April has come to a busy end in the world of motorsport, with World Rally Championship and Formula One rounds last weekend, the latter at Imola in Italy featuring Kiwi racers Liam Lawson and Marcus Armstrong.
Traditionally, though, May has been an even bigger month for global motor racing, with two of the absolute classics of each year — the Indianapolis 500 and Monaco Grand Prix featuring on the schedule.
May 29 is the run date for both events this year, and they will hold special interest for Kiwi fans: the Indy 500 because there are two New Zealanders entered — Scott Dixon and Scott McLauchlan, who are serious contenders for victory — and the Monaco Grand Prix, because as well as the F1 race (sorry, not a Kiwi in sight in that field), the weekend will include a round of the second-tier F2 championship, in which Liam Lawson and Marcus Armstrong are competing.
It is shaping up as a very positive F2 year for both Lawson and Armstrong.
Lawson has been tagged as a potential F1 star for some time.
Though the 20-year old Hawke’s Bay driver had a weekend to forget atImola, he is still strongly positionedat fourth in the 2022F2 championship, having made a cracking start to the series with a win and two more podium finishes in the first three races.
Armstrong, a 21-year-old Cantabrian, has generally looked more like a solid midfield runner in F2 rather than someone moving up the ladder towards afuture in F1. But he lifted his gamelast weekend to win the F2 sprint race at Imola, following on from two fifth placings in the previous 2022rounds.
He now moves to seventh in the series standings.
The F2 season will take a brief break next weekend, while the F1 circus skips across the Atlantic unaccompanied for the inaugural Miami Grand Prix, but will be back in support for F1 when the world championship returns to Europe for the Spanish Grand Prix on May 22, and again for the Monaco Grand Prix the next weekend.
Though the first practice sessions have already run for the Indy 500, Dixon, McLauchlan and their rivals actually have two Indycar road circuit rounds to contest before everything’s up for grabs over 500 miles (804km) atthe famous Indianapolis oval at months’ end.
First up there’s this weekend’s IndyCar round at the Barber Motorsports Park circuit in Alabama, and then mid-May there’s the Indianapolis GP, run on the road course that is largely located on the infield of the oval, but also uses parts of the oval, too.
What else of interest is in the mix for a busy month of motorsport ahead?
Well, there are three Moto GP rounds scheduled for May, starting in Spain this weekend, and then moving on to France and Italy.
The World Rally Championship, meanwhile, heads to Portugal later in the month.
And best not forget Formula E either: Monaco is playing host to international motorsport’s premier all-electric racing category this weekend, ahead of a mid-May round in Berlin.
Kiwi racer Mitch Evans won both races at the previous Formula E round in Rome, and there is a second Kiwi — Nick Cassidy
— contesting the series too.
Closer to home, we have the next V8 Supercar round in Perth this weekend, with the round at Winton in Victoria to follow. The New Zealand Rally Championship also progresses from round one here in Otago earlier this month to round two, the Rally of Whangarei, May 13-15.
Adding that all up quickly, it’s not far off 20 different motor events that I’ll be following between now and the calendar ticking over into the sixth month of the year.
- David Thomson.
Photo by Alex Grimm - Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images
