Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Motor Sport Magazine

One hundred years ago Oscar E Seyd sat down at his desk and typed out the following: “In introducing a new journal, it is usual to commence with a word of apology. We feel that very little apology is called for in respect of the appearance of this publication. We are confident that THE BROOKLANDS GAZETTE will make its own appeal to many thousands of keen motorists. “This journal is not merely ‘another motoring paper’ added to the several which already seek public support. It is something entirely new, and something which we are convinced has been very much wanted. It regards motoring from a new angle; it seeks to meet to the full requirements of those whose chief interests are in the sporting and competition side of the movement.”…

With Red Bull coming off the back of one of the most dominant team performances in Formula 1 history, can we conclude that the two sets of wind tunnel restrictions placed upon it – one for having won the constructors’ championship the previous year and another as a penalty for having exceeded the 2021 cost cap – have not worked? It depends if the objective was to cripple the team or just to impose a penalty which would hurt its development capability, but still keep the sporting element. To take an opponent out or to apply a proportionate penalty – or something in between. Looking first at the regulation ‘success penalty’, winning the 2022 constructors’ championship meant Red Bull would be allocated only 70% of the nominal limit of 320…

I have long maintained that 5.2sec is the perfect 0-60mph time. Brief enough to be exciting, long enough to be savoured, for there is unquestionably a trade-off between the intensity and brevity of the experience. But recently I have come to wonder whether that number should be revisited. Out there in the real world, no one does 0-60mph times. Back in my days as an Autocar road tester I seemed to spend half my life doing them and I only ever enjoyed it when everything hooked up just right; and in those days of manual transmissions and primitive turbos, with no launch or traction control, that wasn’t every time. Over a period of a considerable number of years, no small number of cars cracked under the pressure in my hands.…

● Current thinking regarding the 2026 F1 regulations is for a 20cm reduction in wheelbase, a 10cm narrower track and a lessening in wheel-rim diameter from 18in to 16in. This is to reduce car weight. There is also the desire to frame the aerodynamic regulations in such a way that teams will be guided into creating more of their total downforce from in-washing the airflow direct to the underfloor and limiting the outwash, so as to clean up the aerodynamic wake of the cars. Active adjustment of front and rear wings is also being considered to further aid overtaking. ● Cadillac has announced that it has registered to be an F1 power unit manufacturer from 2028, widening its intended technical and commercial partnership with Andretti in the latter’s bid…

Over 20 years have passed since F1 had an Argentinian driver, and the world championship last graced Buenos Aires a quarter of a century ago. However, in the mid-1950s, the South American nation was on top of the F1 world. Multiple champion Fangio was already a living legend, complemented by the rapid José Froilán González and youthful Roberto Mieres. Despite this, it was another young driver the former was mentoring with hopes to take on his mantle: Onofre Marimón, above, born 100 years ago this December. Tony Watson’s 2004 archive piece describes the son of a racing undertaker, Domingo Marimón, who won the 1948 South American Grand Prix, befriending Fangio along the way. Taking over the competitive concern from his father, Marimón Jr came third on just his second world…

David Whyley You’ve seen the Settrington Trophy, where juniors put ‘pedal’ to metal on track. Now read how this best-known of pedal cars came about, and sold in huge numbers. Famously, disabled men were employed to build them, but David Whyley explains it was equally meant to develop a generation of managers, as the baby Austins used full-sized production techniques. There’s a vast volume of photos and detail on prototypes and development, but the human tale is here too: the miners incapacitated by silicosis happy to be working again, the originating ‘Joy Car’ team not allowed to move to the new plant. Surprisingly involving. GC  Porter Press, £85 ISBN 9781913089283…

My family car as a child... The first one I remember was a SunbeamTalbot with a soft top. I recall being in the back seat when my father came across a herd of cattle and spun the car avoiding them. So that was my first spin, the first of many! He later started buying Fords after they finished 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966. My first road car... I bought a Mini van,inset, for £45 at an auction in Glasgow. A bargain. I used it to tow my Nike Mk10B Formula Ford, built by an obscure race car manufacturer based at Bideford in Devon. I’d been driving since I was about six, sitting on my father’s lap and after having only six lessons, I passed my test first time. I…

Every now and then it’s nice to hand out some advice, and the rise in popularity of online public auctions makes this column timely. Across recent months there have been high-profile sales linked to F1 celebrities such as Michael Schumacher and Nigel Mansell. These are online and anyone can register to bid from the comfort of their own home. And there’s acommon theme with these sales: sky-high prices. Perhaps it’s the anonymity of online bidding, or the fact anybody can chip in to inflate the prices, but these are certainly not the cheapest ways to buy. In these Formula 1 sales at least three ex-Schumacher helmets sold for in excess of £100,000. This is where buyers can get caught out if they don’t know how this sort of auction works.…

Eyebrows were raised in the usually staid world of car auctions by the razzmatazz of RM Sotheby’s sale in Las Vegas ahead of the grand prix. The venerable auction house conducted its business amid pumping techno music, a light show and a special glass stage at the Wynn’s Awakening Theater. The star lot was Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes W04, in which he won the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2013. It was billed as the only modernera F1 car not owned by the Mercedes team or driver himself and achieved a sale price of £15m. That made it the most expensive modern-era F1 car to be sold at auction. More modern race cars are becoming popular among private collectors. In 2022 Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F2003-GA which won both the drivers and constructors’ championship…

More than half a century ago the FIM (motorcycling’s FIA) banned women from world championship motorcycle racing. The international governing body was spurred into urgent action by the ambitions of Londoner Beryl Swain, who in 1962 became the first woman to contest a solo Isle of Man TT. Britain’s national governing body had already tried to thwart Swain. Shortly after the Auto-Cycle Union received her entry for the 50cc TT it introduced a nine-and-a-halfstone minimum weight rule for the event. That should keep her out. “Personally, Iam very much against women taking part in racing,” wrote Motor Cycle News editor Charlie Rous, in supporting the ACU’s dark arts. “I’ve got nothing against them, in fact I think they’re rather nice, and I would like to see them stay that way.…

You can’t help but feel that Alfa Romeo-badged Sauber is treading water until the team becomes Audi in 2026. But that’s not the case for Valtteri Bottas. He seems to have the motivation to stick around long enough to play a part in that new era, when it eventually starts. He still feels he’s got what it takes and looking back to his time beside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes I’d say he never got the credit for the cracking job he did. When he was behind Lewis he wasn’t far behind. The average time difference was very small. Bottas has the ability to get the best out of a car, but that appears wasted at the moment. Does Sauber lack desire right now because of this waiting game? There doesn’t…

You could hardly have a more confusing history than this chassis, with its roots in a Jaguar sports-racer which then carried the Stuttgart crest to victory in three races, two of them being Le Mans. And that was after being abandoned and set aside for a year following completion. Serge Vanbockryck has a record with Porsche books, previously publishing Ultimate works on 956 and 962, both prolific products of the marque. This one though, is perhaps Porsche’s unicorn – a fabled beast of mystery origins rarely seen in the flesh. Those origins are explained here, essentially the search for an IMSA entry to keep TWR’s North American racing team in action. In 1995 Porsche had a bothersome gap in sportsprototype racing before its radical GT1 would be ready, while TWR’s…

Kevin Guthrie Time to recall this affable Scot who contested two GPs, led the Indy 500, won the 1982 British F1 series and was twice runner-up for the Can-Am title. Many interviews help Guthrie depict a gracious man who just loved racing. Team manager Bob Fernley says, “We plundered our way across the US and Canada living a rock’n’roll lifestyle.” Later he’d battle the effects of a major crash at Indy but it never depressed this likeable character, who named his boat Turn 1, scene of that accident. An unpretentious softback for a man with grit aplenty. GC Performance Publishing, £29 ISBN 9781739124922…

Keith Duckworth and his team at Cosworth designed the Ford DFV for one task and one task only – to win in Formula 1. One hundred and fifty-five world championship victories over three decades says they didn’t do a bad job. Yet the Double Four Valve turned out to be much more than a successful grand prix engine, despite its creator’s reticence – hostility even – towards the use of his masterpiece in other disciplines. When famed sports car team boss John Wyer revealed that he intended to go to the Le Mans 24 Hours with a DFV in the back of a new prototype bearing the Mirage name in 1972, Duckworth told him not to bother. Parnelli Jones’s idea to put a turbo on the DFV for IndyCar racing…

● If our DFV feature in this issue has fired a desire for ownership, then this 3-litre Cossie-powered 1980 SHADOW DN11, inset right, should appeal. Its sad claim to fame is that it was the last Shadow to finish an F1 GP – GEOFF LEES, 13th at Kyalami. Recently restored, it’s on sale at Wetherby’s SPEEDMASTER, £POA. ● Not the best news for SUPERCAR DEALERS – the number of licenced supercars in the UK has risen by just 3%, down from 11% last year, says chartered accountant group UHY HACKER YOUNG. The reason? “High interest rates – and a lot of Russian buyers left the UK in 2022,” reveals David Kendrick, CEO of UHY Manchester ● The supercar slowdown has been felt at FERRARI, whose global sales were down 8.5%…

Autumn is a funny time of year for motor sport. While there’s still a multitude of events going on, there’s also this looming sense that the race season is coming to an end. However, for me this means one thing: trialling season is about to start! The Welsh Trial kick-starts the winter trialling season. With the adventures starting before the trial itself, historically you have to complete a 100-mile trip to reach sign-on in the town of Presteigne in Powys, with receipts collected along the way to prove you’d done it. In more recent years they have altered it to be a bit less demanding, but we’d still clocked 50 miles before signing on. We’d taken the Ford Model A, Bess, and were problem-solving early on when a crack in…

2024 F1 Academy calendar Mar 7-9 Saudi Arabia GP May 3-5 Miami GP Jun 21-23 Spanish GP Aug 23-25 Dutch GP Sep 20-22 Singapore GP Nov 29-Dec 1 Qatar GP Dec 6-8 Abu Dhabi GP The unquestionably justified ambition to encourage and promote more women into top-line motor sport remains a hot topic, and at times a contentious one. But is the emergence of a true successor to mid-1970s Formula 1 half-point scorer Lella Lombardi edging closer to reality? The powers behind F1 Academy would argue so. Segregating female racers into single-sex categories remains divisive, more so in the wake of the demise of WSeries. But the latest initiative, which completed its inaugural season in 2023 and is owned by F1’s promoter, looks set to gain greater traction in 2024.…

He’s yet to win after three years of trying, but ex-Formula 1 ace Romain Grosjean, above, will be hoping for a case of fourth-time lucky after switching IndyCar teams for 2024. The 37-year-old has joined Juncos Hollinger Racing as replacement for Britain’s Callum Ilott in a bid to break his duck. Grosjean joined Dale Coyne Racing for a road and street course campaign following his fiery exit from Haas at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix. His promise was rewarded with a full-schedule move to Andretti Autosport – but after two seasons he still hadn’t logged a win. In his place has come another F1 veteran. Swede Marcus Ericsson, who won the Indy 500 for Chip Ganassi Racing last year, has quit for Andretti despite contending for the IndyCar crown. Ericsson…

Ahugely impressive McLaren Old Boys’ and Girls’ 60th Anniversary bash highlighted early November, organised by former team staffers Matthew Jeffreys and Richard West, attended by nearly 350 McLaren veterans – and with company principal for 36 years Ron Dennis its surprise guest of honour. I can’t possibly detail every heartwarmingly memorable moment witnessed between long-time team members, colleagues, friends, and today apparently reconciled onetime love/hate rivals. The anecdotes and insights which surfaced really could fill a book. Here’s just a taster: compère Richard West having just invited McLaren’s 1998-99 World Champion Mika Häkkinen on stage, opening question: “Mika, what really made McLaren so special in those years?”. The Flying Finn’s perfectly timed response, “Me!”. From 30 years earlier, signwriter and later sought-after crash helmet artist Doug Eyre recalled the pace…

The very first session on the new Las Vegas track lasted just nine minutes before it came grinding to a halt, not to be restarted. Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari had pulled up a drain cover as it passed over it at around 190mph and the effect was devastating as the metal cover was briefly wedged between the car’s floor and the track, levering the rear of the Ferrari off the ground and destroying the front part of the floor and the battery contained within. The chassis and battery were both write-offs; thankfully Sainz was unhurt. The track had only finally passed its FIA track inspection days earlier. The drain covers were bolted down but the concrete collar into which they were bolted had been pulled loose, probably by cars prior to…

GOOD INCREDIBLE SULK Verstappen was delightfully off-message in Vegas, calling it “99% a show”. And this after winning the F1 world title. You wouldn’t like him when he’s actually angry. BULLY’S SPECIAL PRIZE Alonso went full Jim Bowen in Brazil, showing Pérez ‘what you could’ve won’ in the dying moments before snatching third place back. TALKING A GOOD RACE Strategy analyst Bernie Collins has been brilliant on Sky F1 coverage – certainly beats some of the old boys. BRING ON THE BOOS Nothing wrong with the pantomime booing for Leclerc at the Mexico end-of-race interviews. It’s supposed to be gladiatorial entertainment after all. BIG VEGAS WINNER Esteban Ocon might ruffle a few feathers with his elbows-out driving style, but he gets results: 17th on the grid to fourth in the…

The 2009 Formula 1 season might have felt like a blockbuster unfolding before your eyes and it has now been given the cinematic treatment it deserves in a new Disney documentary, Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story. The four-part series – which is available on the Disney+ streaming service – is narrated by Keanu Reeves and features masses of unseen archive material plus over 45 interviews with the great, less good and unsung of F1. But, does that all-star cast featuring Jenson Button, Ross Brawn himself, Bernie Ecclestone and many more, tell us anything new? Where it excels is by looking beyond the big cheeses, adding to the story via the everyday people working in the factory. We hear from fuel man Gary Holland, flown in each weekend between running…

N ASSOCIATION WITH STAR LETTER Reading Mark Hughes’s column (December 2023 issue) I become ever more incredulous regarding the apparent opposition of the 10 existing Formula 1 teams to the ambition of Michael Andretti to join the circus alongside partner General Motors. Recently I watched the Williams team principal James Vowles try to defend his outright damning of the Andretti bid by citing the fact that he was responsible to 900 employees who, as I write, create two grand prix cars for a midfield runner and back marker. I understand that the leading teams employ far more people notwithstanding the fact that the likes of McLaren have projects beyond the precious world of F1. It would be pointless to compare this excess to the halcyon days of Ken Tyrrell’s wood…