Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2024 i Motor Sport Magazine

The Goodwood Members’ Meeting always arrives as a blessed relief. After the gloom of winter and an enforced absence of domestic racing the drive to the Sussex track is as welcome as the first daffodils that line the route. And you have to hand it to the Duke of Richmond and his team, they keep coming up with the goods. As Andrew Marriott reports on our website in his review of the Goodwood season opener: “The Members’ Meeting may be the ‘little brother’ of the Revival but that status brings a less frenetic atmosphere with smaller crowds compared to the autumn offering there for races and attractions to excite members of the Goodwood Road Racing Club. “Consider each year’s programme as a menu in a fine-dining restaurant, with new dishes…

The helmet worn by Niki Lauda during his near-fatal crash at the Nürburgring in 1976, is to be offered for sale by Bonhams at an estimate of £40,000-£50,000. The auction, on May 4 in Miami, will see a portion of proceeds donated to UNICEF, as chosen by the Lauda family. Despite the three-time world champion’s attempt to organise a drivers’ boycott, the 1976 German Grand Prix proceeded amid concerns over poor weather and track safety standards. Through the Bergwerk corner on the second lap of the race, Lauda lost control of his Ferrari, spinning off the track, hitting the barrier and becoming engulfed in flames. His helmet flew off in the impact, but Lauda was pulled from the burning wreckage alive. The extensively damaged red helmet has been held privately…

Michael Dunlop stands on the brink of history this year. During June’s Isle of Man TT the Northern Irishman, age 35, could become the most successful TT rider of all time, taking the record from his uncle, Joey. The Dunlop story – a tale of great glories and terrible tragedies on unforgiving road circuits – is not an easy one to tell. Joey Dunlop won 26 TTs between 1977 and 2000. He lost his life a few weeks after that last TT victory, when he crashed out of a race on country roads outside Tallinn, Estonia. Eight years later Michael’s father Robert was killed at the North West 200, a streetracing event a few miles from the family’s hometown of Ballymoney. Robert had been seriously injured at the TT in…

OLD BULL RIDES AGAIN Alonso’s regular heroics for Aramco Martin have been rewarded with a bumper contract extension – someone has to get the points for Team Silverstone. NOT SWISS TIMING Pitstop issues in almost every race for Kick Stake Mullet Who Cares (aka Sauber). You’d think after 30+ years of F1 as well as vast Le Mans experience they’d have worked it out by now. GOOD LIBERATING RACING F1 owners Liberty has now purchased premier bike series MotoGP too. Will we see a crossover event coming soon? NEWEY PASTURES Rumours swirl of an Aston or Ferrari switch for Adrian Newey. C’mon mate, you’ve done all you can at Red Bull – make the change for the sake of our own entertainment. BAD DOWNHILL SLOPE After Alpine sacked anyone with…

If you’re reading this, it means the editor has seen fit to allow a van review to fill part of a precious page of the world’s oldest – and greatest – motor sport magazine. He is clearly an enlightened and very fine fellow. Because he knows what we know: vans matter, particularly to the racing community. If you’ve not driven one of late, you may be rather surprised at where the state of this particular art has reached. Take this brand new Ford Transit Custom. Ford now sells Transits in three sizes: the Connect, which is actually a rebadged VW Caddy, this mid-range Custom version (upon which the next VW Transporter will be based) and its high-roof, long-wheelbase derivative simply known as the Transit. For less money than an electric…

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indianapolis, US, May 26 This year, IndyCar’s showcase revs up for its 108th outing. Over 200 laps and 500 miles of action, 33 drivers will once again battle it out around the world’s most famous four corners – all for a bottle of milk. Well, and around £2.4m. Defending champion, Penske’s Josef Newgarden – the first American winner of the Indy 500 since Alexander Rossi in 2016 – is back for another grab at glory after claiming four of the five IndyCar oval races last year. Meyer Shanks’s Hélio Castroneves will also be chasing a win, which would see him into a league of his own with five Indy victories, while Rahal Letterman Lanigan welcomes two-time winner Takuma Sato back into the fold. NASCAR star Kyle Larson…

