my first GP3 season.”

Italian teenager Vicky Piria has become the first female driver to sign for a GP3 team after completing a deal to race for series newcomer Trident Racing.

Although several female racers have tested GP3 cars, Piria is set to be the first to compete in the championship. The 18-year-old steps up after racing in Formula Abarth last season.

“After ending the 2011 FAbarth season I had the chance to test a Formula 3 car as I saw that as a possible chance for my open-wheel career,” said Piria.

“When Trident Racing explained me the details of their GP3 Series programme though, I immediately known that it was the right thing to do for me.

“I know that there will be many tough aspects to overcome, especially because there will be a lot of more experienced drivers among my opponents. That said, I feel no pressure. I know I can afford a learning year and I’m aware that my goal for 2012 will be to improve step-by-step every lap.”

Piria is the first driver to sign for Trident, which has taken the Addax squad’s GP3 entry this year.

Danica Patrick believes she has a shot at winning the Daytona 500 on her debut in the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

NASCAR’s premier race will be the former IndyCar racer’s first Cup outing. After two seasons of parallel single-seater and stock car campaigns, she has made a full-time move to NASCAR for 2012 and will contest the Nationwide Series with JR Motorsports and a limited Cup schedule in a collaboration between the Stewart Haas and Tommy Baldwin Racing teams.

Asked if she felt she had a shot at winning Daytona, Patrick replied: “Do I think I can win the Daytona 500? Yeah.”

She believes she will have machinery capable of winning if she can get through the race unscathed.

“I have a fast car so I think that’s taken care of but I think it’s going to take some good breaks and a patient race, staying out of trouble,” said Patrick.

She added: “Let’s face it, great drivers don’t have great big speedway races because it depends on so many other factors like the tandem running or like staying in touch with the pack or like a pitstop or something like that or staying out of trouble.

“So I don’t think there is a position that you can put on a race like this because it’s wide open for various levels of experienced drivers to do well.

“Ultimately we all want to win but at the end of the day it’s going to depend on probably looking back at the race and assessing my mistake level probably.”

Patrick’s team boss – and reigning Cup champion – Tony Stewart said Trevor Bayne’s shock Daytona win a year ago had proved a rookie could triumph in the event.

“Did anybody think Trevor Bayne could win the race last year on this day?” said Stewart. “Anything can happen here, it is anybody’s ballgame.

“She did a really good job in July last year in the Nationwide race when I ran with her. I was really impressed at how smooth she was and how good a job she did in the two car deal.

“There is no doubt in my mind she has the talent to do it.”

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali says he is very sad Formula 1 will have no Italian drivers on the grid in 2012.

Jarno Trulli was the only Italian with a contract for the upcoming season, but on Friday Caterham announced he will be replaced by Vitaly Petrov.

The move leaves the grid for the first race of the season without an Italian for the first time since 1970.

“I am very sad that, after so many years there will not be an Italian driver in the Formula 1 world championship field,” said Domenicali on Ferrari’s website.

“I say this on the sporting front and on a personal level when it comes to Jarno, who only on a few occasions has had a car capable of showing off his talents.

“So here, I wish him all the best for the future, both in racing and away from the track. It’s a difficult moment for our sport, partly for external reasons.

“For a few years now, Ferrari through its Driver Academy, has established a long term plan to create a new generation of young drivers, which works also in collaboration with the CSAI and I am pleased to see that just now, we can announce that two talented youngsters, Raffaele and Brandon, will be given a great opportunity to progress in the sport.”

Fellow veteran Rubens Barrichello, also without a drive for 2012 after nearly 20 years in the sport, lamented Trulli’s situation too.

“Sad to see that Trulli won’t be on the 2012 grid…Money is dominating everything,” he wrote on Twitter.

Jarno Trulli was philosophical about his exit from the Caterham F1 team after it was announced that he would be replaced by Vitaly Petrov.

The Italian, a veteran of 256 grands prix, will be absent from the grid at the start of the season, having made his debut in 1997.

One-time GP winner Trulli had a contract with Caterham for 2012, but the team replaced him with Petrov, regarded as one of Formula 1′s ‘pay drivers’.

Trulli said his exit had not come as a surprise to him, and is hoping the financial backing Petrov brings helps Caterham secure a better future.

“Personally I’m not displeased: I was prepared for a possible divorce from Caterham, in the knowledge that the difficult economic situation would have pushed the team to find an adequately-supported driver,” Trulli told the Ansa news agency.

“Small teams have certain needs and contracts are clear. I hope that, with Petrov’s contribution, all the people who work there can have a more serene future.”

Trulli’s exit means there will be no Italian drivers in the first race of the season for the first time since 1970, something the Pescaran reckons was inevitable given the lack of support for young drivers in Italy.

“Formula 1 without Italian drivers is a shame,” he said. “I’m sorry but the problem is not mine: others must take responsibility for this impoverishment, for a situation that after all did not begin yesterday, and over which no action has been taken.

“In Italy there’s no system that helps drivers emerge at high level, so it’s normal it ends up in situations like this. There are talents, but without anyone’s support they are hopeless.

“I’d like to see more involvement from everyone, but at such a time of crisis for the country I can’t see how a young driver can find help in order to be considered by any team.”

Trulli, 37, said he plans to continue racing in the future despite his exit from Formula 1.

“I own a wine production company and a hotel in Switzerland so I’m quite busy, but my job is racing driver and that’s what I count on keep doing: either in Formula 1 or elsewhere.”

New Caterham F1 signing Vitaly Petrov says he is relieved to have sorted his future in F1 after months of uncertainty.

The Russian is replacing Italian Jarno Trulli at the team after weeks of speculation about his future.

The deal was completed too late for him to join the opening test at Jerez last week, meaning that his first opportunity to drive will be the Barcelona test that begins on Tuesday.

But the 27-year-old told AUTOSPORT that he is relieved to be back in the cockpit.

“Of course it’s not good to miss one of the tests, but I’m just happy that I can do the second test at Barcelona,” Petrov said.

“It was a long time during the winter and it is difficult, not knowing what is going to happen with your future. But now finally we’ve taken the decision with Caterham and I can start to work with them over there.”

Petrov endured mixed fortunes during his two years at Renault, with strong performances on occasions such as Australia last year (where he earned his first podium) offset by occasional errors and mounting frustration from both himself and the team over the limits of the R31.

But he says that the move to Caterham is an opportunity for both himself and the team to prove what they can do.

“I think this is a fantastic chance for me, and I think I will show a good side of myself,” he said.

“I think I can improve myself together with them. This team has a lot of potential. Over the past two years they have shown that they have improved their car, they are getting closer to the other teams, and this year they have added a lot of new people at the factory, and we are moving to a big new factory close to Enstone.

“You can see in their eyes that they want to win. They want to be there in the top 10, so they are pushing quite hard.”

Read Edd Straw’s analysis on Petrov’s chances here.

Auto GP has announced its calendar for the 2012 season, with the proposed Suzuka and Donington rounds having been dropped.

The season will kick off at Monza on March 11 and will finish at Sonoma, USA, on September 23.

The Donington Park and Suzuka races included on the draft calendar for April 14 and October 21 have been dropped.

Instead, the championship will race in Marrakech and Brno.

The series, which will race alongside the WTCC, has also announced its new name will be Auto GP World Series.

“When in 2010 we decided to create Auto GP, we knew that ‘step by step’ had to be our leitmotif, that the package we were offering to teams and drivers had to be improved season after season,” said series boss Enzo Coloni.

“I’m happy that we managed to do that also for 2012, turning Auto GP in the only top notch one-make Series that will race in three different continents. We are very proud of that, and that’s why decided to change our name in Auto GP World Series.

“When I look at the feeder series scenario I see some championships that are using high-sounding names but then, in the real world, can’t keep up to their promises. In our case, what the fans will read in our name is what we are, the only feeder series with a real intercontinental calendar.

“This was possible also thanks to the kind support of Eurosport and the WTCC, we are proud to be partners for the second consecutive year. I’m sure that the fans will appreciate the unique racing weekend we are providing together.”

2012 calendar

10-11 March        Monza (I)

31 March-1 April   Valencia (E)

14-15 April        Marrakech (MA)

5-6 May            Budapest (H)

2-3 June           Estoril (P)

21-22 July         Curitiba (BR)

22-23 September    Sonoma (USA)

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Formula 1 teams will trust the FIA when deciding on the Bahrain GP, but insists there are no plans to cancel the event at the moment.

