Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i Motor Sport Magazine

In Austin there was another regulation controversy between the title contending Red Bull and McLaren teams, following on from that concerning McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ rear wing in Baku. This time it was all about the Red Bull’s front floor bib adjustment. There was an awful lot of talking and headlines suggesting Red Bull had been caught cheating the parc fermé regulations. This was triggered by an FIA communication to the teams asserting: “Any adjustment of the front bib clearance during parc fermé conditions is strictly prohibited by the regulations. While we have not received any indication of any team employing such a system, the FIA remains vigilant in our ongoing efforts to enhance the policing of the sport. As part of this, we have implemented procedural adjustments to ensure that front…

In recent years the US Grand Prix at COTA has been a two-stop race. When the Mercedes strategy team informed Lewis Hamilton that this year, based on the information gleaned in the sprint race on the partly resurfaced track, it was set to be a one, he was dubious. The one-stop never works here, Hamilton insisted – until it was pointed out to him that he’d won here in 2017 on a one stop, as did Kimi Räikkönen in ’18. The new surface was sufficiently kinder to the tyres that almost everyone went in planning to stop only once, with a combination of the medium and hard tyre. Making the one-stop didn’t even require the drivers to control their pace. The only slight concern was whether the rear would actually…

A while back, Max Girardo leant me his Daytona for a day and, yes, I know both that I’m a lucky chap and that it should really be called the Ferrari 365 GTB4, but we all know of which I speak. I drove it hard and I drove it fast and was transfixed by it. Which wasn’t by any means a given: I’d driven two before, one of which was terrible, the other really pretty good but quite a distance short of the mesmeric. What was different about this car? It was an early Plexiglas model that had been beautifully maintained but never restored so it was, I am sure, exactly how Ferrari always intended it to be. The company has tried to recreate that magic on a couple of…

São Paulo Street Circuit, Brazil, December 7 While most motor racing series at the start of December are, as the Americans like to say, ‘hunkering down for the holiday’, Formula E is already raring to go with a new season – its 11th. The São Paulo ePrix kicks of its schedule for 2024-25, coming just a month after the Formula 1 São Paulo Grand Prix. No Interlagos for Formula E though; the ePrix plays out on the city’s 1.8-mile long Street Circuit, centred around the huge Oscar Niemeyer-designed Anhembi Sambadrome – a 103,000-capacity music and culture venue that forms the heart of the São Paulo Carnival in late February. At São Paulo we’ll get a chance to witness the debut of the Gen3 Evo car, which Formula E is rather…

Most people associate that iconic image of Colin McRae pirouetting his Subaru in Saltire-soaked jubilation at Chester race course with the moment that he won the 1995 World Rally Championship after the RAC Rally. But the foundations of his championship win were laid a year earlier, back in 1994. That thrilling season was the launchpad for McRae’s unforgettable world title, and the template that defined his often fractious relationship with team-mate Carlos Sainz. Colin was just 25 when he graduated to a full-time WRC drive in 1994, which was considered to be barely out of nappies at the time. Famously he would go on to become the sport’s youngest world champion when he clinched the title a year later – a record that stood until just two years ago, when…

1985 Portuguese Grand Prix Senna’s rain dance creates a storm Eyewitness: Mike Doodson Nobody will ever dare to argue about the significance of Ayrton Senna’s debut Formula 1 win, in a torrential downpour, in the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix. It was a milestone both for the 25-year-old Brazilian and for Team Lotus, which had only one win to show from the previous seven seasons and was scratching to restore its fading prestige. After this showing, as team boss Peter Warr ruefully acknowledged, even his bank manager looked on him more kindly. It happens that Senna had brought along his mum and dad. Swelling a crowd which would have looked sparse at a British club race, Neide and Milton will surely have found more to get excited about than the paying…

Chopard’s perma-busy co-president Karl-Friedrich Scheufele is one of those people who has so much on the go that bystanders are often left wondering: “How does he do it all?” As well as running two highly successful watch businesses – Chopard and the low-volume, ultra high-end maker Ferdinand Berthoud – Scheufele also keeps (and uses) a collection of more than 40 classic cars, works as the co-founder of a charity dedicated to protecting Alpine eagles and oversees wine merchant’s business Le Caveau de Bacchus. And, if that wasn’t enough, a dozen years ago Scheufele purchased a winery of his own, Château Monestier La Tour, 50 miles east of Bordeaux – a quintessential Périgord château that had been badly damaged by fire and had trees growing out of its floors. Scheufele and…

Dacia’s bid to win the Dakar Rally at its first attempt looks on track following an impressive dress rehearsal on Rally Morocco in October. The Prodrive-built and run Sandrider claimed a 1-2 result on the five stage rally raid, with Nasser Al-Attiyah leading Sébastien Loeb to complete a perfect start to the Renault-owned Romanian budget car brand’s first campaign in motor sport. The victory ensured five-time Dakar conqueror Al-Attiyah wrapped up a third consecutive World Rally-Raid Championship, following wins earlier this year in Abu Dhabi and Portugal in Prodrive’s Hunter T1+. Loeb, who has yet to win the Dakar, having finished runner-up three times, came back from a crash on the prologue and then a broken steering arm to finish second in Morocco. The third Sandrider driven by 2022 Extreme…

Britain’s two premier motor sport series put on thrilling 2024 title deciders on the majestic Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit in October, as both the British Touring Car and British Superbike championships went right down to the wire. HILL PIPS INGRAM TO BTCC CROWN Local hero Jake Hill claimed his first BTCC title at the end of an enthralling three-race end-of-term battle with 2022 champion Tom Ingram. Tunbridge Wells-born Hill, 30, and Ingram, 31, arrived at the finale dead level on points. After qualifying Excelr8 Hyundai driver Ingram held the upper hand, only to be delayed by a collision in race one at Druids. Hill then rose from fifth to second, then was gifted victory by West Surrey Racing BMW team-mate Colin Turkington. Ingram hit back to win race two,…

The Red Bull driver merry-go-round made its first stop after the Singapore Grand Prix, with Daniel Ricciardo hopping off the horse (or should that be Bull?!), to be replaced by 22-year-old Kiwi driver Liam Lawson. The whole Singapore weekend seemed strange and left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. I don’t think too many people felt particularly strongly about Daniel being replaced, including Daniel, but the fact that he went through this awkward charade of maybe staying/maybe not felt unfair. It has since come out that the decision had been communicated two weeks prior to the Singapore weekend to Lawson and Ricciardo so I can assume that the only reason to not have a proper send off for Daniel was some contractual obligation to the sponsors. Ricciardo was brought into…

Here’s a fact for you – the MG Cyberster is the world’s first production two seat EV to go on sale. It’s brave, to put it mildly. The car looks great and while the example I drove was in low-powered single motor Trophy rather than GT spec, I didn’t feel it lacking in performance. The structure seems commendably stiff and the ride quality as good as you might reasonably expect. Even the initially baffling interior makes more sense once you’ve invested 10 minutes learning its ways. But there are big problems here, the most obvious being that it’s no fun to drive. Not, at least, in the way you have every right to expect a two-seat roadster to be fun. The steering is notably dull, the electric motor, well, an…

Behind every driver is a team, from design engineers to sweeper uppers, but we don’t often get to hear from, or even about, them. Here’s a chance for the people who did the grimy stuff to have their moment in the sun – an unusual take on long gone Can-Am, from inside the pits, the tow trucks and the motels where mechanics grab a few hours sleep after late nights in the pits – if they’re not pulling an all-nighter. These 400 well-illustrated pages profile two dozen of the dedicated crews who for every round in the free-for-all series (or the earlier USRRC brand) turned out those thundering monsters to entertain and deafen us – people like Frank Lance, known as ‘the Colotti Whisperer’ due to his unique ability to…

Up and down the land, Wellington boots and bobble hats sit dormant for yet another year. It’s been this way since 2019. What has happened to Britain’s round of the World Rally Championship? For almost 50 years, autumn meant one thing to motor sport fans: mud. Glorious mud. Granted, for the last two decades of its existence, Britain’s biggest rally had its wings clipped. The nomadic element of the RAC Rally was long gone. Much-loved events starting from London Airport (now known as Heathrow), heading north on a round-Britain route across five days and through three nights, fuelled by four star and amphetamines, went out of fashion in the 1980s. A decade on and a rally’s right to roam was largely done thanks to David Richards’ cloverleaf format. Owning the…

