Great Read

Whenever I am in Italy, I visit my old friend Romolo Tavoni at his home outside Modena. Tavoni is now 85, in poor health and in receipt of hospital treatment,…

When people ask me which I think is the most impressive vantage point on any circuit I have visited, my answer unfailingly surprises them. Eau Rouge at Spa? Suzuka's 130R?…

When the 1985 season started I didn't have an F1 drive. I was still looking at F1, hoping to get back in. In the middle of the season I got…

Kids can be so greedy. Surely the spectacle of Gilles Villeneuve dragging half his Ferrari around Zandvoort and Alan Jones notching up a third straight win in the new-fangled Williams…

In the UK at least, the frenzy surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s World Championship win last November spread far beyond Formula 1’s normal audience, and for a few days his name was…

Enzo Ferrari’s relationships with the men who drove his cars were often difficult to follow, let alone fathom. Like much about the man, it is surrounded in a haze of…

It’s the height that hits you. At the track, among its rivals from the Seventies, it’s not so obvious. But in the studio, floodlit against bare walls, even with its…

Moments from the life of Keke Rosberg. The 1982 World Champion has always been a fine story-teller — and well able to tell a tale against himself. Rosberg's sense of…

A 'retro' interview this month. Recently I came across a tape, recorded in November 1981 with Frank Williams, and on a whim slotted it into the machine and began to…

Complacency: a strong word when aimed at brittle motor racing people.  But... "Why change it when we're winnin'?"  Sounds complacent, doesn't it?  Well, at the dawn of the 1960s John…

Jean-Pierre Jabouille took up his pole position slot at Dijon 1979. The sun glinted off the bright yellow bodywork, and as he looked in his mirrors he saw the heat…

No doubt there were occasions when Derek Bell secretly wished for an engine failure and an early bath. Perhaps in the middle of a dark, dank night at Le Mans,…

In grand prix racing’s most potent demonstration of yin and yang, the six seasons leading up to WWII were both a golden era for the sport and one malign component…

To preface this article with some anecdote or little-known historical fact would be to miss the crux of the Ford F3L. Twenty-seven years ago, the mechanics at the Byfleet-based Alan…

The World Championship of Makes in 1977 was a rather disjointed affair, consisting of nine events including classics such as the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 1000Km of Nürburgring and…

For someone of my vintage it’s a tremendous breath of fresh air to see someone like Lewis Hamilton doing so well. The statistics are amazing enough already, but they only…

It was during his spell as a McLaren works driver, first with the Church Farm Racing M10A in Formula 5000 and later as a member of the Grand Prix team,…