Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i Motor Sport Magazine

Is that a road car? Technically it is… ish. Meet the Porsche 963 RSP, a one-off version of the brand’s current 963 Le Mans Hypercar. Designed to, only just, meet road-going specifications, and then only if you live in France. Wait, what? There’s a lot of work involved in taking a cutting-edge racing prototype and making it road legal. Porsche couldn’t get the entire thing approved and homologated, so the car can currently only be driven in France due to special permission given by the local authorities. It’s fitting given the backstory… Which is? Fifty years ago Count Rossi di Montelera – of the Rossi distillery family – set Porsche a challenge to turn its 917 into a road car for him. In 1975, Rossi drove the machine from the…

email: editorial@motorsportmagazine.com In recent issues you’ve dealt with the dark days when safety didn’t match the standards of today. In the ’50s and ’60s there were still remnants of the wartime attitude to risk, not just by drivers and spectators but by the press, e.g. Denis Jenkinson’s epic co-drive in the Mille Miglia. It prompted memories of Daily Express photographer Victor Blackman who snapped many hair-raising shots by standing in areas of extreme danger. On a couple of occasions, as a Kent Messenger reporter, I took a camera to Brands Hatch and joined him on the grass on the Paddock Bend, securing photos of shunts, secure in the knowledge that if a spinner came my way I would step aside. In my subsequent minor racing career I was never in…

Gosh!” comes the everso-polite exclamation from Britain’s newest Formula 1 star. “I was scared I wouldn’t fit, but then again there’s no height limit…” Ollie Bearman isn’t peering over the high-tech controls of his Haas VF-25, but the oversized steering wheel of ERA R4A – a car involved in the very first Formula 1 World Championship grand prix. And he’s got company: F1 veteran, Le Mans winner and broadcaster Martin Brundle is shaping up alongside to take out an Alfa Romeo 158, whose sister car won the aforementioned race – and first title – in the hands of Giuseppe Farina. All are here at Silverstone to film a Sky Sports feature commemorating 75 years since that epoch-defining 1950 British Grand Prix (or Grand Prix d’Europe for sticklers). The Alfa will…

This was a race which has been the subject of debate and argument almost since the flag fell on it. Not that it had been a particularly complex duel on that hot, dry summer afternoon, apart from the one vital question that needles to this day: did Stirling Moss win it or was it gifted to him by Juan Manuel Fangio, his two-time Formula 1 world champion team-mate at Mercedes? While that race of 70 years ago and its 0.2sec winning margin have become a rabbit-hole down which this magazine and a galaxy of its writers have cheerfully burrowed over the decades, it was not something that greatly bothered the media back in 1955. The explanation for that, I suggest, is that the regular newspaper hacks regarded that year’s Formula…

Fancy a bit of wind-in-the-hair motoring? Well, it doesn’t come much more ‘windy’ than this custom conversion of the insanely powerful Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, the road-legal dragster that can dash-off a quarter mile in less than 9sec and hit 60mph from standstill in a hard-tocompute 1.66sec. Produced in 3000 units in ’23, the latest version of the Demon followed the original 2018 car which caused a sensation thanks to its readyto-race specification, which included Nitto road-legal drag tyres, transbrake launch control and a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 that produced 828bhp on 100 octane fuel. The 2023 170 was, however, even more extreme thanks to being equipped with the first Hemi engine to produce more than 1000bhp which made it, according to Dodge, the world’s quickest production car. All examples…

1966 JAGUAR E-TYPE SOLD BY HAMPSON AUCTIONS, £283,696 If that seems a lot for a ’66 E-type, it normally would be. But this was no ordinary example, having been upgraded for 21st century use. A 4.7-litre engine and five-speed gearbox were part of the package. 1988 DUCATI 851 SUPERBIKE ‘KIT RACER’ SOLD BY ICONIC AUCTIONEERS, £6325 Being one of only 207 made and with 1100 miles on the clock, this ‘Kit Racer’ was a bargain. Kit refers to the competition parts factory fitted to the standard 851 that made it a track-ready, road-legal racer. 1971 LAMBORGHINI MIURA P400 SV SOLD BY RM SOTHEBY’S, £3.3M Anyone who has seen the (original) Italian Job will likely have clear memories of the opening scenes showing a Lamborghini Miura threading its way through the…

Across the broad spectrum of all motor sport sidecar TT racing is something else. The sight of a rider and passenger hitting 120mph on three wheels – especially on public roads – is a quite staggering spectacle. This is Ryan and Callum Crowe flying to the first of two sidecar wins on the Isle of Man, which means the brothers have now won four TTs on the 37.7-mile mountain course. It was on the first run that the Crowes – who live on the island – set a new sidecar TT lap record with their Honda LCR of 121.021mph (18min 42.350sec). Their lead over nearest rivals Ben Birchall and Patrick Rosney was 1min 17sec.…

Ferrari’s unbeaten three from three at the Big One since its return to sports car racing’s top tier eclipses all expectations. But it was Robert Kubica who deservedly scooped the lion’s share of plaudits as the so-called ‘customer’ 499P – run by the same AF Corse team that’s also responsible for the works cars – completed the hat-trick. Now each of Ferrari’s World Endurance Championship Hypercars has scored a win at Le Mans. Kubica was the first Polish winner, Yifei Ye the first from China, while 26-year-old Phil Hanson can reflect on a final vindication of his decision to sidestep single-seaters as a teenager to focus instead on a sports car career. Now he’s only the third Brit with an overall win at Le Mans in a Ferrari, after works…

LENGTH 4.501 miles LONGFORD IN USE 1953-68 FASTEST RACE LAP 2min 12.6sec, Chris Amon, Ferrari 350 P4, Tasman Cup, 1968 Sometimes known as the ‘Reims of the South Pacific’ due to its long, fast straights and undulations, Longford has a special place in the hearts of Australian motor racing fans and the European drivers who came to race there. Until Formula 1 moved to Albert Park in Melbourne in 1996 it was Australia’s fastest road circuit. Established on the island of Tasmania in 1953 the 4.5-mile circuit on public roads was seriously old-school, and not a place for the faint-hearted. The Australian Grand Prix was held there in 1959 and ’65 and Longford also hosted the Tasman Series from 1964 to 1968 – before closing in ’68 due to lack…

“On May 1st, motor racing history was made, for Stirling Moss won the 1000-mile Mille Miglia, the first time this has been achieved by a British driver, and I had the very great privilege of sitting beside him throughout this epic drive.” So wrote Motor Sport’s own Denis Jenkinson as the introduction to his nail-biting account of being Moss’s navigator in the 1955 event, an article that ran to a dozen pages and which is still widely regarded as one of the greatest-ever pieces of motoring journalism. This year’s edition of the Mille Miglia marked 70 years since Moss and Jenks’ victory in which the pair set a record time of 10hr, 7min and 48sec – a feat that remained un-bested, partly because the event was banned after 1957. And…

One of the first big jobs I did as a young road tester was to pit a Morgan Plus Eight against an E30-series BMW M3 convertible. The outcome may seem obvious, except that, for reasons known only unto the callow youth called upon to deliver the verdict, I gave it to a Morgan whose front suspension dated from the First World War. What do I remember of that story? Mainly being as cold as I’ve been on test and that the Morgan was ridiculously quick, probably because I was later told it had a distinctly non-standard engine under the bonnet. But if I’m honest, that’s the last four-wheel Morgan I really liked. Many years ago my stepmother had a Plus Four which still ranks among the worst cars I’ve ever…

Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris? Unless Max Verstappen pulls off an Alain Prost 1986-style miracle, this year’s world championship battle will answer that question. The Australian seized the initiative in the early months of the season, deposing his more experienced team-mate as title favourite as the narrative increasingly became one of the ‘granite’ Aussie asserting himself over a brittle adversary. That might foreshadow the story of the whole 2025 season, but it’s far from a done deal despite Piastri tilting the playing field in his favour with his performances. Piastri has unequivocally been the stronger McLaren driver so far in 2025. He’s eradicated the question marks that hung over him during the winter after his 2024 campaign trailed off somewhat following his second victory, in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, thanks…

Spanish GP Canadian GP  Austrian GP With McLaren’s advantage very apparent into the nitty-gritty mid-part of the season, there was hope among rivals that the new technical directive regarding front wing flex (which took effect from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards) might re-set the bar. It did no such thing in Barcelona, but with the quite distinct challenges of Montreal and the Red Bull Ring coming up it was going to be interesting to monitor the competitive patterns. In Spain, McLaren locked out the front row, Oscar Piastri from Lando Norris, with the former’s pole time around 0.3sec faster than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull and George Russell’s Mercedes on row 2. That was the foundation for a dominant Piastri victory, his fifth of the season and extending his lead in…

Enzo Ferrari might (allegedly) have described the Jaguar E-type as the most beautiful car in the world – but for my money, a Marcos 1800 GT in the right colour makes the E look pedestrian. And 1800 GTs don’t come much better than this spectacular Haze Metallic Blue example on offer with marque specialist Redline Sportscars which has been buying, selling, restoring and upgrading the cars for more than 30 years. Marcos Engineering was founded in 1959 by Bristol-based engineer Jem Marsh and the celebrated aerodynamicist Frank Costin, whose earlier work at aircraft maker de Havilland inspired him to look to plywood as a material for body tub construction. The first Marcos model, the GT Xylon, was developed to compete in 750 Motor Club races and was campaigned with impressive…

The inability of the rear damper to control the Ferrari’s ride height has snowballed into a tricky political situation for team principal Frédéric Vasseur, one in which he may be fighting for his very future. That’s not how Vasseur’s plight has been reported but within such an insanely politically charged environment as Ferrari, that’s the ridiculous essence of why his efforts at bringing success to the Scuderia are being sidetracked, crucial energy diverted by a stupid distraction. We’ll come back to the rear damper in a moment, but the ‘Vasseur under threat’ stories – two of them – appeared on the eve of the Canadian Grand Prix. When Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport and Corriere della Sera both published pieces critical of him on the same day despite being totally separate…

SPA CLASSIC, MAY 23-25 Always one of the highlights of the season. This time, I was racing with John Spiers in his Lister Costin in The Gentleman Challenge. We were second in the first race and won the second in the rain. A Lister Costin is wild around Spa at the best of times! We were also on track with John’s Mustang and I made my debut for the Italian Ombra Racing team, which is based not far from Monza. I was with Rolf Sigrist, who I coach, on a 65-car grid in his Chevron B19. We came through the field to finish fourth in class – also getting the fastest lap. WATKINS GLEN, MAY 27 We travelled back from Spa on the Sunday night and on the Monday I…

Racing films have always had a reputation for being comedically unrealistic, and unfortunately this production is another to add to the list. There’s no denying that it is beautifully shot, with director Joseph Kosinski giving the audience a new perspective from the driver’s cockpit, but a zero-to-hero plot scattered with inconsistencies and crashes more at home in the F1 video game means this film never gets out of first gear. The movie begins with a stint at the Daytona 24 Hours for Brad Pitt’s character Sonny Hayes. Living in his van, as an ageing driver-for-hire, he nonetheless helps the sports car team regain the lead after a night shift behind the wheel. As Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin is blasted out, complemented by some incredible racing shots from around…

A new Amazon documentary on late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt has shone a light on a man celebrated and, at times, reviled in equal measure. From stock car racing’s North Carolina heartland, ‘The Man in Black’ aka ‘The Intimidator’ simultaneously made himself a villain for some due to habitually putting rivals into the wall. Featuring captivating archive footage and interviews by those close to him, Earnhardt has been produced by his racing-driverturned-burgeoning-media-mogul son Dale Jr. It’s the most-compelling on-screen motor sport production since 2010’s Senna. Gordon Kirby’s February 2011 archive piece further illustrates a racer who could be both straightforward and enigmatic – worthy of his macho moniker but vulnerable at times too. Earnhardt’s father Ralph was a successful driver on NASCAR’s lower rungs, but Dale made his first one-off…

Cricket’s inaugural Test of March 1877 set the tone. An England party that was already exhausted by a hectic schedule – this match in Melbourne was to be the 19th of its tour – was reeling still from a rough six-day crossing from New Zealand. Selection, therefore, was straightforward: all 11 available ‘fit’ men played. Underdog Australia was immediately on the front foot when opening batsman Charles Bannerman, born in Woolwich, made a gritty century. Then opening bowler Tom Kendall, born in Bedford, took seven wickets in England’s second innings to strand the visitors 45 runs shy of their target. The bickering between the New South Wales and Victorian associations – ace fast bowler Fred ‘The Demon’ Spofforth had refused to play – was forgotten, as a country of two…

“Yes, we said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ there was going to be contact between Oscar and Lando but ‘when’ and we now know the answer to that one: Canada 2025.” They were the words of McLaren team principal Andrea Stella after Norris, in attempting to pass team-mate Piastri on the pitstraight in the late stages of the race, hit him instead, forcing Norris’s retirement with broken suspension. It replicated the McLaren team incident at the same place between Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton 14 years earlier, inset, with Norris trying to pass on the left just as Piastri was already moving that way to take up his line for the kink before the first turn. Although Piastri’s left-rear wheel took a hit from the…

Seventy years on from its first postwar grand prix win, Mercedes-Benz hasn’t forgotten the significance of Stirling Moss’s landmark Aintree victory in the summer of 1955. That’s why the German carmaker wheeled out one of its glorious W196s, took it back to the Liverpool race course and gave its current Formula 1 star George Russell a golden chance to briefly slip into Moss’s racing shoes. Or more accurately Juan Manuel Fangio’s. For this was chassis 000 13/55 in which – as Mike Doodson has already covered – the ‘Maestro’ was either beaten or displayed generous discretion, depending on what you choose to believe of that July 16, 1955 race. Russell, ahead of his fine win at the Canadian GP, appeared to revel in the moment at what was a private…