F1 returns with season opener in Bahrain

Formula One is going bigger, brighter and brasher this season with the Las Vegas Strip set to light up a record 23-race calendar and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen chasing a third championship in a row.

The 25-year-old Dutch driver is favourite for the opener in Bahrain on March 5, with the sport hoping he has a harder time than last year when he won 15 of 22 races and took the title with four rounds to spare.

Testing last week at Sakhir suggested Red Bull remain on pole but with Ferrari’s 2022 runner-up Charles Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz the closest challengers.

Mercedes have plenty to do if Lewis Hamilton’s hopes of becoming Formula One’s first eight times world champion are not to evaporate again. On the plus side, Mercedes have banished the “porpoising” that tormented them last year but still need more speed.

Three rookies enter the fray this season.

Verstappen’s Dutch compatriot Nyck de Vries joins AlphaTauri after racing at Monza last year as a stand-in for Williams’ Alex Albon, but Australian Oscar Piastri at McLaren and Logan Sargeant at Williams will be debuting.

Piastri replaces experienced compatriot Daniel Ricciardo, now Red Bull’s third driver.

Sargeant can become the first US driver to complete a full season since Scott Speed at Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) in 2006.

With US interest surging thanks to the Netflix docu-series Drive to Survive, he will have three home races — Miami in May, Austin in October and Las Vegas as penultimate round on a Saturday night in November.

Las Vegas is already hyped to the hilt, with prices to match, for racing on the Strip for the first time.

There will be six sprint race weekends, double last year, and consequently more points to be won.

Sheldon van der Linde scores home victory in Kyalami 9 Hour

SA’s Sheldon van der Linde scored a home victory when he took the Kyalami 9 Hour chequered flag in the Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 on Saturday night.

Sharing the car with Belgian drivers Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts, it was Van der Linde’s second win in the Pirelli-sponsored Intercontinental GT Challenge since 2020 when he also won at Kyalami.

The #32 M4 GT3 took the chequered flag 1.7 seconds clear of the sister machine shared by Philipp Eng, Augusto Farfus and Maxime Martin who chased Van der Linde to the line after a late Safety Car period slashed the latter’s advantage. Tresor Attempto’s Audi crewed by Mattia Drudi, Ricardo Feller and Patric Niederhauser completed the overall podium another 1.3 seconds behind.

It was BMW’s first Intercontinental victory since Farfus and Van der Linde also triumphed in SA four seasons ago.

The Mercedes-AMG GT3 shared by Kenny Habul, Jules Gounon and Yannick Mettler won the event’s Pro-Am class and retain their overall drivers’ championship lead by three points from Van der Linde, Vanthoor and Weerts.

Formula E thrills Cape Town

Home favourite Kelvin van der Linde may have failed to start Saturday’s Cape Town ePrix after his ABT Cupra team pulled out of the race with suspension issues, but the sold-out crowd of 26,000 were treated to a thriller. 

Antonio Felix da Costa won Saturday’s inaugural Cape Town ePrix in style. After starting 11th, the Tag Heuer Porsche driver worked his way up to second position and on lap 24 pulled off an exciting overtake on Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy in the high-speed turn Seven, Eight and Nine complex.

Da Costa then lost the lead to DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne after missing the activation loop on his second mandatory Attack Mode. With two additional laps added to the original 30-lapper because of time lost to cautions, on the penultimate lap the Porsche driver pulled off the same high-speed overtaking manoeuvre as before, and held on to take his first win of the year in this series for electric single-seaters. Vergne was second with Cassidy third after Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz crashed into the wall on the final lap.

It was a successful inaugural Formula E Grand Prix in SA, and race promoter Iain Banner said he plans to bring it to Cape Town for the next 20 years.