Monza on my mind. Sounds like some kind of Italian country and western song, if you can imagine such a thing. But this is not a race report – you can read that elsewhere on the website. This is about the piece of theatre that is mighty Monza as seen from the paddock at Silverstone. All will be explained.

Monza has always been on my mind in September, ever since my first visit to the Autodromo Nazionale in the Royal Parco di Monza just a few miles from Milan – and even when I’m 1000 miles away watching the Le Mans Series cars in the Autosport Six Hours at a windswept Silverstone. The Gran Premio d’Italia at Monza remains one of my all-time favourites. No matter if the race is less than exciting, if the magnificent old circuit has been ‘reduced’ from its former glory. Well, they’ve put in chicanes and taken away the tree that stood in the run-off at the Ascari chicane. Ascari is by far the best of the ‘squiggles’ that were introduced to take some of the heat out of the place. But what matters is the place, the electrifying atmosphere, the history that oozes from the buildings, the trees that line the Lesmos and the old concrete banking that still lurks in the woods above the new track. And Parabolica – now there’s a big, bad, brave old corner in any car.

When first I went to Monza, in 1966, our grandstand seats had been double-booked. No matter, we squeezed in among the tifosi, stood and cheered when the Ferraris streaked past on that seemingly endless straight. It was like finding yourself sitting with the Barcelona fans when you’ve gone to Spain to see Manchester United. Best not to cheer for the Brits or you might find your space has disappeared. I say space because in those days we sat on concrete steps that stretched back from the trackside and up into the semi-darkness of the vast old grandstand opposite the pits. The noise was – and still is – quite incredible. The cars at full throttle all the way from the Parabolica, the crazy tifosi at full volume, and a commentator going mad because the red cars are not on the pace. And that’s worse than not going to Mass.

That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it is. Yes, the grandstands have been made more comfortable, the pits are bigger and smarter, but the race day traffic is even worse. Patience is a virtue when making your way from Milan to Monza.

So, seeing Monza on the TV screens at Silverstone, the feeling remains. The cars coming out to practice on Friday brings it all back, even if the Audis and Peugeots are whistling round Silverstone just yards away. Monza is fast, the fastest in the world in fact, but an Audi or a Peugeot flat out at Silverstone is an impressive sight. They are so much quicker than the rest of field in this multi-class championship, in a different league technically, financially and philosophically from the petrol-engined cars. The best of both worlds then last weekend – Audis and Peugeots braking impossibly late, gobbling up the straights, headlights on to wake up the backmarkers – and then on TV there’s Sebastian Vettel power-sliding the Red Bull through Ascari and streaking down to Parabolica. Untouchable on this form, Vettel is simply a joy to watch this season.

One of the most over-used words in the English language these days is passion. But passion is truly what Monza means – whether or not you support the Scuderia. There is no other race where you feel such devotion. It is one thing to see a Grand Prix car brake from 210mph, point to the apex and disappear again in the blink of an eye. It’s quite another to see it surrounded by the noisiest, most passionate racing fans in the world. On Sunday Vettel led home four World Champions while, for me, there was another champion – magnificent Monza itself.

If you saw the scenes below the podium, you’ll know what I mean. And this on a day when Red Bull beat Ferrari. Meanwhile, another Sébastien – Bourdais, teamed with Simon Pagenaud – won at Silverstone for Peugeot after a dogged battle with Audi.

Hope you made the most of Monza because next we go under the floodlights in the virtual reality of Singapore where the crowd is invisible.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

It was just after midnight on a Saturday back in June when art editor Damon Cogman and I stood up on the steep hill that looks down on Steilstrecke, the right-hander that precedes the short blast into the famous Karussel hairpin. We were panting a little, having pushed our bikes up the grassy slope, but as we took a breather and turned to look down on the track, we knew the effort had been worth it. The magnificence of the Nordschleife, at night, during the madcap annual 24 Hours, is something to behold.

Memories of that night – complete with the fireworks, the higgledy-piggledy campsites, the heady aroma of beer and barbecues, the drunken Germans in various states of dishevelment – will always stick with me. And they came flooding back once again when we chose the cover shot for the October issue, taken 40-odd years earlier from exactly the same place on that hillside. Out here, away from the modern Grand Prix circuit, the Nürburgring hasn’t changed at all.

The trip to the 24 Hours was intended to offer some inspiration for this latest issue of the magazine. Well, that was the excuse anyway. In reality, you don’t need to go there to feel the spirit of the place. The glorious photographs from the archives and the heroic – and often mentally unhinged – stories the circuit has thrown up over the years catch the imagination every time. With the help of Vic Elford, who gives us his guide to the great track, we hope we’ve tapped into that magic in the October issue.

Fittingly, given that some of his greatest days behind the wheel came at the ’Ring, Jacky Ickx joins Simon Taylor for lunch this month. Simon has been chasing Jacky to add to his roster of interviews for years. Each time he spoke to Jacky, the urbane Belgian would always reply politely that he’d be delighted to meet Simon for lunch – but tying him down to a date and place proved challenging.

Fortunately, Simon is persistent! Eventually, Jacky invited him to his wonderful home for a lunch cooked by his wife. We always knew this one would be worth the wait, and so it has proved.

Other highlights of the issue include a fantastic McLaren M1B vs Lola T70 Spyder track test, a revealing interview with Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon and Nigel Roebuck’s insightful view of the Sky/BBC deal for Formula 1 TV coverage in 2012.

Looking ahead, we’re delighted to reveal details of our next reader evening. Following our highly enjoyable viewing of the Senna film in the company of Jo Ramirez earlier in the year, this time we’re delving into the sports car world – and for me, this one is extra special.

Truth in 24 is a fly-on-the-wall documentary following Audi’s successful attempt to win the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2008, in the face of a strong challenge from Peugeot. The film, which was never commercially released in the UK, is obviously a few years old now, but Nigel Roebuck and I only saw it for the first time earlier this year. We were both blown away by the film.

As an insight into life within a modern racing team, I’ve never seen anything as good as this. It shows the oh-so-human side of the Audi racing machine that is usually hidden from view behind the sheen of perfection they like to project. Personally, I think it’s at least a match for Senna as a must-see racing film.

Readers will watch the documentary in the company of Audi’s star drivers Tom Kristensen and Allan McNish, plus race engineers Howden ‘H’ Haynes and Leena Gade. ‘H’ ran Tom, Allan and Dindo Capello’s car to victory in that ’08 race and steals the show in Truth in 24, as we follow his story from the pitwall (I won’t give any more away here…). Leena was ‘H’’s number two back in ’08, but has stepped up since then and engineered the winning R18 in this year’s 24 Hours at La Sarthe.

The quartet will join Nigel Roebuck and I after the film for what promises to be an entertaining forum, as we discuss all things Le Mans and gain further insight into what it’s like to live and race within the crack Audi team. We will, of course, open up the discussion to the floor to take any questions the audience might want to ask.

The event takes place on Saturday October 8 at the stunning Audi quattro rooms, just off the A4 in London. Tickets cost £145, although there is a special price for subscribers of £125 – that’s a 14 per cent discount.

To book, call the office on 020 7349 8472 or e-mail at readersevents@motorsportmagazine.co.uk. If you are not a subscriber, you will be eligible for the special price if you take out a subscription when you book tickets.

The readers’ evening, run in association with Audi UK, will offer a golden opportunity to meet two legends of sports car racing in a fabulous setting. It should be a great evening.

A week earlier, on Saturday October 1, you can also join us at Brooklands for the Bill Boddy Tribute Day. The event, organised by former deputy editor Clive Richardson and the Brooklands Museum, will bring together a collection of cars associated with WB’s life and career, plus some special guests, too. What better place to honour our late founder editor? For a discounted admission price for magazine readers, e-mail info@motorsportmagazine.co.uk

I hope to see you at either – or even both – events.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

There has been news circulating about a possible merger between the World Rally Championship and the Intercontinental Rally Challenge. Manufacturer numbers are down in the WRC – and have been for some time – while IRC entries are booming.

There are more than 120 cars signed up for the IRC Barum Czech Rally on August 26-28, while more than 200,000 people are expected to watch the asphalt action. Not only that, but the IRC has great TV coverage courtesy of Eurosport, which owns the series. If you were Jarmo Mahonen, the WRC Commission president, then a merger would make sense. It obviously does, because he’s the man pushing for it.

However, before I get too cynical about the reasons why, it is worth taking a step back. As some of you may have seen, I’ve been writing a series of articles in the magazine called ‘Motor Racing’s Money Tree’. We’ve broken down all the single-seater championships and then placed them on a tree with Formula 1 in the canopy and Formula Ford down by the roots. We’ve tried to explain how they all fit in together and it seems to have made sense to at least a few people.

The idea was then put forward of doing a similar thing for rallying. But there’s no way you could neatly place the ‘rallying ladder’ on a tree. It would be ‘Motor Racing’s Money Bush’. It is chaos. And that is what Mahonen (below) is keen on trying to address. He wants a system whereby talented youngsters can race in the IRC and then move up easily to the WRC.

It sounds good, but something the IRC is well known for is its atmosphere and, as current Peugeot driver Guy Wilks (below) put it, “character”. Would this be lost if it was taken under the arm of the WRC?

“In the WRC, because of the manufacturer money, there are only so many drivers who are capable of winning a stage, let alone a rally,” Wilks tells me while doing PR for ‘The Go-Kart Rally’. “In the IRC, if you look at the stage winners this year, you have a long list of names.” You do. So far this season, after six rallies, there have been 13 different stage winners. In the WRC, after eight rallies, there have been eight different stage winners.

“I’m really enjoying the IRC because it’s all about the challenge for the driver,” adds Wilks. “The championship has got character and we’ve got a fantastic array of rallies, from the beautiful scenery and countryside in Scotland to the mountain stages in Corsica. There’s also Monte Carlo and even the plains in the Czech Republic.”

On the Monte Carlo Rally the IRC has a stage in the dark up the Col de Turini. It’s a feast for the senses and, for me, it’s what the WRC is lacking – real drama.

“The spectators can get really close to the drivers and the cars; they’re not penned in like in the WRC. Even in the service area for that matter. It’s got a family feel, everybody mixes in and gets involved and that’s reflected in the number of spectators. In Ypres and Barum the service areas are absolutely jam-packed.”

Former FIA president Max Mosley didn’t do a huge amount for the WRC, but now that Jean Todt is in office things may well change. He’s got a history in the series, having been a World Championship navigator from 1973-81, and the fact that he has already sorted a World Endurance Championship for next year can only bode well.

Longer and more challenging stages, fewer remote service areas, tests run at night… Let’s make a WRC round a proper event. Yes, try and create a legitimate ladder system for the sport, but let’s not lose any of the atmosphere that goes with the IRC. The last thing we need is a rallying equivalent of the rather unexciting GP3 championship.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Audi has taken another stunning victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The R18 TDI of first-time winners Marcel Fassler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer crossed the line a mere 13.854 seconds ahead of the second-placed Peugeot 908 of Simon Pagenaud, Sébastien Bourdais and Pedro Lamy. The Peugeot of Franck Montagny, Stéphane Sarrazin and Nicolas Minassian took the final step on the podium.

“The three drivers did a fantastic job,” said Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich after the race. “We were left with our three least experienced drivers [after the two other Audis had accidents] and we gave them the hardest job of all to do: to go really quickly, but not to take any risks. I am very happy with the result and I must congratulate Peugeot because they pushed us to our limits.”

The 79th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours will go down as one of the great battles at La Sarthe in recent years as Audi were left with just one car only seven hours into the race. Neither Audi nor Peugeot looked to have an advantage during the event and it was only in the final three hours that Audi managed to eek out a 25 second gap to the Peugeot of Pagenaud, Bourdais and Lamy.

“The limit of the car is the speed that we’re going to have to go at for the entire 24 hours,” said Peugeot 908 driver Pedro Lamy before the start of this year’s race. He couldn’t have been more accurate and the speed of the Audis and Peugeots was absolutely blistering throughout the 24 hours. Peugeot may not have been able to lap quite as fast as the German cars, but they could crucially do 12 laps before pitting for fuel. The Audis were ever so slightly less economical and had to dive into the pits every 11.

With all three cars from each manufacturer within just over half a second of each other in qualifying we knew we were in for a nail-biting race. However, nothing could prepare us for what happened when Allan McNish tried to scythe his way into the lead after brilliantly moving up from fifth on the grid. Just after the first stops, and with less than an hour of the race run, the Scot came up behind the sister Audi of Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Mike Rockenfeller at the Dunlop Bridge. He dived down the inside on the exit after Bernhard made a mistake and cleared the car, taking the lead. However, just in front of Bernhard’s Audi there was a pack of slower GTE cars, one of which was the Ferrari 458 Italia of Anthony Beltoise, François Jakubowski and Pierre Thiriet. Beltoise didn’t see McNish fly past the number 1 Audi and shut the door, sending McNish flying into the gravel.

Mercifully the new shark fin – which is now mandatory on all LMP cars – did its job and the car didn’t roll, but the speed at which he was going meant that the car flew towards the barrier on the outside of the track and heavily crashed into it. The car flipped over on the Armco and came to rest upside down, just inside the barrier. There was nothing left of the R18 bar the tub and an eerie silence fell over La Sarthe as the crowd waited for McNish to get out. The marshals arrived in a matter of moments, overturned the R18 TDI and thankfully the Scot emerged dazed, but OK. Such was the force of the impact that debris had flown off the car and peppered various photographers perched on the inside of the catch fencing. Amazingly the only injuries were a broken ankle and a broken phone. “I want to find the guy in charge of chassis construction at Audi and give him a big hug as it withstood the impact amazingly,” McNish said once he was released from care.

“It was a massive shock for everyone”, admitted McNish’s team-mate Dindo Capello following the crash. “So many things happened so quickly and our fingers are crossed for him.” Was the Scot being too aggressive? Should Beltoise have seen him and not closed the door? This one will have to go down as a racing incident as McNish may have been cutting through the field quite aggressively, but he was well over to the inside of the turn to give Beltoise as much chance to see him as possible. The Ferrari? McNish was on it so quickly and unexpectedly that there was little chance that Beltoise could have seen him. Indeed the Ferrari driver admitted afterwards that he had no idea the McNish Audi was there.

After over an hour of safety cars while the marshals fixed the barriers, the race was underway again. The battle at the front resumed and the lead seesawed between the Audis and Peugeots. By now we knew that the Peugeots could go a lap longer and the question everyone was asking themselves was whether or not Audi had the speed to make those extra stops. All questions stopped suddenly at 10.40pm. Mike Rockenfeller in the number 1 Audi had just started his fourth stint in the car and came up behind the AF Corse Ferrari of Robert Kauffman, Rui Aguas and Michael Waltrip at the kink after Mulsanne. He started flashing his lights and Kauffman moved over to the left of the road. However, as Rockenfeller came up beside the Ferrari, the car inexplicably edged over to the right and clipped the Audi.

Rockenfeller’s car speared straight into the barriers at high speed and came to a halt sometime later, with only the tub of the car remaining intact. It was another terrifying accident, and it was another huge relief when ‘Rocky’ emerged from the car. He was kept in hospital overnight as a precaution, but is OK according to Audi. Kauffman was reportedly pulled from the Ferrari by the ACO after the incident, but it made little difference to the 458 Italia’s result as it subsequently retired with engine problems.

A lengthy safety car period followed as, once again, the marshals had to tend to more broken Armco. It was another long delay and now Audi was down to just one car – the Marcel Fassler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer machine.

Just before midnight 50 of the 56 starters were still running. The six retirements included the two Audis and also both Aston Martins, which expired only three laps into the race. When it became apparent that 007 and 009 were well off the pace in testing, the word from Aston Martin quickly changed to ‘we’re treating Le Mans as a test session’. This was all very well considering how little time the company has had to prepare the all-new, inline six LMP1 car, but little testing was done. “It has been a frustrating week,” confirmed 009 pilot Adrian Fernández. “I’ve only done eight laps all week. It’s a good team, but the engine isn’t very good at the moment. We just haven’t been able to do any running.” Both cars suffered the same problem – a broken water pump driveshaft. Even if the cars had remained intact, they would have made little headway as they were both over 20 seconds off pole and running eight per cent down on power due to the weak inline six.

Following the safety period to clear up the remains of Rockenfeller’s crash the battle at the front continued with renewed vigour. Peugeot still had all three of its works cars in the race and sensed a chance of victory. Several hours passed as the single Audi and Peugeots swapped places over the pitstops with the advantage swaying one way and then the other.

This was shaping up to be an absolutely classic Le Mans 24 Hours as two slightly different strategies went head to head. The 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th hours of the race passed and Audi still held the lead. Peugeot then jumped ahead, but come the 15th and 16th hours, the German car was back in front. Another safety car period to clear up Jan Magnussen’s crash in the GTE Pro class-leading Corvette and Peugeot led once again. The format continued and as the race drew to a close the tension around the circuit mounted.

It looked like the battle would continue in the final three hours much as it had done for the past 21. But, the action wasn’t over at La Sarthe. With just under two hours and 45 minutes left rain arrived and cars started leaving the Tarmac all over the circuit. It wasn’t heavy enough for full wets, but Lotterer wasn’t enjoying the conditions and started to lose time to the second-placed Peugeot with Pagenaud on board. The rain turned out to be no more than a shower though and the race resumed in the same shape as it was before, with the Audi holding a narrow advantage.

Despite all the shaken hands on the grid between the Peugeot and Audi teams, there was no love lost on the track in the final stages as Marc Gene – who was running fourth, four laps down on the leader – drove Lotterer’s Audi off the road. There were cries from the Audi fans, but Peugeot’s reply was simply “well, there weren’t any blue flags…”

The Audi maintained the lead though, despite a dramatic last stop for a dash of fuel and four new tyres. The car emerged only seven seconds in front of the second-placed Peugeot that had also pitted for its final fuel stop. The delight of the entire Audi crew and the three drivers was clear as the car finally took the victory 34 minutes later.

The LMP1 petrol honours went to the Lola B10/60 Coupé-Toyota of Nicolas Prost, Neel Jani and Jeroen Bleekemolen in the end while the LMP2 category was won by the Zytek Z11SN-Nissan of Karim Ojjeh, Tom Kimber-Smith and 20-year-old Olivier Lombard. The Oreca 03-Nissan with Franck Mailleux, Soheil Ayari and Lucas Ordoñez on board took second, while third in class was taken by Christophe Bouchut, Scott Tucker and João Barbosa in the Lola Coupé-HPD.

Special mention must go to Ordoñez who, having won the PlayStation Academy in 2008, piloted the Oreca admirably. Even though he only started racing cars professionally after winning the Gran Turismo/PlayStation competition he kept out of trouble and lapped very well. He justifiably called his first Le Mans 24 Hours “incredible”.

The GTE Pro class was as hotly contested as always and up until 8am it looked like the Corvette C6 ZRI of Oliver Gavin, Jan Mugnussen and Richard Westbrook was set for victory. However, as mentioned earlier, Magnussen lost control of the car when he was passing the slower GTE Am Porsche of Christian Ried. The BMW M3 GT of Augusto Farfus, Jörg Muller and Dirk Werner looked quick in qualifying and in the race, but suffered various problems that dropped them down the order. In a class of high attrition it was the Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 of Olivier Beretta, Tom Milner and Antonio Garcia that finally emerged victorious ahead of the Ferrari 458 Italia of Giancarlo Fisichella, Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander and the BMW M3 GT of Andy Priaulx, Dirk Müller and Joey Hand.

The GTE Am category was won by the Labre Competition Corvette C6 ZR1 of Patrick Barnhauser, Julien Canal and Gabriele Gardel. The class received some bad press from LMP drivers after quite a few near misses as the faster cars lapped them. In the end, it was a case of staying out of trouble – only four cars were running at the end of the 24 hours. Sadly the CRS Racing Ferrari with amateur drivers Roger Wills, Shaun Lynn and Pierre Ehret at the wheel didn’t finish. Seven hours into the race Lynn lost control of the car at the Ford Chicane. Despite the best efforts of the CRS crew who were shouting directions from behind the barriers, Lynn was unable to restart the car having hit the barrier.

Even though part of this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours was marred by two horrific Audi crashes and several disputes between slower GTE Am crews and the LMP machines, the race will be remembered as an extremely close battle that raged for all 24 hours. Allan McNish openly admits that Le Mans is a 24-hour sprint nowadays and it was certainly that in 2011. It’s a testament to both Peugeot and Audi that all their racers ran with such good reliability considering that both cars are so new. Very big congratulations to Marcel Fassler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer. The trio handled the pressure of being the only Audi in the race with 17 hours to go extremely well and fully deserve the hard fought victory.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Another installment of the ‘week in motor sport’ series. In this episode, I talk to editor Damien Smith about the staff changes at Williams F1, the Le Mans test and also cover the latest news from the DTM, MotoGP and IndyCar series.

The week in motor sport

As always, let us know what you think about all the news and don’t worry… my neck brace is explained at the end!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or, if you’d like to download it…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Le Mans 24 Hours

Andy Wallace and James Weaver were special guests at a media dinner hosted by Audi in the splendid surroundings of Goodwood House during April. Fine British sports car aces both, but I wondered to myself: what’s their link to Vorsprung durch Technik?

Then it dawned on me. Ah yes, they were on the driving strength when Audi first took the Le Mans plunge 12 long years ago.

Their chapter at the very beginning of the manufacturer’s remarkable endurance racing story was short and unsuccessful, but Audi is at pains to stress that they haven’t been forgotten. They are still ‘part of the family’ apparently, despite their one and only appearances as four-ringed factory drivers back in 1999.

The link to today, of course, is that Wallace and Weaver – great mates who enjoyed many years of sports car success together in the US – drove the only closed-cockpit Le Mans prototype built by Audi until this year’s all-new R18 which will take on La Sarthe on June 11/12.

How things have changed. In ’99 Audi was so raw at this enduro game that it built two different cars to hedge its bets. The R8R open car would ultimately set the agenda that led directly to the all-conquering R8. But the neat R8C coupé, financed by Audi UK and run by the British-based Richard Lloyd Racing, lacked “about six months of development” according to Wallace. It was produced so late, it’s potential was never close to being tapped at Le Mans, and as the R8R scored a surprise podium as more fancied rivals fell by the wayside, so the closed-concept racer became a development cul-de-sac in Ingolstadt.

Until now. After nine victories, three of which were achieved with groundbreaking turbodiesel power, dramatic rule revisions have forced Audi back down the coupé route. As we discuss in the June issue of Motor Sport, the exciting and striking R18 has been tasked with blasting the company into a new era, in the race Audi counts before all others.

In our preview we tell the inside story behind the stealth-like car, and also delve into the theory behind its two manufacturer rivals in the top prototype class.

Peugeot also has a brand new car, even if it carries the same name as its predecessor and to the untrained eye looks very similar. As for Aston Martin, well, it has chosen a very different path to achieve its aim of winning the race overall for the first time since 1959. Open cockpit, dramatic aerodynamics, a 2-litre straight-six petrol engine… Once again, Le Mans rules have thrown up technical variety and innovation like no other major race on earth – in the modern era.

Since we closed for press on our Le Mans preview issue, the cars have shown their hands at the Le Mans test day, and it’s with some relief that I can say our analysis of where they should stand has so far been borne out!

The R18 set the pace, but lap time has indeed been increased as intended by the new rules, closer to the ACO’s magic mark of 3m 30sec (Tom Kristensen’s benchmark during the test was 3m 27.867sec); the fastest 908 was only two tenths shy of the fastest time, indicating our hopes for a ‘classic’ come June are not in vain; and as we feared, Aston Martin has a mountain to climb. The British cars managed only 12 laps all day.

I guess we must remember that this is only the beginning of what is intended to be a multi-year campaign for the Prodrive-run squad. We have to be patient.

As ever, we’re pumped up about Le Mans, as you’ll gather when you read the issue. But also as ever, our new issue is far from one-dimensional.

Highlights include a lovely story by Nigel Roebuck, who turns the clock back 40 years to recount how he first became a Formula 1 journalist. No Castle Combe clubbies for our editor-in-chief. Oh no. His first race as a working reporter was the 1971 Spanish GP at Montjuich Park!

Nigel also gets his teeth into the current state of Grand Prix racing, explaining in Reflections why his enthusiasm for what was undoubtedly an exciting Chinese GP is well under control. As we’ve seen from the comments on our website, many of you – but not all – will carry some sympathy with his sentiments about the ‘gimmicky’ nature of the entertainment on offer in F1 2011.

Other highlights of the June issue include a wonderful profile of Elio de Angelis, the cultured Italian who died in a senseless testing accident 25 years ago. Mike Doodson, who knew Elio well, has done a fine job of revisiting his career – with the help of his loyal mechanic, one Nigel Stepney. Remember him?

I cannot sign off this month without looking ahead to the July issue and an exciting reader evening that I’m sure many of you won’t want to miss. Next month we’ll be reviewing a new cinematic documentary that is released in the UK on June 3. Senna is probably the most anticipated big-screen motor racing film since Steve McQueen’s Le Mans (no, I haven’t forgotten about Bobby Deerfield…). Having already seen Senna, I’d say for good reason.

To mark the release, we have organised an evening in London during which you can see the film, in company with the writer and producer Mannish Pandey, our own Nigel Roebuck and Rob Widdows – and Senna’s close friend from his McLaren days, the incomparable Jo Ramirez. After the film, Rob will host a forum in which you will have a chance to question Mannish and Jo about the making of the movie, and of course the great man himself.

For any Senna fan, it will be a night not to be missed. To find out more about the evening click here or contact us on readersevents@motorsportmagazine.co.uk. Alternatively you can call +44 (0)20 7349 8472.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

A new era of sports car racing kicks off in Florida on Saturday. The Sebring 12 Hours marks the return of what should be classified as a World Championship of Makes – even if we’re not allowed to officially call it that.

The tough enduro is much more than just the first round of the American Le Mans Series this year. It also counts for something that calls itself the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, a seven-round global series for sports cars which includes the Le Mans 24 Hours itself. Last year’s three-race pilot series was a toe-in-the-water exercise. Now it’s for real – and even though a title with an acronym as meaningless as ILMC will mean little to the world outside the paddock, the manufacturers are taking it very seriously.

That’s because they know this is the start of something that should be very big. The series is the brainchild of Le Mans organiser the ACO. The target now is for the FIA to embrace the series and give it the World Championship title it so fully deserves.

Audi Sport boss Dr Wolfgang Ullrich summed up the feelings of everyone in sports car racing this week when he said during a press conference: “The ILMC means nothing outside this room. We need a World Championship and we need it quickly. Not in five years, but in two or three.”

There were nods of agreement from the rest of the panel beside him, which included team bosses representing the interests of Peugeot, BMW, Chevrolet and Ferrari.

It is believed that FIA president Jean Todt – who of course led Peugeot’s Group C campaign in the final days of the old World Sports Car Championship 20 years ago – is open to the idea of bestowing a proper title on the series. Let’s hope he moves on it soon.

At the front of the ILMC, we’re looking forward to another chapter of Audi versus Peugeot, as the two giants renew their intense rivalry on the bumpy concrete runways of the Sebring airfield circuit. Typically, they’re being coy over their chances.

