Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2023 i Motor Sport Magazine

30 Race report While the drivers’ title was already bagged, the runner-up spot was still up for grabs in Abu Dhabi – the last date on the F1 calendar 32 Season review A second world title for Max might not have been a surprise but the manner in which he did it certainly was. Here’s how ’22 unfolded 35 Top 10 drivers Of the 22 that raced in F1 this season, here’s our ranking of the best of the best 38 News in brief Frédéric Vasseur’s in, Mattia Binotto’s out, while Mick Schumacher shakes it all about 41 Johnny Herbert Will Ferrari’s latest restructure work? Can Mercedes win again? And why we should be keeping an eye on Alpine...…

In 1968 Vic Elford won the Monte Carlo Rally in a Porsche 911 T, and a week later helped Porsche to its first ever 24-hour race win at Daytona. And this former fact is the reason that Porsche has been able to market this new 911 Carrera T (and its 2017 predecessor) as the most sporting version at the ‘affordable’ end of the 911 range. It always struck me as strange, because the original T was not a sporting 911 at all, but a poverty spec model for those who couldn’t afford a proper 911. It lost its fifth gear, anti-roll bars, crankshaft counterweights, alloy pistons, internal brake ventilation and a load of power, leaving it with just 110bhp. So why make Vic compete in a T rather than a…

George Bamford, who is 41, began collecting and trading watches while he was still at school. In 2003 his interest in horology led the son of JCB chairman Lord Bamford to establish the Bamford Watch Department, a Mayfair-based business specialising in watch customisation. It became known for blackening cases and bracelets using a ‘secret’ military-grade coating process and majored on carrying out unauthorised modifications to Rolex models – which gave Bamford the reputation of being something of a horological maverick. But back in 2017 he went all official, signing a deal with LVMH to become the authorised supplier of customised Zenith watches, a remit that has since expanded to include other brands owned by the luxury goods giant, including TAG Heuer and Bulgari. Since then Bamford Watch Department (‘BWD’) has…

INTERVIEW: DAMIEN SMITH Motor sport loves a poacherturned-gamekeeper. Who better than a former mechanic or engineer who knows all the tricks (and has on occasion used them) to keep slippery racing teams on the straight and narrow? In Formula 1, ex-Brabham boys Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blash were ideal when they became paddock sheriff and deputy, and the equivalent on the UK scene is Peter Riches, who has just completed his 30th season as technical director of the British Touring Car Championship. He’s the teams’ best friend – and worst enemy. Now 70, Riches has given series boss Alan Gow the headache he’s been trying to avoid for years. After 323 events and 821 races he’s retiring and might have proven as difficult to replace as the late and much-missed…

I write in response to recent letters from Rob Gent and Peter Rosier in your excellent November and December issues. Both correspondents have very succinctly highlighted the issue that has dogged Silverstone for decades and that the management team that I head has sought to address over the last six years. The root of Silverstone’s welldocumented financial woes has been that it has only attracted people to the circuit on a handful of days each year. As has been proved conclusively in the recent past, it is not possible to cover the annual costs of operating an FIA Grade 1 and FIM Grade A circuit on gate receipts from a handful of weekends a year. If it is to survive at all, Silverstone has to become more than a ‘one…

The tax case. The daft things he’s said about women. Putin. To the wider world Bernie Ecclestone is what they might call ‘toxic’ these days, like the mad uncle you only see at Christmas who says wildly inappropriate things. Already more than five years since the Liberty Media buy-in triggered his Formula 1 exit, Ecclestone increasingly appears to be a man out of his time. And at 92, nearly out of time too. Which is why the release of a new eightpart documentary on his life, through the prism of his own Formula 1 memories, is so intriguing. The series, called Lucky!, centres on a stark, striking close-up of Ecclestone’s face: white hair, white goatee, bright blue eyes (no specs, which is revealing in itself ), signature white shirt, set…

Now it’s 1-1 to Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Rosberg X Racing dominated Extreme E’s inaugural season last year, while Hamilton’s X44 team came through at the final round to clinch the 2022 title. Nico wasn’t in Uruguay, but appeared on a Zoom call an hour after the chequered flag. “I can’t believe we lost the championship. It was in our hands for ages.” He said he’d been screaming at the TV at home in Monaco, jumping up and down and tearing his luxuriant hair out. “Every possible thing went wrong this weekend. But it’s been brilliant racing out there. We’ve got the best drivers in the world now. You can see everybody’s on the edge. It went down to the wire.” In year one, it was a tremendous achievement…

Like many racing drivers in the 1950s, Alberto Ascari smoked. Some of the more curious items in a mesmerising personal collection of Ascari artefacts (see page 98) are these cartons of cigarettes. They were among the Italian driver’s possessions around the time that he crashed and died at Monza in 1955. Kool, of course, would later be associated with the CART series in the US from 1997-2002 (Team Kool Green), while Diana was the Italian brand name for Philip Morris cigarettes until 2014. Motor Sport (ISSN No: 0027-2019, USPS No: 021-661) is published monthly by Motor Sport Magazine GBR and distributed in the USA by Asendia USA, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals postage paid New Brunswick, NJ and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Motor…

This is not a story I’d intended to write. I’d turned up to drive the new BMW X1 crossover SUV but was told that if I wanted to, I could also try the rather mildly facelifted M340i Touring which was waiting for someone else to drive. So I did. It’s an unfashionable car. Nobody wants estates any more because they’ve all piled into SUVs. It has no hybrid system and it hasn’t even got a downsized 2-litre four-cylinder engine with implausible amounts of boost blowing through it. Instead there’s a very lightly turbocharged 3-litre straight six. And it is absolutely wonderful. Because it’s not got a centre of gravity up in the clouds and doesn’t weigh as much as a limousine, it is both fast and fun, while superbly judged…

Sakhir, Bahrain, February 23-25 Preparation for the upcoming season will start with an official three days of winter testing at Bahrain International Circuit – a week before the opening race at the same venue. The main talking points at Bahrain will, of course, surround the championship picture after 2022 saw total domination from Max Verstappen. His 15 victories broke the record for the most wins in a season which helped the Red Bull driver clinch his second world championship with four rounds to spare. There was a close fight with Ferrari at the start of the season, but the Scuderia’s form faded away as the year went on. For Mercedes, meanwhile, initially they were nowhere to be seen. A Q1 exit for Lewis Hamilton in Saudi Arabia highlights that, but…

TOYOTA Class: LMH 2023 programme: Two cars in WEC Drivers: No7 Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway, José Maria López; No8 Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa This is it. Finally, and after so long, premier-level sports car racing is united. The same cars that race at the Daytona 24 Hours and Sebring 12 Hours in America’s IMSA SportsCar Championship can now compete at the Le Mans 24 Hours in the World Endurance Championship – and major manufacturers are flocking back. Two parallel rule books are the key: Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) allows for greater technical freedom and four-wheel drive through front-axle hybrid systems; LMDh is simpler, more contained and based around a spec rear-axle hybrid on the spine of a next-generation LMP2 chassis, yet still allows for creative expression. Both forms…

One worthy subject upon which Lucky! does apparently set the record straight is Alain Prost. Bernie Ecclestone repeats what he’s said before: that he considers the four-time world champion (and four-time runner-up) the best of them all. Surprising? Well, it’s subjective. But for Manish Pandey it’s notable in the context of Senna which has been widely perceived – including by Prost himself – to have done the Frenchman a disservice by painting him as the ‘villain’ in Formula 1’s most infamous rivalry. “All I would say is at the end of Senna we had seven beats of Senna and Prost reconciling,” says Pandey in defence. “I still feel bad that he felt done down. But look at that accident at Suzuka [1990]. There’s no alternative version in the film. Yes,…

Jean Bugatti might have marketed the spectacular Type 57 Atalante as a ‘grand tourer’ but cars were cars back in 1936 and drivers often used them however they damned well pleased. A case in point is this Atalante being offered for sale by Artcurial in its role as the official auctioneer of the annual Paris Rétromobile classic car show. Its original owner, Charles Olivero, was a high-end jeweller from Marseille who sought relaxation away from the workbench by racing the car in gruelling events such as the Coupe des Alpes, the Monte Carlo and the Liège-Rome-Liège. And why not? The twin-cam 3.3-litre straight-eight engine made for sporting performance and the ‘S’ chassis (lower than that of the standard model) gave the 1.7 ton two-seater surprisingly lithe handling. But being gunned…

SIGNED MOTOGP COLLECTIBLES We don’t showcase enough MotoGP stuff on these pages, so here’s two absolute gems for fans of two-wheeled competition: a truly stunning Valentino Rossi tribute, above right, and a knee-slider handsigned by 2021 MotoGP champion Fabio Quartararo. Let’s start with Rossi who, with nine world titles, 115 victories and 235 podium finishes to his name is unquestionably the greatest motorcycle racer of the modern age. And this superb celebration artwork depicts each of the 26 different bikes Rossi has ridden across his storied MotoGP career, with each season’s stats included alongside. The whole thing is capped by a signature from the man himself. In the market for something a bit more recent? Try this signed slider from 2021 champion Quartararo, complete with presentation frame and limited to…

