Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Motor Sport Magazine

IS THERE A BRITISH BIAS IN FORMULA 1? In the aftermath of the Abu Dhabi debacle the topic has boiled over in some corners of the internet. The media outrage that greeted the decision by race director Michael Masi effectively to hand Max Verstappen victory – and therefore the title – was seen by many as a typically British response to ‘their man’ Lewis Hamilton’s defeat. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of that decision – which the FIA is still investigating – the idea that F1 and the media somehow favours British teams and drivers is interesting. Motor Sport has been accused of favouring British drivers or teams in the past – most recently with our coverage of Abu Dhabi in December – and it is something about which…

BEING TOLD TO “F*** OFF” ISN’T THE usual introduction to your future boss, but this was exactly what Graham Hill (born this month in 1929) said upon meeting Quentin Spurring who was seeking a quick interview as a young cub reporter. This was in 1970 at Oulton Park, when Hill was trying to scrutinise the finer details of Rob Walker’s new Lotus 72. The anecdote forms the start to this month’s F1 Retro, in which Spurring recounts the tale of what it was really like to work for the grand prix legend when he started his own team. The journo-turned-PR man eventually handled press for Hill’s eponymous F1 squad, the latter’s next challenge after his not inconsiderable driving achievements. Spurring entered into Hill’s unique world, visiting his 25-room house for…

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER attempt by a high-performance Audi to rid itself of that reputation. You know, the one that holds that these cars are straight-line machines only, great at gathering pace, less great at changing direction. These, then, are not cars for drivers, but cars for those who wish to be seen to be drivers, which is absolutely not the same thing. Oddly enough, it is a reputation increasingly undeserved these days. I’m not saying that modern fast Audis have become oversteering wunderwagens, all opposite lock and smoke-filled wheel arches – anything but, indeed – but those I have driven of late have been far better balanced machines than their forbears. But reputations are as slow in the spending as they are swift in the earning: there are people who…

GOOD NEWS FOR ANYONE WHO likes unusual automotive- inspired watches – the creations of Giuliano Mazzuoli are once again available in the UK after an absence of five years. Until 1993 the Italian ran a family publishing business that specialised in furniture catalogues. But in the mid ’90s, long before the Filofax was ousted by the smart phone, he devised a diary that attracted a huge following with its brightly coloured cover options and practical layout. In 2001 Mazzuoli followed it up with his range of Officina writing instruments that took design inspiration from a box of tools once used in his grandfather’s bicycle repair shop – and the idea of adapting the appearance of everyday things led to the Mocha pen based on one of Italy’s most distinctive appliances:…

WE ALL HAVE A COPY OF Full Throttle, don’t we? A core book of any motoring library, written by a dashing hero of the track. Have we all read it fully? I realise now that having bought it looking for romance and excitement, I skipped what Birkin calls the kernel of his book – lambasting the 1930s establishment about the poor facilities and support for motor racing. Sued by Brooklands, the very place we picture him, for slamming the ageing track as inadequate and dangerous he had to insert a mild retraction – without removing the contentious words. Did we need a new edition of racing’s most famous title? Out of print for years, second-hand copies nevertheless abound; but within its arresting cover painting this includes a fresh, if small,…

Amid an ever-changing global economy, one thing remains certain: the Ferrari 250 GTO continues to exemplify the strength of the collector car market. Economic and political uncertainties, the rise of new currencies and looming tax increases have encouraged a move towards wealth allocation into hard assets, piquing the interest of savvy collectors. Market players are becoming more cognizant of collector cars as an asset class, led by the 250 GTO. The most valuable car ever purchased was a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO that went for a figure purported to be at least £52m in 2018. That same year, the highest value for a car ever achieved at public auction was realised by the sale of a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO that went for £37m at RM Sotheby’s in Monterey. As…

