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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

On the first running of the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, in 1916, Rea Lentz raced to the clouds in 20min 55.6sec; in 2018 Romain Dumas did it in less than 8min – still the current record. This is Slim Roberts in the Grover Special; he reached the top in 14min 36.9sec. Six years later he miraculously survived a crash at Devil’s Playground – the worst drop-off on the entire 12½ mile road.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Ferrari’s unbeaten three from three at the Big One since its return to sports car racing’s top tier eclipses all expectations. But it was Robert Kubica who deservedly scooped the lion’s share of plaudits as the so-called ‘customer’ 499P – run by the same AF Corse team that’s also responsible for the works cars – completed the hat-trick. Now each of Ferrari’s World Endurance Championship Hypercars has scored a win at Le Mans.

Kubica was the first Polish winner, Yifei Ye the first from China, while 26-year-old Phil Hanson can reflect on a final vindication of his decision to sidestep single-seaters as a teenager to focus instead on a sports car career. Now he’s only the third Brit with an overall win at Le Mans in a Ferrari, after works 499P driver James Calado and Lord Selsdon of Croydon, the bit-part player in Ferrari’s first back in 1949.

Ferrari Kubica celebrates win

You can see how much the win meant to Kubica, whose career almost ended after a rally crash

Getty Images

The two factory crews acknowledged that the yellow 499P had an edge at Le Mans this year, from the test day to the chequered flag – and Kubica was the relentless driving force. The 40-year-old ignored extreme heat and weariness in a final heroic quintuple stint topping more than three and a half hours to see the job through. This was a drive that should be remembered among Le Mans’ best.

Typically, there was no overwrought emotion from Kubica despite… well, everything. The context is well-known and heavy. Fourteen years ago, he almost lost an arm in a dreadful rally crash along with the promise of a Ferrari Formula 1 future. Kubica, considered an equal to Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, faced a new battle to rebuild his racing life. How he even got near an F1 return, never mind an ultimately underwhelming season with Williams in 2019, beggars belief. To now win Le Mans, in a Ferrari of all cars, tops any Brad Pitt movie script.

Kubica and Ye made their Le Mans debuts together in 2021, when they lost an LMP2 class victory with a car failure on the final lap. Last year, in their first Le Mans in the top Hypercar class, their yellow Ferrari let them down in the 21st hour. New team-mate Hanson teased them he was joining a “jinxed” crew. The joke is now obsolete.

No83 Yellow Ferrari WEC

First place for No83 means it’s been a Ferrari clean sweep in all rounds of the WEC

But this was far from a trouble-free run, despite the No83 proving consistently the most potent of the Ferraris. Qualifying was disappointing for all three, Ye leaving the yellow car only 13th on the grid. But in the race it quickly emerged that this was Ferrari’s to lose as the 499Ps established themselves for long stretches at the top of the timing screens. Still, Kubica and co were managing a gearbox glitch and also lost a healthy lead in the 11th hour to the race’s lone safety car interlude. Beyond that, the pace was incessant, in a sweltering 93rd edition.

Yet while others felt the heat, notably Alessandro Pier Guidi spinning the No51 in the pit entry just after 11am, Kubica remained ice-cold out front, even when the No6 Porsche 963 offered Ferrari its only meaningful threat in the final hours. Kévin Estre charged past the works 499Ps and got to within 14sec of Porsche’s 20th Le Mans win and Roger Penske’s first. Those landmarks will have to wait, as Kubica offered a bitter-sweet reminder of what F1 lost in that freak rally crash.

But let’s not dwell on the past. Kubica is sporting a Le Mans winner’s Rolex and that’s enough to inspire a quiet, satisfied smile.

Le Mans: the races within the race

Here’s what happened in LMP2 and LMGT3…
LE MANS, FRANCE - JUNE 14: The #43 Inter Europol Competition - Oreca 07 - Gibson of Jakub Smiechowski,

  • There was more Le Mans joy for Poland, whose Inter Europol team scooped LMP2 class honours despite a late pitlane speeding penalty for Briton Nick Yelloly. VDS Panis’s Esteban Masson looked set for victory, but team chief Olivier Panis was left with head in hands when their ORECA 07, above, slowed with a broken toe link in its suspension. Thus experienced sports car campaigner Yelloly, who somehow hadn’t raced at Le Mans until now, was reprieved to share victory with Tom Dillmann and Jakub Smiechowski.
    Riccardo Pera, Richard Lietz of and Ryan Hardwick
  • Just as well Richard Lietz, above centre, didn’t follow his instincts and retire. The Austrian, 41, is a six-time GT class Le Mans winner after his second consecutive LMGT3 victory with Manthey Racing. Lietz shared a Porsche 911 GT3 R with American Ryan Hardwick, above, right, and Italian Riccardo Pera, beating Vista AF Corse’s Ferrari and TF Sport’s Corvette. Valentino Rossi was right in the mix for GT honours, until the WRT BMW he shared with Kelvin van der Linde and Ahmad Al Harthy was scuppered by electrical issues.
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

1971 Lamborghini Miura P400 SV

Sold by RM Sotheby’s, £3.3m 
Anyone who has seen the (original) Italian Job will likely have clear memories of the opening scenes showing a Lamborghini Miura threading its way through the Italian alps to the sound of Matt Monro’s On Days Like These. That car was finished in an orange tone called Arancio Miura, unlike the less desirable Rosso Corsa in which this example left the factory. What this one did have going for it, however, was the fact that it was one of just 150 of the SV versions made, and was also fitted with the superior split sump motor in which the engine and gearbox oils were separate.

1966 Jaguar E-Type

1966 Jaguar E-Type

Sold by Hampson auctions, £283,696 
If that seems a lot for a ’66 E-type, it normally would be. But this was no ordinary example, having been upgraded for 21st century use. A 4.7-litre engine and five-speed gearbox were part of the package.

1988 Ducati 851 Superbike ‘Kit racer’

1988 Ducati 851 Superbike ‘Kit racer’

Sold by Iconic Auctioneers, £6325 
Being one of only 207 made and with 1100 miles on the clock, this ‘Kit Racer’ was a bargain. Kit refers to the competition parts factory fitted to the standard 851 that made it a track-ready, road-legal racer.

1983 Ford Fiesta XR2

1983 Ford Fiesta XR2

Sold by Iconic Auctioneers, £27,563 
By the late 1990s, Ford’s sporty XR2 Fiestas were selling for a few hundred pounds. But even at more than £27,000, the vendor of this one lost a fortune having spent £104,000 restoring it over six years.

2022 Ferrari 812 Competizione

2022 Ferrari 812 Competizione

Sold by Iconic Auctioneers, £904,875 
This Competizione was one of just 999 of what was then Ferrari’s most powerful ever road car. Sold new to an owner on the Isle of Man, it had covered 2200 miles. It fetched double what it originally cost.

1962 Honda 50

1962 Honda 50

Sold by Bonhams, £6000 
This one-off time-warp example of the world’s most produced vehicle (100 million) had recorded zero miles, had never been run and still had its original swing tags and plastic seat protector.

1990 Singer Classic Turbo

1990 Singer Classic Turbo

Sold by Bonhams, £1.2m 
Singer’s Classic Turbo is a car you want to drive and drive – so it’s surprising that the owner of this one parted with it when it had but 270 miles on the clock. A Singer Flytrack watch was included.

1936 Armstrong Siddeley Special

1936 Armstrong Siddeley Special

Sold by Historics auctioneers, £18,304 
This nicely patinated Armstrong Siddeley-based special looked like a good, honest machine – and promised a decent turn of speed thanks to the combination of its small size and 2.4-litre, straight six engine driving through a pre-selector gearbox. De rigueur leather bonnet strap and driving goggles were included.

Forthcoming sale highlights

  • Historics auctioneers, Datchet, Berks, July 19
    If the weather’s kind, this Historics auction held amid the lush greenery of Windsorview Lakes can be as genteel as the best of Pebble Beach. And, if the rain does hold off, modern classic fans might find it difficult to resist a 1995 Mercedes-Benz 320 SL Mille Miglia – one of 40 such examples built to mark the 40th anniversary of Stirling Moss’s win in the Italian race.
  • Iconic auctioneers, Biggleswade, Beds, July 20
    The wide range of lots in this annual motorcycle sale help it appeal to everyone from bargain hunters to wealthy collectors. This time offerings range from a clutch of six unused Lafranconi silencers designed for 1970s Ducatis to a ‘new, old stock’ 20-year-old Honda Fireblade in Repsol race colours. It’s still in its factory transport crate.
  • SWVA, Poole, July 31
    Probably the last UK classic car auction before the August holiday break, this sale offers plenty of opportunities to bag a last-minute bargain to run for the rest of the summer. One particular lot that caught our eye is a 1962 Triumph TR4 that appears to have been very nicely restored around 25 years ago and has clearly been well cared for since. Its estimate is £16,000-£18,000.
  • Broad arrow, zÜrich, switzerland, November 1
    The US-owned auction house is further expanding its European presence with this new sale set to take place at the historic five-star Dolder Grand Hotel, overlooking Lake Zürich. The carefully curated auction of 60 cars will be held on the penultimate day of the giant Auto Zürich motor show, which has been a fixture of the city since 1987.
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Fancy a bit of wind-in-the-hair motoring? Well, it doesn’t come much more ‘windy’ than this custom conversion of the insanely powerful Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, the road-legal dragster that can dash-off a quarter mile in less than 9sec and hit 60mph from standstill in a hard-to-compute 1.66sec.

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible rear

In this, you’ll burn off all-comers from a set of traffic lights

Mecum Auctions

Produced in 3000 units in ’23, the latest version of the Demon followed the original 2018 car which caused a sensation thanks to its ready-to-race specification, which included Nitto road-legal drag tyres, transbrake launch control and a 6.2-litre supercharged V8 that produced 828bhp on 100 octane fuel. The 2023 170 was, however, even more extreme thanks to being equipped with the first Hemi engine to produce more than 1000bhp which made it, according to Dodge, the world’s quickest production car.

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible engine

6.2-litre supercharged Hemi V8 produces 1010bhp

Mecum Auctions

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible logo

Colour is officially named TorRed

Mecum Auctions

All examples left the factory in two-door coupé guise, but the manufacturer sanctioned Florida-based Droptop Customs to chop the roof off and create – you guessed it – the world’s quickest convertible. The £20,000 conversions are carried out by renowned convertible coach builder Jeff Moran and his team using nothing more high-tech than an angle grinder.

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible interior

Despite its massive performance, the 170 is brimming with mod cons for the road, including blind spot detection, rear parking cameras and rain-sensitive wipers

Mecum Auctions

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible dile

The 170 can sprint from a standing start to 60mph in just 1.66sec

Mecum Auctions

Once the metal roof is detached from the car, it’s replaced with an electrically operated canvas top, with reinforcement being added to the cabin and underside to maintain rigidity during those pre-run burn-outs.

The TorRed example offered here hasn’t had a chance to endure such abuse, however – it has covered a mere 22 miles from new and has yet to melt rubber.

Mecum has not published a pre-sale estimate but since a regular 170 lists at $96,666 (around £72,000), this one seems likely to fetch a premium of at least 50% on top. (Or should that be ‘off top’?)

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible seats

Cabin and underside are reinforced as part of the Droptop Customs conversion

Mecum Auctions

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible side

Sub 10sec drag cars must have an official NHRA rollcage fitted. The Demon never did – so it was banned

Mecum Auctions

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Convertible

On offer with Mecum Auctions, Kissimmee, Florida, July 9. Estimate: on request. mecum.com

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Long shadow of the man in black Feb ’11

A new Amazon documentary on late NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt has shone a light on a man celebrated and, at times, reviled in equal measure. From stock car racing’s North Carolina heartland, ‘The Man in Black’ aka ‘The Intimidator’ simultaneously made himself a villain for some due to habitually putting rivals into the wall.

Featuring captivating archive footage and interviews by those close to him, Earnhardt has been produced by his racing-driver-turned-burgeoning-media-mogul son Dale Jr. It’s the most-compelling on-screen motor sport production since 2010’s Senna.

Gordon Kirby’s February 2011 archive piece further illustrates a racer who could be both straightforward and enigmatic – worthy of his macho moniker but vulnerable at times too.

Earnhardt’s father Ralph was a successful driver on NASCAR’s lower rungs, but Dale made his first one-off appearance in the sport’s top Cup tier in 1975 at the age of 24, and four years later was a full-time fixture in the championship. It hadn’t been an easy ride though. By the time his stock car career had momentum, he’d already got through two marriages, leaving three children behind – racing always came first.

“I was borrowing $500 at a time on 90-day notes from the bank just to race,” Earnhardt is quoted by Kirby. “Racing cost me my second marriage, because of the things I took away from my family. We didn’t have money to buy groceries. We should have been on welfare.”

It was this uncompromising pursuit of his racing dream that would help get him there. He took a race win in his first full NASCAR Cup season, and by the next he was champion.

It was a move to the Richard Childress team that saw the driver really hit his stride. The potent pairing would win six titles across eight years, from 1986 to 1994, with Earnhardt building a business empire and starting his own team towards the end of the ’90s.

The hardest man in the field would tragically lose his life at the 2001 Daytona 500, a race in which he had little luck. The crash came on the last lap of a contest Earnhardt’s drivers, Michael Waltrip and Dale Jr, would take a 1-2 in. It’s the latter who’s helping to keep his legacy alive today.

To read the full story visit our online archive. Get daily doses of period reports and interviews by signing up to our free Great Reads e-mail newsletter via our website. 

On this month… Aintree odour, Brits abroad and Moss’s C 

Factory Flaws 

Motor Sport Magazine August 1957

August 1957
Do we look back at Aintree with rose-tinted specs? Jenks needed something rose-scented at the British GP: “Oh dear, the smell from the nearby factories!” Meanwhile in the Le Mans 24 Hours we bemoan an Ecurie Ecosse 1-2. “Bagpipe music made one long for an Italian win.”

Small World

Motor Sport Magazine August 1971

August 1971
In France for a rally, our Gerry Phillips checks reservations at his hotel to see who’d booked a room for the French GP. ‘Jenkinson’ is seen. “Un petit Anglais avec barbe,” say staff. The Gallic theme continues with a Citroën GS test: “Car of the Year but you have to ask which year?”

Motor Sport Magazine August 2008

Buzzer Round  

August 2008
Stirling Moss drives his 1952 disc-brake pioneer C-type Jag. “She’s such a lady,” he enthuses. Keke Rosberg eschews solids in our Lunch With…, opting for a double espresso. He recalls being 1982 F1 world champion: “I went from zero to hero. I was even on A Question of Sport.”

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Enzo Ferrari might (allegedly) have described the Jaguar E-type as the most beautiful car in the world – but for my money, a Marcos 1800 GT in the right colour makes the  E look pedestrian.

And 1800 GTs don’t come much better than this spectacular Haze Metallic Blue example on offer with marque specialist Redline Sportscars which has been buying, selling, restoring and upgrading the cars for more than 30 years.

Marcos Engineering was founded in 1959 by Bristol-based engineer Jem Marsh and the celebrated aerodynamicist Frank Costin, whose earlier work at aircraft maker de Havilland inspired him to look to plywood as a material for body tub construction.

Marcos 1800 GT rear

Haze Metallic Blue pairs with black bumpers.

Redline Sportscars

The first Marcos model, the GT Xylon, was developed to compete in 750 Motor Club races and was campaigned with impressive success by Marsh, as well as future track stars including  Jackie Stewart, Jackie Oliver and Derek Bell.

The 1800 GT arrived in 1964, combining Marcos’s celebrated plywood chassis and tub construction with the famously robust Volvo B18 engine that powered the Amazon models.

The revolutionary underpinnings were created by gluing together more than 350 individual components made from marine ply to create a complex framework that was both lighter and stiffer than that of conventional, steel-built rivals.

Over the top, Marcos draped the GT’s fabulous glass-fibre bodywork that, while it looked spectacular, was also practical, offering a light and airy cabin, plenty of legroom and capacious luggage space.

Marcos-1800-GT-logo

The B18 engine might have produced only around 100bhp, but with just 769kg to propel it made the 1800 GT a quick and nimble car with a top speed not far south of 120mph.

The example on offer here is even more lively thanks to having been fitted with a later, 2-litre B20 engine that has been tweaked with a high-compression cylinder head and twin Weber 42 carburettors.

Previously owned for 45 years by a marque enthusiast, the car is said to be well known in Marcos Owners Club circles having attended more than half a dozen national rallies. It might also be among the most head-turning 1800 GTs on the road thanks to its combination of blue paint, stealthy black bumpers and chromed wire wheels.

Marcos 1800 GT interior

Aquamarine blue interior

Redline Sportscars

A fold-back sunroof enhances it grand touring appeal, while the blue leather interior, wood-rimmed steering wheel and engine-turned aluminium sill plates scream ’60s style.

Speaking of wood, the aforementioned boot is a sight to behold being, effectively, a beautifully varnished wooden recess with a hinged base concealing the fuel tank and spare wheel. The engine bay is equally well presented (with more varnished wood) and, as a finishing touch, both flanks behind the forward-opening bonnet carry Adams badges in memory of brothers Dennis and Peter Adams who designed the car.

They also created the Probe 16, the futuristic automotive design exercise that was made in three examples, one of which appeared as Durango 95 in the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange.

It was more far-out than the Marcos – but nowhere near as pretty.

Marcos 1800 GT engine

Volvo 2-litre B20 engine

Redline Sportscars

Royal E-type reigned the autobahns 

  • Ever been told you have heirs and graces? Perhaps you need to own this 1965 Jaguar E-Type, which was bought new by Prince Michael of Kent. It was delivered to Germany when his royal highness was serving with the 11th Hussars and driven at full whack on autobahns. “It’s in impeccable order,” says Essex-based Marc James. And it’s listed at a rather royal £POA.

    1965 jaguar e-type

  • Former Ayr United footballer John McTier, who lost an eye at 16 after an unprovoked attack by teenagers, has just been named Best Independent Motor Dealer at the 2025 Scottish Business Awards. With £260,000 compensation, McTier set up Woodville Car sales in Glasgow. The secret of his success? “It comes back to treating other people like you’d like to be treated yourself.”
  • Just three years on from his F1 world title, Mario Andretti was the star driver at the misfiring Alfa Romeo. He drove this 1981 Alfa Romeo 179d, in the Dutch GP. Andretti had what Jenks called “a monumental prang” after a suspension breakage at 150mph. It’s now restored and on sale at Hall & Hall in Bourne, £POA.
    1981 alfa romeo 179d
  • The UK’s first retailer to feature the new’R Renault corporate identity has opened. Letchworth Renault on Icknield Way now gives a greater emphasis on cars, with discussion tables and, of course, obligatory coffees.
  • Coffee, as you know, is outclassed by tea, a fact not lost at South West Nissan in Wellington, Somerset, which has ‘tea’med up with local firm Kingdom to create an exclusive organic brew. “Pop in and have a cuppa,” says the dealer. LG
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

The water is too hot. We must stop, right now,” said Sébastien Loeb calmly over the in-car radio and the roar of the engine. Perhaps the greatest rally driver in history has dealt with more pressing problems in his time, but sitting in the passenger seat of the rally-prepped Alpine A110, a wave of adrenaline rippled through me.

Loeb eased off the throttle and the Alpine coasted to a halt on the side of the mountain track. “Get out,” he said. Which I did, sharpish. A cloud of steam was rising from the rear-mounted engine mingling with dust that the car had kicked up.

Moments earlier we had been speeding upwards somewhere in the Massif des Maures hills near St Tropez at white-knuckle speeds. Loeb in Red Bull race suit throwing the weight of the car backwards and forwards with throttle and footbrake as we approached each bend balancing it on a tightrope and controlling the momentum with instinctive ease then brutally yanking the hydraulic handbrake to slither around the hairpins. Hard on the power and the speedo reached 60mph as we hurtled towards the next bend, nothing but an olive tree between us and a sheer drop the other side. I reminded myself that as well as his nine WRC titles Loeb also once set the record for the Pikes Peak hillclimb which this road was beginning to resemble.

Sébastien Loeb having an interview

Now 51, Sébastien Loeb is spending more time with his family… but can still handle a rally car,

Simon Bauchau/ Red Bull Content Pool

Then came the bone-shaking bang as the car sped over a depression in the road and bottomed out. We would discover later that the force of the impact had broken a coolant pipe and left a trail of liquid along the road. Loeb shrugged as he inspected the damage and the support crew arrived. “They will fix it,” he said.

Eighty WRC rally wins, victories in the World Touring Car Championship and World Rallycross Championship, plus a title in Extreme E, the Frenchman’s record is eye-rubbingly impressive. He has raced at Le Mans finishing second, attempted Dakar eight times and finished on the podium five times (though never won it) and earlier this year won the Race of Champions for the fifth time at the age of 51. Loeb has been named French Sportsman of the Year twice and been made Knight of the Legion of Honour. And in 2016 readers of this magazine voted him in to our Hall of Fame.

But even greats must slow down eventually. When I met him in the south of France, Loeb is as close to being off-duty as you imagine he ever is, albeit working with one of his sponsors, the watchmaker Richard Mille, with whom he has been a partner since 2012. Part of his work was giving people like me a high-speed drive up the mountain path – where our first run ended with that busted coolant pipe. Out of the car he was in relaxed, and for a famously taciturn driver, talkative mood.

Let’s start with who he regards as the best he competed against: Loeb doesn’t hesitate. “I probably had my biggest battles with Marcus Grönholm,” he says. “We duelled quite fiercely, and he was incredibly fast, but maybe he made mistakes too often. It’s possible he was a bit faster than me, but I was more consistent.”

What about his team-mates? “In my first full season, Sainz and McRae were my team-mates. I thought to myself: ‘Now I’m going to find out if I have what it takes.’ And I promptly won the first rally, Monte Carlo, ahead of McRae and Sainz – a 1-2-3 for Citroën. Then I knew I could compete at the front on both asphalt and gravel. That was a key moment in my career. Fom that point on it was clear to me that I could become world champion.

“One reason for my success was that I had a really good system with the pace notes. My records were very precise – that gave me confidence. I could drive cleanly, with a calm style, didn’t have to be aggressive because I knew exactly what radius each corner had and how I had to drive.”

We meet just before Le Mans so talk about his adventures with Henri Pescarolo’s team. Second place in 2006 felt like victory given Audi’s dominance at the time, but it was the 2005 near-miss that still stings. In a competitive car, team-mate Soheil Ayari spun in the 19th hour after picking up a puncture.

“I’ve never seen anyone as angry as Henri after that accident,” Loeb recalls. “But it was a great experience. I wasn’t used to driving with [open cockpit] prototypes, with your head in the slipstream. That was a lot of fun! Driving prototypes was such a different experience from rallying.”

Years later, at 40, Loeb made his strategic pivot from rallying to circuit racing, driven by a simple realisation: “If I want to do something else, I should do it now, otherwise I’ll be too old.” His Citroën WTCC campaign and GT adventures followed, but ultimately reinforced his love for rallying’s unique challenges. “In the end I found that I still prefer driving in the WRC,” he explains. “On circuits, the ratio wasn’t right between all the meetings you have and the time you actually spend driving. I like the driving experience – I don’t need all the meetings around it.”

Seb Loeb in rally car

He won’t be drawn on whether he might repeat a WRC cameo like the one in 2022 which landed him another Monte win saying it wouldn’t fit with his current Dacia Rally-Raid programme. “I can’t compete for Dacia in Dakar and Hyundai in WRC.” he says. “And five events per year [is good] and I still have lots of fun. You reach a point where you want to be home a bit more.” Not that he has gone too soft, slipping in that his Richard Mille watch has survived “two rollovers at Dakar and two in the Abu Dhabi desert challenge”.

He says he is enjoying time with his family – he flies his daughter to her gymnastics classes in his helicopter and enjoys his garage including a Ferrari F355 (“the first car I really liked”), a Renault 5 Turbo (the first car he owned), and modern machinery including a Ferrari SF90. He bridles at suggestions it is a collection: “My passion is driving not cars,” he insists. “The best car for me is probably a WRC car, but I can’t drive that on the road!

“I also have motorcycles, 15 or 20, but that’s not a collection either. Everywhere I have a residence, there are three enduro bikes in case friends come by. I spend my time on things I like, and I’m satisfied with my life,” he says.

Any regrets? “No. I started as an electrician and I’m a nine-time world champion – I can’t regret anything!” Except perhaps the odd broken coolant pipe.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

There wasn’t one single moment that convinced Eliott Delecour he would follow in his father’s footsteps. It was always there; more like the acceptance of a destiny.

“Rallying was something I grew up with, both through my dad and my mum, so it was something that I always knew about and wanted to do,” says the 17-year-old. “It was more about when rather than if – but of course, if I could find the money and a way to do it.”

The surname helped, which opened doors for him to compete in the Dacia Cup in Romania aged 16 in 2023. Within three rallies he had taken his first class win and once Eliott turned 17 in September 2024 he was able to compete in France as well – with outings on famous events such as the Rallye du Var.