Peugeot comes to this race with its all-new 908 LMP1. Yes, I know, it’s got the same name as the old one that won Le Mans in 2009, and at first glance it looks identical. But trust me, it is a new car. Just wish they’d given it the new name it deserves. A confusing decision.

The 908 conforms to the new 2011 regulations that have been designed to slow Le Mans prototypes, and make them safer. Diesel engine sizes have been slashed from 5.5 to 3.7 litres, while the most significant chassis change is the addition of the ungainly F1-style ‘shark fins’ on the engine cowlings. As featured in Motor Sport last year, these have been added as an attempt to stop the old problem of prototypes flipping during accidents. They look awful, but if it marks the end of cars taking flight, then so be it.

“This is a working session for us,” reckons Peugeot Sport boss Olivier Quesnel, who adds a quite remarkable statement regarding the team’s Sebring aspirations: “We don’t intend to win and I don’t think it will happen.” Well, that’s ambitious…

Of course, Le Mans is the focus for the Pride of France. But Anthony Davidson topped night practice on Thursday, following the team’s time-topping performances in testing earlier in the week. The new car has every chance of scoring a debut victory, whatever the boss might say.

At Audi, the new R18 coupé won’t arrive here until the day after the race, as the team prepares to continue its testing programme on Monday. Instead, the German giant is wheeling out its old R15 ‘spyder’ for one last fling. The car has been dubbed the R15 Plus Plus, to reflect the changes that have been forced upon it to allow the team to race it against new 2011 cars. Internally the team is calling it the R15 Plus Minus, which is more accurate. A power-sapping smaller air restrictor has suffocated the turbodiesel that won Le Mans against the odds last year. “It’s as flat as a fart,” was Allan McNish’s colourful description of the difference it has made, but that did not stop the two cars setting the fastest times in the opening pair of practice sessions.

Where the difference will really tell in the race is how much harder it will be for the prototypes to lap GT cars around the high-downforce circuit. With a field of 56 cars, avoiding trouble in traffic could well decide the outcome of this race between the two giants. There’s little in it for pace. As Dr Ullrich said, “performance is not everything for this race”.

The Sebring 12 Hours is always hard fought, and so it promises to be once again. And its significance, as the kick-off point of a new era, only increases the intensity between the two rival camps. Whatever they might say in press conferences.

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Peugeot swept the American Le Mans Series season-closer at Road Atlanta, with Pedro Lamy/Franck Montagny/Stéphane Sarrazin winning Petit Le Mans by just over a minute from the similar 908 HDI of Marc Gené/Alex Wurz/Anthony Davidson. The Peugeots finished two laps clear of the lead Audi R15 driven by Rinaldo Capello/Tom Kristensen/Allan McNish, while Duncan Dayton’s Highcroft HPD ARX-01c was fourth to take the team’s second straight ALMS title with David Brabham/Simon Pagenaud/Marino Franchitti at the wheel. The Highcroft team has won three races this year and its trio of drivers completed the season without damaging a single piece of the car’s bodywork – a superb achievement.

The GT2 championship has been a feature of this year’s ALMS with teams from Porsche, Ferrari, Corvette and BMW fighting for the championship. In fact, Petit Le Mans was a classic as the factory Corvette team came through to score its first win of the year after the leading Risi Ferrari ran out of fuel on the last lap. Oliver Gavin/Jan Magnussen/Emmanuel Collard drove the winning Corvette, finishing 10th overall.

But the GT2 drivers’ championship was taken by Jörg Bergmeister and Patrick Long aboard the Flying Lizard Porsche 911 RSR, while Bobby Rahal’s BMW team took the GT2 team championship with Bill Auberlen/Tommy Milner/Dirk Werner finishing fourth in class and 13th overall.

Porsche’s new 911 GT3R hybrid made its second competition appearance at Petit Le Mans. Driven by Timo Bernhard/Romain Dumas/Mike Rockenfeller the car ran untroubled all the way to finish 18th overall. It races next at the Zuhai Intercontinental Cup in November with ALMS GT2 champions Bergmeister and Long at the wheel.

A bonus to this year’s Petit Le Mans was perfect weather with bright, sunny skies all weekend, a sharp contrast to last year when heavy rain cut the race short and left everyone dissatisfied. But this year the 1000km race ran unimpeded with a record field of 45 starters and a record crowd too of 124,000 spectators over three days – 11,000 more than the previous Petit Le Mans record.

Meanwhile Dario Franchitti qualified on pole and led most of the final IndyCar race of the season at Homestead to beat Will Power to the championship. A late stop for fuel dropped Franchitti to eighth and Ganassi team-mate Scott Dixon came through to win the race. Power had a disappointing race, falling down the field and then slithering into the wall and retirement as Franchitti drove faultlessly to take his second straight IndyCar championship.

Dario won the IndyCar title in 2007 with Andretti-Green Racing before giving NASCAR an abortive try in 2008. Returning to Indycars with Chip Ganassi’s team Franchitti has shown himself to be the class of the field, winning his second Indy 500 this year and relentlessly pursuing and beating Power and Team Penske to the crown. Dario is not only a great racing driver but also a big fan of  Motor Sport magazine, and someone who knows as much about the sport’s history as any driver. Everyone at Motor Sport congratulates Franchitti on an extremely well won championship.

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The place wallows in history. And so does the rally that takes its name from a small town in Flanders where the land is flat and the language impenetrable. The Ypres Rally, established in 1965 and now part of the FIA Intercontinental Rally Challenge, has a special place in the history of motor sport, and rightly so.

The all-asphalt stages are spread across the Fields of Flanders, scene of so much death and destruction in World War I and at the centre of which is Ypres, or ‘Wipers’ as the Tommies called it during those dark days.

Now these fields are bursting with life, the rally cars blasting between rows of vegetables. Cabbages, potatoes, beetroot and corn as far as the eye can see. Speeds are high, there’s barely a hill worth its name, and the challenges come from long, fast straights leading to right-angle corners. The surface varies, the asphalt offering dramatically differing levels of grip.

The winner will need experience, local knowledge and lightning reflexes if he is to avoid the rocks that lurk in the apexes as well as the dust and gravel off-line. Enter Freddy Loix, local hero and five times an Ypres winner. Now 39 years old, he’s back from retirement and strapped into the potent Skoda Fabia. This charming man attacked and attacked again, until his younger and more flamboyant rivals slipped or rolled into the fields and ditches. First it was championship leader Juho Hänninen, stuck in a ditch, then reigning champion Kris Meeke, rolling across a field, allowing Loix to lift off just a touch and come home to a rapturous reception in the shadow of Ypres Cathedral on a hot summer night in Belgium. With him on the podium were Skoda works driver Jan Kopecky and a delighted Thierry Neuville, who salvaged some honour for the defeated Peugeot team.

And thereby hangs a tale. The Skoda IRC team is a fully supported works effort, the Czechs fielding two new Super 2000 Fabias for Hanninen and Kopecky as well as a Skoda UK car for Guy Wilks, who missed Ypres after being injured in a crash on the Sardinia rally. And, of course, the car for Belgian favourite Loix.

All this does not please Peugeot, champions for the last three years, and still entered semi-independently by the Kronos team. The French outfit is pleading ‘poverty’ in the face of the mighty Skodas, claiming that the IRC should not be permitting factory outfits. But this does not concern the organisers themselves, who respond to cries of foul by pointing out that the championship changes organically all the time and is not closed to manufacturer teams.

“If we complain, people will say we are bad losers,” says Marc van Dalen of Kronos. “But that is not the case. We simply don’t have the resources or the budget to fight a full works team in the IRC.” Series promoter Jean-Pierre Nicolas, a former WRC team boss at Peugeot, denies there is a problem. “It is not unfair to have a works team in the IRC,” he says. “The IRC is strong, we have hundreds of independent entries, and sometimes we will have an era when a factory team wants to come in and compete. There is a good battle between Peugeot and Skoda, it’s exciting and good for the series which grows in stature.”

Whatever the ins and outs of this, the huge crowd that gathered in Ypres on Saturday night cared only for one thing. Their man Freddy was back, and back on the top step for a sixth victory. And Monsieur Loix will be out in his Skoda this weekend at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Give him a cheer. This is how comebacks can be done.

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Before Allan went to Le Mans we caught up with him at West London Audi to get his thoughts on this year’s race, the races leading up to it and what his plans for the future are.

Can the Audi R15 Plus beat the Peugeots on pace alone at Le Mans?

We’ve definitely improved from last year. We’ve improved on those areas where we weren’t so quick, so I think we’ll be able to fight a wee bit better. We also understand the car a lot better than we did. This year we’ve been very focused on the type of testing we’ve done. I’ve never run the car in anything but Le Mans aero, so if you think of all the kilometres we’ve done in that set-up, then we do understand it pretty well, the good and the bad. We know the areas we have to work on and we know the parts of the circuit that we’ve got to focus on to keep the speed up. I think we’ll be able to take the fight to Peugeot and give them something to think about, which wasn’t the case last year.

How much did the Le Mans aerodynamic set-up hamper your chances of fighting for a win at the Spa 1000Kms?

It was hard to do Spa in Le Mans aero because it’s a compromise for that place where you need a load of downforce. For us to be so close to Peugeot – we were only one second off in terms of ultimate pace – meant I came away more encouraged than anything else, even though we finished third. It does give me a bit of confidence that we’re better prepared. We’ve also been… quite Audi in a way, making sure that we understand the detail this year. That was maybe born out of the fact that we got our backsides kicked last year.

Where did it go wrong last year?

It started going wrong the previous December with the testing and we just never recovered from it. The race result was a pretty good indicator, really. But the thing that was good about Le Mans last year was the resolve the Volkswagen Group showed in terms of, ‘we were not good enough on that occasion, but we’ll come back stronger’. Getting that from the advisory board of the Volkswagen Group, never mind the Audi management, was a nice bit of support. There was an element of pressure, no question, because you’ve got to perform, but it certainly meant a lot.

You’re well known for doing triple stints at Le Mans, whereas others drivers don’t do such long periods in the car…

They’re weaklings, just weaklings! Jessies! But really, physically I don’t find Le Mans that difficult. Focus-wise for three hours, yeah… I mean if you were to think about driving round the M25 flat out at a 140mph average, then three hours of doing that is quite hard. That’s a few loops of the M25 – OK maybe you’ll be queued at the Dartford Tunnel for a while, but… If you look at it that way, then yes, it is a long time.

Is Le Mans as physically demanding as other tracks?

Not as much as some – we run double stints at Petit Le Mans, which physically is so much harder than Le Mans. There’s no comfort zone at all, it’s all flat out, maximum attack. That’s what it requires to win. If you take Le Mans in 2008, 15 minutes from the end the gap from our car (the Audi R10 of McNish, Kristensen and Capello) back to the second-placed car (the Peugeot 908 of Minassian, Gené and Villeneuve) was 1min 40sec. If you take Petit Le Mans in 2008, we had a six-second advantage after 10 hours. You just need to look at one second per pitstop and we’d have lost Petit. The difference is that small.

Is this where you want to be for the future? At Le Mans with Audi?

Yes, certainly as far as my eyes can see. What else would I want to do? Would I want to be a test driver in Formula 1 again? I’m not going to be sitting in a Ferrari, McLaren or a Red Bull, so why would I want to be there? I’ve been with Audi now… Well, the first time I drove with them was 2000. I like the way they work, they’re very clean-cut: you either win or you lose, and if you lose you fix it, you go back and try and win again. I enjoy it, I enjoy Le Mans, I enjoy the people I work with and I enjoy the competition, which I think is going to get much harder in the next couple of years.

Will Audi stick with a diesel next year?

Honestly, I don’t know whether it’ll be a diesel or not. I know they’ve got a commitment towards programmes, but we’ll have to wait and see. The regulation changes have been pretty substantial over the past couple of years, and at Paul Ricard [earlier this year] we saw how quick the Aston was on the straight, especially on acceleration. It was, well, a bit disappointing to come out of the corner and lose 50 metres on it. I’m quite happy with the diesel because we’ve worked for four years trying to optimise it with the traction control systems, the driveability and with all the other aspects to it. But if they turn up with something else, then that’s what we’ll race. The good thing is that it’s a new technical challenge. In 2011 there’ll be a big push in the hybrid regulations and that’s another new challenge and something which, 10 years ago, no one would ever have thought of. Diesels and hybrids at Le Mans? No way! It’s quite positive for the long-term future of Le Mans.

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The pair of factory Peugeots ran away with Saturday’s 58th Sebring 12 Hours, completing a 1-2 sweep three laps ahead of the lone Gulf/Aston Martin. The winning Peugeot 908HDI was driven by Alex Wurz/Marc Gené/Anthony Davidson, who beat team-mates Sébastien Bourdais/Nicolas Minassian/Pedro Lamy across the line by 13.8 seconds. It was Peugeot’s first win at Sebring and its second in America following the team’s victory in last September’s Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

Without any competition from Audi this year the Peugeots set the pace all week. The two 908HDIs were the fastest cars in every practice session and were challenged in the race only by Lord Paul Drayson’s Lola-Judd, driven by Emanuele Pirro. But Drayson’s car ran into various problems and finally finished 12th, more than 30 laps behind. “It was a very tough race because we were fighting all the way to the line,” said Wurz, who drove the final three hours in the winning car. “But it was an awesome race with a good team and good preparation.”

Gené congratulated Wurz on his final stint. “Alex did a mega job at the end,” he said. “He drove for three hours and there were no team strategies. So he was racing with Bourdais, and Bourdais is really fast here. He really knows this place but Alex was spot-on. So I think he’s the hero in our car.”

Davidson was delighted to win on his debut with Peugeot: “It’s fantastic to be with the Peugeot team. Until a couple of weeks ago I didn’t even have any contact with these guys. It was quite a late call for the season. I’ve always wanted to come here and win at Sebring. I was second in 2003, and to join the likes of Alex and Marc – Le Mans winners – there was big pressure today. I knew I had big shoes to fill after [David] Brabham but I think we did a good job. We got the car into the lead when I was driving and just stuck it out, and like Marc said Alex did a great job at the end.”

The Gulf/Lola-Aston Martin driven by Adrian Fernández/Stefan Mücke/Harold Primat enjoyed a flawless race, running the entire distance without trouble to finish third. “It was fantastic,” Fernández enthused. “I’m happy for Aston Martin and my team-mates. They’re fantastic drivers and great friends, and we managed to do a great job.”

Fourth overall and winner of the P2 class was Greg Pickett’s Porsche RS Spyder driven by Pickett/Klaus Graf/Sascha Maassen. The car ran perfectly and beat the Highcroft HPD ARX-01c driven by Simon Pagenaud/Marino Franchitti/David Brabham by four laps. The Highcroft car led the P2 class for most of the race, building a six-lap lead at one stage, before an electrical fault lost the team 24 minutes in the pits.

The Audi team will join the Peugeots and Highcroft’s P2 car in more testing at Sebring today (Monday) and tomorrow. All three plan to run 12 hours each day in further preparation for Le Mans. Audi also tested at Homestead last week with its latest R15+ and racing boss Dr Wolfgang Ulrich spent last weekend at Sebring observing his competitors.

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The next installment in the ‘Motor Sport podcast series’ is here! Almost ten staff descended on the French circuit last weekend – of course some were doing a little more work than others – and here is the result… The ACO are understandably a little protective over race footage unless you pay for it, but thankfully a car manufacturer came to our rescue.

Our next podcast is in fact one of our new audio recordings with Nigel Roebuck, Rob Widdows, Damien Smith and Ed Foster. Feel free to ask them all a question on the homepage and they’ll try and answer during the session on Tuesday. Watch this space as they say…

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Saturday’s 57th Sebring 12 Hours kicks off this year’s American Le Mans Series, and an interesting race it will be with Audi and Peugeot staging a full dress rehearsal for Le Mans. Two of Audi’s new R15s will take on a pair of Peugeot’s 908s, and the race winner should come from one of these two teams. But Acura’s highly-touted new ARX-02a LMP1 car will also make its race debut at Sebring. The rough old Florida airfield circuit is the worst conceivable place to debut a new car, but the ARX-02a’s designer, Nick Wirth, reckons the Acura P1 teams are up to the task.

Two of the new Acuras will race at Sebring and campaign the entire ALMS season. At this stage there are no plans to race the car outside North America. Gil de Ferran’s new De Ferran Motorsports team will run one of the ARX-02as for the Brazilian and Simon Pagenaud, with Scott Dixon joining them at Sebring. Duncan Dayton’s Patron/Highcroft team will run the other Acura, with David Brabham and Scott Sharp as the regular drivers and Dario Franchitti helping their cause at Sebring.

“I love Sebring,” says Wirth. “I love the history, the people… I love walking round Sebring and finding a hole that you would put traffic lights around and get a road crew out to fix because you might kill somebody. I love the corner worker walking up to me, smiling and saying, ‘Do you love our pothole? Somebody asked us to fill it in but we said we’d rather die. It’s getting bigger and bigger, and don’t you just love it?’

“You ask, ‘How can you have a hole like that on a corner on a racing track which is so fast, and with our new car is extremely fast?’ The answer is it’s fantastic and wonderful and dangerous and scary, and part of what I love about coming to Sebring. I love the challenge of making a car be fast and reliable under the most amazing circumstances.

“You’ve got to be a car designer or an engineer to truly appreciate what a challenge Sebring is,” adds Wirth. “I love taking my engineers out there and telling them to go and stand down by the inside of turn 17 and watch those guys drive that car in there at 190mph. They come past the point where you think they should be braking and they’re still on the gas, and you then see the car do the most amazing bouncing and thrashing over the bumps through that corner. And you don’t want anything to break through there because there’s no run-off and the driver is going to get hurt.”

Wirth says getting the car balanced to operate well through the track’s wide selection of corners is as difficult as dealing with the exceedingly rough surface.

“Sebring has got everything that makes a car designer go mad and that a race engineer can’t get, which is a balance between high-speed and low-speed corners, and that’s what makes it so wonderful,” he says. “It’s one of the greatest racing circuits in the world and it’s at an airfield in the middle of Florida where you’d never imagine it to be. People talk about Spa, but it’s nothing compared to Sebring. Sebring is a destroyer of cars.”

And, of course, there’s the rare ambience of the place, with the infield reverberating to a night-long party. “There’s the race and the fireworks and the cookouts and the smells,” says Wirth. “The drivers know where they are round the circuit by the smells. They can close their eyes and tell you where they are by who’s cooking steak and who’s cooking curry.”

Like Le Mans, Sebring is as much a party as a race. It’s a motor sport experience any fan worth his salt should take in at least once.

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The beginning of the Grand Prix season in Europe always seems to represent some kind of turning point in the year. It’s Spring time, sunny days are warm enough for sitting in the garden, and even the cats wake up for at least part of the day. Yes, I know there’s lots of other motor racing going on, but somehow the arrival of the transporters in Barcelona seems to mark the end of PREviews, and the beginning of the long stretch before the REviews. Such is the year for those with deadlines.

So, what am I doing to keep myself out of mischief? Writing previews, of course, the last two before the truckies roll across the Pyrenees. There’s Audi versus Peugeot at Le Mans to examine and there’s the Goodwood Festival of Speed to consider, the Earl of March having just held his ‘press day’ at his home in West Sussex.

It’s such a nice day, the Goodwood press day, especially when you’re a guest and not an organiser. I speak from experience. Apart from keeping a hand on the forthcoming TV coverage, and making a short video for the Festival website, I was able to enjoy the special atmosphere of Goodwood Park on a beautiful English Spring day.

The hard work is yet to come. For now there’s time to enjoy a blue sky, the odd fluffy white cloud, and the sound of racing cars warming up in the early morning air. And not just any old racing cars. There’s something very special about a 1906 Mercedes being warmed next to a 1997 Penske-Ilmor, a 1953 Ferrari 375 MM Berlinetta being given its final polish, while a few feet away the oil is warmed within the mighty 12-cylinder engine of a 1990 Le-Mans-winning XJR Jaguar. Fried eggs and bacon are served on a huge barbecue next to the startline on the hillclimb while butlers offer steaming coffee, or Bull Shot, on silver trays. If only every event preview could be like this, but we know that won’t happen.

Anthony Hamilton was there, straight off the plane from Bahrain, and paying close attention to a McLaren F1 GTR parked a few yards from a replica of his son’s 2008 McLaren Mercedes-Benz. Does this mean Lewis will appear at the Festival in July? Nobody knows. Up in the woods Rauno Aaltonen flung a Mini Cooper S around the rally stage while World Champion trials rider Dougie Lampkin did impossible things with his new Beta bike before appearing on the balcony of Goodwood House, still on the bike. Yes, he rode it up the stairs. Only at a Goodwood press day.

