Do you remember where you were the day Ayrton Senna died? I bet you do. For motor racing fans, May 1 1994 is a ‘JFK moment’. Older readers vividly recall where they were on April 7 1968 and how they heard Jimmy Clark was gone. For younger generations, Senna’s death reverberated to the same shattering degree.

That May Day, I’d returned home from university for a family function. We had to leave the house during the race, but I knew there’d be time to watch the opening laps from Imola before I’d be dragged away.

In the wake of Roland Ratzenberger’s death the day before, not to mention Rubens Barrichello’s lucky escape on Friday, the tension of that weekend transported itself over the airwaves. You didn’t have to be in Imola to sense the unease felt by everyone in the Formula 1 world.

Images of the startline shunt, when Pedro Lamy’s Lotus slammed into the back of JJ Lehto’s stalled Benetton, remain vivid. It was immediately clear that spectators must have been hurt as debris landed in the grandstand. The weekend was turning into F1’s worst nightmare, but none of us could have guessed at the seismic shock that was to come.

The laps under the safety car, the aggressive attitude of Senna’s Williams as he tore away at the restart – and then the moment he hit the wall. I’d sat in the same living room five years earlier when Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari burst into flames at Tamburello, and apart from some burns to his hands, he’d been all right. Senna would be too – wouldn’t he?

The shots from the chopper hovering over the wreck live with all of us who love this sport. ‘Damn, a third win on the bounce for that bloody Schumacher’ – that was my first thought. Senna would really have his work cut out to claw back the championship now. And then the moment of realisation, as the camera panned in on the yellow helmet slumped in the cockpit.

Thankfully, the BBC cut away from the scene – and I had to cut away from the TV to join my family function. But I couldn’t really focus on anything on that sunny afternoon. From those helicopter images, I feared the worst. So this is what it was like to be a racing fan in the 1960s and ’70s…

I heard the news from Radio 5 Live later that evening. This was strange. Of course, apart from getting his autograph when I was 10 and watching him among the masses at various British GPs, I’d never had any personal contact with this man. So what right did I have to be experiencing symptoms of grief? On my return to uni the next day, I found my friends treated with me kid gloves for a while. I wasn’t even what you’d describe as a Senna fan – but the manner of his loss, and that of Ratzenberger too, shook those of us not old enough to remember the days of Clark, Rindt, Cevert, Williamson – and so on…

Today, Senna is far from forgotten. His legacy still looms large over Formula 1, which is why the release of the new Senna movie is such a major event. It helps that the film also happens to be breathtaking.

As Adam Cooper describes in his ‘making of’ story in the August issue of Motor Sport, the movie is so much more than the sort of TV documentary that pops up on BBC2 from time to time. Senna, which is released in the UK on June 3, is a stunning cinematic experience and I’d urge you to catch it on a big screen rather than wait for the DVD.

As Nigel Roebuck describes in our issue, those lucky enough to gain first-hand experience of the man discovered a character so much more complex than any film could hope to show. It does not – and cannot – tell the whole story, and Alain Prost fans might feel it is unfair. Yes, it is solely made up of fabulous archive footage, much of it never seen before – but this isn’t supposed to be a documentary, retelling history to the letter. It is a pure movie, and it’s a monumental achievement.

David Coulthard had the daunting task of taking Senna’s place at Williams. He meets Simon Taylor for lunch in the August issue and describes the experiences of 1994 from his unique perspective. In his early days in F1, Coulthard earned a reputation for being something of a PR robot in interviews. It was always an unfair tag. Coulthard took his job seriously and was the professional archetype, but he was – as he remains – frank, honest and very funny. And there were moments in his career of extreme bravery, too: surviving an air crash on a Tuesday and finishing second in the Spanish Grand Prix the following Sunday will always be my personal stand-out memory of his long career. His poise and stoicism that weekend was deeply remarkable.

Elsewhere in the issue, Eoin Young changes the pace with his entertaining diary tales of his first season in Europe, lived through 50 years ago this summer, and we’re particularly delighted to print some rare colour photographs of Le Mans in 1959 and ’60. They took our breath away when we first saw them. I hope they’ll have the same impact on you.

Enjoy the issue.

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Testing, testing, one-two-three. We are now in the midst of the fourth and final pre-season Formula 1 test at the Catalunya circuit in southern Spain, where it has been unusually grey and chilly. This is the test that should have been in hot and dusty Bahrain…

Pre-season testing can, as we have so often seen over the years, be not only inconclusive but also misleading. This is because there is always a certain amount of smoke and mirrors, some deliberate sandbagging and insufficient accurate information forthcoming on fuel loads and set-ups.

And this year, we should remember, we are dealing with totally new tyre compounds from Pirelli, which has not yet got a race under its belt in any kind of climate. Rubber is likely to be a major factor in early 2011.

Popular opinion – and many engineers agree – is that we are going to see a lot more tyre degradation in the early races than we have previously been used to. Three pitstops are predicted, some saying more, especially if the weather is hot, the surface abrasive. Added to this unknown we have KERS, moveable rear wings and new cars to consider.

Logic says that Red Bull will the early pacesetters, and so it proved on Tuesday in Spain, with Mark Webber (above) top of the timesheets from Jenson Button – by some margin. This does not mean Red Bull is going to disappear into the distance at Melbourne on March 27, but simply that on March 8 the new Red Bull was more sorted than the new McLaren. And that’s no surprise at this stage. In an era when aerodynamics is key, you can expect an Adrian Newey-designed car to be at or near the top of the times.

What will be in many ways more interesting to see is how the two most radical cars shape up against the rest. These are the Williams (below), with its radical rear end and new transmission, and the Lotus-Renault, with its forward-facing exhaust system. If either of these two risky design ideas prove to be the way to go, then the others will have to follow suit, just as we saw two years ago with the Brawn’s double diffuser, when Button’s pre-season testing pace had alarm bells ringing right down the pitlane.

This year we have seen no such clear advantage, although Red Bull is predictably fast. Not far behind is Ferrari, smarting from its title defeat in Abu Dhabi. All Grand Prix teams of any stature play their cards close to their chests, saving their best until the first afternoon of qualifying. And, just to complicate matters, testing is not what it used to be.

In days gone by there was virtually unlimited mileage, the teams under no pressure to get it all sorted in just four short sessions in February and March. And there’s another difference. Test drivers, or reserve drivers as they are now known, have to get some mileage now or never, whereas before they could do their testing while the teams were away racing. And this means – as we have seen in Spain – lots of new, young drivers being given time in the cars when, in a perfect world, they’d be waiting until the race drivers went away to race.

So, we should not be surprised if Red Bull, Ferrari – and possibly McLaren – are at the front of the grid in Melbourne. Button (above) says we should not expect too much, that the car is not the equal of Red Bull or Ferrari, and they don’t have time to catch up before the end of the month. Bad news for McLaren fans.

