The line of Patrick Head-masterminded Formula 1 Williams-Cosworth FW07s proved to be the most effective successors to the Lotus 78-79 series’ legacy of ‘underwing’ ground-effect aerodynamic technology. Patrick had joined…

Reflecting upon this year’s extraordinary German Grand Prix, one might reasonably assume that hell will freeze over before the current Mercedes-Benz F1 team management will ever again let the parent…

Each year at the Goodwood Festival of Speed I tend to wear four different hats. The one with the biggest brim is probably as Goodwood’s historical (on rare occasions hysterical)…

For all its sumptuous history, Alfa Romeo’s premier-league competition image was fading by the mid-Sixties – submerged beneath time’s passage. A little prestige was occasionally restored in the saloon and…

Main chassis Side tubes united at the front by complex cast magnesium bulkhead, supporting fabricated steel abutments for front suspension coil springs and links, steering rack etc. Spare wheel on…

Mauro Forghieri – for 27 years the chief engineer of Ferrari’s racing operation – was on fine form. Ten days earlier, this tall, rangy man of enormous accomplishment had celebrated…

Yesterday is a far more comfortable place. This is certainly true right now – and it has been so for several fraught years past – for Sir Frank Williams’s Formula…

Ground-effect racing car aerodynamics can be a double-edged sword. In essence, those airflow-accelerating underfloor surfaces were developed to suck the car’s chassis down against the road surface at high speed,…

Formula 1 operated on very different principles during the early years of the world championship, when much of the technology had pre-WW2 roots, but in the late 1950s a revolution…

Sometimes trying to present the truth of a bygone event, much more so of a bygone project, can become tricky as one tries to reconcile sometimes conflicting accounts from witnesses,…

Long ago I was asked to write an auction description of a pretty important competition car. The breathless owner was full of it, particularly since he had, at great expense,…

Cosworth's nascent 4WD F1 design featured a host of innovative engineering concepts, even if not all of them worked as intended. Here's a look under the skin of the machine,…