Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Motor Sport Magazine

IT’S A TRUISM THAT THE TOUGHER times become, the more many of us take refuge in the comfort of the past. As one who can hardly bear to watch such sporting contests as Six Nations rugby or an England test match, or indeed the America’s Cup sailing live – because I don’t handle tension too well – yet who will avidly devour the replay once I know the (too often awful) outcome, I have much sympathy with this mindset. It’s always convenient to consider bygone history in 10-year chunks. This year the motor racing world will be looking back in particular to 1961 – the year of the then brand-new 1½-litre Formula 1, so dominated by the ‘Sharknose’ Ferraris – but against that background it’s quite interesting to leap forward…

THIS SHORT-WHEELBASE 90 model is the Land Rover Defender you really should not buy. It has very little luggage space, it’s hard to get in the back, it’s not significantly lighter than the 110 and the cheapest versions of each are priced just £1200 apart. This is the fashion victim’s Defender, the one you should avoid like a week-old pint of prawns. It is expensive, it is impractical and if that shorter wheelbase really does confer any additional off-road ability it will be in conditions so extreme that barely anyone would dare to venture there in over £50k’s worth of new car. And yet... I want it. I love the way it looks, the fact it’s not just another hulking great SUV, its iconoclasm, its stance and, ashamed as I…

WHETHER THE 300SL is ‘the car of the century’ is debatable – where do Mini, VW Beetle, or Model T stand? – but it does have a very special place. Clever engineering, terrific performance, unmistakable looks and its then-unique gullwing doors mean everybody knows what it is, and the fact that variants of the engine also powered sports cars and grand prix cars to victory marks it as being pretty special. So are our authors: Kleissl is a devotee and restorer, while Niemann once ran the Mercedes-Benz archive, and they offer an immense amount of information and detail. But it’s not all nuts and bolts: there are histories of the triumvirate who made the car happen, of drivers, and lesser-known car variants – the SLS, a coupé with a huge…

Monaco fact file 6 weeks to construct grandstands and barriers for the weekend 13 miles of barriers used in total for the Monaco GP, including 0.6 miles of Tecpro barrier 20,000 m2 of fencing used around the circuit 800 fire extinguishers on site during a race weekend 3 weeks to take it all back down again Records MOST PODIUMS Eight Ayrton Senna MOST FASTEST LAPS Five Michael Schumacher BEST WIN RATIO 60% Ayrton Senna BEST AVG. FINISH 3.8 Ayrton Senna LOWEST START TO WIN 14th Olivier Panis (1996)…

SOME ARE OLDER, MANY ARE FASTER, but if you were to ask me to name the greatest version of the world’s greatest sports car, I would name this car, the 3-litre version of the Porsche 911 RSR. Why? Because it is the ultimate naturally aspirated 911 based on the original 911 design. It represented the final point on its journey as a racing car before the purity of its design had to be compromised to go any faster. In this case, compromised by a turbocharger. It is true that forced induction provided the RSR with a whole new lease of life, and also spawned cars that would pass into racing legend – the Le Mans-winning 935 among them – but while these brutal machines were quicker over a lap, were…

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF Stirling Moss racing on a home circuit, and the chances are you will be imagining him at Aintree, where he won the British Grand Prix in 1955 and 1957, or at Goodwood, where he raced a 500cc machine at the circuit’s inaugural meeting in 1948 and went on to win the Tourist Trophy at the circuit four times, and where a still-unexplained crash on Easter Monday 1962 ended his professional career. Silverstone is unlikely to be the setting that most readily springs to mind. And yet, over the 15 seasons of his career as a professional racing driver, Moss started 48 races at Silverstone, winning 22 of them. The fast sweeps of the converted bomber base in Northamptonshire turned out to be a fine…

• Deposed Libyan dictator COLONEL GADDAFI had his detractors but his appreciation of rare motors was exemplary. Before his regime was toppled, he ordered a MAYBACH 57S XENATAC COUPÉ but never got his hands on the heated steering wheel. It’s on sale at AUTO LEITNER in Holland for £830,000. • Aston Martin new boy SEBASTIAN VETTEL has put his F1 woes behind him by slimming down his car collection. His sell-off included five Ferraris. TOM HARTLEY JNR dispatched a 1996 F50, a 2004 ENZO, a 2015 458 SPECIALE, a LAFERRARI, and F12TDF – both from 2016 – in just three days. • Surrey performance car specialist ROMANS INTERNATIONAL hasn’t let a worldwide pandemic thwart its plans. it is almost doubling its forecourt size after buying the Ford site next door.…

IT SEEMS STRANGE TO CALL ANY OF Mazda’s RX cars a rarity, but the RX-7 FD - the daddy of them all – is fast becoming a prized specimen, with prices beginning to match what Mazda always believed it could, albeit some 30 years too late. OK, so the RX-7 as a general model isn’t all that rare. Mazda had been building it in some shape or form since 1978 and produced over 800,000 in total, with the bulk sold domestically in Japan and Asia. However, take a gander at how many RX-7s are in the UK and you’ll find there were only around 500 on UK roads as of 2020, making the European spec RX-7 a far rarer sight than most Ferraris. Despite being a fantastic piece of design,…

A lunch with Stirling Moss 60 years ago launched the career of one of Fleet Street’s most celebrated photographers. According to Elizabeth Ward, the wife of Michael Ward, her husband’s passion for cars led him to ask Stirling for a meeting. The driver agreed and encouraged the young Ward to pursue his passion, even lending him his own camera and inviting him to document his upcoming race. We publish those images on page 104. Some of Ward’s work is part of the National Portrait Gallery collection.…

IF THERE IS A CAR THAT BETTER illustrates all that is wrong with the ‘crossover’ class of car, it is this new Puma ST, despite the fact that it is head, shoulders, knees and toes better than anything in that category that can be bought for similar money. But here is a car that is based on the Ford Fiesta ST yet priced uncomfortably close to the Focus ST. So it has the Fiesta’s 1.5-litre engine with 197bhp, not the 276bhp 2.3-litre unit in the Focus. It has the Fiesta’s cheap torsion beam rear axle, not the sophisticated multi-link set up of the Focus. Of the three it is the slowest and because of its height and weight it also has the least impressive handling. There’s also the question of…

British Touring Car Championship – Rounds 1, 2 & 3, Thruxton, Hampshire, May 8-9 DESPITE TOCA’S HOPES AND efforts, the beginning of the 2021 British Touring Car Championship season will take place behind closed doors. Thruxton showed its potential last year to shake things up after Colin Turkington’s lead over Ash Sutton evaporated by the time rounds 13, 14 and 15 were settled, and it looks like the 2021 BTCC season could be even more dramatic than the last. Flash is back and racing with Team Dynamics. Gordon Shedden makes his return after several years away but is expecting a fight right out of the gate. “It looks mega competitive, but my fight and determination is as high as it’s ever been, so I’ll be giving it my all,” Shedden…

“YOU MIGHT EXPECT ME TO choose Mika Häkkinen. We fought each other hard for the GM-Lotus European championships in 1988, but I’m going for David Brabham. Our paths crossed early, and late, in my career and I’ve always thought his talent has never been given the recognition it truly deserves. We fought hammer and tongs for the British F3 championship in 1989 and then we came up against each other again in sports cars. I was at Audi, he was at Panoz, and later at Peugeot. Racing against Brabs, there were some titanic battles. At Silverstone in ’89, the British GP F3 support race, I’d been out for a couple of races after an accident when the roll hoop came off and I smacked my head, so I’d had some…

Niki Lauda Winner in 1975 & 1976 SEVEN DRIVERS SHARE LAUDA’S RECORD of two Monaco GP victories – and eight have conquered the principality’s streets more frequently still. In the Austrian’s case, however, the greatest significance is not so much the races he did win as one he didn’t. Lauda scored back-to-back successes in the mid-1970s, the first en route to the world title and the second ahead of the dramatic summer in which he recovered from being read the last rites to sitting on the grid at Monza weeks later. In the first of those, he set a scorching pole position time, described by Denis Jenkinson (Motor Sport, June 1975): “Lauda went out and did a shattering 1min 26.40sec, which rocked everyone on their heels. It was as if…

“TO INNOVATE YOU MUST FIRST imaginate” was an unusually constructed but typically to-the-point Colin Chapman saying. One of his great rivals over many years was the American racing driver, entrepreneur, team principal and similarly self-motivating Roger Penske. As a well-wired driver of his own cars, Penske had imagined an innovative, lightweight and effective car which would comply with contemporary 1962 regulations in US West Coast professional racing, but which would pack a winning performance advantage. The result was his centre-seated Cooper-Climax Zerex Special – based upon a Formula 1 Cooper T53 and so named after the antifreeze being marketed by the chemical company DuPont de Nemours that the Clevelander had skilfully massaged into sponsoring his racing. Penske had already shown he could run with the best even before he appeared…

IF YOU HAVE REGRETS ABOUT FAILING TO tackle a project during lockdown and are now fretting about having nothing to drive when we get the green light to return to the cut and thrust of historic rallying, this competition-ready Sunbeam Rapier could well be worth a bid. The Rapier was Rootes Group’s racy coupé that first appeared in 1955 having been inspired by American Studebakers. The first versions had unsporting column gear shifts, but that didn’t stop British rally driver and Rootes Group dealer Peter Harper taking one to a respectable fifth place in the 1958 Monte Carlo Rally. Knowledge gained from such competition led to improvements on the Series II Rapier (launched the same year) that included a floorchange transmission, bigger front brakes, more precise steering and, best of…

While many businesses have been crippled by the pandemic, those which can trade online have been the lucky ones. Even a high-end specialist in automobilia with a smart shop in London’s St James’s can surf the wave, as Simon Khachadourian of Pullman Gallery told me recently. “We can’t have visitors to the shop any more,” he says, “so we’ve cranked up our online presence, re-done our website, and we produce our digital magazine more frequently now, which is a real lifeline.” If you haven’t seen the Pullman magazine it’s worth a look via their website. We’re not talking old petrol cans; the firm specialises in memorabilia of the highest quality. Apart from the smoking requisites, militaria and aviation objects, the car offerings may cover original artwork by Crosby and Gamy,…

SEND US YOUR IMAGES If you have any images that might be suitable for You Were There, send them to: Motor Sport, 18-20 Rosemont Road, London, NW3 6NE, or email: editorial@motorsport magazine.co.uk. Hi-res digital images preferred. Original images sent at owner’s own risk. We can’t return.…

SLIDING BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A new BMW M3 is always a moment to savour. There’s something about that letter and number that still captivates, even after all this time and series of cars, some markedly better than others. An M3, any M3, is the heart of BMW’s high-performance division and should always be a special thing. Do not be fooled by ‘Competition’ tacked onto the end of this one’s name into thinking it’s some kind of derivative of an extant model. As you can see from its toothsome smile, this is a new M3, and while Competition does indeed mean it’s a fast model, the standard M3 is not coming to the UK. What is coming this summer is the first ever four-wheel-drive M3 and then, at the end…

CAMERAS AND BOOM MICS CIRCLE their prey in Styria: Daniel Ricciardo receives an icy wave from his jilted Renault team boss, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko guffaw to themselves in a corner while Günther Steiner cracks his knuckles, preparing to smash in yet another newly repaired Haas motorhome door. The third instalment of Drive to Survive, the Netflix series that has introduced F1 to a whole new audience, has arrived. With a less contrived narrative, better-integrated action shots and sound effects inflected with a little more subtlety, it also appears to have gone up a gear. Made by Box to Box Films, the documentary is as good as some of us will get to a paddock pass, going behind the scenes to show the top level of motor sport apparently…

BRITISH WATCH BRAND BREMONT formed a partnership with Jaguar more than a decade ago when it made a bespoke clock for the C-X75 concept car. It followed that four years later with gold watches to complement the continuation Special GT E-types built by Jaguar Classic, then produced a range named after the Mark I and Mark II saloons (and added a MKIII for good measure). So when it was announced two years ago that Jaguar Classic would produce 25 continuation D-type racers to bring the number built to a round 100, it was only right that there should be another Bremont special – this time a run of 300 chronographs with dials in the blue livery of the Ecurie Ecosse Le Mans winners of 1956 and ’57. You won’t be…

MONACO GRAND PRIX, 1995 AND A KEY MOMENT in my career as a commentator. Not only was it the first time that I walked the streets and absorbed the sheer complexity of the place, but it was also the first time I shared a commentary box with Murray Walker. We weren’t actually working together; the open-plan style of the booths above the grandstand on the start/finish straight meant we were encapsulated in a large Portakabin with commentators from all over the world separated by short Perspex screens. Murray was teamed up with Jonathan Palmer for the BBC coverage overseen by producer Mark Wilkin while I was sharing the Eurosport TV space with John Watson. It felt so bizarre; to look across and see the man whose every word I had…

HAMILTON. SAINZ. ANDRETTI. Loeb. Rosberg. Ganassi. Button. Even before a wheel had turned in anger, Extreme E was already infused with a sumptuous motor sport pedigree. And while the notion of an electric SUV racing in remote locations might be anathema to anyone who thinks a racing car can look only like a Maserati 250F or a Brabham BT44, please bear with us. Long before it had a name, this concept first fermented in the mind of Gil de Ferran, Indianapolis 500 winner, twice a champion in the now-defunct US-based CART/PPG series and a diehard petrolhead. “I was just sitting at home,” he says, “wondering what motor sport could do for society, how it could combine an important message with a bit of entertainment and the whole thing started to…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA AFTER ITS WAR-ENFORCED hiatus, motor racing was well and truly back on the agenda by the late 1940s - not least thanks to the Cooper Car Company set up by Charles Cooper and his son John at the family’s small garage business in Surbiton, Surrey. Cooper Sr had already built a couple of specials but it was the development of the Cooper 500 Formula 3 car in 1947 that put his name well and truly on the motor sport map. Since the Coopers had decided to base the car around a 500cc motorcycle engine, it seemed logical to mount it in the back where it was best placed to drive the rear wheels. The configuration established itself as the cars began to dominate in hillclimbs and…

2013 LAND ROVER DEFENDER 90 HARDTOP TD ‘BOWLER CHALLENGE’ SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S FOR £30,620 This was the first Defender built for the Bowler Challenge one-make off-road series organised by Land Rover and Bowler. Chassis R01 was used as a development and publicity vehicle before being driven in events such as the 2016 Scottish Borders Hill Rally and the 2018 Hill Rally Championship. A Stage Two engine tune gave it 195bhp and it benefited from brake and suspension upgrades. It had covered fewer than 15,000 miles from new and was among seven Bowler Land Rovers sold by the firm’s former director, Richard Hayward. 1955 STUDEBAKER COMMANDER SOLD BY BONHAMS FOR £17,730 Recently rebuilt as a replica of the car driven to victory in the 2007 Carrera Panamericana. It runs a…

SOMETIMES BIGGER DOESN’T MEAN better. That’s the lesson ultimately learned with the Jaguar XJR-11. Tom Walkinshaw’s recipe for sports car success was simple. Take world-class designers, put together an exceptional chassis and chuck a 7-litre V12 at the heart of it. However, just after leading Jaguar back to the top step at Le Mans for the first time in over 30 years with the XJR-9LM, a sudden realisation came to Walkinshaw. The recipe was no longer working. A glance down the World Sportscar Championship entry list told you why. Mercedes had a 5-litre turbo. Nissan a 3.5-litre turbo. Porsche a 3-litre turbo. Turbo, turbo, turbo, each one significantly smaller, lighter and nimbler than the Jag’s hulking naturally aspirated V12. While the under-stressed V12 still rang true for Le Mans, in…