Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i Motor Sport Magazine

So the constructors’ title returns to Milton Keynes where it will take its place in Red Bull’s towering trophy cabinet that greets visitors to the team’s HQ. It has been richly deserved this season and by the time you read this it seems all but inevitable that it will have been joined by the drivers’ trophy too. Motor Sport offers its hearty congratulations to Max Verstappen and Christian Horner and the whole team: domination has rarely been so total. We also remember Dietrich Mateschitz, the architect of Red Bull Racing who died a year ago this month. But while the title has been settled, the scrap for the remaining places is starting to heat up. And it is with this in mind that it’s worth rewinding to the beginning of…

Ex-Formula 1 driver and Sky F1 TV pundit Karun Chandhok shrugged off his Goodwood Revival fright when the Ferrari 250 GTO he was racing briefly burst into flames. Chandhok was running fourth in the Lavant Cup, this year run for Ferrari GTs from 196066, when the silver car – an example of a model considered the most valuable in the world – suffered an engine failure as he was accelerating on to Lavant straight. Locked rear wheels sent the Ferrari into a spin as a flash fire erupted, before Chandhok regained control and pulled up safely by the barrier. “I was just thinking to myself, ‘how cool is this? I’m in a GTO at Goodwood!’,” said Chandhok. “Then coming out of Lavant I heard a bang and the back wheels…

Employees at Sotheby’s in London back in the early 1990s may remember the then head of the international car department, Malcolm Barber, occasionally railing at the disconnect between the values of blue-chip artworks and the values of blue-chip cars: “Surely some of these cars are just as rare... and they are works of art,” he opined. “So why shouldn’t they be as valuable?” Well, the soaring amounts paid for the ‘right’ cars during the past two or three decades have well and truly proved Barber’s point to be correct. And that point could be rammed home when this 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO crosses the block at Sotheby’s, not in a regular car auction but as one of the star lots in the autumn season’s flagship Modern and Contemporary Art sale.…

Having qualified a shock 11th and 13th fastest in Singapore, Red Bull was looking for a strategic route to rescue its weekend come the race. The reduction of the speed limit in what was already a time-costly pitlane moved the race even more towards a one-stop than previously and the favoured strategy for almost every car ahead of them was to run a medium-hard combination. Given that a twostop would be too slow and the soft tyre didn’t have the range required to do a one-stop, the only tyre offset available to Red Bull was to start on the hards, run long and be on much faster fresh mediums when everyone else was on old hards in the race’s late stages. “In fact Verstappen and Pérez sank like stones on…

This is a car that leaves the distinct impression that both Lexus and its Toyota parent are the most lukewarm of EV-adopters among the mainstream manufacturers. While others have gone charging up to the turn-in point and hurled their brands at the EV apex with almost reckless abandon, Toyota and Lexus are the ones still creeping off the back of the grid. For the company that pioneered hybrid, it’s perhaps an odd approach, though if EVs turn out to be a busted flush within the next 10 years, it’ll be Toyota and Lexus sighing with relief at all the billions it didn’t spend on a redundant technology. Essentially the RZ450e is Lexus’s version of the Toyota bZ4X – more luxurious, more premium in appearance, but based on the same platform…

This one caused much discussion at the RAC motoring book awards judging. It’s built around a previously issued biography, re-presented in a much more glamorous package of two volumes in a slip case. Was this a mere reissue or did it involve enough new material to be seen as a new book? I vote the latter. First, the original author was authoritative Swiss racing journalist Jabby Crombac, Colin Chapman’s close friend and confidant, and it’s reckoned by many to be the best story of his life. Second, written in 1986, it’s out of print. You can buy a secondhand copy, but Crombac’s name has fallen from currency; more recent Lotus fans may not know of his intimate connection. Third, this also incorporates some of the autobiography of Fred Bushell, for…

My family car as a child... The first I remember was a Vauxhall Cresta. When I was 12 my Uncle Stan would go to sleep in the back of his Jaguar, and I’d sit on a cushion and drive him to Shepton Mallet where we were building a new factory. I did that almost every day for six months, never went to school. And I drove our Thames Trader artic to Bridgend. I’d jump out at the Severn Bridge and Stan drove it over. My first road car... That was a red Reliant Robin, inset below, when I was 16 because motorcycles were a no-no in our family. I thrashed that thing and it was worth nothing by the time I’d finished with it. I was racing stock cars and…

