Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is one of the most important car events of the year. It attracts Formula 1 teams and drivers, fanatical historic racers and some of the most interesting cars to have ever graced a track, and everything in-between. Motor Sport was there with its video camera and spent the weekend chasing down some of the drivers…

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did…

Watch the video now (below) or watch it on YouTube

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The men from Ingolstadt were in sombre mood at the end of the 2008 Sebring 12 Hours. For the first time this century they failed to win. Worse still, it was the men from Stuttgart who were first to reach the chequered flag. It could have been worse, it could have been the men from France.

Yes, there were chinks in the Audi armour at Sebring. But it could have been worse, it could have been Le Mans.

There is much to be done before June. And it will be done. Words were not minced in the debrief on Saturday night, nor in those that followed on Sunday. On Monday morning they were back at the circuit, gearing up for a 12-hour test. There will be no rest.

“There were technical problems, ones we had never had before,” said Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, “and there were some driver errors. We had to change the front discs on one car – that’s never happened before. We had to change a turbo on the other car, and there were issues with the front suspension. All these problems came our way this weekend and there is already a full investigation into why this happened.”

When a car has a major problem at Sebring, it passes through the pits and “goes behind the wall” as they say down Florida way. When Marco Werner’s Audi went behind the wall, and into its paddock garage, I went to watch the mechanics go to work on changing the turbo on the engine’s right bank. After a few minutes I was aware of a person standing very close behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I came face to face with a man dressed in Peugeot fireproof overalls. This man proceeded to take a video camera from his pocket and record the surgery to the back of the R10, pausing only to jot some notes onto a small pad. The atmosphere was somewhat tense but he remained expressionless as he filmed over my shoulder. As soon as the work was done, and a swarm of mechanics began to re-fit the bodywork, the Frenchman sidled away. Espionage is alive and well. “It happens,” an engineer told me afterwards. “It is very open house in the paddock here and you can waste a lot of time and effort in trying to stop this kind of thing.” There were a lot of people working on that car, all highly focused on not losing too many laps. Maybe one extra person, looking at the onlookers, might just be a worthwhile idea.

Both Audi and Peugeot went to Sebring to try and break the cars ahead of Le Mans. And both teams succeeded. “If something is going to fail, it will fail at Sebring,” said Dr Ullrich. “It is the toughest race we do. So, we go away, we learn, and we get it right.”

And then, of course, there is Peugeot to worry about. The new car was very quick all week in Florida, not reliable, but very fast. The duel of the diesels – Audi TDI versus Peugeot HDI – is well and truly on. We are on the cusp of a classic battle in sports car racing. If both teams have reliability at La Sarthe in June, the race will be sensational.

On Friday, in the heat of the Sunshine State, the Peugeot was fastest in qualifying but was not awarded pole. What? How so? Well, the session was red-flagged after a huge shunt that damaged the concrete barriers that surround much of this airfield circuit. Nothing unusual so far. But then IMSA decided not to re-start, and instead of giving pole to the quickest car so far (Peugeot) they averaged out all the times from Thursday and Friday and it was the Audi of Allan McNish that came out on top. Had the qualifying run its course, the story may have been different, but probably not.

“There’s no question the Peugeot has outright speed over one lap,” said McNish, “and really they should have had pole. But we are confident of our race pace and our strategy. The battle is on, though, you’d better believe it, and we have work still to do.” He was right about the race pace. Despite losing time in the pits, McNish, Rinaldo Capello and Tom Kristensen climbed back through the field in the evening and into the night, taking second place behind the Penske Porsche, which ran like clockwork. The Peugeot led from the start but was soon in the garage, finishing this gruelling test of endurance many laps down on the leaders.

Sebring is a four-day party for the 100,000 fans who travel from all over the USA to make this event a most extraordinary happening. Camped out in tents and motorhomes, they make the Sebring infield their own for the best part of a week. It is surely the rowdiest and most bizarre motor racing party on the planet, smoke from the hundreds of barbecues drifting across the circuit, a cacophony of rock and country music sometimes drowning out the cars, and a lot of whooping and hollering from the rooftops of trucks, campers and enormous jeeps. This is down-home America. Forget Boston or Manhattan, this is party time down South. Creedence Clearwater Revival blasts out into the night, very scantily clad girls get them well revved up for the annual bikini contest, and there is beer, a very great deal of beer. “Helps ugly people have sex,” one fan told me. “There’s 24 cans in a pack, one for each hour of the day, man.” And in among this mayhem is a motor race. Down in the ‘zoo’ – otherwise known as Turn 10 – there is some serious frolicking, not all of it fully clothed. They have fun, these people, and they love their racing, especially the throaty roar of the Corvettes. They’re not so sure about the whooshing, whispering diesels and Peugeot fans seemed to be thin on the ground. “We hate the French, you know,” one group of ZZ Top lookalikes told me. Right, I see, I said.

