Ferrari's biggest problem: The wrong driver keeps winning
Waking up at 4am on a Sunday is rarely worth it, especially when Max Verstappen looks poised to take another lights out to chequered flag victory — as he did…
We were saddened to hear of the death of Erik Carlsson – one of rallying’s all-time greats – today. Here we re-post Richard Heseltine’s 2010 feature with ‘Mr Saab’
You have to feel for the kid, although judging by the age of the photo he’s probably in his fifties by now. “They were mad Saab fans from Belgium,” recalls rally deity Erik Carlsson, surveying the sepia-tinged image of a beaming couple. “I remember them because they had named their son Carlsson. It was his first name.” He dispatches this anecdote without additional comment, save for a “ja, ja” delivered in his wonderful sing-song Swedish lilt. This isn’t even the strangest case of fan fervour he’s ever encountered, but for a legion of the marque faithful Carlsson is a god. The title of his biography is Mr Saab, after all.
Few drivers spend their entire career with one make. It’s rarer still that they’re employed by that same manufacturer as they enter their ninth decade. Straining to get comfortable in his armchair, photograph albums stacked high at his side, he still looks much the same as he did in his heyday. The hair is thinner, his eyes magnified slightly behind thick-framed glasses, but his broad shoulders and wide girth render him instantly recognisable. Carlsson is a bulwark of a man, his size at odds with the cars he drove: with one exception, he only ever rallied Saabs. “I tried a Volkswagen Beetle once but I didn’t like it. The clutch broke,” he says dismissively.
Waking up at 4am on a Sunday is rarely worth it, especially when Max Verstappen looks poised to take another lights out to chequered flag victory — as he did…
Should there be a new prize for a team finishing sixth in the championship – just like the Jim Clark Trophy in the good old turbo times?
Sebastian Vettel is set to test a Porsche 963 Hypercar, having already been linked with a Le Mans drive. But would his return really add that much to the world of racing?
Political disasters, intra-team infighting, driver market reshuffles, DRS trains, horrific regimes – F1 just needed an actual good race for the win in Saudi and it was all set