Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Motor Sport Magazine

Unlike Formula 1 which follows the sun around the world, domestic motor racing is coming to a close as the evenings begin to draw in. So it seems like a good time to reflect on which summer events I have enjoyed the most. As ever, the Goodwoods feature heavily, from the Members’ Meeting in April to the glitz of the Festival of Speed at the height of the summer. But it will always be the Revival that is my personal highlight. There is something about the time of year, with the maturing sun casting long shadows in the late afternoon across the race track and paddock, illuminating teasing wings of such wonderfully evocative cars, that make it hard to beat. This year’s racing was quite superb and the global pull…

One of the most famous names in singleseater racing, Van Diemen, will be revived by ex-Formula 1 driver Ralph Firman Jr, who aims to continue the legacy established by his father. Founded in 1973 by Ralph Firman Sr and Ross Ambrose, Van Diemen became a major force in the junior single-seater market over two decades, churning out winning machinery for formulas Ford, Renault, Vauxhall Jr Formula 3, sports cars and more from its factory near Snetterton in Norfolk. Now the brand – whose name is derived from Van Diemen’s Land, the former name for the island of Tasmania where Ambrose was born – is returning under the stewardship of Firman’s son, best known for his 2003 F1 season with Jordan. Firman has partnered with ex-Pacific F1 boss Keith Wiggins…

On September 17 and 18 the world’s biggest 24-hour motorcycle race celebrated its centenary. The Bol d’Or is to motorcycling what Glastonbury is to music festivals – and the two events share much in common. Aside from the racing and the music both are tinged with Bacchanalian, atavistic celebrations, with fans making their own worlds to escape the real world for a few days. In fact the Bol d’Or combines both racing and rock’n’roll. Bands like Iggy and the Stooges, Motörhead and The Stranglers have played on the Saturday night, trying to make themselves heard above the demented, apparently neverending howl of 50 or so racing motorcycles, whose riders occasionally find themselves blinded by clouds of campfire smoke drifting across the racetrack. During much of its life the Bol d’Or…

Belgian GP Dutch GP Italian GP After the summer break, the title campaigns of Max Verstappen and Red Bull really kicked on, to the extent that the driver said at Monza, “We don’t need wins any more, but we still want them.” That was just before he scored his fifth straight victory. You may recall that he won the last race before the break, in Hungary, from 10th. Well, he won at Spa from 14th, at Zandvoort from pole and at Monza from seventh. It didn’t seem to matter much where he started from, he would dominate regardless. At Spa and Monza he was taking power unit penalties, the latter a voluntary one just so that he had more engines in the pool for the remainder of the season. Around…

GOOD PANTOMIME VILLAIN Burning £80 Mercedes baseball hats might be too far, but nothing wrong with Monza fans booing winner Verstappen. Thumbs up for partisan pantomime antics. DE VRIES DUB De Vries interrupted his morning espresso to save the day for Williams on Saturday and then Sunday at Monza. Give him an F1 drive! ALL ABOUT SCHMITZ Making all the right strategy decisions at all the right times – strategist Hannah Schmitz has become one of Red Bull’s key personnel. OLD BOYS They might have a combined age of 75, but Alonso and Vettel showed many of the kids how it’s done at Spa by finishing sixth and eighth. MONEY IN THE BANKING The outside being the favourable line into Zandvoort’s banked Turn 1 provided great entertainment, helped by that…

It may seem a strange thing to say about what is by no means the most powerful car in the line-up, but this new 420 Cup is the most extreme road car Caterham has produced to date. For it is nothing less than its racing car modified just enough to earn it the right to wear a numberplate. Which sounds rather exciting, even more so when you learn the sequential SADEV gearbox of the racer is retained too, which means that when you’re flat out you don’t even need the clutch. Up or down the box. At its heart lies a 2-litre Ford engine, tuned to give 210bhp, enough in a car weighing just 560kg to hurl you to 60mph in just 3.6sec. Like the race car, there’s no screen,…

The original Land Rover Defender might have been axed in 2016, but enthusiasm for the so-called ‘best 4x4 by far’ appears to continue unabated – as evinced by the premium prices people are happy to pay for the best examples. Land Rover itself has proved keen to capitalise on the world’s continued affection for the famously utilitarian off-roader, last year building a run of 25 Works V8 Trophy continuations based on the Defenders that competed in the Camel Trophy races held in far-flung places during the 1980s and ’90s. Despite a starting price of £195,000 the edition sold out in just three days – inspiring Land Rover Classic to recently unveil a further 25 Works V8 Trophy II cars, this time costing ‘from’ £225,000 apiece. Based on restored and upgraded…

Everyone wants to drive the ’Ring – it’s implicit in the membership badge of the Petrolhead Club. We also all know that it’s almost impossible to learn all of it, unless you’re a top-level racer with unfettered access, but this comprehensive and beautifully illustrated guide should reduce your chances of demolishing your hire car against the Armco within the first lap. Compiled by a racing instructor and a photographer-cum-publisher, this hefty production combines the back story of the fabled track, including historical nuggets such as where to find the foundation stone, with much practical information such as how to find it, how to get on the track and how to choose some training. There’s also a section on “What to do if something goes wrong” including the circuit emergency number,…

Denny Hulme and Brian Hart hadn’t seen each other for years when they met on the quayside in Monaco in 1986. Hulme, in the cap, as a retired world champion, was making a rare appearance. Hart, a quick driver in his day, had recently become redundant as an F1 engine supplier when Haas-Lola switched from the Hart four-cylinder 415T to the longawaited Ford-Cosworth turbo V6. These two racers found plenty to talk about. At Zolder in August 1964, for example, Hulme had won the Limbourg Grand Prix in a works Brabham, with Hart finishing third for Ron Harris Team Lotus. That F2 race in Belgium had been but one stopping point during a typical summer spent happily crisscrossing Europe: Karlskoga one weekend; Enna the next. They also recalled competing in…

Imagine being a fan of 1970s GT racing and opening up a shipping container only to discover that it contained not one, but two Ford Capri RS2600s in the exact same livery (and probably on the same tyres) that they wore when last on track more than 40 years earlier. That was the case with this remarkable ‘time warp’ RS being sold on behalf of a client by competition-car expert Duncan Hamilton. The ‘sister’ Capri, which was resting alongside it when the container was opened around a decade ago, turned out to be the 1972 factory Le Mans car driven by Jochen Mass and Hans Stuck, which managed 14 hours and 152 laps before retiring with an oil pump failure. That has now been restored to its correct Le Mans…

1955 FERRARI 410 SPORT SPIDER SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S, £18.6M The list of names to have piloted this Scagliettibodied car reads like a roll call of great racers from the ’50s, with everyone from Phil Hill to Richie Ginther and Juan Manuel Fangio to Masten Gregory having raced it in period. But none enjoyed more success with the car than the late, great Carroll Shelby who drove it to eight wins and 10 podiums – the best run of results he achieved in any single car. It was sold complete with the first (1956) and last (1958) trophies he won with it, along with its original 1957 Nassau race licence plate. 1984 FORD ESCORT RS TURBO SOLD BY SILVERSTONE AUCTIONS, £722,500 Classic ‘fast Fords’ have become hugely soughtafter…

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Another vibrant, busy and successful Goodwood Revival bore one unique element in September – remembrances of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Taking place immediately before the Royal funeral, the event paused in silence on each of the three days following a short film of the Queen’s life. Flags flew at half mast around the track and officials (and many of the crowd) wore black armbands over their period-style brown coats, while the Duke of Richmond made a short speech on Friday before activities began. “As we gather on this glorious evening to enjoy the sport we all love, it is tinged with great sadness following the death last week of Her Majesty the Queen,” said the Duke. “Her life and reign are impossible to put into words. Her grace,…

