Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i Motor Sport Magazine

Lewis Hamilton is not having a happy time at Ferrari. But we should celebrate another British driver who is having the time of his life at the Italian marque. James Calado last month lifted the World Endurance Championship title alongside his team-mates Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi. The trophy will sit nicely next to that of his 2023 Le Mans victory also achieved in the 499P. The championship win, which came after a fourth place at the Bahrain 8 Hours, is the first time since 1972 that Ferrari has lifted the title. And it means that since its return to top-tier sports car racing in 2023 after a 50-year absence, the team has now won Le Mans three times and the championship once. “This milestone fills us with pride…

1 SUPER GT Motegi, 2018 Fresh out of Formula 1, Jenson Button embraced the bombastic GT scene in Japan, a country he fell in love with long ago. And it went pretty well. Paired with Naoki Yamamoto in a Team Kunimitsu Honda NSX-GT500, Button stood on the podium in two of his first three races and tasted a maiden win at Sugo. By season’s end at Motegi, the duo found themselves in the thick of a title showdown. Button’s final stint, in which he secured third place, crucially meant they finished ahead of future Toyota Hypercar ace Ryo Hirakawa and soon-to-be Formula E frontrunner Nick Cassidy to secure the championship. The first series rookie to win the title since 2005, ending a Honda Super GT drought dating back seven years… Jenson…

POWER GAME January 1963 Coventry-Climax has U-turned in its decision to quit F1. “It lasted two months,” Motor Sport reports, “and resembles Enzo Ferrari’s annual retirement.” Later in the mag there’s a photo of a truck with DRINKWATER on its rear: “A sound New Year’s resolution for road users,” we quip. PUMP IT UP January 1975 “We were told oil would soon cease,” we opine in the first paragraph of the new year. “But it hasn’t, to the disgust of the Media and other Jeremiahs.” Rally is booming: we reckon five million saw the RAC: “By comparison football and horse racing are minority sports – that is a fact.” RIP BURNS January 2006 WRC driver Richard Burns has died at 34: “His style required the Subaru to go sideways, like…

What has MG done to have incurred your displeasure to such an extent that you seem to seldom miss an opportunity to ignore their past achievements. It was virtually them alone who held the flag flying in the years between the two world wars and who at Abingdon built the Austin-Healeys and Minis that you seem so willing to praise. Who knows what they could have achieved were it not for the petty ego of William Morris (later Sir and then Lord Nuffield) and the mindless team of vindictive senior managers he put in post in subsequent years. Leonard Lord and Lord Stokes to name but two. Your article 50 greatest drives by women [November] seems to do it again by omitting to consider and mention George Eyston’s all-girl MG…

FEBRUARY Introduction of the MCL39 reveals McLaren to have been very aggressive, with extreme front suspension and new cooling technology. MARCH Ferrari was disqualified from the Chinese Grand Prix just a day after Lewis Hamilton won the sprint race. Plank depth infringement the tell-tale of a fundamentally flawed car. APRIL Norris, Piastri and Verstappen winning the three opening races, signalling who the big-hitters were going to be. MAY Piastri winning three races on the bounce Bahrain to Miami, putting Norris on the back foot. JUNE Great win for George Russell in Montreal, breaking up the Red Bull/McLaren duopoly. JULY Piastri’s race-losing 10sec penalty at Silverstone after dominating. Christian Horner fired from his position of CEO of Red Bull Racing, replaced by Laurent Mekies. Stunning win for Piastri at Spa after a…

The FIA Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship turned 75 in May. Later that month the series for constructors celebrated its centennial. For Vanwall did not win the first of these in 1958 as commonly thought. Alfa Romeo did - in 1925. Bugatti won the next (1926). Delage dominated the one after that. And that was (not quite) that. Having suffered a painful birth, this idea ahead of its time endured a protracted demise. Its remaining three editions were embarrassments unworthy of a world champion. So none was declared. Yet this was at a time of rapid growth for motor racing: the poster sport for The Speed Age. A Bugatti advertisement laid claim to 501 victories in 1926 alone. No doubt these included the most minor of events – as well…

What’s the secondfastest category of motor racing on the planet after Formula 1? Formula 2? IndyCar? WEC Hypercar? Think again. The answer in fact is Super Formula, Japan’s top single-seater championship. And what about the fastest category of tin-tops – surely, nothing beats Hypercar? In fact, the GT500 class in Super GT is comfortably faster. At Suzuka, the lap record for Super Formula is 1min 34.442sec set by Nick Cassidy in 2020. That would have cleared the 107% mark (just) for the previous year’s Japanese Grand Prix. As for GT500, the lap record around Fuji Speedway is 1min 25.764sec set by Nirei Fukuzumi in 2021, which is about 2.5sec faster than the WEC pole time from 2024. You’d have to go back several years to the tail end of the…

1962 AUSTIN MINI RIVIERA SOLD BY BONHAMS CARS ONLINE, £97,650 Fiat’s doorless Jolly beach cars crop up for sale quite often. But when did you last see an example of Austin’s attempt at evoking the Riviera vibe? Probably never, since a mere 14 were made from 1961-62, 13 of which were sent to the US. This one remained on home soil and was loaned to the Queen who is said to have used it on the Windsor and Sandringham estates. The unique Alamo Beige car was returned to Longbridge in 1968, from where it was bought by the vendor’s grandfather – who had worked in the BMC experimental department with Mini designer Alec Issigonis. 2021 FORD GT ’66 HERITAGE EDITION SOLD BY BONHAMS, £450,000 This second-generation Ford GT was among…

Autumnal tones in the wooded Aichi Prefecture on day two of the WRC’s Japan Rally. Championship leader Elfyn Evans – WRC runner-up on four occasions in the 2020s – takes to the air but the Welshman is without a win since March. Japan was the Toyota driver’s fourth consecutive secondplace finish in 2025 while his main title rival Sébastien Ogier made it three out of four victories, meaning there are just three points separating the pair. Two-time WRC king Kalle Rovanperä, himself Japan-bound for 2026 driving in the Super Formula series, remains third with an outside chance of adding to his titles. The ’25 showdown will take place at the new Saudi Arabia Rally. Would you bet against eight-time WRC champion Ogier pipping perpetual bridesmaid Evans at the post?…

Now this looks cool Formula E may have its detractors, but it knows how to make a good-looking race car. With the Gen4, due to start racing in the 26/27 season, the designers have gone full Batman, creating the largest and most powerful FE racer yet. We’re particular fans of the newlook aggressive front wing and sidepods, plus the Formula 1-style sculpted rear wing. You say more powerful… Oh yes, and by some margin. Gen3 FE cars produced 350kW of grunt in Qualifying Mode, that’s about 476bhp to you and I. Gen4 will almost double that figure to 600kW (815bhp) in the full-fat driving modes such as Qualifying and Attack, plus the car will be the first to feature permanent active all-wheel drive. Gen3 cars generally only had all-wheel drive…

ESTORIL, SEPTEMBER 18-20 The last round of the Peter Auto series. We had a chance to win the Gentleman Challenge title in John Spiers’ Lister Costin, only for mechanical problems to leave us second, two points down. I was also leading the Classic Endurance Racing 1 series with John Emberson’s Chevron B19, but John wasn’t able to race that weekend, so I had to watch. Serge Kriknoff needed to win the race to take the championship in his Lola, which he then went and did! He’s a deserving champion. SILVERSTONE, OCTOBER 18-19 The Motor Racing Legends finale. John Spiers and I didn’t match our tally of four consecutive wins from last year, but we did take two, with John’s Capri and Cobra. Plenty of fun and laughter. PORTIMÃO, OCTOBER 24-26…

No race series sanctioning body is historically more heavyhanded in managing on-track competition than NASCAR. But its efforts to ensure that championships end with an exciting and satisfying conclusion have managed NASCAR right into a box. The notion of a driver clinching a championship with one or more races remaining in the season displeased all three generations of the France family, who founded and have operated NASCAR since 1948. So too did those years when a driver pointed their way to a title through consistency when another competitor was clearly dominant or had a more impressive stat line. That resulted in the formation of the Chase for the Championship in 2004, which reset the points to zero for the top 10 (later 12) drivers for the final 10 races of…