Ican’t be the only one who is fed up with hero-worshipping movies, documentaries and articles on Ayrton Senna [Senna, May]. Was he a good driver? No doubt. Did he deserve the championships he won? Not all of them. In my book, Senna was a cheat. There’s no kinder way to say it. His determination to win at all costs meant deliberately taking out any driver he thought would beat him and those drivers were Prost, Mansell and others. That’s cheating no matter how you look at it. The sad thing about it is the F1 authorities didn’t come down hard on him. That allowed a young Schumacher to watch how it was done and to continue using the same technique to achieve some of his championships. DAVID COLLINS, LONDON In…

It wasn’t an auspicious start. Less than an hour into BMW’s 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours campaign at the pre-event test one car was parked in the barriers, the other two were ensconced in the pits and wouldn’t leave until a couple of hours into the afternoon session. The German manufacturer, back at the French enduro for a second crack with a Le Mans Prototype, didn’t look like a potential winner. Not with Toyota, Mercedes, Audi and Nissan ranged against it in a year that until the present era stood as the high-water mark in manufacturer participation at the front of the field. Yet six weeks later, BMW was celebrating a dramatic victory after a back-and-forth battle with the first named of those opponents. One of the three new V12…

Colin Sowter just loves Formula 3000 cars. That’s why he owns five of them: two Marco Apicella chassis, a March and a Reynard;Roberto Moreno’s 88D title winner; an ex-Ross Cheever Japanese F3000 Reynard; and this, the best of the lot – Jean Alesi’s title winner. Why the fascination? “As a youngster I always thought if I had the money F3000 was attainable,” says Sowter, who owns Ferrari parts specialist Superformance UK. “One of the people who made me feel that way was Mark Blundell, who raced in motocross at the same time I did. He then went into Formula Ford and like we did in motocross raced every weekend, then ended up in F3000. I felt that could have been me. I’d go to any F3000 event held and fell…

Not long ago I had the privilege of being driven around the Spanish circuit Ascari in a Porsche 911 GT3 by the legendary Jacky Ickx. We were less than a lap in before the secret of the genius that enabled him to win Le Mans six times became apparent: despite being close to 80 years old, he remains spectacularly smooth (both in his driving style and in his demeanour), as cool as a cucumber and – most noticeably – incredibly sympathetic to the machine. In fact, during multiple cringe-makingly quick laps, I don’t think the tachometer ever passed the 4000rpm mark. So if you’re looking for a historic Formula 1 car and believe a little bit of a past driver’s magic might sometimes be left behind, check out this example…

Lola Cars will make its return to frontline motor sport next year in Formula E, following confirmation of its powertrain alliance with Yamaha and the German Abt team – and it promises to be just the start for the revived racing specialist. That’s the message from new owner Till Bechtolsheimer and Lola motor sport director Mark Preston, as the company spools up for its first international racing project since 2012. The technical partnership with Yamaha also marks the Japanese manufacturer’s return to four-wheeled competition for the first time since it powered Arrows in Formula 1 back in 1997. Abt is one of the most established teams in electric-powered Formula E, winning the driver’s title in alliance with Audi and Lucas di Grassi in 2017 and the teams’ crown a year…

Thunder rolled over Goodwood’s 81st Members’ Meeting in April as 24 Can-Ams served up the audio highlight of another brilliant Sussex success melding famous names, great displays and sizzling racing in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Jackie Oliver in his title-winning DN4 topped a spectacular seven Can-Am Shadows display mixing it with McLarens from M6B to M8F, Lola 222 and a brace of BRM-Chevrolets, the tiny wheels of the Shadow Mk 1 showcasing the ‘no rules’ ethos of the Group 7 series. In proof, Ferrari’s V12 712P barked against the shriek of a pair of Porsche 917/30s too, Timo Bernhard aboard one. More Porsche power sent the ex-Lauda McLaren MP4/2 on a demo, Gerhard Berger adding grand prix vibes in his 1989 Ferrari 640, while Dario Franchitti’s laps in the…

Hybrid performance cars seem like old hat these days, but McLaren Automotive caused quite a stir when it pulled the wraps off the Frank Stephenson-designed P1 at the 2012 Paris Motor Show. Arriving three months before the Geneva unveiling of Ferrari’s similarly hybrid La Ferrari, it briefly had the petrol/electric hypercar space to itself and was considered to be the spiritual successor to McLaren’s almost mythical, record-breaking F1 road car. But before the 375 production P1s were built, McLaren completed more than 20 test cars, among which were (according to auction house Bonhams) seven validation prototypes – of which this is one. Making it even more special is the fact that it has been owned from new by double F1 world champion Mika Häkkinen. Chassis VP3 was the main car…