The turning point came in January this year though, when he entered the Stellantis Cup promotional series and also made his WRC debut on the Rallye Monte Carlo. He duly claimed first in the RC4 class (in an Opel Corsa Rally 4) and 32nd overall.

Eliott Delecour and Romain Roche RC4 winners Monte Carlo Rally

Eliott Delecour and Romain Roche were RC4 winners in this year’s Monte Carlo Rally

Alamy Stock Photo

“That was an unbelievable experience – like a dream for me,” says Eliott. Not long afterwards, he took his first overall win in the VW Polo. Yet his feet remain firmly on the ground, with a challenging series of French events lying ahead against hungry young competitors. Through it all, he can rely on the support of his famous parents.

“My dad gives me a lot of good advice, but in terms of driving style we’re quite different. My style of rally driving is much more the modern way, which is more like circuit racing,” points out Eliott. “And I’ve had my mum with me inside the car as my co-driver for a few events. That’s not a long-term solution and it can sometimes be quite strange, but it’s also good to have a co-driver who knows you really well!”

It also helps to have an experienced manager, Gilles Panizzi, whose “eyes can see around corners” according to the late Richard Burns – Panizzi’s former Peugeot team-mate and 2001 world champion.

“Gilles has been a really solid support, and he has also helped me a lot,” says Eliott. “But in the end, if I am going to make it, I have to deliver. And every day, I’m just focused on working hard to achieve that goal.”

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

It says a lot about the no-holds-barred François Delecour that even Colin McRae once described him as “probably the craziest guy I know” (Delecour’s long-time Peugeot team-mate Gilles Panizzi was described as the “second-craziest”).

And before Sébastien Loeb came along, Delecour was the brightest star in the French rallying firmament. François burst onto the international scene in 1991 by nearly winning on his WRC debut in a four-wheel-drive car, which was also his first appearance for Ford on the Monte Carlo Rally.

This relatively unknown 28-year-old with the intense look in his eyes had the temerity to take the lead from reigning world champion Carlos Sainz on the penultimate day and was on course for a history-writing victory until his Sierra Cosworth’s left-rear suspension failed on the final run through the Col de Turini, costing the Frenchman 6min.

François Delecour cycling 60 miles

At 62, François Delecour is at peak fitness, cycling 60 miles a day.

Jayson fong

That emotional roller-coaster firmly set the scene for the rest of his factory WRC career, which took in 12 seasons and several stints with Peugeot and Ford, as well as Mitsubishi for two years. He could – probably should – have been world champion in 1993, the season in which he claimed three of his four career WRC wins, but injuries from a road accident in a Ferrari F40 put him on the sidelines for four months. He still managed to finish second at the end of that year.

Delecour’s final WRC factory drive was a comeback on the 2012 Monte (after a 10-year break) where he signed off with a fine sixth place, but once the tyre screaming stops, what does a retired rally driver actually do? Particularly one as notoriously hyperactive as François Delecour.

Delecour with Motor Sport Anthony Peacock

Delecour with Motor Sport writer Anthony Peacock, who’s being shown the local sights in the family ‘buggy’

Jayson fong

Most people, for instance, travel to Corsica from mainland France by plane or ferry – but he chose to go by jet ski. François still describes that journey as one of the most painful experiences of his life, with his legs and back acting as human shock absorbers, but – as we’re about to find out – he’s a real sucker for punishment. Because François was generous enough to invite us to join him for a day at his home in the south of France (in the same village where Johnny Depp once lived with Vanessa Paradis, in the years before the Hollywood star’s marital arrangements became even more newsworthy).

“François cooks potatoes with the devotion of a Michelin- starred chef”

But this wouldn’t be a day of lazing by the pool and reminiscing. Delecour is still competing on four wheels and two. His latest adventure is a 470-mile mountain bike race across France, which he attacks with exactly the same passion as he displayed on the world’s stages. And it was time to go training.

Now aged 62, his fitness level is insane; almost certainly superior to the peak of his driving career – thanks to a regime that takes in nearly 60 miles of arduous cycling every day. The never-ending gravel tracks behind the family house high up in the mountains constitute his own personal playground. He’s even built a rally stage around the property, complete with a beaten-up former rallycross Renault Clio that has been driven by many of the sport’s absolute legends as they attempt – futilely – to beat his record. Every day is a bit like Top Gear in real life, only much fitter and faster. “That’s probably the most famous Renault Clio in history,” François jokes. “You should see some of the people who have driven it. And crashed it!”

Delecour cycling his bike

With the deft eye of a rally driver, Delecour not only studies the road, but also its edge – for lunch options

Jayson fong

As for Panizzi, there’s still a close connection between the former team-mates. Panizzi now manages 17-year-old Eliott Delecour, the latest generation of a rallying family that also includes Priscille de Belloy, François’s wife and Eliott’s mother.

“It’s a different way of life now,” adds François. “I’m still driving, cycling, doing a lot of things as always, but when it comes to rally, my son is the focus. If I wasn’t convinced of his talent, I wouldn’t be helping him.”

Former rallycross Clio

Former rallycross Clio, as used on the family track.

Jayson fong

They are an incredibly close-knit family unit, along with Eliott’s older brother Mathys – also a driver – living out their shared passion in idyllic surroundings. They are also always ‘on’ (Eliott spends most of his spare time studying onboard videos). To give you an idea, even the family dog is called Taf – which stands for tout à fond, or flat out in English. Priscille is constantly on the phone, doing deals and marshalling the troops. Eliott is somehow trying to balance schoolwork with his burgeoning rally career. François is constitutionally incapable of sitting still.

Delecours cooking potatoes

You need a hearty appetite when visiting the Delecours

Jayson fong

“I can’t help it, this is just the way I am,” points out François. “I have to be doing something. All of us are the same. Even after I stopped driving, things didn’t get calmer.”

Lunch is the only pause in this blur of frenetic activity. Priscille manages to find time to make her own mayonnaise, while François cooks some potatoes with the devotion of a Michelin-starred chef. It’s one of the best flavour combinations you’ll ever taste. François knows a lot about vegetables. In fact, he even gave an interview on a rally in Romania where he talked mainly about carrots (look it up – Interviu Francois Delecour on YouTube if you don’t believe me). But his horticultural pièce de résistance is mushrooms.

Delecours mushrooms

Much-prized morel mushrooms.

Jayson fong

The reaction and vision of rally drivers needs no description, with their seemingly miraculous ability to pick out precise braking points or changes of grip in the dead of night on icy mountain roads. But even that’s comparatively easy compared to the bandwidth needed to distinguish a morel mushroom, growing by the side of a distant river, while travelling at around 20mph on the adjacent road on a mountain bike.

“François is constitutionally incapable of sitting still: ‘I can’t help it…’”

Every day after lunch, François goes for his training ride – hard though it is to tear himself away from that delicious plate of tuna, potatoes and mayonnaise. We’re invited to follow as part of our day out with a difference, but in a buggy that’s actually a decent simulacrum of a World Rally Car, complete with switchable four-wheel drive, a banshee wail rev-limiter and proper six-point harnesses with a rollcage.

Eliott and Priscille Delecours on the couch

Eliott and Priscille are also involved with rally driving

Jayson fong

Earlier, François demonstrated its jaw-dropping capabilities on the gravel tracks. Now, it’s taking a lot of my (admittedly limited) capacity to keep up with him on the same paths. Except this time, he’s on a mountain bike, showing some serious pace.

Those tracks gradually become narrower and more rocky as they climb up the mountainside, offering incredible views over Saint-Tropez and Sainte-Maxime, the Côte d’Azur every bit as sparkling blue as its eponymous appellation.

Going down, the road charges through glistening water-splashes and magical woodland, before levelling out through lush vineyards and neat farmers’ fields.

Naturally, François holds the record on the family track.

Naturally, François holds the record on the family track.

Jayson fong

It’s the south of France as you’ve never seen it before; a long way from the beaches, crowds and commercialism that mould the stereotype of the hectic French Riviera. It sounds glib, but this is the real France – of landscapes and produce and genuine people.

It’s easy to see what inspired the famous French painters who lived and worked in this area, such as Chagall and Matisse. Each corner reveals a beautiful canvas framed by untrammelled nature. “Everything is here,” points out François. “Why would you want to go anywhere else?”

Legs pumping metronomically, with speeds in excess of 30mph and elevation changes that can reach nearly 1000m, he nonetheless cycles resolutely onwards. Until suddenly, he stops. Braking hard in the two-wheel equivalent of a Scandinavian flick, in a hurry to scrub off as much speed as possible. “There!” he points, abandoning the bike and heading towards the riverside. “Look!”

Animals in these parts

Spectators are like animals in these parts

Jayson fong

If you stare hard, you eventually see a few clumps of morel mushrooms, true delicacies in the world of fungi, which normally grow by the side of a river, at the base of trees. Most of the natural world knows how tasty they are as well, which is why they have evolved to be so well-camouflaged.

How François spotted them from the saddle of his mountain bike is a mystery, but it says something about the pinpoint peripheral ability to read a road that all the great drivers – especially rally drivers – never lose.

“Those things would be worth a fortune if you ordered them in a restaurant in Paris,” he points out, gathering them up with the same boundless enthusiasm that characterises all his activities. “Perfect with spaghetti!”

And before you know it, he’s back on the bike and heading to the house before the increasingly threatening skies, which over the course of three hours have turned from cerulean blue to leaden grey, open up fully.

Not that François really cares. He’s on his bike even when temperatures exceed 40°C – a regular occurrence, given the number of water bowsers strategically placed to combat summer forest fires – or when monsoon-like downpours turn those gravel tracks into something that resembles a Safari Rally stage during rainy season.

Delecour collection include a Ford GT40, a Ford Escort Mk2 and a Fiat 500

cars in the Delecour collection include a Ford GT40, a Ford Escort Mk2 and a Fiat 500

Jayson fong

A few months ago, François came off big-time in a remote area – the equivalent of a hard motorbike crash into rocks with no helmet. Ironically, he’d just wrapped a bandana around his handlebars, which came loose and worked its way into the front wheel. His face took the brunt of the impact.

François lay there dazed for a while, wearing a mask of blood, before eventually trying to get back on the bike. Rally drivers are cut from a different cloth. “It’s just what you do,” he grins. “Get back in the car…”

He’s lost count of how many cars he’s driven since his very first national event in 1981, but an easy way to make a rough estimate is to look at the staggering range of models displayed in the large cabinet that dominates his open-plan dining room – one for every car he has driven, more or less.

Some are proving elusive to find: his Autobianchi A112, for instance, while others are extensively represented, such as the Ford Escort RS Cosworth and Peugeot 206 WRC.

“My favourite is probably the Peugeot 306 Maxi,” he says. “It was such an exciting car to drive, which revved all the way to 11,000rpm. I drove it a lot in the French Championship, before I got to the WRC, and I’m driving it again on a rally in Guadeloupe soon.”

Escort RS Cosworth diorama depicts Delecour in the Monte Carlo Rally

Escort RS Cosworth diorama depicts Delecour in the Monte Carlo Rally.

Jayson fong

His other favourite car comes from the opposite end of his professional career – the Porsche 911 R-GT prepared by Richard Tuthill, which made its debut in 2014. “That sound!” remembers François, of the car in which he won the inaugural FIA R-GT Cup in 2015. “And this was why I loved the Maxi too. A rally car needs to have a proper sound.”

His least favourite was the Mitsubishi Lancer World Rally Car that effectively brought his full-time WRC career to a close at the end of 2002: “A big disappointment, as a lot was promised that never happened.”

“A favourite is the Peugeot 306 Maxi – such an exciting car to drive”

Yet perhaps the rally car closest to his heart right now is the Ford Escort: not the RS Cosworth that took him to the brink of a world title in 1993, but the much older Group 4 Mk2 version, which is parked in his garage as part of an eclectic collection that also takes in a Ford GT40 (in which he has contested historic Le Mans) as well as a 22hp Italian Fiat 500 – his wedding car with Priscille.

And many others, including a classic Porsche 3.2 that he has owned from new, plus a well-worn Subaru Impreza that’s used to hoon around in (again, just check out YouTube). “I just can’t help it,” he shrugs. “Driving is something that stays in the blood. It’s not really something I miss as I’m still doing it; and now I’m living it all over again with Eliott.”

The cherished Mk2

The cherished Mk2

Jayson fong

Delecour Jr has also been rallying in the Group 4 Escort, winning the historic section of the Rallye Sainte-Baume last year on his debut in the car, co-driven by Priscille. This year, Eliott took his first overall victory on the Rallye des Roches Brunes, in an R5 Volkswagen Polo. Again, it was his first appearance in the car – although this time co-driven by Romain Roche, who also navigates for François on his occasional outings.

