Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2025 i Motor Sport Magazine

As we were putting the finishing touches to this issue a Swiss racing driver caused a minor storm within the tightly controlled world of FIA communications with a surprise announcement that she was to run against the incumbent president of the governing body, Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Laura Villars is the first woman to challenge for the post and at 28 is of a different generation both to Ben Sulayem, and the only other runner in the race, Tim Mayer, an American motor sport official and son of McLaren stalwart Teddy. The vote will take place in December and as Mark Hughes reports on page 10 the implications in the medium term could be far reaching from a sporting point of view, with a potential showdown with F1 owner Liberty Media…

ÖREBRO, SWEDEN, AUGUST 9 Ronnie Peterson is one of my racing heroes, so a visit to see his brother Tommy in their home town was special. We had coffee and pastries in their original family home, a house their dad built in 1967. I’ve known Tommy, a lovely person, since visiting a museum dedicated to Ronnie years ago. We spent some time at a memorial in the town, where there’s also a restaurant called Monza run by a fan. There are pictures on the walls and even a Ronnie pizza! SILVERSTONE FESTIVAL, AUGUST 20-24 Silverstone Festival started on the Wednesday, coaching the talented Rudi Friedrichs in his Cobra run by the wonderful Pearsons team. In the meeting itself, I raced with Paul Phillips in his Porsche GT3, then with John…

This will be popular – because who doesn’t love an Alfa Romeo? As you’ll have gathered from the title, there’s no place here for the pre-World War II glory years. The book begins post-war with the first green-shoot motor races of the new peacetime, works through the glorious 158/159 early Formula 1 seasons and on through the decades via saloon, touring, rally, GT and sports car racing, plus more F1, up to 2023. What this isn’t is a definitive history of Alfa in motor sport since 1945. It’s a simple picture book, featuring more than 400 images over 300-plus pages. The photographs are drawn largely from Alfa’s own Storico archive, with additions from the author himself – not to be confused with the Benetton and Lotus F1 team manager of…

In 2025 a Mercedes-powered Formula 1 car rules the roost, and 70 years ago it was a similar story. Mercedes made its grand prix supremacy official when Juan Manuel Fangio secured the 1955 world title with a win at the Italian GP season finale. In that golden era Fangio, Stirling Moss and Karl Kling took the podium plaudits, but it was Mercedes’ genius designer Rudolf Uhlenhaut who supplied the winning cars – and he could drive them at full tilt too. Chris Nixon’s October 1997 piece The man who would be Kling… focuses on an individual who was arguably the single-most important element of the Silver Arrows’ pre and post-war success, but received relatively little credit compared to men behind the wheel or its powerhouse team boss Alfred Neubauer. Ironically,…

Its racing life was so short, and yet is the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR the greatest competition sports car of them all? There’s a case to be made. Its stunningly elegant form, its levels of superiority and domination, the twin maestros most associated with it who twirled its wheel so majestically… and the heady mix of triumph and devastating tragedy it represents: quite a cocktail, all told. Had the 300 SLR raced beyond the turbulence of that 1955 season, sports car racing history, and specifically that of the Le Mans 24 Hours, would surely read oh so differently. Even at the time, those lucky enough to encounter it knew this was special. “The various manifold tubes, fuel injection components and centre-mounted brake drums comprised a complex array of sophisticated mechanical exotica…

Where do you begin when you are interviewing a man who has started 322 Formula 1 grands prix, who has won 11 of them, who has stood on 68 F1 grand prix podiums, who has bagged 14 F1 grand prix pole positions, who has driven 17 F1 grand prix fastest laps – much of that magnum opus compiled in Ferraris – yet who, even now, is still racing and indeed still winning? That’s right: in August of this year, at the wheel of a Ford Mustang, 53-year-old Rubens Barrichello won the NASCAR Brazil championship, and, more remarkable still, he did so at his first attempt. Although he retired from F1 in 2011, he has never stopped racing. In 2012 he dipped a toe into IndyCar – briefly – then he…

Privateers (still) on parade Porsche, or rather the factory team, had stayed away from the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1984. A late change in the rules resulted in the withdrawal of its Rothmans-sponsored 956s from the big one in June. Yet the German manufacturer continued its winning ways on the Circuit de la Sarthe, the privateers running the ubiquitous Group C design stepping up to the plate. Leading was Joest Racing, which headed home a 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Porsche block-out with Klaus Ludwig and Henri Pescarolo. Fast-forward 12 months, and the works was back and the result was the same. Victory for Joest, this time with Ludwig sharing with Paolo Barilla and ‘John Winter’. Joest’s 1985 triumph against the factory has long gone down in endurance racing folklore, an example of…

Alfa Romeo’s Procar silhouette racer would never get to compete on a grand prix weekend, but the 164 did. A fleet of them. They were, however, bog-standard road cars driven by rank amateurs. They contested the Alfa 164 Celebrity races, which was meant to be a lead-in to the inauguration of the FIA Production Car Championship in 1989. Bernie Ecclestone and Cesare Fiorio hatched a plan to run a grid full of Alfa’s new four-door saloon for luminaries at eight Formula 1 events in Europe in ’88. Björn Borg was among the star names: the tennis legend took his turn at Monza along with Paolo Rossi, hero of Italy’s victory at the 1982 World Cup. Come Silverstone in July, there was less-star quality aboard the 16 V6-engined ‘racers’, which were…

In 1994, 95 million viewers are reported to have tuned in to watch a white Ford Bronco being pursued by up to 20 police cars at a stately 35mph along a Los Angeles freeway – with American football star OJ Simpson in the back seat holding a gun to his own head after failing to ‘help police with their enquiries’ in relation to the murder of his ex-wife and a male friend. The publicity proved to be a fillip to previously ailing Bronco sales, but the model still disappeared from the Ford line-up two years later before being revived as a modern-day version in 2020. But while the new generation Broncos are undeniably good, we prefer the idea of this superbly restomodded 1970 model that is the result of a…

Sweden’s Susanne Callin and her Slick Tricks Top Fuel Dragster lets rip to win the FIA European Championship. In a winner-takes-all final, Callin beat defending champion Jndia Erbacher. Last year, Swiss Erbacher – who calls her 11,000bhp dragster Jasmine – came from third in the points to win the crown, and threatened a repeat. Britain’s Liam Jones had held a slender points lead until Erbacher defeated him in the semi-final. Callin qualified on pole at 3.877sec over 1000ft, and Erbacher clocked top speed at 317.95mph. Callin returned to Top Fuel in 2019 after a 14-year break pursuing family life. At this race, her teenage daughter Jacqueline stepped up to the adult ranks in the Super Pro ET class, mirroring her mother’s progression a quarter of a century ago.…

This isn’t a Testarossa as we know it… This is a new generation of Ferrari Testarossa, far removed from the original production car that was launched in 1984. While there are some styling cues that hint back to that V12-powered classic, this is very much a beast of the modern age. The evocative name remains however, a term dating back to Ferrari racers of the 1950s when the firm painted the cam covers red in its most powerful machines; the literal translation is ‘redhead’. It’s got some oomph then Oomph would be an understatement. Ferrari quotes the 849 Testarossa to have a staggering 1035bhp. That’s achieved using a 4-litre V8 with twin turbochargers, plus three electric motors – one controlling each front wheel and one assisting the rear axle, thus…

GIRL POWER November 1952 In Catalogic, we review Motor Show brochures: “To the Sunbeam-Talbot lady, our number is on the first editorial page!” And it’s Scotland and back for a Jowett Jupiter test by mag owner Wesley J Tee. “Tired?” he’s asked on his return. “Not a bit,” says Tee. “I’d be happy to go again.” BRUM RAP November 1984 Birmingham’s Chequer Bitter Classic racing car demo attracts 250,000 but the idea of an F1 GP in the city doesn’t wash with us: “Donington takes precedence.” At F1’s European GP, Keke Rosberg says of the 2.8-mile New Nürburgring, “I have more excitement playing snooker.” CURRENT DEBATE November 2013 Forty years on from François Cevert’s death, Tyrrell team-mate Jackie Stewart remarks of the Frenchman, “I sort of saw him as my…

email: editorial@motorsportmagazine.com I don’t know if it’s just me, but looking at the photograph of the selection of Formula 1 cars from across the years gathered on the track at Silverstone in August, as shown across pages eight and nine of the October issue [Opening Shot], doesn’t it illustrate better than a thousand words how bloated, oversized and overweight the F1 cars of today have become compared to preceding generations? I want progress and innovation but not if it means everything gets big and fat! Not all, but some things were better. BARRY PEARSON, BURY ST EDMUNDS, SUFFOLK Mike Doodson’s article in the August edition [Was it a ‘fix’?] returned to the question of whether Fangio let Moss win the 1955 British Grand Prix? The answer is probably, ‘Yes’. However,…