THE ELDERLY SPANISH-SPEAKING couple I’m sharing the 4x4 with start to fret. I’m not in the best frame of mind either. Our local driver doesn’t seem unduly bothered though, and despite urges from my companions for him to change direction, he takes us along what to all intents and purposes is the racing line through the desert from one Dakar Rally spectator viewing point to another – while the stage is live. Hearing the high-pitched whining of a turbo, I peer out the dusty back window of our Toyota Land Cruiser to see an off-road prototype bearing down on us at some rate of knots as dust plumes up behind it. “Turn left!” I tell the driver, who finally acquiesces, with the top-class Dakar Rally competitor thundering past us shortly…

1976 James Hunt Forty-a-day smoker James Hunt’s epic 1976 battle with Ferrari’s Niki Lauda took the sport onto an entirely different level of popularity – and Hunt’s Marlboro-liveried overalls and McLaren were right at the centre of the visual message. Hunt was the short-notice replacement at McLaren for the short-notice departure of Emerson Fittipaldi and Marlboro’s John Hogan formed a closed bond with him. 1977 Gilles Villeneuve The Quebec-born driver was barely known outside of the American and Canadian Formula Atlantic series when he was given his Formula 1 debut by McLaren in a third car at the 1977 British Grand Prix. His placement there was triggered by Villeneuve having thrashed Hunt when the latter guested in an Atlantic race at Villeneuve’s home track of Trois Rivières. 1972 Marlboro BRM…

VINTAGE CLOTHING IS HOT TODAY, but some vintage clothing you don’t want to wear because it’s redolent of a previous occupant, perhaps someone famous. In the racing world a race suit, gloves or best of all a helmet once worn by a famous driver is something to treasure, not to pull on when you go out for a track day in your Radical. Let’s distinguish between ‘vintage-style’ clothing and apparel with a history. You can go rallying in a brand-new blue Dunlop suit like Stirling Moss, or dress up like Ayrton Senna with replica helmet and appropriate suit colours. Apart from being a bit sad, that apparel is unlikely to appreciate. But if you manage to get hold of one of Ayrton’s own race suits, or even a glove or…

JANUARY IS A FUNNY OLD TIME FOR US at the Vintage Sports-Car Club. While a lot of clubs are still a few months away from their first events of the year, we hardly ever stop! We’re not just a racing club, and we hold multiple events right through the winter, such as trials, rallies and tests, which makes it a real juggling act when you’ve got both cars and events to prepare for. Winter fettling I’ve been racing for 38 years and have been very fortunate to build up a small collection of cars that I look after – wherever possible – myself. I have around 13 of all shapes and sizes, from aircraft-engined Parker-GN (Godfrey Nash) and Frazer Nash, to Triumphs, Coopers and even a Lola T70. I fettle…

HALF A CENTURY AGO IT WASN’T easy being a grand prix motorcycle racer, unless you had the backing of Count Domenico Agusta, founder of MV Agusta, whose patronage made Giacomo Agostini the most successful grand prix rider of all time. An American journalist who spent a few days living la dolce vita with the Italian heart-throb described Ago’s life thus: “to race and skid and crash and then make love and drink wine”. The poorer privateer riders did more racing, skidding and crashing than Agostini, but less making love and drinking wine. Among them was Ginger Molloy, a tough New Zealand coal miner who in 1963 loaded his Matchless G50 onto a boat in Wellington and six weeks later rolled it down a ramp at Southampton docks. Molloy spent the…

One of the most intriguing aspects of the 2022 F1 season will be the phantom presence of Honda at Red Bull Racing and AlphaTauri, despite the manufacturer’s official withdrawal from the sport. Honda will continue to provide a high level of support to the newly formed Red Bull Powertrains, and will supply complete power units from Japan. In theory its engineers will be working as hard as in previous years – the big difference is that Red Bull is now paying for their services. Then from 2023 to 2025, as a development freeze kicks in, Red Bull Technology will be on its own. The task will be to build PUs in Milton Keynes with the already proven Honda parts. Meanwhile RBT’s engineering team, which features former Mercedes HPP personnel in…