The current political situation in the country has led to calls for the event to be canned, although F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone said earlier this week there were no concerns about the grand prix.

Horner said the teams will rely on the FIA to make the right decision.

And he made it clear that, as of right now, there are no reasons to believe the event will not go ahead as scheduled.

“As far as I’m aware, we’re definitely going,” Horner was quoted as saying by Reuters on Friday.

“We rely on the FIA, it’s the FIA Formula 1 world championship, and Bahrain is one of the races on the calendar.

“They are far better placed to know what the issues are, and we trust their judgement, as we do the promoter, and we’ll see how things develop. As of today there’s a race committed to Bahrain, and therefore we’ll be there.”

The Bahrain Grand Prix, the fourth race of the season, takes places on April 22.

Tomas Klopp leads the Prototype and GT field into Turn One at Road America.

For 2012 Season 1, the iRacing.com Prototype and GT Challenge opened at two of North America’s classic circuits, Watkins Glen and Road America, for the third season of Le Mans-style multiclass online racing featuring LMP2, GT1 and GT2 classes.  A few changes took place during the off season, namely adding extra weight to bring the HPD ARX-01c up to its correct minimum of 825kg, updates to the tyre model for all three cars, and gridding by class to make starts safer for all concerned.

The schedule saw increases to some of the race lengths in the open setup series – half of the tracks, including Watkins Glen and Road America, were bumped up to 70 minutes, forcing sim racers in all three classes to make a pit stop in those races.  This also added a new strategic element to the competition, as LMP2 drivers must now weigh the advantages of making one stop while running the race at a ‘slower’ pace versus running a faster paced two stopper.  Once again the fixed setup series continued with 25 or 30 minute races, to help inexperienced sim racers or those not wishing to run the longer races.

The “hot split” concept continued from last season – to get more GT participation in races before the weekend – taking place on Thursday and Friday at 20:00 GMT for the open and fixed series respectively. In terms of driver numbers, HPD and Corvette participation numbers were also the highest since they were brought together in 2011 Season 3.

Roderic Kreunen en route to victory at Watkins Glen.

Despite a poor week at Road America, Roderic Kreunen managed to hold on to his lead in the HPD ARX-01c class by just four points over Klaus Kivekäs – thanks to his win in Week One’s most populated and highest Strength of Field (SoF) race.  Kivekäs’ 100% win record from three starts allowed him to close the gap, while Tim Schuett’s two wins from four starts left him rounding-out the top three.

In the fixed setup series, Intel GT series European final winner Raymond Mooney kept himself at the head of the standings with a win at each track, the Scotsman top scoring at Watkins Glen and taking good points from Road America.  After running the Ford GT for most of last season, Rocco Barone showed his pace in the HPD and sits in second, ahead of Teemu Iivonen.

Truth in Advertising: Joni Hagner leads a trio of C6.Rs under the Corvette Bridge at Road America.

Finnish driver Joni Hagner stands atop both tables in the Corvette C6.R class, and with four wins from his eight starts has already put over 400 points on the board in each series.  In the open series, Hagner leads by just nine points over Fredrik Follestad – who top scored at Watkins Glen – with Marc de Loose in third after winning the 4403 SoF “hot split” race.  The fixed series features an all-Nordic top three, with Road America points winner David A Jensen ahead of Joni Bäckman, both behind Hagner.

Kimmo Suominen battles for the Ford GT lead at Road America.

Finally in the Ford GT class, Niek Versteege leads the way on 400 points courtesy of his three victories, as Watkins Glen top scorer Andreas Wottawa retired from his only race at Road America.  Kimmo Suominen – with a 100% record from his seven races – and Daniel Hake round out the top three.  The Ford GT numbers are also being boosted by Club Finland’s shadow series in the Thursday 20:00 GMT timeslot, in addition to the “hot split” concept for GT racers.

Suominen went one better in the fixed series, top scoring by a good margin in Week One before consolidating his position with three wins at Road America – bringing his race record to 13 wins from 14 races!  Scott Michaels won the Friday “hot split” race to move into second overall, and Erik Veidorf in third made it European drivers in the top three of each class.