“Honestly, I believe that Eliott has so much more talent than I had at his age, so the satisfaction I have seeing him now is even more than it was when I was driving – you really can’t compare,” says François, as he painstakingly hoses down his muddy mountain bike at the entrance to his garage; the walls covered in posters and photos and memories.

François’ career in small scale

Model father: François’ career in small scale has its own space in the open-plan living room

Jayson fong

He glances up at them as he places the bike in a rack alongside many others. And he smiles to himself. “In the end, you know, I didn’t win so much and I certainly lost a lot of opportunities. But do I have any regrets, or would I swap anything? Absolutely not.”

In life, in a car, on a bike: François is always flat-out towards the next horizon.

Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Here is a bold claim with which to kick off an interview/profile: no one has ever devoted to motor sport so great a proportion of such a long working life as has Neil Oatley. He is a McLaren stalwart, having worked for the company for the past 39 years. He spent most of those as-near-as-dammit four decades as a key cog in its legendarily successful Formula 1 wheel, but now he focuses on the company’s F1 Heritage operation and its LMDh (Le Mans Daytona hybrid) World Endurance Championship Hypercar project. So he works a bit less hard these days than he used to, right?

“Er, no, wrong,” he sheepishly admits. “Much to my wife’s disgust, I work as many hours as ever.” I am astonished. After all, he is 71. Moreover, when I was McLaren’s comms/PR chief, from 2008 to 2017, Oatley was famous among all our colleagues for his relentless industry, working long stints into the evenings and even nights, regarding the Saturdays and Sundays of non-grand prix weekends as ideal opportunities to get stuck into thorny projects that were less easy to bend his remarkably fecund mind to during the cut and thrust of the working week.

Neil Oatley, left, Spa, 1974

Neil Oatley, left, Spa, 1974.

Gareth Rees

He will not say a lot about McLaren’s LMDh WEC Hypercar project – our interview is not his first media rodeo and he knows all about the importance of technical, strategic, and commercial confidentiality – but he will allow that it is “very exciting”. However, it is already well known that McLaren’s return to the top tier of sports car racing is scheduled for 2027. He will not make any predictions – why tempt fate? – but the company’s ultimate ambition is to win the Le Mans 24 Hours outright, which iconic achievement it first and last accomplished in 1995, courtesy of the fabled McLaren F1 GTR, JJ Lehto, Yannick Dalmas and Masanori Sekiya. That win was a surprising one – a rare occurrence of a fettled-for-the-track road-going supercar beating purpose-built prototypes – but the 2027 McLaren LMDh WEC Hypercar will be a bespoke creation produced by Dallara and run in collaboration with United Autosports, featuring a V6 twin-turbo engine. The project will be led by James Barclay, who readers will know from his column in Motor Sport, who will join as team principal in September from his most recent role as team principal of Jaguar TCS Racing in the FIA Formula E World Championship,.

My interviewee will say more about McLaren’s F1 Heritage operation. “I really enjoy it. For example, we recently built a ‘new’ [McLaren] M23 almost from scratch. That was quite a tough job, a mixture of engineering and research, because back in the day [the 1970s] many things on F1 cars were made on a buck and jigs in the workshop and never actually drawn. So we didn’t have a detailed blueprint to rely on, which meant that instead we had to work with the few drawings we had plus archive photography.” The M23 is one of the greatest racing cars of all time, of course, having been driven to F1 world championships by Emerson Fittipaldi (1974) and James Hunt (1976), and the car that Oatley and the F1 Heritage team brought back to life was chassis 15, some but not all of which they had found languishing apparently unloved in the company’s treasure trove of racing artefacts.

1968-Pedro-Rodriguez-with-Neil Oatley

Getting Pedro Rodriguez’s signature in the paddock at Brands Hatch, 1968

Gareth Rees

“You say you work as many hours as ever, but do you have any hobbies?” I ask him.

There is a pause this time. “Well,” he says, frowning, “I enjoy watching and reading about all kinds of motor sport, including series I don’t work on, like IndyCar, motorcycle racing, all that.”

“What about a hobby that has nothing to do with motor sport?”

He is momentarily stumped, then he rallies – literally. “Ah, well, my wife [Peta] and I have a classic Lancia Fulvia, which I’ve restored to HF spec, and we enjoy going on long rallies in it. We’ve done some in the UK, but also in France, Spain, Portugal and Germany. Peta enjoys them, and we share driving and navigation duties. I tend to do the special stages, but she does her fair share of driving in between. She’s not bad at all.”

Good try, Neil, old chap. I would not class rallying a Lancia as “a hobby that has nothing to do with motor sport”, which was the phrase I used in my question, but it sounds like a lot of fun. I push him again and he reveals a hinterland of other enthusiasms: “I enjoy reading and listening to music, both recorded and live, and our home is crammed with books and discs. I mostly read travel books, books about sport, and of course books about motor sport. In fact I have to admit that my ‘to read’ pile of motor sport titles is now well into four figures. My wife says she is waiting for them to push through the ceiling. I also love cricket, and I go to quite a few matches in the south of England. Oh and I do a bit of gentle mountain biking, too.” Nonetheless, if you are beginning to form the impression that Oatley is a man whose devotion to automotive sport is unusually tenacious, you would be right.

So where did it all begin? “I was born in Camberwell, in south-east London, and in the very early 1960s, when I was about six years old, my dad began to take me to watch speedway racing and stock car racing at the New Cross greyhound racing stadium [which was closed in 1969],” he explains. “My dad was a big speedway fan, but at that age I already preferred cars. Stirling Moss was my hero, just as he was the hero of all young English boys who loved motor sport in the 1950s and early 1960s. His racing career came to an end in 1962, with his accident at Goodwood, which was a big story at the time and a sadness for boys like me, although I think I was probably still a bit too young to be deeply upset by it. But I remember seeing all the newspaper reports, with all the photographs, many of them very graphic actually, showing quite a lot of blood. Something like that wouldn’t be reported that way nowadays, but it was a different time.

Williams 1977 Patrick Nève French Grand Prix

Williams’ sole driver in 1977 was Patrick Nève – here struggling to qualify for the French Grand Prix in the ‘March mash-up’

Grand Prix Photo

“In 1963 we moved from Camberwell to a village in north-west Kent. It was quite near Brands Hatch, which meant that, aged nine, I was able to cycle off to Brands on my own to watch lots of racing there: saloon car races, sports car races, motorcycle races, all sorts. It was great. And the Crystal Palace circuit was only a short train ride away, too – and, again, there I was able to watch many different categories of racing.

“I particularly remember the 1965 Race of Champions at Brands, which was the first F1 race I ever went to. Jim Clark crashed his Lotus 33, while leading, just 50yd away from me. He hit the bank behind the pits. I remember it like it was yesterday. Clark was one of the all-time greats, of course.

“And the following year, 1966, my dad went with me to Brands, for the British Grand Prix, and two days after that race, on the Monday, because the British Grand Prix was often on a Saturday back then, there was a filming day at Brands with many of the F1 drivers and cars for the movie Grand Prix. They needed volunteers to fill the grandstands, and I begged my mum and dad to let me skip school for the day so that I could be there. They refused – but, to add insult to injury, they decided to be there instead of me. I was 12 when Grand Prix came out. I’ve watched it dozens of times since then and I’ve never managed to spot my mum and dad in the crowd, but they were there. At the time I really wished I’d been there too, but I’ve got over it now.” He chuckles, then shrugs.

“Bruce was a driver, an engineer and a team owner rolled into one”

“Then in 1968 I saw Bruce McLaren win the Race of Champions at Brands. He was racing a McLaren M7A – a truly beautiful car – and I got his autograph that day. Those were my two biggest childhood heroes really –Stirling Moss and Bruce McLaren – and Graham Hill for a while, too. But when I saw Bruce racing those fantastic Group 7 cars at Brands, I was sold. Here was a driver, an engineer and a team owner rolled into one.

“I was OK at school, nothing special, better at sciences than arts, and, by the time I was taking my O levels and A levels, I was determined to work in motor sport. But when I mentioned my ambitions to the school’s careers officer, he pooh-poohed the idea. In fact he regarded it as a huge joke. But, undeterred, I tailored my schoolwork to try to achieve my goal. I won a place at Loughborough University to study automotive engineering, and there it was that I first met like-minded people: guys like me who were obsessed with motor sport. Most of them were into rallying rather than circuit racing, actually, but they were still very much my kind of people. One of them was Peter Morgan, who won the 1978 Esso Formula Ford 1600 Championship in a Lola T540. He went on to work for Reynard for many years. He was a great guy. He died two years ago, sadly.

“As I said, I was OK at school, nothing special, and I was much the same at university. I ended up with a 2:2. Getting a 2:2 would make it difficult to get into F1 as an engineer these days, because it’s so competitive, but it was a bit easier back then. Anyway, after Loughborough, I joined a small engineering company in Chesterfield, which was a great place to learn because they made all sorts of things to do with the testing of all sorts of vehicles, such as test rigs, rolling roads and so on. It was small, as I say, which meant that we all had to get involved in everything the company did. It was a fantastic way to acquire a ton of knowledge fast. Then, a year later, 1977, by which time I was 23, I spotted a classified job ad in the back pages of Autosport for a design engineer vacancy at the Williams Grand Prix Engineering factory at Station Road, Didcot. I applied for it and I got it.”

Carlos Reutemann Neil Oatley at Rio in 1981

Williams driver Carlos Reutemann makes his point to Oatley at Rio in 1981; he’d win the GP.

Perhaps now is a good time to ask Oatley to tell me – and thereby you also, dear reader – the truth about the persistent rumour that the F1 car that Williams raced in its first year, 1977, driven by Patrick Nève, was not an ex-works 1976 March 761 as the record books show and as March boss Max Mosley described it when he sold it, but a bitsa made up of odds and ends from various mid-1970s March F1 cars including a 1975 751 and even a 1974 741. Oatley laughs, leans back in his chair, then says, “Well, we may never know. Frank [Williams] bought that car before my arrival, but, yes, the story goes that he’d been told that it was a 761, but when his guys stripped back the paint to re-livery it in the colours of the Belgian brewery Belle-Vue, which was the sponsor that Nève had brought with him, they found old paint schemes from previous Marches. So I’d have to say that, yes, the car was probably a mix of 741, 751 and 761 bits.” So now we know.

Nève was not a bad driver, but he was not a brilliant one either. In 1977 he and Williams entered 11 F1 grands prix in that March mash-up. They scored no points, and they failed to qualify three times: at Dijon, at Hockenheim and at Zandvoort. But Frank Williams and Patrick Head had big plans for 1978. “That was a fantastic time,” Oatley remembers. “I was Williams employee number 13. When I arrived, Patrick was the only other engineer. He didn’t mind that I’d only got a 2:2 at university – because so had he. He used to joke that guys who’d got 2:1s and firsts were too academic to be practical. Well, I don’t know about that, but Patrick was definitely practical. He was a brilliant, hard-working, no-nonsense engineer and a wonderful person to learn from. He was also very patient with me, which probably isn’t what he’s known for. The first proper Williams was the FW06, which he designed in 1977 for the 1978 F1 season. I helped out with the creation of that car. It was very efficient and very light, and it had a nice structure. It was probably the definitive Cosworth-engined garagiste design of the pre-ground-effect era. Oh and for 1978 we had a new driver: Alan Jones.

“Frank ’s unshakeable enthusiasm was incredibly infectious”

“Actually, Frank’s and Patrick’s original intention had been to hire Gunnar Nilsson for 1978, but then he decided to go to Arrows instead. But that came to nothing, because he developed cancer, very sadly, so he never raced at all after 1977, and he died in 1978. But, yes, Gunnar had been their first choice. However, when that idea came to nothing, they went for Alan instead – and, without wishing to criticise Gunnar in any way, because he was a talented driver and a lovely guy, and he’d won the Belgian Grand Prix for Lotus in 1977, I think Alan was probably stronger. Actually, ‘strong’ is absolutely the right word to use to describe Alan. He was not only strong physically but also strong-willed. He had a lot of guts, he was very determined, he had a great sense of humour, and he, Frank and Patrick quickly became firm friends. They were about the same age, of course. At the beginning of the 1978 F1 season, Frank was 35, and Patrick and Alan were both 31.

