The incredible rise and fall of Team Lotus
Grand prix racing was a changing world by 1958. And after the opening race of that season, in Argentina, it would never be the same again, for a tiny rear-engined…
"Mad Ronald," Mike Hailwood used to call him. Twenty and 30 years ago, Grand Prix racing may have been infinitely more perilous than now, but it lacked the hard edge…
Ray Harroun spent seven hours on the three million bricks of Indianapolis getting his bones beaten to powder winning the inaugural 500-mile sweepstakes. Called upon to say a few words…
The first thing you notice is the shock of white hair which stands out dramatically across the crowded room. Then you take in the fact that he still stands ramrod…
On January 24 last year a group of people gathered near Vienna to celebrate what would have been the 50th birthday of Jo Gartner. Often overlooked today, the Austrian was…
Tap the name 'Johnny Dumfries' into any internet search engine and you get the grand prix encyclopaedia pages. You're told that he was born in a castle and that he…
It wasn't always like this. The FIA's Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blash today ensure that a grand prix weekend runs like clockwork and that any indiscretions by teams or drivers…
Before examining Onofre's demise, we should go back to his seventh world championship grand prix start, the 1953 season-closer at Monza. Qualifying had gone well, and from the second row…
The winter of 1957-58 must have been an interesting time for John Wyer and David Brown, the men charged with determining the future direction of Aston Martin’s racing endeavours. Some…
The race which was particularly exciting for me was probably my first Grand Prix win for Lotus in Japan in 1976. The weather conditions were dreadful, some of the drivers…
Howden Ganley’s Formula 1 career began with BRM in 1971 and ended against a barrier at the Nürburgring in 1974, both legs broken. In between he might have won the…
Michael Burn is 92, a former Times correspondent, poet and playwright. But when Henry Birkin met him he was a young student who had never written anything. A mere three…
By his own admission Robin Herd "vacillated and wavered" over which path to follow after leaving Cosworth in 1969. He could either take Bernie Ecclestone's shilling and design a car…
If you ask me, the blokes on the board at BMW lost their nerve. “We communicated our 2009 target four years ago,” said Mario Theissen in Valencia at the roll-out…
The race that everyone remembers and was certainly my most famous win was the 1971 Italian Grand Prix. That was the last of the Monza slipstreamers, before the chicanes, and…
It was Tony Vandervell's impatience as much as anything else which created the machine which won the inaugural Formula 1 Constructors' Championship in 1958. He had, like other notables in…
It may not be immediately obvious what this Cooper-Maserati T86 is doing on these pages, other than going rather fast and looking gorgeous. Look at its race record and while…