Oh yes, and we also know that Mercedes-Benz has a great deal of work to do if Schumacher and Rosberg are to be anywhere near the podium. Unless, of course, Mr Brawn has been keeping something up his sleeve…

So end the ifs, buts and maybes. Soon it will be time to race…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Ahead of our Hall of Fame event next Tuesday (February 15), the Motor Sport team sent out a survey to everyone registered on our website.

Usually these things are well beyond my pay grade, but this time I managed to get a quick glimpse of the results. Some were quite predictable – Jim Clark was voted the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time ahead of Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio – but others weren’t.

Here are some of the results…

Which is the most memorable F1 car of all time?

1)    Lotus 72
2)    Maserati 250F
3)    1988 McLaren MP4-4

What was the best ever rivalry between F1 drivers?

1)    Alain Prost vs Ayrton Senna (with a staggering 68.5 per cent of the vote)
2)    James Hunt vs Niki Lauda
3)    Juan Manuel Fangio vs Sir Stirling Moss

Which circuit in 2011 do you expect to produce the most exciting F1 race?

1)    Spa-Francorchamps
2)    Silverstone
3)    Montréal

Which will be the most improved team on the F1 grid in 2011?

1)    Mercedes
2)    Williams
3)    Lotus (quite a good call, although even if its cars are comparatively three seconds a lap faster than they were at the end of last season they’ll still be a second off the pace)

Out of the rookie drivers new to F1 for 2011, who do you think will excel?
1)    Paul di Resta (should be right on the pace)
2)    Pastor Maldonado
3)    Sergio Pérez

Which team do you think will be the main contender for the constructors’ title in 2011?

1)    Red Bull
2)    McLaren
3)    Ferrari

Which driver would you tip to win the 2011 drivers’ championship?

1)    Fernando Alonso (with the above answer in mind, it doesn’t say much for everyone’s view on Massa!)
2)    Lewis Hamilton
3)    Sebastian Vettel

So there you have it. What are your thoughts? Do these answers really represent what you think?

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Steve Soper never used to be the friendliest of racing drivers. The first time I met him was at the Sebring 12 Hours in 1999, when he was racing a BMW V12 LM sports prototype for wealthy amateur Thomas Bscher. As first encounters go, it wasn’t the best.

As a child of the 1980s, Soper had always been a bit of a hero to me. Here was a Brit who’d been schooled in the rough-and-tumble world of British saloon car racing, taking on – and beating – the cream of Europe in the exotic DTM. We’re used to it these days, thanks to the likes of Gary Paffett and Paul di Resta, but Soper’s exploits abroad back then marked him out as special. Whenever he returned to the BTCC, as trouble-shooting team-mate to Tim Harvey in 1992 and full-time with the crack Schnitzer squad the following year, he carried an air of authority and intimidating quality. Everyone knew Soper was an A-list draw, the man they all wanted to beat.

He continued to carry some of that power into sports cars, but at Sebring in ’99 things had not gone well. The story goes that team manager Dave Price got on the radio to warn him of a full-course yellow, that someone had gone off. “I know,” said Steve. “It’s me.” He’d smacked the BMW into the concrete wall at the final corner.

Now, as Autosport’s race reporter I had to go and ask him what had happened, cursing that I hadn’t introduced myself before the race. I approached him with plenty of trepidation, only too aware of his prickly reputation – plus it’s never a good time to talk to a driver when they’ve just stuffed it.

“Steve,-I’m-Damien-Smith-from-Autosport,-glad-to-see-you’re-OK,-can-you-tell-me-what-happened-please?” I blurted. He didn’t even look at me. “I crashed,” he replied flatly, then turned on his heel and stalked away. Oh dear. So much for bringing the reader that exclusive one-on-one insight.

I told him about our unfortunate encounter recently when we met at a BMW dinner where the marque launched its new UK ‘Classic’ arm. “I’m sorry about that,” he said with a wry smile. “I wasn’t always the easiest of racing drivers to deal with.”

He’s different now. Today, he sells cars for BMW as a respected dealer, and he has definitely mellowed. You can still sense the old intensity below the surface, but he is engaging, friendly and clearly very relaxed with his legacy as one of the great touring car legends. He said he’d be happy to help if we had any feature ideas for the magazine – so we took him up on it!

At a cold and windy Brands Hatch in November, BMW helped us gather three classic racers from three very different eras: the modern 320Si which races in the World Touring Car Championship, a Bigazzi M3 from the heart of Soper-era DTM and a fabulously botoxed CSL ‘Batmobile’ from the 1970s. We then teamed Steve with Britain’s modern-day BMW tin-top hero, triple World Champion Andy Priaulx – who came straight off a plane from Macau – to join him for our test and compare notes.

As you can read in Gordon Cruickshank’s excellent story in the March issue, Soper and Priaulx have a bit of shared history and get on well. They thoroughly enjoyed swapping mounts for the day – and trying something completely different in the form of the Batmobile. So two genuine stars of the touring car world who together span over 30 years of frontline action, three of the finest Munich ‘road rockets’ and Britain’s best-loved race track: it’s a heady mix.

Elsewhere in the March issue, Adam Cooper pays tribute to another touring car ace, Tom Walkinshaw – who of course went on to greater acclaim as the man who made Jaguar a force once again at Le Mans, and helped Michael Schumacher to his first F1 world title at Benetton. Tom died of cancer in December and Adam’s profile of this complex man frames his career in perfect perspective.

Ed Foster meets Dany Bahar and Claudio Berro, the men behind the revolution currently taking place at Lotus; Simon Taylor has lunch with two-time Le Mans winner and, er, BMX World Champion Alex Wurz; Rob Widdows interviews veteran team boss Mike Earle; and I get to meet the charismatic – and eccentric – Italian hero of the 1970s, Arturo Merzario. Reuniting motor racing’s very own ‘Marlboro Man’ with the car he raced for Frank Williams in 1974 and ’75 was a real treat, if a little nerve-wracking…

Finally, if you usually skip over my Matters of Moment editorial (and I don’t blame you if you do!) you might miss the chance to enter a special competition. So allow me to tell you about it here. We’re offering five tickets (plus a guest each) to our exclusive Motor Sport Hall of Fame event, to be held at the Roundhouse in London on February 15. The evening is sure to be one to remember, so click here to answer a simple question and give yourself a chance of being there on the night. Hopefully, I’ll see you there!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I had the pleasure of talking to Jim Hall of Chaparral fame recently. The tall Texan built and raced some of the sport’s most appealing and ground-breaking cars, and went on to run successful teams in America’s Formula 5000 championship and in CART, winning titles in both categories and the Indy 500 in 1978 and ‘80 with Al Unser and Johnny Rutherford respectively.

Hall is one of those rare people who have been successful as a driver, car builder and team owner. He also created a legend with his white Chaparrals, and at 75 he is sharp as a whip and able to recall many details from days long ago. I’m writing a story for the magazine to appear later this year about Hall’s many achievements and didn’t have room for the following stories about his first laps around the Nürburgring, so I thought I’d share them with you.