“The three of them formed an incredibly close, very productive and mutually beneficial relationship. And I was so lucky to be there with them, albeit that bit younger than them, and learning so much from them so fast. Undoubtedly, Patrick has been the biggest influence on my career, and Frank’s unshakeable enthusiasm was incredibly infectious. I remember that at my interview he just wanted to talk about racing rather than ask me about what I’d done in engineering. But that was Frank.”

Frank Williams at the team’s Didcot HQ, 1978

Frank Williams at the team’s Didcot HQ, 1978

Williams did not win an F1 grand prix in 1978, but Jones finished second at Watkins Glen and he might have won at both Long Beach and Brands Hatch had the FW06 been more reliable. The following year, 1979, Head’s first ground-effect car, the FW07, was unveiled, and it was super-competitive from the get-go. The team was growing in size and stature, and a second driver had duly been drafted in for the first time: Clay Regazzoni. “Clay was older,” Oatley recalls. “He was 39 when he arrived at the beginning of 1979 – and he’d been a favourite of mine when I was a teenage fan. So I was excited to work with him. He wasn’t as quick as Alan in qualifying, but in the races he gradually warmed up and by the end of some of them he was often flying. We saw that at Monaco [where he finished second] and Monza [where he finished third], for example.

“At Silverstone Alan was on the pole by a mile, and Clay had qualified in P4. Alan should have won that race easily – he was in a commanding lead until his water pump failed at half-distance. So Clay took over, winning us our first grand prix. It would have been more fitting if Alan had won Williams’ first race, given all he’d done for us, but, although we were gutted for Alan, we were chuffed for Clay. Alan was bitterly disappointed and he left the circuit before the end of the race, but Clay was all smiles on the podium, swigging Lilt [rather than champagne, in deference to the team’s Saudi sponsors]. Having said that, I remember that at one point, when the sponsors weren’t looking, Frank allowed himself a glass of whisky and a cigar, which was unheard-of for him. He was a fitness fanatic in those days, and he hated drinking and smoking.”

Alan Jones, Williams’ 1980, Beatrice

Alan Jones, Williams’ world champion in 1980, was at Beatrice by 1985, teaming up once again with Oatley

Grand Prix Photo

Fate was kinder to Jones for the rest of the season, during which he and the Williams FW07 showed themselves to be the dominant force in Formula 1. Just two weeks after his disappointment at Silverstone, he won at Hockenheim, then he won again at Österreichring, Zandvoort and Montreal. The following year, in the updated B-spec version of the FW07, he won in Argentina, France, Britain, Canada and the United States, securing his only, and Williams’ first, Formula 1 world championships.

His team-mate that year, 1980, replacing Regazzoni, was Carlos Reutemann. “Ah Carlos,” Oatley says with a sigh. “He was brilliant, as quick on his day as anyone, but he had off-days as well as on-days. He didn’t have Alan’s strength of mind. Sometimes he could be absolutely fantastic. For example at Monza in 1981 he took the front wings off and he drove an incredible lap in qualifying, ending up P2, not quite as quick as René Arnoux’s superfast turbo-powered Renault on that out-and-out power circuit but a long way ahead of everyone else, and a whopping 1.2sec ahead of Alan. Then, the next day, on the grid, it began to drizzle, and Carlos suddenly lost confidence. As a result, not only did he not take the fight to Renault in the race, but Alan beat him too, despite the fact that he wasn’t at his best, having been knocked about a bit in a punch-up in Putney High Street a few days before. I think the stark contrasts in that anecdote sum up the differences between their characters.

“Keke had a fantastically athletic ability to drive an F1 car quickly”

“But don’t get me wrong: Carlos could do amazing things. He used to learn circuits in stages then back off for part of the lap while he had a think about it, visor up, as a result of which his lap times were very slow at first. It used to drive Patrick mad. Then, after a while, having driven each section fast in isolation but not having strung them together to record one fast lap, he’d decide that the time had come, and he’d suddenly put it all together and the result would be a fabulously quick lap. But he faded on too many race days. Nowadays you’d probably suggest a sports psychologist, but that wasn’t really a thing 45 years ago, certainly not in F1 anyway.

Senna McLaren 4:4?

So,,, who designed the McLaren 4/4?

“Also, because Frank and Patrick were so matey with Alan, Carlos began to think that they wanted him, Alan, to do the winning. Actually, we just wanted to win, and we didn’t really mind which driver did the winning. I guess you’d have to say that the environment in the team didn’t really suit poor Carlos, and he struggled with the kind of setback that Alan would just shrug off. For example, Carlos was devastated when we switched from Michelin to Goodyear in the middle of the 1981 season. To be honest, I think about Carlos a lot, even now. In fact I might even say that, as his engineer, my inability to create an environment in which such a brilliant driver could really deliver has been disturbing me all these years.”

Reutemann abruptly retired after just two grands prix of the 1982 Formula 1 season – perhaps the onset of the Falklands War had made such a patriotic Argentine unwilling to continue to race for a team so defiantly British – and, as a result, Williams’ drivers that year would be Keke Rosberg and Derek Daly. “Keke was intelligent and combative, and actually one of the reasons we hired him was that Carlos had said that he had ‘the best car control I’ve ever seen’. And he was right: Keke had a fantastically athletic ability to drive an F1 car quickly. But he didn’t have the reserve mental capacity that certain other racing drivers had to think about the totality of the task. That’s why he was often to be seen scratching his head at McLaren, where he was comprehensively beaten by Alain [Prost].”

Ayrton Senna and Neil Oatley

Oatley with Senna, ’90,

Getty Images

Oatley left Williams in 1984, joining Carl Haas’s Beatrice F1 team. Why, I ask him? “Well, because they asked me,” he replies, smiling. “I was offered a job. Also, I felt I should try to prove myself on my own, without the safety net that was working with Patrick. OK, it didn’t work out for any of us really, but we were a good bunch: there was Ross [Brawn], Adrian [Newey], Alan [Jones], Patrick [Tambay] – some top people. If we’d had more time to try to make the team develop, I think it might really have been something. But we didn’t and in 1986 I joined McLaren.

“That came about because our [Beatrice] cars were quick in Hungary in 1986 – Patrick qualified sixth and Alan qualified 10th – so Creighton [Brown], who worked for McLaren, approached me in the Hungaroring paddock and asked me if I’d be interested in discussing a job. A couple of months later I rang the doorbell of Ron’s [Dennis] house, which some used to say was the most expensive bungalow in the UK once Ron had finished renovating it. Gordon [Murray] opened the door. I signed the contract there and then, and I’ve been at McLaren ever since.

Steve Nichols, Ron Dennis, Gordon Murray and Oatley, Adelaide, 1989

laddies in red, from left, Steve Nichols, Ron Dennis, Gordon Murray and Oatley, Adelaide, 1989

“Ron was fantastic: hard-working, hands-on, ambitious, supportive of his staff, and a real racer. I worked closely with Gordon and Steve [Nichols], and they’re both good friends of mine to this day. But they didn’t really get on with each other, sadly. I think Steve was upset when Ron hired Gordon. It sometimes happens like that, and such situations are never easy, but Ron wanted a big name.”

“Which of them designed the all-conquering McLaren MP4/4 that won 15 out of 16 grands prix in 1988?” I ask.

“I’m not going to get into that,” Oatley replies, grinning. The reason for my question is that Murray and Nichols both lay claim to that all-time-great F1 car’s authorship, so, matey with both men, Neil can be forgiven for not wanting to answer my question. But, in case you are interested, it was Nichols. That is what McLaren legend Tyler Alexander used to tell me. That is good enough for me.

McLaren Prost’s car, Rio, 1987

Oatley and clipboard, with Prost’s car, Rio, 1987

Grand Prix Photo

“One person who definitely didn’t design the MP4/4 was me,” says Oatley with typical modesty. “But I was chief designer [and then executive engineer] from the MP4/5 [of 1989] onwards, right up to the MP4-17D [of 2003].” That 14-year period encompassed dozens of McLaren glory days – and F1 constructors’ world championships in 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1998, and drivers’ world championships in all those years and 1999, too. I attempt to persuade Oatley to blow his own trumpet about that incredible period of Woking success, but he will not do it. “Great team effort,” he says, and he leaves it at that.

About Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, however, he is prepared not only to wax more lyrical but also to impart an insight about their interactions that I find devastatingly revealing of the complex coils of both their characters: “It was an enormous privilege to work with them – two truly brilliant drivers obviously – and having both of them in our team at the same time was amazing. From an engineering point of view, and from a psychological perspective too, I found it fascinating that their car set-ups were always so similar: just tiny variations of suspension and wing settings usually, but no more than that.”

Kimi Räikkönen young

Kimi Räikkönen ought to have more world title

“Why was that, do you think?” I ask.

“Well,” Oatley continues, “I’d put that down to a strange fear that they both felt. What I mean is: Ayrton was convinced that he could drive the same car faster than anyone, including Alain, and Alain was convinced that he could drive the same car faster than anyone, including Ayrton. As a result, they were both super-anxious not to lose out by deviating in set-up from what the other had. In fact, so concerned were they both that they might lose out in that way, that they both refused to explore set-up variations that might, perhaps, have given them an advantage.”

“We should have won the 2003 and 2005 championships with Kimi”

The next McLaren world champion with whom Oatley would work was Mika Häkkinen – “perhaps one of the great underestimated F1 world champions”, he says. “He was very, very fast and he was tremendously brave and skilled. He was also extremely focused and dedicated, which qualities he deliberately kept below the radar, because he was never one to sing his own praises. In particular, he was always super-enthusiastic about trying out new technical developments, and he was always super-ready to adapt his driving style to optimise any available performance gain that they might confer. He was great.”

“And Kimi [Räikkönen]?” I go on.

“Well, Kimi was just Kimi: brilliantly talented and naturally quick. We should have won the 2003 world championship with him and the MP4-17D, because we should have realised earlier that the MP4-18 wasn’t going to make it. It never raced, as you know, but, with hindsight, we carried on trying to make it work for too long. After a while I refocused on the MP4-17D, but I did all my design modifications by hand, simply because I wasn’t from the CAD [computer-aided design] generation, so that slowed down its ongoing development a bit.” As if-only stories go, it is a particularly frustrating one. Räikkönen missed out on the F1 drivers’ world championship by just two points that year. Had the MP4-18 been jettisoned earlier, and had greater resource been invested in the development of the old MP4-17D, the performance dividend would surely have amounted to more than those two points.

Eagle T1G, Oatley’s favourite Formula 1 car

Eagle T1G, Oatley’s favourite Formula 1 car

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If Stirling Moss, Graham Hill and Bruce McLaren were Oatley’s three childhood heroes, which F1 car is his all-time favourite? He pauses for thought. “Well,” he says, “I’ve got a one-eighth-scale model of Dan Gurney’s Eagle T1G in my garage. That was such a beautiful car.” It so happens that, when I once asked Ron Dennis to name the F1 car that he thought most aesthetically pleasing, he answered uncharacteristically quickly and succinctly: “Eagle T1G.” Great racing minds think alike.

Does Oatley have any regrets? “Yes, not winning three world championships that we should have won. The first is the 1981 F1 drivers’ world championship. OK, we [Williams] won the constructors’ that year, but we should have won the drivers’ too, with either Carlos, who ended up second, beaten by just a single world championship point, or Alan, who ended up just three points behind Carlos. And we should have won the 2003 and 2005 championships too, with McLaren and Kimi, but we missed out on the drivers’ and the constructors’ in both those seasons, when we should have nailed them.”

“One last question please, Neil: do you plan to retire at some time in the not-too-distant future?”

“Oh no. I have absolutely no plans to stop. I love it. It’s a vocation – a hobby that turned into a career.” Believe me: Neil Oatley really is the ultimate F1 ‘lifer’, and his career, which is ongoing, has been, and continues to be, a truly great one.

Born: 12/06/1954, Camberwell, London

  • 1976 Graduates at Loughborough Uni.
  • 1977 Joins Williams Grand Prix Engineering as a design draughtsman.
  • 1978-79 At Williams becomes race engineer to ageing Clay Regazzoni.
  • 1980-81 Race engineer to Carlos Reutemann who finishes third in the F1 championship in 1980 and second in ’81.
  • 1985-86 Recruited to Beatrice (Haas) where he becomes chief designer, working on the THL1 and THL2 cars.
  • 1986 Moves to McLaren to work with Gordon Murray and Steve Nichols.
  • 1988 Project lead for the normally aspirated V10 project, then the MP4/5.
  • 1989 McLaren’s Alain Prost is the F1 drivers’ champion with the MP4/5; McLaren is the constructors’ champion.
  • 1991 Ayrton Senna wins F1 world title; McLaren has won four consecutive drivers’ and constructors’ titles.
  • 1998-99 Mika Häkkinen wins back-to-back F1 world championships.
  • 2003- Project manager in F1 engineering programmes; involved with IndyCar, Xtreme E and WEC projects.
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Seventy years on from its first post-war grand prix win, Mercedes-Benz hasn’t forgotten the significance of Stirling Moss’s landmark Aintree victory in the summer of 1955. That’s why the German carmaker wheeled out one of its glorious W196s, took it back to the Liverpool race course and gave its current Formula 1 star George Russell a golden chance to briefly slip into Moss’s racing shoes.

