Suzuka, Sunday October 21 1990. The two engineers, formerly colleagues on the same team, were walking through the day’s events. “Well,” said Tim Wright of McLaren, “that was a bloody…
P4. Two syllables to send shivers down your spine — or mine, anyway. In a debate about the best-looking sports-racing car of all time, my choice would lie between the…
Great Read
Some weekends you can come back from a Grand Prix with a notebook relatively clean. There will be a lap chart in there, of course, together with notes and quotes,…
Lotus 79 If ever you were a Lotus fan Goodwood brought it all back. In the paddock, for example, were a pair of Lotus 25s, both ex-Clark, and at the…
Much was made recently of the 'interminable' five-week gap between the penultimate and final races of the Formula One season. And certainly it was unusual, given Bernie Ecclestone's dislike of…
Monza. The 2006 Italian Grand Prix is a few days away as I write, and 30 years have passed since the most remarkable happening I have ever encountered in motor…
A strange thing, the Honours List. Given poor behaviour is apparently something to be celebrated these days, perhaps we should not have been surprised to note the name of Mr…
The 2002 Formula One season may have been largely desultory, for many reasons, but for me it had its moments. Take Monza. I as good as knew that I was…
After who knows how many years, I went back to Brands Hatch in late September for the inaugural A1GP race, and as I walked into the paddock I was struck…
Great Read
Johnny Servoz-Gavin rather shook everyone at Monaco in 1968. Subbing for an injured Jackie Stewart, he qualified Ken Tyrrell's Matra second, behind Graham Hill's Lotus. An archetypal '60s figure, Servoz-Gavin…
It was at Spa-Francorchamps, 30 years ago, that a Grand Prix car first raced with a wing, and you might reasonably assume, given the innovative reputation of Colin Chapman, that…
Great Read
Professor Sid Watkins is not a man with any stomach for political correctness, not one to say 'issue' when he means 'big problem' or 'challenging' when he means 'bloody difficult'.…
On and off, Mario Andretti has been trying to win Le Mans for more than 30 years. The place has hardly been kind to him, but he adores it. "I…
Great Read
Twenty-five years have passed since the death of Gilles Villeneuve, the most beloved racing driver of his generation, and many words have lately been devoted to a man without whom,…
"In a time when motor racing was conducted with integrity and passion, one unique character graced the stage of Formula One. His name was Ken Tyrrell." The narrator's opening words…
As I drive, each July, from Frankfurt airport to Hockenheim, it is my invariable practice to pull off into the rest area by the Langen-Morfelden crossing on the autobahn towards Darmstadt. At…