AS F1 PREPARES TO EMBARK UPON a brave new era in which the cars are specifically regulated to provide closer wheel-to- wheel racing, Pat Symonds, the man in charge of formulating those regulations – a process stretching over five years – gives us some insight into them. The object of these regulations has been to address the overtaking difficulty that has plagued F1 for a couple of decades. Symonds was recruited by Ross Brawn to attack the problem on behalf of FOM (Formula One Management) and commercial rights holder Liberty. He had his own staff, working with FIA technical chief Nicholas Tombazis while F1 teams made various resources available. As Symonds explains, “This is first time that a set of F1 regulations has been the result of full research. Limited…

A CAR OF UNUSUAL INTEREST this, representing the first conjoining of BMW’s ‘i’ and ‘M’ brands, something it once said it would never do. It’s not a full M-car and we know this because it would be named either like a secret agency (Mi4), a child’s birthday (iM4) or, perhaps more realistically, i4M. Even so, here’s a car that puts 537bhp under your boot and which will have you travelling at over 60mph less than four seconds later, which seems fairly M-like to me. The shame is that the rest of the car does not, and for that thank its 2290kg kerbweight. That’s half a tonne more than an M4. It’s more even than a 6-litre Bentley Continental GT. So while a combination of mammoth torque and all-wheel-drive traction assure…

Formula 1 testing – Barcelona, February 23-25 THE NEW ERA OF FORMULA 1 gets underway in Barcelona as teams put their cars through their paces for the first time. Fresh regulations designed to improve the show and promote closer racing have placed greater emphasis on ground effect, but will the new- look machines work as hoped? Max Verstappen’s Red Bull will have the No1 on its nose this year, but can the Dutchman retain his crown? George Russell gets his Mercedes ride at last while Alexander Albon returns to the F1 grid with Williams after a year on the sidelines. Alfa Romeo is the only team with an entirely different driver line-up from last year as Valtteri Bottas partners the only rookie on the 2022 grid, Guanyu Zhou. A new…

Once again we are thrilled to host our annual Goodwood Track Day in partnership with Classic & Sports Finance, with this year’s focus on historic race cars. The event date is a month prior to the fabulous 79th Members’ Meeting so it’s an ideal opportunity to exercise the horsepower and shake down the handling in preparation for the meet. The Goodwood Motor Circuit is one of the fastest and most prestigious venues in the country, as well as one of the most challenging. Even the best drivers admit to learning something every time they tackle the layout, with its old-school sweeps providing a vigorous driving experience. The day has been structured to thrill in every sense, with a Goodwood buffet lunch punctuating the on-track action. You will also be kept…

“It’s a rarity – only a handful of unmolested examples still exist” SIXTY YEARS AGO, A CAR REGARDED by many as the greatest road racer of all time was launched. And this month – March 1962 – it made its competitive debut on the track. It was the start of a journey for the Ferrari 250 GTO that would help it become not only the world’s most valuable collectors’ car but also acquire a mythical aura that means today it stands alone in the pantheon not only of Maranello’s fabled racers but also among all classic cars. One of the reasons for this is its rarity: only a handful of unmolested examples still exist. And so test-driving them to experience their uniqueness is destined to remain a dream of all…

DENIS JENKINSON READ THE situation perfectly. In early 1962, as the dust settled following the ‘Palace Revolt’ in which a number of senior figures had left Maranello, Jenks wrote in Motor Sport that the upheaval was “not likely to have any effect, for after all, Enzo Ferrari has been running a racing team for many years”. In that time, he added, “there has been a long list of engineers coming and going… and yet Ferrari has gone on undisturbed, and it is my guess that he will continue in the same way”. He did – for the most part. The Scuderia’s Formula 1 fortunes briefly slumped, but otherwise it was business as usual – which meant fighting on a number of fronts. When the 1962 250 GT Berlinetta – soon…

EVEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS, a purebred racing car still feels completely different. I have always been impressed by the wonders manufacturers can achieve when converting softly sprung road cars into hard-as-nails GT3 and GT4 racers, but not even they can change physical law. You have the same body in white and same approximate dimensions as the street machine from which it is derived. Which means the result is always going to be compromised: higher, aerodynamically limited and much heavier than something designed for one purpose alone – to race. The Praga R1 was only designed to compete so despite being far less powerful than a GT3 or GT4 car, when you put them on the grid together... Well, at last year’s Oulton Park round of the Britcar Endurance Championship…

Although Tyrrell eventually expanded into newer, larger premises adjacent to its original shed, the latter remained critical to the team’s race preparations for several years. “I joined the team as a mechanic at the start of the 1986 season,” says Phil Cant. “By that stage we were preparing the cars in the newer main building, but the welding department, the fabricators and the trim shop were still in the shed, so whenever we needed to get anything modified that’s where we’d take it. “Later on, when things moved on and the new building was extended, the team all came under the same roof and the shed became a base for the truckies, a place to store packing cases for the flyaway races, pit equipment and other bits, so it was…

THIS CAR FIRST MADE HEADLINES in the automotive press back in 2017 following the completion of a remarkable ground-up rebuild by CMC, the Shropshire-based Jaguar specialist and top-level restorer that is currently putting the finishing touches to the one-off Aston Martin Bulldog. Indeed, much of CMC’s stellar reputation has been earned as a result of the firm’s lion-hearted attitude to taking on unique cars that many other restorers might shy away from due to the enormous amount of work that such projects invariably involve. And this 1954 XK120 SE due to cross the block at Bonhams was certainly no exception. Originally commissioned by Max Hoffman, the celebrated New York-based European car importer, it was one of only a few Jaguars ever to have benefited from the Pininfarina pen. As much…

SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS IS NEARING THE end of its government-backed £67m winter revamp aimed at both improving the safety of the Belgian Grand Prix venue and also attracting back one of its most famous motorcycle races. The circuit has agreed a deal to revive the Spa 24 Hours motorcycle race for the first time since 2003, with the event set to take place this June as part of the FIM Endurance World Championship. The event had been a major draw for the circuit back as far as the early 1970s when it began as the 24 Hours of Liège. However, in order to obtain the necessary FIM Grade C licence the Ardennes track had to commit to a raft of track alterations. This, along with the fallout from a handful of major…

GOOD ZAK ATTACK McLaren boss Zak Brown pulled no punches in his latest parish newsletter, saying quite specifically what he thinks about the self-interest of other teams. It was satisfyingly frank. RUSSELL’S FIRST DAY Merc has been parading a beaming George Russell around like a child on his first day at primary school. Just need Sir Lewis to turn up and push him in a puddle. BOTTAS IS FREE AT LAST He almost bared all last year in Drive to Survive; now Bottas has gone the whole hog – after finally being emancipated from the cold clutch of Brackley – by shedding robes twice on his social media channels. Freedom! COMING UP ROSES Last year Red Bull implied it might put its aero chief Dan Fallows on gardening leave till…

YOU HAVE TO ADMIRE THE chutzpah. Manufacturers from right around the world have come to Europe to challenge the established premium brands, but few have met with much success. From America came Cadillac and Chrysler, failed and left. Japan’s Infiniti fared no better. Even in Europe and despite striving for decades, Alfa Romeo, Jaguar and, more recently, DS have tried to steal a slice of BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz’s pie and done little more than feed off the crumbs on the floor. What hope, then, for Hyundai’s luxury brand Genesis, which is now in the UK with a range comprising a large SUV and saloon, and a smaller saloon and estate, all trying to convince you to forsake your premium maker? The car I drove was a G70 SB (for…

