Oliver Turvey finished fifth in yesterday’s World Series by Renault race at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.

At least, he did, until the stewards slapped him with a 25 second penalty, leaving him a miserable 14th. Read more…

Adam Carroll took Ireland to victory in the fourth A1 Grand Prix championship with victory in both races at Brands Hatch today.

It has been a turbulent season for the ‘World Cup of Motorsport’. The Brands Hatch event was originally scheduled as the season finale, but the organisers later moved the postponed Mexican race to the end of the calendar. Then, following the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico, the event was cancelled. Read more…

I’ve been at Oulton Park today watching the British Formula Three and GT races.

I was opposite the start line as the 2009 F3 championship got under way and pole sitter Max Chilton made one of the most hilariously blatant jump starts I’ve ever seen - have a look for yourself: Read more…

A1 Grand Prix has re-instated the Mexican round of the calendar as a new season finale.

The championship will still visit Brands Hatch for the British round, but after that it will return to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City on May 22nd-24th.

However the distinctive Peraltada corner is to be drastically overhauled. The fast 180-degree corner is to be castrated into a messy series of tight bends to prevent the cars passing through the section at high speed. Read more…

The motor sport fan looking for early season action would have found little reason to come out of hibernation in today’s two WTCC races from Curitiba in Brazil.

If Seat’s domination today continues throughout 2009 it’ll be another season to sleep through.

The Leon turbo diesels filled the top four places in both races. Reigning champion Yvan Muller won the first race and Gabriele Tarquini the second, just as they had in 2008. Read more…

Lola has issued a press release criticising Aston Martin for what Lola describes as ‘misrepresentation’ of its Le Mans effort:

Following a number of inaccurate and misleading quotes given by the Aston Martin Chairman David Richards, regarding the supply of the Lola LMP1 chassis to Aston Martin Racing for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours and Le Mans Series programme, Lola has decided to set the record straight.

The Lola Aston Martin is a Lola designed and built car. It is not a ‘radical re-design’ as stated by Aston Martin Racing. Aston Martin has undertaken some body styling cues that required some CFD work to try to reinstate the Lola Aero performance and minor bespoke mechanical changes to accommodate the styling changes. Lola has spent over two and a half years in the research and development of this state of the art car costing several millions of pounds.

Aston Martin contracted with Lola in December 2008 to buy our cars because they knew that as a result of the 2008 performance that we had the leading LMP1 customer car and Aston Martin didn’t have the time to develop their own car. When Aston first mooted re-homologation of the Lola car and was given the cost of their contribution to IPR and R&D the negotiations broke down. It is completely inappropriate that Aston Martin should now attempt to achieve “ownership” through misrepresentation in the media. Lola’s binding contract with Aston Martin is for two cars the nomenclature of which under the contract is that the cars must remain Lola Aston Martin.

This is the extent of the references to Lola in Aston Martin’s press release about its LMP1 campaign:

The new car which is based on the 2008 Charouz Racing System Lola will be powered by the same production-based Aston Martin V12 engine which, last year, helped Aston Martin secure its second successive Le Mans GT1 title with the DBR9. It also powered the Charouz car to a new La Sarthe lap record for a petrol car.

Aston Martin Racing is developing the car in conjunction with Lola, Michelin, Koni and BBS and continues its relationship with major partner Gulf Oil and official clothing partner Hackett. In 2009, the ACO is introducing new regulations aimed at balancing the performance of petrol and diesel engined prototypes making the LMP1 category more appealing and relevant to Aston Martin.

How will Aston Martin react to this apparent broadside by their chassis developers?

The GP2 line-up for 2009 looks very promising with several top drivers retaining their seats and some intriguing new talent entering the championship.

Lucas di Grassi is back for a fourth attempt at the series. Di Grassi, runner-up in 2007 and third last year despite only contesting part of the season, must be the title favourite as he pairs up with Racing Engineering, with whom Giorgio Pantano won last year’s title. Read more…

The BBC’s comprehensive F1 coverage plan will sadly not extend to GP2 race coverage, or any of the other usual support races at F1 weekends.

This was confirmed by interactive TV editor Matt Millington on the Sport Editors’ Blog, who offered no reason why the decision had been taken:

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer coverage of the support races.

It’s very disappointing, and I hope BBC’s decision not to show GP2 will not stop some other broadcaster picking it up.

Thanks to Vee8 for the tip

Neel Jani joined Nico Hülkenberg as A1 Grand Prix’s most prolific winner by scored his ninth victory in the categoty in the feature race at Kyalami.

But disaster struck the championship leaders. Ireland lost their lead in the title race as Adam Carroll crashed out on the first lap of the race. Read more…