Team Audi does not hate the French. But they do respect them right now. We are in for a very exciting Le Mans. The R10 will take a lot of beating – it is a supremely good racing car – but Peugeot is coming.

Sebring 2008, the 56th running of this classic contest, resulted in Hans Stuck, Derek Bell and Roger Penske being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Everybody was very happy about that. And Roger Penske was the happiest of them all on Saturday night.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The start of a new Grand Prix season is always a time for optimism. One tends to look forward to what lies ahead, not back on what has passed – which is just as well considering the events of 2007 in Formula 1.

But for all the sad controversy of the spy scandal, there was a lot to excite and inspire on track last season, and there’s the potential for more of the same this time around – hopefully without the off-track distractions.

In this month’s issue we focus on the F1 season with a bumper preview that includes profiles of all the teams and drivers. Meanwhile, Nigel Roebuck talks to Sir Jackie Stewart about what to expect, and as ever JYS is thought provoking and frank in his opinions. Stewart’s a signed-up fan of Lewis Hamilton, but that doesn’t mean he’s certain that the bright young star of last year is going to have everything his own way this time…

Aside from modern F1, there is plenty in this month’s issue to keep you entertained for the next month. Gordon Kirby’s exclusive Roger Penske interview on The Captain’s early career as a promising driver is not to be missed, and neither is Simon Taylor’s latest Lunch with… His guest this time? Alan Jones. Entertainment guaranteed, then.

Putting together Motor Sport every month is a joy, but sometimes there are tough decisions to make. Here’s an example.

When we heard Derek Bell planned to race in the Daytona 24 Hours one last time in what would be his final appearance in international motor sport we thought it was a ripe topic for a feature. So I commissioned Rob Widdows to speak to Derek after the race to talk through how it went and reminisce about his good times and bad times at ‘the other’ great 24-hour enduro.

Rob duly carried out the interview and filed an entertaining story in typically double-quick time. Unfortunately, the article had lost its relevance. Poor Derek had missed out on racing because the Riley-Pontiac he was supposed to drive retired early on. Deeply disappointing for the three-time Daytona winner – and a little bit frustrating for us. Without the ‘hook’ of the story, I couldn’t justify running it in the magazine.

But we’ve pieced it together from the cutting room floor for you to read online instead. It was too good to waste, after all.

I hope you enjoy Rob’s article – and this month’s magazine, too.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It all began with a telephone call from his son.

“Hey Dad, one of our drivers has pulled out, how about you come and drive with us? We’re testing next week, why don’t you come along?” said Justin Bell who was due to race a Riley-Pontiac for RVO Motorsports in the Daytona 24 Hours in January. His Father did not immediately accept the invitation.

“Well, it was tempting of course,” says Derek, “ but I’d been back home to England for Christmas, I’d had quite a lot to eat and drink and, although I’ve always kept in shape, I wasn’t sure about going to Daytona at the age of sixty-six in a car I’d never driven. Anyway, Justin persuaded me to go along to a test at the start of January and I first drove the thing at night which wasn’t exactly ideal.”

The initial test wasn’t all plain sailing, even for a man who has won eight twenty-four races, three of them at the Daytona speedway.

“Yes, I was a bit jet-lagged, I’d only just got back to Florida. And it was at night, it was cold, and I couldn’t get used to the sequential gearshift to begin with. I had problems changing down the gears with the paddle system, I was driving like an old woman, and I felt a bit depressed. The last time I’d used that kind of semi-automatic shift was in the Ferrari 333SP and that was about five years ago, so I was a bit all over the place. But the guys talked me through it and after a couple of days I was pretty much on the pace. I was loving the whole thing about being back in a competitive car, and being part of the whole scene again. The car is quick, you know, it’s got nearly 600 bhp and it’s quite tail-happy which keeps you on the ball. It was quite emotional and I was a bit mixed up in my own mind about what to do. So I had a chat with my wife Mistie,” he smiles, “and she said, ‘look honey, if you want to do it, do it,’ which was great, and typical of her. Then a few days later she said, ‘hey, sweetheart, do you really need to do this? It makes me a little nervous,’ and my young son Sebastian said, ‘ yeah, and it makes me feel nervous too Dad’. I understood that, with his big brother and his Father in the race, but I’d made up my mind to do one last big twenty-four hours. If it was back in the days when people were getting killed all the time, then I would almost certainly have stayed away.”