While Max remains in a league of his own, Mark Hughes turns his attention to more interesting matters – the battle for second As the Max Verstappen/Red Bull steamroller of the world championship continues, the intrigue is all about what is going on behind. Behind Verstappen on track and behind the scenes at Red Bull. The prospect of Verstappen leaving the team has receded somewhat. Following his comments earlier in the year that he’d be leaving if Helmut Marko was no longer there, and with the subsequent confirmation that Marko is staying, so Verstappen has said he “is going nowhere”. But as speculation remains about the partnership’s future, so it continues its assault on the Formula 1 record books. As F1 moved from Australia to Asia for the Japanese and…

Iwas beginning to wonder if it might ever happen. After the frankly disappointing ID.3, utterly forgettable ID.4 and improved but still unremarkable ID.5, Volkwagen has finally nailed the family electric car. Had VW decided that this would be the way to introduce the public to its all-electric future, the troubled history to date of its all-important ID sub-brand might have looked very different for it indeed. For here is a car similar in size to the likes of the BMW i5 and Mercedes-Benz EQE, but selling for a fraction of the money. It is powerful, fast and fully competitive with the German premium brands for both range and recharging times. The interior is exceptionally spacious and, while still imperfect, the operating system is vastly improved and no longer makes you…

Win a race, win a million’ – that was the attentiongetting headline which put TWR’s XJR-15 roadable racer into the public gaze. Oh, and running the races ( just three of them, mind) at grand prix meetings would parade your new supercar, and your team, in front of the very people you want to impress – the Formula 1 cabal. But when you’re Scottish bulldog Tom Walkinshaw things are likely to fall your way. Written by the man who made the car look so seductive, this is the complex tale of how the Jaguar that wasn’t meant to be a Jaguar joined the stable of the Coventry firm – even though it had its own outrageously expensive supercar to sell as well. It’s a challenge to keep track of the…

David and Goliath? It’s an old sporting cliché. But in biblical terms the parallel to plucky British privateer Jota taking on and attempting to beat the mighty manufacturers at the Le Mans 24 Hours is not only apt but more pertinent than we might at first think. How a young shepherd boy defeated a giant warrior with a humble slingshot in 1012BC has become modern shorthand for the champion underdog. But scholars argue the original point of the story was not David’s bravery in the face of unequal odds, but the awesome power of God. That’s why David was able to defeat Goliath. Likewise, you could say Jota too has God on its side – in the shape of the greatest and most successful sports car maker of them all.…

Stefan Johansson began as a kart racer, winning the Swedish championship in 1973 before moving to Formula Ford, winning the championship in 1977 and ’79. His speed and natural talent took him to Formula 3 where he won the British championship for the Project Four team. He made his Formula 1 debut with the Spirit-Honda at the British Grand Prix in ’83 and after stand-in drives for Tyrrell and Toleman he was signed by Ferrari where he stayed for two years before going to McLaren alongside Alain Prost. From 1988 to ’91 he raced for Ligier, Onyx, AGS and Footwork before moving to America, racing in the CART series before creating his own Indy Lights team, and later his own CART team. His sports car career included a victory at…

This 1959 LISTER-JAGUAR KNOBBLY ‘BOEING CAR’, inset right, has a flighty claim to fame. Delivered chassis-only to CARROLL SHELBY, it was given a body designed by a consultancy associated with Boeing for a crack at the Land Speed Record – with high nose and Kamm tail (photos exist). It later gained its Knobbliness and Jaguar power when owned by Anthony Bamford, he of JCB fame, in the early ’70s. It’s on sale at London’s JOE MACARI for £894,950. Following the opening of its flagship Q New York location last year, ASTON MARTIN GINZA now takes the marque’s ‘ultra-luxury strategy’ to Japan. The new 3500sq ft space sits within the PENINSULA TOKYO hotel. “Tokyo holds huge growth potential for us,” says Aston chief brand officer Marco Mattiacci. There aren’t too many…