Thirty years after Alain Prost won the 1993 Formula 1 world championship the Williams FW15C remains the most advanced F1 car ever to race, perhaps challenged only by the McLaren MP4/8 that was its main rival that season. The title was Prost’s fourth, lifting him clear of archrival Ayrton Senna’s three and one behind Juan Manuel Fangio’s five. Such was his dominance, Prost secured the title early, in September, and in the wake of the sabbatical he’d been forced to take after leaving Ferrari under a cloud. Perhaps he had a point to prove in 1993. As for Williams, the team was in the middle of its greatest, most dominant era. But the FW15C stands apart, even from Nigel Mansell’s FW14B, because it was the high point of the technological…

Somewhere in a parallel universe tractor maker Ferguson is held in the same esteem as those other tractor constructors Lamborghini and Porsche. And maybe in that world another tractor builder, Aston Martin owner David Brown, is a Formula 1 champion with a luckless Le Mans squad. Because in our universe it seems F1 simply doesn’t want tractor makers to succeed. Their goods were surely good enough: the Ferguson P99 and Aston Martin DBR4 are a pair of F1 racing’s great British what-mighthave-beens. But motor sport could never be accused of being fair. There are various mitigating circumstances surrounding both cars’ unfulfilled potential, though the P99 did claim a non-championship grand prix win at Oulton Park. The DBR4 has to settle for being known simply as one of the prettiest of…

Stefan Johansson never quite snatched the Formula 1 win his career deserved. His best shot should have been 1987, when he left Ferrari for McLaren – just as the Woking team briefly lost its edge. Johansson luck. “Unfortunately, I was there for just a year, but I had an inkling it might only be that way,” he says. “Ayrton Senna was lurking in the shadows. But it was a great opportunity because McLaren at that time was stronger than Ferrari. The year before they had won the championship. It was unfortunate that in 1987 they had one of the worst cars they’d had in a very long time. Prost only finished fourth in the points and I was sixth. It wasn’t the best year, also a lot to do with…

● As princes tend to be, BERTIL OF SWEDEN, the third son of King Gustav VI Adolf, was a right royal car nut. Before the war he owned and raced this 1926 BUGATTI TYPE 35 GRAND PRIX, inset, which now is one of only a few complete and original early 2-Litre Grand Prix Bugattis in existence – with reams of documentation. It’s on sale at WILLIAM I’ANSON in the Cotswolds, £POA. ● LAND ROVER gives used car dealers the best chance to maximise profit margins, with the EVOQUE and DISCOVERY SPORT both giving more than £4000 average retail margin, says DEALER AUCTION’s RETAIL MARGIN MONITOR. Three BMW models made the top 10: 3 Series, 1 Series and X1. ● London-based CLIVE SUTTON will be the first dealer in the…

Anew movie about Enzo Ferrari and his ‘terrible joys’ is finally set for release around Christmas after more than 30 years in gestation. Titled simply ‘Ferrari’, the film is centred around four months in 1957 and the ill-fated final running of the Mille Miglia. Racked by grief for his dead son Dino, Il Commendatore is juggling nearfinancial ruin and the wrath of his wife Laura, who has discovered the existence of his mistress Lina Lardi and illegitimate son Piero. The climax surrounds the race in which Alfonso de Portago and co-driver Ed Nelson crash to their deaths in an accident that also kills nine spectators, five of whom are children. The screenplay is based on the book ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine’ by Brock Yates, which veteran film-maker…

The innovative eco off-roading series which launched in 2021 and attracted a galaxy of star entrants including Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, looks set to be replaced by a new hydrogen-powered world championship. The series promoter has revealed that batterypowered Extreme E will gain FIA championship status from next year. However, at the same time it also announced the creation of an all-new FIA-approved Extreme H series featuring hydrogen-powered SUVs for 2025. Reports suggested the two series would run in tandem, but insiders have cast doubt on that. Then speaking to Motor Sport at the latest round in Sardinia, Alejandro Agag, the founder of both, appeared to confirm a switch. “I think Extreme E will just transition to H and then disappear,” he said. “We haven’t made the final decision…

