Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2021 i Motor Sport Magazine

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Valentino Rossi had recently completed his first season of international racing. Between May and October of 1995, the 16-year-old had contested the European 125cc championship, not only failing to win the title but failing to win a single race. The European championships were the final step of the ladder before grand prix racing. Each year the top three finishers in each category were guaranteed a place on the grid in the following year’s world championships. In 1995 Rossi was like most teenage hotshots: riding on natural ability, not thinking too much, making plenty of mistakes and generally just mucking around. “At first it was quite difficult,” recalls his crew chief Mauro Noccioli. “We had to be careful not to put too much pressure on him. He loved…

Bahrain GP Sakhir GP Abu Dhabi GP GEORGE RUSSELL TRAVELLED to the season-ending Middle East triple-header more in hope than in expectation. Williams had provided him with a better car in his 2020 sophomore season than it did for his rookie year, when it invariably wasn’t even able to compete with the next slowest car and his only competition was with his team-mate Robert Kubica. This year he’s at least been able to mix it with the Haas and Alfa Romeo teams – and the feasibility of an over-delivering presence in the Q2 part of the grid is much greater. That and getting his first points on the board have been realistic targets. He’d yet to achieve the latter as we headed into these last three races and that bugged…

THE FIRST ALPINA I DROVE WAS A 3 Series-based like this one, and I broke it. It was 1988 and it was my job to record its acceleration. The problem was that with an optional automatic transmission it was unable to spin the rear wheels. I had the bright idea of revving the engine to 5000rpm with the gearbox in neutral, then wrenching the selector into drive. Remarkably, it tolerated such behaviour twice before there was a bang followed by a cessation of forward progress. It’s probably why I remember the car so well, and I mention it now only because I found it striking how similar the philosophy was behind the car then known as the C2 to that which underpins this brand new B3. Not that you’d know…

DEREK WARWICK, FOLLOWED BY Patrick Tambay, prepares for a boat ride on the Olympic lake at Montreal on 14 June 1986. This unique form of Formula 1 transport was made necessary by the pits and the paddock on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve being half a mile apart, the F1 teams having to make their weekend headquarters in and around boathouses at the end of the lake. It may have been picturesque, but it was hugely inconvenient. Each day, the teams had to move cars and kit back and forth from the open pits, then located at the opposite end of the track to the permanent structure in use today. Rather than relax and enjoy the experience, both drivers had plenty to occupy their thoughts while preparing for post-qualifying debriefs. Warwick and…

WELL, THE CIRCUIT MAY HAVE LOOKED TOO SHORT AND RATHER UNINSPIRING, but my God, what a remarkably eventful race the Sakhir Grand Prix in early December turned out to be. I’ve been a fan of Sergio Perez since his days in British F3 and was so pleased for him. It will be a great shame if he’s not on the grid next year, but it’s impossible not to have enormous sympathy for George Russell. He had victory snatched from him twice after an unforgettable drive. As for Mercedes, I can’t help but feel that a team that has been the gold standard for seven seasons is, temporarily at least, perhaps more deserving of an award that Denis Jenkinson was fond of handing out from time to time – ‘Team Shambles’!…

THIS IS FAR MORE THAN JUST another Grand Prix car. Back in period, ‘The BRM’ was as much part of British national awareness as today’s news of a Covid vaccine. Through the later 1940s, even my mum had heard of ‘The BRM’ – the ‘British Racing Motor’. The relentless publicity promoting it made millions motor racing conscious. It was tipped to win Grands Prix for Britain, smash Johnny Foreigner’s racing stranglehold and build national prestige worldwide… In fact the British Motor Racing Research Trust’s public relations office was probably the most effective department of the entire industrial co-operative building the BRM through 1948-51. Seldom have such an inflated reputation and naive expectations been publicly promoted for an as-yet-unbuilt Grand Prix car… But such massive PR backfired badly upon the organisation…