If you’re an avid reader of this magazine, you’ll have noticed the new addition to our covers since January, ‘Celebrating 100 glorious years’, as Motor Sport marks its centenary. As part of the merrymaking, we launched our Race Car of the Century campaign, where you get to determine which of our 10 chosen machines from across the decades is the finest of them all. To further mark the occasion, we’ve partnered with renowned motor sport artist Martin Tomlinson to have each of the nominated competition cars immortalised as a bespoke artwork, with both the original and limitededition prints set to be available to buy at the Motor Sport shop. It’s a major undertaking, hand-crafting scintillating snapshots of 10 different cars across Motor Sport’s existence, but it’s a task Tomlinson has…

This summer Santa Pod will mark the 60th anniversary of drag racing arriving in the UK. Dragstalgia will take place at the strip on July 5-7 to mark the diamond jubilee of the US import, which was introduced to Britain in 1964 at Blackbushe aerodrome in Surrey. Among the enthusiasts to attend the first meeting was our own Denis Jenkinson, who witnessed American heroes Don Garlits and Tommy Ivo hit terminal speeds of 191mph and 184mph respectively in 6-litre V8 Dodgeand Chrysler-powered dragsters. The Santa Pod meeting will also honour the godfather of British drag racing Sydney Allard, who collaborated with the National Hot Rod Association’s president Wally Parks to lure the Americans across the Atlantic. Allard’s original British dragster, the Allard-Chrysler, will be brought from its home at the…

The celebrated shed in which Ken Tyrrell’s early Formula 1 cars were built proved a popular draw on its public debut at its new Goodwood home. Members’ Meeting patrons flocked to see the shed, which has been transported to Goodwood from Tyrrell’s former base in Ockham. A formal opening will be held at the Revival meeting in September, but the wooden building was ready to open its doors in time for Goodwood’s season opener. “We’ve tried not to refurbish it and have kept its bumps and bruises intact,” said circuit manager Sam Medcraft. “As it was taken to pieces they found bits of history: front and rear wing endplates tucked away that had been forgotten about, some old posters and stickers too. You can still see the outline of the…

TEAM TACTICS Sergio Pérez’s third place in China, behind Lando Norris’s McLaren, has to be counted as a disappointing result for the Mexican, given how dominant his Red Bull team-mate Max Verstappen was in victory. But as well as acknowledging the extraordinary level Verstappen is operating at, it was also something of a confluence of unfortunate circumstances for Pérez. He was effectively fighting two different strategies in different parts of his race, those of Fernando Alonso and Norris. This had a snowballing effect on his race. When Alonso out-accelerated Pérez off the line and snatched second place from him at the start of the race, it was a much more serious blow for him in hindsight than it appeared at the time. Alonso’s aggressive opening stint was a gesture of…

It was, I suppose, a moment of clarity. Unless you are a motoring journalist this will sound ridiculous, but in the road-testing game you can get so caught up in the business of getting the job done you can quite forget to enjoy yourself. I’m not asking for pity here – by any standards I’m a lucky boy, but often you have so little time with a car and there’s so much that’s new about it that needs to be understood, it is all you can do just to come home with a reliable opinion about it. This was not one of those days. I had the new Aston Martin DB12 Volante for hours and didn’t even need to share it with another journo nor even take any photographs. The…

Jack Heuer (great-grandson of Heuer founder Edouard) was one the most innovative watch marketeers of the 20th century – not least in his ability to choose evocative names for new models. One of his best known is the Monaco, which launched in 1969 as the world’s first waterproof, square-cased chronograph. Since Heuer was already linked with motor sport through chronographs such as the Carrera and Autavia, it made sense to name the new watch after the home of the world’s most glamorous street race. But there was more to it than that. Heuer also chose ‘Monaco’ for its associations with wealth and sophistication in the hope that it would attract buyers other than fans of cars and racing. He envisioned the watch on the wrists of architects, designers and similarly…

T here’s every chance that the forthcoming Monaco Grand Prix will induce familiar complaints about overtaking. Of all the previous outbursts of indignation created by the narrow track, few can equal the moment of madness involving the driver on the left of the picture. Andrea de Cesaris and his Dallara teammate Alex Caffi, right, had performed superbly in 1989 by qualifying on the fifth row of the grid. De Cesaris made the most of it and found himself in fourth place before the race had reached half-distance. The Italian’s quick and clean performance was not matched by Nelson Piquet as the Lotus driver trailed along at the back of the field, soon to be lapped. Assuming an unaccustomed rite of passage, de Cesaris chose to dive down the inside at…

