Ferrari driver coach Jock Clear is adamant Charles Leclerc is ready to deliver a world championship as soon as the team gives him the car to do it.

Leclerc emerged as one of the fastest qualifiers on the grid since joining Ferrari in 2019, racking up 26 poles so far. His number of poles contrasts with winning ‘just’ seven grands prix, which has netted the Monegasque driver a reputation of being a much better qualifier than racer.

But given a large part of Leclerc’s Ferrari career overlaps with the team having been on the back foot in race trim, particularly in 2022 and 2023, his experienced Ferrari coach Clear feels that this reputation is not warranted, certainly not in 2024.

“His reputation in qualifying has certainly been cemented over those years and people tended to say to me two or three years ago he’s nowhere near as good in the race as he is in qualifying,” Clear told the F1 Nation podcast. “Well, that’s not really fair. It’s just that he’s very, very good at qualifying.

“It’s probably true that we’ve shifted our focus slightly to making the car a better race car. Tyre management is, of course, always a hot topic. But we’ve seen Charles do some very good races. I remember back in ’22 in Austria, where Max [Verstappen] really struggled with tyre degradation, and Charles won that race with a really good drive.

“It’s not that Charles historically hasn’t been good on tyres. I think that as a combination we haven’t been focused that well on tyres.

“What we’ve seen this year is the result of us being more focused on getting the car working really well in the race and looking after those tyres, and Charles learning from previous years and honing those skills of tyre and race management. So, I think you’re just seeing a better representation of Charles as a driver and us as a race team.”

Pole man Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, in Parc Ferme after Qualifying

Photo by: Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

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Clear believes Leclerc “will deliver” once Ferrari has everything it takes to challenge for the world championship, which hasn’t happened yet in his six-year stay at the team. Leclerc and Ferrari came closest in 2022, but were outdeveloped by Red Bull as Verstappen romped home to his second straight title, while also throwing away points through various mistakes of their own.

“He’s got what it takes to be a world champion,” Clear said. “He’s got the qualifying pace. My god, I honestly think he’s the best qualifier we’ve seen. It’s difficult to go back as far as Michael [Schumacher] and Mika [Hakkinen] and people like that, but he is the best qualifier for sure. And his race management, if you look at Monza, it’s just exceptional. When everything’s lined up, he can deliver.

“Charles hasn’t been in that situation yet. Was 2022 genuinely a chance for Ferrari to win a world championship? You have to say it was, because at one point we were 40 points ahead. But we weren’t ready as a team and Red Bull outdeveloped us by the end of the year.

“Certainly, there were things that Charles would say were not at championship level during that year, but that is exactly the point. You’re not going to win a championship until all of you are at that level.

“It’s unfair to say that Mercedes only won all those championships because they had the best car. They had the best everything. And it’s the same with Max [and Red Bull] in the last three years. When we deliver a car to consistently challenge for championship, which I think we’re on the brink of now, Charles will deliver.”

M-Sport’s driver line-up for the 2025 World Rally Championship is “totally up in the air” as speculation mounts around the future of its current lead driver Adrien Fourmaux.

The Ford squad often makes its moves in the driver market late into the year and this season is no different as it plans to field two Ford Puma Rally1 cars next year.

The decision to promote Fourmaux back to its Rally1 programme this year after his 2023 season in Rally2 has paid dividends, with the Frenchman reeling off eight top-five finishes including four podiums (Sweden, Kenya, Poland and Finland).

The run has seen the Frenchman amass only six points fewer than Ott Tanak’s 2023 tally at this stage of the campaign, having replaced the 2019 world champion this year.

Fourmaux’s impressive rise has made the 29-year-old a valuable commodity in the service park, with the 2023 British rally champion linked with a move to Hyundai to pilot the Korean marque’s third car for next season.

When asked about his team’s 2025 plans, M-Sport’s team principal Richard Millener maintains that “nothing has been signed with anybody” at the minute.

“It is totally up in the air and nothing is signed with anybody, all options on the table as usual for M-Sport at this point in the year,” Millener told Motorsport.com. “We want the strongest possible team we can get for two cars for next year and that is the goal and what we continue to push on.”