DURING THESE DAYS OF THE Honda NSX, Subaru Impreza, Toyota Supra and Skyline GT-R, it is quite difficult to believe that there was once a time when Japanese cars really struggled for appeal. But rewind to the early 1960s and the Japanese car market was flooded with boxy, dull and shallow imitations of western models. It wasn’t a great look for an industrious island. The nation’s automakers needed a spark, and it came from Suzuka. In 1963 the first Japanese Grand Prix took place, run as a sports car and GT race over 50 miles, and it was won by Briton Peter Warr aboard his Lotus 23. The field consisted of a mixture of sleek prototypes and European GT cars from Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Jaguar. The event proved…

November: Sakhir, Bahrain Romain Grosjean’s 137mph crash on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix was a scene the modern F1 fan could barely comprehend. Incredibly, the Frenchman’s injuries were minimal December: Sakhir, Bahrain If ever a Red Bull driver needed a spark, it was Alexander Albon. His RB16 lights up during practice, but was firmly shaded by Mercedes debutant George Russell during the race December: Sakhir, Bahrain Racing Point painted Bahrain pink with Sergio Perez’s first Formula 1 victory. The last time a Mexican driver won a GP was Pedro Rodriguez back in 1970 November: Istanbul Park, Turkey Once again Lewis Hamilton was the man to beat, but he proved unstoppable in the wet of Turkey, taking his 10th win of the season, the 94th of his career…

The season finale was the least interesting race of the year, with Verstappen, Bottas and Hamilton holding their grid places throughout. F1 has been coming here since 2009 and every year this is the sort of race which unfolds. There are several factors which makes it so. Tyre deg is the first one. The twists and accelerations of the final sector wildly overheat the rears, which take most of the lap to recover. To prevent getting into a runaway state where the tyre’s surface becomes hotter than the bulk – which is a self-sustaining feedback loop – you have to drive to a set speed. You also cannot attack. It becomes a strategy race. The two interconnected DRS zones up to Turns 8 and 11 are preceded by the hairpin…

IT IS MEANT TO BE ONE OF ‘THOSE’ moments. A landmark in the history of Volkswagen to which only two others can compare: the launch of the Type 1 (aka Beetle) in 1938, and the Golf in 1974. But I just can’t see this new ID.3 in those terms. At least not yet. The ID.3 comes across as a capable new electric car, fluently conceived in the main, genuinely attractive, but no kind of revolution in the way that, say, the BMW i3 was in 2013. The car I drove was one of those annoying first-edition cars that tend to appear at launch to exploit early adopter eagerness. Fully equipped, it would cost worryingly close to £40,000 were it not for the Government’s extant £3000 electric car grant. I’d like…

It chimed with the times and came across as the coolest of David versus Goliath victories – petite four-square Minis seeing off rival makes’ uncool, staid saloons. The Mini’s successes on track and even more famously in rallies waved the Union flag across Europe at the time when Britain was finding its postwar place and London was the grooviest spot on the planet. You can read this work as a history of the Mini’s greatest moments or as a catalogue raisonné of Abingdon’s finest, since it investigates and dissects all the works cars in forensic detail, from the first bog-standard 850s through the various Cooper iterations which steadily eked more and more performance and handling from that tiny power plant. This is not a book to read from start to…

Winter Challenge to Monte Carlo, February 7-11 THE 22ND WINTER CHALLENGE to Monte Carlo takes place in early February and provides a great test for competitors – hopefully with a flurry of snow along the way. A new route for 2021 has been devised to push those entrants who have taken up the challenge to even greater lengths, with tricky but scenic French thoroughfares taking competitors from the city of Troyes, 90 miles south-east of Paris, to the more balmy Monte Carlo. Along the way there are almost 1250 miles of roads and bends, night stages and four tests that comprise a worthy challenge to kick off the 2021 season, with machinery dating from the 1960s onwards giving the event a distinctly classic feel. The first leg of the event…

“I’VE HAD SO MANY GREAT RIVALS BUT the one that lasted the longest was AJ Foyt. We fought really hard through the 1960s and ’70s, never gave an inch, and there were a few scrapes along the way. When I arrived at the top level in Indycars he was already a champion, the one you had to go after, and when I won my first road race he was second, and that didn’t go down too well. That’s natural, I was new on the scene, and a thorn in his side. I regarded him as the supremo on the dirt tracks but then, at the Hoosier Hundred in 1967, it got pretty serious. I beat him on the dirt. That race was a turning point – he’d always been the…

STEVE McQUEEN OR JAMES GARNER? Michael Delaney or Pete Aron? Hilts ‘The Cooler King’ or Hendley ‘The Scrounger’? You’ll have your preference. John Frankenheimer, director of 1966 motor racing blockbuster Grand Prix, certainly had his – and it wasn’t the star who he ended up with. “I still think if we’d had Steve McQueen in that movie it would have been bigger than Jaws,” he said. That might have stung Garner, had he cared – which he probably didn’t. For the horizontally laconic actor immortalised in motor sport as the ‘other’ world champion of that melodramatic alternative 1966 season, Grand Prix was just another job – even if his own interest in cars turned out to be genuine. But for his friend, neighbour and co-star in The Great Escape, and…

Fourteen years in the making, the two-volume book Maserati: The Family Silver by Nigel Trow is the ultimate company history by one of the world’s finest automotive writers. Through his friendship with Maserati archivist Ermanno Cozza, Trow was granted unrestricted access to the Maserati and Orsi family documents and was able to interview many of the company’s chief personnel as well as engineers and drivers who combined to create the legend. The Family Silver is the complete reference point for any fan of the Italian marque. Now you can win one of four great prizes: a copy of the unique Archive Edition; a copy of the handbound Collectors’ Edition; or one of two copies of the two-volume slip-cased Tifosi Edition. 1ST PRIZE Special Motor Sport-themed Archive Edition, worth £12,950 Handcrafted…

FEW INTERESTING COMPETITION CARS had been consigned for sale in early 2021 but the shortage is more than made up for by the fact that one of the most remarkably original Le Mans winners of the past 50 years is set to cross the block at Artcurial Paris in February. The Matra MS670 in which Graham Hill and Henri Pescarolo clinched the 24 Hour race in 1972 was originally to be the star of the official sale at the annual Rétromobile show on February 5, but following the postponement of the event until June (Covid-19, of course) Artcurial has scheduled a stand-alone auction called La Parisienne 2021 for the same date. Lots for the sale are flowing in, but it seems unlikely that any will surpass the Matra in terms…

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MANY OF YOU WILL HAVE heard of Manthey-Racing, the most successful and respected of all private Porsche race teams today, so much so that it is no longer private at all, but majority owned by none other than Porsche itself. It has for a while also produced a suite of upgrades for Porsche’s most exciting road cars, sufficient for its GT2 RS to lap the Nürburgring in 6min 40sec, seven seconds quicker than the standard car and by a distance still the quickest time recorded by a road-legal car. The only problem has been that the upgrades have not been officially available in the UK. Until now. Manthey has just appointed Porsche specialist RPM Technik as its UK agent, so I tried its GT3 RS MR to see if it…

BUGATTI BABY II Ahh, we remember getting ride-on cars when we were kids, but safe to say our moulded plastic Noddy cars were nothing compared to this incredible creation from Bugatti and The Little Car Company. As part of Bugatti’s 110th anniversary celebrations, the sport’s car firm partnered with the Bicester-based company to create a run of limited-edition junior cars. And there’s a story behind them, too. When it was launched in 1924, the Bugatti Type 35 changed the racing landscape, crushing its rivals, winning over 1000 events, and truly putting Ettore Bugatti’s little company on the map thanks to grand prix world championships and Targa Florio success. The car was so popular that Ettore decided to have a miniature replica built for his youngest son, Roland, in 1926. It…