From the Finger Lakes of New York and Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine, Week Three see the iRacing.com Prototype and GT Challenge head to the Land of the Rising Sun and Suzuka before returning to the MidWest for a date with the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Week Four.

Ferrari protege Raffaele Marciello will fill the fourth and final seat in Prema Powerteam’s 2012 F3 Euro Series line-up.

The 17-year-old Italian is part of the Ferrari Driver Academy programme, and has already competed with Prema in Italian Formula 3, taking third in last season’s championship, and in the International/British round at Spa.

Team boss Angelo Rosin said Marciello had already made impressive progress and was ready to move up to an international category.

“He moved from Formula Abarth to F3 Italia without any problem and he deserved to be promoted to the F3 Euro Series,” said Rosin.

“I think that his great speed skills will enable him to take on his main rivals from the very beginning.”

Marciello joins Daniel Juncadella, Michael Lewis and Sven Muller at Prema.

Tony Stewart feels it is too early to know if he can carry his championship winning form in last year’s NASCAR Sprint Cup into 2012.

The three-time champion finished the 2011 Cup season in dominant form, winning five of the final 10 races to beat Carl Edwards to the crown.

Stewart and Edwards were the class of the field in the final couple of races, but speaking ahead of this weekend’s Budweiser Shootout non-championship event, the reigning champion believes that it will take time to judge the competitive order for this year.

“I don’t think you really know until you get two or three races into the year, to see what the results are from the winter and the hard work,” Stewart said when asked if he expected to still have an advantage over the rest of the field.

“The hard thing is you have to improve through the winter and all the teams will improve.

“It’s just a matter of if we get five per cent better and someone else gets seven per cent better – is that enough to put them ahead of us? I don’t think we know until the start.”

Stewart, who became the first owner-driver to win the Cup championship since 1992, added that the recruitment of crew chief Steve Addington and competition director Greg Zipadelli helped prevent any complacency in the Stewart-Haas outfit over the winter.

“In all honesty we have still been riding high,” he said. “But we didn’t sit there and say ‘hey, we are celebrating a championship’. That lasted through the [end of season] banquet, then it was right back to work, immediately back on the job of trying to figure out how to do the same thing this year.

“It was easy to do that having Zippy and Steve come on board. Their focus was on what we were going to do this year so it got the whole mindset of the shop to not get lazy and think about what we accomplished last year.”

Monster World Rally Team driver Ken Block will only contest three rounds of the World Rally Championship this season, due to more competitive commitments in America.

The Ford Fiesta RS WRC driver will make his 2012 debut on next month’s Rally Mexico, before continuing his shortened programme in New Zealand and Finland. The American is delighted to finally be able to make the Jyvaskyla event, having been forced to miss it due to a clash with X Games in Los Angeles previously.

Block will still contest X Games along with all five rounds of the Global RallyCross series, four national north American rallies and a five-stop Gymkhana world tour. In the middle of that programme, Block will also film and launch Gymkhana five.

“I’m super stoked to be able to run such a diverse schedule this year,” said Block. “Global RallyCross is shaping up to be a very exciting and new championship here in the United States and I’m looking forward to the new challenges that will bring.

“I’m also thrilled that despite committing to the full GRC season, I’m still going to be able to fit three WRC events into my schedule, as well as a handful of Rally America and Canadian Rally races.

“I don’t think there’s another driver out there that gets to compete in so many different series, as well as gets to do awesome side projects like Gymkhana FIVE and my Gymkhana World Tour. I’m truly a lucky bastard because this is going to be an amazing year.”

Block revealed his 2012 plans via an amusing spoof Q & A video.

Toby Moody has been named as ITV’s head commentator for this year’s British Touring Car Championship.

Moody, 39, takes over from Ben Edwards, who has left his role to become BBC’s Formula 1 commentator instead.

Best known for fronting Eurosport’s MotoGP coverage for over 10 years, Moody is relishing the challenge presented by the BTCC.

“Ben Edwards did a wonderful job and leaves big boots to fill, but I love a good challenge and this certainly is one,” Moody told AUTOSPORT.

