Steve Davies

World Champion Sebastian Vettel started his Chinese Grand Prix weekend with a gentle drive through a Shanghai car park in a couple of Infiniti road cars.

Aston Martin Racing have revealed a new race car based on the V12 Vantage road car - the Vantage GT3 will be ready for competition in 2012 and will replace the the DBRS9 which has been the mainstay of Aston's GT3 racing programme since 2006.

The celebrations continued well into the evening yesterday, as guests of MINI's WRC Team launch were treated to an exuberant display of hooning by factory drivers Kris Meeke and Dani Sordo.

The new MINI John Cooper Works WRC was officially launched at the MINI Plant in Oxford this morning, to a rousing welcome. The spotlight was initially on Hopkirk and Aaltonen as they drove onto the stage behind the wheel of the legendary Classic Mini Cooper S, then the guests and media representatives were treated to a first look at the MINI John Cooper Works WRC in its final World Championship design.

Today is a big day for MINI, as it officially launches its return to international rallying with the MINI WRC Team. At an event to be held at the MINI plant in Oxford later this morning, guests and rally icons will welcome the brand's return to the sport with all the razmatazz of a Mike Tyson comeback.

It's a measure of just how important the video games industry has become these days, that when Codemasters decided to launch their new DiRT 3 rally game, they were able to join forces with Ford, one of the top-3 global car makers in a marketing partnership that includes the viral sensation, Ken Block.

Exactly 30 years after almost achieving what would have been one of the greatest World Rally Championship victories of all time, Walter Röhrl, his co-driver Christian Geistdörfer and their Porsche 911 SC will be reunited between April 5 – 10, for the 2011 Targa Tasmania, a gruelling road rally held over 2,000km of roads on the island of Tasmania, off the south-east coast of Australia.

This weekend saw the opening three races of the new 2011 Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship season, and fans discovered that in the 5-month hiatus since last season the competition had lost none of its close-fought rivalry, or its thrills and (plenty) of spills.