CHOPARD CO-PRESIDENT KARL-Friedrich Scheufele must be one of few car enthusiasts to have competed in every Mille Miglia since his firm became its official sponsor way back in 1988. As it does every year, Chopard created a special Race Edition piece to mark the 2020 rally, and for the first time unveiled a futuristic concept watch inspired by motor sport. A hefty 48mm job with an asymmetrical case made from blackened titanium and fitted with a tourbillon movement, it costs as much as a decent car and isn’t an ‘everyday wearer’. But Chopard’s brand-new Alpine Eagle chronograph certainly is, and there’s a nice story behind it. In 1979, when Scheufele was a 22-year-old apprentice at the family-owned firm, he noticed that the Chopard line-up lacked a sports watch – something…

THE WORLD BECAME VERY strange this year, didn’t it? It was just beginning to go wobbly as F1 prepared to head off to Melbourne in March. For a race that never happened, fans queued up at gates that would never open as the organisers and F1 engaged in a game of stand-off about who exactly would be calling the event off after a confirmed Covid case from within a team - for that call had big financial implications. Those consequences would run far wider and deeper than just that race, of course. Everyone went home and lay low in the dark days of the first wave of the pandemic and the originally scheduled calendar fell like a house of cards. The factory shutdowns were brought forward from summer, redundancies were…

Mk1, sports car, 1958 Designed by Eric Broadley and his cousin Graham, Lola pitched against Lotus, taking class wins at Sebring and the Nürburgring. T210/212, sports car, 1970/71 Jo Bonnier claimed the European 2-litre Championship crown in 1970 with a T210; Ronnie Peterson drove a T212 in ‘71. T800, Indycar, 1984 The car that started Lola’s run of success in IndyCar which included 11 CART/Champ Car titles and almost 200 victories. B2/00, Indycar,2000 Vital car in the Martin Birrane era, as Lola re-established itself as the dominant force in IndyCar. Raced until 2006. T70, sports car, 1965 Penske victory at the 1969 Daytona 24 Hours stands out. In Mk3B form, it’s the perfect historic endurance racer. T332, F5000, 1973 Dominated the single-seater category from 1974-76. Brian Redman won the ‘74…

When Herbert Austin converted his billiard room into a drawing office and tasked a young draughtsman from the ‘works’ to help design a small car, the result was the landmark Austin Seven of 1922. “This little car, which can be run for about a penny a mile, is an ideal car for a woman to use herself, enabling her to do more shopping without fatigue, to visit her friends more frequently and to attend social and recreational functions,” ran the marketing spiel in the innocently non-PC language of the era. What Austin can’t have expected, however, was that the Seven would also become a popular competition car in modified form (kick-starting the racing careers of both Bruce McLaren and Colin Chapman), or that it would still be a stalwart of…

MIXED RESULTS AT THE year-end auctions in the UK and America suggest that the novelty might be wearing off when it comes to online sales, but continued uncertainty surrounding the future of large public gatherings, local lockdowns and tier restrictions means the houses face something of a logistical conundrum when it comes to planning events during the first quarter of 2021. Following the reasonable success of its second Geared Online sale in late October, Gooding & Co will continue with the internet-only format for its Scottsdale auction, which will be open for bidding from January 18-22, with a major item already consigned in the form of a Ferrari 275GTB Long Nose. Meanwhile, the first significant sale in Europe will be Artcurial’s newly-named La Parisienne auction on February 5 that will…

COMPETITION BREEDS SUCCESS. It’s a statement that rings true throughout racing history. And perhaps at no moment was it more relevant than in Germany during the late 1980s. That was an era that gave us tin-top legends such as the BMW M3, the Audi Quattro and this, Mercedes’ answer to both of them – the 190 Evo II. This is not only the car that finally elevated Mercedes to the top of the DTM for the first time, but it’s also the model that cemented its relationship with tuning firm AMG. Without the joint working between Mercedes and AMG on this car, would the Silver Arrows even be in the sport today? Who knows – but the 190 Evo II is the granddaddy of it all, even if it was…