“The BTCC is a fantastic championship with close racing – which I adore – and I have really great memories of watching the Sierra Cosworths and RS500s in the late eighties.

“It’s true that most of my recent work has been in bikes – since 1996 in fact – but I’m a car guy at heart who converted to bikes, and I’ve kept my foot in ever since, commentating at Shelsley Walsh, the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Silverstone Classic.

“Plus I’ve got Tim Harvey – a former champion and a very amiable and knowledgeable guy – alongside me and I’m raring to go.”

Moody will continue his MotoGP commentary role for Eurosport this year alongside his BTCC commitments and will also write regular two-wheeled columns for AUTOSPORT.

British teenager Philip Ellis will make his F3 Euro Series debut this year with championship newcomer GU Racing.

Ellis, 19, won last year’s Formula Lista title for ex-Formula BMW machinery with GU, and is delighted to be stepping up with Gunther Unterreitmeier’s team in a Dallara-Mercedes.

“I’m truly delighted with having the chance of competing in the planet’s most competitive Formula 3 series,” said Swiss-based Ellis.

“I have been watching the Formula 3 race coverage on TV since I was a little boy and dreamed about racing there myself, some day. And now, this dream is coming true.”

Unterreitmeier, whose most recent high-profile succeses have come via Max Wissel’s race wins in Superleague Formula, said that Ellis would be his only driver for the season ahead.

“It will be a new challenge for us and we are looking forward to meeting this challenge. The Formula 3 Euro Series represents the best choice for us as its grid still features the elite of the Formula 3 scene,” he said.

“Our goal: to help Philip becoming the best rookie of the season.” GU Racing will enter just one car for Ellis. “We want to fully focus on Philip.”

The new Mercedes W03 broke cover for the first time at Silverstone on Thursday, completing its first run ahead of its maiden test at Barcelona next week.

This spy shot of the car during a filming day shows it to feature a stepped nose, in common with almost the whole 2012 F1 grid and several other key differences from last year’s machine.

Mercedes motorsport vice-president Norbert Haug told AUTOSPORT: “The nose is the most discussed issue. It’s a stepped nose as some have seen. It’s a very nice solution really and a very dynamic one.”

Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg drove the car. Filming days require that no more than 100km is completed and demonstration Pirelli tyres are used.

Vitaly Petrov will race with the Caterham team during the 2012 season, taking Jarno Trulli’s place at the squad, it was confirmed on Friday.

The Russian had been linked with the outfit for several weeks despite the veteran Italian having a contract with the team he had raced for since the 2010 season.

Petrov was left without a racing drive after Renault – now Lotus – signed Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean for the 2012 season.

The 27-year-old from Vyborg, Russia, will partner Heikki Kovalainen at Caterham.

“This is a very exciting day for me,” said Petrov. “I would like to thank Tony, Kamarudin Meranun and SM Nasarudin for giving me the chance to join a team that made its F1 debut at the same time as me, and has grown from one of the new teams to a serious force for future honours.

“The passion and spirit that Tony and the whole team have to keep moving forwards is infectious, and I am honoured to be able to join them and play my part in helping the team mount a serious challenge to the teams ahead in 2012 and for many seasons to come.

“I have been training hard all winter and am ready to get back into the cockpit and go to work. From what I have seen already, our new car is another good step forward from 2011 and now I cannot wait to see how it feels when we get to Barcelona. I would also like to take this chance to thank all my fans and partners for their support and their patience.”

Petrov made his Formula 1 debut with Renault in 2010 after finishing runner-up to Nico Hulkenberg in the GP2 Series the previous year.

He has scored 64 points, including a podium finish at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix last year.

Trulli, 37, is left without a Formula 1 drive for the first time since he made his grand prix debut with Minardi in 1997.

“I want to take this chance to thank Tony, Kamarudin, SM Nasarudin, Riad, Mike and everyone in the team for the two seasons we had together,” said Trulli.

“From zero we built up and established a solid F1 team. I’m really proud to have been part of it. I understand the decision the team has made and I want to wish to the whole team the very best of luck for the season ahead.”

Team boss Tony Fernandes said the decision to replace Trulli had not been an easy one.

