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WRC Poland, Assen MotoGP, Norisring DTM and more

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WRC - Poland: Martin Prokop is first man to complete the stage, and says the bonnet on his Ford kept lifting up. That's really not ideal on stages this fast.
Grass car

Grass car


Auto GP - Imola: A late entry for the Imola Auto GP grid was revealed in the paddock this afternoon. I'm hedging my bets that Lucas di Grassi and Kurt Busch will be revealed as drivers, says SAM SMITH.
MotoGP - Assen: An incredible confession from Jorge Lorenzo after he struggled to 13th today. He apologised to his team and fans for what he described as his "worst ever" performance, and described it as the opposite of that legendary ride to fifth with a broken collarbone 12 months ago.

He said he simply got spooked in the drizzle during the race and lost all confidence.

Here's the full story.
BES - Paul Ricard: Smith is closing in on Dusseldorp in what will become a battle for third place.
WRC - Poland: Neuville is now the quickest man on the splits, though not by much from Solberg, who is having a bit of a charge.

That might be because Meeke is getting a bit close for eighth, or it good be that the DMACKs on Solberg's Ford are working well in the damp weather we've got now.
BES - Paul Ricard: No change up front as Parente continues to lead. He's not pulling away from Chiyo and the gap between the McLaren and Nissan has been hovering around 1.5s for the best part of the last 20 minutes.
WRC - Poland: The Goldap marathon is underway. Solberg is the quickest of those early in the running order over the opening splits.
BES - Paul Ricard: Leading the GTR category at the moment are newcomers Villorba Corse, with Francois Perrodo at the wheel of the #91 Ferrari 458.
BES - Paul Ricard: Well Sandstroem was in sixth. That was until Leclerc passed him at the final corner.
BES - Paul Ricard: Fifteen minutes completed and the current top six looks like this:

1 Parente - #98 ART McLaren
2 Chiyo - #35 RJ Nissan
3 Dusseldorp - #85 HTP Mercedes
4 Smith - #7 M-Sport Bentley
5 Seefried - #333 GT Corse Ferrari
6 Sandstroem - #26 Sainteloc Audi
BES - Paul Ricard: The closest battle at the moment involves the #84 HTP Mercedes of Buhk and #90 Villorba Ferrari of Andrea Rizzoli. They're fighting over eighth and there's only 0.3s between them.
BES - Paul Ricard: The M-Sport Bentley of Antoine Leclerc moves up to sixth, ahead of Edward Sandstrom. Parente continues to lead and has a 1.437s advantage over Chiyo, while Dusseldorp is third in the #85 HTP Mercedes.
BES - Paul Ricard: Yellow flags are being waved in the third sector after Eric Clement had an argument with the barriers in the #10 TDS Racing BMW.
BES - Paul Ricard: Disaster for the #99 ART McLaren team who trickle down the order after incurring a right rear puncture.
BES - Paul Ricard: First lap completed and Parente leads the way ahead of the #85 HTP Mercedes of Dusseldorp and the #35 RJN Nissan of Katsumasa Chiyo.
BES - Paul Ricard: Parente leads the massive field into Turn 1. Guy Smith is driving like a man possessed in the M-Sport Bentley, who is up to fifth from seventh.
BES - Paul Ricard: Elsewhere, Toyota works driver Nicolas Lapierre is part of the #98 ART McLaren squad this evening. He replaces Alexandre Premat for the next two rounds of the series, teaming up with Gregoire Demoustier and Parente.
BES - Paul Ricard: There's a 42-car strong entry for tonight's race on the French Riviera, with a couple of newcomers in the Gentlemen Trophy category.

Belgian Audi Team WRT has brought an extra Audi R8 LMS in addition to its three regular entries, with Stephan Pourquie, Harry Teneketzian and Gregoire Chaix behind the wheel of the #2 Audi.

The #91 Scuderia Villorba Corse Ferrari 458 Italia is another addition to the category and will be driven by Cedric Mezard and Francois Perrodo, who is a World Endurance Championship regular with ProSpeed Competition.

French GT class winners Duqueine Engineering has entered a Ferrari 458 Italia for their home event. Team owner and driver Gilles Duqueine will race the #350 Ferrari alongside Leonardo Gorini and Paul Lanchere.

And Maximilian Buhk returns to the #84 HTP Motorsport Mercedes at the other end of the grid.


BES - Paul Ricard: Alvaro Parente claimed his second pole position of the season earlier today. Starting alongside the #98 ART McLaren is the #85 HTP Motorsport Mercedes, thanks to Stef Dusseldorp setting the the second fastest time.

