Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Motor Sport Magazine

THE BRISTOL BRITANNIA XM496 Preservation Society is appealing for volunteers to help save the sole surviving RAF Bristol Britannia long-range transport aircraft. Of 85 Britannias built, 23 were ordered by the RAF and delivered in 1959-60. Celestial names such as Arcturus, Sirius and Vega were given to each of the heavy lifters. XM496 Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) has been based at Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire – the former RAF Kemble – since its retirement in 1997. “We seek to recruit engineering and non-engineering volunteers to train up and eventually replace the original volunteers who have made preservation possible since 496 was saved from being scrapped,” said group PR committee member Brian Weatherly. “Jim Brown is the lead engineer. He started his association with the Britannia as a ground…

AT SILVERSTONE, AS SOON AS LEWIS Hamilton had a) lost the lead to Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari as his momentum was checked by his collision with Max Verstappen and b) incurred a 10sec penalty for the incident (to be taken at the tyre stop), his race strategy was largely predefined. With Hamilton unable to pass Leclerc on the restart, and with Leclerc setting a pace quicker than the cars Hamilton was trying to clear, Mercedes needed the Ferrari to stay out there leading, with Hamilton just following. The longer they could do that, the more time they’d pull out on the pack and therefore the fewer places Hamilton would lose when he took his 10sec penalty in the pits. Leclerc wasn’t the priority at this point – how many cars might…

IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE MERCEDES announced the existence of this second-generation A45 S but now it’s found its way over here its 416bhp 2-litre engine still offers the highest specific output of any four cylinder engine. As a result and once hooked up to a four-wheel-drive system, the car is the only production hatchback of which I am aware that can accelerate from rest to 62mph in fewer than four seconds. More impressive is the way it does it: there’s no peakiness and actually quite an invigorating growl as it slings you across the countryside. It reminded me of those ridiculous ‘FQ’ Mitsubishi Evos but without the terrible turbo lag. While the engine grabs all the headlines, just like the V8 Defender reviewed on the previous page it’s actually…

DANIEL CABART ALREADY HAS an impressive track record with Delage – in 2017 he was awarded the RAC Specialist Book of the Year for his volume on the marque’s 192627 grand prix successes, so his scholarly thoroughness is not in doubt. This wider-ranging book on the company’s competition efforts covers the four years before that, including that supremely delicate 2-litre V12, the 2CLV. It’s daunting in size, but Cabart and co-author Sébastien Faurès Fustel de Coulanges have added a note at the start saying there’s a conclusion at the end you can consult as a summary. How very thoughtful of them. The book sets out with a short history and tales of the signifiicant fiigures, devoting a good deal of time naturally to René Thomas, who was involved in the…

British Grand Prix – MotoGP, August 27-29 THE BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND AT the end of August is a busy one with Silverstone hosting Round 12 of the 2021 MotoGP season. Suzuki looks as though it might finally have a foothold in the championship with the introduction of its newest update while Ducati is riding high following the Austria double-header suited to its Desmosedici. Championship leader Fabio Quartararo still holds a comfortable cushion over his rivals in the riders’ standings, but the Yamaha man still has a long road ahead until all others are mathematically out of contention for the crown. Though he was victorious at Assen in the Dutch TT prior to the summer break, Quartararo hasn’t taken pole position since the Catalan Grand Prix in Barcelona back in June,…

CHAMPAGNE WAS POURED OVER the nose according to Porsche tradition and the car the world was expecting to take the marque back to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2000 edged onto the Weissach test track. Many of those at the shakedown – certainly drivers Bob Wollek and Allan McNish – were not aware that it had already been decreed that this would be the final run for the car as well as the first. And so a machine dubbed the LMP2000 joined the litany of unraced cars strewn through motor sport history. Some were simply not meant to be. Which was the case for the LMP2000. It wasn’t so much axed as never given the go-ahead. The same went for the Toyota TF110 Formula 1 car, while others were…

PHIL HILL, who in September 1961 became America’s first Formula 1 world drivers’ champion, began his climb to the top 11 years earlier with his maiden significant victory. That happened at Pebble Beach near Monterey, California, when he forced his own Jaguar XK120 from the back to the front with a drive that commanded national attention. In his first actual road race meeting. Fifty-eight years later his life drew to a close at the same seaside locale. During his professional career Hill won the Le Mans 24 Hours three times, the Sebring 12 Hours three times, the Nürburgring 1000Kms and Brands Hatch 6 Hours endurance races, plus one victory in Can-Am racing (also at Monterey). He also set a Land Speed Record at Bonneville in 1959. Yet for all his…

