Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i Motor Sport Magazine

WALKING THROUGH Kensington one day in the 1980s I saw an Alfa Romeo parked by the kerb. No everyday saloon but an 8C 2300, even then worth a million or so. I recognised it as belonging to Alain de Cadenet and later on I asked him if he didn’t think that a bit risky. “Oh no, ” he said cheerfully. “Most people don’t know what it is and a thief wouldn’t know how to start it.” Typical of the insouciant ADC, who after a life lived in fast machinery and fast circles has died aged 76 in New York from cancer. In his various lives as racing driver, car constructor, TV presenter, commentator and philatelist Alain de Cadenet breezed through with the dash and panache of the 1930s Bentley gang…

Zhou Guanyou emerged unscathed from a terrifying-looking accident in the opening seconds of the British Grand Prix, his Alfa Romeo flipping behind the barriers after interlocking wheels with George Russell’s Mercedes. As he skated along the run-off area upside down, the car’s roll hoop failed and the cockpit halo ended up serving as a secondary life saver. This has brought about immediate investigations by the team and by the governing body. The Alfa, uniquely, uses a blade style of hoop rather than the conventional inverted U shape. But just like every other design on the grid, it exceeded the minimum load requirements demanded by the FIA. “With that first impact, where it landed on the first flip, the team is still doing an investigation, ” Zhou said afterwards. “But I…

GOOD ▲ FLASHBACK! Mick Schumacher earned his first points at Silverstone after a battle with Max Verstappen. A Schumacher versus a Verstappen – is it 1994 again? ▲ TEARY-EYED An emotional Sebastian Vettel drove his newly purchased ‘Red 5’ Williams in the presence of Nigel Mansell himself. Must’ve been a nice change for Williams fans to be crying tears of joy instead of despair. ▲ B+ After running more experiments than a GCSE chemistry student, Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes seem to have fixed the W13 and achieve another podium in Austria. Gold stars all round. ▲ CURSE-BREAKER Carlos Sainz finally rid himself of the unwanted record of race starts without a win in Silverstone. It only took him 150 attempts. ▲ SEVENTH HEAVEN Valtteri Bottas is excelling in his Alfa…

WHAT DO THE RANGE Rover and Porsche 911 have in common? Only that they have both been so successful that, like the shark which is reputed to have achieved perfect hydrodynamic form, they appear to have stopped evolving. This new Range Rover looks so similar to the last, plenty will mistake the two. I didn’t even think the old car felt in need of replacement. But replaced it has been, by an all new car now offering seven seats and an effective fourwheel steering system that reduces its turning circle to that of a Mini Cooper. I drove what is likely to be the big seller despite the fuel price, with a punchy 3-litre diesel and a price tag in excess of £100,000. It wasn’t that long ago that Land…

Hungarian Grand Prix, July 29-31 IF THERE’S ONE RACE THAT STANDS out from a highly crowded July – during which the Formula 1 circus will have four races inside a month! – then it’s the Hungarian Grand Prix. Why? Purely because this is the race that always offers something that bit different to the norm. Sure, July also has the high-speed thrashes that are the British GP at Silverstone and the Belgian race (presuming we actually get a race this year…) at Spa-Francorchamps. Then there’s the migraine-inducing stripes of the French GP at Circuit Paul Ricard and the mountainous Red Bull Ring in Austria, but the Hungaroring is one of the perhaps overlooked gems on the calendar. Not only is the race usually blistering hot (almost always 30°C or above),…

I READ WITH INTEREST YOUR RECOGNITION OF THE RECENT PASSING OF TONY BROOKS [Matters of Moment, July]. As an eight-year-old, I travelled to Watkins Glen with my father to experience the 1961 US Grand Prix. Dad, an avid motor sport enthusiast, immigrated to Canada from England in 1949 and had maintained a friendship with BRM mechanic Dennis Perkins. Arriving at the Glen, we met Dennis and the rest of the team in the paddock. No doubt, I was thrilled when he asked if I would like to sit in Tony’s BRM P57. As the years pass, I am reminded once again of F1’s gentler times. BILL WILCOX, COBOURG, ONTARIO, CANADA I AM SOMEWHAT PUZZLED, IF ENTERTAINED, by Doug Nye’s comments in August [The Archives] re historic racing. I agree that…

McLaren was never not going to race the Artura and with the 720S looking after the GT3 category, GT4 is the perfect home for it, replacing the already highly successful 570S GT4 race car. But the regs don’t allow hybrid power, so the Artura runs an unadorned 3-litre V6 motor which, given that in the road car it already produces way more power than will be allowable under GT4 regs, should be no hardship at all. But it uses the seven-speed transmission instead of the road car’s eight, presumably because of an FIA requirement for a reverse gear, hitherto achieved simply by making the electric motor turn backwards. With a 3-litre V6 where there was once a 4-litre V8, the Artura GT4 is, car for car, over 100kg lighter than…

• The distinctive air feed snorkels of the LOTUS 47GT, below right, mark this as the ex-John Miles/ Jackie Oliver 1967 LOTUS COMPONENTS WORKS CAR which was driven to class victory in the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch in July 1967. Incredibly, it was recovered from a scrapyard in 1974. Now fully restored, it’s on sale at CHARLES LEITH in the New Forest, Hampshire, for £165,000. • Know the story of JEAN RONDEAU? Of course you do – the only driver to win Le Mans with a car bearing his own name (Rondeau M379B, 1980). The M382 was new for ’82, with chassis 001 sent to the US where it raced in the 1982 Daytona 24 Hours and 1984 Sebring 12 Hours. It’s at ASCOTT COLLECTION in France for £355,000,…

REMEMBER MAPS? IF YOU WEREN’T born till the ‘90s, imagine printing out your satnav. The rest of us can recall wrestling with large sheets of paper that refused to return to their original folds – and some of us still keep an atlas in our cars. You can’t explore aimlessly with satnav. (I’m no Luddite: I do use GPS but avoid paying costly ISP data charges by downloading OSM maps – it’s free and you don’t need to be online.) While last year’s road atlas is simply outdated paper, a 1930s map can be an enjoyable trip down that dusty Imagination Lane for us cartophiles, conveying images of traffic-free roads, quiet towns and empty countryside. In fact, the reality was terrible jams in Kingston or Newcastle, frequent punctures on gravel…

When we think of EVs or plug-in hybrids we always complain about their weight. But while its batteries are indeed hefty, the electric motor in the McLaren Artura, left, which we drive on page 86, weighs just 15kg yet delivers 94bhp. In power-to-weight terms that puts it in a completely different league to an internal combustion engine. For comparison, Ford’s little 1-litre three-cylinder motor found in cars such as the Fiesta and which has outputs from 75-150bhp weighs around 100kg.…

THERE’S SOMETHING FOR LESSER Audis to learn from this flagship saloon. How pleasing it is to see a truly rapid Audi that looks so visually discreet and which rides so unexpectedly well. The latter is achieved by using cameras to scan the road ahead and adjust the suspension to suit; it also leans the car into high speed corners, a trait I’ve hated in other cars but which actually works very unobtrusively here. Nor is there anything ‘go-faster’ about the cabin. It’s luxurious but sober and would be close to perfection if the touchscreen was more user-friendly. It could almost be a normal Audi until you realise its 4-litre twin turbo will spear it to 62mph in less than 4sec. It also has commendably neutral handling: driving it fast was…

1961 Cooper and Jack Brabham trigger the Indy 500 rear-engined revolution Together, they’d turned Formula 1 back to front. Then, Cooper and Jack Brabham kicked the doors in for another rear-engined revolution, at the revered home of the big-beast roadsters. Brabham took a rookie test in October 1960 in a lowline T53 and lapped only a couple of mph off the 1959 pole time. It only confirmed the establishment’s fears and spooked officials who thought green cars at The Brickyard were bad luck. They were – for the roadsters. The following May, Brabham crisscrossed the Atlantic to qualify at Indy and race at Monaco and Zandvoort, then returned to start the 500, right. Coventry Climax had stretched an FPF to 2.7 litres, Dunlop had provided special asymmetric tyres and Kleenex…

IT NEARLY DIDN’T HAPPEN. JOST CAPITO was a step away from retirement when he agreed to join Williams Racing as CEO in February 2021, before subsequently taking on the team principal role and the membership of F1’s ‘Piranha Club’ that goes with it. Williams made clear progress last season, taking the chances that circumstances provided. After three dismal years at the bottom of the constructors’ table it climbed to eighth, ahead of Alfa Romeo and Haas. Both rivals have made quicker cars in 2022 and once again Williams has fallen to last place. The difference this time is that the FW44 is still good enough to have allowed Alex Albon to occasionally make the points, and now there is real hope and ambition in the camp. There’s little doubt that…

“GOOD GRIEF. I HAVEN’T SAT Gin this since I climbed out at Brands Hatch in 1972, having just buried it in the bank…” Half a century on, ‘Bubbles’ Horsley (it says ‘Anthony’ on his birth certificate, but nobody calls him that) lowers himself into a small but significant slice of motor racing history, one of two Dastle Mark 9 Formula 3 cars that were the founding pillars of Hesketh Racing when it launched 50 years ago. The highlights of the Hesketh story are well known. In 1973, only the second year of the team’s existence, it emerged as an unlikely front runner in the world championship, running a customer March chassis for James Hunt. It then became a constructor and won one of its earliest Formula 1 races, the 1974…

CLASSIC PORSCHE 911S ARE SO ubiquitous that anyone who wants one is spoiled for choice. But occasionally a 911 appears that is hen’s-teeth rare in terms of spec, history and provenance – and this Rally version is such a car. The original race-based R of 1967 (just 20 were built) is regarded by many as the Holy Grail of 911s. The car on offer at RM Sotheby’s, however, is likely unique in being a regular model that was upgraded in period with the optional Rally package designed to bring competition success to privateer drivers. Hans Niederer, 28 back then, of Oxford, New York was one such person who fancied his chances on track and, with the help of Porsche retailer Jiri Nechleba, specified a car with the 9552 Rally Kit…

THE WORLD NEVER STOPS CHANGING and motorcycling’s elite with it. Riders and motorcycles come and go. Empires rise and crumble. And sometimes ancient empires arise from the dust. MotoGP seems to find itself at such a milestone of change. The Japanese factories that have dominated appear to be in decline, while European manufacturers, which ruled the first few decades of the championship, are now reasserting themselves. A few months ago Suzuki stunned the paddock by announcing its withdrawal from MotoGP. A few weeks later Yamaha revealed it will halve its presence next year because its independent team will run Italian machinery. At June’s German Grand Prix, Honda failed to score a championship point for the first time since 1981. At the very next race, Yamaha was out of the points…

Canadian GP British GP Austrian GP THREE GRANDS PRIX PACKED into four weekends in this quick-fire championship gave three different winners, one of them for the first time. The victories of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (in Canada) and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (in Austria) bookended Carlos Sainz’s breakthrough win at the British Grand Prix. Sainz had been Ferrari’s main chance two weeks earlier, in Canada, where he fought with Verstappen for the win, pressuring the Red Bull all the way to the flag. On that occasion Leclerc had started from the back row as penalty for taking his fourth power unit of the season, placing Sainz in the team’s lead role for the weekend. But before he could take the race to Verstappen, Sainz had to find a way around the…

SILVERSTONE MARKED THE SECOND time this season that Ferrari was involved in a controversial strategy call. Unlike at Monaco, it didn’t cost the team a victory, as Carlos Sainz took his maiden win, but it came at the expense of erstwhile leader Charles Leclerc. The safety car 14 laps from the end came as the Ferraris were running 1-2 (Leclerc ahead of Sainz) but being hunted down by the newer-tyred Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton. Leclerc was just rounding Stowe corner as the safety car was thrown. In this situation the leader is always at the mercy of those who can react to whatever he does. But it seemed obvious that if Leclerc remained out on old hard tyres he’d be extremely vulnerable on the restart to cars behind – principally…

ALTHOUGH SPECULATION RAGES about the influence of plank flexibility on the Red Bull RB18’s relatively smooth ride (see Mark Hughes’s column), there is clearly more to it than just that. Sergio Pérez’s qualifying accident at Monaco led to the car being craned off the track, making its floor fully visible. It showed a floor with a higher and more domed tunnel roof than those of Mercedes or Ferrari, theoretically making it more tolerant of variations in ride height. It showed a lot of intricate detail in the geometry of the inlet strakes implying that they were matched to the curvature of the tunnel roof so as to keep the air pressure distribution more consistent as the ride height and attitude changes when the car is on track. Red Bull has…

RIGHT NOW, TOYOTA BOASTS three manual-transmission performance cars. Naming other carmakers who can claim the same is a depressingly short task. Porsche fits a stick to the Boxster, Cayman and 911, albeit to a minority of buyers. Ford sells a pair of hot hatchbacks alongside the Mustang muscle car. Then there’s Caterham, if you dare designate its expansive selection of Sevens as different models. But whichever way you slice it, one of the humblest manufacturers finds itself in exclusive company. It’s all thanks to president Akio Toyoda being an insatiable enthusiast who prioritises the positive aura of a bunch of proper driver’s cars over maximum profit, perhaps to the chagrin of those counting the yen that rolls in. Why else would the 31-grand GR Yaris get a completely bespoke body…

HOROLOGICAL HISTORIANS WILL know that Abraham-Louis Breguet is best associated with the development of the tourbillon – and since he died in 1823, they will also know that the great man knew nothing of horseless carriages. But at the London Concours in June, Breguet pulled the wraps off a largely forgotten timepiece recalling a brief dalliance with the automotive world that took place 32 years ago. It takes the form of a dashboard clock commissioned by Lamborghini and offered to buyers of the new Diablo as an optional extra costing a not inconsiderable £6000. Available only for the 100 limited edition cars built from 1990-91, the 57mm square automotive edge counter featured a gold bezel, a pusher at the five o’clock position that triggered a chronograph and another at seven…

SCHOLARLY. THAT’S THE BEST WORD for this discussion on the future of automotive history. It’s hard to summarise how much long-time collector and archivist Miles Collier packs into this wide-ranging work, with its references to Neolithic axes and Degas paintings. When he talks about the “artefactual narrative” inherent in a historic vehicle – the history recorded by the physical evidence of patches, reshaping, old paint, plus photos, records and memories – you’ll realise that this is neither a history nor a guide to restoration nor a defence of collecting. Rather it’s a thought-piece on what the car has meant to us culturally and technically, what the place of the historic automobile is becoming as we move out of the internal combustion era, and how to preserve it and the history…

IT SEEMED ONLY RIGHT TO GO BACK. I was here 11 years ago in the very first product created by McLaren Automotive. Then I had no idea what to expect of this all-new car from this all-new company which in a previous life had created the McLaren F1 and Mercedes-Benz SLR. What would a McLaren road car commissioned by Ron Dennis but without the genius of Gordon Murray’s input be like? Efficient? Impressive? Antiseptic? Yes, yes, and thrice yes. The convolutedly entitled McLaren MP4-12C was a technical masterpiece whose only mistake was to forget the person behind the wheel. Today McLaren employs people specifically to ensure that never happens again. They are the ‘voice of the customer’, there to quietly remind the engineers of the complex and often contrary nature…

BUYING, SELLING, AUCTIONS, MEMORABILIA ITALIAN RACING CARS FROM THE 1950S don’t come much more ‘quintessential’ than this spectacular Maserati A6GCS/53, one of the 48 Spider variants of the model built between 1953 and 1955. As aficionados will know, the ‘A6’ designation refers to marque co-founder Alfieri and the car’s six-cylinder engine which, in this case, was a version of the Gioacchino Colombo-designed 2-litre unit uprated to produce around 170bhp through the use of an aluminium block and pistons and twin overhead camshafts. Fitted into a race-orientated ladder chassis made by Gilco of Milan (which also built frames for Ferrari) it created a package that considerably upped the ante over Maserati’s immediate post-war racers which, although successful in their period, were by then being outclassed. The car’s first owner was a…

1924 SUNBEAM 24/70 SOLD BY DVCA, £94,600 In its day, Sunbeam’s 4½-litre 24/70 served as a worthy rival to Rolls-Royce and Bentley. Only 102 were made; four survive. This one once belonged to Devon’s Bernard Smith, founder of Mr Kipling. 1957 AUSTIN-HEALEY 100/6 SOLD BY HISTORICS, £48,876 A fine example of why it usually makes economic sense to buy a restored car than to restore one yourself. This Big Healey was given a new chassis, aluminium body panels and a leather re-trim. 2017 FORCE INDIA VJM10 SOLD BY BONHAMS, £80,500 This positively pink Force India F1 car achieved eight points-scoring finishes out of nine races in 2017. Driven by Frenchman Esteban Ocon, it managed fifth in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix and was also piloted by George Russell during…