Some stories are special. They’re the ones you really want to tell, that you’ve wanted to do for years and that are not the work of a moment. One of them appears in the April issue of Motor Sport.

I’d interviewed Mike Thackwell myself, but only on the phone. Twelve years ago a promising Brit called Jenson Button was about to start his F1 quest at the tender age of 20, and the idea was to talk to the youngest man ever to start a Grand Prix to find out what it was like to go through it all so early in life. Thackwell had been 19 years and 182 days old when he lined his Tyrrell up on the grid for the Canadian GP in 1980 – the same year Jenson was born.

Now, it was well known that Mike had walked away from motor racing and never looked back. He’d been a great maverick star of the 1980s, who’d made the most of his sublime skills in Formula 2 and later Formula 3000.

The F1 career hadn’t worked out though, partly because he refused to conform to the attitude expected of GP drivers, even then. That Canadian debut had ended abruptly when, after a multi-car pile-up at the first corner, he was forced to give up his car for the restart because his team-mates had damaged theirs. Inconceivably, only one other GP start would follow, at Montreal (again) in a RAM in 1984. What a waste.

This man was almost ‘our’ Syd Barrett. And just like the Pink Floyd ‘crazy diamond’, we could track down Mike if we really wanted to – but unlike Syd, there was a chance he might actually talk to us. Perhaps.

It was also well known in racing circles that his sister was married to David Brabham, so getting a current phone number wasn’t too difficult. After speaking to Lisa, I put in a call.

Thackwell wasn’t too keen when I got through. Teaching and surfing were his life now and he reckoned he never thought about his past. But he didn’t hang up and asked me to call back later that evening. I did – and we spoke for about an hour and a half.

The interview was hacked down to a single-page first-person piece, so it wasn’t a big deal. But it had been to me. Thackwell was something of a cult hero.

So all these years later, I was thinking: wouldn’t it be great to track him down again, get him talking face to face – and perhaps even photograph the maverick as he is today? I set Rob Widdows on the task, suspecting he’d find a kindred spirit. He would.

Again, David and Lisa Brabham helped us make contact, and again Thackwell needed some persuading. But Rob is a persistent fellow, and usefully lives not far from Mike on the south coast of England. They met in a pub and over a whisky or two, Rob cajoled him into an interview.

He reported back. I was delighted. Now could Rob talk Mike into allowing us to photograph him, just to complete the story? Yet again, he wasn’t keen, but good old Rob convinced him and took along a photographer friend, Stephen Hayward, to meet Mike on his beloved beach on a cold December day. The brilliant portraits in the April issue, running alongside Rob’s insightful words, are the result. I hope you’ll agree it was worth the chase. Oh, and thanks Rob, Stephen and of course Mike for all playing your parts in what is an early favourite for my Motor Sport article of the year.

Andrew Frankel is another to have delivered something special this month. An exclusive test of Bentley’s 2003 Le Mans-winning Speed 8 made me sit up and take notice, when Andrew sent me the pitch. I didn’t need a lot of time to decide I’d take the story. Again, the photos are stunning. Motor Sport regular Matt Howell was clearly on great form at flat, featureless Silverstone.

Nigel Roebuck brings us our cover story this month, profiling the six World Champions on the 2012 grid over a glass or two with Martin Brundle. There’s plenty on F1 in this issue, given that we’re about to plunge into a new season, including what I hope will be a useful guide by Ed Foster on the Sky vs BBC options that British television viewers have to choose from this year. My dish is on order…

Before I close, I must make mention of the Motor Sport Hall of Fame, from which we’re only just recovering. Our big night of the year, at the Roundhouse on February 16, was a raging success, and I once again doff my cap to the new members, the late Colin McRae, Giacomo Agostini, John Surtees and Adrian Newey. It was a night to remember.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

And then there were none: Italian drivers in Formula 1.

The home of the most famous team in motor racing and of international karting, plus the lair of the world’s most committed taxi drivers, will, for the first time since the 1970 South African Grand Prix, not be represented when the pit lane opens for Qualifying in Melbourne next month.

And Pescara’s Jarno Trulli, a man blessed with fluid speed but perhaps lacking the necessary steely core, might be the last for a while having suffered ‘rouble trouble’: he’s been dropped by Caterham F1 in favour of Vitaly Petrov.

Philosophical and phlegmatic, as a 37-year-old veteran of 252 Grand Prix starts ought to be, he was impassioned more by his nation’s parlous state of F1 affairs: “In Italy there’s no system that helps drivers emerge at a high level, so it’s normal that it ends up in a situation like this. The problem is not mine: others must take responsibility.”

Ferrari’s recently formed Driver Academy is worthy but a little too late – the Scuderia’s dominant Schumacher Era made it lazy about such matters – and nor is it dedicated to Italians: Mexican Sergio Pérez, already with Sauber, and France’s Jules Bianchi, reserve driver for Force India, are its most likely graduates. The UK-centric McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in contrast has been running since 1989, during which time it has boosted the careers of, among others, David Coulthard, Jenson Button and Paul di Resta.

Italian drivers have long suffered a fractious relationship with F1: 15 – the second-most from an individual country – share 43 GP wins between them. To use cricketing terminology, only Alberto Ascari, with 13, was able to build on his start. And even he was bedevilled by omen and superstition; he died on the late-May day in 1955 when a suspicious number of them aligned and he, unusually, paid them no heed.

The next Italian in the win column, some way down it, is Riccardo Patrese with six (from 256 starts). ‘Nino’ Farina and Michele Alboreto have five apiece, Giancarlo Fisichella three, Elio de Angelis two – and thereafter the disappointing total unravels in a string of singles: Luigi Fagioli, Piero Taruffi, Luigi Musso (shared with Juan Fangio), Giancarlo Baghetti, Lorenzo Bandini, ‘Lulu’ Scarfiotti, Vittorio Brambilla, Alessandro Nannini and Trulli.

Compare this with British F1 drivers: 219 wins shared by 19. That’s 11.5 each to Italy’s 2.9. Nigel Mansell (31 wins), Jackie Stewart (27), Jim Clark (25), Damon Hill (22), Lewis Hamilton (17), Stirling Moss (16), Graham Hill (14), Coulthard (13), Button (12) and James Hunt (10). Only Innes Ireland and Peter Gethin became marooned on one.

Farina and Ascari won three of the first four world championships – since when Italy has drawn a blank while Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Clark, Surtees, Stewart, Hunt, Mansell, Damon Hill, Hamilton and Button have racked up 14 titles between them.

I’m loath to stoop to evoking national stereotypes, but feel free to apply them wherever you see fit.

Before you do, however, it must be conceded that British F1 drivers have undoubtedly benefited from their country’s racing fecundity. Only 19 of those 219 wins were achieved in a Ferrari: Surtees and Eddie Irvine (4), Peter Collins, Hawthorn and Mansell (3) and Tony Brooks (2). A French Matra (Powered by Ford and run by Tyrrell) supplied them with nine wins, Maserati two and Mercedes-Benz one. The vast majority, in other words, were achieved in British-built machinery – and I include John Surtees’ 1967 ‘Hondola’ (Bromley via Slough) and John Watson’s 1976 Penske (Poole). Williams, Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, Vanwall, Cooper, BRM, Hesketh, Brawn, Benetton and Stewart Grand Prix are the others.

Italian drivers in contrast have been more reliant on a single source since Maserati imploded after 1957: Ferrari has supplied them with 22 of those 43 wins. That’s 51 per cent – a stat admittedly skewed by Ascari’s fantastic run of success from 1952-’53.

And here’s the rub: Enzo fought shy of employing local talent because of the flak that he copped – from Il Papa down – in the aftermath of the fatal accidents of Eugenio Castellotti (1956), Musso (1958) and Bandini (1967). Alboreto in 1984 was the first Italian to win a GP in a Ferrari since 1966. This combo won twice more in 1985 before fading badly – and no Italian has won a GP in a Ferrari since.

Maranello, with its mist of myth that swirls about it, is a bottleneck. A fair few of the Italian ex-F1 drivers that I have spoken to over the years have alluded to hushed liaisons with Enzo that promised much yet came to naught. Trulli – although he has neither ‘negotiated’ with Enzo nor yarned with me – can, as it turns out, be added to that lengthening what-might-have? Ferrari list.

The pressure of being an Italian in an F1 Ferrari proved too much for several of those who did get to live the ‘dream’: Luca Badoer, Baghetti and, saddest of them all, Ivan Capelli buckled under the weight. And yet the prospect continues to lure. Moths, meet flame. Fisichella, for example, couldn’t resist a final brief fling with Ferrari in 2009, even though it meant giving up his grooved Force India-Mercedes-Benz that would have offered him a genuine chance of victory at Monza.

Why? Because the tifosi care only about Ferrari. Drive one, and you’re ‘Italian’ no matter what is printed in your passport. It’s an open-borders policy that camouflages a narrow-minded viewpoint that is indicative – and partly the cause – of Italian racing drivers’ current predicament as well as many of their long-held frustrations and ultimate underachievement.

Italy has room in its heart only for Scuderia Ferrari. That’s a strength and a weakness – and there’s no avoiding it.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The great and the good gathered at London’s Roundhouse to welcome four new members to the Motor Sport magazine Hall of Fame on February 16.

Rallying hero Colin McRae, motorcycle legend Giacomo Agostini, 1964 Formula 1 World Champion and multiple motorcycle World Champion John Surtees, and the genius of Formula 1 design Adrian Newey were all inducted on the evening. Here’s the video of the night…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

One of many displacement activities motoring journalists like to dress up as work is idly leafing through the classifieds gazing wistfully at all the second-hand cars they can’t afford: this is a job for those who value their quality of life over their standard of living.

My favourite game is trying to spot the future classics – cars that are cheap now but will one day not be. The rules are not difficult: if a car is beautiful, reputedly great to drive, rare and blessed with some kind of competition history, it either is or will become a classic. Others get by on a combination of some or more of the above. So here are some of the cars that, had I the money, I’d be buying in the hope of enjoying some hopefully revenue neutral, or even profitable, motoring. The only health warning I’d attach to what follows is that it is just my opinion and if you buy the wrong version of the right car or one that’s not been looked after, the dream will turn to a nightmare almost at once.

1. Porsche 968 ClubSport. It may not have enjoyed racing success itself but the brand is impeccable, the car an unalloyed joy to drive. And with only around 1400 built (and rather fewer surviving) they are not much more common than a Ferrari F40. Yet nice ones start at around £12,000.

2. Ferrari F355. This is one of the greatest Ferraris of the last 30 years. In fact I’d place it far from the bottom of the top ten Ferraris of all time. Utterly gorgeous and dreamy to drive, spec is all. You want a manual coupe, ideally an early car without the horrid airbag steering wheel. For around £40,000 (or less with left-hand drive) that’s the closest to a bargain any Ferrari currently comes.

3. Jaguar XJ220. This ticks every single box: incredibly rare, fast, beautiful and a Le Mans winner, albeit a class victory of which it was later stripped on a technicality. Only 283 were built and it was the first production car in the world to which 200mph was just another number on the dial. Sooner or later the PR fiasco of its launch will be forgotten and the world will realise that what remains is one of the most extraordinary supercars of its or any other time. Prices for clean cars aren’t much more than £150,000, or around half what you’d pay for a Ferrari F40, of which 1100 were made.

4. Honda NSX. Here is a landmark supercar, sold in tiny numbers over a period of 15 years which can count Ayrton Senna among its development drivers, yet it’ll cost you no more than a mildly upmarket version of the new Ford Focus. Mesmerising to drive even today, the lightweight aluminium wonder car remains the greatest sporting car to come from Japan. Avoid the targa top and, at all costs, the detuned auto version with its awful four-speed box. Pay around £20,000.

5. Peugeot 205 GTI. And finally a car that breaks almost every rule except the one about being brilliant to drive. But when the history of the hot hatch is written, one car will stand above the rest as the best of the breed, and it won’t be a Volkswagen. There are mid-engined supercars that are less fun to drive than a well-sorted 205GTI and, point-to-point on difficult roads, almost certainly slower. It has the best steering, chassis and gearbox of any front-drive car I’ve driven. And with a kerb weight of just 909kg even in 1.9-litre form, it makes almost every alleged hot hatch made today seem dull-witted and boring. Don’t fret about whether it’s a 1.6 or a 1.9 – each has their strengths – just focus your every effort on finding a good one. Really nice cars start at just £4000.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

NASCAR’s enfant terrible Kyle Busch scored a spectacular win in the 200-mile Budweiser Shootout last Saturday night.