The silence, as they say, is deafening. Blinding artificial light bounces off gleaming bodywork as drivers sit motionless in their cars, while four Porsche pitcrew members stand stock still, directing what seems for a period like absent stares towards blinking screens. Suddenly the team radio crackles into life and the drivers robotically reply, before gliding out into the pitlane in their electric machines. It feels like being inside an ‘80s sci-fi movie. But this is London 2021 and a Formula E race. Motor Sport has found itself at the back of the Porsche Formula E pit garage, within the steel cathedral that is the Exhibition Centre for London (ExCeL) for the first ePrix race held in the UK for five years – and then another one, as this weekend is…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA IF YOU’VE ALWAYS FANCIED AN ULTRA-high-performance version of Porsche’s legendary air-cooled swan-song, the 993, German dealer Jan B Lühn might leave you spoiled for choice with this remarkable quartet of examples which he’s selling on behalf of a die-hard enthusiast who spent five years seeking out the best of the best. Not content with the regular coupé, cabriolet or Targa iterations of the perfectly proportioned 993, he went on the hunt for the beefed-up RS and GT2 varieties in both road-legal and track-only forms – and the result is the so-called Leichtbau Collection (for ‘lightweight’) that you see here. The most ‘pedestrian’ is a late 1995 RS model with the highly desirable M003 option code, which means it has Clubsport equipment. Only 217 of these cars…

2014 REALM HERITAGE C-TYPE SOLD BY H&H, £67,500 It may be ‘just’ a replica, but the new owner of this Realm C-type certainly shouldn’t be embarrassed by that. The kits supplied by Realm Engineering are of excellent quality, but it was the attention to detail which made this one so special. Created in homage to endurance racer Tommy Wisdom’s works-supported C-type, it featured a 4.2-litre engine with triple Weber carburettors to give an output of almost 250bhp. Completed in 2014, it had covered just 4,500 miles and remained virtually ‘as new’. Had the body been made from aluminium rather than GRP it might have made double the money. 1950s FERRARI DINO 246/60 SOLD BY BONHAMS, £967,000 This F1 car wasn’t quite what it seemed. It was sent for scrap from…

The case of the BMW M1 is an interesting one. Technically it was a fleeting diversion from the norm, birthed out of the desire to beat Porsche at its own game, built in small numbers and only active for a few years. It’s flash-in-the-pan stuff. But what a few years they were. It was nowhere near the commercial success the M3 was/still is, and not as successful on track as the 3.0 CSL (the first M car), yet the M1 arguably left a bigger impression on the company as a whole than any other model. The story began in the mid-1970s when BMW Motorsport director Jochen Neerpasch spotted an opportunity. At the time, Porsche was cleaning up in sports car racing with its 935, both in the hands of the…

Formula E returned to London this summer but ExCeL presented surface problems due to its indoor section. A polished concrete slab offered little grip so it was left to London-based track designer Simon Gibbons to fi nd a solution. “We took off 2½mm of the surface, put down an agent that bonded to the concrete and distributed emery, which sank into this adhesive,” says race director Oli McCrudden. “Then we had a polymer coating over the top.” As we found, it felt like sandpaper and had more grip than outside. For our ePrix report go to page 114. Motor Sport (ISSN No: 0027-2019, USPS No: 021-661) is published monthly by Motor Sport Magazine GBR and distributed in the USA by Asendia USA, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals…

JENSON BUTTON HAS DIVERSIFIEDHIS POST-F1 career by forming part of a consortium dedicated to bringing back one of Britain’s coolest 1960s coachbuilders – Radford. Button has got together with TV presenter Ant Anstead, car designer Mark Stubbs and business advisor Roger Behle to bring back the famous name, with the firm’s first project being the Lotus 62-2 (based on the 1960s Lotus 62 sports racer), which was recently unveiled during the Quail Lodge show at Monterey Car Week. Only 62 cars will be made in total, with just 12 in the more powerful ‘Gold Leaf’ specification. Prices…? Probably best not to ask. Radford was founded in 1948 by Harold Radford and built its name creating bespoke Bentley and Rolls-Royce offerings. Among its designs were the Bentley Countryman and the fibreglass…

