Where is the best place to chew the cud on the 2010 Grand Prix season? In the office? Too dull – naturally, it’s where we talk motor racing every day. A plush restaurant? That’s Simon Taylor’s territory, surely! So how about the local pub? Now that’s more like it!

The Chelsea Ram is Motor Sport’s regular watering hole, and the perfect place to blot out the realities of economic meltdown and a freezing British winter to concentrate on what really matters. And no, I don’t just mean beer.

To give our pub debate some structure – and thus ensure our natter was actually of some use for the magazine’s pages – we picked on the major themes of the season and began talking. You won’t be surprised to hear that editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck led the discussion and made the best stab at putting the season past into some sort of context, while Rob Widdows, Ed Foster and yours truly chipped in here and there. There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours and we enjoyed looking back at the past year in Formula 1, the result forming the backbone of the January issue, on sale now. Do let us know if you think the beer was talking too much!

Deserving World Champion Sebastian Vettel graces the cover, but the young German’s image will be vying for attention with a very special giveaway this month. We’ve compiled an audio CD of our podcast ‘chat shows’ that have been gaining a growing audience on our website over the past year, and it’s free with the January issue. The list of guests we have pulled in to join us in 2010 is a role call of the great and the good: Mario Andretti, Brian Redman, Damon Hill, Patrick Head, Christian Horner, Sir Stirling Moss, Tom Kristensen, Jochen Mass, Bobby Rahal, Martin Brundle, Emanuele Pirro and Richard Attwood all feature in this ‘best of’ compilation. Each time we pressed the record button, the stories flowed and all the guests got into the true spirit of things here at Motor Sport: in other words, saying exactly what they think on any given subject.

We hope the CD is an added bonus to complement another varied issue of the magazine. Other features this month include Simon Taylor’s lunch with David Hobbs – a man who drove a huge variety of great racing cars during a 30-year career on both sides of the pond; Eoin Young’s memories of meeting Jim Clark for the first time at the Wigram Trophy meeting of 1961; a fond recollection of the F1 team that raced in ‘British Racing Brown’ – the privateer heroes at Hexagon Racing; and a fascinating inside story on NASCAR from an old hand of F1.

I should also mention that we bid farewell to our special guest columnist this month. For the past year Bobby Rahal has brought us snapshots of his fascinating and varied life in racing, for which we thank him and wish him all the best for a successful 2011. Tune in next month to welcome our new guest columnist, who will bring his own unique perspective to our pages as we head into a new racing season.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

We know you’ve been waiting longer than usual for the next audio podcast, but I think you’ll agree this one’s worth waiting for. We gathered in the Drivers Mess at the Goodwood Revival and chatted to Stirling Moss, Bobby Rahal, Martin Brundle, Tom Kristensen, Richard Attwood, Jochen Mass, Emanuele Pirro, Christian Horner and Adrian Newey. Quite a line up…

We hope you enjoy it.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Through a bizarre run of events I found myself driving in Johnny Herbert’s Charity Karting event at the Docklands Raceway last Sunday. This may not seem too strange, but the fact that I’d be driving for team ‘Made in Italy 3.0’ certainly was – it was headed by Riccardo Patrese and two of Emanuele Pirro’s cousins, Geronimo Pirro and Iacopo Canino.

Andrea Colombo, who had very kindly asked me to join them, assured me it was all a bit of fun. However, after qualifying we were sitting on the front row of the grid alongside ‘Pasha Rebels’, a team made up entirely of kids who weighed less than seven stone – combined – and all raced in Tony Kart. It turns out that ‘Made in Italy 3.0’ was very quick. Especially Iacopo, who ended up posting the second fastest lap of the race.

Usually this would be cause for huge celebration, but having only done about seven laps of the track in practice I was, to say the least, fairly apprehensive. The team had never made it to the podium after five years of bad luck, and if I turned out to be the weak cog in what seemed like a team of Schumacher’s offspring, I’d be lynched.

After about 20 minutes of running we were in third place and all was looking rosy until the go-kart broke. Third became fifth, which soon became 10th, then 15th and finally last, as the team at The Raceway replaced our machine. They kindly allowed us to rejoin where we were when it had broken, which bizarrely turned out to be 12th place. We were in for a long two-and-a-quarter hours of making up time.

Thanks to some quite amazing stints from Guido Nola, Simone Patrese, Iacopo, Andrea and Geronimo, we made it back into podium contention. My stint consisted of being stuck behind someone for six or seven laps, but thankfully once past I managed to get the lap time down to something respectable. I hope.

In the end Riccardo didn’t take part in the race after deciding to hand over driving duties to Iacopo for the final stint. Even though he had made the trip over from Italy especially for the event, he was happy with how things stood. The competitive spirit never quite dies…

“The race gets more and more competitive every year,” said Johnny after grabbing me to have a photo taken beside him – apparently my 6ft 7ins frame looks quite amusing next to his… “But everyone enjoys it and it does raise money for some great causes.”

Raise money it does and this year’s charity, The Harry Birrell Scholarship Trust, will no doubt be better off thanks to the ex-Formula 1 driver’s efforts.

It may cost £750 per team to enter, but by the time you’ve split that between all the drivers it is one of the best value races out there. What’s more, you also get the opportunity to punt the likes of Anthony Davidson into the barriers. I’m really sorry Ant; I didn’t know it was you.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine