Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2025 i Motor Sport Magazine

What the racing gods give with one hand they take with the other. Earlier this summer the FIA announced that the historic date clash between the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco GP would be remedied for 2026 by moving the principality weekend into June, rather than the traditional late-May date. A few weeks later though and a new calendar clash appeared – this time perhaps not one that will make quite the same headlines: with the Le Mans Classic now set to be run annually instead of every other year it will take place on the same July weekend as the British GP. That was certainly the case this year – and will be in 2026 too – forcing the Venn diagram segment of fans who love modern F1 and…

1 MERCEDES-AMG Going by world championships won, the Brackley and Brixworth-based works Mercedes team is officially the most successful of the past 20 years – but not by much. Its record-breaking run of domination from the start of the hybrid era in 2014 scooped 15 world titles (eight consecutive constructors’, six drivers’ crowns for Lewis Hamilton and another for Nico Rosberg), which is one more than Red Bull. But on grand prix wins for the period Mercedes actually lags just behind Red Bull, see 2. Then again, for how much longer? How the tallies between these modern-era big beasts evolve will hinge on outcomes from the new chassis and powertrain regulations which blast into force next year – and also perhaps on Max Verstappen’s choice on who he’ll drive for. 2 RED…

Through April and into July I managed 12 consecutive weekends of racing. Back to back I did Spa, Brands Hatch GP, Dijon, Watkins Glen and Zandvoort. Very special. DIJON, JUNE 6-8 At the Peter Auto meeting John Spiers and I raced and won with his Lister, then also raced his Jaguar E-type. I was also racing with Rolf Sigrist in his Chevron and managed fastest lap and second place – a first podium for us together. Dijon is a classic GP circuit with its undulations and fast sweeps. Through the last long swooping corner you’re on a knife-edge. WATKINS GLEN, JUNE 11-14 The following Tuesday we flew to the US for the HSR Classic 12 Hours at Watkins Glen. I was racing with Gary Ball in his Ligier LMP3 and…

Three big hardback volumes in a slipcase, comprising 1960 pages and 665,000 words, illustrated by 3584 photographs, technical drawings and cutaways. Cripes. This is a proper monster. Power Unleashed represents the best part of a life’s work on an apparent supercharging obsession for respected author, historian and former executive for GM, Fiat and Ford, Karl Ludvigsen. In his preface, he pinpoints January 30 1955 as his first active involvement in chasing blown power boost solutions, in a proposal he submitted for a sports car during his studies of industrial design at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. Some of his thoughts then found their way into an article written for Sports Car Illustrated in July 1958 – but it was an article for Automobile Quarterly in 1970 entitled The origins of supercharging where the…

RACING’S GREATEST CAMPAIGN AUGUST 2015 Jim Clark clinched his second Formula 1 world title 60 years ago this month at the Nürburgring. The Scot took pole position, fastest lap and the race win – but that was simply par for the course in what was his greatest ever season. Paul Fearnley’s 2015 archive piece details his sensational 1965 year in diary form. As well as becoming F1 champ for a second time by winning six out of that year’s 10 world championship grands prix, there was also a brilliant Indy 500 victory and he came home first in the Tasman Series. Oh, and he won races in F2, sports cars and tin-tops to boot. Fearnley’s meticulous summary starts with our hero suffering from a slipped disc picked up in a…

McLaren Carried momentum from 2024 to soar higher, with nine wins from the first 12 races. Now, which will be its first champion driver since ’08? OSCAR PIASTRI Points 234  Highlight Take your pick. Passing Verstappen to win in Miami was special. Low point Penalty for safety car gamesmanship cost him British GP win. Aim for 2nd half To complete the job and become world champion. LANDO NORRIS Points 226 Highlight Home British GP win probably just trumps Monaco victory. Low point Too many. Tagging Piastri in Canada was the lowest. Aim for 2nd half Cut the errors out, beat Piastri to that world title. Ferrari Second in team points, but what a disappointing season so far. Team boss Vasseur is facing scrutiny. Same old Maranello story? CHARLES LECLERC Points…

When editor Joe Dunn messages to ask if it is OK to share your email address with Mercedes-Benz, it is intriguing to know why. Then when Mercedes-Benz Heritage almost immediately gets in touch to ask if you would be free to join the 2025 Mille Miglia, it is mind-blowing. The company hoped that I would help it celebrate the extraordinary 1955 victory in the thousandmile race around Italy, when Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson won at a record-breaking speed in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Scroll back 70 years, to May 1, 1955. My greatuncle Egbert Jenkinson had arranged a huge family get-together in Kettering. Some of the Jenkinson family had moved from there to Suffolk where many had become church ministers, particularly in the village of Glemsford. Egbert had gone…

