Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Motor Sport Magazine

Visitors to Ferrari’s famous HQ in Maranello have in recent weeks noticed an addition to the famous campus. It is a huge 42,500 square metre glass and steel factory building on the northern edge of the existing site which was unveiled over the summer. Ferrari refers to it as the E-building and it represents the biggest expansion of the marque’s factory for decades. It also represents a bold vision of the future: it is here that Ferrari’s new generation of models will be built – including the first all-electric Ferrari which will roll off the production line next year. The facility is a statement of intent by the company which built its first road car 78 years ago as it pushes into a rapidly changing automotive reality. The same can…

What is it about 1964 spy flick Goldfinger that gives it such ‘rewatchability’? Of course there’s Sean Connery as James Bond, who brings humour-tinged rock-hard assurance to the role, but equally alluring is Q’s stunningly cool Aston Martin DB5 with all its fanciful gadgetry. “Ejector seat? You’re joking?” guffaws our hero. And with this sparkling aside the 007 franchise found itself with millions of friends for life. You’ll need a sturdy coffee table for this 400-page new book which focuses on the vehicles of Bond – mainly cars. This is volume one of three, released to mark the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger and the DB5. The first in the triumvirate take us from Dr No to Diamonds Are Forever – a Connery parade only interrupted by George Lazenby’s On Her…

RACING THE REICH FEBRUARY 2024 As far as tales of British derring-do go, there’s few to beat that of plucky Eric Crudgington Fernihough. In the mid-1930s, he took on the might of Nazi Germany from his garage – the arena for battle being the motorcycle land speed record attempts. Mat Oxley tells the story in his 2024 archive piece. Fernihough was an orphan who, after being adopted by a wealthy widower, went to Cambridge University. First riding in varsity motorcycle events at Brooklands in 1923, four years later he was at the Isle of Man TT. In 1931 he secured the 175cc European Championship, but in the years to come he had a new goal: “In 1934 ‘Ferni’ set his sights on breaking the two-wheel land speed record,” says Oxley.…

Lewis Hamilton heads into the 2025 Formula 1 season with more questions hanging over him than ever before. The seven-time world champion moves to Ferrari amid high expectations – from himself, from the team and from the fans – with the highest salary he has ever received, after the worst season of his career. Although Hamilton ended a win drought that dated back two and a half years with victories at the British and Belgian grands prix, seventh in the championship is the lowest he has ever finished. And he was comprehensively outpaced by a team-mate for the first time. George Russell outqualified him 19 times to five at an average advantage over the season of 0.171sec. In 2025, Hamilton moves to a team like no other. For a start,…

You know that phrase ‘if it looks right, it is right’? Were that always the case the Ferrari Dino 206 S would have won every race it entered, probably lapping the field for good measure. In the entire history of motor sport few, if any, have looked more right than this. But it’s not what I’m thinking about just now. I’m just waiting for it all to go horribly wrong, which it well might at any moment. I’m at Donington, not for a relatively cuddly track day, but a full test day for unsilenced racing cars. I’m sat in a car worth £4m, without seatbelts, while professional drivers in their modern slicks and wings machines they’re paid to drive, dive and hustle their away about and around me. And with…

If ever there was a character in Formula 1 who was made for the screen it is Luca Montezemolo. The suave Italian with matinée idol looks, easy charm and aristocratic lineage came to epitomise the image of Ferrari in the 1970s. And now thanks to Manish Pandey – the man behind 2010’s Senna – he has a full-length feature film dedicated entirely to his extraordinary career. Motor Sport was invited to a pre-release screening of the new – and at the time not completely finished – film just before Christmas. Directed by Pandey and Christopher M Armstrong, Luca: Seeing Red tells the story of how a young Italian law student with a passion for rally caught the eye – or rather ear – of Enzo Ferrari while defending the sport…

It started with a simple yet bold request. A purchaser of an early 2000s Ferrari Formula 1 car wanted to experience his machine on track. He understood that the only way to do that was with the help of the team that built it. So the question was popped to then Scuderia Ferrari team principal Jean Todt, who liked the idea and put together a small group of engineers and mechanics to allow the customer to live out his dream. More than 20 years on Maranello has a department stacked with upwards of 50 F1 chassis owned by patrons doing the same. What is known as F1 Clienti, which formally kicked off in 2003, was born of the unnamed customer’s brazen question. It was followed three years later by the…

