Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2022 i Motor Sport Magazine

A MID THE EXCITEMENT OF A NEW Formula 1 season getting under way, and buried beneath detailed explanations of aero management on websites, was the announcement of a brand new racing series. Extreme H is set to become the first hydrogen championship when it launches in 2024 and, it is hoped, will drive innovation in hydrogen engine technology. The championship would run alongside Extreme E, the electric off-road series that had its debut season in 2021 and which attracted high-profile teams including those formed by Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Chip Ganassi Racing. It would race in the same locations, on the same days with the same format and would also use Extreme E’s back-office kit like the St Helena, the refurbished ship which transports all the cars and equipment…

NO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY were thinking when they styled it either, but this is another one of those impossibly brave BMWs we’ve seen from time to time. Brave not least because to date these kinds of car have not really hit their mark. The mid-engined supercar, the M1, failed; the genius i8 super coupé never caught on; while the no-less brilliant i3 is finally going to its grave without ever managing the numbers envisaged for it. And if you think the outside of this iX is daring, look at the cabin. Actually I think it’s beautiful, a minimalist’s dream but it goes too far: you know form has overtaken function when you have to start stabbing a screen just to adjust the interior heat. But it’s airy…

THIS, APPARENTLY, IS HOW THE momentous new Formula 1 car test days used to feel in the ‘old days’. The sharp sun brings everything into focus at Circuit de Catalunya, with team members nipping round the paddock like insects disturbed by a torchlight in a basement. Suddenly turbos burst into life, wasp-like wheel guns whirr and rubber squeals upon getaway, and F1 2022 is all systems go. Well, sort of. Officially this is a ‘preseason track session’ rather than traditional Testing with a capital T. And the reason for that, as so often with F1, is TV rights. Bahrain has paid significant amounts to have sole broadcast rights for the only other session – happening March 10-12. But without TV crews this has had the effect of Barcelona feeling more…

PETER WHITEHEAD PITTED HIS Cooper-Jaguar T38 at Le Mans in 1955 just after a catastrophic chain of events had catapulted Pierre Levegh’s Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR through the crowd at 6.26pm. The accident cost 85 lives and destroyed many more. After completing only 38 laps, Peter and stepbrother Graham Whitehead’s Cooper-Jaguar race was over almost before it started. In the fourth hour, running 14th, losing oil and oil pressure, they were black-flagged, a big disappointment for the man who with Peter Walker had won the 1951 endurance classic aboard a works Jaguar C-type. It was also an augury of the fate of a programme begun at Peter’s initiative in late 1953. Usually characterised as a ‘wealthy gentleman driver’, Yorkshireman Whitehead was a fast, reliable seasoned pro – of that age group…

IT’S NOT OFTEN IN THESE DAYS OF homogenised modern single-make racing that you can say you’ve seen or been privileged enough to have raced something that is truly unique. But I’m one of those lucky people because, since 2006, I have been the custodian of the Parker GN, which is undoubtedly the car that has become synonymous with my racing. The Parker GN has an incredible history, having evolved repeatedly since it was first built a full century ago. And it’s still running in circuit races, sprints, hillclimbs... and even doing some mammoth road trips! The car started life as a racing Godfrey-Nash in 1921, running with a standard 1200cc V-twin engine. Then in 1926 Jack Fordham Parker fitted an 1100cc JAP unit, and the car competed like that very…

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We hear a lot about ‘patina’ when it comes to historic race cars and classics. This usually refers to the bodywork retaining the unique scars of a life lived rather than having them buffed out. It is rarer to see the inside of the car being retained so faithfully, hence our delight at seeing this interior of Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes 300 SL (see page 17), unrestored since the great man drove it 60 years ago. Squint and you can even see the scuff marks where Fangio’s knees rubbed against the dashboard.…

WHEN THE 2022 MOTOGP world championship roars into action under the Losail floodlights on March 6, eight of the motorcycles on the 24-strong grid will be Ducati Desmosedicis. The other factories are worried, not so much by the number of bikes but by their speed. Ducati’s desmodromic-valve 90-degree V4 has been MotoGP’s quickest machine pretty much ever since the first iteration was unleashed at Suzuka, the opening race of the 2003 season. MotoGP rights-holder Dorna has six manufacturers signed up to its championship – Aprilia, Ducati, Honda, KTM, Suzuki and Yamaha – to create a maximum grid of 24 riders. Each of those brands must put a minimum of two riders on the grid. Honda, KTM and Yamaha each have four riders (two in their factory teams and two in…

IN 1931, DESPERATELY IN NEED OF A powertrain that cost less to build and run in the wake of a rapidly changing world that had turned against gasguzzling motors, Bentley installed a 4-litre engine designed by someone else into its full-sized 8-litre chassis. It wasn’t even designed by Bentley and was quite unlike any other engine it had used to date. And it didn’t work: just 50 of these Bentley 4-litres with their Ricardo-engineered straight sixes were built before the receivers shut down the original Bentley Motors for good. Spool forward just over 90 years and Bentley is reacting in the same way as the automotive landscape changes once more, using another downsized engine designed by someone else (Audi) in its full-sized Flying Spur chassis. And while sniffy punters only…

THERE’S A SUPERB MOMENT IN the 1969 car-race caper Monte Carlo or Bust where Major Digby Dawlish (Peter Cook) and Lt Kit Barrington (Dudley Moore), driving the ‘1928 Lea-Francis Special Rally’ across a frozen lake in Sweden, outmanoeuvre the Germans amid a winter sports festival thanks to some garden-shed ingenuity and a slice of luck. “I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord is on, Barrington,” says Dawlish as the car clears the melée. “England’s, sir?” Barrington responds. Dawlish nods: “Naturally.” There’s a fair amount of ice too in the 400-page Rallye Monte-Carlo. It’s a curious format – an A to Z (actually A to Y; there is no Z) of the world’s favourite rally, from Sydney Allard, who uniquely won the event in 1952 in a car bearing…

WHEN THE 10 F1 TEAMS turn up in Bahrain for the first grand prix of 2022, none of them will experience conditions like this. In 1989, Brabham faced this excuse for a ‘pit’ as the season kicked off at Jacarepaguá. No less than 39 entries had arrived in Rio, 13 of them desperate simply to earn the right to practise, never mind make the grid for the Brazilian Grand Prix. Brabham was one of nine teams forced to cope with pre-qualifying at 8am on the Friday, the fastest five drivers going through. It was arguably one of the toughest ordeals ever faced in Formula 1 – made worse when you had to operate in circumstances such as these. With more teams than garages, Brabham found itself consigned to the F1…

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE TECH. AS THE NEW F1 season gears up ahead of the first race in Bahrain at the end of March, fans have been given their first taste of Formula 1’s much-vaunted new era. It is an era that is supposed to improve the spectacle of the sport by encouraging overtaking and it has been achieved with a forensic examination and re-drawing of the technical regulations. The 2022 cars are a first in the evolution of F1 in that the regulations have been specifically devised with a set objective – of making the cars more raceable. That’s unique. Years of research have gone into this, led by what used to be the Overtaking Working Group, funded by FOM and headed by Pat Symonds and Ross Brawn –…

GOOD ▲ SEB SPEAKS OUT Vettel on Formula 1 now not offering the chance to take a knee pre-race: “The issues haven’t gone away,” the Aston Martin man said. ▲ TESTING TYRES Lance Stroll has given rare driver insight into Pirelli’s challenging new 18-inch tyres: “Once the grip goes it seems to go without any kind of indication of it coming.” Should sort the wheat from the Mazep – sorry, chaff. ▲ SHIFTING POLE POSITION On Sprint race weekends, ‘pole’ will now once more be awarded to the setter of the fastest lap in qualifying (Friday), not the sprint race winner (on Saturday) – one to keep the purists happy. ▲ FERRARI FEVER No, we are not going to start making predictions about the competitive order based on one morning…

YOU MAY FEEL THE NEED TO bring some earplugs to the 79th Members’ Meeting in April. The Goodwood season bursts into life with a grid of shrieking V10-engined grand prix cars and a fabulous group of Porsche 956s and 962s alongside the racing programme for historic cars and motorcycles. At last year’s Members’ Meeting, as many fans will remember, Bruno Senna did some neat, and very fast, demo laps in his uncle Ayrton’s McLaren-Honda MP4/4 from 1988, laps that brought a capacity crowd to its feet. It was the sight, and sound, of the McLaren at full song around the circuit’s sweeping curves that inspired the Goodwood team to create a bigger, and even noisier, spectacle this year in celebration of the V10 era in grand prix racing. “The reaction…

THERE ARE TWO WAYS IN WHICH A car can benefit from the ‘halo effect’ of Le Mans: by having raced there or by being involved in the cult film of the same name. This Jaguar E-type falls into the latter category, since it was delivered new to the circuit for the attention of Steve McQueen’s Solar Productions to serve as one of a small fleet of sports cars that he used on and around the set (perhaps the most famous of which was the slate-grey Porsche 911 that McQueen drives in the opening of the film and which sold at auction in 2011 for almost £860,000). Being a US specification car it’s likely that the Series II E-type was originally intended to be packed up and flown back to Solar…

YOU MAY ALREADY HAVECHANCED across the review of the Bentley on the previous page and while that is a British plug-in electric limousine, and this a German, exclusively petrol-powered mid-sized SUV, the fact they contain the same internal combustion engine just shows how far component sharing extends across Volkswagen Group product these days. It works at least as well in this Porsche as that Bentley. It is to be remembered that in this latest generation, the Macan S and GTS have both shifted up a grade, so they now sit in approximately the same space as the previous GTS and Turbo models respectively. The Turbo name is now being held in abeyance for the forthcoming, all new and all-electric Macan. Having driven the new Macan S, I wonder if you…

IndyCar – XPEL 375, Texas Motor Speedway, March 20 THERE HAS BEEN PLENTY OF change in the break between IndyCar seasons but the Grand Prix of St Petersburg returned as Round 1 in February to kick things off, while Round 2 will play out at the Texas Motor Speedway oval. Alex Palou won his maiden title in 2021 to become the latest first-time winner since 2017 as IndyCar’s new generation came to the fore. The Spaniard claimed three victories en route to the championship and will be a tough prospect to overcome after displaying consistency beyond his years. Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward was another youngster who impressed and won a brace of races, though Colton Herta – who’ll be 22 years old in March – was the fresh-faced home-grown hero.…

WHILE I UNDERSTAND THAT FOR MANY THE WORLD OF MOTOR SPORT BEGINS and ends with Formula 1, I was a little surprised to read that the excellent Mark Hughes appears to be also somewhat restricted by this boundary. His article King size allies (March) could have concluded with the acknowledgement that Philip Morris and its “iconic chevron Marlboro design” did have a life beyond F1. In 1989 Team Penske and Philip Morris began their 20-year association [shown above on the 1997 Indycar] during which period they won the Indianapolis 500 eight times, a partnership greater, and perhaps more successful, than that with any Formula 1 team. NICK GOOZÉE, DORSET I READ WITH INTEREST THE EDITORIAL IN the March 2022 issue with regard to the question as to whether there is…

SO WILL THESE NEW FORMULA 1 regulations deliver what they’re supposed to and improve the ability of grand prix cars to actually race each other in 2022? “Good question,” says Mike Elliott, the man charged by Mercedes-AMG to lead its technical team towards a target of a record-extending ninth straight constructors’ title, while also powering Lewis Hamilton to what he missed by a race director’s whimsy last term: a record eighth drivers’ crown. “My gut feeling is the regulations will improve the racing,” says the technical director (right). “Aerodynamically, there will be some benefits, but I don’t think they will be as big as we hope for. There may be some signs in the [new 18-inch Pirelli] tyres that they will also help with the racing. We just need to…

1 Bahrain Sakhir / March 18-20 First look at new 2022 F1 cars in race conditions. Bahrain has been a dramatic round in recent seasons 2 Saudi Arabia Jeddah / March 25-27 Changes to barriers have been made to improve visibility through corners after concerns over safety during the first race 3 Australia Albert Park, Melbourne / April 8-10 First race on the new layout. Changes have been made to Turns 9, 10, 13 and 15 in hope of adding overtaking spots 4 Emilia Romagna Imola, Italy / April 22-24 The old-school layout means overtaking has been tough since F1 returned but can the new regulations change that? 5 Miami Florida, USA / May 6-8 New street circuit around the Dolphins NFL stadium. Turns 14-16 are tight but average lap…

“HIS SKIN WAS TOTALLY BURNT AND blistered. He was in serious trouble – no doubt about it. But that was him – he just wouldn’t let anybody down.” So says renowned Formula 1 engineer Trevor Foster, giving an example of the fortitude of his Shadow colleague Tom Pryce, sadly lost to the motor sport world at Kyalami 45 years ago this month. Foster is speaking to Marcus Simmons who, in our archive piece from July 2005, perfectly captures the character of a prodigious F1 driver taken before his talent allowed him to realise the achievements it so richly deserved. Perhaps what endears Denbighshire-born Pryce to fans of the time and those looking up Formula 1 history is the humble approach which he became known for. “He could have been world…

PROFESSOR BECKY SHIPLEY WALKED into the soft, comfortable interior of the staff common room at University College London (UCL) and sank into one of its deep crimson leather sofas. It was Tuesday evening, March 17, 2020. Outside, the leafy squares of Bloomsbury were placid in the evening air, the streets empty and eerily quiet even for the renowned peace of this oasis in the heart of London. The Covid-19 virus had spread across the globe, migrating in bodies of travellers, unknowing vectors who took a modern plague across borders and continents. The virus made you struggle for breath; the worst-hit couldn’t breathe at all. Gradually, the world was waking to a bitter truth. It faced a global pandemic in which millions would die. A few days earlier, the UK government…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA LOOKING FOR A LOW-MILEAGE classic that’s never been raced or rallied? If so, don’t read on – but if the thought of owning what is claimed to be the world’s best-developed Big Healey appeals, this 1959 example could well be for you. Registered BSL 621 and therefore (inevitably) known as ‘Basil’, the car was bought by its previous owners during the 1990s specifically for use in long-distance rallies. The husband-and-wife team sourced it from America, reasoning that the left-handdrive configuration would make it more suitable for international driving – and then proceeded to spend the next 15 years and more than £200,000 upgrading the car to the nth degree. The work was carried out by Healey specialists Orchard Restorations of East Sussex and included increasing the…

2013 LAMBORGHINI GALLARDO LP570 SOLD BY COLLECTING CARS, £79,500 This could have been a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ – the chance to buy a purpose-built Lamborghini race car that had been used in serious competition only once before being sold off as a track-day toy. Originally supplied to Lamborghini Dallas, the car was raced at Watkins Glen by Scott Speed in the Super Trofeo series before, unaccountably, being moved on to a private owner. With just 1600 miles on the odometer, the 5.2-litre, V10-engined LP570 had been well maintained and was sold complete with a basic spares kit, factory technical passport and FIA-compliant rollcage. 1985 FERRARI 288 GTO SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S, £2.9M Collector Marcel Petitjean bought this in 1998 from the original owner – BMW ‘Batmobile’ racer Bepp…