On tap this week:
- Canadian team scores record win in Macau
- Hayley ends rookie year sixth
- HP back in IndyCar
- Porsche wins 2015 WEC championship
- Quote of the Week:
- Vettel adds another title
Swedish driver Felix Rosenqvist delivered a record eighth victory for Canada's Theodore Racing in the prestigious Macau Grand Prix on Sunday.
The win by the reigning Euro F3 champion is the second victory in the tough street race for the outfit since it was revived in 2013 by original Theodore founder Teddy Yip Sr.'s son.
"It is a dream come true for me and my family to be Macau champions for a record eighth time with Theodore Racing," said Yip Jr.
"We took victory on our return to Macau in 2013 with Alex Lynn and to repeat this achievement just two years later with Felix Rosenqvist is a seriously amazing achievement."
Founded by Yip Sr. in 1978, Theodore Racing started 33 grands prix between 1978 and 1983, but found little success in Formula One, scoring a total of two points. Things were different in Macau, where the team ran several future F1 stars including, Rubens Barrichello, two-time world champion Mika Häkkinen, Eddie Irvine, and three-time world champion Ayrton Senna, who won the first F3 Macau Grand Prix for the team in 1983. It disbanded in 1992.
Since Yip returned the family name to race team ownership, he has also helped several young Canadian drivers including Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters regular Robert Wickens and Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada driver Daniel Morad, who both raced for his Status Grand Prix team in GP3. Status Grand Prix will compete in GP2 next year.
In this year's 62nd Macau race, Yip continued that tradition by running Montreal's Lance Stroll in one of his three entries. Things didn't look good early when the 17-year-old was pushed into a wall on the tight street circuit and bent a rear wishbone.
Despite the damage, Stroll climbed up the order to eighth by the chequered flag after starting 13th.
"The rear was sliding quite a bit; maybe it was the wishbone damage," said Stroll, who is thought to have the inside line on a driver development role at the Williams F1 team.
"It could have been a better result — a lot of things got in the way, but with everything that happened eighth isn't bad."
Random thoughts
It looks like Hewlett-Packard (HP) will return to IndyCar as the primary sponsor of Simon Pagenaud. Toronto Motorsports seems to have jumped the gun by advertising the HP branded No. 22 die-cast car made by IndyCar's official die-cast supplier Greenlight prior to Pagenaud's team, Penske, making the announcement of his 2016 livery. The computer maker was the primary sponsor of Pagenaud's car for two seasons beginning in 2012 when he was with the Schmidt Peterson team. The 31-year-old French driver, who has four wins and two poles in IndyCar, joined Team Penske in 2015.
By the numbers
Calgary's Cameron Hayley posted his 13th top-10 finish of his rookie year with ThorSport Racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, taking a ninth place in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on the weekend. In all, the No. 13 Mattei Toyota Tundra driver took four top-fives and led 78 laps to finish sixth overall in the final points standings, despite racing at 18 tracks he'd never visited before joining the NASCAR truck series. While they are impressive numbers for a young NASCAR driver, the big question is whether they are good enough to attract a sponsor and truck series ride for 2016.
Technically speaking
Despite an engine actuator that needed repairs twice in the World Endurance Championship finale in Bahrain on Sunday, the Porsche 919 trio of Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley were able to recover and take a fifth place finish to capture the 2015 title. Things did not look good for the Porsche team early in the race after it went four laps down due to the technical troubles, but they fought back into the top-5 and ended the season with a slim five-point margin in the final standings. "It was a massive day for the team," Webber said. "You saw the spirit of the mechanics; you saw the spirit of the drivers. I cannot thank the mechanics enough."
Quote of the week
"To get an opportunity to race at this level, to have the success that I've had, to have the sponsors that we've had, and to have the fans that we have. The first one to the car was the team and [owner] Rick Hendrick and then my family — that is all that really matters to me. Those people are so important to me and make this all worthwhile. I told everybody before the race that no matter what we are going to be happy and celebrate. That is exactly what we are going to go do."
— Retiring four-times NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon after finishing sixth in his 797th and final career race in 23 years of Sprint Cup competition in the 2015 season finale Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Gordon was in contention for the 2015 title, but it went to Ford Ecoboost 400 race winner Kyle Busch.
The last word
Four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel won the 2015 Race of Champions crown on the weekend, defeating nine-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Tom Kristensen in the best of three final at London's Olympic Stadium Saturday. Taking overall driver honours likely lessened the sting of losing the team title to England Friday. The German squad of Vettel and 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Nico Hülkenberg, who drives for Force India in F1, could not find enough speed to beat two-time British Touring Car Champion Jason Plato and three-time World Touring Car Champion Andy Priaulx in the Nations' Cup.
Jeff Pappone