The non-points sprint race kicks off NASCAR’s 38-race season and resulted in a remarkable victory for Busch who came from the back of the field and survived both an accident and a couple of huge tank slappers to beat Tony Stewart across the line by less than a nose – 0.013 of a second.

Busch is renowned as an extremely talented driver whose temper and bad manners sometimes get the best of him. Last year he was suspended for one race near the end of the season after deliberately crashing into one of his rivals in a NASCAR Truck series race, but Kyle’s uncanny skill was obvious to all at Daytona last weekend as he made two superb saves before putting himself into position to win the final sprint to the finish.

The Shootout always produces a bunch of multi-car accidents and this year’s race was no different with three big shunts eliminating half of the 25-car field. In the last of these Jeff Gordon ploughed into the wall after clouting Busch repeatedly in the tail. Gordon was collected by team-mate Jimmie Johnson and Jeff’s car then rolled over three times before coming to a rest on its roof. To everyone’s relief, he scrambled out of the wreckage without any injuries.

NASCAR has fiddled with the rules to discourage the two-by-two drafting seen at Daytona the past two years. Radiator openings and cooling system rules have been tightened, spoilers reduced in size and a new ‘shark fin’ added to the left side of the rear window and tail. These changes were greeted positively by most of the drivers who feel it makes for better racing and puts more into the driver’s hands.

“It was a fun race,” said winner Busch. “I thought a lot about how the pack was back. There were certainly some moments when we were all pushing each other. It was intense. Guys were pushing all the time, pushing on you five rows deep, everybody squirrely, the back end of the cars real light. It was a great race from my seat. Hopefully it was from everybody else’s.”
Busch also talked about how busy he was when he caught his pair of giant tank slappers. “Man, it was exciting from where I was a few times for sure,” Busch said. “The first time might have been luck but I’m going to say the second time was all skill! It was interesting from my seat. I was steering, stabbing, braking, gassing and everything in between trying to keep the thing straight and get it back under control.

“I was just glad that I was able to pull through it, to be honest, to be able to straighten it back out and keep going. It’s just instinct and hoping the timing is right. If you overcorrect just a little bit, you could hook back to the right and go straight up the racetrack into the wall.”

NASCAR champion Stewart complimented Busch on his pair of great saves and on beating him across the line. “I was right behind him when he had his problem in turns one and two,” Stewart said. “He had to catch it three times before he saved it. You get 3,400 pounds moving like that and to catch it once was pretty big, but to get away with it and catch it again was bigger and the third time was even bigger. That was three big moments in one corner and he never quit driving. It was an unbelievable save, just a great save.

“There’s a lot of guys that wouldn’t have caught that,” Stewart added. “He did a fantastic job with that save. I’m sitting there expecting a yellow and the green is still out. I’m like, ‘Man! That’s the coolest save I’ve seen in a long time.’ It’s pretty cool to see somebody that went through two big moments like that come out and still win the race.”

The following day Carl Edwards took pole position for next Sunday’s Daytona 500 with Roush-Fenway Ford team-mate Greg Biffle qualifying second. Thanks to this year’s slightly larger restrictor plate and smaller spoiler Edwards was able to record the fastest qualifying speed at Daytona in thirteen years – 46.216 seconds, 194.738mph. Edwards and Biffle will start from the front row next Sunday with the rest of the 43-car field determined by Thursday’s pair of 150-mile qualifying races. Busch commented on the challenges facing the drivers in the 500.

“There’s going to be some moments where you’re pushing, trying to see what your car is going to do,” Kyle remarked. “But you have to keep your water temperatures in check, the front and back bumpers on your car, and you’ve got to keep the sides on the car and be there at the end. When it comes down to the last 10 miles it’s going to be hectic. We’re probably going to be spinning each other out and hopefully being able to miss all the wrecks.”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Great to see the two grandest men of bike racing inducted into the Motor Sport Hall of Fame this week, taking their place alongside Fangio, Senna and the rest.

John Surtees and Giacomo Agostini greeted each other like old friends when they met at the Hall of Fame awards evening at London’s Roundhouse, embracing warmly and immediately launching into animated conversation in Italian. Their motorcycling careers were, of course, inextricably linked with the revered Italian marque MV Agusta, the Ferrari of motorcycling.

Indeed ‘Il Grande John’ and Ago were the men who made MV. Surtees won the marque’s first four 500 world titles, between 1956 and 1960, while Ago took seven consecutive 500 crowns with MV between 1966 and 1972. Even now MV stands as the fourth most successful constructor in motorcycle Grand Prix racing, despite the fact that its race shop closed its doors for the last time in the mid-1970s.

John Surtees with TAG Heuer’s UK managing director Rob Diver

However, the real reason Surtees and Ago were decorated this week was for the unique achievements that make them two of the greatest men in motor sport history: Surtees the only man to have won world titles on two wheels and four, Ago the man with the most motorcycle Grand Prix wins, an astonishing 122 victories.

Both men have wonderful tales to tell about the enigmatic Count Domenico Agusta, a Godfather-like figure who ruled his racing team from a vast, darkened office next to his Agusta helicopter factory. Agusta was an aristocratic control freak who ran his team like a chess set in which he was the king and everyone else the pawns.

Surtees found him a hard man to get along with, even trickier than Enzo Ferrari, for whom he won the Formula 1 car world title in 1964. When I asked Surtees with whom would he rather spend an evening – the Count or il Commendatore – he thought for a moment and then said “Neither! But I spent more time eating and drinking with Enzo. He was OK once you got him away from Modena”.

Like everyone else, Surtees had huge difficulty getting even a moment or two with Agusta who used to enjoy making his riders sit for hours outside his office waiting for an audience.

“He wanted to create an aura around himself – everything he did was about increasing his social standing,” Surtees added. “He seemed to enjoy making things difficult for you. When the MV 500 really needed a new frame the only way I could raise the problem with him was by booking myself onto the same train back from Spa to Milan!”

Ago – who won all but one of his 15 world titles with MV – vividly recalls his first-ever meeting with the Count.

“I had an appointment to see him at 4.30. I waited outside his office and finally he saw me at 10.30. When I go inside it’s a big room, very dark, all the trophies on the wall. His desk is high up, like an altar in a church, and he’s there with a small light on his desk.’

‘Who you are?’

‘I’m Agostini.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to race with your bike.’

‘But my bike is a difficult bike. Can you ride my bike?’”

So the Count ordered his secretary to book Monza for a private test session the following day. Agostini duly arrived and walked out of the pits to see a line of traffic cones stretching down the start-finish straight.

“It costs a lot of money to book Monza, but he wanted me to ride slalom like I used to do in motorcycle gymkhanas when I was a boy, and I am already a three-time Italian champion! The Count, he liked to play with you. OK, so I did the slalom and he gave me a contract.”

In 1969 Agostini got the call from Signor Ferrari, who wanted Italy’s racing darling to follow in the wheel tracks of Surtees.

“I was so excited – to drive for Ferrari! Then I start thinking. My passion is motorcycles. And for sure I am making a lot of money racing motorcycles, always on the podium, always making the headlines. And cars? Maybe I don’t enjoy the same success, so I decided to stay with motorcycles.”

Both Ago and Surtees’ records seemed entirely safe until recently when Valentino Rossi looked like he might be able to overhaul at least one of them. In the end, however, Rossi decided against chasing F1 glory with Ferrari and now seems unlikely to win the 18 MotoGP victories he needs to overhaul Ago.

Surtees encouraged Rossi to try and emulate his own achievement but Ago is happy that his own record once again looks unbeatable.

“Already I told him: Valentino, I enjoy when you win races, but please stop when you have two or three victories less than me! Anyway, now I think the record is very difficult for him. It’s not impossible, but maybe he has two or three years left and even if Ducati build a very good bike, Stoner is so fast…”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

What a night! The 2012 Motor Sport Hall of Fame went off with a bang last night as we inducted four more racing luminaries.

This year John Surtees, Adrian Newey, the late Colin McRae and the brilliant Giacomo Agostini brought the number of Hall of Fame members up to 20 at the Roundhouse in Camden.

Held in association with TAG Heuer, the event – which was also sponsored by Infiniti – was kicked off by host Jake Humphrey who welcomed Sir Jackie Stewart and David Richards on stage. The three-time Formula 1 world champion and the chairman of Prodrive presented Colin’s father Jimmy and his co-driver Nicky Grist with the Hall of Fame award. “We’re very honoured,” said Jimmy. “I don’t think Colin realised what a popular guy he was.

“To be inducted into the Motor Sport Hall of Fame is special because it’s mainly a racing community, so to be the first rally driver is quite fantastic. As a family we are so honoured that this has happened. Everyone loved the Colin McRae style of driving and it’s shown by the following he has.”

He certainly does have a huge following and there were plenty of his fans in the room including the writer of the BAFTA award winning Senna movie Manish Pandey and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason.

Martin Brundle and Steve Parrish were next on stage and after some gentle ribbing from BBC’s Jake Humphrey about Martin jumping ship to Sky, they welcomed the legendary Giacomo Agostini. The 10-time winner of the Isle of Man TT and 15-time world champion had flown over from Milan specially for the evening and when you read this he will have already arrived back home! “It’s wonderful for me to receive this award from Motor Sport,” he said. “I’ll put it with all my other trophies. It will be my 2000th I think, but this one is particularly important to me.”

After a short break Sir Stirling Moss and TAG Heuer’s UK managing director Rob Diver took to the stage to present John Surtees – the only man ever to win a world championship on two wheels and four – with his award and TAG Heuer watch. “I’ve been to the Hall of Fame in America, but it’s nice to come along and join some of these luminaries in motor sport,” he said to the 500-strong crowd. “It’s a wonderful occasion tonight, celebrating the in-depth interest in motor sport itself.”

It was great to honour a man such as John, and it was also a pleasure to help raise money for the Henry Surtees Foundation. Guests entered a charity raffle – with prizes such as a TAG Heuer watch and an eighth-scale Amalgam model of Sebastian Vettel’s 2011 championship-winning car – and helped to raise thousands of pounds for the foundation John set up in memory of his son Henry.

The final inductee of the evening was the only designer to have won world championships with three different teams – Adrian Newey. His current team principal Christian Horner and Motor Sport’s editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck were on hand to welcome Adrian to the Hall of Fame. Nigel quite rightly pointed out that he is “the best designer ever to have graced the Formula 1 paddock”.

“This is something I never dreamt of,” said the modest Newey. “To have joined so many legends, so many people who I have followed, who I aspired to when I was younger, is an amazing feeling. It feels very special.”

The evening, according to everyone we talked to, was a great success. Thanks to everyone for attending and for those that couldn’t make it – there’s always next year. 2012 will be a tough year to beat whoever we induct next year!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Nürburgring Nordschleife and its (4.8-mile) Sudschleife offshoot never made ‘sense’.

Built in the euphoric aftermath of the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation of the early 1920s to create employment and generate income in a German backwater, its scope was epic: a never-to-be-repeated lap of the gods.

I have no doubt that should you mull a list of 20 or so fantastic drives that it will include several Lords of the ’Ring: Caracciola, Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Ascari, Fangio, Brooks, Moss, Clark, Hill, Surtees, Stewart and Ickx. For so extensive yet intensive was the examination set by this circuit that not only did it distil the great from the good, it also refined the absolute best. Though often foggy, the ‘Green Hell’ was never a happy hunting ground for sufferers of red mist.

Niki Lauda’s fiery accident of 1976 was Formula 1’s Last Rites at the track, but the World Sportscar Championship and Formula 2 clung on through flips – Manfred Winkelhock’s March 802 and Stefan Bellof’s Porsche 956 – and spins to the bitter end.

Except that it wasn’t the end.

‘Sense’ prevailed in 1984 when the new Nürburgring was opened. Castigated at its anodyne outset, the years have been kind to it: it’s not a bad track and has hosted some good races. Yet it has never emerged from the shadow of its big brother up in the mountains. Nordschleife is a place of pilgrimage. Pay your Euros and you can retrace the Lords’ wheel tracks. But might this privilege be revoked any time soon?

Like all major European tracks, Nürburgring is dealing with the fact that Middle East oil money now greases F1’s cogs. Both it and Hockenheim have had recent disputes with Bernie Ecclestone and since 2008 have shared the spoils of Germany’s GP on an alternating basis.