MotoGP looks set to become the latest series to race in Saudi Arabia with the announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding between MotoGP commercial rights holder Dorna and the Gulf state. The race would take place in a new purpose-built facility, potentially the same one the country has pledged to build when it recently extended its F1 contract to 2030. No time frame has been given for the race, but the deal includes the establishment of a new programme to support young Saudi riders. “As the leading global championship for two-wheel circuit racing, we are thrilled at this opportunity for MotoGP to expand its reach within the Middle East by adding an annual grand prix in Saudi Arabia,” said Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta. The deal has been criticised by some…

It’s relatively easy to have great strategy with the fastest car. But when scratching for pace, somewhere close but not quite there, sometimes circumstances can favour you, allowing you to give the faster guy a fright. Mercedes was in such a situation at Zandvoort. The W13 is a tricky car but Mercedes at least now broadly understands it. Its limitations are baked-in but it has strengths. On a highdownforce track where the cars can be run with a low ride height, it is pretty quick. Add that to its usual kindness on the rubber and it was somewhere close in Zandvoort, closer than it’s been all season. When Mercedes saw that this, combined with a bit of ambiguity in what the ideal strategy was set to be – one-stop or…

Looking just at this three-race sample, the Red Bull RB18’s pace advantage at Spa was far greater than at Zandvoort and significantly better even than Monza. Verstappen had to fight harder to win the Dutch race from pole than he had to win at Spa from his penalised 14th on the grid, or at Monza from a penalised seventh. Spa and Monza are relative outliers on the calendar with their low-drag demands, though they have been joined recently by Baku and Jeddah. For such tracks aero efficiency becomes much more important than around conventional tracks where the relative importance of downforce to drag is much greater. At Zandvoort, the cars run pretty much full downforce and so the track presents a completely different set of challenges to those outlying venues…

The new EQE is one of the most important cars in the Mercedes EV vanguard: derived from the extant EQS luxury saloon, the EQE is the one that will have to sell in volume right around the world. And if you look at it objectively, it seems to have what it takes to succeed. The mid-range car I drove was quick enough, obviously as quiet as a morgue and, on the air suspension that’s standard on the top two trim levels in the range, as comfortable as you’d expect an executive-class Benz to be. The interior design is as clean as an operating theatre table and while I care for its haptic controls far less than good old switches and buttons, others are far worse. And while you won’t get…

Round 8, October 22 The Nürburgring Endurance Series usually ends its season in October but due to Covid in 2020 and ’21 dates had to be juggled around – and normal service has not quite resumed yet. Heavy snow in April meant that a round had to be rescheduled – to November 5. So what should have been the NES finale is now the last race but one. The series consists of eight races from March onwards, most lasting for four hours. All are held at that most challenging of tracks – the Nürburgring Nordschleife. First, a Nordschleife refresher: the ‘Green Hell’ features almost 1000ft of difference in elevation. The track’s lowest point sits at 1050ft above sea level and the highest is 2020ft. Its length is a real test…

Iread with interest your report in the August 2022 issue [Triple Crown tales] about the Henri Pescarolo and Graham Hill victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours 50 years ago. I would like someone to tell me who had been the one who had said that the Triple Crown was winning the Monaco GP, Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans. Wrong! Unless someone with authority can tell me otherwise, the Triple Crown as far as I know has always been winning the F1 championship, Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Le Mans. By all means a very, very difficult task to do. Fernando Alonso has tried and sadly did not quite make it, and I think he remains the only active driver that could do it. I laugh…

“It’s possible that the leading teams and drivers were drawn by one of the UK’s biggest prize funds” They are rarely mentioned in the same breath, but Mallory Park and Formula 1 are by no means strangers. The circuit was a staple on the British Formula 1 Championship calendar during its three-season zenith, 1978-1980, hosting two rounds annually. At the time it seemed wholesome, noisy fun as recent, secondhand grand prix cars hurtled around in little more than 40 seconds. Nobody batted an eyelid that the track had precious little in the way of pit facilities… or even less in terms of run-off. It had – and still has – a magnificent café, which surely mattered more… Leading grand prix teams very occasionally tested there – using the hairpin to…

It is June 11, 1972 and what had always been a dream had come to nothing. What galled was that it was so close to coming true. What would it have been like to race a Ferrari at Le Mans? It seemed that the former boxer Pierre Laffeach and the farmer Gilles Doncieux would now never know. It wasn’t meant to be like this. Both drivers had been finalists in the previous year’s Volant Shell driving competition. And that entitled them to drive at Le Mans in a car entered by one of the competition’s sponsors, none other than triple Le Mans winner Luigi Chinetti himself. This was the man who had established Ferrari in North America and whose North American Racing Team was the most famous and fabled…

● In 1986, mere months after Marty McFly uttered to Doc Brown in Back to the Future, “Are you telling me you built a time machine... out of a DELOREAN?” this 1983 DMC-12, inset, was placed in climate-controlled storage with just 5397 miles on the clock. Offered by Florida’s PODIUM AUTO SALES for £85,000, it is itself a time machine and still has its original factory Goodyear tyres. ● If your collection lacks a genuine grand prix winner, then BRABHAM BT26A chassis 3, below right, might fill that embarrassing void. It was driven to victory in the 1969 Canadian GP by JACKY ICKX – indeed, the car bears the name of the 1969 F1 runner-up – and was the racer that JOCHEN RINDT put on pole at the 1968…

One of the few things that niggles me about my 1989 BMW 635 is that it came with a horrible ’90s radio – all swoopy chrome and flashing lights. I could search for the correct period radio-cassette, but then I’d miss out on DAB, Bluetooth and BBC podcasts. So I’ve been investigating alternatives. As a result this column is less about collecting than finding suitable old-looking things for the classic car you’ve already collected. “Yo u’ve – but you’ll probably thrown out your CDs regret that” If you do want a period radio that matches your car’s age you’ll find dealers at the big autojumbles as well as online. And once you’ve found the right head unit you can have it invisibly converted to VHF, DAB or Bluetooth (including hands-free…

Monza marked its centenary year with a string of celebratory events, plus the small matter of a grand prix, at the start of September. First opened in 1922, Monza has become one of the world’s most famous racing circuits, having held the Italian Grand Prix every year bar one since the world championship’s formation in 1950 – plus 15 other pre-F1 world championship events between 1922 and 1949. Safe to say times have changed since that first race 100 years ago, when Pietro Bordino won a 5hr 43min thriller aboard a Fiat 804, with a fastest lap of just over 4min 5sec. The track then hosted the closest finish in F1 history when in 1971 Peter Gethin edged to victory ahead of a top five covered by just 0.61sec. Fast…

Did any car ever try to be more things to more people than this? VW’s new ID 5 is an SUV and a crossover, a coupé, a hatchback and an EV all rolled into one. And now you’re waiting for me to explain why the resulting confection is not also the automotive embodiment of the much used ‘Jack of all trades’ epithet. You’ll be waiting a while, for that is precisely what the ID 5 is: a broadly effective device for doing a wide range of jobs yet one of so little character or distinction I am writing these words within minutes of vacating its interior for the last time because if I leave it any longer, I fear I might forget about it entirely. It suffers to an even…

Remember Drake Olson? Not sure we did. Briefly a rising star in IMSA, Olson made a single start in a works Rothmans Porsche 962, sharing No3 (chassis 002) with Vern Schuppan at the 1986 Le Mans 24 Hours. Following a pair of trouble-free stints from the Australian, Olson took over in seventh place but lasted all but half an hour before he was forced to pit with hydraulics dramas, then not long after stopped for good on the Mulsanne with a broken gearbox. Schuppan was switched to No2, Olson to the hospitality suite to entertain guests. That Serge Vanbockryck tracked him down to Alaska, where he runs a flying business ferrying intrepid mountaineers, skiers and snowboarders, to complete a six-page profile says a great deal about why that much overused…

Choosing one rival from World Touring Car or DTM is difficult. There are so many drivers capable of winning and the competition is extreme. For example, in 2006, at the last race in Macau, there were nine of us who could have won the championship. It’s not like Formula 1 where one guy can have a big car advantage. “I’m going for Augusto Farfus. It could have been Gabriele Tarquini or Yvan Muller, but Augusto was the young charger at BMW who challenged me when I was near the end of my career. He was brought in as a young gun by BMW while I was racing both for and against BMW because of the way their teams were competing with each other. I was always up against Schnitzer driving…

Fuji, October 23 1977. A year on from the heart-in-mouth climax that crowned him an against-the-odds Formula 1 world champion, James Hunt has just completed his sole season as world champion – in emphatic fashion. Taking the lead from Mario Andretti’s pole-winning Lotus at the start, he is never headed in his McLaren M26. If only more days had been like this, he might have matched his old mate Barry Sheene and clinched a consecutive crown. The speed was there, no doubting that, and there had been other high points too, notably in front of his home crowd at Silverstone. That was sweet, especially after the bad taste left by Brands Hatch ’76. But the niggly retirements – suspension failure in Argentina, a broken exhaust and fuel pump glitch…

  The first thing you see upon entering the offices of PhysicsX is an 800cc two stroke motorbike powered by a snowmobile engine. Next there is the Kellison EXP001, the Batmobile-style racer that sprang from the mind of Jim Kellison in 1957 and which has recently been restored. Further inside the offices the walls are crammed with textbooks and patent plaques. “This is about heart,” Robin Tuluie says about the Kellison before gesturing to the book-lined office. “In there it is cerebral.” Tuluie is one of the great maverick engineers – some would say visionaries – of his time. He started out as an astrophysicist, before swapping planets for pitlanes and taking a variety of jobs spearheading new innovations with F1 teams and helping secure a world championship for…

On the Tuesday before the Dutch Grand Prix, Christian Horner gave a speech to the staff of the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes. Half the team was not being sold to Porsche, despite the widely-reported commercial papers Porsche had lodged to that effect. Red Bull would remain an independent team, Horner emphasised. Porsche had only been offered a deal with Red Bull Powertrains (the engine manufacturing company set up by Red Bull, which recently made the fire-up of its first prototype) which would have placed the German manufacturer’s name on the Red Bull power unit, together with the input of around 20 Porsche engineers. But that was all there was. Porsche’s earlier talks with Red Bull’s soft drink magnate, 78-year-old Dietrich Mateschitz, had been based around Porsche buying…

It’s widely accepted in today’s classic car world that there is no longer any stigma attached to recreations, replicas or continuations – so long as they are ‘done right’. There are few that have been ‘done’ quite so right as this superb follow-on of an originally unique car built for the French Porsche works racer Claude Storez in 1957. Seeking something lighter and more competitive than the standard Porsche model, Parisian printer’s son Storez – who had become French rally champion racing a 356A Carrera and a 550RS Spyder in events such as the Reims 12 Hours and the Liège-Rome-Liège – commissioned Zagato to design and fabricate an aerodynamic alloy body for a factorysupplied 356 Carrera Speedster. After leaving Zagato’s Milan workshops in late 1958, the car returned to Porsche…

LOTUS 72D 1:8 MODEL When it comes to beautiful scale model kits, Pocher is one of the top names out there. The company has been recreating some of the world’s most beautiful cars and bikes in miniature form since 1966. If you’re a keen hobbyist, then one of its incredible self-assembly kits is definitely for you. How about this stunning one of the Lotus 72D, which measures 1:8 scale? Containing over 800 parts – made from metal, rubber, textiles and more – you can while away hours, days, even weeks constructing the car that Brazilian legend Emerson Fittipaldi took to victory in the 1972 British GP. Wearing the timeless John Player Special livery, this is a fine centrepiece to any collection. £719.99 ICONS OF F1 CALENDAR That’s right, the…

August and September are a funny time of the motor racing year. Events come thick and fast as everybody tries to make the most of the summer before things tend to get rather soggy around autumn. The knock-on effect of the fixture congestion is it just goes to show the sheer variety of things there are to do with vintage cars! “The locals love to see a vintage car, and always ask ‘quelle vites se? ’” The month started off with the VSCC’s Prescott Hill Climb,which is a wonderful event, and I was delighted to see a huge spectator turn-out – with four fields full of people camping ready for a weekend of the action. Prescott is perhaps the most popular event on the VSCC calendar, but from the outside…