Racing History

As a young engineer at Rolls-Royce, I needed a source of inspiration, like most people, and I looked towards the Alfa Romeo 158/159. Then I was lent by R-R to…

May 1940 was a month of immense drama as General Heinz Guderian's tanks crossed the River Meuse near Sedan and brought blitzkrieg to northern France, thrusting a spearhead between the…

Cooper T72. Goodwood. 1964 by Jean-Pierre Jaussaud Jim Russell opened a school at Magny-Cours, and I won a Cooper-BMC F3 car. I had to collect this car from England and…

The other day I listened again to an interview, recorded in early 1957, with the Marquis Alfonso de Portago. Originally put out on a Riverside LP, it was reissued on…

Great International Race held at Brooklands A brighter scene than Brooklands on August 7th, 1926, would be hard to imagine; sunshine, dresses, sumptuous cars, grass, trees, advertisements, and lastly the…

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…

More motor racing on sand courses has occurred than may be generally realised. The inaugural use of such a venue appears to have been in 1904 by the Irish Automobile…

When we started Williams Grand Prix Engineering, for 1977,” said Patrick Head, “I think we had eight employees at the start of the season, and 11 at the end of…

I have often wondered what became of the fixtures and fittings and artefacts of The Steering Wheel Club. There were innumerable great photographs, but also more unconventional items, like the…

On January 24 last year a group of people gathered near Vienna to celebrate what would have been the 50th birthday of Jo Gartner. Often overlooked today, the Austrian was…

John Webb was one of the great motor sport visionaries. For 25 years, from 1964 to '89, he ruled Brands Hatch, grew the circuit into the most successful in the…

In January 1950 a young employee was called in to see the manager of the Credito Italiano bank in Modena. The bank had a new client and, keen to help…

It is one of motor racing’s enduring images – a BRM P25 cartwheeling down the track shedding components, one being the driver, who appears to be kneeling on the road,…

There is still great warmth in the way Peter Collins is recalled, 48 years after his passing. It’s more than the fact that he was a successful driver, with three…

When compiling a list of famous Belgians, I think instantly of Georges Prosper Remi, better known as Hergé, whose Tintin stories have long been favourites of mine. Then there’s Eddy…

Were someone to achieve something similar today, their accomplishment would likely be obscured by a blizzard of hype. But it was different then. Taken out of context, Eric Thompson’s World…