In the round-up: John Wickham, the owner of the Spirit team that raced in F1 in the mid-Eighties and later director of the Arrows team, has died aged 73 after a long illness
In brief
Spirit F1 team owner John Wickham dies aged 73
John Wickham, the owner of the Spirit team that raced in F1 in the mid-eighties, has died aged 73 after a long illness.
Spirit joined the grid for the 1983 season with Honda B7LE engines – at the time the Japanese manufacturer’s first F1 engines since they left the sport in the late-sixties. The team started a total of 26 grands prix between 1983 and 1985 – fielding drivers such as Stefan Johansson – but did not score any points.
Wickham later acted as director of the Arrows team in the early 1990s and was then in charge of the Bentley Le Mans programme which took victory in the illustrious 24 hour race in 2003. Wickham was also head of operations for the A1GP series, which ran from 2005 to 2009.
Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours temporarily halted by “security breach”
The Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours simracing event was suspended for over an hour due to a “security breach”, race organisers confirmed.
The race had just reached the six hour mark when the race was red flagged due to server problems for a second time. After a delay of over an hour, race organisers released a statement confirming that “the two servers that have been used for the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual have had a suspected security breach.”
After addressing the security issues, the race restarted with 16h30m of race time remaining. After seven hours of racing, the #20 Porsche Coanda team led the race by less than a second from the two Team Redline cars, with the #1 car of Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen in second place.
Mercedes’ Antonelli leads FRMEC after opening round
Mercedes junior driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli holds the championship lead in the Formula Regional Middle Eastern Championship after the opening three-race round in Dubai despite not claiming a race win.
Antonelli sits on 38 points after a fourth, a sixth and a second-place finish in the first three races. Nikhail Bohra won the second race with Mari Boya winning the third and final race of the weekend.
The next round will take place in Kuwait with three races over Friday 27th and Saturday 28th of January.
Red Bull junior Lindblad wins first car race, Ugochukwu leads UAE F4
It was a good day for F1 junior drivers in the second day of racing at the UAE…
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