Even if only the 2022 victories of Max Verstappen counted, he’d still be comfortably in the top 20 of all-time career race wins in the sport’s history. That’s how statistically dominant he was. He scored more Formula 1 wins in this one season than Graham Hill, Jack Brabham or Emerson Fittipaldi did throughout their long careers. But it was only in the season’s second half that the scale of his performance superiority matched the race win stats which were being notched up. In the first half it was often Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc setting the pace. Neither the Ferrari team nor the car were quite robust enough to carry the hopes that the speed of the F1-75 forced upon them. Ferrari corporate politics being what they are, it led to the…

It has, I am afraid, been a while. After the overwhelmingly adequate ID.3, 4 and 5, Volkswagen has finally done what it set out to do from the start and created a truly desirable pure electric car. A pity, then, that the fact it’s so expensive and the size and shape of a small van means this ID Buzz is and will likely remain a niche item. Nor is it particularly clever. Forget the absurd flexibility of the original Microbus and its many descendants, you can’t even remove the rear seats from the Buzz. It’s slow, has a range many will find limiting and, of course, VW’s unfit-for-purpose infotainment system. And yet so too is it brilliant. If you care about such matters, I’ve driven Lamborghinis that have attracted less…

Derek Warwick has every reason to appear thoughtful, his prospects at this particular moment seeming as bleak as the surroundings. It was one thing for the Lotus driver, while standing in some sunny Formula 1 paddock, to breezily accept the challenge of taking part in the 1990 Lombard RAC Rally; quite another when the reality hits home on this winter’s morning in Kielder Forest. Warwick is about to have his first run in a Prodrive Subaru Legacy RS. Correction; his first run as a driver. Warwick’s day had started off sitting alongside Markku Alén, just to see which way the two-mile test stage went and get a feel for how the winner of 18 world championship rallies would tackle it. Warwick had learnt next to nothing about the route, so…

Some delicious irony for you. A few weeks ago I was on my way to a Porsche Formula E Gen3 launch to find out more about a new racing car built on the premise of chasing an alternative route to sustain the ‘filthy’ sport we all love. Now here I was, stationary on the M25, because a group of Just Stop Oil protesters had clambered up on the motorway gantries. Despite what I do for a living, I sat their sympathising with their cause – yes, I’m as much of a self-confessed tortured hypocrite as Sebastian Vettel on climate change – even if I disagreed with their tactics. Especially as they were stopping me from learning about a small part of a possible solution to their cause. Hell, they nearly…

The passing of time can obscure reputations. Relying on the written word and second-hand reports can amplify inaccuracies through repetition and like the old game of Chinese whispers result in a distortion of the truth. It is why historians search out primary sources which shine an unfiltered light on their subject. Such sources are rare. Which is why it is so unusual and so important to be able to study one of the world’s greatest collections of primary sources relating to one of history’s greatest racing drivers. It is hard to overstate the stature of double World Champion driver Alberto Ascari – the 70th anniversary of whose 1952-53 title wins for Ferrari we now celebrate. In period this great Italian star inspired innumerable young kids to tear happily around on…

When it comes to fourwheel motor sport that’s both fun and accessible, trialling is difficult to beat. And among the most competitive trials cars ever built are those that emerged from the tiny Dellow factory in the Worcestershire village of Alvechurch where Ken Delingpole and Ron Lowe set up shop in 1949 to build their inexpensive, lightweight competition machines. With their rearward weight bias and tough chassis (which were made from Government surplus chrome molybdenum rocket tubes left over from World War II) the cars proved ideal for hillclimbs and tackling the loose surfaces typically found in trials events. Among Dellow fans in period was Tony Marsh who went on to become British hillclimb champion no fewer than six times, initially in a Cooper Mark VIII (1955–57) and then in…

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER FERRARI F2003-GA SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S, £12.8M the most significant automotive auction of 2022 didn’t happen at a regular car sale, but as part of Sotheby’s Geneva-based Luxury Week which mainly encompasses jewellery, watches, handbags and wine. The ex-Michael Schumacher F1 car with which the German ace scored victories in Spain, Austria, Canada, Italy and the US on the way to the 2003 driver’s championship obliterated its £8m high estimate to become the most expensive modern F1 car ever sold at auction. The F2003 was sold in on-the-button condition following a comprehensive overhaul by Ferrari’s Corse Clienti. 1980 VAUXHALL CHEVETTE HS-X SOLD BY SILVERSTONE AUCTIONS, £29,250 A special version of the already special 2.3-litre Chevette HS homologation model, this HS-X was one of just 10 created by Middlesex…