Autosport Plus

The secrets of oval racing

Often dismissed for being all about bravery and turning left, oval racing suffers more misconceptions than most forms of motorsport. The reality is more sophisticated

Performance

Our experts' guide on how you can become a better racing driver

Running three-wide battling for the lead at Chicagoland Speedway in 2008 with Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves to his inside and Chip Ganassi Racing's Dan Wheldon on his outside, Ryan Briscoe could be forgiven for having a lot on his mind.

But as well as the tiny corrections at the wheel and the barrage of radio traffic from his spotter, the fence post at Turn 3 kept drawing his attention.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.