IS FORMULA E BEGINNING TO LOSE its shine? After early success in attracting big name brands, many manufacturers have now formed a disorderly queue to leave the electric single-seater series. First up for the exit is Audi, which gave notice of its withdrawal ahead of the recent season finale in Germany. It will instead pour the electrical know-how gained from FE into its new all-electric Dakar project, plus its return to Le Mans with an LMDh programme from 2022. Almost as soon as Audi’s shockwave had subsided, BMW followed suit, claiming it would end its involvement to better focus on building and developing electric road cars. It also happens to have an LMDh project on the go, aimed at 2023. And now Mercedes – fresh from winning both the drivers’…

The car-damaging incidents at the two successive rounds of the Formula 1 championship, Silverstone and the Hungaroring, put damage costs very much in the news in this era of F1 cost caps. Any money spent on damage repairs is money not spent on improving the car. For many teams, this has always been the case. But in the past accident damage made no dent on the development programmes for the top teams. That’s no longer the case and, as such, it’s become a controversy. Red Bull was particularly hard hit, with Verstappen’s 5g impact with the Copse Corner barriers at Silverstone – after tangling with Lewis Hamilton – costing what team principal Christian Horner reckons was £1.3m-worth of damage (inset, above right). The team then suffered a further heavy damage…

WITHOUT WISHING TO spoil your reading pleasure, it is fair to say that the two other road cars that I’ve reviewed this month are both machines you expect to be all about the engine until you drive them, whereupon you realise almost immediately your attention actually deserves to be elsewhere. And because this Maserati Levante comes sporting an engine designed and built by Ferrari for use in its Roma coupé, you expect it’s likely to play a pretty big role in proceedings too. In the event it’s like going to a gig by an understated acoustic folk band called Saving Grace and discovering its lead singer is Robert Plant. The engine is this car’s saviour and, looks aside, the only reason anyone might consider spending so much on what is…

WITH ITS AGGRESSIVE nose the Breadvan Ferrari is usually seen as a quasi-GTO, but as author Richard Heseltine explains in this book, it started life as a plain 250GT but was upgraded specifically in order to beat those ‘ordinary’ GTOs. As a new machine it was originally supplied to Belgian grand prix and sports car driver Olivier Gendebien, but as early as 1962 it was transformed, losing weight and gaining its unique estate-car shape and pointed nose thanks to Count Volpi and his Scuderia Serenissima. The crucial backstory, as Richard explains, is that Volpi was involved with the abortive 1961 ATS effort which stole away key figures from Ferrari, so Enzo refused to sell him the two GTOs he wanted. The irony is that although a GTO is still seen…

A lthough Land Rover’s ‘New’ Defender seems to be gaining some serious traction, demand for original 90 and 110 models shows no sign of waning – in fact, it seems that many ‘Landy’ enthusiasts would rather have a ‘new old one’ than a ‘new new one’. As a result Somerset-based Arkonik is doing a roaring trade selling its meticulously restored and upgraded 1980s and ‘90s versions in the UK after almost a decade of building them primarily for the North American market, to which it has shipped around 300. Arkonik was founded in 2007 by engineer Andy Hayes who, after being hospitalised for two months due to a motorcycle accident, recuperated by restoring a beaten-up 1983 110 and driving it around Europe. He built a second on returning and, after…

I MUST HAVE ATTENDED HUNDREDS OF press conferences across the years, but nothing compared to this one on Friday, September 4, 1987. The scene is the garden of St Georges Premier, a restaurant made even more desirable by its setting, deep within the park at Monza. The location was chosen because it was neutral ground, away from the Formula 1 paddock. Our host, the Honda Motor Company, did not wish to insult Williams Grand Prix Engineering further by making public a decision to terminate the supply of engines. Frank Williams knew all about it, of course, but didn’t need reminding of how Honda planned to sever this technical collaboration one year early. It had been a successful relationship in terms of performance but not, in Honda’s view, when it came…

IS THERE A UK MOTOR SPORT HAPPENING more hotly anticipated this year than Goodwood’s jewel, the Revival Meeting? The Festival of Speed was special, as will be the Members’ Meeting in October. The sun-drenched British Grand Prix is one that will never be forgotten, thanks largely to the antics of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, while fans have also flocked back to Silverstone Classic, British Touring Car Championship rounds, British Superbikes and much more. But the Revival – it’s the one so many of us missed more than anything during 2020. September isn’t September without it. So what should we expect from the world’s favourite motor sport event and certainly the pinnacle of the historic racing season on September 17^19? The short answer is more of what we’ve become used…

• In 1950, STIRLING MOSS owned and raced a COOPER MARK IV T12. From 23 outings, it scored 12 first-placed finishes but by Christmas it was in the classifieds. “Winner of Monaco, Silverstone, etc,” read the ad, with all enquiries to Moss on Tring 2181. It’s currently on sale at TERENCE MORLEY CLASSIC CARS in Kent for £385,000, including photographs – and the ad. • The final version of the FORD CAPRI was the 1986 limited edition Mark III 280 ‘BROOKLANDS’. All were right-hand drive with a 2.8-litre V6 engine and each was green, hence the Brooklands nickname. Of the 1038 built, there are now just 90 280s on UK roads, and this one, below left, with 50,000 miles on the clock, is available at KGF CLASSIC CARS in Peterborough…

MOTOR RACING AS A BOARD GAME? Can pushing a few counters around a printed track get anywhere near the excitement and noise of the sport? Perhaps not – but then plonking a tiny top hat on a blue square is not the same thing as being a Mayfair landlord. It’s imagination that makes it work. Over the years there have been many attempts to capture the screech of tyres in more or less two-dimensional form and there are collectors out there hoping some faded, tattered box at a car boot sale will reveal an undamaged gaming gem. The truly lucky might find The Gordon Bennett Motor Race game from the early 1900s, with Edwardian racers pounding down a dusty road on the lid; slightly more common is the 1920s Brooklands…

LUXURY EUROPEAN TRACKDAYS If you grew sick of sitting at home a long time ago, there’s good news on the horizon as things are finally opening up. The government rules (for at least the next five minutes, or so…) suggest that travel to many European countries is now back on the table, and if you’re double-jabbed then things are likely to become a whole lot easier. It’s a good time to dust off your trackday toy, then, chuck a bag in the boot and head off to some of Europe’s finest driving destinations. Our friends at RSR – the leading trackday operator at both Spa-Francorchamps and the Nürburgring – have kindly offered us a few spaces on some of their super-popular day events across the year. So take your pick…

UPWASH Air rises up from front wing, which serves no useful aero function, So this needs to be turned downwards BOOMERANG Wing profile turns upwash to downwash, improves airflow to aero devices downstream SIDEPOD BLINDS The stack of wing profiles over the floor edge create downforce SIDEPOD UNDERCUT Downwash directs airflow over floor and diffuser MCLAREN IS RIVALLING RED Bull in how many new parts are being produced as each team continues to heavily develop their cars despite the looming challenge of the all-new 2022 aero regulations. McLaren arrived in Hungary with a heavily revised barge board arrangement for its MCL35M. To understand the probable reasons for an apparently innocuous change requires some backstory. This is a highly distinctive car within the constraints of the quite prescriptive technical regulations, with…

DON’T LOOK AT THE LAND ROVER Defender as a standalone vehicle. It is in addition an image builder for Land Rover and a much needed one as well. For a while Range Rover has snapped up all the attention from the fashionista media. Since the demise of the original Defender five years ago now, poor old Land Rover has had to subsist on the thin gruel provided by the unremarkable Discovery Sport and visually charmless Discovery. The Defender’s job is to sprinkle stardust on them, and sprinkler-in-chief is the new V8 version. For this is a car nobody needs. If your requirements are simply for a fast Defender could I commend to you the quite excellent plug-in hybrid version which will still break six seconds to 60mph but cost a…

BOOKS SPECIAL 2021 IF I WENT IN FOR JUDGING BY COVERS, I’d be smiling on this with its lovely speckle-bronze fiinish, and the fact that it’s packed with Alfa Romeos is for me the perfect cake to go under the icing. Unusually, this catalogue raisonné begins by applauding the work of others, notably Simon Moore, even advising us to look out for his next 2.3 8C book. It’s their way of saying that the book is not going to spend as much time on the mechanicals as it otherwise might. Sound judgement, as this is about coachwork, specifically that produced by the carrosserie of Joseph Figoni in Paris. With access to the fiirm’s sales books the authors are starting from the horse’s mouth, and continue with much information about both…

SPECULATION HAD ENDED ON Monday September 23, 1996 when it was revealed that Murray Walker would be ITV’s main Formula 1 commentator. The announcement was made by MACH1, a trading name devised from a coalition of the Meridian and Anglia ITV channels, plus Chrysalis, Neil Duncanson’s production company that, a few days before, had won the five-year contract. Having secured their key player, MACH1 would continue to put together the rest of the broadcasting team, with particular focus on the commentator to accompany Murray. Martin Brundle was mentioned in various speculative media reports. But the man himself was not so sure – primarily because he was, first and foremost, a racing driver. Martin had just completed his 11th full season of F1, Jordan having been one of several different teams…

THE HAMILTON, VERSTAPPEN ACCIDENT AT SILVERSTONE TO ME ILLUSTRATED what a corner F1 has driven itself into with its stewarding standards. This was obviously an incident the stewards needed to study. There are a number of different opinions. If it was a racing incident, I still think Lewis was the main culprit and should have received a drive-through penalty. However, the real issue is the two penalty points that were added to his licence. Lando Norris received two licence penalty points just for defending his position in Austria and this is where the problem lies. The stewards are involving themselves in far too many incidents. Stewards awarding penalty seconds like confetti is doing real harm to F1 – they could almost be said to be bringing the sport into disrepute…

Volkswagen Polo WRC (2017) The real shame about a few of these unrallied cars is that they could have become world-beaters. In the case of the 2017 Volkswagen Polo WRC, there’s no doubt about it. The last Polo was built to the exciting new 2017 WRC regulations, when the cars sprouted bigger wings, brasher attitude and a lot more power. Volkswagen had been the dominant team (with Sébastien Ogier) since 2013, winning 43 of the 53 rallies it entered. Which made it all the more shocking when the company suddenly canned its WRC programme in November 2016 following the infamous emissions scandal. By that point the new Polo WRC was only a couple of months away from its competition debut in Monte-Carlo, so virtually complete. Marcus Grönholm was one of…

“Dave Kaemmer is God!!!” Such was the overheated fanboy title of a thread that appeared more than a decade ago on Race Sim Central, a site that catered to the first generation of hardcore virtual racers. But in the years since, Dave Kaemmer has – astonishingly – graduated to even-more-mythic status as the co-founder and principal software guru of the online-racing leviathan iRacing. “In my opinion, he founded the sim-racing genre,” says Tim Wheatley, who created the original Race Sim Central website and recently revived it. “I can’t overstate how important he is.” Racing games have been a lifelong project for Kaemmer, a wiry, well-preserved 57-year-old resident of suburban Boston, Massachusetts. He was there at the birth of racing simulations for the masses, and he now stands at the pinnacle…

ENTHUSIAST TASTES CHANGE inevitably with each generation. Most of us grow up in motor sport entranced by the successful cars of our personally formative era. Therefore it’s perfectly natural for enthusiasts in later life to hold those same cars in great esteem, despite the passing years. And when we finally lose interest -living or dead – a fresh majority fanbase replaces us, with broadly different tastes absorbed from a later era. It’s a natural, right and proper progression – but a broader perspective is always healthy… When I first became involved in the racing world of the early 1960s, I found legions of older-generation enthusiasts positively misty-eyed over the great cars of the 1920s – the straight-eight Delage Grand Prix cars of 1926-27 seemed especially iconic, while a particularly tweedy…

RENZO RIVOLTA’S INDUSTRIAL forebears made a fortune postwar out of products that included bubble cars, scooters and refrigerators. But the man himself simply left a legacy of some darned cool cars, not least the Rivolta that he was inspired to develop for purely selfish reasons: he wanted something quick and comfortable that was more luxurious than a Jaguar and less expensive than a Ferrari – and, since no one else made such a thing, he decided to do the job himself. Rivolta turned to a young Giorgetto Giugiaro to pen the body, Carrozzeria Bertone to build it and Chevrolet to provide the momentum in the form of a 327ci V8 that pushed out 300bhp, with some typically fancy materials for the interior. The result: a genuine gentleman’s express that could…

THER’E SOMETHING BEAUTIFULLY simplistic about older-model 911s. Sure, they’re technically advanced, with their convention-defying rear-mounted engines and trick electrics, but that rather basic, no-frills silhouette has been known and loved for more than six decades now. Porsche has always marketed the 911 as a turnkey performance car, as comfortable on the track as the daily commute, and perhaps no model proved that better than the 964, which turned Porsche from just another racing manufacturer into the place to hone your craft if you were an aspiring sports car racer with healthy pockets. Single-make homogenised championships are very much the order of today, but in the 1980s they were far rarer. Everything from Formula Ford to F1 was multi-chassis and topline sports car racing was largely the preserve of big brands…