George Russell drives mercedes w196 at Aintree

Of course, the sharp-eyed among you will know that Juan Manuel Fangio raced No10 in the 1955 British GP, but nevertheless this is the actual car the ‘Old Man’ drove to second place

Finn Pomeroy

Or more accurately Juan Manuel Fangio’s. For this was chassis 000 13/55 in which – as Mike Doodson has already covered – the ‘Maestro’ was either beaten or displayed generous discretion, depending on what you choose to believe of that July 16, 1955 race.

Russell, ahead of his fine win at the Canadian GP, appeared to revel in the moment at what was a private commemoration played out in front of a select audience and a couple of film crews from the BBC and Channel 4. A full lap of the period three-mile circuit was impossible thanks to the potholed surface at Waterway (the first corner) which continues to create a major hurdle to the independent Aintree Circuit Club’s ongoing ambitions for a proper motor racing revival event at Jockey Club Racecourses’ world-famous venue.

“The speed, the noise, the look – it’s incredible. It was a privilege to get behind the wheel”

The rest of the lap still exists, winding through what is now an infield golf course and driving range. But even if a proper surface was laid at Waterway, the closure of Melling Road – at two points, on the way out and on the way back to the gigantic grandstands – would also have been required. Then it absolutely wouldn’t have been a secret event, of course. Perhaps one day it’ll happen properly, and in a manner where we can all be invited.

As it was, Russell had to be content with a couple of runs up and down the old start/finish in front of empty grandstands that are only packed out once a year for the Grand National. But at least the W196’s distinctive straight-eight howl had rung out again at the too-often overlooked British GP venue, where Moss and Fangio created a joyous slice of Silver Arrows history all those years ago.

George Russell sits with Mercedes W196

Beyond this secret commemoration, the Aintree Circuit Club is also hosting a ticketed 70th Anniversary Celebration – Display, Drive and Dinner at the race course on Saturday, August 9. From £99. Go to ormskirkmotorfest.com/aintree1955

Finn Pomeroy

“I am speechless after driving the W196,” said Russell. “The sensation of driving this car is indescribable. The speed, the noise, the look – it’s incredible. I can’t believe that Sir Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio were racing this car 70 years ago. To bring the car that Fangio raced here at Aintree in the 1955 British Grand Prix back to the track is so awesome. It was a privilege to be entrusted to get behind the wheel. I want to say a massive thank you to everyone at Aintree, the Aintree Circuit Club and Mercedes-Benz Classic for making this happen.” DS

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Just how good was Aintree, the circuit situated six miles north of Liverpool’s city centre? Created on the hallowed precincts of the Grand National horse race, it opened to international-class motor racing in 1954, with plenty to recommend itself. It offered good public access (railway station a short walk away) and convenient facilities. This included restaurants and covered grandstands – benefits of the venue’s long-established equestrian heritage – which would bring in discriminating patrons.

Jack Brabham, winner of the 1964 Aintree 200

Jack Brabham, winner of the 1964 Aintree 200

Grand Prix Photos

The early GPs there attracted substantial crowds, with the 1955 event reputed to have drawn a race-day attendance of 150,000. Curiously, it was not to last. Two factors which contributed to the collapse of the Merseyside idyll, following a non-championship F1 event in 1964, were safety concerns (lack of run-off areas) and the boom in car ownership, which worked in favour of more remote track rivals.

There were other negatives which counted against Aintree, not least among them the sickly aroma from the British Enka (artificial textile) factory on the nearby Ormskirk Road. Flat and grimily industrial, it lacked the scenic charm associated with continental circuits.

The Aintree Racecourse was opened in 1829 and had been hosting the Grand National steeplechase race since 1839. It would become one of the greatest horse races in the world. The management of the racecourse had been in the hands of several generations of the Topham family since the 1840s. In 1932 the property became the responsibility of 47-year-old Arthur Topham, who had no interest in carrying on the family tradition. By chance, his wife, a former vaudeville performer and actress, was happy to step in.

It was not lost on the former Hope Hillier, now the redoubtable Mirabel Topham, that one week of horse racing per year was bad business. Following a visit to Goodwood, she decided that Aintree deserved dual use, as a result of which the motor racing circuit was designed and built, for a sum of £100,000, over just three months. Two events were held in 1954, both won by Stirling Moss, the success of which led to an agreement with the international authority for the British GP to run on Lancastrian soil in 1955.

Stirling Moss Cooper-BRM, Aintree 200, April 1959

Moss in the one-off Cooper-BRM, Aintree 200, April 1959.

Although I missed that first GP, I was present at Aintree’s non-championship F1 event two months later – the first motor race I attended. I suspect that my father, a municipal accountant who rose to become the county treasurer of Lancashire, had been sent some complimentary tickets. It was his idea to drive us to Aintree from Preston in the family Hillman Minx. By the time we got home that night, his son had acquired a new passion.

Wolfgang von Trips and Phil Hill flank Laura Ferrari after the 1961 British GP

Ferrari team-mates Wolfgang von Trips and Phil Hill flank Laura Ferrari after the 1961 British GP

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I would later encounter a celebrated fellow Northerner whose love of motor racing extended as far back as mine. This was George Harrison of The Beatles. Fascinated by Tyrrell’s six-wheeler, this closet F1 fan had shown up at the first GP at Long Beach in 1976. He was introduced to the British sports correspondents flocking around him. It was in the paddock in Adelaide 10 years later that Mr H and I found ourselves chatting about our Northern roots and our introductions to the sport. I mentioned the 1955 race at Aintree, and rather pompously mentioned how my father had driven me there. “I drove there with my dad, too,” said George. “I was on the top deck and he was down below, collecting the fares.”

Jack Brabham, Cooper T51, 1959 British GP. Below

Jack Brabham, Cooper T51, 1959 British GP.

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The British GP would return to Aintree in 1957, 1959, 1961 and finally in 1962. From then onwards, Silverstone alternated the event with Brands Hatch. Aintree was history. The non-championship F1 event in 1964, won by Jack Brabham in one of his own cars, brought down the curtain on international racing at the venue. By then, Mrs Topham’s enthusiasm was waning. Although she announced that the entire facility was for sale, no deal went through because there had been a provision in the contract which she had signed when acquiring the racecourse in 1949 that it would not be sold to be developed. It was finally sold in 1973 but it has never been developed.

Jim Clark, 1962

Jim Clark, 1962

Grand Prix Photo

Aintree still holds strong memories for me. Of these, the stand-out race was the non-championship F1 200 in 1959, held a couple of weeks after I had left Rugby School. I was now the holder of a driving licence, so on the way down from Preston I shared the wheel with my father. As we pulled in to the car park, we spotted two very senior officers of the Lancashire force, dolled up in their number one meet-the-Queen uniforms. They greeted my old man almost deferentially, then asked me if I would like a close-up view of the action.

Two unusually affable sergeants ferried me out to the Melling Crossing and parked me behind a wooden stanchion, so close to the racing line that I could almost touch the cars. It was not until several years later that I realised why I had been singled out for such privileged treatment. It was my father’s signature, in his capacity as county treasurer of Lancashire, that appeared at the bottom of every salaried policeman’s monthly payslip.

Lotus driver Graham Hill, No28 1959 British GP

Lotus driver Graham Hill, No28, among the midfield in the 1959 British GP.

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I like to think that the 1959 race at Aintree, though not a ‘proper’ grand prix, would prove to be a milestone in the technical development of F1. The perennially optimistic BRM outfit had two of its stylish front-engined cars in the field, but had registered its interest in the swelling tide of rear-engined doctrine by lending one of its four-cylinder engines to Rob Walker’s independent team, Stirling Moss’s employer, to be fitted into the back of a Cooper chassis which had been bought for the purpose.

“A great start by Moss rocketed him into second place”

The 2.5-litre BRM powerplant, bulkier than the regular Coventry Climax units, was a tight fit in the little Cooper. An oversize radiator had been crammed into the nose and Moss’s seat had to be pushed uncomfortably forward. The Walker team’s mechanic Alf Francis had also made some alterations to the front suspension. After a brief test in Modena, where it had been fitted with the Valerio Colotti-designed gearbox commissioned by Mr Walker, it went to Aintree, where Moss was hoping to win the 200 for the fourth time.

“The car shuddered violently at the front under heavy braking and was really difficult to drive,” Moss told Doug Nye. So much for the Alf Francis ‘improvements’. Our hero managed no better than sixth fastest time in qualifying, a full 2sec slower than Masten Gregory in a Cooper-Climax. There were two factory Ferraris, front-engined V6 Dinos, with Jean Behra qualifying in second place and his new team-mate Tony Brooks back in eighth.

1959 programme

1959 programme

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A great start by Moss rocketed him into second place behind Gregory, until the latter’s clutch failed, lifting Moss and the ill-behaved Cooper-BRM into the lead. Somehow he had then pulled out half a minute on Harry Schell’s BRM and Behra’s Ferrari. But neither of the British cars was destined to finish: Schell’s hard-pressed BRM expired on the circuit and Moss pulled up in the pits with the first of the several niggling failures in the Colotti box that would blot the rest of his season.

The real casualty of that 1959 season would be Ferrari. Although Behra and Brooks took a 1-2 result at Aintree, both the works Cooper-Climaxes and Walker’s mongrel had the legs on them. On the first lap, the red cars were running sixth and eighth: retirements had allowed them their success. Whether or not you believe Maranello’s official reason (“union disagreements”) for the Scuderia’s absence from the British GP at Aintree in July, it surely saved Enzo’s front-engined orthodoxy from ignominy on the Mersey.

Von Trips, 1961 British GP

Von Trips, 1961 British GP; his win here lifted him above Phil Hill in the drivers’ championship

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If Aintree had kindled my yearning to become a racing driver, it would also be the scene of that ambition being crushed. In 1966 I had acquired an early model U2 Clubman. It was looked after by a pal who owned a Gulf service station in Manchester, who had painted it in the brand’s pale blue and orange colours. We trailered it to Aintree, where the local club ran training sessions on Tuesday evenings. I climbed aboard, did a few laps and decided to go for a quick one. Coming down the main straight, I screwed myself up to brake at the last imaginable moment. As I hit the pedal, I was overtaken by the entire Chevron factory team: Tim Schenken in an F3, Peter Gethin in an F2 and Chevron boss Derek Bennett in a GT, all three of them international race winners, indulging in a shake down.

It was then, I believe, that the Almighty kindly signalled to me that I was not cut out to drive racing cars. Instead, I switched to marshalling (I flagged two British GPs) and, later, to writing about the sport. I don’t regret not becoming world champion. But I do admit to missing Aintree, stinky breezes and all.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

This was a race which has been the subject of debate and argument almost since the flag fell on it. Not that it had been a particularly complex duel on that hot, dry summer afternoon, apart from the one vital question that needles to this day: did Stirling Moss win it or was it gifted to him by Juan Manuel Fangio, his two-time Formula 1 world champion team-mate at Mercedes?

Juan Fangio and Stirling Moss embrace

Fangio and Moss, brothers in arms before the race

W196s of, Karl Kling, Piero Taruffi, Moss and Fangi

The W196s of, from left, Karl Kling, Piero Taruffi, Moss and Fangi

While that race of 70 years ago and its 0.2sec winning margin have become a rabbit-hole down which this magazine and a galaxy of its writers have cheerfully burrowed over the decades, it was not something that greatly bothered the media back in 1955. The explanation for that, I suggest, is that the regular newspaper hacks regarded that year’s Formula 1 drivers’ championship as all but settled, with Fangio arriving at Aintree with a 14-point advantage over Moss (27 points to 13) and only two rounds left to run.

“The race has become a rabbit-hole down which a galaxy of writers have cheerfully burrowed”

Lest we forget, the F1 calendar of 1955 had lost four events (in Germany, Switzerland, France and Spain), all cancelled by worried promoters in the wake of the Le Mans disaster that had cost dozens of spectator lives in June. Britain’s mid-July event would be the fifth round, with the final contest not now due to take place until Monza, in September. Bearing in mind that Fangio, 44 years old at the time, had won three of the four pre-Aintree events, and that Moss, still a relative youngster at 25, had yet to break his grand prix duck. The Argentine veteran was all but guaranteed his third title.

