Great Read

Tony Gaze was at the Australian Grand Prix this year, tall and distinguished and unrecognised in the paddock of the modern professional business that he knew as a sport 50…

Stirling Moss Inaugural Goodwood Meeting, September 1948   The place was pretty bleak, but it was a lovely meeting. We went with our Cooper 500 in a horsebox, me, my…

Indycars at Daytona. That suggestion today would bring a volley of laughter from drivers, mechanics, owners and race officials. The speeds would easily top 250mph and it would be borderline…

Vijay Mallya is very much the modern Indian man. An entrepreneur, a politician and a standard bearer for a fast-emerging economy. He owns a football club, of course, and he’s…

Formula One is the sport’s ultimate showcase. And Ferrari has been its 50 year constant, its pivot, its most famous team and, by association, the most famous marque in the…

Anyone who lives beyond man’s natural span of “three score years and 10” has to be respected, and to live a further 20 years demands admiration. If that man has…

If it were possible to pinpoint where the old Formula 1 became the new, it might well have been on the deck of a yacht at Monaco in May 1971.…

One thing about Colin Chapman and his staff at Ketteringham Hall, the Research and Development centre of Team Lotus, is that they do have a go and do not sit…

Sports car racing assumed a distinctly transatlantic flavour in the 1960s when hybrids of European chassis and American V8s began to appear on US race circuits in significant numbers. In…

Passing San Lorenzo, the famous restaurant, the other week, I was reminded of a pleasant lunch there, years ago, with a charming American lady: Louise Collins, widow of Peter. She…

Before Williams and BMW tied the knot in Formula 1 they underwent a trial marriage in sports car racing. Unlike the F1 enterprise it quickly proved successful, adding a Le…

Early September, a couple of days after the Belgian Grand Prix and a few before the Italian at Monza. Christian Horner has just walked into the Silverstone garage, still sporting…

As a devotee of Messrs Cook & Moore, I recently learned with horror that most episodes of Not Only… But Also are lost for ever. Back then the BBC would…

On a cold New York winter evening in February 1954, Rudi Caracciola stepped stiffly from a taxi outside Le Chanteclair restaurant at 18 East 49th Street, between Fifth and Madison.…

Day two of Rally Finland, noodling slowly along a public road between special stages three and four, near a place called Kukkaro, Kimi Räikkönen and co-driver Kaj Lindström have pulled…

Imagine Jaguar D-types, Ferrari Monzas, Aston Martin DBR1s and 300S Maseratis fighting it out over a fast, narrow road circuit looping over high hills. A circuit almost as long as…

Big breath. I have to go there. The matter has to be raised. So best get it out of the way, no point pussyfooting around the edges. So I look…