In 1963 Hall lived in the UK for most of the year and raced a Formula 1 Lotus-BRM for the BRP team. At the end of the year he returned home to Texas to launch the revolutionary Chaparral 2 Can-Am car and focused on racing in America until his driving career came to an end, following a leg-breaking accident at the end of the ’68 Can-Am season.

Hall’s best result from his year in F1 was fifth place in the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, and he’s proud of making it through his first and only race on the legendary Nordschleife without a single mistake. Big Jim spent most of the week prior to the race flogging his Mini-Cooper around the track, trying to learn it as best he could. He also enjoyed contrasting lessons from some of the F1 aces of the time – Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Richie Ginther and Lorenzo Bandini.

“At the Nürburgring I ran into Richie, Phil and Dan,” Hall recalled. “They were in a big black Mercedes and they said they were going to go around the Nürburgring and asked me to join them. I said, ‘Wow, that would be great.’ So I went with them and got to see each one of them drive a lap. That was a real lesson. They all had a lot of ability, they were all different and I got to see all three of them do it. That was pretty exciting.

“When I first showed up at the ‘Ring I stopped at the Sport Hotel and walked in and Bandini was there with his girlfriend. I was a new guy and he looked at me and said, ‘You want to go round?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ He was in a little Alfa Guiletta that had about a halfway back seat. I had to sit sideways in it. So his girlfriend got in the passenger seat and he got in the driver’s seat and off we went, and I can’t tell you how frightened I was! Maybe that was his intent.

“I was all cooped up in the back of this little car and we’re going around there so damn fast, and I had no idea which way the turns went or whether he was on the right or wrong side of the road. It was quite an experience for my first lap around there.”

Hall went on to finish the race in the points, and three years later his Chaparral 2D long-distance sports/racer won the Nürburgring 1000Kms with Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier driving. It’s one of Hall’s proudest achievements.

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As Fernando Alonso chased Nico Hulkenberg in the early stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix, it was apparent that on the long climb at the end of the lap the Ferrari was making little impression on the Williams, and you had to be impressed by what Cosworth has achieved this season. Rubens Barrichello suggests that ‘driveability’ isn’t all it might be, but on horsepower – so long as the engine is reasonably fresh, anyway – it apparently lacks for little. Pretty impressive, you’d have to say, for what is supposedly a ‘customer’ engine, supplied to four teams: whatever else Lotus, Virgin and HRT have been short of in their debut season, it hasn’t been grunt.

Alonso found himself in the unusual position of chasing Hulkenberg because the young German – although swiftly dispensed with by the Red Bulls – had succeeded in putting his Williams on pole, and it was pleasing that this should have occurred at Interlagos, where the team’s last victory – by Juan Pablo Montoya – was scored six long years ago.

The manner in which Hulkenberg achieved his pole position reminded me rather of qualifying for the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in 1975, when Jody Scheckter – in freezing conditions – threw his Tyrrell around with such vigour that he alone got decent temperature into his tyres, and achieved a time no one else could approach. In the case of Hulkenberg, a wet Interlagos was drying out by the end of qualifying, and he – one of the first out on slicks – drove as quick an out-lap as he dared, got his tyres up to temperature, and went for it, setting a time more than a second faster even than the Red Bulls.

As we saw so often in the season past, Adrian Newey’s wonder cars duly waltzed it in the race, but Alonso wasn’t very far behind Webber at the flag, and might have been able to exert a little more pressure had he not lost a significant amount of time behind Hulkenberg in the early laps. The importance of qualifying is perhaps even greater today than at any point in the past.
Most would agree, I think, that on many occasions in this era of Formula 1 the highlight of the weekend – in terms of excitement – is Q3, that final 10-minute period when only the 10 fastest cars are out, and the track is relatively uncluttered. Since refuelling was dropped, thank God, so the need to ‘qualify with fuel for the first stint of the race’ has gone with it, and thus the cars are in pure, ultra-light ‘qualifying spec’.

Think of Singapore. Alonso stole that race from the faster Red Bull of Vettel because he drove a perfect qualifying lap, and Sebastian, heading for pole on his final run, lightly clipped a guardrail. That meant starting second, and although he pressured Fernando for the entire race, second was where he finished, too. Saturday, in other words, decided Sunday, and often it has been that way because overtaking, as we know, is extremely difficult with F1 cars of the contemporary era.

The top six drivers in the 2010 World Championship represented three teams. At Red Bull, Vettel out-qualified Webber 12-7, at McLaren Hamilton beat Button 14-5, and at Ferrari Alonso was ahead of Massa 15-4. Ten times Vettel started from pole, followed by Webber (five), Alonso (two) and Hamilton and Hulkenberg (one apiece).

No wonder the young man looked so gratified in Brazil. It’s a tragedy that financial considerations – Hulkenberg isn’t loaded down with personal sponsorship – have obliged Williams to part with him, but Nico will surely get a drive elsewhere for 2011. Most drivers, after all, go through an entire F1 career without once starting from the front.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show on Thursday that Lotus would build engines for the IZOD IndyCar Series’ new 2012 formula. Few details were revealed at the announcement, including who will design and build the engine, although Bahar’s comments suggest Lotus would do the work on its own without a partner like Cosworth.

“What we’re trying to do with the Lotus brand is leverage our heritage, which is all about motor racing,” he said. “We’re taking racing seriously. We don’t just want to put a sticker on a car that we did not have an interest in building. We want to fight with the big guys.

“We started this year with a very small activity with Takuma Sato in the KV Technology team. It was just one car to understand Indycar racing. It was an opportunity for us to become a real contender. The series is developing well and I think it fits perfectly with our abilities and strategy in the US, which is our biggest market.

“So we took the decision to build our own engine. By doing that we are going to be the underdogs fighting Chevy and Honda. But that’s fine. It’s all about competition.”

Bahar confirmed that Lotus would develop its own ‘aero kit’ for 2012. “We will be designing our own chassis and own aero kit,” he said. “We want to compete by designing our own cars and hope other teams can profit from our design. We’ve started already investing in developing the right aero kit and engine for 2012.”

Bahar also said that as many as four Indycars will run in Lotus colours next year. “We’ll be expanding our activities in IndyCar with our partner KV Technology. There will probably be three or even more cars in our livery.”

Kevin Kalkhoven owns the KV team with former driver Jimmy Vasser. He also owns Cosworth in partnership with Jerry Forsythe. Kalkhoven was conspicuous by his absence from Thursday’s Lotus engine announcement and did not respond to requests to comment on the news. So we await further details with interest.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

As I write, there is some uncertainty that the Korean Grand Prix – a race no one within the sport, save Bernie Ecclestone, seems to want – will actually take place. Deadlines for track inspections and signings-off have been missed (and not by just a few weeks, either), and for reasons not immediately clear the Korean organisers appear to be cut far more slack than is normal for Formula 1’s powers-that-be.