There's still plenty of time (15 minutes) for you to read our qualifying report, so click here for a more thorough recap of what happened in that session.
WRC - Poland - SS18 results:

Stage times:


1 Latvala 7m40.1s
2 Ogier +2.7s
3 Mikkelsen +5.9s
4 Neuville +6.8s
5 Hirvonen +8.8s
6 Meeke +10.1s

Leaderboard:

1 Ogier
2 Mikkelsen +26.0s
3 Neuville +2m14.3s
4 Hanninen +2m18.0s
5 Hirvonen +2m22.0s
6 Latvala +2m52.1s.
BES - Paul Ricard: Not long to go until the final three-hour Blancpain Endurance Series race of the season. The remaining two races being the 24 Hours of Spa next month and the Nurburgring 1000km in September
WRC - Poland: With Ogier and Mikkelsen both admitting to cruising in first and second overall, the stage win on Babki goes to Latvala.

Next up, in half an hour, is the return to Goldap.

The 35km stage is where everything went crazy earlier on, with Evans breaking his suspension, Ostberg rolling, Latvala breaking his suspension too and Meeke going off the road. And pretty much everyone who didn't have an incident having to slow up because of someone who did.
WRC - Poland: Latvala is fastest through now, and takes 8s out of the gap to Hirvonen. That brings that gap down to half a minute.

Meeke wasn't so swift but has got to within 2.7s of Solberg in the fight for eighth.
WRC - Poland: Hirvonen is slightly slower than Neuville, but Hanninen - still troubled by that steering oddity - loses 9s to his team-mate and that swaps the Hyundais in the order. Neuville, who was ninth not so many stages ago, is up to third.
WRC - Poland: Neuville is fastest of the first group of cars, and the splits suggest he's going to take another chunk out of team-mate Hanninen's advantage on this one.

He's also reporting a fair amount of rain on the stage. It's poured on the service park this afternoon.
WRC - Poland: Five minutes until the rally resumes with today's second run of the Babki stage.

With the VWs cruising up front, the attention is now on the battle for third, where Hanninen is trying to hold off Hyundai team-mate Neuville and M-Sport man Hirvonen despite a steering worry.

If he can have a good run tonight (and he needs to get a bit of confidence back to do that), Latvala might join this fight before the finish too.

Watch for Meeke regaining another place as well, with Solberg (Henning) very much in his sights in eighth place. Though considering Citroen was on for third and fifth until its disasters on the Goldap stage earlier, a few points won't be huge consolation.
Car park

Car park


USC - Watkins Glen: A view of the car park at the Glen. On the right, the AUTOSPORT editor's car. On the left, not the editor's car. Bit of a contrast.
IndyCar - Houston: Pagenaud vaults up to P1 with a 59.3716s final lap and secures pole for this afternoon. Castroneves will start alongside him on the front row, with Dixon, Filippi, Hinchcliffe and Sato rounding out the top six.
IndyCar - Houston: A minute to go, and the track has come to life. Filippi is on provisional pole.
IndyCar - Houston: Filippi is now on track, and Castroneves is rolling towards the pit exit too. No sign of movement from Dixon, Pagenaud or Hinchcliffe yet. There are just over three minutes remaining.
IndyCar - Houston: Just under six minutes to go, and Sato is the only driver to have posted a time so far.
IndyCar - Houston: It sounds like the Aleshin/Bourdais altercation had something to do with the Russian overtaking Bourdais on the out-lap. Bourdais sounded irritated when interviewed by the pitlane reporter; Aleshin didn't even know that he'd been under investigation.
IndyCar - Houston: Green flag is out for the Fast Six. Sato takes advantage of the clear track and heads straight out to put a lap in the bank.
IndyCar - Houston: Whatever happened between Bourdais and Aleshin, IndyCar has decided not to take action. So there you go.
IndyCar - Houston: The second phase ends, and there are more surprises.

Progressing to the Fast Six: Takuma Sato, James Hinchcliffe, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Luca Filippi, Simon Pagenaud.

Eliminated: Justin Wilson, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Sebastien Bourdais, Mikhail Aleshin, Juan Pablo Montoya, Josef Newgarden.

Incidentally, an incident between Bourdais and Aleshin is under investigation. We didn't see anything on the screens, so we can't tell you much about what might have gone on between those two.
IndyCar - Houston: The last time Power was eliminated this early was Detroit, and on that occasion he went on to win. He's not sure about his chances of repeating the trick this time around:

"It's a more difficult track to come from the back. But you know what IndyCar races are like - anything can happen. We just have to play it smart and see what happens.

We went the wrong way with set-up again. Just have to have a think about it and take it from there."
IndyCar - Houston: Now the commentators are talking about 'Felipe Luca'.
IndyCar - Houston: The second qualifying phase is underway, with the fastest 12 cars from the first two groups now fighting it out for the chance to progress to the Fast Six.
BTCC - Croft: And that's the end of a superb qualifying session, with Turkington taking a fine pole ahead of Plato. Shedden and Neal make it an all-Honda second row, with reigning champion fifth and Rob Collard making it two WSR BMWs in the top six.
BTCC - Croft: Plato improves to 1m23.616s to move to second in his MG.

By: Dan Cross, Matt Beer, Marcus Simmons, Glenn Freeman, Andrew van Leeuwen, Sam Smith, Kevin Turner, David Evans, Mark Glendenning, Charles Bradley, AUTOSPORT staff

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