Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Motor Sport Magazine

A DECADE AGO, ON JUNE 12, 2011, ONE of the great, perhaps the greatest, comeback races unfolded on a lakelike Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Jenson Button, who two years earlier had claimed a most unlikely World Championship title for Brawn GP, progressed from 21st after 40 laps to first after 70. But that is only half the story. This was the grand prix that really did have it all: a 24-car grid featuring no fewer than six former and future world champions, red flags, a two-hour rain suspension, five safety cars, punctures, two collisions for the winner and six visits to the pits. In all the race lasted just over four hours. As Jenson remembered later, “It was one of those races that felt like everything was going wrong for the…

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I lived in an almost entirely Alfa-centric world. There were Giulias, Berlinas, Alfettas, ’Suds, one after the other from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s when I left home. There were but few exceptions to this rule – I remember an Escort GT, a Fiat 132 and even a Triumph 2500PI – but these flirtations never lasted. Except one. It was an orange BMW 2002Tii which turned up during a betwixt-Alfetta interlude. My father was a bit shocked by how good it was: faster than the Alfas and more fun too even if it didn’t quite have the charm. Indeed he was so impressed with it he did the logical thing and chopped it in for a 2002 Turbo. Logical, but wrong. The Turbo was…

DAMON HILL ON MICHAEL SCHUMACHER “RIVALRIES START WITH YOUR team-mates. In Formula Ford it was the whole gang of them. I’d come from bike racing and this was the first time I’d been up against people who could pull something else out of the bag. My toughest rival? It has to be Michael Schumacher. At the start of 1994 he hadn’t won a championship, but he’d already been putting the pressure on Ayrton Senna, and then, after Imola, the pressure was turned on me, the full weight of his potency. Nobody was fully aware of just how much brilliance he had in him, though it was pretty obvious by the end of the year when he beat me to the title by one point after the collision in Adelaide. People…

“You have to be able to adapt. To find the limit of every race car” “All-rounders are special. Just because you’re a good road racer doesn’t mean you’ll do well at Indy...” Back in what some like to call the ‘good old days’ racing driver were freelancers, heroes for hire, hustling a grand prix car round Monte Carlo one weekend and taking a Lotus Cortina by the scruff of the neck the next. Unlike today where specialisation is key, to be a racing driver half a generation ago you had – almost by definition – to be an all-rounder. One who could adapt their style to whatever machinery was available. But to dominate across multiple disciplines was still rare. To move between such different cars successfully you needed to have…

THERE’S TALK THAT WE’RE about to experience the euphoria of a second ‘Roaring ’20s’ as we come blinking back into the post-pandemic light. For ‘our world’, the timing of the brakes being released from restrictions couldn’t be better: the Goodwood Festival of Speed, back after a painful year away, should return on July 8-11 and could be the perfect occasion to embrace some semblance of normality – at an event that has a history of transporting us to a state that is anything but. Boy, it’ll be good to be back in the Duke of Richmond’s garden. REMEMBERING SIR STIRLING MOSS Speaking of boys, the FoS will be the first public occasion where motor sport can properly celebrate the wonderful life of The Boy, Sir Stirling Moss, in the wake…

It’s notable that Williams Advanced Engineering technical director Paul McNamara credits F1 for his company’s emergence as an electrification pioneer, given the reticence of grand prix racing to fully commit to battery or fuel cell propulsion. “We’re fortunate to be involved in something that is a societal mission to decarbonise,” he says. “We’re in the right place at the right time. In terms of motor sport, WAE owes itself to the vision of F1 back when they first set up KERS, which forced Williams and others to invest in a lot of capacities on batteries, controllers and motors. It forced us to invest in facilities and engineers to do that, which then moved across to this more electric form of motor sport. Without F1 that serendipity wouldn’t have happened.” The…

LEE GALE, CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Suixtil Nassau knitted polo shirt Available in gold, white, navy and pale blue, the Suixtil polo was worn by a panoply of drivers in the 1950s and ’60s, including Moss and Fangio. I’m a fan of a knitted tee, Fred Perry usually, and this is an absolute beauty. Suixtil dates back to 1930s Buenos Aires and the gentlemen’s outfitter Salomon Rudman. He was a motor sport nut and his wares were a paddock hit. I spoke often about this top before Christmas and not a dicky bird. C’mon kids or the internet gets switched off. £85 DAMIEN SMITH, CONTRIBUTOR Martini Porsche Le Mans 1971 print Royal College of Art graduate Ian Bilbey is a classic car enthusiast and competing member of the Vintage Sports-Car Club who…

