1936-2014
Racer and engine builder Brian Hart died in January, aged 77. Best known for the turbocharged four-cylinder engine that took Toleman into Formula 1 and earned Ayrton Senna three podium finishes, Hart’s company was a saviour for F1 teams who could not land a major engine supplier, although in terms of victories rallying and F2 were more fertile.
Starting as a driver in 1958, Hart raced...
This serial race winner and straight talker remained a factory driver for almost 20 years. No shortage of anecdotes here, then...Writer Simon Taylor | Photographer James Mitchell
Most of the best drivers who earn their living in sports or touring cars have at least cut their teeth in the single-seater formulae. Steve Soper is different. This man racked up a fine career over more than 20 years,...
Honours were well distributed in the Castrol Anniversary Touring Car Championship
There were a lot of doubting Thomases around, including this writer, when the RAC decided to make its British Touring Car Championship for 1974 open to Group 1 production saloons only. The decision was based on the escalating costs of preparing competitive Group 2 cars, the resultant thin grids and a lack of...
"Small racing car manufacturers like ourselves have to diversify into wider fields of engineering if we are to exist and keep our manpower and equipment fully employed throughout the year." This is the view of Tony Roberts, the sales manager of Hawke, a company founded in the 1969 boom for Formula Ford cars. This season over 50 cars have been sold, many of them for export, but even so the problem...
Richard Heseltine
Heseltine brings a unique viewpoint to our NOrburgring special he is one of the few
people to have lapped the historic circuit in a Volvo 850. And an estate at that. Well, if it's good enough for Tom Walkinshaw... His selection of the very finest performances at the fabled track is inevitably a personal one, so we've cleared our inbox ready for the volley of readers' replies...
While Ferrari scored a predicted 1-2 at Silverstone, helped no end by the superiority of Bridgestone's wet-weather tyres over Michelin's, the chief excitement of the meeting surrounded the financial fate of the Arrows team. Non-payment of £3.2 million-worth of bills due to Cosworth for the team's engines meant that, on Niki Lauda's orders, the vital electronic control units needed to run at...
No, you’re not seeing things: the classic Broadspeed Ford Capri written off in a huge crash at Silverstone in 1973 has been brought back to life
By Ed Foster
The words ‘replica’ and ‘recreation’ will either evoke little reaction in you or send shivers down your spine. For as long as there have been interesting cars in the world, people – with varying degrees of attention to detail – have made...
The XJ220 wasn’t the car that Jaguar had promised its customers – in fact, in a happy twist of fate the end product turned out to be even betterBy Richard Heseltine
Oh to have been a fly on the wall when this series was first mooted. Just imagine the pitch: a championship for racing drivers no younger than 50 years of age competing in identical Jaguar XJ220 supercars. Worth the best part of £500K...
Continuing what now looks like a repeat whitewash of the World Sports Prototype Championship, the Sauber Mercedes team notched up another 1 —2 success at the Nürburgring in August. The Silk Cut Jaguars were fast and reliable, finishing in third and fourth places one lap behind, and Mark Blundell was "best of the rest" in a solo drive taking his Nissan to fifth place, three laps in arrears.
It...
"The spectator comes first"
Not so long ago, Silverstone Circuits had an unenviable reputation as the complacency capital of British motorsport. Our sister publication Motoring News received so many bad vibrations at the 1987 Shell Oils British Grand Prix that it initiated a reader survey, the results of which appeared shortly after. The findings contained some unfavourable comments which led to...