Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i Motor Sport Magazine

How important is it to preserve evidence of past racing glories? On this, readers of Motor Sport and I will agree. One of the biggest and best investments we have made in recent years is digitising our entire back catalogue of magazines right back to 1924 and allowing subscribers to search for material via the archive section of our website. However, old film footage of racing’s past is in danger of being overlooked when it comes to preservation. Last month I sat on a panel at the Broadcast Sport Summit attended by all the major sports broadcasters to discuss the importance of looking after archive film. Along with fellow speakers Steve Rider, Simon Owen, the grandson of Alfred Owen, owner of BRM from the 1950s, and Ben Foakes of Base,…

1 JOHN WATSON 22nd, 1983 United States GP West It’s a record John Watson hopes will stand for ever – and it will unless more than the current 10 teams join the Formula 1 grid. Struggles with Michelin tyres better suited to turbo charged Renaults left the Cos worth DFV-powered McLarens 22nd and 23rd on the grid at Long Beach. But on Michelin’s 05 tyre in the race, Wattie went on his famous charge – on a street circuit too. Team-mate Niki Lauda got him at the start, but the pair began slicing through the pack in tandem, until the Northern Irishman slipped back past the Austrian. Three of the front runners – Patrick Tambay, Keke Rosberg and Jean-Pierre Jarier – took themselves out, but Wattie still had to pass…

SILVERSTONE FESTIVAL, August My son Chris ended up doing most of the touring car race in our Toyota Corolla. It was peeing down and he’s mad in the wet. We finished eighth overall. The car has so much history. It was Chris Hodgetts’ BTCC title winner in 1986 and later became a rally car. We’ve had two outings in it this year and won the class twice. PRE-GOODWOOD REVIVAL, August I tend to do a day on the Lotus test track at Hethel before Goodwood. I drove a Lotus 18, 21 and 25 on the same day. It was interesting to see the progression, within an hour and a half! The 25 as a monocoque has less roll and needs less steering angles, all very tight. I also drove Katsu…

First things first – pronunciation. Although in Yorkshire it’s said with a ‘huff’, our Eric preferred ‘Ferni-ho’. Sounds a little ho-falutin’ but then Eric Fernihough wasn’t the usual grimy Brooklands biker. Raised in comfortable circumstances, this Cambridge graduate was, for a few short years, one of Britain’s famed speed kings and holder of the world’s absolute motorcycle speed record. In the end, stretching ever further, he paid the ultimate price, and his one-time fame is long gone. Though Mat Oxley’s Racing Hitler tells of Ferni’s records, this fuller biography is also a history of the world motorcycle speed record. Author Terry Wright has gone to remarkable lengths in Britain, Germany and Hungary to source primary information on a man who, says Doug Nye in his foreword, “had the looks of…

ÖSTERREICHRING, AUSTRIA, AUGUST 13, 1972 It is easy to forget that the permanent racetrack, in the hills overlooking the village of Zeltweg, was opened only three years ago. Even before the third Austrian Grand Prix took place there was a feeling of attending an established Grand Prix. Some new events on the international calendar seem to take many years before they form any character of their own, but the Austrian Grand Prix has achieved all this in its third year on the Osterreichring. Will we ever forget 1970 when Ferraris were first and second and the enormous crowd of visiting Italians besieged the paddock; wave after wave of Ferrari enthusiasts descending from the hills, each with its Ferrari flag? No sooner had the cheering died down than a new wave…

It would be understandable, perhaps even expected, for the usually unflappably confident Porsche to be just a little nervous about the reception its new Macan is likely to receive. Simply because it has an almost impossible act to follow. The last Macan was launched a decade ago on an already six-year-old Audi platform and has vied ever since with the Cayenne for the title of Porsche’s best-selling car. Between them they account for two-thirds of everything Porsche sells. But the new Macan – and the next Cayenne that will follow it on the same platform in quite short order – are pure electric cars, cannot be anything else and are launching into an increasingly EV-sceptical marketplace. And Porsche’s first foray into this world has not been without issues: the Taycan…

