Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2022 i Motor Sport Magazine

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS of plug-in hybrids. Never got my head around having two different ‘engines’ yet spending almost all your time with one or other switched off, a pointless dead weight to carry about. Why not just buy a diesel? Well, we know the answer to that now: quite wrongly diesels are now well on their way to becoming social outcasts while in large, luxurious cars, a pure petrol powertrain is expensive to run, cripplingly so to tax. But I still don’t care for the miniscule electric range offered by most PHEVs (plug-in hybrid EVs), nor the often fractious relationship between their e-motors and petrol engines, particularly when it comes to handing over power. But not here. This new S580 e is the best plug-in I’ve driven. Whereas…

MARK BLUNDELL ON MARTIN BRUNDLE “THIS HAS TO BE MY OLD sparring partner Martin Brundle. When I started in Formula Ford in 1984 he was already in Formula 1 with Tyrrell but I caught up with him in 1991 when we were team-mates at Brabham. Then, in 1993 we were back together at Ligier. I was the first ever British driver at the French team and when Martin joined they had two rosbifs to contend with. So now we were rivals as well as good friends, which can be tricky as we are both very competitive people. It never came to blows but there were some ‘tense moments’. We laugh about those now. “Your biggest rival in a grand prix is your team-mate but we were united in our efforts…

TOYOTA CLAIMED A FOURTH Le Mans 24 Hours victory in a row in year one of the new era for sports car racing last August. The opposition for its pair of Le Mans Hypercars is the same this time around – two LMHs from Glickenhaus and one old-style LMP1 from Alpine – but it would be wrong to think that the Japanese manufacturer is shooting fish in a barrel as the only major manufacturer on the grid. The rules of engagement in the Hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship have changed this season. These changes have robbed the Japanese manufacturer’s GR010 Hybrid of one its key weapons. The speed at which the hybrid LMH contenders such as the Toyota can deploy electric power through the front wheels is now…

WHEN FERNANDO ALONSO speared off the road during qualifying for the Australian GP, the result of an oil pressure drop triggering a failsafe mode that shut down the car, there were mixed emotions in the Alpine garage. On the one hand there was the usual frustration of a missed opportunity and the repair job to come. On the other there was the knowledge of just how fast Alonso had been going, and the promise that it represented. The Spaniard’s first two sector times indicated that he might even have beaten Charles Leclerc to pole, putting him right into the heart of the battle between Ferrari and Red Bull for the race. The performance indicated that the team is making genuine progress towards its stated target of being a title contender…

NIGEL MANSELL SIGNED 1:2 SCALE FERRARI HELMET Enzo Ferrari’s last pick for an F1 driver was Nigel Mansell, who quickly earnt the nickname Il Leone by the tifosi. He wore this helmet in his two seasons at the Scuderia – 1989-90. £349.95 JODY SCHECKTER 1:12 SCALE TYRRELL P34 When it was first revealed, the Tyrrell P34 shocked the world for having six wheels. It helped give Jody Scheckter a win at the 1976 Swedish Grand Prix – the car’s finest moment. £495 RACING GREEN NOTEBOOK Embossed with the Motor Sport logo on its cover, this A5 notebook belongs on your desk – and with its rear envelope pocket you will never lose receipts and notes again. £16 DRIVEN: AN ELEGY TO CARS, ROADS AND MOTORSPORT John Aston’s autobiography is an…

• Already home to Porsche and MG showrooms, PICCADILLY in London will soon have a new automotive neighbour. This autumn LOTUS MAYFAIR, inset right, will arrive, a new ‘global store’ across from the Ritz. Geoff Dowding, Lotus executive director, sales and aftersales said: “It will host some of our most amazing cars from today and yesterday, including from our racing past.” • Remember when pop diva MADONNA was married to film director Guy Ritchie and had an English accent? While in the UK she was driven by chauffeur in a 2005 AUDI A8L 4.2TDI SE QUATTRO, supplied new, and now on sale for £24,995 at KGF CLASSICS in Peterborough. So the story goes, Madonna was a gym habitué and the driver would wait outside. The car had a daily parking…