Given that there has always been minimal enthusiasm for this race in the paddock, many will be only too glad not to have to schlep to the Far East for the third time in a month. But the five World Championship contenders – or some of them, anyway – necessarily feel differently, for if Korea evaporates, only three Grands Prix will remain on the 2010 schedule.

If you’re Mark Webber, that won’t cause you too much concern, for you lead the World Championship by 11 points, and one fewer race means one fewer opportunity for the rest to catch you; if, on the other hand, you are Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel or Jenson Button, you want as many chances as possible to do just that.

Be it three races or four, we are now into the red meat of the World Championship, and usually by this point in the season we are down to two, rarely three, protagonists. The fact that five drivers still have a shot is testimony to the extraordinary year F1 has had: three teams have produced cars good enough to win several Grands Prix: Red Bull has six, McLaren five, Ferrari four.

Whereas both Red Bull and both McLaren drivers have won races, however, only Alonso has won for Ferrari – yes, I know you can argue reasonably enough that Felipe Massa would have won in Germany, were it not for the ‘team orders’ imposed that day. But the fact is that, although Massa drove a fine race, only circumstances at the start – poleman Vettel delaying both himself and Alonso – put him in a position to win. Hockenheim apart, Felipe has not looked like a potential winner this year.

That being so, Ferrari some time ago opted to concentrate – in terms of the World Championship – on Alonso, and rival teams have criticised it for so doing. Never at Ferrari – even in the autocratic days of Michael Schumacher – is there an official number one driver, but usually someone, simply by being clearly quicker, becomes the de facto team leader, and the situation with Alonso and Massa reminds me rather of that in the mid-70s with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni.

Going into these crucial end-of-season races, therefore, Alonso has one clear advantage over his rivals for the championship, in that he does not have to fight his own team-mate. His team’s decision is already taken, whereas Red Bull and McLaren still have both drivers in contention, and the time awaits when they have to put their emphasis on one, and require the other to play a supporting role. Red Bull has suggested that that time has not yet come, and McLaren has been even more bullish, suggesting that it would never favour one of its drivers over the other (even though this has not always been the case in the past).

Of course it may not come to that: while unlikely, it is not impossible that Webber and Vettel, Hamilton and Button will go off to Abu Dhabi still with at least a mathematical chance of lifting the 2010 World Championship.

In Singapore Massa, thanks to a gearbox problem in qualifying, started stone last, and therefore was never in a position to be of assistance to Alonso. As we know, Fernando’s superb drive brought him 25 points, but had Felipe started from a normal grid position he might well have been able to steal points from some of his team-mate’s rivals – if not Vettel, then certainly the hobbled Webber, who finished third.

Alonso has no real need to worry about Massa’s points tally, for Felipe is too far behind to become a factor in the title race, but of course he would appreciate it deeply if Felipe could keep a rival out of third or fourth place or whatever. Webber, on the other hand, has to worry about Vettel, and Hamilton has to worry about Button.

In 1973 Lotus won the constructors’ championship with seven victories in the 15 races, four to Ronnie Peterson, three to Emerson Fittipaldi. Tyrrell was runner-up with five wins – but all of them went to Jackie Stewart, who won the World Championship.

In 1986 Williams easily won the constructors’ championship with nine victories in the 16 Grands Prix, six to Nigel Mansell, three to Nelson Piquet. McLaren was runner-up with four wins – but all of them (together with a great many second places) went to Alain Prost, who won the World Championship.

Only three years ago McLaren drivers Hamilton and Alonso finished the season with 109 points apiece – but finished second and third in the World Championship behind Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen, who had 110.

In every case two ‘number one’ drivers won a lot of races – while another driver, in a slower car, nicked the title. If Christian Horner and Martin Whitmarsh stick to the bitter end with their policy of allowing their drivers to race each other, I will admire them for it. But then I’m not a sponsor…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

In the final part of our special Jochen Rindt tribute, we hear from two more of his rivals who were due to race against him at the fateful 1970 Italian GP, where the Austrian was killed in practice before becoming Formula 1’s only posthumous World Champion. Fifteen of the 26 drivers entered for that race survive, and we’ve spoken to all but one of them (as reader Chris Hall guessed correctly – George Eaton) in the run-up to this weekend’s race at Monza.

John Miles

GB, Lotus (team-mate)

“Jochen and I didn’t really mix, so in one way I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t move in the same circles as the F1 glitterati. He had a very glamorous wife, and I lived in a terraced house in Islington with my three children, so it was a rather different lifestyle. Socially our paths didn’t really cross. We didn’t gel I think because we came from such different backgrounds. He didn’t see me as the next Emerson Fittipaldi, or whatever.

“Having said that, we were team-mates, so I got to know him quite well. He had a tremendous urgency about the way he conducted his life and he was very quick to judge, I would say – not the most tolerant guy in the world, like a lot of racing drivers.

“The Lotus 72 (the title-winning car on which Miles led the development) was such a troublesome child for me – every time I got into it something broke and there were a lot of confidence-destroying problems with that car. Jochen once said to me at Spa, ‘I wouldn’t drive that car if I were you’. I had a wheel fall off – fortunately at La Source – then two tyres went down in the race. There were an unending sequence of things going wrong.

“Jochen kind of didn’t want to drive for Lotus in one sense because he knew the cars were liable to let him down. But once the anti-dive and anti-squat were taken off, the car got very fast, and he was compelled to drive it because it gave him a very good position to win the World Championship. He was caught between the opportunity of winning a World Championship, but of the car always falling to bits.

“To me he was always fair, but he didn’t see me as a racer. He didn’t see me as someone with the same risk-taking profile as he had. His clan were the likes of Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham – he had a good relationship with them.

“1970 was the year that destroyed my career in a sense, so it’s not one that I remember with great fondness. It was a bit like being a rear-gunner in a Lancaster bomber. The Monza weekend itself… Well, it was catastrophic, for obvious reasons. I had a big disagreement after practice on Friday about the wing situation and I didn’t want to run the car without them. We had no idea, no data that supported the aero balance without wings. I drove one lap with the car like that and I concluded it was completely undriveable; I nearly killed myself going round the Curva Grande. Colin Chapman ordered me to take the wings off the car, so they came off, but before I could get out to practice Jochen was killed. He was such a tremendous driver that I don’t believe the aero issue was what made the car leave the track. I believe that something broke, although others think differently. I followed Jochen at the end of Friday practice and his car looked dreadful. Colin already wanted to take the wings off the car, but the initial idea wasn’t Colin’s: Jochen had suggested it to him.

“There was engineering rashness with the 72. If we hadn’t been doing stupid experiments like taking the wings off with zero aerodynamic data to base it on, and if the mechanics hadn’t pulled an all-nighter to do this stuff, then maybe Jochen would still be alive.”

Emerson Fittipaldi

BR, Rob Walker Lotus (team-mate)

“My relationship with Jochen ran quite deep, because we raced together in Formula 2. By the time of Monza I was the third driver at Lotus, behind Jochen and John Miles, and I remember him helping me in the first Formula 1 test at Silverstone. He told me about the car and he was holding out the board as I went around each time.

“Monza was my fourth race and on the morning before practice I remember clearly that Jochen and I were talking about my 1971 contract over breakfast. He wanted me to drive in the team he had started with Bernie Ecclestone (his manager) and I agreed. It was very exciting and I felt so proud that I would be driving for Jochen. That was the last time I spoke to him.

“Then came the disaster. It was awful for me. I was only 22 and he was a guy I had looked up to as an idol. He was always very good to me when I arrived in Europe from Brazil, and his death was a big shock. My wife had become very close to Nina Rindt also, so on many levels it was a really difficult time. It wasn’t just the racing. Back then we never knew when we packed our bags on a Wednesdsay or Thursday whether we would be coming home on a Sunday night.

“Jochen was always extremely focused and he used to read a lot, he was intelligent. That was his way to relax. He could sometimes seem quite cold if you didn’t know him, but if you got close to him as a friend he was a really warm guy underneath. The way he treated me was fantastic and it gave me a huge motivation. He was an extreme talent and a fantastic guy.”

Anthony Rowlinson

Anthony Rowlinson is executive editor of The Red Bulletin

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

This weekend’s Italian Grand Prix marks the 40th anniversary since the death of Jochen Rindt, who was killed at Monza in practice for the 1970 race. Having been that season’s dominant driver for Lotus – first in the 49B, then in the 72 – he came to Monza with 45 points and a 20-point lead over nearest rival Jack Brabham. It would be enough to confirm him as champion two races later when Ferrari’s Jacky Ickx, by then the only man who could overhaul Rindt, finished fourth at Watkins Glen. The three points he scored meant Rindt would remain out of reach and become Formula 1’s first posthumous World Champion.

He was also Austria’s first World Champion, and in his home country he remains feted to this day.

A hugely charismatic figure, Rindt was not, however, universally popular and some of his rivals, in particular, considered him aloof, even arrogant.

Fifteen of the 26 drivers entered for the 1970 Italian GP are still alive and to commemorate a majestic driver, cut down in his prime, we’ve spoken to all but one of them. Here are some of their recollections, with more to follow in the run-up to this weekend’s race at Monza.

Jackie Stewart

GB, Tyrrell

“By the time the race came around a lot of the immediate emotion had somewhat reduced. The day before had been very traumatic. Helen went to the hospital with Nina and that’s never a nice thing for a wife to do, to look after another wife.

“I think I finished second. I can’t remember where I was on the grid [he was fourth]. I went out and did quite a good qualifying after Jochen died. It’s in Winning is not Enough. Tried the March, went back to the Tyrrell, and then the March. As a racing driver, when the visor goes down and the lights go out, you have to get on with it. Driving a car, you are so totally consumed by what you are doing, you’re never allowed to be distracted. In that respect it was maybe it was one of the advantages I had: being able to block things out. I always tried to remove emotion and I was able to do that. I had won the championship the year before. From about halfway through ’68 I suddenly matured mentally and was able to manage everything better in my own head.

“That was a bad year, 1970. Bruce McLaren and Piers Courage were killed, and of course Jochen. It was quite difficult to deal with these things, because it’s not just at the track, and seeing the things I saw. It’s brought back to you the next week because of the funeral, and two months later there’s a memorial service. Monza was one of those circuits where we didn’t have a problem with safety. We’d refused to go to the Nürburgring and that was a big deal. Jochen was part of that with me.

“There’s always emotion involved at the start of the race. I was lucky enough to be able to remove most of it. I can’t remember much about it. To finish second in the March was a good result.”

And the Coke bottle-smashing incident after qualifying?

“I make no excuses for that. I’d been to Jochen. I’d been to him and come back to Nina, who had disappeared with Helen. Then Ken…

“Going back out was the right thing to do. The barrier had been fixed, but I suppose because of what I had seen when I went out I was in tears. But when I had the visor down that was when I did my qualifying time, which was the best lap I had ever done at Monza. I didn’t have a death wish. But as I came back in, my best friend John Lindsay handed me a Coca Cola. I took a drink and I will never forget I had it in my hand and I was so angry, I took the bottle and smashed it against the concrete wall that separated the pits from the track. That was my emotion. But not in the race. That’s what I remember.”

Jackie Oliver

GB, BRM

“I remember that most of us were staying the Hotel de Ville on the edge of the park. I had breakfast with Jochen’s wife and we went to the circuit together. We certainly all knew each other.

“Jochen had certain people he wanted to associate with and others he didn’t. He tended to be very self-centred, which isn’t unusual in a successful racing driver. I wouldn’t count him as a friend. He associated with people, I believe, who were as good as him and then he’d make a judgement on the others and didn’t give them space in his life.

“We raced together in Formula 2 the year before and then again in F1. Colin Chapman, Jochen’s boss at Lotus, saw Jochen as a replacement for Jim Clark, and he was probably right about that.

“It was a very dangerous period for motor racing. Lots of us were getting nailed. The cars were not as safe as they are now. They tended to catch light in a crash. No fuel bags. In that situation, it was a bit like being in the military, I imagine. There was no point in dwelling on it. If you were dwelling on it for too long, you weren’t doing a good job. You were better off doing something else.

“I didn’t dwell on it. I knew there were people dealing with the situation so I shut myself down. A few drivers were able to engage with the death of another driver, perhaps because they needed to immerse themselves. Certainly Jackie Stewart felt he had to be involved because he was pushing to get improved safety standards. But I just went my own way and thought ‘there’s another one of us gone and it will never happen to me.’

“No remorse. No sadness. No tears. As far as I was concerned Jochen was just gone. Looking back it was probably an inappropriate way to behave, but I suppose a number of others were exactly the same.”

Jacky Ickx

BE, Ferrari

“Not winning at Watkins Glen was such a release. How could you beat someone not able to defend his own chances? The fact that Jochen won the World Championship was the most perfect solution. As for me not having won, it doesn’t create any kind of sorrow at all. Now, when I think back, I feel so sad for all those around me – probably more talented than I was, and certainly more dedicated, who didn’t have that extra piece of luck that made you a survivor. That was the great thing about that era – survival.”

Anthony Rowlinson

Anthony Rowlinson is executive editor of The Red Bulletin

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The guests of honour at this weekend’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca are Sir Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney. The irrepressible Moss will make his return to US competition driving his own Porsche RS-61 following last spring’s terrible elevator accident, while Gurney and a fleet of All-American Racer’s Eagles – from F1 to Indycars, Can-Am and IMSA GTP cars – will be celebrated in a private reception at the track on Saturday evening.

Without doubt Moss and Gurney number among the greatest drivers from the 1950s-60s. They were team-mates in Lucky Casner’s Camoradi ‘birdcage’ Maserati in 1960, scoring a classic victory in miserably wet conditions in the Nürburgring 1000Kms. But Stirling and Dan were also fierce competitors in F1, long-distance sports cars and American sports car racing. Moss introduced the Lotus 19 to North America by winning the inaugural professional race at Mosport in June ’61, and that autumn Dan gave Frank Arciero’s Lotus 19 its debut and battled with Stirling in the sports car races at Riverside and Laguna Seca.

Of course, Stirling’s career was cut short by his crash at Goodwood in 1962, but at that time Dan was beginning to expand his horizons to become a team owner and innovator of the first order. It began when Dan shoehorned a Ford V8 into his Lotus 19, marking of the start of the Anglo-American chassis/engine combination that blossomed into Group 7 in Europe and triggered the creation in 1966 of the legendary Can-Am series.

At the time Gurney was hatching the first of his remarkable line of Eagle F1 and Indycars. The 1967 Eagle-Weslake V12 is reckoned by many to be one of the most beautiful and effective F1 cars of all time, and the 1972 Eagle-turbo Offy dominated Indycar racing through the early ’70s. In Jerry Grant and Bobby Unser’s hands the Eagle became the first car to lap a closed circuit at over 200mph.

Two of Dan’s proudest creations were the 1981 Eagle-Chevy Indycar and the Eagle Toyota GTP car from 1992-93. The ‘81 Eagle was designed by Trevor Harris and was a ground-effect car of a different colour, creating its downforce in a manner unlike the Lotus 79 and its followers. Harris and Gurney called the system ‘Boundary Layer Adhesion Technology’, and the different-looking car proved very quick, with Mike Mosley scoring a famous victory from the back of the grid at Milwaukee in ‘81 and Geoff Brabham running away from the field at Riverside until the car suffered a transmission failure.

The other thing about the ‘81 Eagle is that it was powered by an all-aluminium Chevy V8 built and developed at AAR’s shop in California. It was a classic case of Gurney pursuing his own path against the dominant turbo Cosworths of the day and a true expression of his American hot-rodder’s heart. Fans loved the car and engine, but over the next few years CART’s team owners, in their wisdom, decided to restrict and effectively eliminate both car and engine from the rulebook. Silly boys…

In closing, I have to add that I rate Dan as America’s greatest racing man. Why? Because he won in everything he raced – F1, Indycars, Can-Am, long-distance sports cars and NASCAR – and also enjoyed a rare second act as one of the sport’s most accomplished and innovative team owners and car builders. On Saturday evening, wherever you may be, raise a glass to toast Moss and Gurney for their many achievements as both racers and gentlemen.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

We are fast approaching mid-season. Yes, I know, time flies. And the older you get the faster it flies. As a lad, my elders would tell me that the days and weeks rush by when you get beyond a certain age. They were right. I simply mention this for the benefit of our more youthful contributors.

Anyway, I thought it might be useful, amusing, or vaguely interesting to look back on my predictions for the season to assess the accuracy, or otherwise, of how things might go this year. You may remember that I suggested 10 things which might happen during, or by the close of, the 2010 season. I will take them in their original order, as I laid out the magic cards on January 4.

1. Hamilton and Alonso will tangle with each other – well, not yet they haven’t. Alonso has been too busy making mistakes on his own.

2.  Rossi will win the MotoGP title – no, he won’t, not after his horrendous crash at Mugello last Saturday. Although badly injured, Valentino has – according to the reliable Rick Broadbent in The Times – “discovered a great rapport with morphine”. Blimey.

3. Schumacher will win a race – not yet he hasn’t, but he still can. If only Mercedes could recapture the magic of Brawn GP.

4. Audi will win Le Mans – this time next week we’ll know.

5. Bernie Ecclestone will prepare to retire – no comment.

6. The Renault F1 team will be a shadow of its former self – just plain wrong.

7. Räikkönen will come back to F1 – still think he might. However Red Bull, which had been linked to Kimi, has now signed Webber for another year alongside Vettel.

8. Vettel will move to Mercedes – I think he will eventually.

9. Lotus F1 will be best newcomer – correct so far.

10. Somebody will run out of fuel before the end of a race – well, not yet, but it’s been extremely close on occasion. Virgin should have paid attention here.

OK, not a great result at this juncture you will no doubt be thinking. And you’d be right. But now we’re off to Montréal where anything can happen, and often does. The walls are very close and the grid will be very tight. And then there’s Le Mans  – a close-run thing between Peugeot and Audi for sure.

So, while we’re all stunned by the Rossi accident at Mugello and are suddenly acutely aware – by his absence on Sunday – just what a huge amount of excitement he brings to MotoGP, we have lots of other racing to look forward to.

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Fifty points in seven days – and now Mark Webber, for the first time in his life, leads the World Championship. To any Formula 1 driver, admitted or not, the Monaco Grand Prix is the most important, the most prestigious, race to win, and Webber did it in the most comprehensive manner imaginable. On pole position by a scarcely believable three-tenths of a second, he took the lead immediately, and although there were several safety car periods, each of them costing him his lead, on every restart he just went away again –from Red Bull team mate Sebastian Vettel, who, as at Barcelona, was simply not able to match his pace. When Webber and his car are in harmony like this, he is as good as invincible. At the press conference, for the second Sunday in succession, the much-vaunted Vettel looked frankly bemused.

“What can I say?” Webber beamed afterwards. “It’s hard to avoid the clichés, isn’t it – but this is the Monaco Grand Prix! I guess it has to be the proudest day of my career – to win here is a dream for every driver. A party tonight? Probably a lot of people are going to be here, rather than going home, because of the volcanic ash, so… yes, I’d say there’s likely to be a party tonight, with a few sore heads in the morning. The boys really deserve it – they work so incredibly hard…”

It had not been easy, he said – just keeping your concentration going for 78 laps around Monaco can never be easy – but it had been more straightforward than perhaps he might have expected. After qualifying the Red Bulls were again the strong favourites at this, a circuit at which they had not previously shone, but there was clearly some threat from the Renault of Robert Kubica, which separated Webber and Vettel on the grid, and lurking, too, were Felipe Massa’s Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.

Kubica, as it happened, got a little too much wheelspin away from the line, which allowed Vettel to snick through on the run to Ste Devote. “That pretty much decided second place,” said Sebastian, but I couldn’t do anything about Mark today – he was just too quick – and in fact I was concentrating more on my mirrors today, because Robert was never very far away.”

Indeed he wasn’t. “A lot of the time I think I was actually a bit quicker than Vettel, particularly on restarts, but…it’s almost impossible to pass here, you know, and late in the race I flat-spotted a tyre, and then had terrible vibration from it. I drove hard today, and I think third place is not too bad…”

The Monaco Grand Prix effectively ended ‘under yellow’, for at Rascasse a couple of backmarkers – Trulli and Chandhok – became entangled in a nasty-looking incident, the Lotus going over the top of the HRT. Neither driver was hurt, but the safety car was instantly deployed, and such was the quantity of debris that, with only three laps left, there seemed little chance of restarting the race proper.