Nürburging bosses were fortunate, therefore, to have a USP: Nordschleife. For some reason, however, they deemed this insufficient. Ignoring its core, they went for ‘Cor!’ and built a theme park complete with roller coaster and, I kid you not, a Fangio-themed steakhouse called El Chueco.

‘Nüro Disney’ never made sense, never mind ‘sense’, and now lies all but empty while pistonheads continue to crank it up on motorsport’s biggest ‘roller coaster’ before cramming into the Pistenklaus down the road for a celebratory bier or drei.

Huge outlay plus small income equals big debt and a vexed local government. More bartering with Mr Ecclestone surely lies ahead and it’s clear who holds the stronger position there, while Hockenheim’s better access and surrounding infrastructure – plus it’s Sebastian Vettel’s local track – make it the GP’s more obvious home for the foreseeable future.

It’s hard to imagine titanic Nordschleife being dragged under by this, but those closer to the subject than me have felt sufficiently nervous to create petitions and go public. Should the gates be locked and the track fall into disrepair, we could easily have another ‘Brooklands’ on our hands.

I have been lucky to tackle Nordschleife – reverentially, i.e. slowly – in historically important machinery and so won’t be nipping through the Chunnel to fang around it in a hot hatch while I still can. But talk of its potential demise has caused me to revisit another precious memory.

The underfunded Fearnley family never got beyond Thruxton during Nordschleife’s heyday, but its youngest member, as a junior reporter for Motoring News in 1993, did attend the last full-shot sprint race held there.

That inaugural season of hi-tech Class 1 DTM saloons included back-to-back four-lappers of Nordschleife-plus-GP-Strecke: 15.7 miles. With Nicola Larini cast in the role of Nuvolari, Alfa Romeo upstaged Mercedes-Benz, as it had in 1935.

© Alfa Romeo Automobilismo Storico, Centro Documentazione (Arese, Milano)

During practice I ventured to the left-over-crest of Pflanzgarten. Uwe Alzen, a bullish racer never short of commitment, was first through. His Merc 190E – in name only – landed askew and I took a pace back from the shallow Armco that separated me from him. Nordschleife is like that: it grabs you immediately, and doesn’t let go thereafter.

Larini, despite 33kg of success ballast accrued by four prior wins elsewhere, led both races from start to finish in his total-traction V6. Hardly classic encounters in themselves, it was the venue’s grandeur and historical context that made them stick in the mind.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Larini tended to gain time on the modern portion of the track before managing the gap over the old majority. Cameras in his cockpit reminded you how bumpy Nordschleife is, and caught him smiling as he glanced left at the Karrussel’s exit to scope his pursuers.

There was a camera in his footwell too. On the descent from Hohe Acht, the circuit’s highest point, his left foot hovered mindfully over the brake while his right mashed the throttle. He tapped the middle pedal on occasion but barely with sufficient force to connect pad with disc. He was brave. His appreciative crew mobbed him. And I was there.

That, at least, is ring-fenced.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It’s been a busy few weeks for me, but as well the Daytona 24 Hours, testing the new Indycar and training with my cousin Paul di Resta and brother Marino in Europe, I managed to get behind the wheel of the amazing Porsche 917. But more on that later…

It all started with Daytona, which was a little disappointing for me – finishing just off the podium in fourth. But I was straight into testing the Indycar and that’s improved a lot since I last drove it.

I was one of the first people to drive it back in November 2011 and it wasn’t – shall we say – ideal! It was a bit of a handful and it had some big handling and balance issues. We’re definitely getting there now though.

One of the problems is that IndyCar has made the regulations so tight now that you can’t just fix the car like you would have before. It’s got specified suspension for example and we have to wait for IndyCar’s permission to change it and also for Dallara to manufacture the parts. One of the other issues is that I can’t right-foot brake in it. I’m probably 95 per cent as competent with my left foot, but it’s just missing that last bit of finesse. We’ve had a bit of a back and forward with IndyCar and they’ve now come up with a kit that’s going to allow us to right-foot brake. When you’re talking a tenth of a second between pole position and the second row you can’t afford to give anything away so that’s good news.

It was a really tragic end to last season with the death of my good friend Dan, and it’s very difficult for everyone to recover emotionally from that. The drivers in IndyCar are very competitive on track, but a pretty close knit bunch off it. It’s made dealing with Dan’s death difficult because we were all so close, but easier in a way because all the drivers have been supporting each other. Dan was such a huge presence in IndyCar with his larger than life personality and skill , we’ll miss him but like Greg Moore we’re not going to forget him and we will be working together with the series to make the sport safer.

Death is a shocking part of motor sport, and one of the hardest things to deal with was the reaction to the terrible accident in Vegas. A lot of people were commenting on it who didn’t have the first idea about motor racing and they were talking rubbish. It was very difficult and racing without him beside us this year will be just as tough. We all miss you Dan and will be thinking of you.

The business of IndyCar

I do think the business side of things in IndyCar is in good shape. The calendar is not ideal because there aren’t as many ovals as we would like, but some of that is a result of what happened in Vegas. I think next season’s calendar is going to look a lot better.

There are plenty of positives though because we’ve got the new car and engine manufacturer competition again, which is going to be great. We’re also already at 25 cars and counting so that’s good news. I really hope Rubens Barrichello will come and do a full season. It’ll be really good for the series because he brings a great deal. I think it would lift the competition level once again and also mean that I wasn’t the oldest driver on the grid…

From there it I came over to Monaco to see Paul and Marino, and do some training. There’s a huge Scottish ex-pat community in Monaco with Allan McNish and David Coulthard as well so it was great to catch up with everyone.

The Porsche 917

The other highlight was driving the 917 at Daytona to celebrate 50 years of the race. I wasn’t planning to drive in the parade and was looking forward to watching it. Then Bruce Canepa came up the day before the parade and asked whether I wanted to drive the 917. I said “yeah, we’ll see what happens”. I really didn’t realise what I had been asked because my brain was in racing gear. I was heading out of the circuit on the golf cart and it suddenly hit me that I had been asked to drive a 917! I screeched to halt, went back and talked to Bruce a little more about it.

It was a great thing to take out and it was interesting to watch because they had all the winners there out in front of all these cars from different periods in the history of Daytona. It was like evolution in reverse because they had all these stunning historical cars and then they stopped at the Daytona prototypes, which are not the best looking machines in the world…

All the drivers seemed to migrate to the 917, the 956s and 962s. I jumped in the thing and I was sitting there with Brian Redman in the BMW CSL – that he and Peter Gregg drove – next to me. He leaned over and said something to the mechanic who was looking after my car. He came over to me and said “Brian wanted to remind you that in period seven of these snapped in half at the fuel cell bulkhead so don’t hit anything”. I look up and there’s Redman in complete hysterics!

It was great because we did two parade laps and then they let us go. It had quite short gearing in it so I was sitting at about 7000rpm on the banking, so about 150/60mph, but it actually felt pretty slow. But in the infield I really opened it up and gave it some. People have talked about it before, but the torque of the engine is something very special. The weight transfer when you accelerate is like a speedboat! The nose just keeps coming up every gearshift and then when you brake it really dives. If you see any of the pictures of the 917s in period, if it’s under acceleration, it looks like the front ride height is about a foot. Then when it’s braking into a turn it looks like a modern car. You can really feel that behind the wheel. It’s also a very strange driving position lying almost horizontally with the wheels very close to your head. It’s best not to think where your feet are!

My first IndyCar race is on March 25 so we’ve got plenty to be getting on with in the coming few weeks. I’ll bring more news from this side of the Atlantic soon.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Every year, the Car of the Year jury gets together with all the shortlisted cars to put them through their paces.

Actually that’s not entirely true. Of the 59 jurors, 53 (representing 22 of the 23 countries that return jurors from Portugal to Russia) gather at a test track outside Paris. The remaining six, the UK contingent, go to Silverstone.

We’re not trying to be awkward or secede in Cameroonian fashion, we just want to drive the cars on roads relevant to their customers and which will test them to the very limit of their ability.

So tempting though it is, we don’t spend the day skidding around the track: the BRDC kindly open the clubhouse to us to use as base, from which we head out on a fiendish route created by the late Mike Scarlett, devised to throw every challenge at a car’s chassis that it can reasonably be expected to handle.

Every car came with a surprise of one size of another, apart from the Ford Focus which was predictably good and reminded me just how high the standard of small family cars has now become.

On the positive side the Toyota Yaris – a car I’d read about but not driven, was better than many had said. Not class leading or close, but well packaged, with strong performance from an energetic 1.3-litre engine coupled to a close ratio six-speed box. But its steering was poor and its suspension over sprung.

More good news for Land Rover who’s Evoque set about proving it has the substance to match its style. Interestingly the entry-level front-drive version was by some margin better to drive than more expensive all-wheel drive variants. My advice is to save the money unless you really need the traction and spend it instead on options that actually improve the car.

Volkswagen’s Up! surprised only because it’s the first time I’d driven it in company with a couple of at least quite close rivals. I suspected strongly it would have little trouble besting them, but the margin of superiority was less easy to predict. It’s so structurally sound Porsche could have engineered it and I had little trouble running rings around the opposition.

And Vauxhall’s Ampera showed it’s not just a one trick pony: its ability to do decent distances on electric power alone is impressive, but no more so than the deftness of its ride, the quality of its cabin or the strength of its performance. Sales in the US of its Chevy Volt sister are notably poor at present, but I suspect this is a slow burner. Its time will come.

By contrast the Fiat Panda, a car I instinctively like, was rather undone by British B-roads. Its seats are too flat, its vertical body movements too loosely controlled for comfort. It looks cute and has a charming interior, but if it is to be your only car rather than something in which to do the weekly shop, in the UK it feels not quite cooked.

Which brings us to Citroën’s C5, a luxury car unable to provide the single most important facet of luxury: comfort. This large and elegant flagship not only had a worse ride than the Evoque, Focus and Ampera, it was outshone by the Up!, Yaris and even the Panda. So badly judged are its suspension settings that its otherwise considerable appeal is all but entirely undermined.

The winner of the Car of the Year award will be announced on March 7. I’ve not voted yet but for me it’s between the Ampera and Up, with the Evoque in a strong third place. As for the views of the other 58 jurors, we will all have to wait and see.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

No doubt you will have heard about, and been intrigued by, a new motor racing movie.

Yes, another one for the fans, hard on the heels of the acclaimed documentary about Ayrton Senna that drew not just us devotees, but also a wide cross section of other people to the cinema.

Not since John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans has there been a true Hollywood blockbuster based on the sport we love. The makers of the new film about the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda will therefore be greatly encouraged by the box office success of the Senna documentary. The new movie, however, is not a documentary.

Provisionally entitled Rush, the film will tell the story of the dramatic 1976 Grand Prix season, a tale that even the most creative Hollywood scriptwriter could not have invented. Allegations of cheating, swashbuckling British hero versus Austrian hard man, operatic Italian Ferrari versus sober English McLaren, Hollywood idol Richard Burton walks off with hero’s wife, hard man close to death after fiery crash, finale played out in pouring rain in shadow of Mount Fuji. And those are just the headlines for the posters.

Early indications for the film are good. Lauda himself is enthusiastically involved in the planning and Ron Howard, who made A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13, is the director. So if the film is anywhere near as good as those, we’re in for a treat. Script is by Peter Morgan, famed for the quality of his screenplays for The Queen and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It doesn’t get a lot better than this before filming gets underway.

But will we get the real story, the dramas and the tensions of that extraordinary season? Indications are good because former McLaren team manager Alastair Caldwell is also on board for the ride. This no-nonsense Kiwi, famed for his leadership and drive throughout that demanding season, will surely make sure that the facts, bizarre as some of them may be, get told as they should be.

It was in fact Caldwell who shrewdly stage-managed Hunt’s return to the grid at the British Grand Prix after Ferrari claimed he should not be allowed to take the re-start after damaging his car in a collision triggered by Clay Regazzoni who’d tried to muscle past Lauda at the first corner.

“What happened at Brands Hatch that summer is a big part of the story, especially the fall-out from the accident and the re-start. But I never wanted to get involved in the movies, nor ever thought I would be,” Alastair told me this week, “and I’ve been warned that even a little bit of filming takes a huge amount of time. It will be about a month out of my life, so I plan to get a motor home where I can get a bit of peace away from all the hundreds of people involved in the project. In racing I was used to working with a small team of people, everyone doing lots of jobs, no union rules or stuff like that. So yeah, it’s off to film school for me, and it will be an experience.” Presumably, Mauro Forghieri will also be invited to participate, though he may decide not to park his trailer next to the former McLaren man.

