Great Read

Talk about going out in style! Not only did Phil Hill win the last professional race he entered — the BOAC 500 at Brands Hatch in 1967 — but as a…

For many of us, grand prix racing entered a fallow period after the death in May 1982 of Gilles Villeneuve, and none felt that more keenly than Denis Jenkinson. Even…

John Miles beckons me over with a crook of a gloved index finger. He points to a smear of blue paint on the inside of the monocoque. "See that? This…

John Surtees was always destined to become a constructor. At least that's how it appeared from the outside. For he absolutely knew his own mind – how a team ought…

No mistakes this time Long Beach, California, April 8th EACH YEAR the running of the United States Grand Prix (West) through the streets of the town of Long Beach in…

Only four Indianapolis 500 rookies in 100 years have started from pole: Teo Fabi in 1983 is one. Prematurely balding and softly spoken, his puppy-ish face often apparently bemused, occasionally…

Alan Brinton was a good old-school journalist. He was 1950s Fleet Street personified. He addressed everyone as “old boy” or “my dear”, could actually touch-type but, cast adrift by the…

In order to appropriately mythologise Jackie Stewart, he really should be dead, the better to fulfil the time-served, cruelly macho parapsychology of his chosen sport. Not suburban-dead, felled by atherosclerosis…

Today’s media like to give our heroes convenient labels. Stirling Moss is “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship” – a glib line which says nothing about The…

Date: 20 July 1985, 3.12pm Location: Silverstone Circuit, Northamptonshire Event: Final qualifying, British Grand Prix Point of interest: Then the fastest F1 lap of all time Not many Formula 1…

John Godfrey Parry Thomas, holder of the Land Speed Record for nine months in 1926/7 (and 10 days in 1924), was cut from a very different cloth to his more…

A straightforward, dyed-in-the-wool racing enthusiast, spool back 50 years and think yourself into the cockpit of that great silver car in its headlong gallop around Italy. You are in the…

Jan Magnussen is under few illusions about his Formula 1 career. "I let myself down," he says, "and that always hurts. I planned to be world champion and it didn't…

On 17 July 1937, during practice for the German GP, Bernd Rosemeyer fought his wayward Auto Union round the Nürburgring in 9min 46.2sec, a time that staggered the pitlane. By…

Argentinian Grand Prix, Buenos Aires, 1979 I've always considered Argentina in 1979 to be my first real Grand Prix victory. I'd won in Sweden in 1977, but only because of…

You are Peter Collins. Young, handsome, living a glamorous life with a film star wife — and quick. You have heaps of respect for Fangio, but today, it would seem,…

The Hamilton phenomenon has rewritten the Formula 1 record books. But Lewis’s meteoric progress doesn’t diminish the achievements, 37 years ago, of a Brazilian tyro called Emerson Fittipaldi. Emerson was…