Adrien Fourmaux, M-Sport Ford World Rally Team

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The team wishes to agree a new deal with Fourmaux and has not given up on retaining his services. However, should it need to look elsewhere the squad appears to have a shortlist of options to fill its two seats.

Its other full-time driver Gregoire Munster delivered arguably his best Rally1 performance to date in Chile, where he ran as high as fourth, matching stage times at the top of the leaderboard, before finishing seventh.

The performance arrived after a inconsistent campaign to date which could bode well for his future, although Millener says the Luxembourger should remain focused on the final two rallies of the season.

“He just needs to concentrate on one rally at a time now. He shouldn’t be thinking about how he makes sure he gets a drive next year,” added Millener. “It needs to be a case of just doing the best he can on each rally and see what comes at the end of the year.”

Another driver that M-Sport is keeping an eye on is Martins Sesks following his trio of Rally1 outings with the team. The 25-year-old’s drives to fifth in Poland, followed by a podium challenge in Latvia before a mechanical issue struck, has turned heads.

Sesks admitted after his latest outing in Chile that he was unsure where his future lay.

“Like he says, he doesn’t know what is next and I don’t know what is next, there is a lot up in the air but it was good to give him that opportunity as well and now we need to see what happens in the next few weeks,” said Millener.

Outside of those two drivers, Motorsport.com expects WRC2 title contenders Oliver Solberg and Yohan Rossel to be on the team’s 2025 driver shortlist.

CCTV footage of the alleged attack on an Erebus engineer at the Bathurst 1000 has emerged which indicates the incident involved only a single person.

The team, which won the race through Brodie Kostecki and co-driver Todd Hazelwood, had its headlines taken over by reports of the incident, with details revealed on Monday’s Seven Network breakfast programme Sunrise by the reigning series champion.

“One of our crew members was unfortunately attacked last night. It’s really disappointing and really put a spoil on the evening,” Kostecki said.

“We wish Sam all the best and hopefully he recovers fast, along with his partner, Tameika.”

The engineer that suffered the alleged attack was hospitalised, with three men reported to be the aggressors.

But CCTV footage shown on a Seven News Central West bulletin portrayed a very different story, with a young man seen hitting himself rather than sustaining an attack.

The report explained that a man was walking along hitting himself in the face before falling to the floor, with a woman following in his footsteps.

Brodie Kostecki, Todd Hazelwood, Erebus Motorsport Chevrolet Camaro ZL1

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Police have confirmed the man is out of hospital and that, while the investigation remains ongoing, the force is confident no attack took place.

The incident is the latest in a turbulent year for the Erebus outfit which saw Kostecki miss the commencement of the campaign due to behind-the-scenes drama.

But he had won the Great Race with Hazelwood to give the team a first triumph in the event since 2017, when David Reynolds and Luke Youlden came out on top.

Five-time Le Mans podium finisher Richard Westbrook has called time on a career in which he was a factory driver with Porsche, General Motors, BMW, Aston Martin and Ford.

The 49-year-old Briton has announced that last weekend’s Petit Le Mans IMSA SportsCar Championship finale at Road Atlanta was his last race as a professional driver.

Westbrook’s decision to retire brings the curtain down on a career that included back-to-back Porsche Supercup titles in 2006-07 and class victories in the Sebring 12 Hours and Daytona 24 Hours enduros in 2013 and 2018 respectively.

As well as third-place finishes overall with Glickenhaus and Cadillac at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2022 and ’23, he notched up a trio of class podiums at the Circuit de la Sarthe with Porsche, Ford and Aston Martin.

Westbrook explained the time was right to call time on his career, despite having a year left to run on his contract with the JDC-Miller MotorSports Porsche GTP team with which he has raced in IMSA this season.

“You can’t do it forever and at some point you have to be honest with yourself, say you’ve had a good run and pass on the baton,” Westbrook told Motorsport.com.

“This was the first season that I have felt like that: my performances were still there, but the enjoyment factor had gone a bit. I wasn’t so excited about getting in the car as I had been in the past, and if that’s the case, you have to question whether you should be doing it.

Petit Le Mans was Westbrook’s final race as a pro as he bowed out in the JDC/Miller MotorSports Porsche 963

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

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“I’m happy with my career and the way it has ended: I probably wasn’t going to achieve a lot more and it has been my decision to stop.”

Westbrook said that his biggest achievement was racing for 23 seasons after he started competing again following six years of inactivity after his single-seater career stalled in Formula 3 in 1996.

“I have to pinch myself sometimes what has happened over the past 20-odd years,” he explained. “Everything happened so quickly: I went from doing nothing to driving for all these manufacturers.”

Westbrook picked out his four seasons racing for Chip Ganassi Racing in IMSA in 2016-19 with the Ford GT in the GT Le Mans class as one of the best periods of his career.

“That was a special time for me,” said Westbrook, whose regular driving partner over the four years was Ryan Briscoe.

“We had a good group of people and scored a lot of wins, but unfortunately not the championship. We were second twice and it always went down to the wire – that’s one regret I will always have.

“When I look back I think I should have won more, more championships. There were big wins in IMSA, like Daytona and Sebring, but never a championship – that will always rankle.”

Westbrook formed a successful partnership at Ford with Briscoe, but the title eluded them

Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images

He singled out his second-place overall finish in the 2015 IMSA points alongside Michael Valiante with the Spirit of Daytona team when he was on the books of Chevrolet as another regret.

“We were a small operation racing against big teams like Action Express Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing and we came within three points of the championship,” he said.

Westbrook also picked the first of his two Le Mans overall podiums, notched up with Glickenhaus Racing, as another highlight.

“Jim [Glickenhaus, the marque founder] put his money where his mouth was and we achieved everything we could,” said Westbrook. “To stand on the Le Mans podium with him was really special.”

The three Le Mans podiums in class came in 2010 in GT2 with the Scuderia Italia Porsche team and in 2016 and 2020 respectively with Ford and Aston Martin in GTE Pro.

He was also a race winner in the FIA GT1 World Championship with the JRM Nissan team in 2010 and in class in FIA GTs with the Prospeed Porsche squad in 2008 and ’09.

Westbrook was a frontrunner in the Formula Opel Lotus Euroseries one-make single-seater championship in 1994-95, but a proposed F3 drive with the KMS-run Benetton Junior Team in Germany fell through for 1996.

He then stopped racing after a handful F3 races in Germany and Austria that year and didn’t resume until coming back for a short self-funded partial programme in the Supercup in 2002.

After four weeks away, Formula 1 returns for a frantic six-race run in eight weeks, with the United States Grand Prix a crucial weekend across the grid as 2024’s final upgrades emerge.

The race at the Circuit of the Americas is largely seen as the last major opportunity to unleash a batch of car upgrades this season. Austin is the start of a triple-header that includes Mexico and Brazil, making it logistically the easiest place to introduce new parts.

Then follows another triple-header of Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi to close off a hectic season. Some teams might bring new low-downforce items to outlier Vegas, although it is expected teams will generally re-use their wing specifications from Monza and especially Baku. And by Qatar it will have been too late to get a big return on investment unless teams choose to trial parts for 2025.

So, whatever teams have had in the production pipeline over the last month will now start to emerge as they make one final push to improve their fortunes. Austin is a sprint weekend, giving teams less practice time to dial updates in, but they have become accustomed to the format so their reluctance to bring upgrades to a sprint event is not as big as it used to be.

“We all know that we already started the development of next year’s car and we try to do our best to have small upgrades,” said Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur. “I think it will be probably the last one for everybody; it will be true for us, but it will be true for the other teams. And now it’s so tight over the last four, five, six races, if you have a look on the grid, it may get tight and every single bit can make a difference.”

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-24

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“It’s a natural point in the year that all teams will bring something to Austin,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner added. “Ferrari has got something sizable. I think Mercedes, McLaren, they’ll all be bringing something.”