“It was not an easy decision to bring Vitaly in to replace Jarno, but it was one we made to ensure that we give fresh impetus across the whole team and with a realistic eye on the global economic market,” he said.

“Jarno has an incredible natural talent behind the wheel, and his winning record and longevity in the sport will bear testament to that talent in the Formula 1 annals forever, but now it is time to open a new chapter in our team’s story, and Vitaly is the right person to help us do that.”

It will be the first time since 1970 than an Italian driver is not on the grid for the start of a Formula 1 season.

Shaun Stroud led qualifying to earn the pole position with a 21.702 second lap, while Tim Doyle’s 21.767s lap earned him a  spot on the outside of the front row.  Chris Cahoe, Matthew Lambertson and Niles Anders rounded-out the top five in a starting field blanketed by just over half a second.

The start of the 135 lap race saw Stroud jump out to the early lead with Doyle and Lambertson falling in behind.  The race went green until the first caution flew on Lap 18, when Jeffrey Koolbergen lost control exiting Turn Four and slammed hard into the wall – and immediate retirement.  Given that Milwaukee is notoriously hard on tires, the resulting yellow saw the entire field head to pit road for tires and fuel.  The top five remained the same with the exception of Anders beating Cahoe out of the pits.

15 cars ready to rumble on the Milwaukee Mile.

On the Lap 22 restart, Stroud once again blasted to the lead with Doyle and Lambertson just behind battling for the second spot.  Lambertson eventually muscled his way around Doyle and set his sights on Stroud.  The race remained green with the entire field staying on the lead lap until Scott Manifold became the first victim of a blown right front tire on Lap 69 with race leader Stroud just behind him.  Manifold managed to bring his car to pit road, avoiding a yellow and no one else was involved.  Three laps later, Randy Crossno would also suffer a tire failure, again without a yellow flag flying.

First tire victim: Scott Manifold.

Meanwhile, several drivers started making green flag pit stops on Lap 72.  Leader Stroud brought his Dallara to pit road on Lap 75 which allowed Doyle to lead a lap.  For Doyle though, this spelled doom as his right front failed entering Turn One, sending him hard into the Turn Two wall.  This brought-out the race’s second yellow and ended his hopes for a good finish.

During this caution period, Anders was able to lead two laps before pitting for fresh tires and returning the lead to Stroud.  Lambertson, Cahoe, Mark Schutte and Gary Borkenhagen all benefited from being ahead of the leader prior to the restart, as they got the wave around and tagged onto the tail of the field.

Week One winner, Michael Peters, had worked his way up to second on the restart on Lap 80 ahead of Anders, Chris Manifold and Joe Branch.  In all, 10 cars were still on the lead lap with only Terry Matthiensen one lap down.

Stroud powered away from the field at the green with many positions changing over the course of the next eight laps.  Peters dropped from second to eighth while Lambertson worked his way from the rear of the field to third position.  The first car-to-car contact occurred on Lap 88 when fifth place Jonathan Goke got a little loose in Turn Two leaving Cahoe nowhere to go.  Both retired with heavy damage.

A bird's eye view of the contact between Goke and Cahoe.

Once again the field headed to pit road for new tires with 45 laps left in the race.  Stroud led the field off pit road with Lambertson moving up to second, followed by Anders, Branch and C. Manifold.

Once back under green on Lap 92, the pace started to pick-up with many drivers setting their fastest laps of the race.  The top five remained the same until C. Manifold worked his way past Branch for fourth on Lap 105, only for Branch to retake the position the following lap.  Three laps later, C. Manifold moved back around Branch, bringing Peters with him and dropping Branch to sixth.

Lap 119 saw the race’s fourth and final yellow fly for the spinning Schutte off Turn Four, although he was able to remain on the lead lap.  Four of the top five chose not to pit, the exception being fifth placed Peters.  Branch and Schutte also took the opportunity to pit in the hopes of advancing positions on the restart.

With only six laps to go on the restart, Stroud led Lambertson, Anders, C. Manifold and Borkenhagen to the green flag.  Lap 125 saw C. Manifold lose three positions, dropping to seventh while Peters, who restarted sixth, made his way past Anders for third on Lap 127.  Borkenhagen lost three positions in the end on older tires, finishing seventh.

A 'Stroud's-eye' view of most of the race.

Stroud becomes the third winner in three races, moving up six positions in the points to within five points of Doyle.  It was his first top five.  Lambertson finished third, also picking up his first top five.  Peters had another strong run, coming from 11th to snag the last podium position.  Anders and Branch rounded-out the top five.

Stroud cruising to victory!

Race Stats

Laps:  130
Pole:  Shaun Stroud
Lead changes:  3
Cautions:  4
Caution laps:  16
Lap leaders: Stroud 1-74; Doyle 75; Anders 76-77; Stroud 78-130.
Margin of victory:  0.912s
Hard charger:  Michael Peters (8 spots)
Biggest loser:  Tim Doyle(10 spots)
Laps lead:  Stroud (127)
Fastest lap:  Stroud, 22.200s (Lap 95)

Top 5
1.  Shaun Stroud
2.  Matthew Lambertson
3.  Michael Peters
4.  Niles Anders
5.  Joe Branch

Cars finishing: 9
DNF: Koolbergen, S. Manifold, Crossno, Doyle, Goke, Cahoe

Mercedes enjoyed a successful first run of its 2012 Formula 1 car at Silverstone today ahead of its test debut at Barcelona next Tuesday.

The Mercedes F1 W03 completed the 100 kms of running permitted on a filming day using Pirelli demonstration tyres, with both Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher taking turns behind the wheel.

Vice president of motorsport Norbert Haug hopes will allow the team to “hit the ground running” next week.

“Judging the performance on a roll-out day is very difficult because you run on demo tyres and it was on the short circuit, but the car did everything it was supposed to do,” Haug told AUTOSPORT.

“There’s a limit of 100 kms so Nico did 50 kms in the morning and then we changed to Michael. There were no teething problems and now we are heading to Barcelona.”

Details of the new car are sketchy, but the glimpses seen of the car so far reveal that, like all but one of the teams who have so far unveiled their new machines, it features the so-called ‘platypus’ nose that only McLaren has opted against.

“The nose is the most discussed issue,” said Haug. “It’s a stepped nose as some have seen. It’s a very nice solution really and a very dynamic one.”

Haug added that the extra 10 days of preparation time gained by not running the new car at last week’s first test at Jerez have been put to good use.

In addition to mileage completed using the old car at Jerez on the 2012 Pirelli tyres, Haug believes that the simulation work done at the team’s Brackley base leaves the team in good shape.

“We have done some very good simulations and calculations and worked a lot inside the company,” said Haug. “We had the car on the rig ahead of time and simulated using the engine, gearbox and KERS for quite a while. So we are positive and the target has to be to hit the ground running [at Barcelona].

“We learned something with the old car concerning the new tyres and specifically ran with the blown diffuser because the comparative data with the old tyres was gathered under these conditions.

“We learned a lot and hopefully we can translate what we have learned into the new car.”

Valtteri Bottas will have his first taste of the new Williams-Renault FW34 on the second day of next week’s Barcelona test.

Bottas, who is scheduled to drive in 15 Friday practice sessions in his capacity as Williams reserve driver in 2012, has two days of testing under his belt with the team, both in last year’s car during last November’s Abu Dhabi young driver test.

Bruno Senna will drive on the first day of the test on February 21 with Pastor Maldonado taking over for the final two days after Bottas’s run.

Mark Smith has taken over control of the Caterham F1 team’s technical department after Mike Gascoyne’s was promoted to chief technical officer of the entire Caterham Group.

Gascoyne, who joined the team before it made its Formula 1 debut in 2010, will now be responsible for proposing, supporting and coordinating technical initiatives in Caterham Group’s F1 and GP2 team as well as Caterham Cars, Caterham Composites and Caterham Technology & Innovation.

Smith, who as the team’s technical director, takes over the day-to-day control of the technical side of the F1 team. He will increase his presence at races in 2012.

The team said Gascoyne will also continue to attend grands prix this year.

“This is a very proud moment for me,” said Gascoyne. “My new role will now give me the chance to help drive value across the whole group through the creation and delivery of new projects in all the sectors we are already working in, and opening up new opportunities for each of the Group’s companies to embrace.

