Top spot is in sight with two races to go
THE MOTORSPORT LAP/ Lewis Hamilton seems to be inching closer to claiming his fourth championship title following his US Grand Prix victory
Following this past weekend’s US F1 Grand Prix that took place in Austin, Texas, Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-AMG) has now inched even closer to claiming his fourth championship.
However, things may not be as clear cut as they seem — Sebastien Vettel (Scuderia Ferrari) will have to win both the Mexican and Brazilian races and Hamilton will have to finish further back than fifth in order to cover the current 66 point deficit between the two drivers.
Hamilton managed to qualify in pole position for the US race, but momentarily lost the lead to Vettel following a poor start, managing to regain the lead with the use of DRS to stay in front right through to the end.
Vettel had to settle for second, while team-mate Kimi Raikkonen finished third after the race stewards found Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen gained track advantage when he squeezed Raikkonen off the track at turn one.
As a result, Verstappen had to relinquish his third spot, ultimately finishing fourth.
The next race, in Mexico, will take place this weekend so it will be interesting to see how things pan out as the season nears its end.
Volkswagen is hoping to make a big noise, quietly, on the world’s highest major car race, with a one-off, all-electric racer set to tackle next year’s Pike’s Peak hillclimb. Humbled by scandal, Volkswagen is pushing to bring five new electric cars into production before 2022 and it sees the as-yet-unnamed hypercar as a trailblazer for its zero-emission future.
While it isn’t releasing power, torque, range or acceleration data for the Pike’s Peak racer, VW has confirmed it has Rhys Millen’s electric prototype record of 8:57.118 in its sights. To do that, the comically winged VW will need to climb 1,440m to the top of the 4,300m peak in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains in the US.
The last time a full works Volkswagen effort hit Pike’s Peak, its wild twin-engined Golf didn’t finish the 19.99km hillclimb, though sister company Audi has famously had success there in the early 1980s with rally legend Walter Rohrl.
It was the Carnival City Rally finale of the NRC (National Rally Championship) this past weekend that saw the pair of Theuns Joubert and Ettienne Lourens finish in first spot in their Toyota Auris after 13 stages. They were followed in second by AC Potgieter and Nico Swartz (Volkswagen Polo), while Guy Botteril and Simon Vacy Lyle (Toyota Etios) came third.
However, Botteril had already done enough to also clinch the overall championship title this year, which means he joins the legions of Toyota’s former South African national rally champions such as Leeroy Poulter, Serge Damseaux, Jan Habig and Hergen Fekken.
VOLKSWAGEN’S ONE-OFF, ALLELECTRIC RACER IS SET TO TACKLE NEXT YEAR’S PIKE’S PEAK HILLCLIMB