By this stage Derek had just three weeks to prepare for the race. He went to the gym, worked out a bit, got a new helmet and some new overalls, and started to get back into the routine.

“Don’t forget,” says Derek, “ I did race in 2007, I drove the Porsche 962 at Brian Redman’s event at Daytona and I beat Emerson Fittipaldi in a Toyota celebrity race, that was good. I always try to do the Goodwood Revival, too, after all it’s where I won my first ever race in a Lotus 7 in 1964 and it’s a wonderful circuit with some great memories. Then I drove the Bentley Le Mans car at Sears Point at the end of the year, and that was pretty physical, so I knew I was in good shape. In fact the doctors said I was absolutely fine, all the vital functions up to speed, you know. I mean, if I’d been out for a year or something then I probably would have said no to Justin for Daytona.”
There were to be five drivers in the RVO Riley-Pontiac – the Bells plus team owner Roger Schramm, a young Estonian called Tonis Kasemets, and Paul Dallenbach from the famous American dynasty of racing Dallenbachs.

“It sounds like a big crew,” says Derek, “ but Roger was only going to do some laps towards the end while all the younger guys would be doing double stints and I was really looking forward to one last twenty-four race, one last hurrah. We rented a big fifty-foot camper and set up home at the circuit, the families came down for the race weekend, and I felt pretty relaxed about it all, very calm about the whole thing. It’s hard, you know, to give it all up after forty-four years in a racing car.”
So, raceday came, and went. Just like that. And Derek never even got behind the wheel.

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, or something,” he laughs, “but I feel cheated and today, sitting at home, I do feel very disappointed, yes. I wanted to finish with one last big race, especially at Daytona, where I’ve won three times, but I’ve been here before and it was nobody’s fault.”

There was relief, however, that Justin had survived what could have been a very nasty accident and which resulted in the car being packed away.

“We were running well,” explains Derek, “I’d told everybody to keep out of trouble, stay out of the way, and only come in if you have to, just keep it going. We were up in ninth place and Justin was flashing down the back straight at over 180 mph when he felt a vibration. Before he could get it slowed, bang, a front disc exploded and bits of it came through the floor and went whizzing past his ear, it was pretty shattering. He arrived backwards into the chicane but gathered it all up and managed to pull off the circuit and get a tow back to the pits. The damage was just too bad to continue – the wheel and the disc had torn the front suspension out of the chassis and the floor was nearly worn through to the fuel tank – so it was just as well we had to stop. Disappointing, such a shame not to have even had a go.”

So, no more Le Mans, and now no more Daytona. But lots of great memories in the bag.

“God, yes, absolutely,” Derek grins, “I mean, now we live here in Boca Raton in Florida, the place is only a couple of hours down the highway and it’s a fantastic racetrack. It is now the mega place for racing in the States, great facilities, especially since the money came in from the NASCAR races. And the fans are fantastic, they love it, and they come and talk to you, know exactly who you are and what you’ve done. For me, Le Mans will always be number one, but Daytona is very special and the twenty-four hours there is a tough race to win. It’s very different, of course, from Le Mans – in many ways. At La Sarthe you’re on an eight-mile lap with fifty-five cars whereas at Daytona you’re on a lap of less than three miles with up to seventy cars. So the traffic is much harder work, twice as stressful, and it’s much more physical. You can pass on the Mulsanne at Le Mans, at least you could before they bastardised it with those two chicanes, and there’s more of a flow to the place. Before those silly new chicanes you could relax on the Mulsanne too, move your shoulders around, flex your wrists and relax some of the cramps in the muscles. At Daytona it’s all point and squirt, with lots of second gear corners, 90 mph corners, but second gear all the same. There are slower cars everywhere, so you can get badly held up on the infield – but then you can overtake on the banking. Both places call for tremendous discipline and stamina but I think Daytona is more challenging in some ways. All these 24-hour races are extremely demanding, whether it’s Le Mans or Daytona. I remember in 1987, at Daytona, I was sharing a Porsche 962 with Al Unser and Chip Robinson and one of the side windows had been sucked out, so the ventilation system was ruined and it was getting pretty uncomfortable. Al was sick, I had the cramps and Chip was totally knackered so we brought in Al Holbert, who’d been working as crew chief, and he took over for an hour and a half. In the end A.J Foyt, who’d been chasing us, blew his engine up and we had quite an easy victory. I really thought I wouldn’t be able to do the final stint that year. The masseur put me on a bed of ice and I had such bad cramps I couldn’t get back into my overalls for those last few laps, but then the guys told me I’m on in fifteen minutes, the adrenalin kicked in and somehow you jump back in and you’re racing again. Of course it does help if you are leading the race and you’re about an hour away from victory. In the days when the cars had loads of grip, you were really knackered, especially when it was just the two of you sharing a car like the Porsche 917 at Le Mans – you can do that race with two drivers – but it’s not an option at the speedway, three is essential.”