There are driver’s watches, there are car watches, there are motoring watches – and then there’s the Heuer Carrera. True, it wasn’t the first chronograph made specifically for automobilists, or even the first watch to be designed with motoring in mind. But there’s no denying that the Carrera has gone down in history as one of the most evocative driver’s timepieces of all, er, time… For those who don’t know the oft-told story, it arrived in December 1963 after company boss Jack Heuer had visited the Sebring 12 Hours in the firm’s role as official timer. It was there that he met the parents of Mexico’s Rodriguez brothers (Ricardo and Pedro) who told him about the Carrera Panamericana road race – and Heuer latched on to the Carrera name as…

It seems to me that the motor industry and its customers are somewhat out of step. It’s nobody’s fault and hard to see how it could be avoided, but just as electric cars are starting to find their feet, those who should be buying them have lost interest and, thanks to some fairly rubbish early product and entirely inadequate infrastructure, I can’t say I blame them. But it seems that manufacturers are now realising that slick design is not enough for the latest generation EVs and that they also need to think what goes beneath and not just produce cars with no range, inelegant power delivery and all the appeal of treading on something a dog left behind. I’ve just cast my vote for the 2026 Car of the Year,…

In a nondescript German factory corridor, bright shafts of light break through the gaps in a shutter. Suddenly the corrugated metal door starts to rise as the dazzling white beams bursts forth, causing the small crowd assembled in the passageway to take a step and shield their eyes. All that’s missing is the Also Sprach Zarathustra theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey to accompany what promised for a second to be a seismic moment, but all ends in a bit of an anticlimax. Revealed is a few studious, bespectacled engineers who turn round to stare at us in mild annoyance, before going back to their work without saying a word. Still, we’re in the middle of something historic here. Motor Sport has been invited to Audi’s famous Neuburg motor sport…

“Absolute chaos. I’ve never seen anything like it.” That’s ace photographer Jayson Fong’s verdict after we sent him west for a special commission: to capture the madcap Weston Beach Race. First run in 1983, the event in Weston-super-Mare is an annual highlight of the UK’s motorcycle off-road calendar and attracts hundreds of riders of all ages and experience, plus thousands of spectators. The races are held on a six-mile circuit made up of a flat-out blast along the beach, before riders turn back across a tough course pockmarked by man-made dunes. Run on the first weekend of October, Storm Amy played havoc this year and caused the Saturday races to be cancelled. But after rebuilding the course overnight, organiser RHL Activities was relieved to find Sunday dawning under clear blue…

Cars are being pushed for the start of the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, including the Coopers of Jack Brabham (No10) and Bruce McLaren (No12) and Lotuses of Jim Clark (No36) and Innes Ireland (No38). The ordinariness of the picture masks the tragedy that was to come: the race was marked by the death of potential Formula 1 world champion Wolfgang von Trips, whose Ferrari collided with Clark’s Lotus and crashed, killing 15 spectators.…

The honeymoon period between Ferrari executive chairman John Elkann and Lewis Hamilton seems to be over, given the former’s stinging summary of the team’s turgid performances after the São Paulo Grand Prix (DNF/DNF). “If we look at the championship, we can say that the mechanics are winning it, with performance and everything done on the pitstops,” he began. “If we look at our engineers, there’s no doubt the car has improved. If we look at the rest, it’s not up to par. And we certainly have drivers who need to focus on driving and talk less, because we still have important races ahead and it’s not impossible to get second place.” “Perhaps John should lead by example,” said Jenson Button in his pundit role, delivering a summary of the situation…

Nazareth, in eastern Pennsylvania, is synonymous with American motor racing, the town steeped in the history of the sport. Mario Andretti still lives there and when he won the Indy 500 in May 1969 the street where he lived at the time was renamed Victory Lane. Two months later he won the USAC Dirt Champ car race at the Nazareth Speedway. “It’s where it all started for me and my brother Aldo,” he says.“It was a tough, tricky track, short oval with elevations, one for the brave. I learnt a lot there.” The town is all about horsepower, but not just the cars. The track was originally for horse racing but in the early 1900s a new half-mile dirt oval was created on the edge of town and the folk…

