Autosport - 5 March 2015 | Page 109

THE BACK STRAIGHT GET AUTOSPORT ON THE MOVE WorldMags.net ON SALE ALL OVER THE WORLD DOWNLOAD IT NOW FROM AUTOSPORT.COM ONLINE GLENN FREEMAN EDITOR AUTOSPORT.COM XPB IMAGES [email protected] @glenn_autosport NASCAR LAS VEGAS - LIVE Eurosport 2 Sunday 1800-2000 The new season of World Touring Car action gets under way in Argentina, with Jose Maria Lopez hoping home advantage can help him get off to the perfect start in his title defence. His shock win on his series debut at Termas de Rio Hondo just a year and a half ago launched his international touring car career, and he’ll certainly have the crowd on his side. Citroen team-mates Yvan Muller and Sebastien Loeb will surely be his main opposition, although Honda should be closer to the pace this season. Premier Sports Sunday 1900-2300 NASCAR hits the progressive banking of Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the third race of the Sprint Cup Series. This time last year Brad Keselowski grabbed the win after plucky Dale Earnhardt Jr ran out of fuel only half a lap from the finish, so there’s a bit of unfinished business for Junior, who has yet to win at Vegas in the top series. After the lottery element of Daytona and Atlanta’s ‘winter’ event, Vegas could be where the 2015 pecking order begins to emerge. best winter, rather than which team looked in the best shape for Melbourne. Obviously the answer to the latter is Mercedes, and there’s every chance the reigning world champion has more in the tank than it showed on those race runs or soft-tyre laps at Barcelona. So who topped our original ‘best winter’ list? To let you in on a little secret, Mercedes was third, behind Ferrari (first) and Williams. Does that mean either of those teams is likely to outperform the Silver Arrows next weekend? We doubt it. HOT ON THE WEB THIS WEEK COURTNEY’S GUIDED TOUR OF ADELAIDE DUNBAR/LAT KALISZ/LAT WTCC ARGENTINA - LIVE DURING THE COURSE OF LAST week’s final pre-season Formula 1 test, the AUTOSPORT team was coming up with a ranking judging how we think the teams all stack up heading to Australia. It’s not meant to be a prediction along the lines of “this is what we expect the final order in the constructors’ championship to be” – that would be even harder to predict. But it reflects the here and now. One of the main challenges we came across was deciding how to rank the teams. Initially our list was based on which team had enjoyed the V8 SUPERCARS: ADELAIDE HIGHLIGHTS Motors TV Friday 1340-1650 If you missed the opening round of Australia’s premier tin-top racing series, or needed a bit of sleep last weekend, then fear not – Motors TV is rounding up the entire Clipsal 500 in three-hour highlights packages shown regularly through the week. It was another classic mixture of door-to-door racing and sporadic chaos on the streets of Adelaide, perfectly setting up another year of fire-breathing thrills from the rambunctious V8 pack – though Jamie Whincup already looks hard to beat. THE F1 SHOW Sky Sports F1 Friday 2000-2100 It’s now just a week until the Formula 1 field will be gathering in Melbourne ready to finally begin the 2015 season, and that means Sky’s weekly magazine programme is firing up for the new year. The F1 Show can be a hit-andmiss affair depending on who’s appearing on it, but with plenty of content gathered from testing and huge pre-Melbourne anticipation, this is going to be a good chance to summarise how F1 2015 is shaping up so far with Sky’s line-up of in-house pundits and star guests. SEARCH FOR: GoPro – A lap with James Courtney Holden Racing Team’s James Courtney straps a bunch of cameras to his V8 Commodore for a wild ride around the Adelaide Parklands circuit. This is a man who clearly enjoys his job: “Sounds beautiful on the limiter, doesn’t it…” AUTOSPORT’S TWEETERS Autosport Ben Anderson @autosport @BenAndersonAuto @gazzasportscars Edd Straw Matt Beer Mark Glendenning @eddstrawF1 @mattofautosport @m_glendenning Glenn Freeman Stuart Codling Mitchell Adam @glenn_autosport @CoddersF1 @DrMitchellAdam Marcus Simmons David Evans Henry Hope-Frost @MarcusSimmons54 @davidevansrally @henryhopefrost Jonathan Noble Scott Mitchell Lawrence Barretto @NobleF1 @ScottMitchell89 @lawrobarretto WorldMags.net Gary Watkins MARCH 5 2015 AUTOSPORT.COM 109 109 PHOTO 4/XPB IMAGES the week