Monday Pit Stop #12
It was a busy weekend for motorsport, with Formula 1 taking place in China for the first time since 2019, while the World Rally Championship held its first asphalt event of the season in Croatia. Rally Croatia was won by eight-time world champion Sebastien Ogier for Toyota (his 59th career victory and his first since last year's Safari) after a dramatic final day in which Hyundai driver Thierry Neuville and Toyota's Elfyn Evans – who had been trading the lead – both hit problems, shuffling them down the order.
However, Neuville retains his advantage in the drivers' classification, while Toyota tops the manufacturers' standings. Second in the drivers' championship is Evans, ahead of M-Sport driver Adrien Fourmaux: one of the revelations of the season so far, who took his first Power Stage win in Croatia (which carries extra championship points).
In the Junior World Rally Championship, also supplied by Pirelli, young Estonian Romet Jurgenson moved into the series lead, after winning on the challenging Croatian asphalt in his Ford Fiesta Rally 3: the car used by all the competitors in the Junior series, so that talent alone shines through.
The main event back home in Italy was the second round of the World Endurance Championship at Imola, and the first in Europe.
After a thrilling rain-afflicted race, Toyota held off Porsche to take victory by just seven seconds after six hours of racing – making it an incredible weekend for the renowned Japanese manufacturer (which also won the first round of the South African Rally Raid Championship with former Dakar champion Giniel de Villiers in a Hilux).
Strategy was at the heart of the complex Imola race: the key to Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries, and Kamui Kobayashi's win was picking the right moment to switch to wet tyres. Ferrari had qualified on pole with Antonio Fuoco and was dominant in the dry – occupying the top three places on the grid – but had to settle for a best result of fourth in the actual race.
The LMGT3 class was all about the BMW M4, with Darren Leung, Sean Galael, and Augusto Farfus beating team mates Ahmad Al Harty, Valentino Rossi, and Maxime Martin by 22 seconds. As for BMW's new Hypercar – which looks strikingly different from all the others – that finished a promising sixth. Expect to see Rossi let loose in it once the time is right…
Jenson Button, the 2009 Formula 1 champion, was 11th on his return to a full-time racing campaign this year in a Porsche 963 shared with Phil Hanson and Oliver Rasmussen.
Their car was just ahead of the top Lamborghini (driven by Mirko Bortolotti, Edoardo Mortara, and Daniil Kvyat), which was 12th, ahead of the leading Alpine Hypercar. The sister car featuring Mick Schumacher in the driver line-up came home 16th, six laps down.
The GT World Challenge Asia, which runs exclusively on Pirelli tyres, got underway at the Malaysian circuit of Sepang with a capacity entry of 33 cars. Audi won the first race, with a pair of well-known drivers in the shape of Franky Cheng and Adderley Fong, while the Porsche of Lu Wei and Laurin Heinrich claimed race two.
Formula 3 has just finished a three-day test at Barcelona. Campos Racing driver Mari Boya ended up topping the times, ahead of the next round at Imola alongside Formula 1.
And finally, on the other side of the world, Pirelli has signed a new exclusive supply agreement with the Copec Rally Championship in Chile, for the next three years. The tyres used for this championship will be made in Pirelli's factories in Argentina and Brazil.