RE JOHNNY HERBERT’S JANUARY COLUMN in which Damon Hill stated that he thought Lewis Hamilton’s Brazil performance was the best he has ever seen. There was another performance that Damon would like to have seen, and that was his father Graham’s charge through the pack at the 1960 British GP. Having qualified his P48 BRM second, he had the misfortune to stall it as the flag dropped. As coolly and smoothly as Lewis, he drove through the field ultimately passing leader Jack Brabham and his Cooper to take the lead. Regrettably it all came to naught when the single rear disc brake let him down. I witnessed the race at Copse Corner and groaned with the rest of the crowd as he spun. It was nevertheless a stirring performance and…

A MONGST ALL THE WORLD’S greatest classic cars there can be no doubt that, in general perception, the confined group of Ferrari 250 GTOs reigns supreme. Some might argue but as Stirling Moss used to say, these things are a pyramid, a pyramid has a point and on that point there’s only room for one… For proof that the GTO sits at the apex, just look at where the modern-day collectors’ car market rates the GTO, where a vast global audience of enthusiasts and fans rates the GTO, where a huge majority of established and aspiring well-heeled collectors (and investors) rate the GTO. All of them prize the Ferrari 250 GTO most. But is this based on its achievements in period? Allow me to argue the evidence against, and to…

FIFTY YEARS AGO WHEN A BRM P160 burst out of a giant cigarette packet at Paul Ricard to signify Marlboro’s first F1 sponsorship deal, smoking was synonymous with glamour – and over the next few decades the sport played its part in meeting that aspiration. But as the Philip Morris title sponsorship with Ferrari comes to an end in 2022 the products of the tobacco companies are seen in a much more critical light. They have outstayed their welcome, out of step with the social mores of today and the fanbase F1 wishes to reach. But in the 1970s and ’80s Marlboro and motor racing embraced danger and hedonism together and achieved a symbiosis, each boosting the fortunes of the other. During that time Marlboro became the most popular cigarette…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA LOOKING FOR A DECIDEDLY FAST Ford with truly serious power and provenance? If so, you’ll struggle to find better than this spectacular RS200 EVO2 which was originally sold to the late King Hussein of Jordan so he could indulge his passion for racing. An enthusiastic daredevil and incurable adrenaline-seeker, Hussein was potty about cars, motorcycles and aircraft so it was inevitable that the 250-odd horsepower produced by the ‘regular’ road-going RS200 homologation special wouldn’t even come close to satisfying his need for speed. Instead, he ordered this, which is claimed to be the quickest RS200 ever to be despatched from Ford Motorsport’s HQ in Boreham, Essex. It was transported to his highness aboard a Royal Jordanian Air Force cargo plane in 1986 – along with Ford’s…

1972 DATSUN 240Z SOLD BY THE MARKET, £24,000 Datsun’s 240Z might have been the best-looking, most practical GT car to have come out of Japan – but most of the few originally exported to the UK soon suffered the ravages of rust. This example, however, was in superb shape having arrived from California four years ago after being given a quality repaint in its original white. A tidy engine bay and an immaculately re-trimmed interior (complete with original wood-rimmed steering wheel) added to the appeal, as did the of-the-era Konig alloy wheels and push-button radio. It was certainly a great way of avoiding the London ULEZ charge. 1972 LANCIA FULVIA S2 SOLD BY HISTORICS, £19,244 Competition-car looks but this appeared more or less standard underneath, meaning it could have made…

IT’S HARD TO THINK OF ANOTHER company that has done more for modern British motor racing than Ginetta. Since being dragged back from the brink of oblivion in 2005 when racer and businessman Lawrence Tomlinson and his LNT Automotive concern bought the firm, Ginetta has been on something of an upwards curve in terms of both production and reputation. What was previously a manufacturer of low-volume road cars has morphed into a motor sport powerhouse, running five single-make championships, competing in GT4 categories around the world, pioneering junior racing prototypes and even having a crack at Le Mans with its LMP1 programmes. But at the heart of it all is the G40, the humble, affordable and hugely enjoyable smallest offering of the range. Used in both the long-running Ginetta Junior…

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