1 Don’t discount Toyota Twelve months ago, Toyota headed into the Le Mans 24 Hours as the clear favourite, though it ultimately lost out to Ferrari in a thrilling race that went down to the wire. On the evidence of the opening round of the World Endurance Championship in Qatar in March, the odds have to be considerably longer. The Japanese manufacturer’s pair of GR010 Hybrid Le Mans Hypercars were pretty much nowhere. The reasons for that are multifarious. The pack has been catching up on the incumbent kings of the WEC and the Balance of Performance, the system by which the field is meant to be levelled in the WEC’s Hypercar class, was clearly not in Toyota’s favour in the Middle East. Victory second time out in Imola wasn’t…

Oscar Piastri is the cool, calm centre of the Formula 1 universe. The Australian meets triumph, disaster and everything between with a laconic deadpan, casting him as the natural heir to Kimi Räikkönen’s ‘Ice Man’ crown. Whether at the middle of a headline-making contractual maelstrom even before he started a grand prix, keeping Max Verstappen at bay to win last year’s Qatar sprint or reacting to rare on-track mistakes, Piastri appears serene. Were you building a racing driver from scratch, his tranquil intensity would be an ideal foundation. He’s also seriously fast, last year translating a glittering junior category CV into podium finishes and the best rookie season since Charles Leclerc back in 2018. His speed troubled highly rated McLaren team-mate Lando Norris at times, contributing to McLaren agreeing a…

Reynard in aReynard? This we’ve got to see. Especially as the car in question is peak Formula 3000, the long-defunct Formula 1 feeder that roamed Europe as agloriously open chassis and engine category between 1985 and ’95 before the dreaded one-make malaise set in. Company founder Adrian Reynard, in Jean Alesi’s Eddie Jordan Racing, Camel-liveried, 1989 championship-winning 89D at Donington Park? Yes! “I’ve never driven an F3000 car or anything bigger than a Formula Atlantic,” says Adrian with a hint of out-of-character nerves. He’s 73 now, but looks great on it and is preparing to indulge in another season driving one of his own Formula Ford 2000s in the wellsupported Historic Sports Car Club series. “I’ve actually built a brand new old-stock FF2000 for this season,” he says, “a 1981…

In the rapidly evolving world of motor sport you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere in Europe that has moved as fast as Silverstone. Across the last decade the rate of development at Britain’s grand prix venue has been staggering, transforming that largely flat old airfield we used to know into a thriving hub. Only recently, Silverstone agreed a fresh contract to continue hosting the British Grand Prix until 2034 at the earliest, giving it and circuit owner the British Racing Drivers’ Club, a solid platform to build on for the future. But they’d been building well before then, and the new contract is just reward for an ever changing, ever improving motor sport facility that perhaps gets overlooked compared to the state-funded tracks and glitzy street venues F1 has increasingly…

2023 ASTON MARTIN VALKYRIE SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S, £2.4M Aston Martin’s F1-inspired, road-legal hypercar was in development for seven years between the idea being conceived in 2014 and delivery to the first customer. But with just 150 scheduled to be made and the promise of 240mph performance, there was no shortage of willing buyers. But whoever waited patiently for delivery of this example – uniquely finished by Aston’s Qdivision custom shop in Scintilla Silver and red – must have lost interest by the time it arrived last year, because it crossed the block with a mere 123km on the clock. It fetched about the same as ‘retail’. 1981 MG METRO 6R4 EVOCATION SOLD BY HAMPSON AUCTIONS, £45,000 This replica of a mighty Metro 6R4 recalled one campaigned by Tony Pond,…

Jody Scheckter’s recent decision to sell off his private collection of race cars is interesting. The South African won the Formula 1 world championship in 1979 driving for Ferrari, and famously secured the only race victory for the six-wheeled Tyrrell P34. After his career, he made a point of searching for and buying as many of his own race cars as he could. RM Sotheby’s Monaco sale on May 10-11 will split and sell off The Scheckter Collection, comprising everything from his Formula Ford to his world titlewinning Ferrari, plus the Tyrrell, Wolf and more. I have been lucky enough to have had a tour of this collection, below, from Jody; I’m following the sale with interest. That got me thinking about other world champions who get overlooked in the…