Josh’s Motorsport Blog – May 2013

Josh Smith blog entry

 

sponsor bulletin picTime for another blog, and it seems that the sun isarriving in May which is finally nice to see!

There’s lots of news to discuss this month, the first being the new FIA Formula E championship starting in 2014. http://formula-e-news.com/
This exciting new championship is set to run in 10 cities, including London. There will be 40 cars with 10 teams. The cars themselves with run with Michelin tyres, Dallara chassis’ and McLaren will be providing the motor, transmission and electronics. It will see a new step forward in sustainable engineering within motorsport and will help to test and develop electric vehicle technology for road cars.

In other motorsport news Marc Marquez picked up his first MotoGP win in Austin, USA. He was on pole for the race and sat behind team mate Dani Pedrosa before passing him with 6 laps to go to take a comfortable win. He is sure to be a world champion in the near future. http://www.motogp.com/en

In F1, we are nearly at the end of the 3 week break after a return from the first batch of fly-away races. Spain on the 12th May is the next race and it will be interesting to see what developments have occurred for each team during the break. (http://www.formula1.com/default.html)

In the WRC, the new VW Polo of Sebastien Ogier seems to be the title favourite with wins in 3 out of the 4 rallies so far. http://www.wrc.com/results/
A title fight between him and Loeb would have been nice to see, but he is only doing a small handful of races this year.

Back at college, we have now had our BSc(Hons) Motorsport Technology top-up year validated by Oxford Brookes University and this is set to start in September 2013. The college race team is also racing on May 6th and 27th at Castle Combe in the Radical. We will be hoping to continue the good start to the season and make it on to the podium in both race events. www.castlecombecircuit.co.uk. You can also follow us on Twitter @MotorsportBC

Last but not least, my book has been published and is now available from Nelson Thornes directly along with the usual likes of Waterstones and Amazon – hopefully it will be of use to some of you in providing an insight into all areas of motorsport engineering!

Read the latest sponsorship bulletin to catch up on the latest from Josh’s racing team!