• When highly successful hillclimb and sprint race driver PATSY BURT died in 2001, her death notice in the Daily Telegraph read, “Retired on 73rd lap due to mechanical failure”. Her cars were known for their Burt Blue livery, and this 1965 FERRARI 330, inset right, is no exception, which she bought new. One of just 44 RHD models, its on sale for £349,995 at West Sussex’s PREMIER GT. • RHD STINGRAYs, ZO6s and E-RAYs will become more common in 2025 as CORVETTE sets its sights on the UK market. Dealer partners will be ARNOLD CLARK (Glasgow and Altrincham) and LUMEN AUTOMOTIVE (Shrewsbury). “In the UK, there’s incredible demand for these award-winning cars,” said Callum Rankin, Arnold Clark brand director. • If you’re quick, there’s still time to see AYRTON…

JANUARY 8, 2025 ALULA, SAUDI ARABIA No, this isn’t Andy Green’s Thrust SSC Land Speed Record car streaking across the desert but the Toyota Hilux of Yazeed Al-Rajhi and co-driver Timo Gottschalk en route to victory at the Dakar. This year’s rally saw big names fall early including Sébastien Loeb (Dacia) and Carlos Sainz (Ford). Toyota dominated but despite having five factory entries it was privateer Al-Rajhi and his Overdrive outfit who triumphed – the first time a customer team has won in 25 years. The first Saudi to ever win the event finished in 52hrs 52min 15sec, 3min 57sec ahead of Toyota Gazoo driver Henk Lategan in second.…

Is this a dream? We know… looks like a fantastic work of fiction, but this is real. The legendary Ford Escort Mk1 is back and potentially better than ever thanks to Boreham Motorworks. Is it actually an Escort though? Absolutely! And not a battered and rusted old one underneath either. This new one is built from the ground up as an honest continuation car that is fully licensed by Ford. It even gets Ford continuation chassis numbers. There’s pleasing updates too… Bet they’ve ruined Wrong! Boreham’s Mk1 stays faithful to its forebear. To create it the original blueprints were recovered from the Ford archives and existing models were laser-scanned so the entire car could be recreated in exceptional detail. But using modern tooling gave the chance for improvement. This new…

PORTIMÃO, December (pre-Christmas) A week before Christmas, I spent two days coaching John Emberson – owner of the ‘Chocolate Drop’ Chevron [see Golden brown, November 2024] – in Portimão, in a Radical SR3. I encouraged him to buy the car for this purpose because it’s significantly cheaper to run than a historic Chevron, and it also enables me to sit with him in the car. RALLY CLASS December (pre-Christmas) Straight after that, I was coaching a client in a Ford Escort Mk2 on gravel. Everyone I race with, I try and take them off-road (deliberately!). It’s important to build a broad skill set and people have a lot more car control than they realise, but on track you don’t always get the opportunity of sliding cars around and developing the…

A FAIR COP? March 1954 “It is unfortunate that people can’t mind their own business,” we cry, after a taxpayer kicked up a stink upon hearing that the British police entered the Monte Carlo Rally. We’re in calmer mood after visiting new circuit Oulton Park while “Nashing”, that is, testing a Frazer Nash. CRY ME A ROVER March 1978 Editor Bill Boddy admits to journalistic licence in his 10,000-mile review of the editorial Rover 3500: “It hadn’t quite reached that mileage when it went in for repairs.” In F1 Villeneuve and Peterson collide in Brazil. “He doesn’t have good judgement,” the Swede said of his rival. GORDON’S GEN March 1989 Gordon Cruickshank, seven years into his Motor Sport career, is busy in this issue, testing an Audi Coupé (“five-cylinder snarl”),…

email: editorial@motorsportmagazine.com It was with much sadness to hear of the passing of David Brodie – ‘The Brode’ – a proper racer, if ever there was one. I was a guest of Dave’s at Donington when he was racing the Starion. I had read a letter in Autosport from Dave saying that he had visited the trophy room at Duns, as he was a big Jim Clark fan, and said how good it was, urging people to visit. Jim Clark is also my hero and I wrote a letter to Dave, and received one back with the invite to spend the day with the team. It was wonderful. I remember sitting on the pitwall with Dave, when Barry Sheene wandered over and sat with us. He was driving a Toyota…

Austrian Gerhard Berger is a man who knows all about what it’s like to start a new life aboard the Prancing Horse at Maranello. It was at Ferrari that he had some of the best moments of a long and successful career in grand prix racing. The first of his two stints at Ferrari came in 1987, after a single season at Benetton, summoned by Enzo himself. A huge accident at Imola in ’89 was his worst ever and he left at the end of the season to join McLaren alongside Ayrton Senna. He returned to Ferrari in 1993 and the following season he won the German Grand Prix in the Scuderia’s 412 T, the team’s first win since 1990. A move back to Benetton in 1996, when Michael Schumacher…

CHRIS FROGGATT For Chris Froggatt, the XX Programme provided an entrée into motor sport. Eight years on from taking his first steps out on circuit with Ferrari, he’s the winner of four class titles in GT World Challenge Europe and has twice captained the Team UK squad at the FIA Motorsport Games. Froggatt, 31, went from taking part in one of Ferrari’s track driving Corso Pilota events, to buying a 599XX, to racing in the Ferrari Challenge one-make series and on to international sports car racing in double-quick time – with a slight diversion onto the F1 Clienti programme. Invited to take part in the Corso Pilota by a friend, the renewable energy entrepreneur was told he had an aptitude for driving by instructor Andrea Belicchi, an 11-time participant at…

Just prior to writing this month’s column, the idea of Max Verstappen considering a move to Aston Martin for 2026 was just one of those theoretical ‘it has a logic to it’ sort of abstract ideas. But a few days ago came the first external suggestion that this was indeed under discussion. That still doesn’t mean it’s definitely true or even if it is that it’s definitely happening. But there is a sense of inevitability about it, one just underlined by the recent (self) appointment of Andy Cowell as team principal as well as his position as CEO. Aston, with Adrian Newey about to join to sit alongside Cowell at the incredible new factory, with Honda working as its exclusive power unit partner, with Lawrence Stroll maintaining his ‘whatever it…

Langhorne, a one-mile dirt track speedway in Pennsylvania, was a place that drivers both feared and respected, the ultimate challenge for the bravest of the brave. “No circuit scared me,” said Mario Andretti, “but Langhorne was a spooky place. I saw so many drivers killed there. Even now I get goosebumps when I think about racing there.” The track opened in 1926, built on marshland about 15 miles north of Philadelphia by a band of racing enthusiasts known as the National Motor Racing Association. Unlike most speedways it was not an oval but almost a circle of left-hand turns, the track becoming known as the ‘Big Left Turn’. From 1956-70 USAC brought open-wheel races to Langhorne and this was the track’s finest era with all the big-name drivers like AJ…

A long-awaited WRC round in the US looked like it might finally become a reality, with officials confirming last summer an aspirational timeline that could see racing in Tennessee as soon as 2026. But rally insiders aren’t so sure. “There is nothing I can say to a timeline right now,” American Rally Association series manager Preston Osborn says. “There’s still a lot of boxes to check both with ACCUS [the national sporting authority of the FIA for the US] and also the FIA. With that, I’m not able to give any firm or speculative time for when it could come to the USA.” A standalone Rally USA Tennessee last summer was officially cast as an exhibition event focused on volunteer training ahead of an eventual WRC bid. But many who…

Steve McQueen, Hollywood’s so-called ‘King of Cool’, will forever hold a place in the horological history books as the man who gave fame to the Heuer Monaco chronograph. As anyone who has managed to stay awake through McQueen’s 1971 film Le Mans might know, the actor chose to wear a Monaco in the role of racing driver Michael Delaney – a fact the modern-day TAG Heuer milks unrelentingly. As well as receiving regular reminders of McQueen’s association with the Monaco from the brand itself, examples from the batch of six supplied to prop master Don Nunley for use in the film turn up at auction with surprising regularity. In December one of the McQueen-worn watches that was snapped up by mechanic Bevan Weston after the film wrapped sold at Sotheby’s…

It was one of those moments when you just knew, and it took less than a mile. That was all the time I needed to know for certain that the Alpine A110 was one of the finest road cars I’d driven. Nearly eight years and who knows how many drives later, I’ve seen nothing to tempt me to change that view. If you judge a car by its ability to do the job for which it was designed, it is an all-time great, in an era where such things are depressingly scarce commodities. But none of us hacks could figure out what it would do next and nor it seems could Alpine, because no one would relaunch an entire brand like that with a low-volume, low-margin product and then choose…

It was a clear, crisp summer morning and I was walking the dog across a deserted Cornish beach when my phone rang. The number was Italian. No one likes these moments of solitude and contemplation interrupted, and I was angry at myself for even looking at the blasted device. But there’s something curiously exotic about an international dialling code on an Apple screen, and curiosity won – so I answered. There was a slight crackle, a decent pause and then: “Am I speaking to Chris ’Arris?” “You are,” I said. “I am calling to discuss a project I would like to speak with you about. It’s called F41.” (All delivered in accurate English, but with a perfectly Italian lilt.) He continued, largely because I was silently processing whether this was…

“Ferrari, for me, has always been all about a number of different things; the history, the sculptural look of the cars, the noise of those V12 engines, and they are still the best looking cars. My first Ferrari was the 275 GTB four-cam. It was another five years before I could afford the GTO. My first connection with Ferrari must have been the Dinky toy, the blue one with a yellow nose, Prince Bira’s racing colours. Then I went racing with my dad, to Goodwood and Silverstone, and this was the ultimate treat because he was both a spectator and a competitor. So I’d seen the 1950s drivers like Fangio and Ascari, and become very aware of the Ferrari grand prix cars. Ferrari stands for so much more than just the…