Sir Stirling Moss was there, looking as sharp as ever, and giving interview after interview. The man is a star in every sense of the word. Every young driver should aspire to this.

There were James Bond cars, and Bond girls too. A collection of 007’s cars will be a highlight of the Cartier Style et Luxe exhibition – a tribute to the secret agent’s creator Ian Fleming.

None of this is real motor racing, it is not a series or championship, it is not political and it is not under the jurisdiction of a governing body. It is entertainment. My colleague Nigel Roebuck – who spoke at length to the Earl of March – and I will be previewing the event in Motor Sport in June, by which time the season will be well and truly underway.

Spring is here, the lambs are in the fields, and the trees are beginning to flower. Lots to look forward to, certainly, on and off the circuits. Our Prime Minister still looks pretty miserable so maybe it’s time for votes of confidence in the real world too.

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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.

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(1971 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Rodriguez & Jackie Oliver (Porsche 917 LH) leads Gerard Larrousse & Vic Elford (Porsche 917 LH), Mark Donohue & David Hobbs (Ferrari 512M), and Jo Siffert & Derek Bell (Porsche 917 LH))

Do you remember the great days of Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans? When an annual pilgrimage to the little town in the Loire was something not to be missed? If you couldn’t be there, you’d tune in to BBC radio for those brief news reports, the late night bulletins always the most atmospheric, romantic even, with the sound of the cars wailing past the pits. If you were lucky, you’d get to see some pictures on BBC television, usually the start on Saturday afternoon and the finish on Sunday with the cameras lingering on that famous clock as the hands ticked round to 4pm. Remember when Ford took on Ferrari, when Porsche came with the long-tail 917, the arrival of the glorious-sounding Matras, the big yellow Renaults and the ceaseless scream of the Mazda? That’s all fairly recent of course. We could go back further, to the triumph of Jaguar and the heroics of Duncan Hamilton, the almost military presence of Mercedes-Benz and the night Phil Hill danced his Ferrari through driving rain to a last-gasp victory.

(Left-to-right in the Jaguar paddock at Le Mans in ’54: Peter Walker, Peter Whitehead and Duncan Hamilton (with a bunch of bananas). Behind include Mrs Lois Rolt (seated), Tim Seccombe and Mary Walker (behind Hamilton))

These were the days when the 24 hours of Le Mans was truly the most famous motor race in the world, when people bought cars because the manufacturer had won at La Sarthe, thinking they must be both rapid and reliable. Us Brits travelled in our tens of thousands to France that weekend in June, pitching our tents, watching in awe at the speed on the Mulsanne and tramping through the woods to see the cars flash through Indianapolis corner. The food was good, and the wine, for this was France and those catering vans at Brands seemed a planet away. OK, you were so tired – and sometimes soaked – by the end of Sunday that you swore you’d never go again. But you did. It was fun, romantic, exciting and knackering.

Things are different now. The race still runs for 24 hours, and the wine still tastes good though the exchange rate has done for the price. But the long blast down Mulsanne has been broken up with chicanes, and wire fences force us to watch the cars at a distance. Health and safety. For us, and them. And then there’s the Audis, the diesel-powered Audis. Much to the chagrin of legendary Le Mans heroes like Henri Pescarolo, the silver cars have come, conquered – and stayed.

I mention all this because next weekend sees the running of another famous endurance race. We’re off across the Atlantic to see the Audis at Sebring, where the mighty German cars have won every time this century. Extraordinary. A mirror of Le Mans in many ways. Sebring has a fine history, it’s one of the classic long-distance events, and the old airfield circuit remains pretty much as bumpy and basic as ever it was according to Allan McNish, who aims to win yet another one for Audi at the weekend. But this year could just be different. Peugeot is entering a single car, in preparation for Le Mans, and in the hope of getting one over the Audis in this duel of the diesels.

We know the beautiful Peugeot is quick. We saw that at La Sarthe last summer. If it was as fast as it looks, it would win by miles. This is surely one of the best-looking racing cars of the modern era. But can Peugeot get on terms with the sensationally reliable Audis over a 12-hour period, let alone double that distance in June? We don’t know, but it will be worth watching, and it will be some kind of guide to what’s in store at Le Mans. Peugeot is desperate to win in France, of course, while Audi is in no mood to give up its hard-earned reputation as the fastest diesel in the world (we’re not counting the JCB Dieselmax world land speed record machine).

(March 16 – 18, 2006, Sebring 12 Hours – Allan McNish in the Audi R10 leads the pack)

To Sebring then, and memories of reading about Stirling Moss’s great feats around the wide-open runways, remembering pictures of headlamps lighting up those warm Florida nights, with drivers in shirtsleeves and sneakers and shades. All very Steve McQueen. Like Le Mans though, it will be different now, if only because of the new world order in long-distance sports car racing. Audi dominates, Peugeot challenges, the fans long for a battle. Which TDi will they want to buy on the Monday morning, believing that racing can only improve the breed? Well, I have owned both marques, and both were damn good in their different ways. I will be there as an impartial observer but I have a gut feeling that Peugeot will have to wait until June before it gets a proper crack at making a dent in Audi’s armour.

(2007 Le Mans 24 Hours, Pedro Lamy/Stephane Sarrazin/Sebastien Bourdais (no 8 Peugeot 908 Hdi FAP) leads Lucas Luhr/Alexandre Premat/Mike Rockenfeller (no 3 Audi R10))

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Last week I jumped in the car and fought through the ‘variable’ speed limit on the M25 to get to Brooklands by 6pm. As far as I can tell the new speed limit ideas are about as successful as a porn concession at the Vatican would be. The queues were horrendous and I just made it in time for the start of the Torchlight Ghost Tour around the famous circuit and buildings.

The tour is in fact more of an introduction to the history of the circuit. I say introduction because a full tour of the place would take over a day, our guide knew this as he had tried it, more than once.

If you have never been to Brooklands or even if you just want to jog your memory the hour and a half ‘wander’ is a brilliant taster. All the major historical features are covered such as the Napier Railton that was the fastest car ever to lap Brooklands at a speed of 143.44mph. A time that is unlikely ever to be broken considering only 3/4 of the track remains.

One of only two surviving Vickers Wellington bombers, the earliest Peugeot in existence, and numerous other fascinating artefacts make for a very enjoyable evening.

As for the ghosts… well I must admit that I didn’t see any but I am assured that they do exist. The stories were certainly chilling – the freezing cold weather and the shadows that my torch cast certainly made me walk briskly to my car afterwards.

This may well have been due to the fact that I had landed from Los Angeles that morning and was suffering from chronic jet lag. It certainly gave the tour that little extra edge.

The next couple of Torchlight tours are completely booked up but I would fully recommend getting in the queue, have a look at www.brooklandsmuseum.com for more information.

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