● If it’s reliability you need, this 2013 FERRARI 458 GTE, inset, right, never suffered a DNF. It was quick too – chassis 2868 was first in all four 2013 Asian Le Mans Series races and finished eighth in class, 28th overall, at Le Mans in 2014 (Shinji Nakano, Martin Rich and Pierre Ehret). It’s in immaculate condition, says DK ENGINEERING in Herts, where it’s on sale for just under £1.35m. ● After being entrusted to sell Bernie Ecclestone’s car collection, next up for Midlands-based dealer TOM HARTLEY JNR is the MANSOUR OJJEH COLLECTION. Ojjeh, the Saudi businessman and noted McLaren figure, died in 2021 but accrued 20 McLaren road cars – including the final F1 supercar built, which is tipped to fetch a record price for the model. ●…

At this year’s Festival of Speed we witnessed another celebration of Formula 1’s 75th anniversary – although as you’d expect, Goodwood’s was rather special. On Sunday, the four-time F1 world champion Alain Prost was centre stage, driving his 1988 Monaco Grand Prix-winning McLaren MP4/4 before appearing on the balcony. It was the Frenchman’s second balcony visit. The previous day he’d been accompanied by six other F1 title winners – Nigel Mansell, Mario Andretti, Sir Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jacques Villeneuve and Mika Häkkinen; 14 championships over four decades.…

Woooaah – what’s this? This is the ultimate watch-turned superbike tie-in you never knew you needed. Unveiled at the recent Le Mans Classic, of which Richard Mille is a sponsor, the RMB01 is a 1000cc fusion between the worlds of fast bikes and high-end watches. I don’t see the link… Think intricate engineering and, of course, the watchmaker’s long association with the automotive world. The bike is achingly pretty, with a futuristic Tron vibe. Brough and RM’s designers have worked together to bring elements of watches that cost as much as houses into superbike design. It looks lightweight… Richard Mille timepieces are famed for their skeletonised designs, and this motorcycle carries that theme with exposed engine casings, a CNC-machined aluminium frame and a forged-carbon exoskeleton. Particular detail is in the…

OVER THE MOON September 1969 In Matters of Moment we congratulate the US for its lunar landing, but agree with an expert on the BBC who said, “The risks to which astronauts were exposed were not so great as those taken in more sophisticated sports, like motor racing.” “So we’re still in business!” we whoop. GRASS ACT September 1980 Good word alert… Editor Bill Boddy is impressed by Audi’s range-topping 200 5T Turbo: “It’s great for overtaking several ‘mimsers’ at one go!” A few pages on, the Chislet GP in Herne Bay makes our events section: “The machinery consists entirely of lawnmower. Whatever next?” RIP WB September 2011 Bill Boddy dies at 98: “For the first time Motor Sport will hit the stands untouched by the man we knew as…

email: editorial@motorsportmagazine.com Like Mike Doodson, I have many fond memories of Aintree [Was it a fix?, August]. My father, who had raced motorbikes on Southport Sands, took me along to Aintree in 1955. He had previously taken me to Oulton Park and Alton Towers (long before Alton Towers became a leisure park there were motor bike races). On one occasion travelling down the East Lancs Road we were passed by two Maserati 250Fs! I soon became hooked on motor sport. I joined the marshals club and officiated at Aintree many times. At major meetings Mirabel Topham provided lunch for the marshals on practice day. I remember at one event helping John Bolster pulling out the cable for his microphone – long before the advent of the radio! Attached are a…

July 8, 2025 London Tuesday morning, two days after the British Grand Prix. Christian Horner is attending a meeting called the previous day by the Red Bull company’s senior Austrian management ostensibly to continue a conversation which had taken place at the preceding Austrian Grand Prix. But a conversation which in reality had been ongoing almost from the moment Dietrich Mateschitz died in October 2022. This was the conclusion of that long discussion. He was being relieved of his duties with several years still on his contract – for reasons they didn’t care to disclose to him. A financial agreement was reached and the following morning Horner informed his staff by way of an emotional farewell speech. At least they’d granted him that. But otherwise there wasn’t much in the…

At Silverstone, our Lola T70 reunion was completed by a spry 80-something ex-mechanic who has a fascinating connection to SL76/141: David Westley, inset, ran the car when it ‘raced’ (and crashed) without a driver. He was on the set of Le Mans when the Lola turned into a Porsche 917K and became a remote-control movie star. “Ulf Norinder had a racing manager who knew Andrew Ferguson at Team Lotus,” explains Westley, who had previous T70 experience working for Roger Nathan. “Andrew sent a letter asking would I be interested in working in France for six months or so? Yes, OK. They found me an apartment near the end of the Mulsanne Straight.” Westley has happy memories of the summer of 1970, and no wonder. “Just outside the circuit there was…

When the teaser trailer for F1 dropped during the British Grand Prix in July 2024, it included footage filmed at Silverstone the previous year, with Hollywood A-lister Brad Pitt hustling his APX GP F1 car around the Northamptonshire circuit as veteran driver Sonny Hayes. But just as exciting for motorsport fans was the brief shot of Pitt and his co-star Damson Idris on the grid, standing next to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen during the national anthem, a remarkable blend of fact and fiction that pointed to the level of realism and authenticity that F1’s makers were striving for. Directed by Top Gun: Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, whose long list of credits includes NASCAR-set Days of Thunder and automotive thriller Gone In 60 Seconds, F1 roared into…

How’s this for an automotive dream team? Carroll Shelby, Alejandro de Tomaso, Peter Brock and Medardo Fantuzzi. That was the quartet that came together exactly 60 years ago to develop a car for Shelby that would compete with Bruce McLaren’s creations in the pending Can-Am series, which replaced the short-lived US Road Racing Championship (USRRC). The result was the spectacular De Tomaso P70, with low-profile bodywork penned by Corvette Stingray and Shelby Daytona Coupé designer Brock and formed by Carrozzeria specialist Fantuzzi over the top of de Tomaso’s central-spine chassis from the Vallelunga road car. The wind-cheating, aluminium body made the most of Can-Am’s relaxed rule book with features such as a shallow, integrated windscreen and a rear aerofoil that could be adjusted for maximum downforce at speed. But despite…

The valuation of a Formula 1 team may seem an esoteric consideration for F1 followers. But it can have a huge impact upon events and the landscape upon which the sport plays out. For example, without the effect of Netflix upon the valuations of teams under Liberty’s franchise system, we’d probably now be very familiar with a Porsche Red Bull team. In which case we may have seen the departure by now of Christian Horner from there, but probably for different reasons to those which transpired. Quite how an empowered incumbent CEO of the race team could have run on an equal basis with an entity as powerful and focused as Porsche was always difficult to envisage. But what finally nixed Porsche’s bid back in 2022 was the sudden inflation…

Jacarepaguá rose from the ruins of the old Autódromo Nova Caledônia in Rio de Janeiro, with work on the new track starting in 1971. Local politics soon intervened, the project stalled and Formula 1 moved to Interlagos for a non-championship race in 1972. Construction finally resumed and the circuit was completed in 1977. The grand prix came to Rio a year later, with Argentinian Carlos Reutemann winning for Ferrari ahead of Brazilian hero Emerson Fittipaldi, now with his own Fittipaldi team. Safety concerns at Interlagos led to the grand prix extending its stay at Jacarepaguá in 1981 and again it was Reutemann who finished first, this time in a Williams. A year later Brazilian Nelson Piquet won his home race but was disqualified and Alain Prost inherited the victory. The…

Ask drivers who came up through the international road racing ranks what they like most about racing in America and inevitably you’ll hear about the genial friendliness and relaxed paddock atmosphere. But the answer you will get most often will involve the racetracks themselves. Most of the classic road racing circuits in the US were constructed in a three-year period from 1955-57, and the ones that have survived – Road America, Laguna Seca, Lime Rock Park, Watkins Glen and Virginia International Raceway – are virtually unchanged in terms of layout some 70 years later. Supplement that core group with the likes of Mid-Ohio (which opened in 1962), Road Atlanta (1970) and add in the Sebring airfield circuit (in use since 1950) and Canadian classics Mosport (1961) and Mont-Tremblant (1964), and…

Think big name watch brands with links to motor sport and the two obvious ones that spring to mind are Rolex and TAG Heuer, which has been inextricably linked since the launch of the Carrera chronograph in 1964. However, Tudor, the more affordable subbrand set-up by Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf back in 1946, should not be overlooked. Its history includes an early foray into motorised competition through a 1950s advert for the then-new Oyster Prince model that ran: “Worn by a competitor in the Monaco international trophy for motorcycles. For 29 hours, over a course of rough, winding, alpine roads, it was subjected to an ordeal by dust, rain and the constant, merciless vibration of high-speed riding. And yet, at the end of the gruelling test, it emerged ticking smoothly,…

If you’ve watched the Netflix series Yellowstone you will want to go to Montana. If you haven’t it comes highly recommended by me and everyone else I know who’s seen it, and then you too will want to go to Montana. If you actually do go to Montana, you’ll be wanting to go back to Montana pretty much from the moment your aircraft eases off the Tarmac at Bozeman airport. It’s the kind of place you’d expect to exist only in your head. It’s bigger than Germany but has fewer people living in it than Birmingham. Its largest city, Billings, is home to only slightly more residents than Eastbourne. In this one state, there are more cows than the combined human populations of Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds, which means…

On paper Lewis Hamilton’s move to Scuderia Ferrari appeared to be a case of perfect timing; it wouldn’t be long, so we thought, before he’d be challenging for race wins. When he signed in January last year the Maranello team had just finished third in the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship with 406 points, having scored one win in a season dominated by Red Bull. He then watched with interest as his future employers moved up to second place last year on 652 points, with Charles Leclerc and the departing Carlos Sainz logging five victories between them. The team seemingly had momentum on its side. Having spent three years struggling with a series of tricky Mercedes ‘divas’ Hamilton could be forgiven for thinking that – as with his decision to…

Motor Sport has teamed up with Footman James and Scalextric to bring you the inaugural Motor Sport Cinema Club evening, giving readers the chance to watch a special screening of Grand Prix, the original F1 film. But that’s not all! The evening also includes an exclusive Q&A session with VIP guest David Brabham, whose father Jack appeared in the film back in 1966. The event is hosted by racer and commentator Alex Brundle. Join us on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 for an exclusive cinema screening of the ultimate Formula 1 racing film Grand Prix at London’s Curzon cinema in Mayfair. For more details and to book your ticket visit our website, below motorsportmagazine.com/cinemaclub…

“I’m not going to say too much or I’ll get myself in trouble,” said a hacked off Oscar Piastri after the British GP. “Apparently you can’t brake behind the safety car any more.” He was referring to his race-losing 10sec penalty for “driving erratically” behind the safety car. This penalty had to be taken at his pitstop and it allowed team-mate Lando Norris to leapfrog past him into the lead and thereafter victory. “I didn’t do anything different in the restart five laps earlier,” Piastri explained. The FIA document said telemetry revealed he had used 50 bar of brake pressure and decelerated from 135mph to 32mph in a short distance. But it did not mention that on his previous restart he’d decelerated by a similar amount. Furthermore, 50 bar is…

For as long as Motor Sport has been in existence – 101 years and counting – there have always been drivers whose natural talent and work ethic made them eminently well suited to grand prix racing but who, for a variety of reasons, some of them unworthy, enjoyed careers less glittering than they should have been. Stoffel Vandoorne is an example of exactly that kind of F1 nearly-man. Still only 33, always fast, as fit as any racing driver has ever been, and as clever as several lorry-loads of monkeys, he has won races in karts, of course, then in no fewer than six singleseater categories – Formula 4 Eurocup 1.6, Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 3.5, GP2, Super Formula and Formula E – which is a pretty tasty…

To the uninitiated, Yamaha’s FZR750R OWO1 might look like any other 1990s superbike with a name like a WiFi code – but to those who know, this is a true racer for the road that was created to counter Honda’s dominance of the World Superbike Championship with its RC30. To meet homologation requirements Yamaha needed to build 1000 OWO1s, a mere 125 of which landed in the UK – complete with a whopping price tag of £12,700, double the cost of a standard FZ750 road bike and a sum equivalent today to £33,000. For their money, buyers got a 749cc engine that produced 121bhp at a screaming 12,000rpm thanks to the use of forged pistons, hand-polished ports, big valves, titanium conrods and a quartet of 38mm Mikuni flatslide carburettors. The…

1967 FERRARI 275 GTB/4 SOLD BY BONHAMS, £2.6M If someone offered you a second-hand car that had been through the hands of too many people to list, been shipped back and forth across three continents and started life as a coupé before being converted to a spider and then back again, chances are you’d walk away. But when it’s a Ferrari 275 GTB all, it seems, can be forgiven. This car’s owner acquired it in 1996 as a NART Spider replica before sending it back to Ferrari 17 years later for a rebuild that cost £100,000 for the mechanicals and £150,000 for the bodywork. It’s now ‘exactly’ as it was when it left the factory in 1967. 1992 PORSCHE 944 SE SOLD BY H&H, £27,000 The condition of this rare…