Motorsport News 17/06/21

Tom Ingram says he has vindicated his decision to switch teams over the winter as he took Hyundai’s first-ever victory in the British Touring Car Championship at Snetterton on Sunday. The Excelr8 Motorsport driver switched from the Speedworks Motorsport Toyota Corolla team at the start of the season but says his reversed-grid race win in Norfolk has shown his choice was the right one. Ingram, who is second in the standings after six races of this year’s contest and just two points behind fellow Snetterton winnerAsh Sutton, said: “It is an amazing feeling to have put it all together and come away with a win. “We have been able to silence any doubters that there were, all those who were questioning what we were doing [switching to the Hyundai programme]. We have been…

It is easy to have had a love-hate relationship with McLaren. For those with long enough memories, the domination of the TAG, Honda, Niki Lauda, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna era for the Woking team meant that Formula 1 races were becoming a foregone conclusion in the mid-to-late 1980s. While it was predictable on the track, at least the British team kept things lively by having two drivers who were (almost literally) at each other’s throats for a significant part of that decade. There was another purple patch at the end of the 1990s before every other team was put firmly in the shade by Ferrari and Michael Schumacher. The slump for McLaren was significant and reached its nadir at 2015 when its disastrous recoupling with Honda resulted in ninth place, the…

British rising star Johnathan Hoggard has a surprise race chance in this weekend’s FIA Formula 3 round at Paul Ricard’s French Grand Prix meeting, replacing Pierre-Louis Chovet at Jenzer Motorsport. Twenty-year-old BRDC SuperStar Hoggard won 2019’s Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year award, getting a Red Bull RB8 Formula 1 car test as part of his prize. He also took part in FIA F3’s post-season tests last year at Barcelona and Jerez, though has not had a full-time drive since finishing runner-up in 2019’s BRDC Formula 3 contest with seven race wins, a campaign that also won him a drive in 2020’s Daytona 24 Hours via the Sunoco Whelen Challenge. Hoggard said: “This was unexpected and happened so fast. I have worked for that opportunity for years and I…

Pato O’Ward ofArrow McLaren SP moved to the top of IndyCar’s points standings with race-two victory in last weekend’s Detroit Belle Isle double header. O’Ward, in the eighth race of this season, became the first competitor to win a second IndyCar race in 2021, and did so recovering from 16th on the grid after hitting the wall in qualifying. Having risen throughout the race, O’Ward was sixth with 11 laps to go, then following a caution put in a stunning late-race charge to win, passing long-time leader Josef Newgarden of Penske with three laps left. The Mexican, now a point clear of Ganassi’sAlex Palou at the table summit, dedicated the win to team-mate Felix Rosenqvist who was injured in a race-one crash the previous day (see separate story) and to McLaren’s long-time partner…

Toyota’s #8 Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley trio took their second 2021 World Endurance Championship victory from two in the Portimao 8 Hours after a team orders call. Toyota in its 100th world sportscar race had its two Hypercars take control overAlpine’s polesitter via making fewer pitstops. Jose Maria Lopez made the #7 Toyota’s final pitstop under the safety car which let him emerge just behind Buemi. The Toyota pitwall then decided to swap positions to see if Lopez had a pace advantage, but when Buemi stayed with him the team swapped the cars back. The debutant Glickenhaus 007 LMH finished 54 laps down due to a lack of pace, with starting driver Richard Westbrook reporting severe tyre wear, and a lengthy pitstop for damage after being caught in a skirmish…

The opening IndyCar race of last weekend at Detroit’s Belle Isle track had a lengthy stoppage after a heavy crash for Arrow McLaren SP’s Felix Rosenqvist following a stuck throttle. The Swede hit the wall on the outside of the street track’s Turn 6 just after the one-third distance point of the Saturday race, and needed to be extricated from the car. The track clean-up and barrier repairs resulted in a one hour and 20 minutes’ halt. A statement from IndyCar medical director Dr Geoffrey Billows that evening read: “[Rosenqvist] was transferred to Detroit Receiving Hospital for advanced imaging and evaluation by the trauma and neurological services. Evaluation revealed no life or limb threatening injuries, he remains awake and alert, he will be observed overnight prior to discharge.” Rosenqvist meanwhile tweeted that “I’m…