We don’t yet know who will play James Hunt, a tough casting decision if ever there was one, but it’s reported that Chris Hemsworth is in line for the role and Daniel Bruhl has been chosen to play Lauda. The film could succeed, or fail, in the casting where credibility is all. Suggestions on a post card to Ron Howard.

There are few details of locations, like which circuits may be used, but filming will be based in Europe. With a budget said to be $100 million, and input from the likes of Lauda and Caldwell, this is surely a movie that will come to a cinema near you with great expectations. The film will not be made for us racing fans, but for a wider audience. Those of us who were there, at the circuits through that long, hot summer of 1976, will surely be watching with a critical eye.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Truth be known, last month’s Rolex 24 Hours was a mere warm-up for the big show, which arrives in Daytona at the end of this week.

By mid-week more than 100 haulers containing Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Truck series cars will set out from their bases, mostly in North Carolina, headed south to Daytona for the start of the NASCAR season. Practice and qualifying for the Daytona 500 begins next weekend with the 54th running of the 500 starting on February 28.

The 500 has been moved one week later than usual this year in order to distance it from the weekend before last’s Super Bowl, the giant of American sports. Everything stops in the United States for the Super Bowl, which attracted 111 million viewers this year, more than 10 times the TV audience Daytona will draw. NASCAR and its television partners are probably correct in believing it’s best to keep a safe distance from the Super Bowl in order to gain maximum media exposure for Daytona and NASCAR’s season kick-off.

Inevitably, there have been complaints from fans about the date change. Many NASCAR fans own long-standing time-shares in North Florida condominiums blocked out for the middle week in February so some of them will miss this year’s 500. Of course, the Daytona 500’s February date is essential to the race’s continuing success because it draws fans to Florida’s sun from all corners of the northern United States when everyone is looking for a break from winter. So it will be interesting to see if the date change has any effect on the crowd.

In fact, the coming week of racing at Daytona is affectionately known as ‘Red Neck High Holy Days’ as NASCAR fans follow the teams south, some flying but many driving aboard a variety of motor homes, pick-up trucks and SUVs. It’s time to get some sun, cruise the beach, grill a bunch of burgers and steaks, party a little (or a lot), and enjoy some racin’.

In Tony Stewart NASCAR this year has the perfect defending champion. Stewart won the championship in style with some excellent end-of-season races and his aggressive driving and outspoken manner make him a big fan favourite, second only to Dale Earnhardt Jr. Stewart became a team owner three years ago in partnership with machine tool manufacturer Gene Haas and Stewart-Haas runs a pair of Chevrolets for Stewart and Ryan Newman with chassis and engines supplied by Hendrick Motorsport.

Danica Patrick (above with Tony Stewart) joins Stewart-Haas at Daytona this year in a third car as she makes a full-time move from Indycars to stock cars. Patrick will be surrounded all week by endless ‘Danicamania’ hype and more than a few people believe that with NASCAR’s help she will qualify on pole…

Of course, Daytona never provides much of an indicator about the rest of the season because the races at Daytona and Talladega are run with restrictor plates, designed to limit horsepower to less than 500 rather than the 850 or more available at all other NASCAR races. With restrictor plates the show’s the thing and almost anybody can win, witness the long list of unlikely Daytona winners since the dreaded plates were introduced in 1988.

Things will be a little different this year because NASCAR is introducing fuel injection at Daytona. The teams have done a lot of testing with the new McLaren/Bosch fuel injection system and NASCAR expects the transition from carburettors to go smoothly. Again, NASCAR is all about ‘the show’ rather than technology and the Rednecks are perfectly happy with that.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It has taken a while coming, but there is increasing recognition among major car manufacturers in the world that if you are to design a car with a truly outstanding chassis, all the pounding of proving grounds, laps of the Nürburgring and visits to frozen lakes and Middle Eastern deserts may not do it for you.

There is a missing ingredient, a test so reliable, so simple to replicate and so revealing in what it tells you about your car that more and more car companies are including it as an integral, essential part of their test programme. This ingredient is called the British B-road.

Cars that feel really quite capable on the shiny new roads of Europe that manufacturers prefer to take us to for their launches can feel utterly inept the moment you get them home. Historically Audis in particular have fallen foul of this effect. And have you wondered why, whatever their other faults may be, Lotuses and Jaguars have almost always had fabulously accomplished chassis?

It’s because if you can make a car feel even reasonably good over here, it’s going to be nothing less than brilliant everywhere else. I have no doubt that if the McLaren MP4-12C had been developed outside the UK, it would feel completely different and not have the most composed ride of any supercar the world has seen so far.

Why? It’s partly because our roads are so dismally maintained, but also because they have a higher than average crown in the middle. Our road designers seem also to have either a cruel sense of humour or no commonsense. I know nowhere in Europe or America where the cambers, radii and surfaces seem to have been determined by so much pot luck. Less than a mile from my house there is a quick curve concealing entirely the entry to a railway museum at its apex. And if you survive that there’s a turn immediately afterwards which seems even quicker. And indeed it is until, just as you think it must open out, it turns in again with a vengeance.

I know we should all drive with an even greater margin of safety on roads we don’t know and I know equally well that not everyone does, which is why the Medivac helicopter is such a depressingly frequent visitor to this neck of the woods.

For a chassis designer, it’s a difficult balance. Clearly stability is essential so the car doesn’t spin if you suddenly have to brake to change direction while cornering quickly. But too much stability means the car sticks dogged to its original line, which may be the last thing you want.

Of course electronic stability systems have helped cars maintain the intended lines of their drivers, but they are no substitute for a chassis that is supple and agile enough to cope with all a British country road can throw at it.

This is why, for instance, every product sold by Volkswagen now has a session on UK roads mandated into their development programmes. And I don’t just mean Golfs and Polos, I mean Audis, Skodas, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Seats and Bugattis. Their engineers now know what their British counterparts have kept secret for decades: to make a really good chassis, you need our really bad roads.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

If it looks right, it is right: Renault AK 90CV, Bugatti Type 35, Alfa Romeo Tipo B, Maserati 250F, Lotus 25, and 72, Ligier JS11, McLaren MP4/4 and Ferrari 641.

There are, of course, exceptions to this ‘rule’. It is possible to be ugly and good rather than bad: Jack Brabham’s bug-like Coopers, the stubby 1973 Tyrrells of Jackie Stewart and François Cevert, Ferrari’s stumpy 126C3, with its barn-door rear wing, and Michael Schumacher’s beaky Benettons.

Chances are that the most successful Formula 1 car of 2012 will be added to the latter list, for although we can’t yet know which it will be, we can predict with near certainty that it will be ugly. (Only the McLaren MP4-27 does not offend the eye.)

The teams are blaming the rule-makers – and the rule-makers the teams – for the stepped schnozzes besmirching our sport’s pinnacle category. Well, would you lay claim to a car seemingly constructed from Lego? And I’m talking Duplo, not Technic.

Yes, form must follow function in this competitive environment, but on this occasion its face has been spited – on behalf of improved driver safety, it must be said. A lowered nose should provide better protection to the head of a driver at the sharp end of a T-boning. Engineers complained, however, that they would have to design entirely new cars to accommodate revised suspensions. Hence: one batch of rules for the nose, another for the rest of the chassis.

We will get used to these preposterous proboscides, I’m sure – the desensitisation has begun already – but will we ever grow to love them?

Perhaps.

My Six of the Worst heebie-GPs (below) will not meet with universal approval because one man’s Brussels sprout – I’m a vegetarian – is another man’s poison. I defy anyone to describe any of my selections as tasteful yet I will sympathise with those who feel beholden to one or two, maybe even three or all, of them.

Hey, everybody has a guilty motor sport secret or six.

Right, those of you of a nervous aestheticism should avert your eyes. Now!

1980 Ferrari 312 T5
The T4 of 1979 would have been included here but for its sufficient power, speed, reliability, tyre grip and driver talent that covered for those manifest aero deficiencies. Its updated successor cannot be so redeemed. It bombed: 105 fewer points scored. Even when it sloughed its hideous skin, it looked like an autograss special.

1979 Ensign N179
Declutter the sidepods to smooth and maximise the flow of low-pressure air through them. Makes sense. Ah, but where to put all those rads? Erm, surely not stacked in the nose. Oh dear. End result: the world’s fastest ‘step ladder’ – and a slow F1 car.

1995 McLaren MP4/10
You know, the one with a mid-wing atop its unlovely engine cover. The car looked huge and yet Nigel Mansell struggled to squeeze his Mid-Ohio spread into it. An embarrassing, but lucky, escape.

1935 Trossi-Monaco
Its nose-mounted radial engine made it look like an antediluvian Hoover. Count Carlo Felice Trossi hoped to clean up with it. Sadly, this front-wheel-drive machine sucked, then blew.

1981-’82 Toleman TG181/B/C
The team called it the ‘General Belgrano’. There was a hint of genuine affection in the nickname – and a whole dollop of truth. Designer Rory Byrne went on to smaller and better-looking things.

1956 Bugatti Type 251
Because of its hunchbacked pushmi-pullyou look – and wayward handling – its poor driver, Maurice Trintignant, didn’t know whether he was coming or going, even on the arrow straights of Reims. This, thankfully, was the car’s last reported sighting.

What about March’s 711, with its tea-tray front wing? you ask.

Why that elliptical shape looked so right on RJ Mitchell’s Supermarine Spitfire and yet so wrong on R Herd’s F1 car – its front wing was a Frank Costin-creation – I cannot be sure. But it did.

Why I love the car so, even so, I cannot be sure either. But I do. There, my ‘guilt’ is no longer secret.

Had it not been for Stewart aboard a (less stubby) Tyrrell, Ronnie Peterson, in only his second season of F1, would have become world champion in his works 711. Yep, it’s another of those ugly exceptional exceptions.

And such a success might have made the raised nose de rigueur in F1 19 years before Jean-Claude Migeot cocked a snook at convention – and beauty – with his game-changing Tyrrell 019.

Which is sort of where I came in, all sniffy about suchlike.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Something quite extraordinary has been announced.

An event that no motor racing enthusiast can afford to miss, that nobody ever dreamed would actually happen. Beg, borrow or steal the cash to be there.

The Silver Arrows will race again. Yes, the real ones, the original Silberpfeil, not the cars that are painted silver and described as ‘silver arrows’ by creative marketing departments these days. We are talking pre-war Auto Unions and Mercedes-Benz, last seen in action in the 1930s when men were men and motor racing was horribly dangerous.

The last time we in Britain saw an Auto Union race a Mercedes-Benz was in October 1938 when Tazio Nuvolari (above), in an Auto Union D-type, won the Donington Grand Prix from Hermann Lang (below) in a Mercedes-Benz W154 with Dick Seaman third in another W154. These cars made their final race appearance at the Yugoslavian Grand Prix in September 1939, the day after war broke out in Europe.

True, Mercedes was back in 1954 with the W196, but the Auto Unions had gone and Juan Manuel Fangio, having forsaken his Maserati 250F in mid-season, won the World Championship for Mercedes-Benz, a feat he repeated in 1955 before winning two more in ’56 and ’57 with Lancia-Ferrari and Maserati respectively. But that is another story for another day.

Your chance to see the Silver Arrows driven at race speed on a circuit comes in September when the Goodwood Revival will stage a ‘demo’ race for which both Merc and Auto Union have entered their priceless cars. This is surely a sight not be missed, even if the drivers are advised that an all-out, fully fledged race would be a step too far for such valuable racing cars. Competition in this demo race will come from the more frequently seen cars of Maserati, ERA, and Bugatti. A mouth-watering prospect, no?

We will see Auto Union types C and D, and from Mercedes the W25,W125, W154 and W165. We are still waiting for details of who will have the privilege of being in the cockpits, but you can be sure they will be tried and trusted friends of the Merc and Audi museums. Surely Hans Stuck Jnr will be in the frame for one of the Auto Unions. Goodwood, just as it was in its heyday, will be the perfect place to see these mighty machines in action, howling down the straights or drifting through the long, sweeping corners of this genuinely unspoilt racing circuit.

I make no apology for waxing lyrical about this extraordinary happening. If you’re not sure what I’m raving about, there are films of these cars racing in period on the internet. Alright, we won’t see cloth caps and shirtsleeves, but these cars are a handful however the drivers may be dressed. Word is that the Silver Arrows will have their own special place in the paddock so that we, the fans, can get a really close look at some of the most exciting Grand Prix cars ever made. You may have seen them run on the Goodwood hill at the Festival of Speed but you ain’t seen nothing yet.

When the Silver Arrows came to Donington (above) the crowd, more used to watching Rileys, MGs and ERAs, was astounded by the power and speed of the German cars Built with little regard for cost, the silver cars dominated Grand Prix racing from 1934 to the outbreak of war in 1939. More recently, when a BRM V16 raced at an early Revival, grown men were reduced to tears. It’s going to be that kind of occasion. And, depending on the outcome, this may well be the first, and last, time you will ever see an Auto Union race a Mercedes-Benz on British soil. Start saving your pennies now.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

This is the car that was meant to be the true spiritual successor to the original Mini, a car so radical and successful in its layout and design it would change the way small cars were built.

Except it didn’t turn out that way. When the Up! was first shown almost five years ago, it was a clever, cutesy design with an engine under the rear seat driving the rear wheels. It was a packaging miracle, intended for production. Then VW started crunching numbers. It concluded that while this configuration was potentially ideal for a city car, it wouldn’t work for any other environment. And as every new VW platform is expected to stretch into a range of sizes and across a variety of in-house brands, it did not make sound economic sense. The Up! as we knew it was strangled at birth.

Welcome, then, a rather different Up!: a conventional front-engined, front-wheel-drive urban runaround. And were it not so devilishly well executed, I might not have considered it to be worthy of inclusion on these pages.

In the event I drove it 350 miles in six hours, across country, along motorways and into and back out of London – a challenge that would have had any potential rival wilting under the pressure. But despite its 1-litre, turbo-free motor, the Up! excelled itself.

Its packaging may no longer be miraculous, but it’s still in a league of its own relative to its classmates. Its rear seat and boot are perilously close to Polo proportions, a fact of which VW is very aware. Its second unexpected attribute is its mechanical refinement: you might think that persuading such a car to maintain a steady 85mph would be agony on the ears; in fact the engine is so smooth and wind noise so well managed you could be in a Golf. For such a small, light car on a short wheelbase it rides well too.

If it lacks anything, it’s a sense of humour. Viewed objectively, it’s an absurdly better product than a Fiat 500. But while its mechanical sophistication will appeal to one of its target constituencies of senior citizens, the fact that it is visually merely pleasant and has an interior more fluent than far out means the Fiat may continue to charm younger prospects.

It’s a car I liked very much. But knowing what I do, my strongest feelings are not how good it is, but how much better it might have been.

Factfile
Engine: 1.0 litre, three cylinders
Top Speed: 106mph
Price: £10,390 (High Up!)
Power: 74bhp at 6200rpm
Fuel/co2: 60.1mpg, 108g/km
www.volkswagen.co.uk

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

He may be largely unrecognised in his home country, but Justin Wilson is one of the UK’s finest racing drivers.

At Daytona the weekend before last he showed his stuff yet again as part of Mike Shank’s winning team in the Rolex 24 Hours. It was Justin’s first race since suffering a compression fracture of his T5 vertebra in an IndyCar accident at Mid-Ohio last August and he had no problems at all in the race. Wilson drove three times during the 24 hours, beginning with a double stint lasting almost two hours.

“I got out from the first stint and I could feel a tingling from a lot of the muscles in my back that hadn’t been worked-out for a while,” Justin said. “I thought, ‘this might not be good.’ But the second time I got in the car after four hours rest I felt much better and when I got in for my third stint, I felt great. I did four stints in a row from 5.50am until 9.10am – three hours and twenty minutes – and I felt 100 per cent.”

Justin and his team-mates – AJ Allmendinger, Oswaldo Negri and John Pew – enjoyed a faultless race. “The car was fantastic,” Justin declared. “There were no reliability issues whatsoever. We didn’t have to do anything to the car – we put fuel and tyres on it, changed brake pads, and that was it. We refilled the driver’s drink bottle a few times and it went pretty much perfectly.

“Everyone was focused on what we needed to do and although we didn’t talk about it, we all knew. We just got in and did it. AJ did a great last three hours and Ozz did a fantastic three hours before that and John Pew was driving really fast. It all came together.”

Wilson has nothing but praise for team owner Shank who’s also trying to put together an IndyCar team this year with Paul Tracy driving. “Mike is a great person, a great team owner and someone you always enjoy driving for,” Justin says. “There’s no hidden agendas, nothing going on in the background. What he says is what he’s going to do and it just happens. There are no games with Mike.”

After his crash at Mid-Ohio last summer Wilson wore a plastic back brace stretching from his shoulders to his hips for 10 weeks. Fortunately the compression fracture in his back was such that an operation wasn’t required and after four weeks wearing the brace he started swimming on a daily basis.

“You just had to be very careful. I did six lengths the first day and slowly built it up. Being able to use the muscles without risk of damaging your spine anymore sped up the rate of recovery. By eight weeks I was feeling really good and just itching to get back in a car.”

The first time he drove a racing car after the accident was in January’s three-day Rolex 24 test session at Daytona. He had been out of action for five months. “The first lap around Daytona up on the banking was a strange sensation. It was, ‘OK, I’ve got to get the body used to this again.’ But after a couple of laps you forget about it and get back into a rhythm. It wasn’t too bad. I was able to get back up to speed and built it up over that test and it all felt good.”

Justin has rejoined Dale Coyne’s team for the upcoming IndyCar season with Honda engines. Bill Papis will engineer his car this year. Papis was his engineer when Wilson scored Coyne’s only win at Watkins Glen in 2009. Todd Phillips has joined Coyne from Newman/Haas and will be Wilson’s crew chief.

“We’ve got some good people and hopefully we can win some races again,” Justin remarked. “I think we’ve got a good opportunity with Dale and the Honda engine. If we do some good testing I think we’ll be in with a shout. We just have to work it out. I think it’s going to be an exciting year. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a great opportunity and a chance to really build something and hopefully win a few more races.”

A Formula 1 superstar he may not be, but Justin Wilson is an excellent driver and true racer. If you want an underdog worth cheering for, he’s your man.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

About this time of year in 2007 I watched Casey Stoner and his wife Adriana walk out of the back of the pits at Sepang, get into their hire car and drive back to their hotel.

It was 4.30pm and everyone else was still out on track, hunting for a lap time and a setup. I knew then that his rivals were in big trouble. He ended up dominating that year’s World Championship.

This time Stoner didn’t leave the recent season-opening Sepang tests early but he started very late and the result was just as daunting. An old back problem prevented him from doing all but four uncomfortable and slow laps on day one, so his rivals were already a full day ahead when he rode out of the pits on day two. And yet it took him just three laps to set the second fastest time so far.

That is utterly, breathtakingly remarkable. Stoner hadn’t ridden a MotoGP bike since early November and yet it took him only a few minutes to reacclimatise himself to life at 200mph, with a lap time just tenths outside the lap record.

This has always been one of the many glittering weapons in Stoner’s armoury and – even if it won’t specifically win him a race – it leaves his rivals dumbfounded and afraid because it’s something they can’t do. While they work steadily up to speed, looking for some feel from the tyres, Stoner gives it full throttle and leaves his instincts to deal with the consequences.

This otherworldly ability comes from Stoner’s childhood spent on the Aussie dirt track scene when he would ride dozens of races a day, most of them lasting no more than a few minutes. In other words, no time for getting up to speed, just ‘Wide F****** Open’ from the starting gate every time.

Stoner always shrugs off comments about his ability to reach lap record pace straight from the pits. “I learn naturally, it’s not a big deal to do those times so soon,” he says, which must freak out his rivals even more.

The reigning MotoGP World Champion and his Repsol Honda RC213V completed the three days at Sepang almost six tenths ahead of 2010 champ Jorge Lorenzo (Yamaha) and his Repsol Honda team-mate Dani Pedrosa. Stoner did his fastest lap of the tests just second time around on the final morning! Lorenzo’s team-mate Ben Spies closed the session in fourth, a further three tenths down, with Valentino Rossi fifth on Ducati’s ‘90 per cent new’ GP12.

It’s still early days yet but Stoner already looks a strong favourite for retaining his title. The only thing that might trouble him is that back problem, the legacy of a crash from his Aprilia 125 at the 2003 Dutch TT. The injury came back to haunt him on the first morning at Sepang when he was doing his pre-ride stretching exercises – his back fully locked up and he needed immediate treatment from the team physio. Last year the injury caused him difficulties during the Estoril GP and resurfaced on and off for the rest of the season. No doubt Stoner will be visiting a few back specialists before 2012 kicks off for real in Qatar on April 8.

Rossi’s debut on the redesigned Ducati V4 – with conventional aluminium frame replacing the factory’s unique carbon-fibre monocoque – was much awaited and yet at the close of play he was 1.2 seconds off, which is pretty much where he was last season. Rossi nonetheless seemed upbeat because he believes Ducati have sorted much of the front-end woes – “the f****** black hole” – that tormented him throughout 2011.

Ducati mechanic Alex ‘Axle’ Briggs put it like this: “We have problems to solve but the good news is that they are new ones, not old ones”.

Only time will tell if Rossi’s new problems are easier to fix than the old…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

When Toyota’s Lexus luxury brand was launched all its established European rivals must have been quivering at the prospect.

The LS400 set new standards of ride and refinement not just for that type of car, but for the entire automotive sector. Then when Lexus let it be known that the LS400 was its ‘practice’ car the inference was clear: just wait for the finished article.

Well, we’ve been waiting over 20 years now and the closest Lexus has come to building another as talented as the LS400 is the extraordinary but ultra-expensive and low-volume LFA supercar. Every Lexus that any mere mortal might be able to buy has been, at least by comparison to the stratospheric standards of the first, a disappointment.

On the surface this new GS has the ability to buck that trend. It’s a good-looking car, the petrol/electric hybrid motor gives performance, economy and CO2 figures to rival the best European diesels, and the packaging issues that blighted the old GS have now been resolved: it’s as big in the back and boot as you could reasonably expect such a car to be.

So far so good. Step a little closer, however, and you’ll see why that far from being the second coming, the GS is another missed opportunity.

The interior may have the largest navigation screen yet to inhabit the inside of a road car, but it will take more than that to imbue the class and style that provides such a sense of occasion in Mercedes, Audis and Jaguars. It looks like a top-of-the-range Toyota.

And when you drive it you discover that while the performance is strong, it’s not particularly pleasant: the continuously variable transmission making the not very sonorous V6 sound like it’s attached to a permanently slipping clutch. Its ride is also too firm. Lexus was keen to point out how well its new four-wheel steering system makes the GS handle on the limit, and it does handle well. But I couldn’t help feeling that if they’d tried as hard in other important areas of an executive saloon car’s endeavour, a rather more rounded and impressive product might have resulted.

Factfile
Engine: 3.5 litres, six cylinders, with hybrid electric motor
Top Speed: 155mph (limited)
Price: £50,000 (approx)
Power: 338bhp at 6000rpm
Fuel/co2: 47.9mpg, 137g/km
www.lexus.co.uk

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

“Racing’s comin’ at ya” proclaimed the headline on the front page of the Daytona Beach News-Journal as I made my jet-lagged journey to work last Friday morning.

“Let’s go racin’” yelled the banners in Bill France Boulevard as we approached the Daytona International Speedway, a bull ring of a racetrack just inland from what the locals assure me is the “best beach in the world”.

Now, I might argue with the description of the beach, but not with any of the claims made about the 24-hour race that has made Daytona famous all over the world.

This was my first trip to Daytona, just as it was for young Brazilian racing driver Felipe Nasr. Have you heard about Felipe Nasr? If not, let me tell you that you are going to be very aware of him in years to come. He is 19 years old, comes from Brasilia and is the reigning British Formula 3 Champion. And, since last Sunday afternoon, the subject of a great deal of attention. This guy is very talented, as you will discover.

Last December Nasr went to the speedway to test his Riley-Ford Daytona Prototype having won his drive through a Sunoco competition to find a suitable young driver. Boy, did they find one. He was immediately quick, raising eyebrows right down the pitlane. Before the race on Sunday I sat down with him to talk about the experience.

“You know, coming here is unbelievable, such a great opportunity for me,” he says, a grin all over his face. “I’m just amazed by everything, I’ve only raced in Europe before, I’ve never before raced a car with a roof, something so big and heavy compared to my F3 car. First laps out in practice I was laughing inside my helmet, I was enjoying myself so much. Wow, I couldn’t see where I was going because I don’t see my front wheels like in a single-seater, and there’s 600bhp and the thing is pulling me pretty hard.

“Then I got in the banking, just kept my foot down and, wow, that was something special. The infield is quite narrow and cars will be three abreast, you know, but hey, I’m ready for that. I’m not used to so many cars on the track and I reckon I will overtake more cars than ever before in my life. The key, I think, will be patience, not damaging the car, and keeping up the pace, bringing the car home.

“My goal is Formula One but this race is more time in a racing car, a chance to learn new things, to do long stints, learn about tyre degradation, to deal with traffic, and to race against really good teams and drivers. We have good plans for the future, I just need to make the right decisions, but right now, here at Daytona, I want to be in good shape for the race and I can’t wait to get out there.”

The result on Sunday afternoon could hardly have been more impressive. Late on Saturday night he was dicing with Juan Pablo Montoya, took the lead for a while, he and JPM weaving in and out of the traffic. Standing on the podium in third place, he looked surprised, delighted, elated and just a little bit tired.

The following day I met him as he sat down for lunch at the North Turn restaurant by the beach where Bill France staged his first ever races, on sand, in 1936. This is a haven for any NASCAR fan, a museum as well as a place to eat.

“You know, it was incredible, just incredible,” says Felipe. “Unless you were in the car I cannot really describe what it was like. The darkness, the lights, the traffic, and flat out all the time. Just a fantastic result for me.”

As I said earlier, you will hear and see a great deal more of Felipe Nasr. Yet another hugely talented Brazilian joins the fray.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The combination of Triple Eight Engineering and Jason Plato, with more than 160 wins and 12 titles between them – the most successful team and driver in the championship’s history – will give MG a jump-start on its BTCC return this season.

It’s great that the Octagon is back. That badge still means a great deal to people – me, for instance – who have had hours, days, years of fun in MGBs and Midgets 1275 and 1500.

But it doesn’t – can’t – mean as much as it did on October 23 1980, which is when the final proper UK-spec B rolled off the line at Abingdon, a victim of BL-zeebub.

Every time Sir Michael Edwardes spots an MX-5 – or when his chauffeur points one out to him – he must surely emit a Homer-like ‘Doh!’ He has admitted since that the closure of MG is the biggest regret of his time as the boss of British Leyland. But even had he rescinded that decision on October 24, MG would not have been the same. Its thread had been snapped.

Motor sport at all levels and in all forms was central to old MG’s success. Indeed, it was the catalyst, its EX-perimental cars of the 1920-’30s proving the competitive worth of their constituent parts before being filtered forthwith to the next road-going model.

Killjoy Lord Nuffield called a halt to this feverish process in the mid-1930s. To be fair, the company then rode the wave for the next 25 years. It was the arrival of Midget and B – plus that of Stuart Turner as BMC’s comps boss – which triggered another burst of competition success in the 1960s.

Cue a personal Top 10 of MG motor sporting moments:

1. 1933 RAC Tourist Trophy

Legendary Tazio Nuvolari accepts an offer to drive a K3 at Ards. Its pre-selector gearbox is explained to him, extra cushions are placed beneath and behind him, and off he rockets. He wins, of course, but not before he’s given a fright by local hero Hugh Hamilton in a smaller-capacity MG J4.

2. 1933 Mille Miglia

An approaching engine note. The expectant Italian crowd sways forward for a closer look at the first car home. It’s BRG. This K3 doesn’t win outright – Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo 8C does – but it wins its class, George Eyston/’Johnny’ Lurani beating team-mates Earl Howe/ Hamilton by just over a minute after 18 hours of racing. MG take the Team Prize too.

3. 1957 Bonneville

Stirling Moss feels exposed, isolated and helpless. He’s laying flat on his back and grasping a horizontal steering wheel. A supercharged 290bhp B-series is screaming in his ear, and the salt swishes eerily below him. Despite losing third gear, he sets a 1500cc record for the flying mile in the saucer-shaped EX181: 245.11mph.

4. 1939 Dessau

Stuffy Nuffield relents and sanctions record-breaking attempts. Maj Goldie Gardner buys Capt Eyston’s EX135 and has Reid Railton design a streamlined body for it. Just three months before WW2, he clocks 203.2mph for the flying mile in an 1100cc car – on an autobahn. The following day, after some overnight reboring, he breaks the 1500cc class record too: 203.8mph.

5. 1931 Montlhéry

The race against Austin to crack 100mph in a 750cc car is of vital promotional importance.  Eyston wins it for MG with a speed of 103.13mph at the speedbowl near Paris. Seven months later, in the same supercharged EX120, he crams 101.1 miles into an hour – before baling out when his gallant machine catches fire.

6. 1966 Marathon de la Route

The racing replacement for the epic Liège-Sofia-Liège rally is a 72-hour regularity blind around the Nürburgring’s Nordschleife. Deemed too easy, it is extended to 84 hours. Despite crashing at a recently resurfaced corner on the second lap, the B of Julian Vernaeve/Andrew Hedges covers 5620 miles to claim victory.

7. 1966 Targa Florio

Rallying superstar Timo Mäkinen is famous for ragging Minis and Big Healeys. But he comes up trumps when Turner places him in a B for Sicily’s famous road race. An overnight storm drags tons of mud onto the 41-mile circuit and Timo, superbly supported by Mini dicer John Rhodes, is in his element. They finish ninth overall and win the GT category.

8. 1963 Le Mans 24 Hours

This works B is ostensibly a privateer. Fitted with an extended nose, it’s capable of more than 130mph. Disaster strikes early when it’s involved in another’s accident. Alan Hutcheson, digging it furiously from a sandbank, comes within 10 minutes of exclusion. He and Paddy Hopkirk drive brilliantly thereafter to finish 12^th overall and win the 2-litre GT class.

9. 1934 Prix de Berne

Richard Seaman’s stripped K3 is relegated to the last row of nine by ballot and no one gives him a second look. They do when he takes the lead of the season’s most important Voiturette race after just 11 laps of the daunting Bremgarten circuit. He wins, and Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union take careful note of this bright young star.

The 10th is open to debate below because I’m in danger of exceeding my word count.

Of much greater importance, however, are the myriad opportunities that these everyman sports cars have provided enthusiasts from around the globe to cut their teeth, from Seaman, WTCC contender Rob Huff and the recently deceased Roberto Mieres to the tens of thousands of contented MG clubmen still racing/rallying/etc today.

Yes, one MG is back. The other MG, the proper one, never went away – in the motor sport sense at least.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

News that Land Rover is considering building the new Defender in India has already been greeted with some fairly predictable howls of outrage from those thinking that a Defender not built in Solihull is barely worthy of the name and clearly unaware the car has already been built in the Far East, Middle East, Africa and Europe.

But it’s an interesting point: does the location of a car factory actually matter?

To some it clearly does. A decade ago BMW spent some hundreds of millions building a final assembly plant for its newly-acquired Rolls-Royce brand because it was felt ‘Built in Munich’ was perhaps not the best tag to hang on the car when relaunching the marque from new. Likewise Volkswagen chose to rebuild entirely the ageing and underinvested Bentley factory in Crewe in preference to the far cheaper and easier solution of transferring production to Dresden where the Continental’s quite close cousin, the VW Phaeton, was in production.

Others have been far less squeamish. I wonder, for instance, how many Porsche Boxster drivers realise it is overwhelmingly likely that their car was built not by Porsche in Stuttgart, but a company called Valmet in Finland? When Aston Martin ran out of capacity at Gaydon, it had no qualms about getting Magna Steyr in Graz, Austria to build the Rapide which is, incidentally, the best built Aston I’ve ever driven. It’s V12 engines have always been built in a German Ford factory.

So what? Clearly it is essential for a car company to have an identity, and it helps for that identity to be linked to a nationality, but that doesn’t mean it needs to lose a competitive advantage by insisting everything it does has to happen in that country or not at all. Volkswagen understands this very well: no car company has exploited the potential of platform sharing better, which is why under the skin certain Audis, Skodas, Seats and VWs are structurally identical. But Skoda’s head office remains in the Czech Republic, Seat in Spain and VW and Audi inconveniently far apart in Germany. Don’t expect Porsche to leave Stuttgart any time soon, any more than Lamborghini will quit Sant Agata or Bugatti leave Molsheim.

For me it is all about credibility. Car companies can build what they like and where they like so long as the customer believes the product to be the genuine article.

It goes wrong when manufacturers start playing badge roulette and hoping the customer either won’t notice or doesn’t care. This is what makes me fearful of Fiat’s strategy for Lancia and Chrysler, which is to badge Lancias as Chryslers to sell where Chrysler has a presence and vice versa. But is calling a Lancia Delta a Chrysler Delta really going to increase it’s chance of sale in the UK? Are the Italians going to be duped into thinking a Chrysler 300C is really a Lancia because it wears a blue shield? I think not.

Otherwise it doesn’t matter. Ferrari can build cars in Germany, Australia, Patagonia or on the moon for all I care: so long as they’re designed in Maranello by people who work for Ferrari, Ferraris they will stay.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Well here I am, still recovering from a gruelling Rolex 24 at Daytona, but to be honest it must have been one of Grand-Am’s best events ever.

It’s a shame our new Spirit of Daytona Corvette car wasn’t able to figure a bit more in the mix at the front, but we were pleased to have lead at the six-hour mark and bring a brand new car home in the top 10. The 50^th running of the race was certainly the biggest Daytona event I’ve been to, and both the series and track pulled out all the stops to make it special.

We got into the lead by good team work and strategy, but ultimately the Ford-powered cars had too much of an advantage over us and, barring a mechanical mishap for them, one of them was always going to win. The winners got a special watch from Rolex… from one tall racing driver to another, congratulations to Justin Wilson!

This race is exceptionally tough because, for most teams and drivers, it’s the first race of the year and it can catch people out. Most 24-hour races take place later in the season. Nürburgring, Le Mans or Spa are between May and July, so there’s a long lead time for people to get to know their cars and get plenty of hours behind the wheel. At Daytona, if you come out with a new car, you inevitably will only have had it a month or so before the biggest race of the US season.

I got a fair amount of ribbing over the weekend because the team was sponsored by GoPro, a maker of compact digital movie cameras, and I had to wear one of their HD HERO2 cameras on a head band to the drivers briefing, autograph session and the driver/car presentation on Saturday morning.

It’s part of the ever-changing social media world in which we live and they wanted a driver’s view of these events to use in their marketing. I’m not sure it’s something I’d do every week because we all like a bit of anonymity from time to time and you stand out enough as it is in a race suit. When you’re wearing one of these you might as well have a red nose and big shoes on… well according to my team-mates anyway!

It was great to see some top drivers from lots of different categories such as NASCAR, IndyCar and the World Endurance Championship come together to take part like Juan-Pablo Montoya, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon, AJ Allmendinger and Allan McNish to name just a few. There were also full factory driver line-ups from Corvette, Ferrari and Porsche. The drivers’ briefing on Saturday morning was the one time you get us all in the same place and we are addressed by the race’s Grand Marshal who, this year, was supposed to be AJ Foyt. He’s recovering from an operation on his knee and his doctors banned him from attending at the last minute so Sir Jackie Stewart (there on Rolex ambassadorial duty) was drafted in as a substitute. He must have been hot in those tartan trews, but as always he was very entertaining, taking the mickey out of Messrs Franchitti and McNish in particular.

After the briefing there was a picture of all the British drivers in the race, plus some high profile former winners. I was chatting to Derek Bell and ACDC’s Brian Johnson who was competing in the wonderfully named 50+Predator/Alegra Daytona Prototype. He said to me, “Ah, Oliver Gavin! I’ve heard your name and seen your behind many times but never met you in the flesh.” It’s the first time my behind’s been talked about by a rock star!

At this particular race 75 per cent of the teams are catered for by one provider instead of having their own motor homes or catering units. ‘Marion’s’ consists of a large marquee with rows and rows of trestle tables and one large buffet. You’ll see everyone from Patrick Dempsey to Dario to Dixie, all queuing up with their mechanics to get their meals – quite a sight. If only Formula One could be like that.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

What a pleasure it was to watch Mike Shank’s team run a faultless race to win the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

It was the first major win for Shank’s burgeoning team and the first Daytona 24 Hour win in 13 years for Ford. It was also a great win for drivers Justin Wilson, AJ Allmendinger, Oswaldo Negri and John Pew, all of whom shared the delight of scoring the biggest victories of their careers.

