Motorsport Roundup: Notable highlights from 13/04 to 19/04

While racing action around the world is still on hold, that hasn’t stopped the motorsport community to make future announcements as well as provide assistance to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the last seven days. It started with British F1 teams supplying 20,000 medical kits, followed by Italian based WEC teams donating money to fight the virus. Future announcements came in the form of technical regulations and driver contracts for MotoGP and Sergio Perez giving us a tease of what to expect from the 2020 Formula One cars. This week also saw coronavirus unfortunately taking the life of Bob Lazier, former CART IndyCar 1981 Rookie of the Year.  Here’s more on what transpired: 

Formula One

Earlier this year, 7 UK-based F1 teams, namely-  Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, BWT Racing Point F1 Team, Haas F1 Team, McLaren F1 Team, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, Renault DP World F1 Team and RoKiT Williams F1 Racing participated in an initiative called Project Pitlane, in which the teams will be providing medical equipment to help fight the coronavirus. It has been revealed that the seven teams have helped supply over 20,000 orders for medical equipment for the National Health Service. 

In other news, Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff has made a personal investment in Aston Martin shares, While he claims that his commitment to Mercedes is still there, this move does provide a possible scenario of Toto Wolff’s next move if he chooses to leave Mercedes in the future. In relation Aston Martin, Sergio Perez has dropped an interesting claim that the 2020 Formula One cars will be shattering lap records once racing resumes. 

MotoGP

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The FIM Grand Prix Commission has announced a variety of changes to the MotoGP 2020 and 2021 technical regulations. The changes consist of a spec freeze for the premier class bikes until the first event of 2021 and a spec freeze until the end of the 2021 season for the Moto2 and Moto3 class. This week also saw Alex Rinz extend his contract with Suzuki upto 2022. In addition to this, MotoGP organisers are looking to hold races behind closed doors whenever racing resumes. This will consist of only Dorna staff, riders and teams being allowed in the circuits. 

WEC 

The past week has seen Italian based teams contribute in tackling the coronavirus pandemic. It started with LMP2 team Cetilar Racing set to donate all the money saved since the cancelled WEC round at Sebring to the Italian Health Care. In addition to this, all the money from the team’s annual sailing regatta will be donated to the Italian Civil Protection. The other team being Ferrari running in the LMGTE Pro class, have raised over 1 million euros to help fight coronavirus. They’ve also donated an ambulance to AUSL Modena.

IndyCar

The last seven days unfortunately saw the passing of Bob Lazier, former CART IndyCar 1981 Rookie of the Year due to coronavirus, aged 81. His earlier career included winning the 1971 Formula B class at the SCCA National Championship Runoffs, and stints at the USAC Mini Indy Series and Formula 5000 before graduating to the CART Indy car Series in 1981 with Robert Fletcher’s team. The highlight of  his rookie title winning year was the fact that his debut was at the unusual age of 42 years.

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