Great Read

He had a reputation for not being keen on testing. But there he was pounding round Estoril, in February. At seven days, this was the longest pre-season evaluation Williams, the…

"I’ll give you the same tip I gave to Jacky Ickx in 1973 when he was driving the Targa for the first time, in the Ferrari 312P,” says the voice…

Through my 20-odd years as a Grand Prix journalist, I have been repeatedly surprised by the drivers' lack of childhood enthusiasm for motor racing. Most, indeed, seem almost to have…

It seems hard to believe that Tony Rolt could be old enough to have raced at Donington, but the fact remains that, at the relatively tender age of twenty-one he…

Entering the final half-hour, Chinetti held a 21-second lead with Nuvolari, the 'Flying Mantuan', gaining. Chinetti stopped for fuel and the lead changed — again. WF Bradley of The Motor…

German Group 5 saloon car race, Nurburgring, 1976 I've had a funny career. I started like gangbusters, and always came very close but never got all I wanted. So to…

Pragmatists, not purists: That was Cooper compared to design-led Lotus, or the intensive engineering of BRM. While Colin Chapman was stripping out every gramme and making components double up, Cooper's…

It was like bumping into an old flame. Forty years ago, in our distant youth, we'd shared just one dance. In the intervening decades we'd both moved on; inevitably, we…

Seeing it lined up, in the Goodwood paddock at the Revival Meeting, with such as the Dino 246, the 250F and the Mercedes-Benz W196, it struck me again how small is the Lancia D50, how astonishing…

Just minutes after picking up the mountain pass we come to the first hairpin. I look at my photographs of behemoth Mercedes and Auto Unions scrabbling around tight Alpine bends…

When Mateus goes to bed he settles down on the kitchen floor beside the cooker. There are seven people living in two rooms. It is hot and there is no…

Lifetime achievement awards are usually consolation prizes for people who made a career out of finishing second. John Cooper so rewarded by the historic racing world is clearly an exception.…

We all know that there is only one individual sports car in history to not only claim a World Championship but also Le Mans not once but twice. The story…

Teatime in McLaren’s paddock palace, The Brand Centre. ‘Team Button’ – father John and manager Richard Goddard – are having a natter. They might be talking business, but just as…

The formation finish, staged for the benefit of the cameras, has become commonplace at Le Mans thanks to a certain manufacturer from Germany. Before Audi’s domination of the event, though,…

It is purely an age thing, I suppose, this, peculiar tendency we have to forget whole swathes of people who did their stuff before a certain age. An atrophied sense…

Sometimes things just don’t turn out as they should. If you had been in the grandstands at Le Mans one lap into the 24-hour race of 1962, you’d have had…