You could forgive Valtteri Bottas for crying enough and gracefully bowing out of Formula 1. The 35-year-old has competed at the top level for 12 seasons, experienced the highs and lows of life in a leading team during five years at Mercedes, and achieved more than the vast majority of drivers, with 10 grand prix wins. Yet amid what he admits is “the worst season” of his career in terms of results in the back-of-the grid Sauber, his enthusiasm has not faded even while his prospects for 2025 dwindled to re-signing for his current team or face F1 oblivion. The obvious question for the Finn is: why are you still going? “Because it’s the number one thing in my life,” Bottas fires back, unhesitatingly. “Racing is still by far the…

Next time you stagger off a long-haul flight and squint into the midday sun as your body clock tells you that you should really be tucked up in bed, think back to 1884. That was the year of the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC, at which the world was subdivided into 24 time zones with each 15 degree zone east or west of the Greenwich Meridian representing one hour of time ahead or behind respectively. It was a sensible idea, but it did create the inconvenience of having to adjust one’s timepiece whenever a new zone was crossed in to – although, with steam trains being set to hold their position as the fastest objects on earth for another 25 years, the problem of jet lag was still a…

When Marloe Watch Company was launched in 2006, its co-founders Oliver Goffe and Gordon Fraser were operating from locations so far apart they weren’t even in the same country. Marketing man Goffe was based at the company HQ in Berkshire, while Fraser was 400 miles away in Perth, Scotland, where he created the designs for the first few models. The unusual arrangement didn’t prevent the micro brand from establishing itself and rapidly expanding, but an efficient set-up it wasn’t – so when personal circumstances forced Goffe to make a temporary move to the Netherlands, it made sense that Marloe’s base should relocate to Scotland. The original plan was to find premises in Perth, but a chance meeting with a husband-and-wife architect team revealed that they were about to convert a…

2017 MORGAN PLUS 8 SUPER SPORTS SOLD BY BONHAMS CARS ONLINE, £58,698 Visitors to the Goodwood Revival had a chance to preview this Morgan before it was offered for sale online with an estimate of £70,000-£90,000. The fact it was moved on for less than the lower figure bears testament to the state of the middle market – this was a rare and collectible car in superb condition. One of a planned production run of just 60 examples designed to mark Morgan’s centenary at its historic Pickersleigh Road plant in Malvern, Worcestershire, the pared-down racer-for-the-road featured aero screens, side-exit exhausts, race roundels and ‘steel look’ alloy wheels. 1973 MGB GT V8 POLICE CAR SOLD BY HISTORICS AUCTIONEERS, £19,448 A V8 B wouldn’t catch today’s phone snatcher on an electric bike…

British motor sport will gain its own historic endurance race for 1960s sports cars next summer, to be run in the “spirit” of the epic Spa 6 Hours. Equipe Classic Racing will host the enduro at Donington Park on Saturday, July 5. Dubbed the Equipe 6 Hour race, it will be run to the same format as the hugely popular Spa classic for single-car, multi driver teams in pre-66 GT, GTS and touring car classes. But one key exception to the Spa formula is that Ford GT40 prototypes won’t be permitted in a bid encourage overall competition and to keep to a cap on high closing speeds between the fastest and slowest entries. “We have been working on this for some time,” said John Pearson, co-founder of the Equipe club.…

International prototype sports car racing will return to these shores in 2025 for the first time in six years – in what could be a precursor to a long-awaited British comeback for the World Endurance Championship. Silverstone will host the penultimate round of the 2025 European Le Mans Series on September 14, marking a welcome return for the series featuring LMP2, LMP3 and LMGT3 for the first time since 2019. The ELMS is run by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organiser of the Le Mans 24 Hours and the WEC, and Silverstone chief Stuart Pringle, inset, is in talks to secure a round of the thriving world championship in 2026 or 2027. When asked by Motor Sport whether the ELMS race might blaze a trail for a WEC return, Pringle…

The original, West Yorkshire-based Scott, producer of the pre-war, smoke belching 500cc/600cc motorcycle The Flying Squirrel, went into liquidation in 1950 but was acquired by Birmingham-based enthusiast Matt Holder who continued to build motorbikes right up until 1978. That same decade saw another fan, George Silk, combining original Scott engines and hand built Spondon frames to make the Silk 700S, which was made from 1975 to ’79. But it took the late Scott-o-phile Bruce Simpson to envisage a Scott for the 21st century – and the result was the Scott Swift Custom Special, this one-off that’s going under the hammer at Iconic Auctioneers’ regular Classic Motor Show auction held at Birmingham’s NEC. Simpson started with an early frame, into which he fitted one of the super-rare 500cc twin carburettor engines…

The large, A2-size, limited-edition Motor Sport 75 Years of the F1 World Championship 2025 calendar celebrates a major milestone for grand prix racing using a superb selection of colour and monochrome images dating from 1950 to the present day. Drivers in our special calendar include Juan Manuel Fangio, Ayrton Senna and Lando Norris at such races as the British, Swiss and Emilia-Romagna GPs. Order your limited edition calendar now by going online to the Motor Sport shop or ring the number below. Price: £32.99. motorsportmagazine.com/calendar2025 +44 (0) 20 7349 8484…

Remember the Fiesta and Focus – the brilliant bread-and-butter Fords on which the company built its reputation in Europe? Forget them now – one has gone and the other is going. Think Explorer instead. Because the new face of the most mainstream Ford in Britain is an electric SUV with a name (but nothing else) from Ford’s American division and based deep down on what is actually Volkswagen architecture. Ford has bet the farm on this strategy, not least completely re-kitting its Cologne factory to build them instead of petrol-powered Fiestas. Right now just one version in two trim levels with a big battery and rear-wheel drive is available, but a low-powered model and a range topping all-wheel drive car are both on their way. Your £45,875 buys you a…

The premises, dominating the side of the M40 south of Banbury, say it all. Every vehicle in the car park points uniformly outwards while the sharp, angular and uncluttered lines of founder David Richards’ office are reflected throughout the building. Prodrive, which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary, is a company built on attention to detail. The Prodrive name is prominent on the building but the company’s long-standing driver Darren Turner first thought it was a golf driving range. To date, the operation has been a ‘white label’ company, hidden behind brands like Subaru and Aston Martin while delivering World Rally Championships, Le Mans GT victories and British Touring Car Championships for its customers. Richards reckons that Prodrive has been ‘silent’ about its projects. Having established itself as one of…

Ever since the launch of the radical Speedtail back in 2018, McLaren fans have been looking forward to the follow-up in the marque’s fabled Ultimate Series of supercars – and it arrived during the first week of October when the even more extreme W1 was finally revealed. With its all-new twin-turbo, 4-litre V8 married to a transmission-mounted electric motor, the £2m W1 boasts a power output of 1258bhp, a 0-60mph time of less than 2.7sec and a top speed of 220mph – making it the most powerful and fastest road-going McLaren ever built. Two years ago, long before the W1 was revealed to the public, the design team from Richard Mille was allowed a sneak peek of the model in clay to enable them to get weaving on a suitably…

BARESI & CAINE Honda has licensed UK motorcycle engineer/historian George Beale to make 60 watches commemorating the 60th anniversary of the RC164 motorcycle of 1964 that set the marque on the road to grand prix glory. Just 25 RC164s were made but, in the 1980s, Honda gave Beale permission to build 10 recreations of the near-identical RC174. The steel Stella watch, left, features dials applied with a gold Honda wing and gold winding rotors. Beale compares the micro mechanics of horology with the jewel-like engineering of the tiny Honda racer. Baresi & Caine Honda RC164 Stella, £28,000. hondasix.com LAURENT FERRIER If less is more, look no further than the creations of Laurent Ferrier, a former racing driver who competed seven times at Le Mans, achieving third overall in 1979 in…

One dictionary definition of a ‘white elephant’ describes an object that “is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of”. The White Elephant here may well prove a bit troublesome (it is a TVR, after all) and could be expensive to maintain – but it certainly isn’t useless, and owner Ed Gibson of Shmoo Automotive doesn’t expect it to be difficult to dispose of when the time comes. As dyed-in-the-wool TVR fans might know, the White Elephant was a prototype built in 1988 specifically for the marque’s thenmanaging director Peter Wheeler. The ‘wedge’ appearance for which TVRs were famous was beginning to look long in the tooth, so Wheeler envisaged something a little more rounded – which chief designer John Ravenscroft created by…