Lunch with... Chris Amon
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…
In motor sport these days, the term ‘privateer’ has fallen into disuse. Outside the professional teams, most serious racers either have access to much personal wealth – their own or…
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…
Late at night on July 14 1973, Andrea de Adamich lay in a hospital bed in Milan, his legs both broken. Life as a Grand Prix driver had come to…
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…
Money was so tight that driver Chris Craft and team manager Keith Greene had to take a Page & Moy tour to get to North America for the two end-of-season…
United States GP (East), Watkins Glen, October 5th 1980 From start to finish, the 1980 season was an unbelievable one for me. It was an amazing year because I won…
Between this year's Australian and Malaysian grands prix, Mrs C and I used up a free week with our first visit to New Zealand. On our travels around the wonderful…
No racing driver has ever survived such a big accident. And it’s unlikely that a grand prix car will ever again be allowed to run flat out into an earth…
Appropriately, it is November 29 as I write, and – just as in 1975 – there is a thick crust of frost on the windscreen of my car. That evening,…
Once again the Grand Prix teams of cars and drivers came together to pit their skill and endurance against the fabulous Nurburgring, for the German GP is seldom a split-second…