According to a report on Autosport.com a consortium led by Prodrive boss David Richards has bought luxury car maker Aston Martin from Ford.

Richards has a strong motor-sports pedigree having run sucessful rally teams, been World Rally Champion co-driver and being part of the group that holds the commerical rights for the World Rally Championship series.  Richards has confirmed that Aston Martin will remain committed to motorsport in the next few years. He has been involved with Aston Martin throughout its current sportscar projects, which are overseen by his Prodrive operation. “We’re not going to be running away from sportscar racing with me as chairman of the business,” Richards told autosport.com. “The company has supported us right from the build-up to our involvement in GT racing, so you’ll continue to see us at Le Mans this year with further enthusiasm from our investors.”

 Richards has also spent time in Formula One with both the Benetton (now Renault) and Honda teams. Richard’s own ProDrive organization is set to join the Formula One grid in 2008. So will we see a British Racing Green liveried Aston Martin F1 car next year? Here’s hoping.

According to autosport.com, Grand Prix driver, Heikki Kovalainen and Rally driver, Marcus Gronholm of Finland beat the one-man Team USA to win the Race of Champions Nations Cup in Paris. The Finnish pair won the final 2-1 against Rally and Moto-X star Travis Pastrana, who had to uphold American honour by himself after both NEXTEL Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson and Grand Prix driver Scott Speed were forced out by injury.The American driver had to compete in every heat and took some impressive scalps in the competition, including Gronholm (below), Colin McRae and David Coulthard.

Meanwhile former DTM Champion Sweden’s Mattias Ekstrom staged an upset by defeating home favorite Sebastien Loeb to win the individual Race of Champions

Happy Birthday today to Giancarlo Minardi, (born 9/18/47) founder of F1’s prennial underdog team.

and to road course master, the multi-talented Boris Said, (born 9/18/62).