I’d been in the world 14 years and one month when, on January 4, 1967, I watched Donald Campbell’s fatal Bluebird somersault on Coniston Water, on our black and white television. I look back on that as the defining moment of my life. Then four months later, when I’d screwed up while helping my father overhaul his Rover 90’s gearbox, I sought refuge in the latest Autocar. My mother’s employer used to pass his copy on to me, so I got the May 4 issue on the 5th. There, I found an evocative photo of this fierce-looking BRM H16 being driven by a guy called Jackie Stewart in the International Trophy race at Silverstone. I already loved cars, but until that moment the best were Bluebird CN7, the Maserati 151s,…

Alain Prost, arms aloft, in a thrilling finale in Adelaide. “And look at that!” exclaimed Murray Walker. Eighteen laps from home, we’ll never forget how Nigel Mansell’s world title hopes disintegrated along with his left-rear Goodyear. It happened just after he’d lapped Philippe Alliot’s Ligier, in a shower of sparks. The Williams-Honda bucked at 190mph, Mansell somehow keeping the car in a straight line before it slithered to a stop, nudging a concrete barrier at the end of Adelaide’s Dequetteville straight. So cruel. How Alain Prost then undercut both Mansell and Nelson Piquet, winning the race and snatching his second consecutive world title – one he admits is the most cherished of his four – enshrined his legend. Lucky? Yes, but there was so much more at play, in a…

It all began so smoothly. Ron Dennis invited Formula 1 reporters to the McLaren executive dining room where, over a pleasant lunch, he outlined how access to Lewis Hamilton would be strictly controlled in 2007. Ensuring his young superstar an easy passage with the media during his debut season may have been the priority but, unknown to Dennis, in another room in the same building, an engineer was about to engage in subterfuge that would blow McLaren – and F1 – apart. At the start of the British Grand Prix weekend, it was revealed that 780 pages of sensitive technical documents belonging to Ferrari had been leaked to McLaren. Such duplicity had never been seen before on this scale. As F1 correspondent for The Observer newspaper, I was stabbing in…

Between Austin and Mexico, conversations between the drivers and the FIA led to a clarified understanding about how stewards would judge wheel-to-wheel contests for position. This followed the Austin incident between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in which a defending Verstappen forced an attacking Norris off track, where Norris completed the overtaking move and received a 5sec penalty for doing so, putting him behind Verstappen in the results. Henceforth, the ruling of whether a legitimate pass had been made would be decided by which driver’s front axle line was ahead at the apex. Whichever driver that was would be adjudged to be ahead and have the right to the rest of the corner. But not to the extent of forcing the other driver off. In the early stages in Mexico,…

As well as being a fan of cars, boats and high-performance bicycles, Aston Martin design chief Marek Reichman is also a mad-keen motorcyclist – which explains why Aston Martin surprised the world in 2019 by announcing it was about to start building its own two-wheeler, the AMB 001. The futuristic machine, limited to 100 examples, was designed around the V-twin engine made for the modern-day Brough Superior motorcycle but enhanced with a Garrett turbocharger that boosted output to an eye-watering 180bhp. The AMB 001’s ‘attack’ riding position, swooping lines and aerodynamic bodywork set it far apart from the more traditionallooking machines built at the Brough Superior factory in Toulouse, France, and the limited edition sold out fast. At Milan’s EICMA motorcycle trade show in 2022, however, Aston Martin announced plans…

That Bentley looks familiar… Yes, well, it has been gracing the pages of Motor Sport for almost as long as the magazine has been published. It is the grand old marque’s Speed Six, first introduced in 1928 and the winner of the 1929 and 1930 Le Mans 24 Hours. In fact the original model is regarded as one of Bentley’s most important cars and remains its most successful racing car. This, though, is a brand new version of that original – a Continuation Series that Bentley is making. So is it new or old? A bit of both but mainly new. Although based on original blueprints of the Speed Six, the Continuation Series cars are crafted by hand from scratch, each taking eight months to complete. Bentley is keen to stress…

Faulty steps and tragic dark shadows cast the still-young world championship in a peculiar and troubled light, especially from this distance of 66 years. This was also a season that carried Formula 1 further from its pre-war grand prix roots and edged it towards something more akin to what we know today. For the first time a constructors’ cup was awarded, just the leading car from each manufacturer claiming points, accumulated from the best six scores from the 11 rounds, but not including the Indianapolis 500. The awkward anomaly of America’s great race counting towards the drivers’ championship wouldn’t be scratched until after 1960. There was also a key format change: race duration was reduced to between 185 and 310 miles or a minimum of two hours. But F1 was…