The scene of three victories, then, in 1986,’87 and ’89, but also the scene of an extremely close encounter with concrete, an encounter of the kind that was surely responsible for a few crags on the famous craggy features of the Le Mans legend.

“God, yes, I am the luckiest bastard alive,” he laughs now, but not at the time, “that was in 1990, we were running just outside the top three in the Porsche 962. It was during the night when the left rear tyre let go on the banking between turns three and four. I tell you, tyre failure on the banking at Daytona is something you can really do without. The car went straight into the wall and took off into the night. I always used to run high on the banking, close to the wall, just in case something like that happened. Anyway, the front end went up in the air and that was it – we just flew upside down for a very long way. There were guys racing underneath me while I was flying…….. then it landed on its tail on the concrete apron by the pits. It seemed to slide for ever on its roof, my helmet was wearing through on the concrete, then it stopped. I could hear liquid trickling around somewhere, and I could smell petrol, so I released the belts and banged the fire extinguisher button quick as I could. The problem then was that the gas extinguisher sucked all the air out of the cockpit – and all the air out of me too – so I passed out. Boy, I tell you, I was lucky that time. But I have great memories of the speedway at Daytona and I just wish I could have started that one last race at the place.”

So, that’s it then, is it? Has Derek Bell finally retired? Again.

“ Well, um, yes, but…………well, look, for now it’s over, yes. But I’ve thought it was all over before. I’ve never, you know, officially retired because it’s just so hard to do. I always said that I would never do Le Mans again and there’s a thousand youngsters out there wanting to have a go, prepared to pay for a drive. I have never, and will never, race for nothing. Who knows, if I get another offer I can’t refuse……………..you forget how much you love it until you get back in the car.”

To translate that response, Derek Bell will definitely probably retire. Maybe. Remember, he first started talking about retirement at the end of 1988, the year before he took his third victory at Daytona. At the time he said he hoped he would be able to stop sensibly, not make a “bloody idiot” of himself, not become some old fogey in a blazer.

So far, so good, then.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I went to Littlehampton this week, a little town by the sea that has many good memories for me.

At the beginning of my journalistic career I spent three years as a reporter on the Littlehampton Gazette, now called the Arun Gazette, presumably in deference to the River Arun which flows through the town and out into the sea. Or it may be that Littlehampton is governed by Arun District Council whose ugly modern headquarters is in the town itself. It’s a funny place, run down like so many of our seaside towns, and yet it aspires to something more sophisticated. The Body Shop is here, its not-so-ugly headquarters employing a great many local people. Anita Roddick was a Littlehampton woman and borrowed the money to start her business from the man who ran Rowe’s garage on the edge of town. And there is a wacky new café down by the beach, lots of expensive new houses along the east bank of the river and then there’s Littlehampton Welding, a company with an international reputation for its ability to make and assemble huge steel structures. They are largely responsible, among many other projects, for the Gerry Judah-designed central displays at the nearby Goodwood Festival of Speed.

I went to Littlehampton to see Mike Earle, a man who’s forgotten more about motor racing than most of us have ever known. We’ve been friends since 1977, when Mike was running David Purley’s LEC Grand Prix team out of a shed by the railway line next to the Purley family’s refrigeration company just up the road in Bognor Regis. Before that, he looked after Derek Bell, and after that he took his Onyx Formula 3000 team into Grand Prix racing with backing from Moneytron. There’s not much he hasn’t done. These days Mike is closely involved with Zytek, his Arena International Motorsport team running a car at Le Mans each summer, and he’s been guiding the career of young Max Chilton in Formula Three.

This little enclave on the Sussex coast was once the hunting ground of no less than three motor racing heroes – David Purley, of course, Derek Bell and John Watson, both of whom lived in nearby Pagham. While Derek has moved to Florida and John has moved to Oxford, Mike has stayed in Littlehampton where he continues to run his immaculate racing team, the workshops and the trucks sparkling in the February sunshine.

I had a letter recently from a reader who wanted more stories about David Purley in the magazine. I will speak to the Editor. Meanwhile Mike Earle should be writing his autobiography. Maybe I’ll lend him my spare tape recorder.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine