Sportscar news round-up

MG's choice of Lola to build its challenger is obvious, as Lola boss Martin Birrane is also part of the Phoenix consortium that bought MG when the Rover Group was broken up and sold off by BMW at the start of this year. Birrane told Autosport: "It's been my aim since taking over the company [Lola] in 1997 to be involved with a manufacturer. To be in partnership with a marque such as MG is an honour."

The MG racer will be a completely new car, rather than one based on Lola's current B2K/10 or B2K/40 racers, and it's expected to be powered by a twin-turbo 2-litre engine. This will not, however, be a development of the 1.8-litre blown unit used in MG's MGF road car.



Mauro Baldi has admitted that his hopes of winning this year's SportsRacing World Cup have come to an end after being pitched out of last Sunday's round at Donington Park and falling to third place in the overall rankings. Making the most of this trip-up, race winners Christian Pescatori and David Terrien will head to the Nurburgring in a fortnight's time for the first of the remaining three rounds with a lead of 40 points and only 60 points up for grabs.

Baldi's R&M Racing Riley & Scott was knocked off by John Nielsen's Panoz when the drivers were confused by the safety car staying out for a second lap ahead of the rolling start so that two stranded cars could be cleared up. The frontrunners accelerated as they came out of the Goddards hairpin then immediately slowed, causing a concertina effect that saw the Italian dispatched into the barriers by a repentant Nielsen. With Lilian Bryner, Enzo Calderari and Angelo Zadra making the most of several frontrunners falling by the wayside to finish third in their BMS Scuderia Italia Ferrari 333SP behind the Pescatori/Terrien JMB Competition Ferrari and their sister car of Philipp Peter and Marco Zadra, this trio now lies second overall ahead of the unfortunate Baldi and Gary Formato.

Peter Owen and Mark Smithson lead the SR2 class, having extended their advantage over Niklas Loven by winning the class at Donington in their Redman Bright Pilbeam.



French sportscar marque Venturi is set to return to the sportscar racing scene after a change of ownership, with occasional racer Gildo Pallanca Pastor now at the helm after purchasing the company to take it out of administration a month ago.

Racing Venturis have been entered in the Le Mans 24 Hours in the past, but the marque's sporting reputation was earned through its well-supported one-make sportscar series that ran on circuits around Europe in the mid-1990s.

Pallanca Pastor intends to develop a new supercar to be launched at the Geneva Motor Show in early 2002 and then get a racing version of that to the tracks as soon as possible after that.