It has been a year of development, controversy and near-peak excitement, rather than a season of out-and-out classic motor racing on the national club scene.
On the whole grids have been full - in the majority of cases near to over-flowing - and competition has been keen and fierce. It is, perhaps, a sign of the slightly easier times in which we live that there appears to have been no dire...
A jubilant John Watson holds aloft his British Grand Prix trophy to the applause of Jacques Laffite and the crowd after his highly popular victory at Silverstone at the wheel of the McLaren MP4. Below, Alain Prost was the early leader in his Renault Elf turbo, but dropped out with engine trouble.
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Brazilian rising star Roberto Moreno made no mistakes in the F3 race supporting the British...
During a winter when even Formula One sponsorship stopped being the right of every team one could be forgiven for thinking that 1979 might be a very tough season indeed for those racing primarily in Britain.
In fact the opening races of the British season proved that we are likely to see some of the most entertaining and financially well-supported motor racing seasons of all.
The Aurora model car...
Down a back alley in Romford, Essex, is a large shed attached to a garage. The shed is nearly empty, except for one corner, where jacks, tool chests, and piles of tyres surround a single car — fairly conventional saloon, except that it squats so low on its fat slick tyres that it would be in serious trouble on the public highway. The car is an Alfa 75, and the small team which operates from...
The talented eighteen-year-old New Zealand Formula Three driver Mike Thackwell has become the youngest person ever to win the top Grovewood Motor Racing Award in its sixteen-year history. Thackwell received a cheque for £1,000 from former World Champion John Surtees in a ceremony at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in December.
Second place, and a cheque for £500, went to twenty-six-year-old Birmingham...
D.S.J. endorsed my own belief when, reporting on the South African Grand Prix, he said that every Renault owner from humble R5 to V6 saloon must have thought (after seeing René Arnoux win in the RE21) "Man, look at these Renault cars, aren't they something", and that the Renault F1 success must have "influenced a lot of people that Renault was the car to buy". Thinking that, to a lesser extent,...
It should mean goodbye to the "Auntie" image for good when two racing Rover 3500 SD1s contest this year's Tricentrol RAC British Saloon Car Championship. A change in the regulations to raise the Championship's capacity into from 3-litres to 3.5-litres will allow BL to add a new dimension to the battle for overall honours traditionally contested by the 3-litre Capris.
Drivers of the two Team...
If standard of preparation reflects on performance, then the Toyota Celica GT driven by Winston (Win) Percy in the Southern Organs/RAC British Touring Car Championship just has to be a winner. Indeed it is and in the 1600 cc class the immaculate WIN 1 has WON 6 of the seven rounds it has started. As a result Percy is leading his class and lying third overall in the Championship, at the time of...
Feel the noise
Sir,
It was a pleasure to see John Davenport's tale of the Rover 3500 SD1. His words captured the chaotic essence of the time in Britain: 'Red Robbo', Longbridge, strikes galore. It was no coincidence that the cars were painted red, white and blue.
As Technical Editor (not Sports Editor) of Motor, I was familiar with the Rover 3500 as a road car, but you had to extrapolate pretty...
It was not an obvious choice, but the big 3500 put Rover on the tin-top map. British Leyland's then motorsport boss, John Davenport, retraces its steps
To its designers, David Bache and Spen King, it was known as Specialist Division Number One: SD1 for short. It was known to the journalists who voted it Car of the Year in 1976 as the Rover 3500. Comedians called it the 'Bionic Dog'. But at the...