“Mark Smith is exactly the right person to step up to the broader role he will now be taking on in the F1 team, and I am looking forward to working even more closely with Mark Edwards at Caterham Technology & Innovation, Phil Hall at Caterham Composites and Ansar Ali at Caterham Cars.

“This is a big challenge but one I am extremely excited about and I want to thank our shareholders for this opportunity.”

Tony Fernandes, Caterham Group Chairman added: “We are all delighted that Mike has taken up the challenge we have presented him, to lead technical direction across the whole Caterham Group.

“His experience, knowledge, enthusiasm and creativity give him the perfect skill set to help us achieve the ambitious goals we have set for all the group companies, and I know Mike is excited about what lies ahead.”

Williams is convinced this year’s car is a clear step forward compared to last year’s challenger, with which the team struggled most of the season.

The Grove team endured its worst ever Formula 1 season last year, scoring just five points on its way to ninth place in the standings.

Williams is hoping to revive its fortunes with the new FW34, with engineering chief Mark Gillan adamant that the car proved to be stronger in the first test at Jerez.

“It is a definite step forward,” said Gillan. “It is definitely a very different car and there is a lot of things that we need to start investigating and unlock because last year we could not go down those particular routes because we were prevented by the way the car behaved or the way it used its tyres.”

He added: “It is clear that the car is very different to last year. And there are certain areas where we need to improve. Set-up tends to take a while to iterate too, and certainly that is what we will be looking to in the next couple of tests.

“Sometimes the car can not look good in certain areas but there is not much laptime by improving those specific things, but in areas such as the low speed, where you get most lap time to gain, those are areas to investigate to always try to improve.”

He praised the Renault engine powering the car this year, when the team and the French car maker are reunited.

“It’s very good, very positive. It is a very impressive engine,” he said.

Gillian was also happy with the performance of Bruno Senna during the first test with the team, the Brazilian the busiest man over the week with 250 laps covered.

“I would say from our side, we were very pleased with his general consistency,” Gillan said.

“Obviously he is learning the car. His feedback is excellent, very precise. It is good to get a new perspective on things and very, very useful – so the debrief went on twice as long as it normally does and it was very, very good at all.”

Hot 'lanta! Nearly 850 iRacers answered the challenge of AMS in Week 2, with 26 of them earning 200 or more points.

Jason Karlavige edged-out Jared Crawford to win the top split of the week, and the absurdly high total of 360 points that went along with it. Karlavige’s record was unblemished on the week, as he only made the one start, earning the pole, and leading 37 of the 110 laps to put his name at the top of the board. That second place earned Crawford a not-to-shabby 346 points, and the overall points lead. Also coming on huge as of late is the surging Adam Gilliland, who rounded-out the podium in Atlanta

In all an astonishing 26 Class A-licensed drivers scored over 200 points in Atlanta, a huge lift from this stage last season. Although only two weeks into the season, it is never to early to start glancing at the points. To no surprise, Crawford and Karlavige have jumped out front early, with the next Class A-licensed driver, Gilliland, in fourth. Philipp Geiss is also off to a strong start, as is former NiPS winner Mitchell Hunt.

Atlanta was a popular venue with 29 drivers competing in ten or more races on the week. California’s Al Rodriguez once again led the way in starts with 26, with Robert Ingleman (23) hot on his heals. Rodriguez also scored the most wins with eight, the next closest was Patrick Baldwin with six, then Steve Sheehan with five.

Week Three of the NiCAS will keep the speeds up as the teams will head to Homestead-Miami Speedway, which always provides excellent sim racing with its multi-groove racing surface. If Week Two was any indication, the top Class A drivers are out for blood this season, and they are not wasting anytime to getting stamping their ticket to the NiPS. Homestead promises more of the same high split, high intensity racing action!

The HRT team will skip the first Barcelona test in order to focus on being ready with its new car for the second and final test there.

The Spanish squad tested for two days at Jerez last week, using its 2011 car as the new challenger is yet to pass all the mandatory crash tests.

HRT was hoping to be able to attend the first Barcelona test with the new car, but the failure to pass two crash tests meant a change of plans.

The team has decided it will not be testing at Barcelona next week with the old car either in order to concentrate on getting the new single-seater ready for the March 1 outing.

The Barcelona test kicks off on Tuesday.