IF YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER Tony Pond powering his MG Metro 6R4to a heroic third place in the 1985 Lombard RAC, you’re likely a fan of what mustsurely be one of the most unexpected, exciting and imaginative rally cars in history.Not to mention one of the shortest-lived and largely unsuccessful (in period, at least). In hindsight, the Metro 6R4 appears to have been the result of a bizarre aberration on the part of Austin-Rover’s board who, in 1981, gave Motorsport division boss John Davenport the green light to develop an all-new rally car. Such was the enthusiasm that Williams F1 was tasked with creating it, a job led by chief designer Patrick Head and top engineer John Piper. Between them they came up with a monocoque chassis designed to…

HAVE YOU NOTICED ON ZOOM interviews how often the background is a wall of books? Despite Kindle and its fellows there’s nothing like picking up a real book and flicking through the pages. That’s echoed by Ben Horton of Hortons Books when we talked about collecting books old and new. “The book market is in rude health,” Ben thinks. “Four or five years back people were worried about the arrival of the e-book, but I think that was a fad. People have realised that reading from a screen doesn’t have the same involvement. Sensory things happen with a book. The ship was turning in that direction prior to the pandemic – Mark Zuckerberg once said books were cool and that Christmas there was a sales spike. Another point is that…

If you want a Land Speed Record, get someone official to time you and make sure you play by their rules. Donald Campbell’s 1964 403.10mph, detailed on page 114, was timed by FIA ratified stewards (left). But it had already been surpassed by Craig Breedlove’s Spirit of America at 407.45mph – only that was a jet-powered tricycle, which the FIA didn’t count. America did though, so for a while Breedlove was the fastest man in the world in the US, and Campbell the fastest man in the world everywhere else……

YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A GENIUS to understand why it’s easier to overtake in MotoGP than in Formula 1. But as MotoGP machines become more closely matched – due to improving technology and tighter technical regulations – the act of executing a passing manoeuvre grows more complex. That’s why qualifying and the start are now so crucial in MotoGP. Inevitably this has led to a new technology race, with so-called holeshot devices. The best way to make a MotoGP bike accelerate away from the grid isn’t by adding horsepower or improving traction, it’s by reducing the amount of front-wheel lift. Racing motorcycles are tall and short, so they want to loop over backwards when full torque is applied to the rear wheel. The concept of the first start gadget,…

EVERY TEAM WENT INTO THE Spanish Grand Prix pretty certain it was going to be a one-stop race. It wasn’t. The tyre degradation and wear was more aggressive than had seemed the case during Friday practice and it migrated the race to a two-stop – and that certainly only enhanced Mercedes’ prospects. Lewis Hamilton’s victory over Red Bull’s Max Verstappen drew obvious comparisons with the nearidentical pattern seen in the 2019 Hungarian Grand Prix, with Hamilton pitting from close behind the leader, emerging over 20sec behind but his fresher tyres enabling him to catch and pass Verstappen with a few laps to go. You typically need an advantage of at least 1.2sec per lap to be able to overtake around this track. Hamilton on tyres 18 laps newer than Verstappen’s…

ONE OF THE EVENTS I SO WISH I’d been able to attend was the launch of the Bentley Turbo R in 1986. Not for its sheer power, or sumptuous luxury, but the fact that someone thought it a good idea to present the car to the world’s media at the Hungaroring, then as now one of tightest, least luxobarge-friendly permanent racing facilities ever created. The tyre bill alone must have near enough bankrupted the company. But what’s this? Another implausibly powerful Bentley grand tourer being launched on another F1 circuit? Well, think of it as an amuse-bouche – the proper introduction of this most powerful of current Bentleys will come in the autumn, but I was still intrigued to see how a 2273kg coupé would handle laps of the full…

THE LONG-STANDING CONNECTION between cars and timepieces has produced endless watches with cues from the automobile world. You know the sort of things: wheel-shaped winding rotors, sub-dials that look like brake discs, markings based on speedometers and so on. But the perfectionists at McLaren wanted a more technical, less clichéd approach when they set out to find a watch partner – which is why the marque announced in 2016 that it had made the decision to go with Richard Mille, known for its ‘racing machines for the wrist’. The first watch to emerge from the pairing was the RM50-03, the world’s lightest split-seconds tourbillon, followed by the RM11-03 fly-back chronograph to honour the Senna. Just months after the launch of the Senna, McLaren announced its intention to create the first…