1976 PORSCHE 911 CARRERA RALLY CAR SOLD BY BONHAMS, £207,000 Low mileage; never raced or rallied? Not this 911, which boasts the distinction of having covered more race miles than any other Porsche. It began clocking up its thrice-around-the-world total in the 1977 London-Sydney Marathon crewed by Poles Sobieslaw Zasada and Wojciech Schramm. Its most notable outing as a historic was in the 2005 East African Classic Safari when it was crewed by then-owner David Cavanagh and Björn Waldegård (who won the event for contemporary cars four times). In 2015, it was driven to Poland for an emotional reunion with its first pilot Schramm. 1961 MERCEDES-BENZ 190 SL SOLD BY H&H, £38,250 This rusted wreck attracted bids from Texas and India before being hammered down to a brave British buyer.…

ONE OF THE THINGS ABOUT motor racing seasons is they tend to go from not much to everything at once as soon as all the big events kick in, and we’re definitely at that time of year where there’s almost too many events to cram in. Let’s start with that slightly delayed catch up from the VSCC meeting at Cadwell Park over Easter. What a tremendous event it was, undoubtedly highlighted by the Frazer-Nash race. Unlike at Goodwood, this catered purely for standard FN and GN cars, so we didn’t have all the super-fast modified specials and the result was a run at a slower pace, so racing was much tighter throughout the grid as nobody ran away with it. Of course, it also marked the debut of my wife…

We profile John Piper on page 123, and his role in the development of the MG Metro 6R4, left. His memories reminded us of the tale of Austin Rover employees getting around homologation rules that required 200 road-going versions to be built. The story goes that the number was never reached and when officials came, cars were wheeled in one end of the building, out the other, and added back to the queue. Apocryphal probably, but indicative of the seat-of-pants nature of 1980s British car-making. Contact us: motorsportmagazine.com @Motor_Sport @motorsport1924 @MotorSport1924…

T HIS IS A BIG YEAR FOR THE ISLE of Man TT’s greatest living exponent. John McGuinness turned 50 in April and will make his 100th TT start during 2022 race week. And once he’s wiped the sweat from his brow and taken the first sup of a pint following the eventending Senior TT he may decide never to do it again. If McGuinness makes that decision it will be a momentous one, both for him and for the TT, because his whole life has revolved around racing motorcycles on the Isle of Man and he’s won 23 TTs, which is more than anyone apart from the late, great Joey Dunlop (26 wins). When McGuinness was a kid he used to bunk off school and stow away on the ferry…

Emilia Romagna GP Miami GP THE CONTRAST BETWEEN venues could hardly have been more extreme; the beautiful old park circuit of Imola, a former public road set in a verdant Emilia Romagna valley, an ancient place in a region of culture pre-dating even the Roman Empire. Consigned to the sport’s past for 14 years, Covid brought Imola’s return as Fl sought survival and consolidation. Two weeks later the circus made its first appearance at Miami, an aggressively brash venue with a circuit fashioned from the car park of the huge Hard Rock Stadium, home of the Miami Dolphins American football team. It’s probably the glitziest event in F1 history and was being staged by F1 itself, wearing the hats both of promoter and main event. This was Fl in expansionist…

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THREE races George Russell was very lucky with the timing of a safety car coming after most of his rivals had pitted but before he had. The free pitstop it gave him in Miami effectively catapulted him in front of team-mate Lewis Hamilton, just as had happened in Australia. In the straight running of those races, without the safety cars, Hamilton would have finished comfortably ahead both times. At Miami, Russell was able to pit for new medium-compound tyres and rejoin in the safety car queue right on the tail of the old hard-tyred Hamilton. Such was Russell’s grip advantage it was a relatively simple matter to pass once the race restarted. But could Hamilton have done anything different? The option was there for him…

MERCEDES INTRODUCED THE first significant upgrades to its troublesome W13 at Miami. Although the team feels that it needs a fuller understanding of the root cause of the car’s inconsistencies before it can know whether to proceed with its ‘zero sidepod’ concept, it is hoped these initial developments may change the car’s behaviour in a way which might shed more light on the problem. The changes seen at Miami comprised a new lower-downforce rear wing and an associated smaller beam wing below – and a new, quite radical, front wing endplate, inset right. The rear wing is of a completely new family, with a straight-edged mainplane of smaller area than what has been used to date and a new tailor-made shallower upper flap. Up until now the rear wing level…

YOU CAN SPIN THE STORY OF THIS car in two quite different ways. The easily pleased will point to the fact that here is an ‘M-performance’ 2 Series with near enough the same pace as the previous pure ‘M’ M2. They’ll point out also it is now alone in its sector in offering a proper six-cylinder powertrain and, more, that while there is now no choice but to have four-wheel drive, almost all of that power is directed almost all of the time to the rear wheels alone. By contrast the cynics among us will point out that even if it’s not used very often, four-wheel drive still carries a weight penalty. They’ll point out too that manual gears are no longer available and that the automatic transmission is of…

Fans of souped-up Mercedes-Benz cars will be familiar with Bodo Buschmann, who was just 22 when he teamed up with friend Klaus Brackmann 45 years ago to establish tuning house Brabus, the moniker being concocted from the first three letters of each of their family names. It was a partnership of convenience, however, devised to satisfy Germany’s law for companies to be established by at least two individuals. Once that was achieved Brackmann lost interest and sold his share to Buschmann. Buschmann died in 2018, but shortly before he had set about applying Brabus customising methods to a boat, having bought an 11.3 metre Axopar for his own use a couple of years earlier. He subsequently had it ‘tweaked’ by his own engineers who changed the dashboard, seats and upholstery,…

ANYBODY WITH AN INTEREST IN vintage chart music will know that this glossy, 258-page book about France’s ruthless march into motor racing from 1966-74 shares its title with Peter Gabriel’s first UK Top 10 single. And if you’re thinking, “Well, Games Without Frontiers was 1980 – it’s the wrong time period!”, you’re right. But let us explain. Although Gabriel was commenting on Cold War politics, Games Without Frontiers is a translation of Jeux sans Frontières, which was the Europe-wide Olympics-with-custard-pies TV show where competing regions would dress in oversized outfits, often as clowns or bakers, to win comedic races. We know the format as It’s a Knockout but Jeux sans Frontières was a French show dating back to 1962 – the idea, it is said, of president Charles de Gaulle,…

1. DUNLOP CHICANE “It’s easy to brake too late, lock the rears, but if you get the first apex right the second follows nicely. It’s faster than you think and you can carry quite a lot of throttle through the second part as the track curves uphill and you crest the rise under Dunlop Bridge. You can be quite rude with the track limits on the exit depending on how closely they’re watching us. It’s an ever-evolving ‘arms race’ between the drivers and Race Control.” 2. THE ESSES & DUNLOP CURVES “You need to watch for the bump in the right hander after the left-hand sweeper. You’re moving towards the limit of grip so it’s hard to place the car. The banking into the bottom of the ‘bowl’, the base…

NIKITA ACHANTA, WRITER F1 World Champions: 1950-2019 If Sebastian Vettel can name all the world champions dating back to 1950, we can try too. Created to commemorate 70 years of F1, this poster by Automobilist is limited to 700 copies and each is numbered. Its rich colours have been printed on high-quality paper using state-of-the-art technology. Names are engraved in gold embossing and the print features a stunning rendition of today’s cars. If you or your father live and breathe top-level racing, this is one for your collection. £99 JAMES ELSON, DIGITAL WRITER Jabrock Bullrun sunglasses With the British motor sport season about to hit top gear, now is the perfect time to invest in the summer apparel needed, whether you’re at BTCC Knockhill or a track day at Snetterton.…

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@motorsportmagazine.co.uk. Hi-res digital images preferred. Original images sent at owner’s own risk. We can’t return.…

Russell and Hamilton talk of their W13 ups and downs After going fastest in FP2 in Miami in his Mercedes, George Russell, below, was puzzled. “I don’t understand why we have hit the ground running here. We knew coming into this weekend, with the higher temperatures, it would help us a bit with tyre warm-up. This is the first really hot race. The car seems to be working well but it’s only Friday and we’re not getting too carried away.” Lewis Hamilton was also relatively quick, but even more perplexed. “It feels similar to me, to be honest. We definitely still have a balance issue. We haven’t cured it. But looking at the times it seems we have improved, so I’m not quite sure where that is. I’m still struggling…

GOOD ▲ HORROR SHIRT “Please buy the merchandise, ” Alex Albon, above, centre, begged in Miami in the hope of a bigger budget. Another brilliant performance to take ninth in the race suggests he’s doing fine with Williams’ current car. ▲ WALK OF NO SHAME MB’s celebrity trawl up and down the grid was more exciting than at most races this year – he didn’t know why the celebrities were there, and neither, seemingly, did they. ▲ RUSSELL RISING His spine might be fragmenting from the porpoising, but Russell has rodeoed the troublesome Merc to fourth in the championship – the only driver to finish top-five in every race. ▲ INVISIBLE ESTEBAN Esteban Ocon has very quietly been one of the stand-out performers this year, but barely anyone seems to…

After four years proving that critical acclaim is no guarantee of commercial success, the rapturously received but still slow-selling Alpine A110 has had its mid-life facelift. Not that you’d notice: if you can spot any material differences between the first and this second generation model, your eyesight is better than mine. There are three new models starting with the standard A110 and culminating the most expensive S version. We’ll focus here on the A110 GT, which combines the optimal suspension set up of the standard A110 with the high output motor of the A110S, a combination only possible in the past by those who bought the run-out Legende GT special edition of which just 26 came to the UK. And it’s now got a bit more power too, though we…

Jakarta ePrix, June 4 ORIGINALLY MEANT TO BE PART of the 2019/20 calendar, the inaugural Jakarta ePrix was cancelled due to the spread of Covid. But it’s now back on track and Indonesia will host Round 9 of the 2022 Formula E season. Five different venues in the Indonesian capital were considered to host the race, including a track by the National Monument. In December, FE announced that for the next three years, the race would be held in Ancol in the north of the city. Close to the beach and overlooking Jakarta Bay, spectators can expect a sun-kissed seaside backdrop as the cars zoom past. This will be the first Asian ePrix held since the Sanya ePrix was cancelled in 2021. But the event has been embroiled in controversy…

SEEING JOHN HINDLE’S LETTER REGARDING A STOPLIGHT GRAND PRIX INVOLVING a GTO Ferrari [April] dislodged an almost-forgotten similar event, showing how times have really changed. A group of friends and I had decided to see the Can-Am race in 1966 at Bridgehampton, and one of the favourite evening activities was to scour the local gas station garages for race cars (Bridgehampton had no on-track garages). The dessert after that crawl was to visit local bar parking lots to see the visiting cars. I was looking over a particularly nice silver Aston DB6 when I heard the unmistakeable sound of V12s hard at work. Streaking by the bar (on a two-lane secondary road) was a liveried 1964 Ferrari GTO racing a Ferrari 250 LM. Using both lanes, mind you. Both were…

Richard Adams only met John Piper through a mutual friend, but it didn’t take much to convince this serial classic car owner that Piper Special Vehicles should be entrusted with an expensive pet project: to build a loose homage to the MGC GTS coupés with which the Abingdon works went racing in the late 1960s, including at the 1969 Sebring 12 Hours. The works only built two of the lightweight racers, featuring aluminium roof, door skins, front valance, ‘bubble’ wings and Perspex-fitted tailgate. There was ‘Mabel’, registered MBL 546E (which finished 34th overall at Sebring), and ‘Romeo’ – RMO 699F (a highly respectable 15th, driven by Andrew Hedges and Paddy Hopkirk). Adams has based his replica on the latter. “I’ve always liked the idea of the Sebring, but as they…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA IF YOU’RE AFTER AN HISTORIC ENDURANCE racer, it’s probably a wise idea to buy one from someone who knows what they’re like to live with – someone like 2004 LMP2 Le Mans Series champion Sam Hancock, for example. Now best known as a driver coach and historic racer, he also brokers classic competition cars from his London base – and one of the most interesting offerings on the current Hancock inventory is the 2004 Nasamax-Judd V10 LMP1 car pictured here. Why? Because it was the first racer ever to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours running on 100% renewable fuel. It started life three years earlier as a more conventional car in the form of a Reynard 2QK chassis powered by a four-litre Judd, but…

REGULAR VERSIONS OF SOME cars in comparable condition tend to be worth roughly the same – but a touch of star quality can lend a ‘halo effect’. And never was that truer than in the case of this superbly restored Marcos 1600 GT which is set to cross the block. For those who didn’t spot the feeble pun, this particular Marcos was the very car driven by Roger Moore in the final episode of the 1960s TV series The Saint, in which Simon Templar sets out on a car rally but crashes into a tree as a result of mechanical tampering by baddies. The full story of how the car ended up being chosen for the episode is lost in time, but what is known is that the person who…

CINEMA POSTERS WERE NOT printed in huge quantities, and if not binned when showings were over were returned to the distribution centre for credit, so a limited number of originals survive. Sometimes studios printed a large run for giveaways or sale, and there’s an endless number of modern reprints, official or illicit. There’s nothing wrong with buying these for their decorative value, but they have no worth in collectability – which makes buying a minefield as some vendors seem confused about the meaning of the word ‘original’. Film distributors often use different artwork and layouts for their own country. Sometimes the name of the film is changed – Paul Newman’s Winning, for example, was released in France as Virages. It’s likely most readers will be thinking of English-language films, but…