The Pivot

It’s not a ute, mate. Not even close to the bunch of Hiluxes that were hammered in the old Crump ads for Toyota. Neither is it as weird as the Tesla Cyber thing, which looks like a monkey got loose with a sheetmetal folding machine one evening.  But because electric vehicles have been in the news this past month or so and without passing comment on the ill-conceived and virtue-signalling Kiwi ‘ute tax’ (well not much anyway), let’s acknowledge the work being done to bring EV technology to offroad racing. Far from the shores of Fortress New Zealand the Extreme E series is raced in unique offroad race cars that are full battery EVs.  The unique motorsport event was the brainchild of Spanish businessman Alejandro Agag, who has been involved in Formula One and came up with Formula E, the open-wheel electric-powered circuit racing series. Formula E, of course has our own Mitch Evans racing in the Jaguar team and looking like a title prospect. Extreme E is billed as “the race for the pl

After an epic battle in the first Formula 2 sprint race at Silverstone, Marcus Armstrong has taken a podium finish in the second, fighting off all rivals to defend his position throughout the 123.7 km race. In race one, an early spin by championship leader Guanyu Zhou brought out the safety car and compressed the field. Armstrong had surged from the seventh row at the green light to be in the top four. An intense battle over the following laps left the outcome undecided and a second incident on lap 12 once more bunched the field, leaving Armstrong inside the top ten but locked in a three way battle for sixth as the race resumed two laps later. He crossed the line in ninth place, which put him on the front row in the partial-reverse second sprint race on Saturday afternoon. Then in the second sprint – distance race the top three of Richard Verschoor, Armstrong and Dan Ticktum held their positions off the start line while the field jostled for the minor points-bearing positions

Back to real race circuits...fantastic! The cut and thrust of F2 street racing left Kiwis Liam Lawson and Marcus Armstrong adrift as the championship battle develops but both are on the fightback trail. At a ‘difficult’ Azerbaijan round of the FIA Formula 2 championship Armstrong had his best qualifying performance of the season and took much-needed points in the first race, while Lawson was put into the wall by Australian Oscar Piastri. It was Armstrong’s turn in the second race as he hit the barriers during a battle for fourth; Lawson came back from a start position of 20th to finish seventh. Then in the final race, Dan Ticktum, Theo Pourchaire and Armstrong tangled at turn 3, forcing Pourchaire into the escape lane and knocking Armstrong out of the second race in a row. Ticktum copped a ten second penalty for the incident. Lawson had started from pole but in the cut and thrust of repeated safety car periods finished sixth. Now, Marcus Armstrong is looking forward to a return to the