MOTORSPORT: All-female W Series goes full throttle

There's positive news for Australian women in motor sport.

After weeks of uncertainty, Molly Taylor's future in the Australian Rally Championship has been clarified, while four Australian women road racers are now in Austria trying to gain places in the W Series – the new all-female Formula 3 category starting in Europe this year.

Subaru confirmed this week that it will support Taylor in the ARC for a fourth year.

She won the national rally title in the first year of the association (2016), and has been second and fourth in the series in the two years since.

The one big change this year is that the Production Rally Car-class WRX STi that Sydney-based Taylor will drive with her second-year co-driver Malcolm Read, will be prepared by a different Tasmanian team - Craig Brooks' Orange Motorsport rather than Les Walkden Rallying.

Meanwhile, Chelsea Angelo, Caitlan Wood, Alexandra Whitley and Charlotte Poynting are among about 60 women to be evaluated at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria, this weekend for 18 places in the all-expenses-paid W Series.

They will be assessed on racecraft, fitness, media presentation and their ability at pitching for sponsorship.

The judges include Red Bull Racing's genius designer Adrian Newey and retired 13-time grand prix winner, David Coulthard.

The W Series will use Tatuus T-318 Formula 3 cars with the initial season starting in May. The series will comprise six rounds, supporting DTM (the German touring car championship), at European circuits Hockenheim, Zolder, Misano, Norisring, Assen and Brands Hatch.

Wood, who has been based in Britain for three years, says the start of the W Series is "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for women racers.

"It's giving more women the experience they need to go out and compete in the mainstream formula categories and continue their pathway forward," she said.

The 18 chosen for the debut season could be known as early as Monday.

McLaren Applied Technologies (MAT), sister company of Formula 1's second-most successful team, this week unveiled an extreme concept of how a grand prix car could look in 2050.

Dubbed MCLExtreme, it is a 500km/h rear-wheel-drive electric car powered by a foldable battery moulded to the aerodynamic package.

Shape-shifting active aero, an on-board AI co-pilot and ‘self-healing' tyres are listed among its features.

"We are always looking to innovate to find the solution for tomorrow today," said MAT motorsport director, Rodi Basso.

"In recent years, we have seen concepts and ideas about how a Formula 1 car could look and operate in the future. However, this is the first time anyone has given detailed thought and insight into a viable vision of motorsport in the future.

"Our hope is for this to stimulate debate about how motorsport responds to changes in technology and sports entertainment trends to ensure we can meet the needs of fans in 2050."

As exciting as the concept is, fans of McLaren surely would prefer that, after six years without a grand prix win, it concentrate more on returning to the pointy end of the field in the season starting in Melbourne in mid-March than dreaming about the middle of the century.

Mazda is the pacesetter for the first of this year's endurance racing classics, the 24 Hours of Daytona in the US.

Qualifying lap records were set in all four classes, with one of the Daytona Prototype International (DPI) Mazdas (reworked by Germany's Joest Racing) breaking a 26-year-old record for sports prototypes at the Florida venue where the race is held on a combination of the famous superspeedway and a road course.

British driver Oliver Jarvis (pictured) put the Mazda ahead of Team Penske's two Acura (Honda) prototypes, with another Mazda fourth, followed by five of the previously-dominant Cadillacs and a Nissan, which was 3 seconds off the pace.

Australian James Allen claimed the LMP2 pole by more than half a second for DragonSpeed.

Ryan Briscoe is in the third-fastest GTLM car, a Chip Ganassi Ford GT, and Chaz Mostert the seventh-fastest machine in that class, a BMW M8, in which one of his co-drivers is Alex Zanardi.

The new Porsche 911 GT3 R that Matt Campbell is sharing was 10th fastest of the 23 cars in GTD, one place ahead of the Acura NSX in which Simona De Silverstro is driving.