Racing Driver, War Hero, Industrialist reads the subhead to this family blessed biography. Consequently, it is only a motor racing book in part – and a small part at that. As Paul Kenny writes, American-born but English-bred Whitney Straight “established a legitimate claim to being Europe’s finest independent driver, and second only to Enzo Ferrari as a privateer team entrant”. His full-time racing career lasted all of two seasons, 1933 and ’34, before he disbanded his eponymous team to focus on the other great mechanical passion of his life. Straight was a thrusting pioneer in Britain’s civil aviation industry before the outbreak of World War II. As the author writes, he then experienced a “good war”. Kenny became captivated by the standout story of Straight during research for his previous…

PUBLIC FACE, PRIVATE MAN APRIL 2002 The pocket rocket MG Metro 6R4 was a cult off-roader, but it only achieved one WRC podium – 40 years ago at Rally GB. The man at the wheel for that milestone, Tony Pond, had a career which mirrored that of the car: almost, but not quite. His results belied the talent, however, as supported by rally legend Walter Röhrl: “I’d rather have Tony Pond in my team than driving against me.” That quotation kicks off John Davenport’s April 2002 Pond appreciation, the latter having died at the age of 56 just a month before that issue of Motor Sport was published. Born in west London in 1945, Pond started out as an independent before being offered a factory role at British Leyland in…

The Carsafe London is a new discreet facility located in Tyburnia W2, just a short distance from Mayfair. It is designed for collectors of prestige cars, supercars, hypercars and rare classic models and sets a new standard for security in the heart of the capital. Positioned as a true ‘private automotive back office’, at The Carsafe London we go far beyond traditional vehicle storage. We provide a unique service with our highly trained team. Our company offers 360-degree management of all the vehicles stored with us, from everyday logistics to full administrative oversight. Thanks to its central location on the edge of the congestion zone, The Carsafe London gives an unmatched combination of accessibility and discretion, making it a unique proposition within the city’s luxury automotive market. For more than eight…

Soon we’ll know the outcome of what has turned out to be a fascinating three-way title fight. Someone has to win it. And by the final race the fascination will be in how we got there. The grands prix in Mexico and Brazil signalled that Lando Norris was far from the delicate flower many had written off against the tougher cookies Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri. These two races set a tone, especially as they illuminated moments of competitive distress for Norris’s two title rivals – as well as a sensational back-from-the-dead recovery by Verstappen in São Paulo. In particular these GPs beautifully encompassed the sheer volatility of a seasonal contest which had initially looked like a straightforward exclusively McLaren affair. The high altitude of Mexico City makes the surface…

The Weston Beach races are the focal point of the UK enduro motorcycling season, and the event attracts all-comers of varying experience – including young riders with fresh ambition. Take Harry Nott. The 13-year-old has only been riding for a couple of years and this was his second crack at Weston. His dad Andrew says the bug has well and truly bitten. “Harry is a member of Sudbury Motorcycle Club and there is a very strong enduro/motocross gaggle in this area of Suffolk. He’s done some motocross this season with everything geared towards Weston.” Harry has been riding a Husqvarna TC 85 and has established himself as a frontrunner in the Eastern Youth Enduro series, and has taken in a couple of rounds in the Welsh championship too. He’s lucky…

Guenther Steiner is that rare thing in modern motor sport: a genuine character; a straight-talking, old-school racer in an era of corporate jargon and marketing polish. Not despite that, but rather because of it, he has become a cult hero to millions thanks to his gloriously unfiltered appearances on Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, cussing his way into the hearts of fans across the globe. But, while the world may have discovered him quite recently as the irascible boss of the Haas Formula 1 team, swearing at broken front wings, poor strategy calls, and of course his wincing drivers, his story is far longer, far more varied, and far more interesting than that. Now 60, Steiner has spent four decades in the racing world, from the rough-and-tumble stages of…

These days, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are the marques best known for offering souped-up four-door cars off-the-shelf through respective M and AMG tuning houses. But the former racer and Jaguar dealer John Coombs was likely the first to tempt enthusiastic drivers with tweaked saloons back in 1962, when he created a menu of modifications for the already sporty Mark II 3.8. Born in Chertsey, Surrey, in 1922, Coombs ran the eponymous dealership founded by his coachbuilder father, William, and took up motor sport post-war in both Formula 2 and Formula 3. He was also a keen club racer during the 1950s, entering a Jaguar Mark I into the Silverstone TT of ’56 (the year in which Jaguar officially retired from competition), subsequently establishing his own team that gave seat–time to a…