Red Bull believed the bumpy Singapore Grand Prix would be its toughest test of 2023, and so it proved The simulator had already suggested that Singapore was going to be the most difficult circuit on the calendar for the Red Bull RB19. What wasn’t anticipated was just how much of a struggle it turned out to be, with the previously unbeaten car not even making Q3, Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez complaining of oversteer, bottoming out, locking brakes and lack of tyre temperature. Inevitably such symptoms are interlinked and it became clear as the weekend went on that the underlying car traits which made the track difficult were exacerbated by some key set-up decisions taken as the team tried to get around the basic limitations. “There’s never a silver bullet…

Iwonder how many thousands of key strokes I have expended being critical of fast Audis in print over the years? Thousands? Millions more likely. I reckon it started a little over 30 years ago, when the company replaced the original quattro with the S2 Coupé. And I didn’t need to review that to know it wasn’t very good: my father bought one to replace a 911 so I already knew. Then came the first of the RS Audis, the 1994 RS2. Gorgeous to look at, sit in and listen to. But the drive failed to live up to such promise. And that was just the start. Of all those that followed, the only fast family Audi I recall with any genuine affection was the ‘B7’ RS4 Avant built between 2006-08…

It has been 12 months since we brought news of TAG Heuer’s 50th birthday gift to the Porsche 2.7 RS in the form of a brace of special Carrera chronographs – and throughout this year the watch brand has been relentlessly celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Carrera itself with a string of new models. The first was the ‘panda dial’ version in January, a 600-piece edition that closely resembled the original 1963 model. That was followed by an all-new Carrera with a wide and deep ‘glass box’ crystal, plus a tourbillon model, two further chronographs with conventional crystals and a new three-hand Carrera Date. And TAG Heuer hasn’t finished yet. Having spent an undisclosed (but undoubtedly large) sum promoting the Carrera through a five-minute movie called The Chase for…

My name is Shelby, and performance is my business.” That’s what the lanky Texan says into camera on a promotional film, and it’s the line with which Preston Lerner wraps up this very comprehensive tale of Shelby American’s great years. How many Cobra, GT40 or Shelby books have there been? Too many, I’d say. Here, though, Lerner presents the whole history in one 325-page hardback. A respected author and Motor Sport contributor, he interviewed dozens of people, and it feels like the inside story, packed with quotations from everyone from the man himself, team linchpins like legendary fabricator Phil Remington to team truck drivers, written in his entertaining prose: “Miles swept past as placid as a soccer mom driving a minivan” and “Ford waltzed into the new season fat, dumb…

Here’s Thierry Boutsen calmly parking and stepping out of his Renault in the Mexico City pitlane in readiness for a day’s work. As if! Bernie Ecclestone wouldn’t allow road cars within a mile of his precious paddock – never mind the pitlane – unless, of course, a substantial sum of money had changed hands. Renault Mexico’s marketing budget must have been particularly healthy in 1990 as it promoted the new Clio. Their camera crew (carrying the high-value Ecclestone-approved passes) is closing in to record the moment as if this is a Formula 1 driver’s normal means of arrival at the track. Renault would need to make the most of it because there wasn’t much to say about Williams-Renault in this race as Boutsen finished fifth. The phlegmatic Belgian probably shrugged…

Until recently, the pretty Classic Performance Engineering stable housed a third example of Britain’s pioneers that circumstances conspired against: the Kieft-Climax. Like the Aston Martin it wasn’t external but internal forces that kept it off race tracks in the 1950s. Like the Ferguson, it was pushing the envelope. The special ‘Godiva’ quad-cam V8 was created by the great Harry Mundy and ‘Wally’ Hassan when Climax owner Leonard Lee caved to pressure from British race car manufacturers lacking a suitably competitive engine. Climax had the engineers, but not the confidence. Ready to race, Lee pulled the plug fearing the Italians would blow them away. In fact the Godiva had the horses to more than compete. Whether the carmakers, the likes of Cooper and HWM, would have tamed the power to keep…

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1953 FERRARI 166 MM SPIDER SOLD BY GOODING & COMPANY, £2.5M This spectacular Ferrari 166 was built for the celebrated Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa (who died in 1965 after crashing his 250 GT into a tree on the outskirts of Paris). Ferrari bought back the 166 in 1955 and sold it on to Belgian concessionaire Jacques Swaters, after which it had three further owners in five years prior to being acquired in 1960 by UK enthusiast Bernard Worth. Worth consigned the car to Gooding & Company after using it for 63 years to participate in events ranging from the first meeting of the Ferrari Club of Great Britain in 1967 to the Mille Miglia. 1972 FORD ESCORT MEXICO SOLD BY ICONIC AUCTIONEERS, £35,438 Only the Mexico badges give away that…

Let’s talk about a little-known corner of the collectibles market, one that risks being almost entirely forgotten – which also makes it so appealing. I’m speaking about Formula 1 drivers’ clubs. Now, these weren’t some clandestine, ritual-rich occasions during which drivers were sworn in, swaddled in robes. These were more light-hearted social groups that came about in less commercialised times. Way before the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, there was the Club International des Anciens Pilotes de Grand Prix F1, which catered for current and retired F1 drivers. With only around 300 members it was super-exclusive, and therefore anything to do with it is like a history of sporting society at the time. Founded by Louis Chiron in 1962, with Stirling Moss as its inaugural president, the club would put on…

The last-surviving Alvis grand prix car will take a star turn at the next Bicester Scramble on October 8, a week shy of the 96th anniversary of its only race. Recently restored by The Alvis Car Company and revealed for the first time in refurbished state in Japan in April, the frontwheel-drive racer will be a prominent feature at Bicester. Though it was entered into the second British Grand Prix on October 1 1927, the long straight eight-engined car raced just once, when ‘Bentley Boy’ George Duller took the wheel for the Junior Car Club 200 Mile Race at Brooklands a fortnight later. The Alvis started on the front row and got away in the lead, smoke billowing from its spinning front wheels, but a misfire led to retirement. The…

Mick Doohan, father of Alpine Formula 1 reserve driver Jack, won the last of his five consecutive MotoGP world championships 25 years ago. The Australian would almost certainly have won more but for injuries sustained in May 1999. That Jerez crash was the second life-changing accident of his career but this time there was no miracle comeback. It was time for retirement. Doohan had ruled MotoGP with an iron fist for half a decade, riding 500cc two-strokes, which were so much nastier than today’s electronically managed 1000cc four-strokes. His strengths – remarkable riding talent, teaktough psyche and a burning furnace of determination – had fans waking up on Sunday mornings wondering who would finish second. When a journalist suggested to Doohan – never one to suffer fools gladly – that…

28 Race report Ferrari threatens at home, delivers next time out, then Verstappen answers critics 32 Word on the beat Lawson’s disappointment, Massa’s madness and why DRS will get a boost in 2026 34 Tactical analysis How the safety car scuppered Red Bull’s fightback plans on Singapore’s streets 35 Good month, bad month Wikipedia slurs, lizard chicanes and the clangers dropped by Pérez and Partridge 37 Johnny Herbert Why Red Bull has called it wrong on Ricciardo over Lawson for 2024…

● Impressive rookie stand-in Liam Lawson, above, was informed (by Red Bull’s Helmut Marko) just after qualifying his AlphaTauri in Q3 at Singapore that there would be no race seat for him at the team in 2024, as it intended to retain its line-up of Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo once the latter was back from injury. However, there is significant interest from Williams and it may be that Lawson will replace his former F2 team-mate Logan Sargeant in ’24. If not, he will be retained by Red Bull as reserve. ● It was widely expected at the time of going to press that Pirelli, and not Bridgestone, would be awarded the F1 tyre supply contract for 2025-27. ● Felipe Massa’s legal team (representing his contention in the UK…

GOOD LAYING DOWN THE LAWSON AlphaTauri supersub Liam Lawson has been brilliant, scoring his first points at Marina Bay. With Ricciardo and Tsunoda now confirmed at AlphaTauri for 2024, will Williams snap up the Kiwi? LIZARD KING How to mix up F1: Bernie suggested sprinkling the track and we’ve had cottage cheese Pirelli compounds – maybe we just need more reptiles? RED RUSH Ferrari has been battered in this column – but finally Vasseur’s flâneurs have stopped staring at the asphalt and won! GOLDEN BOY Piastri podium in Suzuka – surely the best debut season since another certain McLaren rookie 16 years ago. LANDMARK RESULT Alfa Romeo scored a point for the first time in six races at Monza. Time for another special edition livery. BAD MILTON KEYNES MELTDOWN Milton…

How nice it is to have an interesting Peugeot parked outside again. It must be about three years since the last one – my beloved but little-used 205 GTI – left the premises for good. That said, this new 408 is interesting for a rather different set of reasons. Is it interesting to drive? Not remotely. It’s rather slow and while it handles better than most crossover hybrid coupé-cum-SUVs, that’s like pointing out that rice is better than tapioca pudding while failing to mention you’d never actually choose either. But it is an interesting place to be. The car look interesting from almost any angle and while its lines are so complex they could easily have simply been a mess in less-skilled hands, it actually works. The interior, spacious and…

NEC, Birmingham, November 10-12 Goodwood’s season may be over, but there’s still a few chances to get up close and personal with automotive legends, and the Classic Motor Show in Birmingham is not one to be missed. Held at the gargantuan NEC, the event always bring together a huge array of classic car and motorcycle clubs to showcase some stunning metal. Visitors will be treated to a journey through time as they progress between the halls, starting with pre-20th century vehicles, before moving on towards Rolls-Royce and Ford cars of the 1920s and ’30s. War-time machines will be on display, as will cars of the 1960s and ’70s, decades that cranked up the horsepower. American muscle cars will pepper those halls, while visitors can then step into the 1980s and…

This is our kind of restomod. While the world goes gaga for million-pound-plus Porsche 911s with reimagined bodies, perhaps something with proven motor sport nous is how to convince folk like us that a retired icon warrants a comeback. The Prodrive P25 is exactly that. Ostensibly it’s the old Subaru Impreza STI 22B road car, but modernised for the 2020s. Sounds too easy. And it is. Because in reality it’s something else entirely. With the team of people behind it, we ought not be too surprised. What you’re essentially looking at is a late 1990s WRC Impreza with fewer stickers and two decades of technological evolution sprinkled sympathetically through it. Prodrive is now almost 40 years old and has campaigned cars in almost every sporting discipline, though its rallying success…

Take a step back for a moment. An Austrian company that sells a sickly sweet, fizzy energy drink is the dominant force in the world’s most technically sophisticated and complex sport, thanks to its committed patronage of a British-based Formula 1 team. It’s become normal now so we take it for granted, yet it’s still amazing. But doesn’t that premise sound familiar? Twenty years before sorry Jaguar morphed into brash and disruptive Red Bull Racing, Benetton got there first. The parallels are uncanny. That much emerged time and again during the four years it took to research and write a newly released book on Benetton, coined as the Rebels of Formula 1. Red Bull has big characters at the top in Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, a genius designer in…

With less than two years to go before every new car with a Jaguar badge on its bonnet whispers past in electrically driven silence, perhaps now is a good time to remember the good old days when the marque’s Special Vehicles Operations division made proper, petrol-powered growlers – such as the undeservedly overlooked XE SV Project 8. The saloon cousin of the open-top, F-typebased Project 7, the Project 8 made its first appearance at the 2017 Goodwood Festival of Speed where a burnt orange example wowed the crowds with its unexpectedly feral roar as it scorched up the hill. The symphony of sound came, of course, from the legendary 5-litre, supercharged V8 that had been tucked beneath the bonnet in place of the cooking 2- or 3-litre petrol or diesel…

ALL PRODUCTS AVAILABLE AT MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM/SHOP SIGNED COMMEMORATIVE WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP PRINT The year is 1973, and January’s Monte Carlo Rally is about to blast into life to kick-start a run of 13 events that would take the top crews everywhere from Europe to the US and Africa. The inaugural WRC was quite a spectacle, and Jean-Claude Andruet’s win for Alpine on the Monte set up a title-winning campaign for the French brand (there was no drivers’ title then – that arrived in 1977). Fifty years on the WRC is still rocking, and what better way to mark the half-centenary than this epic Automobilist offering. Limited to eight copies, it’s signed by 17 notable drivers or co-drivers representing the golden years of ‘maximum attack’ on the special stages... Those included are…

The Oulton Park Gold Cup is a special event, and a great chance for the VSCC to share the stage at a truly prestigious meeting, so there was a huge sense of excitement as we loaded up Mord to head to Cheshire for the VSCC Team Race. This new race was an idea to connect club members and have some fun. In essence there were two races, to allow teams of two drivers to compete. There was the added twist of the fast-and-slow wildcard combinations too where the two fastest drivers from practice would be paired with the two slowest, creating two strategic outliers for the races. Having recently shared the Austin with him at Donington (see last month), this time it was the turn of my boyfriend Louis to…