As it was, the safety car pulled off at the end of the final lap (so as not to appear on all the ‘chequered flag’ photographs), and it was at this point that Michael Schumacher suddenly made a desperate lunge past Fernando Alonso for sixth place.

What is it about Schumacher and Rascasse? On his last appearance at Monaco, in 2006, Michael ‘parked’ his Ferrari at the corner, thus blocking the track in an attempt to protect his pole position from last-second attack. For that, he was put to the back of the grid, and most felt he got off very lightly.

This time around he passed Alonso at the end of the final lap – which had been run as a ‘safety car’ lap, and therefore precluded overtaking before the start/finish line. Afterwards the stewards debated the matter for hours, and one didn’t really understand why, for it seemed like an open-and-shut case. Eventually it was announced that Schumacher had indeed transgressed, but as the regular penalty – a ‘drive through’ – could not be applied as this was the last lap, a time penalty of 20 seconds was imposed instead.

Much earlier in the race there had already been muttering about Schumacher, who got ahead of Mercedes team-mate Rosberg, and remained narrowly there until lap 19, when he came in for tyres. With a clear track in front of him Nico cut loose at this point, setting new fastest laps on consecutive laps, and it seemed clear that he would be ahead of Schumacher after his own stop. As it was, for reasons unclear to all but the ultra-cynical, Mercedes decided not to bring Rosberg in until lap 28, by which time his tyres had gone way past their best. When he rejoined Nico came out just behind… Michael Schumacher…

Alonso, never at the best of times exactly a fan of the great man, was furious about the Rascasse incident, in which he came close to hitting the barriers, but already he had been on the back foot all day, having started from the pit lane, stone last. In the Saturday morning practice session, having just set the fastest time, Fernando clattered into the fence at Massenet, and although the impact speed was not that high, the Ferrari’s monocoque was damaged, obliging him to miss qualifying altogether – no T-cars allowed these days, of course.

Alonso had been fastest in both sessions on Thursday, and was very much a man to fear for the Red Bull boys. He makes remarkably few mistakes in a Grand Prix car, but this one – who knows? – might ultimately cost him the World Championship.

For McLaren, Monaco was a consummate disappointment, with Hamilton finishing fifth after never featuring, and the unfortunate Jenson Button retiring after a couple of laps, his engine cooked after someone forgot to remove a cooling cover from the left hand sidepod – where resides the radiator…

No such problems for Webber, though – no problems of any kind, in fact. The Red Bull is unquestionably the fastest car – and at the moment the man who is driving it fastest is one derided by some as a hard trier, and very brave, but essentially an artisan at the wheel. At Monte Carlo, as at Barcelona, he looked like an artist.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Welcome to another Motor Sport audio podcast. This month we take a look at the first three races, the drivers, the teams and of course the racing.

One of our favourite parts of doing these podcasts is the variety of questions that we get sent in so if you haven’t yet done so, make sure you ask the team a question for next month by clicking here.

And because it features so much in this month’s recording… here’s that radiator…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Following Formula 1’s Bahrain season-opener Motor Sport’s readers were among race fans around the world who made it clear how disappointed they are with Grand Prix racing’s 2010 edition. We’ve heard the same complaints for years – boring racing, no passing, and cars which all look the same running on an incredibly featureless, soul-sapping track. As many people asked: what happened to the FIA’s special overtaking group? Obviously, they failed miserably in their task.

Some people ask why CART’s old Indy or Champ Cars and the IRL’s current Indycars put on a better show with closer racing and more passing. One reason is that when F1 went to flat bottoms more than 20 years ago CART stayed with a Lotus 79-style ‘tunnel car’. Mario Andretti insisted that flat-bottomed cars were much too pitch-sensitive and more difficult to drive in close quarters, therefore discouraging close racing and passing. Mario’s concept was an integral element of CART’s and then Champ Car’s rules until the latter’s demise in 2008, and was the primary reason why Champ Cars put on a better show.

Of course, the IRL went down an entirely different route. Contemporary IRL cars are seriously restricted on horsepower and downforce, and are designed to run around in a pack. Passing is extremely difficult but the cars do tend to stay close together much like in a NASCAR restrictor-plate race. Yet the IRL’s formula has proven spectacularly unpopular as the series struggles to draw crowds to most races and its television ratings have plunged to miserable new lows.

A key element in the IRL’s formula is the massive amount of drag designed into the cars by the rules. In discussing the new Delta Wing Indycar concept Chip Ganassi told me that designer Ben Bowlby emphasised the excessive amount of drag required by the IRL’s rules. “Ben pointed out to me that an Indycar has more drag than a stock car!” Ganassi exclaimed. “I said, ‘How can an open-wheel car have more drag than a big, full-bodied NASCAR?’ That’s not the way it should be. But that’s how we, as rule-makers, have allowed it to be.”

Surely the people who write the rules have defined far too many of the specifications for today’s racing cars, F1 included. Darn near every element of the cars are specified by the rulebook. Today, there’s no room to create something that’s at all innovative like a rear-engined Cooper-Climax or a Lotus 79. Instead, we’re supposed to drool over the latest aerodynamic refinements to wing endplates and so forth. But these things are way too arcane, if not trivial, for most race fans. Clearly, people are tired of watching the same basic package that we’ve seen for the past 20 or more years.

Something radical is desperately needed, and that’s why I think the Delta Wing concept is a great thing, just to shake up everyone’s thinking. This spirit drove the sport for most of its history but there’s no longer any room for out-of-the-box thinking. If Colin Chapman was alive today, he’d shake his head and walk away, disgusted with the spec car syndrome that has infected the sport at every level, F1 again included.

Of course, if the rules were to be opened up F1’s team principals would complain that it would be too expensive and would result in too many different solutions and probably in one concept proving much quicker than anything else, making all others obsolete. No doubt there’s some truth to this riposte, but that doesn’t mean the sport isn’t in dire need of inspired technical leadership to recreate itself in a way that intrigues and excites more of us.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The launch of the new Lotus Grand Prix car in London last week got me thinking. At last something has – I haven’t been inspired to put pen to blog in recent weeks.

Launches of new racing cars fall into two main categories – the absurdly lavish with dry ice, awful music and dancing girls. Or the nicely businesslike (as in Williams every year) where the car is the star and you have a gut feeling about its prospects.

The unveiling of the new Lotus fell into the latter category. Well, OK, it was a little bit glitzy but not absurdly so.

The Lotus-Cosworth T127 is a great-looking racing car, at least as far as is possible in the modern era. And great-looking racing cars are often quick racing cars. Not always, granted, but if they look right, then they invariably are right. Of course, looks are a subjective thing, but I like what Mike Gascoyne has done with his first car for the Malaysian version of the old Team Lotus.

The colour scheme is terrific – enough green and yellow to acknowledge its heritage without being a ghastly pastiche of the real thing. Clean, simple lines and a purposeful feel about the ‘package’, as it’s known these days. I am a fan of Gascoyne and his work. I’m aware that a great many people find him difficult, rather too bullish, but I find his attitude acceptable in a world that is so often pasteurised, homogenised and corporately correct. I believe, also, that he has built some good cars which, given a bit more development, could have been great. We know that looks are not everything, but somehow the T127 gets off on the right foot even when it’s standing still.

In the highly complex world of aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering that pervades modern Grand Prix racing the tiniest pieces of bodywork can take a car to the front of the grid or leave it languishing at the back. So we will have to wait a couple of months before we know whether Gascoyne has got this one right. The hard work begins now, in Jerez, and the big test will be in Bahrain and beyond. There will be problems, there will be frustrations, but a man of Jarno Trulli’s experience will know, pretty much as soon as he leaves the pitlane, how effective the new Lotus will be.

One of the most important things a Grand Prix car has to do is combine speed through the air with grip in the corners. That sounds obvious, but it’s a fine balance, a sweet spot that eludes even the best engineers.

In 2006, at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, I remember studying the Renault R26 in which Fernando Alonso had won his second World Championship. Nearby, Dan Gurney was doing a TV interview, during which he observed that – were he a piece of air – then this was the car he’d most like to drive through him. We knew what he meant. Tim Densham’s car looked right straight out of the box and, developed by Densham/Bell and Symonds, it wafted Alonso to a second consecutive title.

Of course, we can also think of great-looking F1 cars that failed to live up to their looks. For various and very different reasons, Dan Gurney’s beautiful Eagle and the gorgeous Brabham BT45 did not translate beauty into winning. There are always exceptions. But consider the cars of Gordon Murray, surely the most visually stunning of the modern era. They looked right, they were right, and they won a great many races. And yes, I know, there were exceptions even then.

I wish Lotus well. We all know it’s not the “real thing” but it’s a good name to have on the grid and my instinct is that it will be the best of the new teams as the season unfolds.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The Lotus name returns to Formula 1 this year. Neither Tony Fernandes nor Mike Gascoyne are pretending this new team has any direct link to Colin Chapman’s great squad, but still the use of the Lotus badge is seen as controversial in some quarters. After all, the legacy is a huge one to live up to and anyone who goes racing under the auspices of “Britain’s Ferrari” (as Johnny Herbert so correctly describes the marque) accepts great responsibility.

We have our own reservations about the use of the name by an all-new squad, but would those most closely associated with Team Lotus feel the same? We asked Paul Fearnley to find out as part of our celebration of Lotus in F1, the centrepiece of the March issue of Motor Sport. The verdict? Well, read the magazine to find out!

As part of the Lotus special, editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck recounts his personal memories of Team Lotus and explains why the team means so much to him. Meanwhile, lucky Andrew Frankel gets behind the wheel of the F1 car that first inspired him: Mario Andretti’s Type 79, the ‘wing’ car that stormed the 1978 World Championship. And Rob Widdows meets Fernandes and Gascoyne to hear about the revival of Lotus in F1.

From a personal point of view, this issue felt like a long time coming. In fact, it seemed as if it would never end! Hopefully that should come across when you read it (in a good way) because there is plenty between the covers.

Highlights include more from the 1970s, as dep ed Gordon Cruickshank witnesses a very cool reunion: Andy Rouse and the British Leyland Jaguar XJC tin-topper, the epitome of that romantic motor racing standard – the glorious failure! Then it’s that man Frankel again as we remember the Tour of Britain, which attracted stars from stage and track – plus the odd Radio 1 DJ…

Finally, I must mention Simon Taylor’s latest ‘Lunch with’ interview. He met March co-founder Robin Herd for what would prove to be an entertaining bout of reminiscence, but in a venue with a twist. You’ll find out what I mean on page 74.

The April issue is already well underway, and so far it’s coming together nicely. In fact, I’d better get back to it! In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the March edition and do let us know your thoughts on the return of Lotus to F1.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

After the success of last year’s Jim Clark Film Festival, Legends Film Festivals is returning this year with ‘Legends of Le Mans’.

The festival, dedicated to the history of the Le Mans 24 Hour race, will take place in Oxfordshire on March 7/8 and will feature three hours of archive footage focusing on the period between 1955-75. As well as celebrating 50 years since Aston Martin’s historic 1-2 finish, 40 years since the JW-Gulf Ford GT40’s 1-2-3 finish and 50 years since the Lotus Elite scored the first of six consecutive class victories the day will be filled with guest speakers.

This year Jackie Oliver, Richard Attwood, David Piper, John Wagstaff and Peter Riley will all be on hand both days. There will also be a dinner on the Saturday night where all the guest speakers will be present. For more information and to book tickets, go to www.legendsfilmfestivals.com.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The new issue of Motor Sport, on sale now, is a very special one for all of us on the magazine. Producing each edition always has a ‘labour of love’ element to it, but that feeling was heightened as we worked towards deadline this time. And it was all down to the great man who graces the cover.

As I have written in Matters of Moment this month, Jim Clark died before I was born, but that hasn’t lessened the power of his influence over me. He remains an inspiration to racing fans around the world, from his home town of Duns in Scottish border country to the pilgrims who head to the Indianapolis 500 every year.

To mark the 40th anniversary of his passing, Nigel Roebuck offers a personal tribute to the man who was “everyone’s hero”, as Brian Redman puts it. Also, American writer Robin Miller looks back at Clark’s incredible impact on the Indy 500, speaking to Dan Gurney, Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Parnelli Jones about how this quiet legend won over the tough Brickyard racers.

David Tremayne recounts that final, fateful day at Hockenheim, while Rob Widdows asks Lotus mechanic Jim Endruweit for the insider’s view of what Clark was like. It was a pleasure to put the pages together and we hope it is just as much a pleasure to read.

Back in the current world, we are enjoying the start of what looks set to be a fascinating Grand Prix season. The first race in Australia got a big thumbs up from everyone at the magazine, as you can read in the issue. The loss of driver aids has been a big gain for the sport.

And if you are a motorsportmagazine.co.uk regular, you will have spotted yet another addition to our coverage during the first couple of GPs. Our web maestro Ed Foster, who is one of Motor Sport’s three ‘bloggers’, has been writing frantically during GP weekends, from Friday through to Sunday, to offer his thoughts on the action. He’s also organised for practice times and race results to be added to these special blogs, so please do take the opportunity to read his words and add your own comments. We’d love to spark some conversations between fans on the site, with Ed’s GP coverage becoming a regular feature.

So enjoy our special Jim Clark issue – and keep logging on to motorsportmagazine.co.uk!

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine