News in brief, August 2005

(See also page 99)

Germany’s star-studded touring car series, the DTM, is to stage a one-off ‘legends’ event for charity at the Norisring on July17 and four-time World Champion Alain Prost is the first to commit to it. Prost, who has been racing in French GTs this year, will join fellow big names in the contest and tested a Mercedes C-class, Audi A4 DTM and Opel Vectra GTS V8 at Oschersleben.  Each driver will get a turn in each car against the clock. Six more World Champions — Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Niki Lauda, 1990s DTM racer Keke Rosberg, Jody Scheckter and Nigel Mansell — were on the organisers’ wish list of drivers as we went to press. The man responsible for the recruitment of the stars is Domingos Piedade. the former manager of Ayrton Senna.

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We were saddened to hear just before we went to press of the death of Steve Fellows. He became a noted road-rally navigator before joining the staff of Motoring News in 1980. After a spell as rallies editor he left and subsequently set up the Proaction PR company, handling Opel and Marlboro. He had been fighting cancer for some time.