Shank is a former driver who won the Formula Atlantic C2 Championship in 1996 before starting his team, first in Atlantic, then moving into the Grand-Am’s Daytona Prototype category in 2004. Shank’s cars have always been powered by Ford engines and they’ve been able to win three Grand-Am races over the last eight years and have challenged unsuccessfully to win at Daytona.

But this year Shank was ready with two of the new generation of Riley Mk XXVI-Fords. Both of his cars were in the hunt all the way and as the long night wore on Shank’s lead car, driven by Wilson/Allmendinger/Negri/Pew, established itself in front and over the race’s last half they were the men to beat. The strongest challenge came from Chip Ganassi’s lead Riley-BMW driven by last year’s winners Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas/Graham Rahal/Joey Hand, but Shank’s Ford-powered car was quicker on the banking and Pruett and his team-mates admitted it was going to be tough to beat Shank.

In the middle of the night Ganassi’s second car driven by Juan-Pablo Montoya/Dario Franchitti/Scott Dixon/Jamie McMurray fell out of contention because of a broken gear lever. Other leading lights to hit trouble included all four of the new Corvette Daytona Prototypes. Most notable of the Corvettes was Wayne Taylor’s car driven by Max Angelelli/Ryan Briscoe/Ricky Taylor and Bob Stalling’s Gainsco car driven by Alex Gurney/Jon Fogarty/Memo Gidley. Taylor’s car suffered a valve train failure after only a few hours while the Gainsco Corvette ran into trouble with a failed water pump and then a crash, which required a change of nose.

By the time the sun came up on Sunday morning only three cars remained on the lead lap – Shank’s and Ganassi’s number one cars and Starworks Motorsports’ lead Riley-Ford driven by Ryan Dalziel/Alan McNish/Lucas Luhr/Enzo Potolicchio/Alex Popow. The Starworks car started from pole and stayed on the lead lap all the way, eventually claiming second place when Pruett/Rojas/Rahal/Hand hit gearbox trouble. A long stop was required to change the Ganassi car’s gear stack, which lost four laps and dropped Pruett and his team-mates to sixth at the finish.

Meanwhile Allmendinger/Wilson/Negri/Pew ran the distance without any trouble or mistakes to score the biggest win of all their careers. Allmendinger brought the winning car home, driving the last three hours without relief and scoring his first win in five years, since departing Champ Car for NASCAR at the end of 2007. “It’s such a prestigious race,” Allmendinger said. “It’s one of those races you want on your résumé. It’s just amazing. I’m going to cherish it. This is the biggest win I’ve ever been a part of and those last three hours were some of most fun I’ve ever had in a race car.”

It was also a great accomplishment for Wilson who was driving his first race since breaking his back in an IndyCar accident at Mid-Ohio last August. “This is a tough race,” Justin said. “It was flat-out all the way. We gave it everything, every lap. That’s the way it has to be in order to be competitive and win this race. I’m really pleased for Mike and Ford, and the whole team.”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It’s been a while since Jaguar’s XJ220 debacle, but those involved at the time will never forget it.

In 1988 Jaguar showed a very beautiful concept car powered by a 48-valve V12 motor driving all four wheels. In the tertiary stage of Thatcher’s bull market, orders were not hard to find. But when the car went into production in 1993, it and the world were very different. It was not just the economy that had shrunk in the interim: the XJ220 was smaller, had lost its all-wheel drive and dropped half its cylinders. Ugly rumours that its V6 was based on that in the Metro 6R4 rally car abounded. Suddenly the £403,000 list price didn’t look so appealing after all.

It’s been almost 20 years since the XJ220 project turned sour, but it’s only now that Jaguar has felt able to offer a car for sale with a six-figure price tag. The XKR-S convertible is a very different kind of supercar to the XJ220, but, coincidentally or otherwise, has the same 542bhp and, at £103,000, is pushing the Jaguar brand back into a territory in which it has long feared to tread.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think the fast open sports car is a fundamentally flawed concept, but it should be said that this Jaguar has impressive answers for the inherent issues of structural weakness and refinement at speed. Besides, despite being Jaguar’s most sporting open car for many years and its pumped-up appearance, it’s still not a true sports car. It’s a sporting Grand Tourer whose ageing and tonsorially-challenged owners are unlikely to require it to deliver ultimate dynamic finesse. It’s more likely they’ll want it to be comfortable, fast and make a great noise.

Such buyers will not be disappointed. This is one of those rare rapid machines that is actually improved for the removal of its roof: the performance loss is negligible, the gain in automotive theatre palpable. Roof down, you can hear the 5-litre supercharged motor in all its glory. And if I tell you that even in North America, where the noise of a V8 is part of the soundtrack of daily life, that one blip of the throttle is enough to gain the undivided attention of an entire street, you’ll have a good understanding of this Jaguar’s simple but undeniable charms.

Factfile
Engine: 5.0 litres, eight cylinders, supercharged
Top Speed: 186mph (limited)
Price: £103,000
Power: 542bhp at 6500rpm
Fuel/co2: 23.0mpg, 292g/km
www.jaguar.co.uk

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I wonder if there is a single motoring journalist who has visited the launch of three new Porsche 911s.

It doesn’t seem like much of a claim for people who earn their living this way, but it is. I’ve been to two, but before this month the last had been in 1997. The third I missed on account of not having been born. In the little more than 48 years since Porsche revealed a 2+2 sports car at the 1963 Frankfurt Motorshow and called it the 901 (until Peugeot cried foul and forced a change in digit), the 911 has been modified hundreds of times, but only replaced twice.

So there is rather a lot riding on this, the 911 we must get used to identifying by its internal ‘991’ call sign. It’s an odd number considering its predecessor was coded ‘997’, but Porsche says it helped combat industrial espionage in the project’s early days. Hmm.

Had its enemies found out what Porsche was up to with this car, they might have been surprised. Of course the new 911 would still have a flat-six engine behind its rear axle, but the 100mm extension to the wheelbase and the adoption of electric power steering smacked of a word not normally included in the 911’s lexicon: conformity.

And that’s exactly how it feels. The characteristics that once would have been the last thing you’d notice about a 911 – if they were there at all – are now the first. You sit in a more spacious cabin and survey a landscape of elegantly crafted surfaces, thoughtfully positioned switches and an ergonomically optimised driving position. Crank the motor (which still sounds the same, thank goodness), pull the gear selector into drive (because very few manual versions will be sold despite the novelty factor of their seven forward gears) and ease away.

You’ll notice next how comfortably this car rides, and then, as your speed rises, how much quieter it is. I’m not sure where the tyre roar of old has gone, but gone it has.

You could drive it all day, all year or all your life like this. In the role of continental cruiser or daily driver, it gives little or nothing to the Audis, BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes that more traditionally play this role. There’s even a substantial amount of additional rear room, though it remains defiantly a 2+2.

This is exactly what Porsche has planned. There’s no car I’ve studied harder nor spent more time in than the 911, not just in my career but in my life. And I know the reasons most people buy a 911 and the reasons they would like others to think they bought a 911 are entirely distinct. However they would like to be perceived, the last car in the world most would want is one that behaved in archetypal 911 fashion, locking its brakes on the approach to a wet corner, indicating apparent terminal understeer on the way in and exhibiting actual irretrievable oversteer on the way out. What they are after is the intrepid image of the 911 driver without actually driving a 911.

Which is exactly what Porsche has provided. Goodness knows what you’d have to do to get into trouble in a 991 – certainly nothing I could throw at it during a full day of hard running in California’s Santa Ynez mountains ruffled its composure to any discernible degree. You could, of course, make it slide, and at either end, but if you turn the electronics off and try hard enough you could say the same of any rear-drive car. The point is that the car would do it only in reaction to deliberate and specific provocation. It could never happen inadvertently for there are no unforeseeable circumstances in which you’d happen to be driving with safety nets disabled, turn into a corner very fast on a trailing throttle, and then bang the throttle wide open. There are 15-grand hatchbacks that are trickier to drive on the limit than this.

At first I feared this might not be a good thing. Is a 911 with the challenge removed worthy of the name? Of course it is. Fact is, Porsche has been removing what is loosely thought of as ‘911-ness’ almost since the car’s birth. In the ’60s came the first of what have so far been three extensions to the original wheelbase.

The ’70s bought the high grip, low-profile tyre, the ’80s power steering and a quicker rack to help you arrest that fast-moving tail. But the real transformation came in the ’90s with the arrival of proper, wishbone-based rear suspension for the 993 series and traction control (and a yet longer wheelbase) for the 996. The last decade saw the introduction of Porsche Active Stability Management, which works less like a Get Out of Jail Free card and more like immunity from prosecution. It’s so good you’ll often be entirely unaware of how hard it’s working to save you from yourself.

The 991 takes this to the next logical level where it doesn’t need to get you out of trouble because, unless you’re insane or catastrophically unlucky, you’re never going to get into trouble in the first place. Of course the electronics are there, but only because the market commands that they are, not because the car needs them in anything other than freak emergencies.

I know this because I was so concerned that the process of domesticating the 911 had finally gone a step too far, that I resorted to some fairly base techniques to see if, under all that sleek sophistication, still beat the heart of the world’s greatest sports car. In short, it got thrashed.

It was a humbling experience. The limit of adhesion is now so high that driving it through a curve as quickly as it will go, you fear for the reactions of other road users – not because the car is sliding (it’s not), nor using an inch more road than it is entitled to (it doesn’t), but because it’s going so damn fast. And that steering, while not so garrulously communicative as 911 die-hards might like, makes every other electric steering system I’ve tried look nothing less than incompetent.

So the result is almost two cars in one. There is the very fast, all-purpose daily weapon whose suaveness and civility will enhance your commute to work or long motorway slog. Then, if you know where to look, there’s a hard-core driving machine which, for sheer point-to-point pace, is possibly as nuts as any earlier 911 and far more prejudicial to your licence and liberty. The car’s single biggest fault is that you have to search too hard to find this other side of its character, so hard that I fear many owners may never get to appreciate what an extraordinary machine they have bought.

What astounds me is that this is just the start. In time will come the Turbos, GT3s and, lordy me, even GT2 variants – each faster and more ferocious. But if you believe in starting as you mean to go on, it’s hard to see how Porsche could have done a much better job of replacing its icon than this.

Factfile
Engine: 3.8 litres, six cylinders
Top Speed: 189mph
Price: £81,202
Power: 395bhp at 7000rpm
Fuel/co2: 29.7mpg, 224g/km
www.porsche.co.uk

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Twenty-four years into my journalistic career and finally a story lands in my lap.

When my new neighbour expressed an interest in motor sport our conversation soon turned to her father’s racing of a modified Ford Escort at the old Kyalami.

During the recent festive break it was my pleasure to meet the man himself. We yarned about Rhodesian Gary ‘Socks’ Hocking – Howard was present at Durban’s Westmead in December 1962 when the 1961 350cc and 500cc world champion crashed a Lotus 24 with fatal consequences – and riffed on a wide variety of motor sporting obscuriana. At no time, however, did he mention his family’s part in a compelling racing-car mystery. His USA-based brother lobbed that grenade a week or two later, via email: Warwick Fitzwilliam is the last-known registered owner of the IGM-Ford.

This poor-man’s ‘Lotus 7’ was a homebrewed South African special. According to Warwick, its welding “was not up to expert quality” and its handling was “iffy on Dunlop racing tyres”. Yet it was touched by greatness: the poor man who designed it was Ian Gordon Murray, first link in the chain of thought and deed that connects Colin Chapman to Adrian Newey.

The inspiration behind those gorgeous Nelson Piquet Brabhams and peerless McLaren F1 supercar, Murray was studying engineering at Durban’s Technikon when that racing flame burning within ignited his gas welder.

“The IGM looked like it did because I used a Lotus 7 nose and wings; it was cheaper than making new moulds,” he says. “The frame was a lot lighter, more triangulated and stiffer than a 7’s. It was a completely different layout.”

It looked like a kit car but was in fact bespoke: “I bought a 1-litre 105E Anglia engine, made my own pistons and bored it to 84mm: 1073cc. Most people imported Mahle pistons and went out to 85mm – 1098cc – but I couldn’t afford to. Buying a pair of Weber 40DCOE carbs had broken the bank.

“I lightened some Consul conrods. Made my own camshafts. Reworked the cylinder head. Fitted Jaguar inlet and Peugeot exhaust valves. Made my own manifolds. And lightened the flywheel by much more than was reckoned safe by the British tuning magazines. They also said that you must fit a steel crankshaft to rev beyond 7500rpm. I used a standard cast crank. I reckoned that if you carefully balanced every part – reciprocating mass as well as rotating – you could get away with it. I did so to within a tenth of a gramme and revved to 8500rpm for two seasons with no problem.

“It only had 90bhp but the car was quick because it was so light: about 400kg. The only thing I didn’t touch was its four-speed Ford gearbox. I made my own fuel tank from 22-gauge steel, the suspension, even the seats. I learned to weld on that car. One of my crashes at the Roy Hesketh circuit was caused by poor welding.”

Murray met with considerable national success from 1967-68, winning his class at Roy Hesketh and at the Polly Shortts and Burman Drive hillclimbs. But when wealthier opponents began to import Elfins and Lotuses, he decided that it was time to move on. The IGM went swiftly through several pairs of hands after he relocated to England in 1969. Warwick bought it from a Durban lawyer in 1971 and set about a series of updates.

“Gordon had used a coat-hanger to weld with, and it showed,” he says. “I reskinned the body, replaced the windshield and front mudguards and lowered the headlamps.” He also extended the central facia so that it blended with the wide transmission tunnel. “The A-bracket locating the rear axle was worn, which made it tricky at the limit. Howard drove it too, but we never raced it. Gordon had learned a lot by the time he joined Brabham.”

The car was sold in 1972 – at which point its scent goes cold.

“I spent 15 years looking for it,” says Murray. He even flew to Cape Town to cast his eye over a contender for the title, but came away disappointed. “Eventually a lawyer friend of mine in Durban put a private detective on the case. He tracked down the documentation and we concluded that it had been written off and not rebuilt.”

There might now be another avenue to explore, however. Although Warwick has no record of the man who bought the car – the sale was made through an intermediary, racing driver John Rowe – he takes a different line on its possible fate and whereabouts.

“My feeling is that it’s in East London,” he says. “I saw it, circa 1975, in the back of a furniture-removal truck, the registration of which was prefixed CE for East London. That’s in Cape Province, a relatively remote area. If the car has since been sold, chances are that it would have been bought by other local enthusiasts.”

He has kept some of his telltale mods secret to obviate the creation of an unauthorised facsimile, and so hope still remains that Murray and the IGM will be reunited.

Should that occur, Murray – no doubt with much emotion – would be able to reaffix the hand-made badge that Warwick long ago prised from that discarded Lotus 7 nose and forwarded to him as a keepsake.

“I have the original hand-made steering wheel too,” says Murray, “and a large proportion of the original drawings. I’m considering building a replica and doing some historic racing before I get too old.”

See, badge engineering isn’t all bad.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Never exactly one to kowtow to convention, Patrick Head. But then great race engineers never are.

It’s written in their DNA to kick against established thinking as they search for ‘the next big thing’, the ‘unfair advantage’ – the clever techie breakthrough that might expose another grey area in the rules and exploit it to the maximum.

For over 30 years, such thinking has been the sole motivating factor in Patrick Head’s professional life at Williams Grand Prix Engineering. His contribution to the sport, from the eras of ground effects to turbos to ‘active ride’ and on into these days of ever more restrictive rules, has been immense.

And as he steps away from the F1 frontline to concentrate on the technologies of the future at Williams’ hybrid power offshoot, we acknowledge that contribution with a special celebration of an incredible career in the March issue of Motor Sport – including a mammoth ‘Lunch with’ interview that breaks our record for length. It’s a glorious monster!

Typically, Patrick breaks a few myths in the issue as he reflects on some of the high points of life at Williams. He’s written, especially for us, the definitive account of the ‘gizmo’-laden masterpiece and game-changer, the FW14B in which Nigel Mansell totally dominated Formula 1 during 1992. In terms of technical excellence, those days are considered a ‘golden era’ when Grand Prix racing broke through new boundaries – to the point where the rule-makers had to drag the designers back and ban their clever systems for the good of the sport. But Patrick rejects the ‘halcyon days’ theory.

“There were more freedoms within the regulations in those days but I would not call it a ‘golden period’ for engineers,” he writes (without frills, as you’d expect).

“I have heard the FW14B described as one of the most technologically advanced racing cars ever built but the technologies we see today are of a very high standard right across the field and things like KERS and DRS are still a strong engineering challenge.”

In other words, the idea that F1 was more advanced 20 years ago than it is today is a fallacy. F1 cars in 2012 are created to a tighter rulebook, but they are vastly more sophisticated than they ever have been. Even to the layman’s eye (in other words, mine!), our new photoshoot of FW14B emphasises just how far F1 cars have come, particularly in terms of packaging and aerodynamics.

But even if the current generation of cars are vastly superior pieces of engineering than those of the early 1990s, what cannot be denied is that they are far uglier. As Pat Symonds predicts in our most recent podcast, the 2012 cars won’t be remembered for their aesthetic qualities – as the first sight of the new Caterham F1 confirms (it’s all to do with new regs lowering the noses, but not the front bulkheads, as Pat explains here).

Back in the issue, Patrick also talks about the drivers he’s worked with over the years, and as I highlight in Matters of Moment, his matter-of-fact verdict on Mansell again challenges convention. Let’s just say his view would not have been shared by the late Peter Warr, whose posthumous autobiography is reviewed this month…

From Williams and the analysis of ‘active ride’, we make a seamless shift (geddit?) on to Lotus and the car where the system was pioneered. Andrew Frankel’s piece on Colin Chapman’s final F1 car, the Type 92, is fascinating and complements Patrick’s article perfectly. Firsthand insight from Peter Wright and Tim Densham tells the story of how Chapman once again found inspiration from an idea that would change everything – in this case long after he had departed…

Elsewhere, Nigel Roebuck talks to Martin Brundle about his controversial move from the BBC to Sky – in his words, like going from Manchester United to Manchester City. If you’ve leapt to conclusions about his decision, take the time to read his side of the story. It’s quite revealing.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this one. Part of me – a big part of me – resents having to pay Rupert Murdoch to watch F1. But I don’t resent having to pay for coverage per se, and I am intrigued by the plans Sky have for a dedicated channel. The BBC has done a great job, but I suspect the ‘evil empire’ is about to come up with a game-changer that is the TV equivalent of active ride…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

What is now known as the Rolex 24 Hours was founded 50 years ago as a three-hour race called the Daytona Continental.

The race was run over three hours in 1962 and ‘63, then extended to 12 hours in 1964 before becoming a 24-hour grind two years later. The first Daytona Continental in 1962 was won by Dan Gurney driving Frank Arciero’s Lotus-Climax 19 and he did it in memorable fashion, coasting beneath the chequered flag after his engine blew on the last lap.

Gurney first raced Arciero’s Lotus 19 near the end of 1961 in the LA Times Grand Prix at Riverside. He didn’t finish at Riverside but was second to Stirling Moss’s UDT-Laystall Lotus 19 at Laguna Seca the next weekend and scored his first win with Arciero’s 19 at Nassau in November. Dan was ready for Daytona in February of 1962.

The 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway opened in 1959 and was the first modern, high-banked super speedway in America. A 3.8-mile road course running through the infield, that used more than half of the banking, was ready to go in 1962 and Bill France Sr. went all out to attract a quality field for Daytona’s first sports car race.

A star-studded line-up arrived including a NART Ferrari 246SP driven by Phil Hill/Ricardo Rodriguez, a NART Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa for Rodriguez and Canadian Peter Ryan, Jim Hall and his front-engined Chaparral 1, Stirling Moss and Innes Ireland in Ferrari 250GTs, Pedro Rodriguez in another Lotus 19, Roger Penske in his own Cooper Monaco, Jim Clark in a Lotus Elite, plus American stars AJ Foyt, Fireball Roberts, Marvin Panch, Joe Weatherly, Rodger Ward, Walt Hansgen and Dick Rathmann.

While some teams used two drivers, Gurney drove Arciero’s 2.5-litre Climax-powered Lotus 19 alone. Near the end of the first three hours Dan was leading by almost two minutes only to have his engine fail on the final lap about three-quarters of a mile from the finish line. He coasted down the front straight and with great presence of mind stopped at the top of banking just short of the start/finish line, waiting for the starter to wave the chequered flag at the expiration of the three hours.

Gurney then turned the wheel and allowed his car to coast down the banking to win the race. Legend has it that he used the starter motor to cross the line but that’s not true.

“The engine blew pretty seriously and I thought a rod had probably gone through the block, so the starter motor wouldn’t have turned the engine,” Dan explains. “I just put it in neutral, then used the banking to let the car roll down and across the line.”

Phil Hill/Ricardo Rodriguez finished second aboard Luigi Chinetti’s Ferrari sports racer with Jim Hall’s Chaparral third and Stirling Moss taking fourth place in Chinetti’s Ferrari 250GT.

The following week Gurney made both his NASCAR stock car and oval racing debut in the Daytona 500 driving a Holman-Moody Ford. Dan was the first F1 driver to try NASCAR and would go on to win five NASCAR races at Riverside, his home road course. Jim Clark would follow Dan five years later, making a one-off outing in another Holman-Moody Ford at Rockingham, North Carolina in 1967.

Gurney finished fifth in his hundred-mile qualifying race, and was running with the leaders in the 500 before his engine blew. In spite of that disappointment he thoroughly enjoyed his first taste of NASCAR. “All the great names of NASCAR were there like Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts, Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Banjo Matthews and Lee Roy Yarbrough, and Smokey Yunick and Cotton Owens were big names among the car owners.

“The marques included Dodge and Plymouth, Ford and Mercury, Chevrolet and Pontiac, with Firestone and Goodyear both supplying tyres. It was plenty serious racing, no doubt about it.”

50 years later it’s a very different sport, but Gurney is still going!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

A moment of idleness turned into an interesting experiment last week.

Having succumbed some time ago to the somewhat dubious charms of Twitter I posted a tweet asking if a new supercar offering less power, but a better power to weight ratio than its predecessor would help or hinder its sales.

With one exception, everyone who posted a reply thought sales would be harmed. More interestingly, every one who expressed an opinion said they thought the car itself would be improved.

Now of course this might say as much about the curious kind of cove who thinks following my Twitter feed a worthwhile activity as it does about the future of the supercar, but it still got me thinking.
Are we really saying that people who buy supercars are more interested in a headline power figure than what the car is like to drive? Is the need to demonstrate that ‘mine really is bigger than yours’ so overwhelming they’ll happily accept a compromised car to achieve it? Certainly according to one small section of Twitter-literate car fans, that appears to be the case.

All manufacturers have been adding more weight and power to models

If this is true, those who feel that way cannot be blamed for it. The fault lies with car manufacturers and the people who help form opinions about the cars they make. Like me.

The incentive for a car manufacturer to make each successive sporting or supercar more powerful than the last is easy to see. Put bluntly, performance has to be seen to improve from one generation to the next and it is far easier, cheaper and commercially effective to do this by adding power rather than removing weight. But more power requires more control, which means beefed up suspension, brakes and bigger wheels and tyres. This not only adds weight but, crucially, adds it just where you don’t want it, as unsprung mass.

But can they really be blamed for providing what their customers tell them they want? Should we, the motoring media, not think a little harder before lavishing praise on a car whose weight has risen another 100kg to the detriment of every single area of dynamic endeavour save ride quality? Should the fact the 0-60mph time has fallen another couple of tenths only because even more power has been added really be seen as such an admirable, aspirational thing? I think not.

The good news is the ship is starting slowly to turn around. I can’t think of a mainstream manufacturer who’s recently launched a fast car with less power than the one before, but it seems that at least the ever-spiralling weight gain is in the process of being checked. Ferrari was the only manufacturer to spare the time to wade into my impromptu Twitter debate and while the next 599GTB will have over 700bhp (can you imagine how good that’s going to sound?) it is expected that the weight will remain the same.

But more needs to be done: sporting car manufacturers and car magazines, websites and television programmes should talk about weight first and power second, and make the power to weight ratio the figure the number owners want most to brag about in the pub.

I guarantee you this: the first supercar manufacturer who replaces, let us say, an 1800kg car with 600bhp with one weighing, say, 1650kg with just 570bhp will have a car that’s quicker to accelerate, slow down and corner, will use less fuel and emit less CO2 and which will, all other things being equal, be better to drive in every way that matters to every car enthusiast. Surely that has to be preferable to a bit more power?

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine