Motorsport

28th January 2007

AUDI wants a Brit to join its 2007 DTM attack. Adam Carroll, Danny Watts and Oliver Jarvis are all in the frame to drive an A4 in this year’s German V8 touring car series.

The trio tested for the team last week, and now await their fate. Britain is already well represented in the DTM, with past champ Gary Paffett, Jamie Green and Susie Stoddart lining up for Mercedes.

GERMANY has a commanding lead in the A1 GP of Nations after 19-year-old Nico Hulkenberg won both races in New Zealand.
Team GB arrived in Taupo holding second place in the World Cup of Motorsport, but dropped to fourth after Robbie Kerr damaged his car. He finished a lowly eighth in the opening race, and retired from the second.

MITSUBISHI racked up its seventh straight Dakar Rally triumph when Stephane Peterhansel won the North African adventure for the ninth time. The Frenchman finished ahead of team-mate and defending champion Luc Alphand to give Mitsubishi a one-two. Incredibly, though, the Japanese squad failed to win any of the gruelling event’s competitive stages.

Volkswagen’s two front-runners, Carlos Sainz and Giniel de Villiers, consistently outpaced Peterhansel and Alphand in their TDI-powered Touaregs, but dropped out of contention with mechanical woes.

“We’re looking back on a Dakar Rally which has given us many great moments, as well as a bitter disappointment,” said Volkswagen
motorsport director Kris Nissen, after his cars won 10 stage victories.

MARK Higgins will defend his British Rally Championship title
in 2007. The Manxman is gunning for a fourth crown in his Subaru,
as well as contesting rounds of the Production Car World Series, which kicks off next month in Sweden.

Further boosting British hopes abroad, Guy Wilks plans to take part in selected rounds of the WRC in a three-year-old Ford Focus.

CHAMPCARS are coming back to Europe. But the series won’t be visiting the Brands Hatch circuit in Kent as it did in 2003.

Instead, homegrown heroes Justin Wilson and Katherine Legge, and the other drivers in the US-based championship, will compete at Assen in Holland and Zolder in Belgium.

These rounds will be on 2 and 9 September. The 17-race calendar will also include new street events at Las Vegas and Phoenix, Arizona, Zhuhai in China and St Jovite in Canada.