Great Read
Whilst the idea of a journalist carrying out a serious evaluation of a present-day grand prix car is as unlikely as it is presumptuous, it's not every day that the…
In 1981, the year before his death, Colin Chapman's Lotus colleagues witnessed something incredible: the most creative racing car designer of the time fell out of love with motorsport. Convinced…
Great Read
A hot, dusty afternoon in southern Spain. It’s September 28 1990, Friday qualifying at Jerez. With eight minutes left, Jean Alesi’s Tyrrell has just produced a ripple of interest in…
Fitness is all-consuming in Formula One, I know, but still there is something depressing about the uniformity of drivers' tastes today. Favourite drink: mineral water; favourite food: pasta. An exception…
Great Read
For sheer driving satisfaction there are three races I'll always remember above the rest. The first was in 1988 at Delmar, California, in an IMSA Jaguar, when I was nerfed…
Great Read
What has a gestation period of 50 years? Cyril Kieft's grand prix car. Conceived in 1953, part-built in '54, abandoned by '55, the incomplete car was forgotten by the racing…
By Robert Kubica's standards the answer was short, albeit tinged with the Pole's slightly off-beat humour, which has endeared him to the rallying fraternity since he took up the sport…
Great Read
Ron Dennis used to be based next door, during his Project Four days. His still-under-construction hi-tech temple to hi-tech, Paragon, lies only a few miles down the road, but it…
Standing on a piece of dull Aberdeenshire countryside, shivering against the wind as it blasts off the North Sea, you might not at first realise that there was anything of…
Great Read
Going through some old tapes recently, I came across an interview with James Hunt in the early '80s. It was typical James, forthright but well-reasoned, and I smiled often as…
After spending a great deal of money last year rebuilding the pits and paddock and modifying the circuit considerably, easing corners, removing bumps, widening the road and re-surfacing, all the…
Great Read
Jacques-Bernard Ickx is a complicated man. The thinking man’s racing driver, the thinking woman’s idol. Here is a man who is many things to many people. An emotional, soulful and…
Great Read
In a few months’ time comes the 25th anniversary of the death of Gilles Villeneuve. Tragedies of this kind are mercifully rare these days, but during my first year of…
Great Read
Twenty years ago this month, found myself a week before Christmas in a place to which ordinarily wild horses would not drag me. Sao Paulo I find about the least…
Great Read
Purity of line is the first thing that strikes you. Every time the Formula 1 rules shift, it takes only a matter of laps to accept a new look as…
Great Read
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.…