1955 Aintree circuit race start

In 1955 the all-new Aintree circuit hosted the British Grand Prix for the first time, with as many as 150,000 in attendance

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The FIA’s points allocation then was 8-6-4-3-2, with a bonus point for fastest lap. Although this meant that there was a mathematical possibility of Moss surpassing Fangio, the Englishman made no secret of his hitherto worshipful attitude towards his team-mate. Fortunately for us students of track history, the ‘Boy’ was about to break the mould by actually tackling his hero and taking the race to him for the first time. Or did he?

What is clear about that Saturday afternoon at Aintree is that there was some place-swapping between Mercedes’ two aces, at least in the early stages of the 90-lap, 270-mile event. Moss had narrowly beaten Fangio to pole position for the first time that year, by 0.2sec, only to be relegated by him in the first-corner mêlée.

Within three laps Moss had ducked back into the lead, only to be re-passed on lap 18. But as Richard Williams helpfully remarked in a piece about Mercedes’ 1955 season in The Observer in 2021, “an adroit piece of work in lapping a backmarker under braking for a corner [on lap 26], forcing Fangio to fall back, allowed Moss to build a cushion; this was a trick he had learned from Luigi Villoresi at Monza a few years earlier, while trying to follow the Italian’s Ferrari in his HWM.”

Alfred Neubauer at Aintree

Was Mercedes racing chief Alfred Neubauer – in the suit – giving the British public a home hero victory? Moss said not…Although Williams was not present at the race, our own Denis Jenkinson was able to take up the story. “By Lap 40 Moss had increased his lead to 9sec, due to nipping through some slower traffic while Fangio had to wait.” 

However, another Motor Sport regular, Michael Tee, has a quaint alternative explanation for the suddenly increased gap between the battling Benzes, one which had nothing to do with Villoresi’s ‘trick’.

Tee, photographing the race at the far side of the circuit, told our own Simon Taylor in 2014 that Fangio had lost the time in a grassy off-road diversion close to where he was standing. He claims that encountering the great champion post-race, he was given a reproachful finger-wagging, which he interpreted as a rebuke for having moved his position, thereby depriving the unfortunate ace of using him as a braking-point marker.

“The ‘Boy’ was about to break the mould by tackling his hero and taking the race to him”

As the race wore on, Mercedes team chief Alfred Neubauer put out signals requiring his drivers (there were four of the silver cars in the race – Moss, Fangio, Karl Kling and Piero Taruffi) to slow down. According to Jenks, in a book published to celebrate Hugh Hudson’s glorious biographical Fangio: Una Vita a 300 All’ora film in 1980, Neubauer had decided that the race should be Moss’s. In fact, Fangio had previously agreed to a similar scheme in 1954, when he yielded the lead to team-mate Kling in a ‘demonstration’ race at the AVUS circuit.

Here we acknowledge the contribution to the story of our colleague Nigel Roebuck, who had the advantage of having been present at Aintree for the ’55 British GP, albeit only nine years old at the time. Later, as a seasoned F1 writer, he had an opportunity to quiz both Moss and Fangio: those conversations appeared in these pages in 2003. “It is entirely possible, as Moss [now] says, that Neubauer whispered in Fangio’s ear before the start, that Stirling was permitted to win,” Roebuck recounted. “But he seemed to have had an edge throughout that particular weekend, and had beaten Fangio to pole position. In the race, his fastest lap was almost 2sec faster.”

Juan Fangio 1955 British GP Antree. jpg

By the 1955 British GP, Fangio was on course for his third drivers’ world title

Moss remained nonplussed. “Don’t ask me if he let me win that day, because in all honesty I don’t know,” he told Roebuck, “and it was something we never discussed subsequently. I can tell you that there were no prearranged tactics between us, no team orders from Neubauer.

“Perhaps it was suggested to Fangio that he should let me win, because it was the British Grand Prix. It’s quite possible. But he wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever have let me know it, unlike some drivers of the recent past. He had too much class for that.”

So, Roebuck mused, had the great Juan Manuel privately decided to allow his young team-mate to win his first GP victory that afternoon? Could there even have been a technical quirk which had disadvantaged him? On the one occasion when Roebuck was able to interview Fangio, he did not hesitate to put that question to him. The great man’s response, he records, was typically enigmatic: “I don’t think I could have won, even if I’d wanted to. Stirling was really pushing that day, and his car had a higher final drive than mine. It was quicker.”

Stirling Moss British GP Aintree

Moss was fired up for the British GP, taking pole, fastest lap and a narrow victory. He’d go on to win another 15 world championship races

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Jenkinson’s account in his 1973 book Fangio gives weight to the assumption that while Neubauer had instructed Fangio to yield to his British team-mate once the race was underway, the younger man had been entirely left out of the plot. Indeed, as he told Roebuck, Moss had neither received any instructions from Neubauer nor come to any sort of an arrangement with Fangio. As far as he was concerned, the 1955 British Grand Prix was a straight fight. Nor, intriguingly, did he ever acknowledge that he had the slight edge under acceleration that he would have had with the higher axle ratio that Fangio so punctiliously mentioned to Roebuck.

“I don’t think I could have won, even if I’d wanted to. Stirling was really pushing that day”

As a result of Fangio’s later-race surge, the two Silver Arrows were nose-to-tail as they approached the finishing line. Moss appeared to lift off, enough to allow Fangio to draw almost level, only to floor his Mercedes and assure himself of victory. “I backed off on the last lap,” Moss told Roebuck, “because I wasn’t sure of what we were supposed to do — but when the Old Man was still behind me at the final corner, I can tell you I gave it everything on the run up to the line!”

Thus the question lingers. Did Fangio gift the race to his team junior? By deliberately holding station behind him for the latter half of the race, we can surmise that it was his (or Neubauer’s) intention to present Moss with his first grand prix win, in his ‘home’ race at Aintree. But then there was Fangio’s catch-up flurry, seemingly in defiance of the boss’s signals, which put them nose-to-tail on the last lap. What was going through his mind?

Stirling Moss and Fangio hug

With the race ended, the restless minds of motor sport writers began to question the result. Right: Aintree’s last British Grand Prix gets underway in 1962

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Here, the final word on this decades-long mystery goes, deservedly, to Doug Nye, Motor Sport’s house historian, in the foreword that he asked Fangio to provide for the splendid 1987 book Stirling Moss: My Cars, My Career which was put together in collaboration with Nye. While written by Fangio in the calm of his long retirement, it reveals a deal brokered between the two men that may have made sense at the time, but which neither of them would respect.

Addressing himself directly to Stirling in the book, Fangio wrote: “Then there were the times when we raced each other from start to finish, until the ’55 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, when you finally agreed with me that the battle between us should only last until we had gained a certain advantage over the competition. Then Neubauer had to show us the ‘Langsam’ pit signal [slow down] and whoever was in front stayed in front, and whoever was second stayed second.”

“Then there was Fangio’s catch-up flurry, seemingly in defiance of the boss’s signals”

Here is the proof that there was indeed an agreement between the two men not to engage in combat on track once the order was settled and they were signalled to cool down. It’s a great idea, of course, but one which will never sit comfortably with competitors whose overlying ethos is to win, come what may.

The deal made in Belgium in 1955 did not survive. At Aintree, there was no denying that both Fangio and Moss ultimately chose to disobey it.

If only we had known this at the time. It would have been a lesson to the cavalcade of team bosses who decreed, sometimes in written contract, that team orders might be put into operation. If greats like Fangio and Moss couldn’t keep their word, what chance that the likes of Villeneuve/Pironi, Prost/Senna, Piquet/Mansell, Vettel/Webber, Hamilton/Rosberg and their teams would have done the same?

The lesson? In Formula 1, any attempt to keep a good man down is ultimately doomed to fail. The craving to win will always defeat good intentions.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

It’s a popular quiz question – “Who is the only woman to have scored points in an F1 grand prix?” Some of the more pedantic respondents will indicate that it was actually only half a point, as the race in question was stopped early, but either way, by finishing sixth in the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix, Lella Lombardi became the holder of that unique statistic. However, what is equally clear is that the record does her a disservice, as it overshadows the rest of her 23-year career.

Lombardi in the Scuderia Italia Brabham, 1973 Italian F3 season at Casale

Lombardi in the Scuderia Italia Brabham, first race of the 1973 Italian F3 season at Casale.

McKlein

Italian national F850 champion in 1970; the Ford Escort Mexico Kleber Challenge title in 1973; sharing the highest-placed finish post-war by an-all female crew in the Le Mans 24 Hours (with Christine Beckers in 1977); three outright victories in the World Sports Car Championship, followed up by 13 class wins in the European Touring Car Championship and the 1985 Division 2 ETCC crown (with Rinaldo Drovandi) – that’s a pretty impressive record for any driver. These were among her other achievements, yet they are largely forgotten, eclipsed by the focus on F1 that tends to overlook other areas of the sport. There was a great deal more to Lella Lombardi than her points-scoring result in the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix – even if by doing so she achieved something that two-thirds of the men who started an F1 race never managed.

F850 win at Monza, 1970

F850 win at Monza, 1970

Claudio Zancai

Lella Lombardi headshot

On the rise, 1972

McKlein

Given Lella’s impressive record, and her significance to the sport for gender-obsessed F1 statisticians, it has baffled me for decades as to why there has never been a biography written about her, not even in her native Italy. It’s something I have wanted to put right for a long time, so when I was offered the opportunity to write about “whomever I wanted”, I jumped at the chance. Quickly it became apparent why nobody had attempted it before. Lella gave few interviews during her lifetime and largely kept herself to herself. Her career spanned 1965 to 1988, and for a devout Roman Catholic from a then traditional Italy, the fact that she was also gay meant that she built a defensive wall around her personal life. Fundamentally, this was to protect her partner Fiorenza, who was a constant presence alongside her from the earliest days of her career, and (along with Lella’s siblings and with help from a hire-purchase deal) provided the financial input to help her acquire her first racing car, an F875 CRM, with which she learned the ropes in the new Formula Monza that was launched in 1965. So effective was Lella’s guarding of their life together that many of the Italian journalists who knew the couple well enough to be invited for dinner at their home never knew Fiorenza’s surname.

Lella Lombardi 1975 with kids on a bike

Our heroine, 1975, with a friend’s children – on the day she had signed an F1 deal with March

Giuseppe Bonadeo

Her background was unusual for a racing driver, even in car-mad Italy. Her father was a butcher in the tiny village of Frugarolo, close to Alessandria. A practical rather than an academic pupil, she was a natural athlete and became a capable handball player. She learned commercial skills from her father, negotiating with traders at the meat markets, while developing a taste for competition by racing her Lambretta against the village boys. This resulted in a visit from the local priest, asking her to tame her wild ways. Although she was the youngest of three children, Lella became the first person in her whole family to hold a driving licence, learning at the wheel of the firm’s van. Friends tell eyebrow-raising stories of their adventures making deliveries on the Ligurian peninsula.

Smiling and cheerful out of the cockpit, Lella was always informally dressed; you’ll struggle to find a photo of her in anything other than racing overalls, and in those where she is in civvies she’s usually wearing jeans and sweatshirts. It therefore came as a surprise to discover that before she became a racer, she was an accomplished dancer. As a teenager, she and her friend Giuseppe Bonadeo won many local and regional jive contests. Discovering an image of Lella in a party dress was almost disconcerting!

Lella Lombardi, European F5000, Brands Hatch, 1974

Lombardi, European F5000, Brands Hatch, 1974

It was also interesting to learn that, away from the racetrack, her favourite pastime could not have been further removed from the sound and fury of her sport. Her friend Oscar Berselli, right-hand man of her benefactor Count Gughi Zanon, tells how “Lella really liked fishing; it helped her relax and she went as often as she could. On any weekend she had free she went fishing with Fiorenza, who couldn’t go during the week because she was busy every day in the office at the Davoia insurance agency that she and Lella ran as a business partnership.”

She was good at finding and maintaining relationships with sponsors and was no diva; her backers quickly realised that she did her best to give them a good return on their investment. Brands Hatch’s Angela Webb recounted how she would not squander their cash on extravagant hotels or first-class air tickets.

In 1974, John Smailes wrote in Sports Car World, “While the top men in the sport seek the trappings – the glamour, the parties, the easy chances, the money – she’s motivated by none of them. It’s almost as if she has been consecrated into the religion of motor racing. She is married to her sport.” Had she raced two decades later, Lella might have been able to attract still more lucrative sponsorship that could have put her in more competitive cars; attitudes were starting to change – one could argue that she had helped to change them – but she probably saw few of the benefits herself.

