Great Read

"I’d like to talk about Alan [he uses the English pronunciation] Prost,” says John Watson after some thinking time. He’s like that, always has been: he’s a thoughtful man. “There…

'He truly never met a race car that he didn't like. All US racing was clamped in an AJ Foyt stranglehold' It was a great racing civilisation that America had…

Blip, blip, buzz — pause — clunk, sputter, sputter. This Lotus 'queerbox' is in perfect condition. But it's still a sod. Next lap, into the first corner, there's a confident…

Those last 10 laps were exhausting. I was checking the rev counter, listening anxiously to the engine’s note, changing gear with exaggerated care, braking a little earlier and giving the…

IN 1948 at Bremgarten a 12 year-old Swiss boy watched, entranced, as a Frenchman wove his magic driving a Gordini. The boy's name was Joseph Siffert, the Frenchman's Raymond Sommer.…

If ever you were a Lotus fan Goodwood brought it all back. In the paddock, for example, were a pair of Lotus 25s, both ex-Clark, and at the Brooks auction…

Georg Meier, BMW's newly crowned European 500cc bike champion, got the call from Auto Union in early November: come to the Nürburgring and test for us. Tall and handsome, he…

It looked like an extravagant joke, an extended April Fool's stunt played by a bunch of ex-public schoolboys with more money than sense. It ended, as everyone had predicted, in…

Ferrari had romanced him. He had joined as its number one; Gilles was its number two. All seemed in order... until South Africa, of all places. The third grand prix…

The English dictionary which graces the shelf in Motor Sport's editorial offices gives the definition of the word classical as "of the first class, of allowed excellence". It's an adjective…

Rene Arnoux stood in the Dijon pit lane, listening. Listening to the throttle applications and braking points of an old friend performing a secret test in Rene's Ligier. What he heard made…

Twenty five years on, the photograph still has a mesmeric power to make your eyes prickle, to evoke anger and poignant images of what might have been. Five men stand…

Bravery in a racing car does not necessarily translate into the bravery of the battlefield. In the case of Robert Benoist, William Grover (‘Williams’) and Jean-Pierre Wimille, it did. When…

To passers-by at Baron's Court underground station, two days before Christmas 1985, he was just an elderly man, but by his appearance not a local one. That he had seen…

He’d faced down danger before but this was different: not only Plan A but Plans B, C, and D had been exhausted. The right rear rubber had detonated just past…

The first pure-bred Mercedes-Benz racer for 35 years. A World Championship winner. The car that gave us Michael Schumacher. The machine that laid the foundation stone of the German manufacturer’s…

You'd never have guessed you were witnessing the start of something big. It was an inauspicious debut by anyone's standards. Smoke and steam poured from the stubby, strange-looking machine that…