ON TUESDAY MARCH 17, 1987 I was among eight members of the British media flown to Italy by the FIA to witness the signing of the latest Concorde Agreement. It turned out to be a long way to go for lunch. The news value extracted from the day was zero. But as an indicator of the latest state of Formula 1 politics intermingled with Latin chaos, it was priceless. By eschewing the grand surroundings of its headquarters in Place de la Concorde and choosing Maranello, the sport’s governing body was not only paying deference to Enzo Ferrari’s 90th year but also the fact that, as ever, the Old Man was quietly calling the shots. The culinary logic of using the Cavallino restaurant, opposite the main gates of the Ferrari factory,…

The days of drivers racing saloons, GTs and single-seaters all in one afternoon are the preserve of a few historic racing specialists today, but to dismiss the notion that all-rounders still thrive in the contemporary sport would be an oversight. Code switchers are still plentiful, whether they have popped out the other side of Formula 1 or bounced off its glass ceiling having only grazed the underside. When they widen their horizons, they often find new or greater fulfilment as they prolong or establish their place among the privileged few: to live the life of a paid professional racing driver. Lest we forget, you have to be special to earn money to race at any level and it’s this achievement by which racing drivers’ careers should perhaps be judged above…

FROM THE OUTSET COLIN CHAPMAN had no option but to be obsessive about the weight of his cars. He had no access to the exotic twincam engines used by such sportscar-racing rivals as OSCA, Porsche and Maserati. Not until 1957, thanks then to Coventry Climax, could he obtain power units that could match those of his rivals. So to achieve a competitive power-to-weight ratio with hopped-up Ford and MG engines lightness had to be a passion. It remained so throughout Chapman’s career - though not always successfully. Lightness was already high on the agenda in 1951 when Bill Boddy, editor of Motor Sport, visited Chapman to see his “astonishing” Lotus special that was causing such a furore in club-racing circles. “The principle on which Chapman worked,” he reported, “was to…

SUCCESS - BUT IT WAS BITTERSWEET. By 1964 Donald Campbell had battled accident, injury, weather, and increasing public criticism in his fraught quest for the Land Speed Record. He saw it as a feather in Britain’s technological cap, but public interest was waning and it was an increasing struggle. These pictures, from a collection of 93 newly donated to the National Motor Museum’s photo archive, were taken by a team member during the ultimately triumphant attempt when Bluebird CN7 recorded 403.10mph over the measured mile across Lake Eyre, South Australia. But a poor salt surface, a shorter than desired course and tyre problems held back the 4WD machine which had been designed for speeds nearer 500mph. Nevertheless it was a new record, and 200,000 people turned out to watch him…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR CLASSIC Ferraris? If the answer is open-topped with clean lines, zero frills and a stonking Lampredi V12 under the bonnet, then this delightful 340 America from 1952 should fit the bill. But not only is this Vignale-bodied 340 lovely looking, it also has a full and fascinating history having been brought to the US when new by Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti and displayed at the New York Auto Show before being loaded onto a Douglas DC-6 cargo plane and flown to Denver. The car must have caused a sensation, both because of its exotic appearance and the fact that it was the very first Ferrari to arrive in Colorado state, where newly appointed marque representative George Joseph Jr put it up…

1947 CISITALIA D46 MONOPOSTO SOLD BY BONHAMS, £137,000 Piero Dusio’s Cisitalia D46 was developed as an affordable means of entry to a series of competitions intended to revive single-seater racing in Italy and Europe after the war. Designed by Dante Giacosa, it had an advanced spaceframe chassis and was powered by a Fiat 1100cc engine, tuned for reliability and cheap maintenance. In period, this example took part in the Grand Prix de Bern, then stayed in the same ownership for more than 40 years before being bought by the vendor and restored. Although fitted with a race engine, the original also came with the car. 1954 JAGUAR XK120 SOLD BY HISTORICS, £95,200 This XK120 was stripped before a rebuild to ‘fast road’ spec by Jaguar tuner Guy Broad. A big-bore…

GOOD TEAM TO FIA RADIO Broadcasting Toto Wolff complaining to F1 race director Michael Masi about the ‘Bolshoi on wheels’ (see ‘Mazespin’) was a piece of TV genius. Soon we might get even more interesting interactions like Ferrari asking: “Can we turn our engine back up now?” or Christian Horner accidentally mouthing off about Crofty’s commentary. REJUVENATED ‘HONEY BADGER’ Daniel Ricciardo’s comeback drive in Portugal might not have been quite ‘Wattie’ at Detroit ’82, but he still put on a show coming through from 16th to ninth. His Pirelli Preservation Prowess (TM) was on show both there and Spain, where he finished sixth. Monaco next, a Honey Badger speciality. MIXED STRATEGY RACES What contributed so beautifully to an astoundingly not boring Spanish GP was a mix of strategies – to…

REMEMBER THE MERCEDES-BENZ CLS Shooting Brake? A brilliant idea, combining the style of the CLS coupé with the practicality of a conventional estate. Brilliant, that is, in all regards but one: it didn’t sell. So what hope then for this Taycan Shooting Brake – I’m sorry, Cross Turismo? Like the CLS it sits on the same wheelbase as the car from which it’s derived, has no more legroom in the back, but comes instead with a higher roofline and big boot grafted on behind the rear wheels. It is, of course, even heavier than the already startlingly heavy standard Taycan. For myself, however, I wish it well. The Taycan was already the world’s best electric car and the Cross Turismo body adds a load more practicality for an additional 25kg…

CAN YUKI TSUNODA BECOME THE first Japanese driver to score a grand prix victory? That’s certainly the view of his main backers, and if he continues on his planned progression and eventually joins Red Bull Racing, the opportunity to win races will be there. Tsunoda has already made a little bit of history by becoming the first driver born in the 2000s to make it to F1. It’s been far from an easy transition with AlphaTauri - incidents and colourful radio messages have attracted as much attention as his pace - but those who know him well agree that he is a fast learner, and he will get there. “He had a stupid mistake in Imola,” says his number one supporter, Dr Helmut Marko. “Now he is a little bit…

10% off To claim your discount use code FTHRSDAY21 at checkout Code expires June 30 VELASOR PEUGEOT L45 BOX SET The French Grand Prix at Lyon in 1914 was one of the greatest races of all time – a Peugeot vs Mercedes dust up. These L45 slot cars are handmade with moving parts and operable elements. £2300 WATCHES FROM THE BLUE COMPANY It’s time to spruce up the accessories with a classic or sports watch – like the MeisterSinger Bell Hora, left, or Doxa Divingstar. £3490 and £3750. thebluecompanylondon.co.uk F1 BRITISH GP WITH MATCH HOSPITALITY Here’s your chance to see all the action at Silverstone from a VIP alfresco 360-degree rooftop terrace as part of Match Hospitality’s Fusion VIP package. From £510. hospitality. silverstone.co.uk MOTORING LEG-END SOCKS These socks are…

• “If you drink, don’t drive – don’t even putt,” cracked Rat Packer DEAN MARTIN. In 1979, The Cannonball Run star, whose vanity plate was once ‘DRUNKY’, was the first owner of an ASTON MARTIN V8 VOLANTE CONVERTIBLE that’s now on sale ($POA) at AUTOSPORT DESIGNS in New York. That’s amore! • PORSCHE CENTRE PRESTON has become the first location in the country to install ultra high-speed charging points. In just five minutes, the CBX 150kW CHARGER, below, can give a Taycan power for 60 miles – enough to get you to Halifax. “It’s a glimpse into the future of electric motoring,” said centre principal Tom Fox. • A myth-busting mission by the GOVERNMENT, AA and ELECTRIFYING.COM reveals that many of us are still in the dark about EV incentives:…

MOTOR RACING WILL NEVER BE a completely accessible sport, especially in these modern times of high-tech single-make cars populating the junior slopes. But the fact that racing started as, and always will be, a sport for the well-off, didn’t stop people attempting to open the grid up to ‘the man on the street’. And few did that as well as Arthur Mallock and his U2 race cars. Across six decades and 30 iterations, U2s have done more to help draw newcomers into the sport than perhaps any other design, and the wide-ranging specifications and models are still catered for today with U2s of all shapes and sizes still competing in anything from Clubmans to formulae Junior and Ford, and historic sports car competitions. Incredible then, that one basic design could…

WHEN COLIN CHAPMAN pulled the covers off his dainty Lotus 7 at the Earl’s Court Motor Show in 1957, we doubt that even in his wildest dreams he’d have imagined that it would morph into anything like this. At the time you might have laughed at the thought of that humble design which placed fun high above comfort ever turning into such a hardcore road-rocket/track toy as the Caterham Superlight R500 – perhaps the ultimate evolution of the design. Let’s face it, weighing just 506kg, the R500 would have pleased Chapman. No need to ‘add lightness’ here. There was hardly any weight to start with! Okay, the R500 model, of which Caterham assembled 175 between 2008-2014, is a far cry from those early Lotus 7s. But it certainly has the…

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