The big controversy at Monza was McLaren’s dilemma in asking Oscar Piastri to surrender second position to team-mate Lando Norris after the latter had suffered a delay at his pitstop. Norris had been the lead McLaren throughout the race up to that point and McLaren, in trying to ensure the team does not interfere in their battle for the world title, sought to remedy the pitstop problem with the left-front wheel in that way. Piastri – who under instruction had helped Norris out in qualifying the day before in giving him a tow to ensure he graduated from Q2 after messing up his first lap – was displeased. “We said a slow pitstop was part of racing,” he replied to the request, presumably in reference to an internal discussion that…

Sustainability wasn’t the buzzword in 1984 that it is today. But there was a growing consensus that Formula 2 couldn’t go on as it was. Added to unpalatable costs, the crushing domination of Ron Tauranac’s Ralt-Hondas following BMW’s withdrawal of support for its aged engines left nobody in doubt that change was needed. That’s certainly what Formula 3000 provided. Although reigning F2 champion Mike Thackwell in a works Ralt converted pole to victory in the inaugural race (another 205 would follow by its 2004 conclusion) at Silverstone in 1985, that didn’t tell the full story of F3000’s maiden season. Few would have predicted Christian Danner’s eventual coup in a customer March entered by BS Automotive, not least because the German had never previously won a single-seater race. But small, even…

● The tragic loss of German talent: Manfred Winkelhock, above right, and Stefan Bellof, above left, perished at the wheel of privateer Porsche 956s within the space of a couple of weeks at the end of the summer. Winkelhock, killed driving a Kremer car at Mosport, was an established F1 driver, while Bellof, who died at Spa in a Brun entry, was earning his spurs with Tyrrell. Many who worked with Bellof believe he was an F1 world champion in the making. ● Arrivederci, Lancia: Lancia’s LC2, above, the big underachiever of the early years of Group C, undertook its final full race programme with the factory in ’85. It was only due to compete sporadically the following year, but the programme was abandoned after the deaths of Henri Toivonen…

European and UK manufacturers ranging from Iso to De Tomaso and from Jensen to Sunbeam saw an easy route to performance by fitting big American V8 engines into their relatively light sports car chassis – but British engineer Sydney Allard got their first. Allard, the scion of a successful family of Ford car dealers based in Clapham, south-west London, began to prove his worth as a competitive driver after taking up the sport in 1929 with a Morgan three-wheeler. Then only 19, he went on to compete in long-distance events, the Brighton Speed Trials and the Prescott Hill Climb (where he set a sports car record in 1938) before founding the Allard Motor Company in 1945. Although tantalisingly successful at times, the business was never set to last and Allard…

1961 FERRARI 250 GT CALIFORNIA SPIDER COMPETIZIONE SOLD BY GOODING CHRISTIE’S, £18.8M There were gasps of amazement at RM Sotheby’s Maranello sale in 2012 when Chris Evans splashed out a record £5.5m on a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider originally owned by actor James Coburn. Fast-forward 13 years and that sum seems peanuts compared with what an anonymous buyer paid for this example of the same model – one of only two alloy-bodied versions that left the factory in full competition specification. Original owner, German entrepreneur Ernst Lautenschlager, used it for hillclimbs and circuit racing. 1961 DEEP SANDERSON SOLD BY ICONIC AUCTIONEERS, £37,125 Created by Formula Junior builder Chris Lawrence, the Deep Sanderson was a tiny racer powered by a rear-mounted Mini engine. This steel bodied prototype ran at…

A populist president trying to reverse our environmental progress? Not Donald Trump. We’re talking Formula 1. F1’s future is being shaped not only by developments in the real world but by the governance system in place since Liberty’s takeover of the commercial rights. Within that framework there’s a culture clash between the FIA and F1 which is also determining how that future is being decided. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem is being thwarted in pushing through his agenda for a return to a loud, normally aspirated F1. He recently ruffled a few feathers by requesting a post-Dutch Grand Prix meeting with teams and engine manufacturers about going back to a naturally aspirated 2.4-litre V8 formula from as early as 2029. Months before we’ve even had the first race of the…

Many of those who watch the Austrian Grand Prix will never have witnessed the visceral drama of racing at the magnificent Österreichring, part of which has morphed into what is now known as the Red Bull Ring. The original circuit reached parts of the Styrian hills that drivers at the Red Bull Ring have never seen. The Austrian Grand Prix was originally run on an airport circuit near Zeltweg until, in 1969, the beautiful, challenging and undulating 3.7 miles of the Österreichring was built at Spielberg. It was fearsomely fast and after Mark Donohue’s fatal accident in 1975 at the first corner, the Hella-Licht right-hander, the track was modified for the Grand Prix in 1976 and a year later the corner was re-drawn again, this time as a chicane. The…

From 1911 to 1994, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was pretty much a one-trick pony. The gates opened on May 1, the Indianapolis 500 was contested a few weeks later, and by June 1, the gates were locked again for another 11 months – other than for the golf course that was constructed within and adjacent to the track in 1929 as a revenue generator. Increasing revenue was the goal in 2013 when the Hulman-George family commissioned the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to produce a now-infamous report that suggested several ways to monetise the Speedway and grow the IndyCar Series. Thankfully, most of the ideas for IndyCar were rejected, including condensing a 15-race championship into 19 weeks (teams are already stretched to the limit with a 26-week campaign). The championship would…

I’m just back from a motorcycle ride: eight days, 2000 miles from Copenhagen to Norway’s North Cape, the place they call ‘the end of the world’, inset, below. The Arctic Rally was the latest adventure organised by cousins Robert Nightingale and Jonny Cazzola, founders of Malle London which launched in 2013 as a manufacturer of high-quality British-made biking luggage and riding kit. Two years later the designers added a fresh string to Malle’s bow with the introduction of the Malle Mile, a week end of two-wheeled off-road antics that attracted 80 machines. Today, Malle rallies are as big a part of the business as the gear it was built on – the Mile now attracts a crowd of thousands, while The Great Mile (a ride from the southern tip of…

I didn’t know Richard Parry-Jones when I travelled to Saint-Tropez in January 1993 to drive a new Ford. But without knowing it, I was already feeling his influence. The car was the replacement for the Sierra and, frankly, we weren’t expecting much given how mediocre was that car and the fifth-generation Escort (Britain’s biggest-seller in ’93). And in the latter case ‘mediocre’ is being kind. But then came the invite, and with it an offer to transport any and all rivals to comparison test against the car they called Mondeo. This was, indeed, what some might call ‘fighting talk’. But without so much as sitting in it, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we knew before we left England that Ford had come up with a world-beater. And so…

Coming off the banking in full flight, straight-eight motor roaring with crazed approval, pushing forward from second to third with all the conviction I can muster, feeling the thrust and seeing that long, silver bonnet sloping away ahead of me, briefly it doesn’t seem real. Nor even close to it. This is not ‘just’ a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, but in engineering terms, the ultimate 300 SLR. No journalist has ever been allowed to drive it. Yet here I am: no rules, no chaperon. Just me, Mercedes’ own test track and the SLR, one of the most rare and special cars not only in its unique collection, but the world. At this title we know the SLR in general and one, chassis 0004/55, in particular. It’s the car in which Stirling…

Ella Lloyd RODIN MOTORSPORT A female driver that has inspired me is Jade Edwards. She helped and coached me during my first year of racing, giving me valuable advice. It was great to be able to get guidance from her especially as she had also raced in the Ginetta Junior series during her career, like me. Another inspiration has been Jamie Chadwick. When I started racing, W Series was running, and it was inspiring to see her doing so well. Doriane Pin PREMA RACING I learned about Michèle Mouton from my dad. I was following quite a lot of rallying when I was starting go-karting, and she was the one that showed that everything is possible in motor sport, especially in rallying, so she was the one I was looking…

Determining the best Formula 3000 drivers is an inherently subjective task. Statistics are useful to a point but can’t be relied on fully, since drivers who became champion at the first attempt and graduated directly to Formula 1 have fewer wins or poles than those who accumulated results over several years. We’ve attempted to find a middle ground for our ranking. Spare a thought for Jean-Marc Gounon who, as the only non-Reynard winner in 1991 and ’92, made a compelling case for inclusion. 5. Christian Fittipaldi Superior reliability helped him see off Alex Zanardi for the 1991 title, but earning more poles (4-3) than the Italian is nothing to sniff at. Two wins in Pacific’s Reynard and relentless points-scoring allowed the rookie to profit from favoured contenders being hamstrung by…

“Ecclestone found a willing collaborator for his Procar idea, first floated in ’87, in Alfa Romeo” Riccardo Patrese hit the throttle on the exit of the Parabolica. Seconds later, just before jumping on the brakes for the Rettifilo chicane, he was well north of 200mph on Monza’s start-finish straight. And he was driving a car that looked for all the world like a standard four-door saloon! The sound, a new one in motor racing, as he flew down the main straight at Monza in front of packed grandstands told a different story. Patrese had jumped out of his V8 Judd-powered Formula 1 Williams after first qualifying on the Friday afternoon of the 1988 Italian Grand Prix and straight into a mount that wasn’t perhaps quite as different as it looked.…