RNW Staff

Porsche will tackle the 24 Hours of Daytona on 26/27 January fielding a pair of 911 RSR. As the most successful brand in the history of this venerable race, the sports car manufacturer from Weissach now aims to write another chapter in the success story at the season opener of this year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship. The two ca. 510 hp 911 RSR will be run by factory squads in the hotly contested GTLM class. The new Porsche 911 GT3 R celebrates its race debut. In the GTD category, four customer squads will each field one of the latest generation GT3 racers. 

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Second top-ten finish for BWT Mücke Motorsport in the 24 Hours of Dubai at second attempt. The team’s Audi R8 LMS #9 took P6 in the prestigious 24-hour race at the Dubai Autodrome last weekend (10th – 12th January 2019). The five drivers – Audi Sport’s Markus Winkelhock, Ford works driver Stefan Mücke, Mike David Ortmann, Ricardo Feller and Andreas Weishaupt – were on course to take a podium for quite a long time until a stone flew up, changing everything…

For Alessandro Zanardi (ITA), starting at the 24-hour race in Daytona (USA) is a bit like coming home. He celebrated the first successes in his impressive racing career in the United States. From 1996 until 1998 he contested the IndyCar series CART there, and was crowned champion in 1997 and 1998. After two years in Formula 1, he returned to US racing in 2001, until his accident at the Lausitzring (GER) on 15th September 2001 gave a new spin to his life and career.

A new season is about to get underway on the fifth continent. On the weekend of 31st January – 3rd February, R-Motorsport will be contesting the prestigious Bathurst 12 Hour race in Australia. The team based at Niederwil near St Gallen in Switzerland will be fielding two Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3s at the Mount Panorama Circuit.

RLR MSport has signed Bruno Senna and John Farano for its highly-anticipated return to LMP2 competition in the 2019 European Le Mans Series.

Both KC Motorgroup Ltd. (KCMG) Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 cars showed promising pace in the Dubai 24 Hour and would have been in podium contention, were it not for a number of unfortunate issues. After a strong qualifying performance by Joshua Burdon, the #35 Nissan of Katsumasa Chiyo, Tsugio Matsuda, Burdon, Shaun Thong and Andrea Gagliardini lined up 14th on the grid, with Matsuda taking the wheel for the start.

It’s a new year and a new program for Australian GT after a change in ownership during the 2018 season, so we thought we’d take a look at what is different about the coming year, and what the competitors and fans will see across the seven-round program.

Jack Butel contested his first race meeting of 2019, with the Jerseyman traveling to the Middle East to contest the Dubai 24 hours with new team Optimum Motorsport in its Ginetta G55 GT4 sports car. Butel will be driving for the English team this season and used the desert curtain raiser to familiarise himself with his new surroundings.

Christian Fittipaldi will close out his illustrious driving career when he returns to Mustang Sampling Racing for the 57th Anniversary Rolex 24 At Daytona, ending a 31-year career for the 48-year-old native of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The 2019 ABB FIA Formula E Marrakesh E-Prix saw a brave start from Jean-Éric Vergne who launched for the lead into turn one from his P2 start position. Unfortunately, the attempt was just on the limit and the Frenchman spun out. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the reigning Formula E champion who quickly worked his way through the grid to end P5 at the checkered flag.

Nissan e.dams test and reserve driver Mitsunori Takaboshi and simulator driver Jann Mardenborough impressed in Morocco with an opportunity to climb behind the wheel of the Nissan e.dams’ Formula E cars.

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The first endurance highlight of the season ended in great success for BMW customer racing teams. The excellent performance of the BMW M4 GT4 in particular stood out at the Dubai 24 Hour (UAE).

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McLaren have “taken some measures” to boost reliability ahead of February’s first pre-season test, says CEO Zak Brown. Last year, their first with Renault power, McLaren were dogged by reliability issues in testing. McLaren suffered five separate breakdowns over the course of a troubled eight days although a late surge saw Fernando Alonso finished second fastest overall. The Woking team covered just 599 laps, fewer than Sebastian Vettel managed alone. This year Brown says they are taking steps to avoid a repeat performance. “I don’t want to share in detail some of the things we’re doing differently this off-season than we did last season,” he told RACER. “We are doing things differently, to be more prepared, not just with performance but we had a lot of reliability issues going into Barcelona testing last year. So we have taken some measures to get ahead of that. “We will continue to develop as all F1 teams do, on a weekly basis, and we’ll bring to Australia our most developed performance that we’ve been doing here since we started developing the car and having reliability programs to make sure [it is better]. “One of the reasons why we were slower to bring performance (in 2018) is because we had reliability issues. “You roll off the truck in Barcelona, instead of being able to get straight down to performance, you’re having issues — wheel nut issues, heating issues — you then stop focusing on performance and you start focusing on reliability. “The team did a good job to give us reliability coming out of Spain testing, to have cars both finish in the points in Australia. “We’re in a better place performance wise and reliability coming into winter testing.”

Their mission was never in any doubt. Conditions were perfect, and the start went absolutely according to plan. GRT Grasser Racing intended to win the 24 Hours of Dubai at the third attempt, but things turned out differently in the end. After 24 exciting hours filled with stress, Lamborghini works driver Mirko Bortolotti together with Christian Engelhart and Rolf and Mark Ineichen, crossed the finish line in fourth place, which sounds disappointing, considering original expectations, but in actual fact, the result was stunning and only made possible by a sensational charge up the field and a terrific team effort.

Nissan e.dams demonstrated strong pace but suffered ill-fortune in the second round of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in Marrakesh today.

The second race of the 2018/19 ABB FIA Formula E season showed pace, performance but only delivered a couple of points for Panasonic Jaguar Racing in Marrakesh.

Courtesy of customer team Envision Virgin Racing, Audi became the first manufacturer to achieve a double podium with the new generation of Formula E race cars. In the second round of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in Marrakesh (Morocco), all four Audi e-tron FE05 cars finished in the points. In addition to positions two, three, seven and ten, the extra points for pole position and the fastest race lap also went to the Audi e-tron FE05.