Lella-Lombardi-sits-on-edge

Lombardi was purely focused on her racing career – there were no champagne-fuelled parties or throwing money around

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Bonadeo reflects sadly, “The Italian mass media gave little space to Lella’s exploits. Perhaps in the Alessandria area some news came out, but at a national level not much at all. When they interviewed Vittorio Brambilla, they might talk about Lella then. However, in England there was much more written about her than there was in Italy. Perhaps it was a mistake on our part in not giving her enough prominence; she was too far ahead of the times.”

“Lella’s career during the 1960s and 1970s was hamstrung by misogyny and inattention”

What is equally clear, however, is that despite her talent and tenacity as a racer and the quality of her technical feedback to her engineers, Lella’s career during the 1960s and 1970s was hamstrung by a combination of misogyny and inattention on the part of some team owners and race organisers. In one of her rare interviews, she told how she hated the condescending smiles she received from some male rivals at the start of her career, which conveyed either contempt or the patronising suggestion, “I’ll help you because you’re just a woman who won’t be able to do this alone.” In her F3 years, she also told her friend, Mirosa Vaccotti, “These men don’t give me a break; when I go slowly, they say I’m an obstacle; when I go fast, they say I’m dangerous. They don’t want me there!” It was a rare complaint from her about the way she was treated by her male rivals.

Lella Lombardi in the 1975 Spanish GP

A top-six finish for Lombardi in the 1975 Spanish GP gave her half a point in the F1 World Championship but the race is remembered for the accident that cost the lives of four bystanders

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When she eventually reached F1, in mid-1975, frustrated with her March’s perpetually inconsistent handling which showed no improvement regardless of any set-up changes, she was untypically forthright to Autosprint: “I honestly think that the car is not up to the task. My team tends to give me the leftovers from others and the car is rarely as good as I would like it to be.”

Lella Lombardi’s F1 1975 South African GP, March

Lombardi’s first F1 outing was the 1975 South African GP, driving for March (DNF)

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It’s a criticism that her team-mate Hans-Joachim Stuck confirms to be true, especially with regard to the down-on-power engines with which she was often saddled. There is also the well-documented story that the reason for her car’s mysterious handling only came to light when her successor at March, Ronnie Peterson, reported the same issue when he was given Lella’s former chassis to drive in 1976. When the tub was stripped down at the factory, a cracked internal bulkhead was found to be the culprit, by which time the damage to Lella’s F1 season – and her reputation – had been done. Some years later, in this magazine, March technical chief Robin Herd admitted, “Poor Lella, she’d had bad traction all along. I feel sorry for her and wonder about it even now. It was one of the few times that she complained about the inequality of F1 – because nobody had listened to her about the problem with the car.”

“Poor Lella, she had bad traction. Nobody had listened to her about the problem with her car”

Gender was something that never concerned her. After making her F1 debut in 1975’s South African Grand Prix, she told a local reporter, “I hope that, now, people have begun to understand that Lella Lombardi is a racer who is a woman, rather than a woman who races. That is a distinction that I care about very much.” Later that year, in a Q&A column in Autosprint, she claimed, “I have never considered the male-female issue, only the competition that exists between different drivers. Under the helmet, women and men are completely equal.”

All female team at Le Mans, 1977

All female team at Le Mans, 1977.

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Lella Lombardi Win Spa 24 Hours, 1984

Class win, Spa 24 Hours, 1984

Jean-Claude-Legrand

When asked by the New York Times about her historic F1 points finish, she responded, “I don’t think it dawned on me that I was the very first woman to collect championship points. Things like that just don’t bother me. I’m just as competitive as any man. Too many women perhaps feel that motor racing is essentially a masculine affair. Well, I don’t agree at all. It’s simply a competitive sport. There’s a lot of glamour surrounding being the first girl to do well in F1, but the whole business is overrated. I love motor racing and that’s all I want to do. I’m not terribly conscious of there being a difference between male and female in this sort of thing. The thing I like is the feeling when you pass the chequered flag first. That’s something I don’t have any problems sharing with my male colleagues.”

“She was a quiet force of nature, blessed with tenacity to follow her passion for racing”

One of the recurring themes that emerged from the hundred-plus interviews I conducted while researching Lella’s story, and one of the most striking, is that nobody I spoke to or who commented about her in contemporary accounts has a bad word to say about her. This is extremely unusual in any walk of life, but especially so in the dog-eat-dog world of professional motor sport where feelings and opinions are amplified by rivalry. It’s clear that she was a quiet force of nature, blessed with tenacity and a determination to follow her passion for racing above all else. Equipped with an iron will, making great personal sacrifices despite limited financial resources, she fulfilled a dream she had nurtured since childhood. Her technical ability is mentioned repeatedly, often in the same breath as her quite demanding set-up requirements from her mechanics. She also possessed excellent mechanical sympathy and was adept at looking after the car. Seventeen career pole positions and 20 fastest laps confirm she was no slouch when it came to speed, either.

Lella Lombardi and Christine Beckers Le Mans 1977

Lombardi, left, and Christine Beckers finished 11th
at Le Mans ’77

Getty Images

The ups and downs of Lella’s career, with some challenges overcome and others providing career-damaging setbacks, read like a Hollywood film script. It’s one that also has a tragic ending. Having formed her own team, Lella Lombardi Autosport, to create opportunities for new drivers, ill health forced her to retire from racing in 1988. The pain she thought was due to a sailing injury turned out to be breast cancer, and she passed away peacefully in Milan in March 1992, at just 50.

1980 Vallelunga 6 Hours driving an Osella PA8

1980 Vallelunga 6 Hours driving an Osella PA8

Gianni Tomazzoni

In an obituary for Autosprint, Franco Lini wrote, “Lella only wanted to satisfy herself, no one else; to compete not as a woman against men, but as driver against driver. And she committed herself to it thoroughly. She was convinced that it was only one’s approach to racing that made the difference, if one had the right machinery. She made racing the sole purpose of her life, and she was fully satisfied, knowing that what she had achieved had always been the maximum possible with the means at her disposal. This is why she lived a happy life.”

Lella Lombardi: The Tigress of Turin – Her Authorised Biography by Jon Saltinstall, will  be published by Douglas Loveridge Publications later this year.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

  • On the eve of the Canadian Grand Prix, Derek Warwick was handed a one-race suspension from his role as an FIA steward by the governing body for quotes attributed to him on a betting site. Ironically, the quotes were supporting decisions taken by the FIA stewards at the preceding Spanish GP.
  • Ahead of the FIA presidential elections in November, sitting president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has instigated changes to the governing body’s statutes. These allow him to block candidates based upon whether they are deemed to have professional integrity. The changes also allow him to align the terms of office of the various committees with his own. These changes – voted through by member clubs – drew strong criticism from the Austrian Automobile Association, which in a statement before the vote said, “Where there is even a risk of changes appearing to benefit the current FIA administration, and not the FIA itself, the changes should not be adopted… The FIA has entered a dark period of democratic backsliding.”
  • McLaren’s F2 front-runner Alex Dunne took part in his first official F1 practice session at the Red Bull Ring, driving Lando Norris’s car in FP1. He caused a stir by lapping fourth-fastest of the session, less than 0.1sec slower than Oscar Piastri.
  • Franco Colapinto’s seat at Alpine is not guaranteed beyond the British Grand Prix, Flavio Briatore confirming it will be on a race-by-race basis subsequently. Valtteri Bottas has been mentioned as a potential stand-in.
  • Red Bull and Max Verstappen continue to discuss whether they will work together in 2026, with Toto Wolff refusing to deny that he is still trying to recruit the world champion to Mercedes. There is still no contract extension for George Russell there.
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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

Barcelona: it was the third lap, as race leader Oscar Piastri pulled himself out of Max Verstappen’s DRS range, which gave the first indication to Verstappen and Red Bull that they were not going to be able to take the race to McLaren by doing the same thing. Around a very hot track of long, tyre-punishing corners, the Red Bull could not live with the McLaren’s superior rear tyre deg. If Piastri could so casually pull out 0.7sec over the pace Verstappen judged they needed to be running to get the stint lengths required for a two-stop, then McLaren clearly had way more in hand than they.

That’s when the three-stop came onto the radar on the Red Bull pitwall. Theoretically slower than a two-stop, if the tyre deg was even greater than forecast, it might not be. Furthermore, they were pulling out time on the Ferraris and Mercedes’ behind, so even if it didn’t allow them to beat McLaren, it probably wasn’t going to cost them position. There seemed nothing to lose and possibly something to gain.

Verstappen had split the McLarens at the start, courtesy of some excessive wheelspin from Norris, and he was able to keep him behind for a few laps. But when the Red Bull’s fading grip began to tell after 13 laps and Norris was able to DRS his way past, Red Bull brought its car in, switching Verstappen to a new set of soft tyres. This was way earlier than optimum for a two-stop and McLaren did not respond.

They were, however, taken by surprise at Verstappen’s pace into his second stint. It was fast enough that he looked set to be ahead of the McLarens after their much later first stops. This wasn’t necessarily alarming for McLaren, given the extra stop Verstappen would have to make. But it was slightly concerning. They asked both Piastri and Norris – still on their original soft tyres – if they could up the pace a little. Both replied they were nervous of doing so, given the stint lengths they’d need for the two-stop and how second-hand their tyres were already feeling. Was this hot race swinging things towards an optimum three-stop, even for McLaren? In which case Red Bull could have stolen a march on them.

McLaren accepted that Verstappen would be ahead of them after they made their first stops (on laps 21 and 22) for a set of medium-compound tyres each. Piastri emerged just under 6sec behind, with Norris a further 4sec adrift. The race-leading Verstappen, on his by-now quite worn softs, would be doing only a further seven laps before making the second of his three stops, losing around 0.5sec per lap to them in this phase.

Max Verstappen hunts down Oscar Piastri

Onto new mediums eight to nine laps newer than those on the McLarens he rejoined 17sec behind but going much faster thanks to the new rubber. In the first 12 laps of that stint he took 11sec out of the McLarens. It was another worrying moment for McLaren. But finally Max’s tyres cried enough and in the last five laps of the stint he lost 4sec to the McLarens, which were now finally off the hook.

As Verstappen made his third stop on the 47th lap, all McLaren had to do was pit Norris in response (and Piastri the lap after that) to retain track position. They then pulled away quite comfortably. Verstappen had made them sweat briefly, but it was essentially a bluff.

The later safety car then consigned the three-stop to a negative, as it meant Verstappen had no new soft or medium tyres left for the restart.

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Parting Shot: July 10, 1956 Pikes Peak, Colorado

“Yes, we said a few times that it wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ there was going to be contact between Oscar and Lando but ‘when’ and we now know the answer to that one: Canada 2025.” They were the words of McLaren team principal Andrea Stella after Norris, in attempting to pass team-mate Piastri on the pitstraight in the late stages of the race, hit him instead, forcing Norris’s retirement with broken suspension. It replicated the McLaren team incident at the same place between Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton 14 years earlier, inset, with Norris trying to pass on the left just as Piastri was already moving that way to take up his line for the kink before the first turn. Although Piastri’s left-rear wheel took a hit from the front-right of the other car, he had no damage and was able to continue to the finish.

“It was the result of a racing misjudgement on Lando’s part, a miscalculation that just happened to be with his team-mate but which could have been with anyone. Obviously we never want to see two McLarens colliding but at the same time it is a part of racing and we did appreciate the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation. He raised his hand, he took responsibility for the accident and apologised immediately to the team. He came to apologise to me, as team principal, in order to apologise to the entire team.

McLaren Crash in canada

“It’s important the way we respond and we react to these situations, which ultimately will be a very important learning point. I don’t think it’s a learning from a theoretical point of view, because the principal was already there, but it’s a learning in terms of experiencing how painful these situations can be. And this will only make us stronger in terms of our internal competition. And in terms of the way we go racing.”

Piastri was quite sanguine about the situation. “My discussion with Lando afterwards was fine,” he said. “Half of it was on the way to the stewards’ room, so that was fun. All good. We spoke about it honestly before we even got back to the team. Lando put his hands up and apologised… we’re still free to race, still fighting for a championship each. So we just keep going racing and make sure that we don’t come into contact again.”

“It’s up to us as a team to show our full support to Lando,” concluded Stella. “We will have conversations, and the conversations may be even tough, but there’s no doubt over the support we give to Lando and over the fact that we will preserve our parity and equality in terms of how we go racing at McLaren between our two drivers. The situation would be different if Lando would have not taken responsibility and apologised.”