Few knew: ‘Uncle Ken’, firm of handshake and belief, kept a mean secret; and, with views to his past, present and, wisely, future, Jackie Stewart had let a couple of Ford bigwigs in on it, too. Stewart’s super-supportive soulmate Helen wasn’t told, to prevent her the agony of counting down the days to the rest of their lives together; and nor was team-mate François Cevert, so obviously living his best life. Stewart had recovered from the ulcer that punctured 1972 – but the knot in his stomach wouldn’t go. The baggage of international motor sport was becoming harder to bear. His fretting children were starting to ask awkward questions. So he would, he microrevealed at a Mayfair club in April, hang up his tartan-banded crash helmet after October’s United States…

There was neither an epic Formula 1 World Championship fight, with Alain Prost taking his fourth and final title at a canter, nor a deluge of classic races, but some great seasons aren’t defined by this. Instead, 1993 marked the apotheosis of grand prix racing and an inflection point changing the direction of F1 in profound ways. It really would never be quite the same again. This was the final season when F1 could claim to be an unfettered battle of technology. While regulatory constraints had slowly tightened for decades, the ‘gizmo’ cars of 1993 were the last of the breed of racers pushing harder at the limits of technology than the artificial boundaries of the rules. As Motor Sport itself declared on its cover in November 2023, the 1993 season…

Just imagine that a Formula 1 team was fined nearly £50m by the FIA and disqualified from the constructors’ championship, as a result of its chief designer having been caught in possession of top-secret technical data belonging to its closest competitor. Just imagine that, the following winter, rather than buckle under and give up, that team’s workers instead put stout shoulders to the wheel, despite the mood of terrified and defensive pessimism that had enveloped them over the previous months, and that in the spring they flew to Melbourne and, weeping with relief and joy, they won the season’s first F1 grand prix. Just imagine that, as the F1 campaign unfolded, the battle for the drivers’ and constructors’ titles became a two-horse race, fought between the organisation that had been…

Two McLaren Formula 1 chassis sit silently side-by-side in a workshop dazzlingly clean, orderly and unremittingly white in decor. Nothing unusual about such a scene at the McLaren Technology Centre, of course: it is the modern face of McLaren Racing; unwavering in its uniformity and regimentation, and this season, blazingly successful, too. While something improbably complicated is being worked on over the corridor in an identicallooking engineering bay, this particular sanctum is McLaren Heritage, and in it, among other racing crown jewels, are two M23s. Firstly, the M23 needs no introduction whatsoever. For McLaren it was a car that really shot it to the F1 stratosphere, in 1974 helping the team to its first F1 World Drivers' Championship with recent Team Lotus defector Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel, the Brazilian…

Well this was going to be a first. I’ve been track testing cars for this title for 28 years and can recall just one occasion on which I have left the circuit without intending to, and that was in 1998 when I had a harmless semi-spin in the 1988 Le Mans-winning Jaguar XJR-9LM while exiting the Ford Chicane at that very track. But never have I failed to make it through the first corner before. But now as the Lancia LC2 point blank refused to turn into Redgate approximately 5sec after I’d departed the pitlane for the very first time, I could see no other outcome. It’s surprising just how rich a seam of insults you can throw at yourself in those few remaining seconds. This wasn’t going to be…

● Once raced by notable Land Speed Recordbotherer SIR MALCOLM CAMPBELL at Brooklands, this 1926 BUGATTI TYPE 35B, chassis 4696, inset right, went on to have a lively post-war existence in races and hillclimbs when owned by former VSCC chairman BERNARD KAIN. “It’s a delight to drive,” enthused Cotswolds dealer WILLIAM I’ANSON, where the car is on sale, £POA. ● While a first all-electric BENTLEY is to launch in 2026 – “a true luxury urban SUV”, according to CEO Frank-Steffen Walliser – the Crewe-based marque has delayed its aim to go fully electric across its range until 2035, five years later than originally planned. It will continue to make plug-in hybrids until then. ● Victim of an Enzo Ferrari clear out at the end of a lacklustre 1973 F1 season…

1955 AUSTIN-HEALEY 100 ‘LE MANS’ SOLD BY DORE & REES, £54,000 Austin-Healey introduced a Le Mans kit following the impressive second and third in class finishes by virtually standard 100s at the 1953 edition of the race. The upgrade included higher compression pistons, bigger valves and louvred bonnet – with all-important leather retaining strap. Just such a kit was fitted to this Healey before it was shipped to the US for Lester Seasongood, senior officer of the Sports Car Club of America. Campaigned extensively by Seasongood and two further US owners, it then returned to the UK 20 years ago where it was restored and converted to RHD. 2024 IWC PILOT’S WATCH SOLD BY BONHAMS, £197,000 Lewis Hamilton wore this special IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph ‘Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’…

● Dan Fallows has been released from his position of technical director at Aston Martin after a very disappointing season for the F1 team. He will “remain with the group”, his role as-yet unspecified. ● The Alpine team has officially confirmed its switch to Mercedes power from 2026 until “at least 2030”. Mercedes will also supply gearboxes. The 2025 season is thus set to be the final one in which the Renault power units created in Viry, France will compete in F1. ● A Grand Prix Drivers’ Association open letter to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem issued after the São Paulo Grand Prix is highly critical following the president’s campaign for drivers to cut out swearing on pain of heavy fines or other penalties. “There is a difference between swearing…

CIRCUIT DE CHARADE FIRST RACE 1958 LAST RACE (FULL CIRCUIT) 1988 LAP RECORD 2min 53.9sec, Chris Amon, Matra MS120D, 1972 A mountain circuit around two extinct volcanoes with 50 corners and just one brief straight – surely not a grand prix venue? Yet that was Charade, scenic but challenging, clinging to the flanks of tree-clad hillsides in the Auvergne Volcanoes Park, and on four occasions between 1965 and, above, ’72, it hosted four French Grands Prix. It was narrow, dusty and the volcanic rock crumbled into black flints which littered the track edges and punished any driver who went off-line – and anyone following. Punctures were frequent, and in 1972 Austrian BRM driver Helmut Marko, following Emerson Fittipaldi, was blinded in one eye by a stone which pierced his visor.…

Announced attendance numbers should always be taken with a pinch of salt, but based on televised overhead images, the quoted figure of 404,958 for the Mexican Grand Prix weekend seems believable. And that’s with Sergio Pérez running nowhere close to the front of the Formula 1 field… Mexicans have traditionally turned out in force to support native sons. The country’s modern-era record for a sporting event was set in February 1993 when legendary promoter Don King attracted a crowd of 132,247 to Azteca Stadium for a boxing match pitting local hero Julio César Chávez against Greg Haugen for the super lightweight title. That mark was exceeded for a CARTsanctioned IndyCar race in October 2003, when 221,011 spectators descended upon the then-recently renovated Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with the main draw being…

With a history in motor sport that dates back more than a century, TAG Heuer has enjoyed associations with some of the greatest drivers of all time – but the one it’s most proud of is that with triple Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna. It was in 1988, his first title-winning year, that the link between the brand and the Brazilian was forged after a significant stake in the watchmaker was acquired by Ron Dennis. At first, Senna’s relationship with TAG Heuer was based on a mutual appreciation rather than a contract, with the brand’s watches becoming the star’s default choice. As of 1989 he was seen wearing several models, starting with a steel and gold-plated 2000 Series before trying various pieces such as the colourful Formula 1. But…

email: editorial@motorsportmagazine.com Thoroughly enjoyed John Oreovicz’s November issue article on American icons [America’s golden greats]. My father covered auto racing in the ’60s and ’70s for a local newspaper at [Pennsylvania’s] Langhorne, Trenton and Nazareth. He started taking me to Langhorne in 1963 and went every year until the track closed in 1971. We got to see Foyt, Andretti and Jones race there along with other great drivers of that era. Unfortunately I never got to see Gurney race but did see him do a lap of the original Watkins Glen road course in 2001 when he was the grand marshall for the Grand Prix Festival. Lee Holman, son of John Holman, was the passenger. Oreovicz is spot on saying each driver had their strengths and no one driver is…

What’s blue-and-white and red all under? John Surtees’ Ferrari 158 wore North America’s racing colours at a topsy-turvy Mexico City decider, its welfare ostensibly catered for by influential US importer Luigi Chinetti’s NART organisation. This was due to Enzo’s hue and cry over the Italian national body’s stubborn refusal to sanction the homologation of his mid-engined 250 LM as a GT. Surtees, already a multiple motorcycle world champion for domineering Count Agusta, was used to but still often bemused by the Latin temperament and its attendant ‘decisions’. Rare in being offered a second chance to join Scuderia Ferrari after a first refusal, his influence extended beyond a number one’s usual reach, for a team increasingly isolated by British supremacy. His push for open-minded modernisation met with some success – yet…

In terms of Formula 1’s mass appeal, this was its genesis. A human story that catapulted the sport from minority interest to a global phenomenon. It had every bit as much impact as Drive to Survive would have many decades later in taking F1 to another level of awareness. The storyline has yet to be bettered. Flamboyant English ex-public school hippy, with total disregard for society’s mores who just happened to be brilliantly combative and gifted behind the wheel of a racing car. Versus the world champion, very correct, measured, precise as a Teuton representing the legendary Ferrari. Hunt vs Lauda. Anti-establishment vs conformism. McLaren vs Ferrari. Hunt, long hair, cigarette dangling from his mouth while signing post-race autographs and making outrageous but amusing and eloquent quips. Keen to get…

The 1997 Formula 1 World Championship was a memorable contest that saw Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher fight for the title all the way to the final race, and only when the former took the chequered flag was he confirmed as the winner. The curious aspect is that the two protagonists rarely actually met on track, and indeed not once in 17 races did both men stand on the podium together. It was therefore something of a plot twist for the title to be decided by a controversial collision. In his debut season with Williams in 1996 Villeneuve had pushed team-mate Damon Hill all the way to the final race, and with the Briton now gone he soon seized the initiative over the incoming Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Schumacher meanwhile was heading…

Every year yields a champion, many campaigns feature a spectacular title battle, but few produce legends of heroic failure. Fernando Alonso’s near-miss for Ferrari in 2012 stands as one of the greatest heroic failures in three-quarters of a century of the Formula 1 World Championship. The epic Brazilian Grand Prix title decider, where Sebastian Vettel delivered a stunning drive to recover to sixth after somehow surviving turning in on Bruno Senna’s Williams on the opening lap, a triple impact leaving him with exhaust damage and facing retirement, was just one chapter of a titanic fight. The Ferrari F2012 was far from a great car. I vividly remember watching it trackside in Barcelona during pre-season testing, admiring the way Alonso hustled and cajoled the unresponsive machine into changing direction between Turns…

New Zealand is fairly small. It’s also very far away. But, right now, its racing drivers are having a moment. Often overshadowed by its larger neighbour ‘across the ditch’, the South Pacific country’s drivers can be found at the sharp end of many major racing series across the world. Look at Liam Lawson, for instance, patiently waiting to pounce into one of Formula 1’s most desirable seats. Scott Dixon, Scott McLaughlin and Marcus Armstrong in IndyCar. Jaguar Formula E team-mates Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy, whose title challenges came right down to the wire. And the startling Shane van Gisbergen, a versatile, generational talent who’s making significant waves in both NASCAR and its Xfinity series. That’s just the tip of the antipodean iceberg. It begs the question: why are so…

Having shown the world what it was capable of with its motorcycles, Honda expanded into four-wheelers in 1963 – first with the tiny T360 truck and then, four months later, with the jewel-like S500 sports car. The S500 evolved into the S600 and, ultimately, the S800 version on offer here. And what a remarkable machine. It was in a completely different engineering league compared with ostensible competitors such as the MG Midget, Triumph Spitfire and Fiat 850, having a minuscule 791cc, fourcylinder engine that revved to a screaming 9000rpm and pumped out 70bhp. With an all-up weight of a mere 790kg, that was sufficient to propel the S800 to a pretty impressive 100mph – making it not only the first Honda automobile to reach the ton, but also the fastest…