At the front, McLaren leads by 41 points and looks primed to keep its advantage until the end of the year, based on its performance gap with Red Bull in recent races. But Red Bull has offered glimpses that it has finally understood where it has gone wrong with the development of its RB20.

Yes, Max Verstappen finished a massive 21 seconds behind McLaren’s Lando Norris in Singapore but was still a clear second at Red Bull’s worst circuit. COTA’s flowing layout might offer a better picture of whether Red Bull has truly turned the corner.

That is the second reason why the Austin weekend is so key. It heralds a return to more traditional circuits featuring high-speed direction changes, contrasting with the most recent run of low-downforce tracks Monza and Baku, and a maximum-downforce but low-speed street circuit in Singapore.

Austin will therefore offer a clearer picture of what the form table might look like until the end of the year, with only November’s race on the Las Vegas Strip the odd one out that’s closer to Baku in nature.

“What we’re looking to do is to build on the understanding that we have and take a car there that’s well balanced between both of its axles, it inspires the confidence of the driver,” Horner said. “It’s a very different challenge. There is that first sector [which] is very high speed. They’ve resurfaced part of the circuit as well, so there’s another variable that’s thrown in.

“It’s a sprint weekend, so you’ve got to hit the ground running. But the whole team’s been working incredibly hard on understanding the issues, addressing them, and getting, hopefully, remedies on the car for Austin.”

While all attention has gone to McLaren’s battle against Red Bull, Ferrari may yet be in the fight, following just 34 points behind Red Bull in third. But the Scuderia is perhaps the team with the biggest question marks to answer this weekend, as it has struggled with high-speed bouncing on the most demanding circuits since the summer.

Maranello’s solutions to that crippling problem have gone unproven on the atypical run of Monza, Baku and Singapore, so Austin will be the litmus test on whether Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz have the tools to compete on COTA’s demanding configuration.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

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“We are seeing the numbers that we expected, bringing those new parts on the car, but we still don’t have the definitive answer of how close we got to McLaren or Red Bull on a normal track,” Leclerc said. “I’m sure we did a step forward. How much? I think we’ll see that in Austin.”

Sainz remains cautious too until he sees Ferrari’s latest specification stretch its legs on “normal tracks”, but feels Vegas will be Ferrari’s best bet to take another win this year.

“I think every team has one more upgrade more or less in the pipeline that they’re going to try before the end of the year, so we could still see some swings in performance,” the Spaniard said. “At the same time, we’ve seen upgrades this year don’t [always] mean performance. It doesn’t always translate into lap time. It’s happened to us and other teams, Red Bull, Mercedes, except McLaren.

“What we need to see is if it makes a difference in Austin and Brazil, all the more old-school normal tracks, basically. And then Vegas I think is our next big chance.”

In a statement released on Monday, HMS gave the following explanation for their decision to accept the penalty: “Hendrick Motorsports will not appeal the disqualification of the No. 48 car following Sunday’s race at the Charlotte Roval. NASCAR allows a clear margin to account for the difference in pre- and post-race weight.

“After a thorough review by our team and the sanctioning body, we simply did not give ourselves enough margin to meet the post-race requirement. Although unintentional, the infraction was avoidable. We are extremely disappointed to lose a playoff spot under these circumstances and apologize to our fans and partners.”

Originally, all four Hendrick drivers had advanced into the Round of 8 after Kyle Larson’s victory on Sunday. But in post-race technical inspection, the No. 48 HMS Chevrolet failed to meet minimum weight requirements, which includes a tolerance around 17 pounds. Per Brad Moran, the managing series director for Cup, the car was weighed multiple times and the team was given the chance to both fuel up the car and add water.

Bowman was disqualified and the subsequent loss of points resulted in him being eliminated from the 2024 NASCAR Cup playoffs. Bowman’s misfortune put two-time NASCAR Cup champion and Team Penske driver Joey Logano back in. At the checkered flag, he was out by four points. This also changed the owner’s championship, as the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota was originally eliminated there, but is now back in as well.

The official Round of 8 points grid: