Goodwood is proud to announce that the exceptional career of John Surtees – to this day the only person to win World Championships on two and four wheels – will be celebrated at this year’s Goodwood Revival, taking place over the weekend of 6-8 September. 2024 marks 60 years since Surtees won his Formula 1 World Championship, and would have seen the eight-time World Champion celebrate his 90th birthday, this coming Sunday, 11 February.

Looking back

Reflecting a truly extraordinary motorsport career – which included seven motorcycle World Championships between 1956 and 1960, the 1964 Formula 1 World Championship, and the 1966 Can-Am Championship – the tribute to John Surtees will include everything from 250cc, 350cc and 500cc motorcycles to Grand Prix winners, unlimited sports cars and GTs. In April, the 81st Members’ Meeting will assemble an incredible array of Can-Am cars, Surtees having won the inaugural championship with his eponymous team in 1966.

Two icons cross paths

John Surtees is a key figure in the annals of Goodwood’s unique motorsport history. It was at Goodwood that he tested a car for the first time, in 1959. The following year, it was here that he made his four-wheeled debut in a Formula Junior Cooper, racing for Ken Tyrrell, at the 39th Members’ Meeting in March 1960, finishing a close second to none other than Jim Clark.

That 1960 season was remarkable. Having taken part in his first race on four wheels in March, he made his F1 debut in May, scored his first podium with second place at the British Grand Prix in July, and his first pole position at the Portuguese Grand Prix in August! All while fitting in around his two-wheeled commitments, where he won the 350cc and 500cc World Championships for MV Agusta!

First Festival of Speed

In 1993, Surtees became a Patron of the very first Festival of Speed, utilizing his extensive contacts to organize the motorcycle classes for the event and riding his 1952 Vincent up the Hill. Returning to race at the early Goodwood Revivals, ‘Big John’ entertained a new generation of Goodwood motorsport fans, as fiercely competitive in the RAC TT Celebration as he had been on the Circuit during its heyday.

Shortly after his passing in March 2017, the 75th Members’ Meeting paid a moving tribute to Surtees, on the anniversary to the day of that first race in 1960, with a minute’s noise reverberating through the paddocks and The Duke of Richmond leading a commemorative lap in a Team Surtees Lola T70. We now look forward to honoring the remarkable achievements of an enormously talented driver and rider, as well as the life and legacy of a great friend of Goodwood.

Doug Nye

Doug Nye, motorsport historian, co-founder of the Festival of Speed and friend of Goodwood, said: “John Surtees was simply unique. Despite having spent my entire adult life amongst such ultra-competitive racers as Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart and many more, he was the most competitive personality of them all! He won motorcycling World titles seven times, and the Formula 1 Driver’s World Championship once. On a motorcycle, he was magic to watch, just man and machine merged into one – while in a car, he took no prisoners yet was still visibly a master – a total perfectionist. From first sampling a racing car at Goodwood in 1959-60 he became one of our first Festival of Speed Patrons in 1993. He was – on two wheels and four – a total star.”

Duke of Richmond

The Duke of Richmond said: “As an eight-time World Champion and the only man to achieve the honor on both two and four wheels, John Surtees was not only a huge figure in the history of the Goodwood motor circuit but also played a big part in the establishment of our modern events. Along with Stirling Moss, John was a Patron of the Festival of Speed and was deeply involved from the very beginning. More than anything, he was an exceptional racer and a great friend.”

All content © 2024 Goodwood

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On May 9^th, 1992, Roberto Guerrero earned the pole position for the 76^th running of the Indianapolis 500-mile race. Piloting a Buick-powered Lola T92/00 for King Motorsports, the 33-year-old Colombian became the first man in Speedway history to officially break the 230-mph barrier as he set new track records for single-lap average (232.618 mph) and four lap average (232.482 mph) for the four-lap, ten-mile run into the record books.

Guerrero would be the only driver in the 33-car starting field to record all four qualification laps over the 230 mph barrier as the 1984 Indianapolis “500” Co-Rookie of the Year award winner would log what would prove to be the sixth and final pole position of his Indy-car career.

The post An Honor to Race There appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Feature Image via Ignite Media 

For our latest episode of automotive personality interviews, we caught up with Parker Thompson, who is just fresh off winning the 2022 Porsche Carrera Cup North America.

The post Interview: Parker Thompson, 2022 PCCNA Champion appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Much like other drivers that suddenly announced their retirements, it seems that Seb, as he’s affectionately known to friends and fans alike, decided to pull the plug while still achieving moderate success and bow out in a dignified fashion after over a decade in the sport to spend more time with his kids and extended family.

As he is one of the winningest champions at the pinnacle of motorsport, it is only appropriate that—as this chapter of his life closes and a future where he can focus on his family and other interests opens—we look back at just what made Seb one of the best ever.

This is a profile filled with examples of natural skill, heated moments with teammates and opponents alike, and some amazing drives that closed out the final years of the V8 era of Formula One with a bang. Quite hotheaded for a German (who are usually seen as calm, collected drivers on the F1 grid), Vettel’s career can be equally defined as explosive and determined, and we will explore all aspects of it.

Sebastian Vettel’s Early Years

Karting

Sebastian Vettel was born on July 3, 1987, in the sleepy countryside town of Heppenheim (Bergstraße), in the Hesse state of what was known then as West Germany, as the second youngest of four, with a younger brother and two olders sisters. While not the most affluent of families, the Vettels realized after putting him in a kart at the age of three in 1990 just for fun that he had a serious natural talent for driving, and they focused on registering Sebastian for local karting events and drop-in races.

By the time he was four, he was winning karting events, and became a fervent fan of what he dubs as the “Three Michaels:” Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Michael Schumacher. He was fully intent on becoming a singer like his idol Jackson, until he realized that he enjoyed karting quite a lot (and that he also didn’t quite have a singing voice that would make him a pop star).

Instead, due to his natural talent and raw speed, in 1994, a seven year old Seb won a seriously competitive karting competition, with the grand prize being a meet and greet with Michael Schumacher.

This was his first encounter with one of his heroes, and despite the saying of “never meet your heroes,” 1994 was also the year that Schumacher won his first World Driver’s Championship. To a young Sebastian, he was an inspiration to both push hard for what he wanted—which was to win, but to also remain humble as possible, as Schumacher dedicated his first title to the man that was his main rival, the recently passed Ayrton Senna, for the trophy.

In 1997, at the age of 10, Vettel moved to the professional leagues and won both the DMV Karting Championship and the NRW German Championships back-to-back. Of course, this drew the attention of professional scouts for the newly formed junior academies of major Formula One teams, and in 1998 at age eleven, he was signed to the Red Bull Junior Academy.

With some serious backing behind his name now, Sebastian was able to move up to international karting events, and continued to win races. The highlight of his karting career, however, was his victory in 2001 at the Junior Monaco Kart Cup, racing in the top tier KF3 super karts.

This was a milestone for Vettel, as the kart track uses the entire lower half of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit, and was sanctioned by the Automobile Club de Monaco, who also run the entire Grand Prix weekend for Formula One. It was also an international cup overseen by the FIA, as it was one of the most prestigious karting cups you could win before moving to higher category open wheelers.

Formula BMW, Formula 3, & Formula Renault

In 2003, with support from Red Bull, Vettel was able to enter open-wheeled Formula car competition and joined the German Formula BMW ADAC series. He was placed in the Eifelland Racing Team and partnered with Andreas Wirth, a future endurance car professional racer. Despite Wirth being in his second season of Formula BMW, Vettel outmatched him at almost every event, consistently driving faster and qualifying higher.

In fact, during his rookie season, Vettel finished second in the Formula BMW ADAC Championship with five wins, five poles, and twelve podiums in nineteen races. Maximilian Götz, a future ADAC GT and FIA World Endurance champion, was the only driver to beat him.

2004, however, was the year that Sebastian Vettel made himself known as a seriously fast, destined-for-the-big-show driver. Switching to the Berlin-Brandenburg team, Vettel’s sophomore season was a display of utter domination, leaving every other driver in the field in the dust.

In a twenty race season, he won eighteen, and he was on the podium for the other two that he did not win. At that time in the FIA rankings, Formula BMW ADAC was akin to national Formula 4 series, and as the champion, Vettel had the option of moving up the FIA ladder.

The Next Step: Formula 3

He did so in 2005, signing to the German ASL Mücke Motorsport Formula 3 Euro Series team. As the cars were much faster, much more aero dependent, and much higher tech than the Formula BMW cars, Vettel struggled throughout the first half of the season to produce strong results.

He was consistently in the midfield, however, and after getting to grips with how much more finesse the F3 cars took to drive seriously fast, he was able to return to a front running position, often challenging a young British driver by the name of Lewis Hamilton for race wins. In the end, he scored five podiums from twenty races, while Hamilton went on to be the 2005 F3 Euro Series champion.

A highlight of his 2005 season was being invited to participate in two of the most prestigious F3 races in the world: the Macau Grand Prix and the Masters of Formula 3. At Macau, Vettel showed absolute determination and skill, coming in third behind Lucas di Grassi (2010 Virgin F1 Team driver and 2016 Formula E champion) and a young Polish wunderkind, Robert Kubica. At the Masters of Formula 3 event, however, he got mired in the midfield and finished a respectable, if midfield, eleventh place.

His performance did impress, however, and he was given a test day with the Williams Formula One Team later on in 2005 for his performance in the Formula BMW series, and after he won the Rookie Cup for F3 with 63 total points, the highest scoring rookie, he was invited to test with BMW Sauber Formula One. During both tests, he showed immense natural feel and speed with both cars, and was lapping within a few seconds of the professional F1 drivers for each team by the end of both test days.

This raw speed and feel for the car saw Vettel get his foot in the door in 2006 with BMW Sauber, as he was signed as their official test driver, while also participating in the 2006 Formula 3 championship. Not satisfied with just the test driver position and Formula 3, Sebastian also entered the European Formula Renault 3.5 Series, at that time a direct feeder series to Formula One.

He showed immense pace in Formula 3, trading the points lead in the championship with future F1 driver Paul Di Resta almost every race weekend. When he was put in the more powerful Formula Renault car, however, he blitzed the field, taking the win and second place in the first two races at Misano.

Reality Comes Crashing Down

It was during the 2006 Formula Renault 3.5 Series race at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps, however, that the first bite of the true dangers of racing hit Sebastian full force. In the front half of the pack during the first race of the weekend, Vettel was pushing hard, showing his pace and talent, when an accident happened in front as the cars crested Radillon after the famous Eau Rouge corner.

The crash resulted in shards of carbon fiber being scattered everywhere, and by pure chance, one of the airborne pieces of carbon fiber sliced across his knuckles, nearly severing his right index finger. The injury was serious enough that he was withdrawn from Formula Renault, and it was expected that he would be out of the cockpit for months.

The video of the crash does involve, well, a crash, so viewer discretion is advised—and instead of embedding the video, we’ll simply link to it here: Sebastian Vettel 2006 Injury At Spa.

To everyone’s surprise, seven days later at the Masters of Formula 3 at Zandvoort, the Netherlands, Vettel showed up with his finger wrapped in a flexible cast, and subsequently placed sixth in the race. He continued racing for the remainder of the 2006 F3 season, but due to his injury, was not able to match his pace from the first half of the year, which ultimately saw him come second in the championship.

Formula One: A Rough Start

The Call

2007 started off for Sebastian Vettel like many before him, with him entering a series and showing utter domination from the word “go”. For this season, he elected to participate in Formula Renault 3.5 full time, and won the German round at the Nurburgring. He was steaming ahead of the field in points, easily in command of the championship, when what many F1 drivers simply say is “the call” came.

At the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix, BMW Sauber driver Robert Kubica went through what was one of the most violent crashes that had been seen in the sport for nearly a decade, getting bumped off the track at nearly 180 MPH, hitting an access road that caused his front wheels to lift into the air, and smashing nose first into the inner barrier before the famous hairpin at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

The car literally shattered into pieces, the only not breaking apart being the extremely robust safety cell that surrounds the driver. After tumbling, spinning, and being exposed to high g-forces, as well as sustaining minor injuries to his feet, Kubica was out of competition for the foreseeable future.

As such, when it came time for BMW Sauber to travel to the next round at Indianapolis, they called Vettel up to the team. Although he had taken part in free practice sessions in 2006 for BMW Sauber, this was his first call up to the top tier of motorsports.

Despite the buzz surrounding his call-up, Vettel remained calm and provided a mature drive for the 2007 US Grand Prix, qualifying seventh and finishing a respectable eighth. This made him, at 19 years and 354 days, the youngest ever points-scoring driver in Formula One—a record he held for many years.

Red Bull/Toro Rosso

This performance showed that Vettel had the ability and skill to handle a Formula One car at race pace for an entire weekend and provide results. Still a member of the Red Bull Junior team, BMW Sauber and Red Bull Formula One came to an agreement shortly after the US Grand Prix, and Sebastian was released from BMW Sauber to be immediately signed to Toro Rosso, Red Bull’s junior and development team. He replaced the American driver Scott Speed, who had been released after the US Grand Prix for not providing expected results and being given all the chances he could have had.

This was it. This was the promotion to a team under the Red Bull banner he had been working towards for nearly a decade, and he finally had made it. But be it from youthful enthusiasm or coming to terms with the fact that his dream was “really happening,” at the rain-soaked 2007 Japanese Grand Prix at the Fuji International Circuit, things nearly came undone for him.

After working his way up to third behind Red Bull’s Mark Webber and the McLaren of race leader Lewis Hamilton, he lost focus for a moment during a safety car period and crashed into Webber, forcing both cars into retirement. This would have been Toro Rosso’s maiden podium, and one of Webber’s up-until-then best finishes—and with one mistake, he wiped out two nearly guaranteed podium finishes for the Red Bull camp.

Vettel’s One Weakness: The Temper Starts to Show

To say that Mark Webber was, in a word, “pissed” about Vettel’s mistake is an understatement. He did not hold back any criticism, and even went as far as to say that he thought that Vettel had been moved into Formula One too early. He was given a ten-place grid penalty for the following round at the Chinese Grand Prix—however that penalty was nullified after eyewitness video showed that Hamilton might have not been following correct safety car procedures, causing Webber to slow down, with the domino effect of the distracted Vettel hitting him.

Despite this, it seemed that Vettel’s confidence was shaken, and he qualified a dismal seventeenth. Yet, once the five red lights went out, the raw talent surged through. In a race of mixed conditions, Vettel moved all the way up the field to finish fourth, which caused Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateshitz to make the ultimately prophetic statement that he thought Sebastian would be a world champion in the next five years.

Despite being billed as intelligent, mature, and extremely involved in the technical side and small details of tuning the car to his driving style, the young German also started to show that he was, at times, quick to anger and that he had a particular temper. It is expected, to say the least, that when you’re one of the twenty best drivers in the world, your ego can be about as big as a hot air balloon, but most drivers keep it under control.

This would come to the fore in the first four races of 2008, where Vettel scored four consecutive DNF’s (Did Not Finish), with retirements in the first lap for three of them. He was shown on TV broadcasts as throwing his fists around after hopping out of the car in frustration, and he was very brusque with the media. This famously got him in a bit of hot water with the Red Bull team, and after a “consultation” with the team bosses, he was much calmer at the Turkish Grand Prix, although again he seemed to lose confidence, finishing fourteenth.

Once again, after a confidence shakeup, Vettel returned to form at the 6th round of 2008, the Monaco Grand Prix. A track that is notoriously difficult to pass on, Vettel qualified seventeenth, yet was able to finish the race in fifth, scoring his first points of the year.

At the following race at Valencia, Spain, it seemed that something had been switched on in Sebastian, causing Toro Rosso’s technical director, Giorgio Ascanelli, to comment that suddenly Vettel had figured out how to drive a Formula One car consistently fast. This would again prove to be a prophetic statement, as the Toro Rosso Miracle was but a few months away.

2008 Italian Grand Prix

Monza. The Temple of Speed. The second fastest circuit that Formula One visits after Spa-Francorchamps. The holy ground of the Ferrari Tifosi, where the prancing horse is venerated and any Italian team that scores a point there is applauded. As Toro Rosso is Italian for Red Bull, and the team was based just down the road from Monza, it was a popular car with a seriously fast young star driver.

Of course, Monza is all of those things listed above when it is dry. However, the 2008 Grand Prix weekend was plagued by rain, and a wet track separates the great drivers from the legendary ones. Imagine everyone’s surprise, then, when during a rain soaked qualifying session, at 21 years and 72 days old, Sebastian became the youngest driver to ever achieve pole position, a record he holds to this day.

When it came race time on the Grand Prix Sunday, the torrential rain saw one of the few safety car starts of a Grand Prix. Because of his vantage point of being in pole position and not buried in the rooster tail spray from the extreme wet weather tires, Vettel catapulted away from the field and led the race nearly the entire way through.

In a mature drive that saw speed balanced with exceptional car control in the most challenging of conditions, Vettel crossed the finish line in first, 12.5 seconds ahead of the second place McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen.

At 21 years and 73 days old, Sebastian Vettel was the youngest driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix event, a record he held for 8 years. It was dubbed the Toro Rosso Miracle, “the race that was,” a coming-of-age for both the very young team and the young driver.

In fact, after Toro Rosso boss Gerhard Berger commented that Vettel could not only win races, but was destined to win championships, the German media gave him the nickname of “Baby Schumi,” a name he had no problem accepting as Schumacher was one of his childhood heroes. This race also saw the beginning of one of Vettel’s more controversial celebrations, where he would raise his right index finger—the one that was nearly severed—and emphatically pump his fist around.

At the end of the 2008 season, Toro Rosso had been cemented as a viable team, Vettel had proven to be a natural talent and a race winner, and subsequently he was named the 2008 Rookie of the Year at the Autosport Awards. However, as the saying goes, the story had just begun.

Red Bull & The Rise of the Champion

2009 & Leading the Charge

After David Coulthard retired at the end of the 2008 season, Vettel was promoted to the main Red Bull team—on the back of his 2008 Toro Rosso campaign giving the first win and the first pole position for the junior team since its inception.

The 2009 RB5 was an absolute beast of a car, with a screaming V8 engine revving to 18,000 RPM, and unlike many of the cars that were eligible, it did not run the new KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) hybrid drive. It was as if the car and Sebastian had been made for each other, and he proved to be immediately a front runner the instant he first turned a wheel in anger on a track.

At the first round in Australia, Vettel was on track to place second, a podium in his first outing for the main team, when he crashed out after colliding with Robert Kubica as the two fought over second place. Two races later, at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix, he went on to qualify in pole position, the first pole for Red Bull, as well as lead almost all of the race laps, giving Red Bull their first win in F1.

Vettel would go on to win at Silverstone, Red Bull’s home grand prix at the time, to the delight of the team and fans alike. At the Japanese Grand Prix, Vettel scored the second ever Red Bull pole position, and dominated the race, leading every lap to come home in first.

At the first ever final round Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, he won that race, and through his efforts across the season, came in second in the driver’s championship to Jenson Button. The Constructors Championship was also very tight, with Brawn GP, which would become Mercedes-AMG GP in 2010, beating Red Bull by just 18.5 points.

2010: The Year It All Came Together

2010 was a banner year for Formula One. With the birth of Mercedes-AMG GP, seven-time world champion and fellow German Michael Schumacher came out of retirement as the highest profile signing in many years to give the team an experienced, albeit older, driver as their lead.

The son of World Champion Keke Rosberg, Nico, was signed as the second driver for the team, forming an all-German ownership and driving team. Another driver named Nico also entered Formula One in 2010, the much loved “Hulk,” Nico Hulkenberg, who would go on to be one of the most successful drivers to never win a race (and a definite fan favorite).

It was also the year that saw the expansion of the points system to its modern style, with 25 points awarded for a win, 18 for second, 15 for third, and so on down to 1 for tenth, which allowed for more drivers to establish themselves as point scoring racers. What most teams had not counted on, however, was the fact that Red Bull Racing, using the award money from coming in second in the Constructors Championship, had developed one of the most dominant and technologically advanced F1 cars seen since the legendary Ferrari F2004, the RB6.

Sebastian immediately put the car on pole at the first round of 2010 in Bahrain, and led most of the race until a spark plug failure caused a misfire, and he dropped back to fourth. At the second round in Australia, Vettel again placed the RB6 on pole, but retired from the race on lap 26 after a brake failure sent him spinning off into a gravel trap. It was also in Australia that he was appointed as director of the newly reformed Grand Prix Drivers Association, as he had no qualms about being outspoken and direct.

His first win of the season came at the third round in Malaysia, where Mark Webber had secured pole with a brilliant and brave switch to slicks as the often rain soaked track was drying near the end of qualifying, with Vettel putting his RB6 in third. At the start of the race, he powered past Nico Rosberg in second, and moved inside Webber at the first turn to take the lead, and there was no looking back from there. With Webber coming in second, this was the first 1-2 finish in Red Bull Racing’s history.

Despite the successes, there was a rift starting to grow between Webber and Vettel, with the older, more experienced Australian, who was technically the primary driver of the team, feeling like the young upstart German was taking unnecessary risks to get to the front of a race, including passing dangerously close to Webber on multiple occasions. Despite the low-boiling animosity, the two were able to still race cleanly at the Spanish GP, with Webber first and Vettel third, and chalking up another 1-2 at the next round in Monaco, with Webber finally winning at the legendary race and performing his now classic backflip into the pool atop Red Bull’s paddock suite.

Despite both drivers being in good spirits about Monaco, the rift was firmly and permanently sealed in place at the next round in Turkey. As Webber had often commented, the two Red Bulls were running comfortably in first and second, with Webber in the lead, when Vettel made a dive-bomb passing move to take the lead of the race… or at least that was his intention. Instead, he crashed into Webber, spinning out of the race with Webber screaming on the team radio to the pit wall about Vettel’s impetuousness and impatience. Mark was able to continue, but would have to nurse home the RB6 with minor damage, dropping down to finish third.

Neither driver took responsibility for the collision, with Webber insistent that Vettel had tried to force a pass that was never going to work. Vettel countered that Webber had moved his car to block him, and the two never truly saw eye to eye after that.

They would trade wins and podiums throughout the rest of the first half of the season, both garnering enough points to be almost even in the top four spots of the drivers championship, mixed in with Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. During the second half of the season, however, a resurgent Ferrari with Alonso and new updates for the McLaren of Hamilton saw both those drivers win multiple races, with the Red Bulls often in second, third, and a couple of times not even on the podium.

By the time the season wound its way to the final race at Abu Dhabi, any one of Webber, Vettel, Alonso, or Hamilton could win the title if they won the race. Red Bull Racing was already the Constructor’s Champions with a solid showing at the previous round in Brazil, but coming into the final race, Vettel was 15 points behind Alonso, 7 points ahead of Webber, and if all three of them retired from the race and Hamilton won, he had a chance to take the title.

The race was a seesaw battle between Button, Webber, Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso, although with some excellent strategy calls from the pit wall, Vettel emerged from his final pit stop outside of any real challenge for the win of the race, with a ten second gap as he crossed the finish line to second place Lewis Hamilton, third place Jensen Button with the two most dangerous challengers, Alonso and Webber, finishing in seventh and eighth respectively.

Once the pit wall had confirmed that Vettel had enough points, firstly, Vettel’s race engineer confirmed the places as they finished, then called out “DU BIST WELTMEISTER!” Christian Horner, team principal at Red Bull, keyed up the radio next and spoke his now famous line, “Sebastian Vettel, you are the world champion!”

All the prophetic statements by all of the personnel over the years at both Toro Rosso and Red Bull Racing came true in an instant, and at 23 years and 134 days old, Sebastian Vettel became the youngest World Drivers Champion in the history of F1, a record that has not been broken since 2010.

Title Defense & Three More Years Back-to-Back

Vettel started the 2011 season with strong wins at both Australia and Malaysia, coming in second place at the Chinese Grand Prix third round as his radio was broken and he couldn’t communicate his tire wear to the team effectively. He also won rounds four and five, before his radio failed again at the sixth round in Monaco.

The pit crew were not ready when he entered the pit lane for new tires, which led to him both having a slow stop as well as being sent out on the wrong set of tires. He was able to hold Fernando Alonso and Jensen Button behind him until the race was red flagged near the end, allowing him to change tires under the red flag rules and subsequently win the race.

He came second at the Canadian Grand Prix. At the European Grand Prix at Valencia, the FIA implemented a ban on engine mappings, which many saw as a thinly veiled attempt to reel in Vettel’s massive points lead. Sebastian responded by recording his first hat trick of the season, with pole position, fastest lap, and the race win.

Another rule change at the next round at Silverstone targeted the blown diffuser aerodynamic device, which Red Bull had pioneered for 2011 and was achieving great success with. Despite the change, Vettel was able to hold off teammate Webber, who had ignored team orders and was pushing to take second place off of Seb. That second place marked another entry in the record books where a driver had placed no worse than second in the first nine races in the season, winning six of those races.

Vettel would finish fourth at his home Grand Prix in Germany, second at Hungary, and then was back on the top step at Spa-Francorchamps. He tied Ayrton Senna when he nabbed his tenth pole position in Italy, being only the second driver to have taken ten pole positions in two separate seasons, and he won from pole without much challenge.

A win at the next round in Singapore put him mathematically within reach of securing the title, and with a second place at the following round in Japan, he had accumulated enough points and was declared the champion with a shocking five races left in the season, marking him the youngest back-to-back champion in the sport’s history as well as the youngest to win two titles. With a win at the next race in Korea, he also joined Michael Schumacher as the only other driver at the time to win more than ten races in consecutive seasons.

At the end of 2011, Vettel claimed the record for the most pole positions in a season at fifteen, as well as racking up eleven wins, seventeen podiums from nineteen races, and a record setting 392 points in a season.

2012 was a bit of a different beast, which saw multiple drivers gaining ground and a highly competitive season unfold. At the Malaysian round, Vettel’s temper would once again get frayed after a collision with backmarker Narain Karthikeyan caused him to finish outside of the points. He snapped after the race, calling him “an idiot and a cucumber.”

By the time the season had reached the summer break, he was fifth in the driver’s standings and looking like he might not make it to a third title. It was, in fact, a deficit of 39 points to Ferrari’s Alonso with seven rounds remaining that was making things look grim.

What happened next is one of those second halves of a season drivers dream about. He won at Singapore, took a hat trick at the Japanese Grand Prix, and surged to within 4 points of Alonso as the latter retired during the race. Wins in Korea and India saw him return to the top of the standings, and by the time the season came to the final round at Interlagos in Brazil, he had a 13 point cushion over Alonso.

Things looked bad, however, when a first lap collision with Bruno Senna sent him spinning off the track and to last place. With a heroic drive, he recovered to sixth place to win the title by a scant three points—one of the narrowest margins a title has been decided by.

This placed Sebastian in rarefied air, joining names like Schumacher and Fangio as a triple title winner, as well as being the youngest triple consecutive title winner—a record he still holds to this day.

2013: Multi-21 & The Fall from Grace

By 2013, there was no denying that Sebastian Vettel was one of the best drivers to sit in a Formula One car. Yet, his title defenses and wins had been marred by his often explosive criticisms of other drivers, his single finger fist pumps that had started out innocently but were getting more and more in the face of other drivers as he did them, and his temper sometimes getting the better of him. It was after a third place finish at the opening round in Australia that the now infamous “Multi-21” incident happened at the second round in Malaysia.

Teammate Mark Webber had never won the Malaysian Grand Prix, and as the race unfolded, he held the lead on the road, with a hard charging Vettel closing in on him in second place. Sebastian made several dangerous passing attempts, coming close to contact with Webber on multiple occasions, which caused the Australian to radio the pit wall to literally ask what Vettel was doing.

In a now famous radio message, Red Bull told Vettel to go to engine mode “Multi-21, Multi-Two-One.” There was no such combination of knobs and dials on the steering wheel to set such a mode, however—as it was code for team orders to hold position and to not pressure Webber so that he could go for the win and Red Bull would get a 1-2 finish.

However, Sebastian blatantly defied team orders, to the point that he used KERS deployment and DRS (Drag Reduction System) on the front straight-on lap 46 to slipstream Webber and try to slingshot around him. Webber, incensed, closed the door and pushed Vettel to within a few inches of the pit wall while both were screaming down the road at over 180 MPH.

Four corners later, Vettel was able to cut around the inside of Webber to take the lead. This prompted the team principal, Christian Horner, to cut over the radio in a rare direct order and say “This is silly, Seb. Come on!” in the hopes he would obey team orders and return the place to Webber. Webber famously came on the radio and in a very dark tone reported “That’s good teamwork, yep”, with his rage barely restrained.

Vettel would go on to win the race, and further infuriating Webber, did his typical fists-pumping-in-the-air victory motions from the cockpit. This caused Webber to accelerate and cut across the front of Sebastian with mere inches to spare, which caused Vettel to have to brake hard during his celebrations.

After the two had climbed from their cars and were in the cool-down room before the podium ceremony, a visibly furious Webber looked at Vettel and simply said “Multi-21, Seb. Yeah. Multi-21.” During the post race press interviews, Webber was close to smashing the table every time he put down his water glass, and as soon as the interviews were done, tore from the room and headed straight to Horner.

This single incident permanently soured the already rocky relationship between the teammates, and Horner called an extremely rare sit down with each driver separately that night. He explained to Webber that he had been known to push to the boundaries of team orders, something Webber did have to relent on. The more vicious criticism was reserved for Vettel, though, explaining to him that he had taken a rare win away from Webber, who had been in the sport for a decade and only won a handful of races, and that in doing so he had not only hurt the teams image, he had also acted selfishly and egotistically.

Vettel, properly mollified after the full impact of his actions resonated in that he had done his teammate a serious wrong, flew back to the Red Bull Racing factory in the UK, where Webber was, and offered a full apology, which Webber accepted… barely. Vettel was not reprimanded by the team, albeit his management team had brought in lawyers in case any punishments were administered.

After Webber’s comments about Vettel’s racecraft emerged in the media, by the time the Chinese Grand Prix came around three weeks later, Sebastian would provide the most scathing withdrawal of his apology he could to the media: “Obviously I realized at that moment there was quite a conflict. On the one hand, I am the kind of guy who respects team decisions and on the other hand, probably Mark is not the one who deserved to win at the time. The bottom line is I was racing, I was faster, I passed him, I won.”

This caused such an uproar that Red Bull CEO and founder Dietrich Mateschitz personally called Mark Webber when he was between races back home in Australia to get a first hand oral and written account of what had happened. Rumors began to circulate that Webber might not hold his seat for much longer, which were summarily dismissed by Webber and Red Bull as a whole, with Mark even offering a tiny olive branch stating that he was “not an angel at certain other events here and there.”

This whole incident, including Vettel’s retraction of his apology and the fact that the company CEO was furious at him caused his rapid tumble from grace in the eyes of many. He would still race, and race hard, throughout the rest of the season, and won the last nine races of the season, including two more hat tricks back to back, becoming only the third driver to ever achieve that after Alberto Ascari and Jim Clark.

When the checkered flag fell on the 16th round in India, Vettel had become the youngest ever four-time title winner, including a new record as the youngest to win four titles back to back. Holding four titles also made him one of the top five drivers, ever, in Formula One.

During the remainder of the year after the Multi-21 incident and the subsequent drama, Vettel was very often booed by crowds, an act which the paddock and the other drivers frowned upon. Sebastian would admit to the media in 2020 that during the 2013 season, he had not tempered himself and the booing did get to him, causing to have serious doubts about continuing in the sport. This incident also provoked Mark Webber to retire from Formula One a year earlier than he had expected, and he went on to have a successful run in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

2014 saw Daniel Ricciardo take Webber’s seat after being promoted from Toro Rosso, but the damage to both Vettel’s confidence and image had been done. He struggled to get to grips with the new Turbo Hybrid V6 RB10 car, and when the curtains fell on the season, he earned another record, becoming only the second defending champion since Jaques Villeneuve in 1998 to fail to win a race during a season after their last title.

2014 also saw him released one year early from his Red Bull contract. Things had soured so much that Vettel had expressed interest in—and been accepted for—moving to Scuderia Ferrari to “begin anew” and help take the prancing horse back to the top of the championship like Schumacher had done in the 1990s and 2000s.

2015 to 2020: The Ferrari Years

Sebastian Vettel, like almost any other Formula One driver, had aspirations to race with, and win races with, the Scuderia since he was of a young age. Ferrari was and is a legendary name within the sport—the only manufacturer to still have raced in every race and every season since the formation of the first codified rules of Formula One in 1950. Legendary names had raced in the scarlet racing red machines, such as Fangio, Hill, Lauda, Surtees, Mansell, Prost, and, of course, Schumacher.

Vettel’s first appearance in a Ferrari was in November of 2014, after the final race of the 2014 season had finished, driving the F2012 V8 around Fiorano, Ferrari’s test track behind the main Ferrari road car factory. However, once the spring test arrived, it appeared that Vettel and Ferrari had pulled another Vettel and Red Bull, as the Ferrari SF15-T F1 car was extremely quick, stable, and suited Sebastian’s driving style perfectly.

This was demonstrated with a strong third position at the season opener in Australia, and then steamrolling to a win at the very next round in Malaysia. This was his first race win in over a year, and the first win for Ferrari for two years. A series of podiums followed, and Seb remained a viable championship contender, trailing Lewis Hamilton by only 42 points.

The second half of 2015, however, was when the unraveling of fate occurred. Despite a coming second to the roar of the Tifosi at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and gaining a pole position in Singapore and winning that race after Hamilton retired, Vettel was never able to claw back the deficit to Hamilton, and ended the season with three wins, thirteen podiums and a few pole positions.

Vettel declared it was “a miracle” that he came in third, and much as prophecy seemed to follow Sebastian around, his own words proved to be the curse of his Ferrari years.

2016: The Year of Crashes

2016 was unofficially dubbed the Year of Crashes, due to how many drivers collided with each other or the track furniture. It was also the season that solidified the less-than-amicable nickname for Max Verstappen, “Crashstappen.” Third place in Australia was followed by a very rare Did Not Start at Bahrain as the car died halfway around the formation lap.

At the Russian Grand Prix, Vettel famously gave Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kvyat the nickname of “the Russian Torpedo” after a suicidal pass attempt that saw the Red Bull hit the rear of the Ferrari instead of the planned dive-bomb down the inside. Vettel would later retire after Kvyat crashed into the back of him a second time, this time destroying his diffuser and damaging the rear wing, making the car undriveable.

At Mexico, Vettel went for a bold move to overtake Verstappen, but the Dutch driver weaved and then lost control slightly, going off track but rejoining it right away in a manner that did not give him a lasting advantage. Vettel’s temper flared and he went on a curse laden tirade on the radio about Red Bull, Verstappen, and the race director, Charlie Whiting. A visually mollified Sebastian immediately apologized for his comments during the pit lane interviews, especially as Whiting was seen by many drivers as very strict, but also very fair in a highly politicized sport.

The rest of 2016 followed suit, with Vettel getting two points on his license and a ten-grid place penalty for dangerously blocking Ricciardo during a divebomb pass by the Australian. Despite seven podiums, there were no pole positions and crucially no race wins, and he came in a distant fourth with 212 points to Ricciardo’s 256 points in the championship.

2017: A Return To Form—For A While

2017 started out for Vettel with a race win in Australia, his first win in a year and a half. As the start of the season continued, he led the charge with a win in Bahrain, multiple second place finishes, and crucially winning the Monaco Grand Prix.

This was important, as it seemed the promise of Vettel leading Ferrari to the top step again was coming true, and it was the first Ferrari win in Monaco since Schumacher in 2001. However, Vettel’s now infamous temper reared its head again in Azerbaijan, where during the Baku GP, under the safety car, he ran into the back of Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

Claiming that he had been brake checked, he furiously drove up on Hamilton’s left side and intentionally turned into him, clashing wheels and being extremely lucky not to cause damage to either car’s wings or barge boards, crucial aerodynamic devices. This incident led to Vettel being issued the maximum in race penalty, a ten second stop-and-go.

The FIA investigation was thorough after the race, and the decision was reached that the penalty applied and served during the race was appropriate. Ferrari, however, felt let down that Vettel’s temper had shown in a scarlet red car, and Vettel issued a full public apology for the incident, taking responsibility and pledging to use personal time over the next 12 months to further educational opportunities at FIA sanctioned events.

By this time, Vettel was well ahead in the points, and looked to be on track to break Lewis Hamilton’s streak of championships. However, the second half of 2017 was a half season that Ferrari would probably like to erase from history. Apart from a pole and win at Hungary, all the other races were plagued by crashes (such as the infamous one at Singapore where the top three cars were wiped out before the first corner), reliability issues (such as his turbo failing during qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix), or simple and pure bad luck.

That last one happened in Mexico, when Vettel became the fourth driver in F1 to claim 50 pole positions, but he collided with Hamilton during the race, damaging his car, and because of the difference in the points standings, it gave Hamilton just enough points to claim the championship. This marked the first time in Vettel’s career that he did not win a championship in a season where he had led it at one point.

2018: The Fight for Five

The 2018 season was one of the most hyped up in the history of Formula One, as the media dubbed it “The Fight For Five.” For the first time since the inception of the sport, two four-time world champions were in competitive machinery on the same grid, Vettel and Hamilton. As before, Vettel took the lead with a win at Australia. That race also marked his 100th podium, and he became only the third driver to have led over 3,000 laps.

A series of pole positions and wins were dotted all over the first half of the season, with victories in Bahrain and Canada, and three back to back pole positions in Bahrain, China, and Baku. At the Canadian Grand Prix, Vettel’s win was his 50th win, and he became one of only four drivers at the time to achieve that milestone.

Then came what many now consider to be the turning point of Sebastian’s career, the moment it all went wrong: The German Grand Prix at Hockenheim.

Vettel was comfortably leading the race, and was looking at an easy win. However, a few laps earlier, he had been defending and battling to hold first place, and had done so over multiple sausage kerbs—raised tarmac that is meant to prevent a car from cutting too much of a corner or to direct it back towards the track. He had unknowingly damaged his front wing over a few of them, which resulted in enough of a loss of downforce, causing understeer. On top of that, it was raining and the tarmac was being rapidly cooled by the chilly storm.

So when Vettel came to the stadium hairpin section of the track near the end of the race, the wing finally gave up, which immediately dropped his downforce at the front. He turned the wheel left to go around the hairpin, but his Ferrari speared off the track and hit the wall.

A visibly upset Vettel could be seen pounding the steering wheel in sheer frustration, and was literally in tears on the radio to the pits, repeating “F**k’s sake! F**k’s sake… sorry guys.”

The season spiraled downhill from there. There was a win in Belgium—but contact in Italy (Ferrari’s home race) saw Vettel drop to the back of the field and only manage to recover to fourth. Things got worse in Singapore, where Ferrari’s allowed development upgrades for the car were fitted to both Vettel’s and Raikkonen’s cars, only for them to have the adverse effect of slowing the cars down.

Reverting to the old chassis at the US Grand Prix saw the car return to being competitive, but it was too little, too late. In Mexico, Vettel claimed his first podium at that race, but Hamilton secured his fifth title.

2019: A Changed Man

There were two major developments that marked the start of Vettel’s 2019 season. The first was that he had a new teammate in the massively talented, much younger Charles Leclerc. The second was that the Sebastian Vettel that showed up to race this year was a much calmer man.

It could be that he had a good talking to from the Ferrari management regarding his temper and the public image he was presenting of the Scuderia. It could be that he realized that his temper and bursts of anger caused him to make mistakes. No one really knows.

The Ferrari SF90 F1 was a complete rethink, taking the good from the previous few seasons, meshing it together into a car that many pundits and experts believed would be the car to finally return Vettel to the top step at the end of the year. However, Mercedes, with their W10 F1 car, had not deployed full power like Ferrari had during testing. As such, the speed and stability of the Mercedes cars stunned everyone in Australia, being so fast during the straights and holding so many Gs around the corners that the SF90 simply couldn’t keep up.

Fourth in Australia, third in China and at Baku. Vettel managed to claim pole in Canada, his first in 17 races. During the Canadian race, however, he suffered snap oversteer while defending from a hard charging Lewis Hamilton, crossing a grass median and returning to the track directly in front of Hamilton, effectively cutting him off. For the incident, he received a five-second time penalty for not entering the track in a safe manner, which he disagreed with vocally. He crossed the line first, but the five seconds dropped him to second.

In one of only two real shows of the old Vettel temper, once the top three cars were parked behind their position stands, with his own SF90 parked up at the entrance to the pits in protest, he switched the first and second place stands. He moved the first place stand to the empty spot where his car should have been, did his one finger raised fist pump to say “First place,” and then went off to the podium ceremony.

He was unable to run in qualifying for Germany, however he did manage to recover from the back of the field to second place. Ferrari’s home race at Monza was a disaster, with snap oversteer causing Vettel to spin at the Ascari Chicane, where he clipped Lance Stroll’s Racing Point as he reentered the track, causing the Canadian to spin out.

Vettel received a 10 second stop-and-go penalty for the incident and finished 13th. The only other good moment of the season came when both Ferraris ran extremely well during the Singapore Grand Prix, with Vettel winning, making him a five times winner at the track.

Retirement with an MGU-K issue in Russia and a pole position but a jump start that almost stalled his car in Japan were then overshadowed by the Brazilian Grand Prix. In the second of the only two moments of his old temper, a safety car restart caught him mildly unaware, and both Red Bull’s Alex Albon and his teammate Leclerc were able to pass into the first corner, Leclerc aggressively so.

This caused Sebastian to charge off after his teammate to retake his position, and while running along the right side of Leclerc, he seemed to steer slightly to the left. The cars touched, with Leclerc’s front right tire deflating so violently it broke the suspension, and Vettel’s left rear tire also explosively deflating, damaging his left rear suspension.

Leclerc speared off the course into the runoff area, and Vettel was able to limp the car a few more corners before his suspension completely failed and he had to pull off of the track. His radio spoke to his anger, as he screamed “Mein Gott muss das sein?! So ein bockmist aber auch!!!”

While there is a bit of slang in the radio message, it roughly translates to “My God, does this have to be?! Such bullsh*t too!”

Interestingly, Vettel did not walk back to the pits after he was forced to abandon the race, instead leaning against the tire barrier and rubbing his face forlornly. The mature, calmer Vettel had realized his temper had caused another mistake. He seemingly felt so badly about knocking both Ferraris out of the race, as well as losing any points the team desperately needed for the constructor’s championship, that he stayed at a nearby marshall’s post and watched the race from there, finally walking back after the race finished.

He finished fifth overall in the championship, and was outscored by Leclerc—only the second time that had happened to him in all his years in Formula One.

2020: End of An Era & The Global Pandemic

2020 was set to be a season of redemption for Vettel, having been humbled by the mistakes that had caused two major incidents in 2019. Preseason testing showed that Mercedes had a new steering system called DAS  (Dual Axis Steering), which allowed the driver to change the inward toe angle of the front tires during a race.

Inward toe angle is how much the tire is pointed inwards to the nose of the car, and you want to find the balance between a sharp angle for cornering, and a shallow or even neutral angle for the straights. DAS allowed for the driver to relax the toe angle during the straights, and it would return to the preset angle for cornering, all through an ingenious system that was activated by pulling or pushing the steering wheel to change the angles.

That same preseason testing also showed that the Ferrari SF1000 was a second and a half slower around Barcelona than the 2019 car. This was the cause of some uproar, because most of the other teams had complained in 2019 that the Ferrari team was outpacing Ferrari-powered cars on the grid by a shocking margin.

The FIA investigation was focused on the power unit, and after examining everything, there was no penalty applied to Ferrari. However, the technical regulations for 2020 were changed slightly, mandating that all cars needed to have a second bespoke fuel flow sensor that sent its data not to the teams alone, but also to the FIA and the race stewards.

In Australia, Red Bull was prepared to challenge the investigation’s findings if Ferrari placed on the podium, but that all came to a screeching halt as the Australian Grand Prix was canceled, and the season put on hold, due to the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19. A modified, shortened season, with the return of some tracks that had not been raced at in many years was hammered out so that there would be racing, but no fans would be allowed in the stands, and each team had to maintain extremely strict social bubbles to prevent possible inter-team transmission.

At the Austrian Grand Prix, Vettel placed 10th, and was also given a reprimand on his record for breaching the social bubble rule to chat with members of Red Bull, his old team. Vettel retired with wing damage after being struck by Leclerc during the opening lap of the Styrian Grand Prix, run on the same Red Bull Ring circuit as the Austrian race.

That is pretty much what the rest of the year was like for Vettel. His highest result was third in Turkey, but multiple non-points placings, retirements, and the fact that he felt that Ferrari was placing all their efforts into Leclerc led Sebastian to not negotiate for a renewal of his contract, with Ferrari announcing that his contract would not be renewed for 2021. By this point, Vettel was simply waiting out the days until the season was over, and ended 2020 in 13th place, his lowest ever placement in the championship standings.

He was able to gain a race seat at the newly formed Aston Martin F1 Team, partnering with Canadian Lance Stroll. Lawrence Stroll, Lance’s father and a billionaire, had bought heavily into Aston Martin as both the car maker and to create an F1 team, and he wouldn’t pair his son with anyone that had not won multiple world championships.

Vettel settled into the mentor role comfortably, having put his temper behind him, and helped develop Lance’s skillset, which has since been apparent in a few moments of brilliance by the Canadian.

However, with a car that was a mid-field competitor, and being—at 35—the second oldest driver on the grid behind Hamilton, the calmer, more mature Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement. He stated that he hoped to spend more time with his family, invest more time in his new found passion of championing for sustainable energy and fighting climate change, and quite simply because it felt like the right time.

Will Sebastian Vettel Stay in Motorsports in Some Way?

The answer to that question is a very strong “maybe”.

We say maybe, as Vettel recently confirmed that he will take part in single events during the coming years. These include the Race of Champions and the Formula One Legends races, as he owns a few classic F1 cars. He will also stay somewhat involved in electric and sustainable fuel racing development. However, it is very unlikely that we will see Vettel back in open-wheel Formula racing, as that chapter is closing for him come the end of the 2022 season.

As well, he has three young children with his wife Hanna Prater, with the oldest being 8 years old. With the travel and multiple weeks or months away from home to race in Formula One, he has outright stated that his first priority will be being there to see his kids grow up, as well as spend more time in general with extended family.

Honestly, when you’re a four time world champion, and had your head given a good shake before 2019, even for us, as fans of the sport, it just feels right. He achieved what he set out to do—to be a world champion. He led the charge with Ferrari, a team he always wanted to race for since the famous days of Schumacher, leading the team to 7 titles, four on the run.

Vettel is still young enough that if he wants to dedicate himself to an entirely new career, perhaps as an analyst for the German broadcasts of F1, or joining fellow German world champion and ex-F1 driver Nico Rosberg in his efforts to combat climate change and push sustainable fuels and electrification to new levels, he has the time to do so.

Whatever he ends up doing, we just know that for about 20 of his 35 years, Sebastian Vettel grew up racing, entered the top tier of motorsports, became one of only five drivers to ever win four or more drivers titles, and has more than earned his retirement.

The post Sebastian Vettel: Profile of a Champion appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

At this point in time, Moretti probably had more top class starts in IMSA races than anyone else. He was the quintessential “Gentleman Driver”. He made his living, forming the MOMO company which started out making steering wheels. He had eventually branched out to other automotive products. He was well loved in the paddock, and in fact frequently cooked pasta for many of the teams during the IMSA race meetings.

I had worked on teams racing against Moretti in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1994, I started with Doran Racing, who were preparing Moretti’s Ferrari 333SP in IMSA competition.

RACE 1: Daytona

Moretti had first come to Daytona in 1970 and raced in a Ferrari 512S. He did not finish. He continued to race over the years, much of it in the USA. The Daytona 24 hours became a fixture on his calendar.

Momo entered Porsche 935s, Porsche 962s, A Nissan GTP, and several other makes over the years. In the early 1990s, Moretti was instrumental (along with IMSA) in convincing Ferrari to build a sports car for the new WSC (World Sports Car) rules that IMSA implemented in 1993. This was, of course, the Ferrari 333SP.

Through all this, the desired victory at Daytona proved elusive. In 1992, he was leading Sunday morning in a Joest Porsche 962, and the engine failed. The next year with two hours to go, he had an insurmountable lead in his Nissan GTP—and again, the engine failed.

In 1996, once more with a small lead Sunday morning in his Ferrari, co-driver Bob Wollek got run off the road by a GT car, causing the car to lose several laps while repairs were completed. Max Papis earned his nickname, Mad Max that day, making up all but 62 seconds of the deficit, but fell just short.

In 1997, again with a car fast enough to win, a small, minor oil fitting broke spraying oil on the exhaust which started a fire. Although the Doran crew repaired it, the car could only get back to 7th overall.

By 1998, the teams had really figured out the Ferrari 333SP. The engines ran fine for the 24-hour distance. It all came down to preparation and execution. Kevin Doran was the team owner of Doran Racing who prepared Moretti’s cars. Kevin had won the Daytona 24 hours twice in the 1980’s as Al Holbert’s chief mechanic, so he knew what was required.

Jeff Graves was the chief mechanic on the Ferrari. Most of the other crew and mechanics on the team had been with Kevin since the Ferrari 333SP first came to IMSA in 1994.

In those days, Daytona had started the concept of a pre-test. In early January, the circuit would open for three days for open testing. It would give the teams an opportunity to test everything for the 24-hour early and find any bugs beforehand.

Kevin and Jeff were determined to get organized and focused to set the stage for the race at the test. Each session started with a plan to test and run in all race brakes, bodywork, and suspension. We worked out of remote open garages away from everyone else. The test went smoothly, and the team left with a good sense of accomplishment.

Three weeks later for the race, the team again situated itself in the remote garages, far away from the commotion in the main area.

The team had a great driver lineup—Moretti, of course, with Didier Theys and Mauro Baldi—who had all driven the 333SP since the beginning. They all knew the car very well. As the fourth, Arie Luyendyk, Didier’s neighbor in Scottsdale, AZ, was brought on board. He was very experienced. He had won the Indianapolis 500 twice, had won Sebring, and had run sports cars with Nissan before. He fit right in like he had been on the team for years.

The race in 1998 would again be a Ford-Ferrari battle reminiscent of the 1960s. The main Fords were from Dyson Racing. They were Riley & Scott MK3 chassis with 5-liter Ford V8s. The main protagonists from Ferrari were Moretti, Wayne Taylor’s team, and Andy Evans’ group.

The Ferrari ran a 4-liter V12. The Ferrari probably had a slight edge on horsepower, but a disadvantage on torque. The Ferrari was well-suited to Daytona, which favored top speed.

There really was a stellar driver line up for all the major cars. Wayne Taylor had himself, Eric Van de Poele, and Fermin Velez. The Andy Evans squad consisted of Bob Wollek, Max Papis, Ron Fellows, and Yannick Dalmas. The Dyson Team, in two cars, had James Weaver, Elliot Forbes-Robinson, Butch Leitzinger, John Paul Jr, Dorsey Schroeder, and Perry McCarthy, along with Rob himself.

The Moretti car qualified 2nd behind the Evans Ferrari. With some superstition, Kevin (Doran) took the pit right at the break in the wall, where you would turn left into Victory Lane. The hope was that this would be an omen.

Moretti himself started the race, and in the first stint, had an altercation with a GT car, which caused some damage to the body work on the right rear and the right rear wing plate. It was repaired with tape over the next several pit stops and the car continued. The IMSA officials complained about the right-side number, which had been lost on the right side-pod, so the team had to fashion a #30 out of yellow tape and put it on the wing end plate during one of the subsequent pit stops.

So, while the car looked a little second hand, it continued with good pace. During the night, we were lucky. On lap 397, Luyendyk had a tire fail as he was coming into the Daytona tri-oval at over 190 mph. Maybe his Indy car experience helped him, as he spun to his left and did not hit the wall, ending up in the pit lane, very near our pit stall. That ended up only needing a quick check and change of tires in order for the car to continue. It could have been a lot worse.

By Sunday morning, the car was back to second place. One of the two Dyson cars was out, the other was leading. The two main Ferrari competitors were also out. Taylor’s car had crashed in the early evening, and the Evans car had terminal gearbox and engine issues. Everyone knew from the previous year that the Dyson Fords were straining to make 24 hours.

Although they had won in 1997, the car was struggling at the end. So on Sunday morning, we started to push harder, making the Dyson team run faster to stay ahead. A short while later, the Dyson car started smoking and running about 5 seconds per lap slower. A short while after that the car came into the pits in a big cloud of smoke and steam. The engine had expired.

Rob Dyson completed the painful TV interviews, as the Daytona 24 was also an emotional event for him. A true sportsman, he then came down to the Moretti pit box and hung out with the Doran team till almost the end of the race. At around lap 627, Luyendyk came in and said he felt a vibration in the rear. As a precaution, the right rear upright and axle (where Moretti had been hit earlier in the race) was changed.

Moretti took over after that and was really enjoying himself, and the team had a hard time getting him out of the car when his stint was up. But he was to finish the race and the team wanted him well rested, so Mauro Baldi did about 40 minutes.

The video feed showed Mauro making the sign of the cross in the car after each lap was completed, as we all knew what was at stake. Mauro then came in and handed it back to Moretti for the final 20 minutes or so for the finish—as there was no way Moretti was not going to be the finishing driver. This was his 28th year at the event.

At the finish, all the teams lined the pit lane in salute and applauded as Moretti came in. The first guy to shake his hand as he drove by was Rob Dyson—a class act. A Ferrari had won the Daytona 24 hours for the first time since 1967. The church bells were ringing in Maranello. It was front page news in Italy.

Victory lane was surreal. As they handed out the Rolex watches, Moretti started to open the packaging and take his watch out. This was not done before. Most drivers just smiled and accepted the Rolex box. Someone asked, “what are you doing, Gianpiero?”

He said, “I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get this watch, I am going to put it on now”!

RACE 2: Sebring

Sebring in 1998 was run under a convoluted rule set. This was now the opening round of the PSCR (Professional Sports Car Racing) championship. Andy Evans had changed the name of IMSA to PSCR but was in the process of selling it all to Don Panoz.

Daytona had previously been run as a USRRC (United States Road Racing Championship event). Entrants for Sebring had the choice of running under PSCR, ACO (Auto Club d’Louest) or FIA (Federation Internationale de L’Automobile) rules—which were all, of course, slightly different from USRRC rules.

The WSC (World Sports Car) cars were slightly quicker than the top GT1 cars in practice and qualifying. ACO rules, however, allowed GT1 100-liter fuel tanks, whereas WSC got only 80 liters. So, depending on mileage, GT1 cars would probably run longer stints, making less pit stops for fuel. There were also slight changes in some air restrictor sizes, and importantly, refueling times were regulated by a fuel hose restrictor, which was smaller than the USRRC size had been at Daytona.

The WSC cars dominated qualifying with the two Ferrari 333SPs and the top Riley & Scott Fords taking the top 5 places, all in the lap time of 1:55 and change. The faster GT1 cars (the two Panoz GTR1 and the Champion Porsche 911 GT1-Evo, were in the 1:57 bracket.

However, post-qualifying tech caught out quite a few cars with improper sealing restrictors, including one of the Dyson Fords and all three of the GT1 cars. This left Wayne Taylor’s Ferrari on the pole, and our MOMO version 3rd, with one of the Dyson Fords in between.

Our Momo car had the same driver line up as Daytona (less Arie Luyendyk). Gianpiero Moretti, Didier Theys, and Mauro Baldi were very familiar with the car, the track, and the tires (we used Yokohama). Forty- eight cars started. While less than some in the past, the traffic would be difficult—as the speed differential between the faster cars and the slowest ones was some 40 seconds per lap based on qualifying speeds.

Didier took the lead at the start. Shortly thereafter, both Dyson cars ran into trouble, one with engine failure, the other with electrical issues and a subsequent crash. Wayne Taylor’s Ferrari was slowed by fuel feed issues. The two Panoz GTR-1 and the champion-entered Porsche 911 GT1 Evo proved competitive in race trim as they went further per fuel stint than we could go with the Ferrari.

Early on, it was noticed that the GT1 Porsche of Boutsen, Wollek and Pilgrim seemed to be putting in 100 liters of fuel faster than we could put in 80 liters, so something was amiss. Other teams noticed this as well—most notably Panoz, as the Porsche was fueling much faster than they were.

Upon investigation by the PSCR officials, it was discovered they were still using the USRRC refueling restrictor. The resultant penalty left them some 3–4 laps behind us. Our plan had been that Moretti would do all his stints during the daylight hours, Didier Theys would run the difficult twilight sessions, and then he would turn the car over to Mauro Baldi for the finish.

By late afternoon the temperatures cooled, and we started to have trouble getting temperature in the tires when we put new slicks on. Didier, in fact, spun once while exiting the pits on new tires. We would lose time to the GT1 cars for several laps after fitting new tires, as the drivers had to take it easy.

Also, by rule, we did not have the carbon brake system of the GT1 cars, so more time was lost when we had to change the brake pads. We duly maintained a slight lead until around 7:50 pm, when Didier turned the car over to Mauro Baldi. He would take it to the finish just past 10 pm.

There was a yellow with pace car around 9 pm. The Panoz GTR-1 of Andy Wallace was right behind us in the line-up, but one lap down. We knew we would need one more stop to make the end. We were unsure of their situation, but knew they had more fuel capacity and might make it to the end without stopping.

We did not want to get into a situation by stopping, going to the back, then giving another yellow the potential to put them right behind us on the same lap. So, the decision was taken to stay out, run our fuel down to the end, and short-stop under green for the final splash. That’s what we did, and Mauro did a masterful job the last 2.5 hours to bring us home.

It turned out the Panoz also needed a splash of fuel, so it ended up the same—1 lap down in 2nd place. The Champion Porsche made a good recovery to round out the podium.

For the 4th time in history, one team with the same car had won the “36 hours of Florida” (Daytona plus Sebring) in the same year. It had previously been done in 1982, 1985 and 1996. It was subsequently done in 2016 by the ESM Nissan. Mauro Baldi had joined some elite company, being, at that time, one of 7 drivers to complete the “Triple Crown of Endurance Racing” (winning Daytona 24, Le Mans, and Sebring). NOTE, there are now 9 who have accomplished that feat.

RACE 3: Le Mans

Since the team had won Daytona and Sebring, Moretti decided to enter Le Mans once again in 1998 in the unlikely event that he could complete the “triple”. I say unlikely as by then the ACO (Auto club de L’ouest) rules did not favor IMSA WSC cars at all, especially the Ferrari with the smaller 4.0-liter engine.

Fritz Gebhardt (the Momo distributor of Germany) and his team joined us, providing all the logistic support needed for the event, including his truck and motorhome, which was pressed into service as our hospitality center. He even brought in a German chef who ran a restaurant in Germany to handle all the food needs of crew and guests. It was superb, and a good addition to our little group from the USA.

Wednesday night practice went reasonably well, but by the end of the night, the engine was leaking some water. However, this was not a disaster, as we had a brand-new rebuilt engine to install on Thursday for the race. We would run it on Thursday night, and then all would be set.

This plan went downhill quickly as Didier Theys made one lap on Thursday and came in with oil leaking everywhere. A camshaft housing had cracked. Michelotto (the Ferrari Engine builders by 1998) suggested we might put in the old engine, but since it had been leaking water, Kevin Doran refused and asked them to repair the oil leak. Problem was, there were no parts on site to do that.

A mechanic at Michelotto in Italy had to gather the required parts and tools, get on a plane and fly to France. Our crew spent all day Friday getting the engine out and prepared for whenever the engine man from Michelotto showed up.

He did not show up at the circuit until about 8 pm. Some of the crew was sent back to the hotel; the rest of us reinstalled the repaired engine and tested it in the car at 4 am on race day. By then it was too late to get back to the hotel. We slept in the driver caravans for 2 hours. By then, at 6:30 am on race day, fans started arriving, so there was too much noise for sleeping.

So, there we were, starting a 24-hour race with about 2 hours sleep. The car ran reasonably well in the top ten until just past midnight when the gearbox started having problems. Unlike the Audis, the Ferrari 333SP’s Gearbox was not a quick change. It took 30-40 minutes. The car ran well the rest of the way, and we ended up 13th overall.

Shortly before the finish, Team Manager Kevin Doran designated four of us to go up into the fan area behind the pits near the ACO office. We had won some prize called the ESCRA prize. None of us really knew what it was. Apparently, it was a prize awarded each year to the mechanics that the ACO had deemed to have provided the best service for their car during the race.

There, in a private area, we were feted with champagne, wine, and snacks, and presented medals by the ACO officials, some of whom were in jackets and ties. We, of course, looked totally out of place in our greasy fire suits. Having only slept 2 hours in the previous 48, we were soon a little lightheaded from the Champagne. But we did all our PR posing with the officials and graciously accepted the nice medals. Loading up the truck was an arduous chore after that.

RACE 4: Watkins Glen

Having finished all three of the “big Races”, Moretti decided to enter the Watkins Glen 6hr in early July. Little did we know that this would be his last race. At this point, this was a USRRC sanctioned race. Many of the teams in the USA would run some PSCR (Professional Sports Car) races and some USRRC races in 1998.

The main participants would again be as they were at Sebring: prototype cars From Ferrari and the Riley and Scott-Fords of Rob Dyson, along with the quick GT-1 cars of Panoz and Porsche. The Prototype cars were again slightly quicker but carried less fuel, so they would have to stop more times than the GT-1s.

Qualifying did not really show what the race pace would be, due to the fuel disparities among the classes. Our Ferrari qualified 2nd to one of the Dyson cars, with the other Dyson car 3rd. The GT-1 cars led a few times in the middle stints, due to their longer fuel windows. Due to a jump restart penalty on our car in the middle stages, we were a lap down on the lead Dyson car with two stints to go.

However, critically, Mauro Baldi passed James Weaver (Dyson-Ford) quickly on the restart to put us back on the lead lap, albeit most of one lap down. Lucky for us, there was another pace car situation due to an accident with about 1 hour to go. Somehow, we pitted quickly, while the Dyson car did not (there was some confusion whether the pits were open or not—but they were). Baldi turned the car over to Didier Theys, and he started in front—just ahead of Weaver for the last restart.

The two former roommates (Weaver and Theys) in English F3 many years prior, put on a good clinic for the last hour, and Didier beat James to the line by just 0.6 seconds to win the third US main endurance race in 1998. This was the first time one team and one car (Ferrari 333SP-019) had won the three main US endurance races in one year. It has not been done since as of this writing.

We had been lucky but had pulled off the victory. All the mechanics loaded up, then went to Pierces 1894 (a famous Elmira NY eatery) for a dinner party. Moretti, Renzo Setti of Ferrari, and Kevin Doran went to the Ramada Inn Corning to celebrate by drinking Wild Turkey, which was Moretti’s favorite drink.

By the time we all got back to the Ramada, Moretti was still drinking Wild Turkey. He announced his retirement. We discussed old times. We were all very happy for him. It was a good feeling to go out victorious.

Myself and one of the other team mechanics, Bill Pasquini, still had to drive to Rochester NY to make a 6 am flight (Rochester is about a 1.5 hour drive from Watkins Glen). After a few more wild Turkeys with Gianpiero, we staggered out around 1:30 am. How we made it to Rochester without killing ourselves or getting arrested, I don’t know.

Luckily at 3 am in upstate New York, there are not a lot of people on the roads. Neither one of us could drive for more than 20 minutes or so at a time. We would pull over and have to switch out with each other. We got to the hotel, took showers, and crossed to the airport for the flight home. After that night, we could sleep on the plane!

Moretti retired from racing. An era was over. The team carried on with another of the great gentleman drivers, Fredy Lienhard. But that is another story.

The post Four Endurance Races in 1998: Gianpiero Moretti Retires from Racing & Goes Out in Style appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Vintage racing can also serve as an arena for someone to hone their driving skills and enjoy a weekend at the track, making new friends and visiting with old friends. While the demographics of the participants lean towards older individuals, there are a number of young people who have discovered it as well. Most simply enjoy their time behind the wheel of a vintage race car, but for some it may also serve as a path to higher levels of racing.

Such is the case with 22 year-old Horatio Fitz Simmon, the subject of this article—who is an active vintage racer but also has aspirations of becoming a professional race driver. From a very early age, he has thought of nothing else but race cars, racing, and becoming a professional driver. As you will see in the following paragraphs, his background and activities have been focused on that goal, choosing vintage racing as his entry point to race cars.

A Racing Environment

To say Fitz-Simon was brought up in an environment which influenced his interest in racing would be an understatement. He was not only born into a family where cars and racing were a focus but also lived in a house with a strong connection to motorsports.

Horatio was born in Towcester, Northamptonshire, England, the youngest of five children (two brothers and two sisters) a short distance from Silverstone Race Track and into a home originally part of the Hesketh Estate. You might recall the name Hesketh, which was the name of a Formula 1 team of the mid-1970s whose driver was one James Hunt.

Horatio’s Father, Ian, had a keen interest in racing, which he pursued in a Porsche 911 competing in the Porsche Classic Cup. Ian also dabbled in the car brokerage business, so young Horatio was exposed to a selection of sports and racing cars at a very early age.

Horatio’s two older brothers, taking after their father, took up racing for a period of time but decided they were not as interested in the sport as their father and moved on to other activities.

To California & Karts

When Horatio was two years-old, the family moved from their native England to Northern California, where they have lived for the past 20 years. Ever since he can remember, Horatio liked going fast—whether it was on a tricycle, bicycle, or kart. One of his earliest memories after arriving in their new home was of a Mclaren M10 F5000 race car his father found and purchased.

Horatio recalls, “I would spend hours in the car moving the steering wheel from side to side, pretending I was racing, and soon set a course—amply aided by VHS videos of epic battles between James Hunt and Niki Lauda”. He soon realized all that he wanted to do in life was race and began pursuing his parents relentlessly to let him have a go in a kart.

Horatio finally received his kart on his fourth birthday, when his father took him to Sear Point Raceway. A new 50cc kart was purchased, and Horatio had his first experience on the track turning laps by himself. He loved it;  the die was cast.

Over the next several months, Horatio spent many hours practicing on the track during test days, but it wasn’t until early 2005 that he had his first experience racing other drivers.

It was at Sears Point in the rain where he began circulating around with kids in their bigger karts—yet Horatio was keeping up with the faster drivers. Going through a tricky set of corners, he spun out in a puddle and slid under a trailer parked alongside the track.

Had it not been for the karts engine impacting the trailer first, Fitz-Simon could have suffered serious head injury, but he came out with just a damaged helmet and a headache. Witnessing the incident was his father, and it scared him to think what might have happened. That was the end of Horatio’s initial foray into karts.

Back Karting in the Deep End

Five years later, his father acquired a used 80cc kart, which he and Horatio rebuilt. The kart was not competitive but was useful for practice, and Horatio spent hours running laps at local tracks to hone his skills.

This was followed by a 125cc kart, in which he had his first competitive racing experience. He soon found he was a few years older than most of his competition in the 125cc class (who had begun racing at an earlier age).

With his family’s full support, he spent many weekends at the track practicing and racing a full schedule in the Gatorz Challenge of America Series. As a rookie driver, he jumped in at the deep end, competing against many of the best drivers in America.

Showing a glimpse of his talent, Horatio qualified on the front row of his first race—which attracted the attention of PSL Karting, a CRG (kart manufacturer) factory team from Canada. He finished the year with his first pole position, six podium finishes, 3rd place in the Redline Oil Series Championship standings, and fourth place in the SKUSA Summer Nationals. All this led to an offer of a factory ride with PSL Karting for 2013.

Outside of karting, Horatio and his Father attended as many vintage car races as their schedule would allow. This added exposure to racing further heightened his interest in racing and becoming a race driver.

In only his second year of competitive karting, the 2013 season was a breakout year for Horatio, producing even greater results. Racing as a factory PSK Karting driver, he was the California Redline Series Champion and the Gatorz Challenge of America Vice-Champion, with seven pole positions and ten race wins, plus 13 Podium finishes and eight lap records. He was ranked 5th in his class in the U.S. and topped it all with being named a driver for Team USA Rotax World Finals.

Once again, his racing prowess attracted the attention of a factory team; this time it was Sodi Kart USA (a leading kart manufacturer based in France). He was offered a last minute drive in the U.S. Rotax Grand Nationals in New Orleans and caught a redeye flight—arriving just in time for qualifying and his race. In the final (and against 40 of the top drivers in the U.S.), he finished 5th and set the second fastest lap. The future was looking bright.

A Sudden End to Racing

For 2014, Horatio moved up to the Junior Rotax Series in karts that were bigger and faster than what he had been racing previously. In his first race, he finished fourth in the first round while setting one of the fastest laps—but unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to secure a factory team ride for the season.

Racing at this level as a privateer without sponsorship was cost-prohibitive, so Horatio was forced to abandon his aspiring career—A crushing blow after his series of successes in such a short period of time.

Cars & Planning

With karting not dominating his time, Horatio focused on school—all the while thinking of how to get back to racing. While attending a local high school, he spent his spare time buying classic British sports cars, which he would repair and sell for a profit.

He also spent a summer rebuilding a used Porsche 911 SC (a duplicate of the one his father had raced) for his own use. This was a great learning experience for developing his mechanical skills, which would come in handy in the future.

He also spent time with his friends, zipping around the back roads near his home in the Porsche with an occasional day at the track. However, never far from his thoughts was the desire to race again, with one idea foremost in his mind: go to where the real racing action was for an aspiring driver—England.

After graduating from high school in 2018 (and with a plan formulated to rekindle his racing, along with funds derived from his car selling business), all he needed was to pick the right time to enact his plan. During this non-racing period, he also spent time making as many contacts in the automotive world as possible, hoping those contacts might benefit him in the future.

When he turned 19—and after a quick stay in the hospital for an appendectomy (on his birthday no less!)—the opportunity to visit the U.K. materialized.

Back to the Old Country

While recovering from the hospital stay, his father said he was planning a trip to the UK to arrange for a service for his recently deceased grandmother. Horatio persuaded his father to take him along, which would accelerate his action plan.

His first step before leaving home was to make arrangements to obtain the Association Racing Drivers Schools (ARDS) license, a must have for anyone wanting to race in the UK. Shortly after arriving in the UK, he took the course at Silverstone Circuit and obtained the all-important ARDS License.

A conversation with his ARDS License Instructor turned out to be the impetus for his first race in the UK. The instructor (also the Chief Instructor at the Silverstone School), after learning Horatio wanted to become a professional race driver, told him “you’re wasting your time, go and become a soccer player. You’re closer to making the Premier League than getting to Formula 1”.

He then told Horatio that if he wanted to find out how good he was, he should enter the Walter Hayes Formula Ford Festival—where he could judge his talent against some of the best drivers around. Horatio logged this challenge in his memory and would accept it in due course.

The Big Move

After the short stay in the UK, Horatio and his father returned to California, where Horatio spent the next couple of months biding his time and finalizing the details of his plan to return to the UK. His goal was to be in the UK in time for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July.

He recalls, “I quietly contacted one of my Father’s UK friends and arranged to rent a room from him in a town called Leamington Spa, which is a convenient short train ride to Silverstone Race Circuit. I next sold my Porsche and other personal possessions and bought a one-way airline ticket to the UK. All this without revealing my plan to my parents”.

Horatio’s Father Ian recounts how the family learned of Horatio’s intentions.“One night at dinner, Horatio announced he was going to become a racing driver, a statement he repeated. He was going to England in about a week. He then proceeded to lay out his plan. Of course we knew of his interest in racing, but this still caught us a bit off-guard. On his own, he made all the necessary arrangements and had his bags already packed—and by gosh, he did it!”

Tea, a Mentor, & an Introduction

Early in Horatio’s kart racing days (and through his father), Horatio had met someone who would turn out to be a very special individual. His name was Howden Ganley, an ex-factory Formula One and LeMans 24 Hours driver who happened to live not far from the Fitz-Simon home in California.

Horatio’s father had sought Howden’s advice on several race cars he had acquired and introduced him to Horatio. Ganley’s experience of moving from his native New Zealand to England at 19 years old to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional race driver certainly struck home with Horatio. Their friendship grew, and the two would link up again when Horatio moved to the UK. It was Ganley who would help jump-start Horatio’s efforts to make the right connections in UK racing.

After Horatio arrived in the UK in early Summer 2019, he settled into his attic room at his father’s best friend’s home. His next contact was with his aunt, who was a track manager at the Silverstone Circuit—where she arranged a job for Horatio serving tea to customers in the British Racing Drivers Club during the British Grand Prix.

Horatio says, “This was a wonderful place to make connections and meet all sorts of important racing people. Fortunately, Howden, a regular attendee to the British Grand Prix, was present and introduced me to many key people whom he thought might be able to help to get my foot in the door”.

One of the introductions was to Richard Dutton, principal of Fortec Racing—a well known racing team (British F3, F4 and former Formula Renault). Dutton invited Horatio to come to the Fortec Facility to have a look around and try out the racing simulator.

The simulator was a good opportunity to show the team his potential ability. The test went very well with his laps clocked at the same time as the Fortec team driver—and this was in front of the whole team who had watched. Impressed, Dutton invited Horatio to the Donnington Race Circuit for an actual track test in an F4 car. Things were moving along unexpectedly fast.

Two weeks later, Horatio found himself at Donnington, sitting in an F4 car for the first time and about to head out onto the track. No pressure here! At the conclusion of his laps he was told he had lapped eight tenths of a second faster than the team driver and was running at race pace. The team offered him a factory ride in the British F4 Series for the next season, but there was one major catch—he had to find quite a large amount of sponsorship money to secure the ride. Unfortunately, this proved to be unattainable and made even more difficult with the effects of the pandemic. As a result, there would be no F4 ride in 2020.

While attempting to find a team to race with, Horatio was able to supplement his income by becoming a driving instructor at the Silverstone Racing School and the Jonathan Palmer Racing School—both of which offered ample daily track time, which was worth more than his paycheck to him. He would continue as a driving instructor upon his return to the UK in 2021.

Finally a Race

With just enough money for a plane ticket home and possibly buying some track time, Horatio recalled the ARDS instructor’s comment about racing in the upcoming Walter Hayes Formula Ford Festival. However, there wasn’t much time to find a ride, so he immediately began telephoning everyone he could think of in search of a race car.

All efforts were unsuccessful, until the last call to a race team located at Silverstone—Classic Team Merlyn, whose head man, Mike O’Brien, Horatio had served tea to at the British Grand Prix. In short order, an agreement was reached to race a 1972 Merlyn (the oldest car in the race) against a large field of newer cars and experienced drivers.

The race was held in pouring rain, but Horatio overcame a slow start to move up the field, even passing his ARDS Driving Instructor (!) to finish fourth. For the Final the next day, the course was dry and the racing very competitive.

He had several good tête-à-têtes with the frontrunners, eventually finishing third—a great accomplishment in his first race in an outdated car at a very prestigious event. It had been a whirlwind six months in the UK, and Horatio had proven he could race with seasoned UK competition, so he was looking forward to the 2020 season.

CSRG & Historic Formula Fords

Over the winter months, Horatio worked hard at arranging a ride for the next season (and building his bank account to live on and pay for his racing). His plans were interrupted by the pandemic as travel overseas was severely limited, forcing a delay to fly back to the UK.

Analyzing the situation, he decided on a different course of action for the coming season—instead of pursuing a ride in an F3 or F4, he would focus on Historic Formula Fords. This decision was based on several factors:

• The cost to race Historic FF versus F4 was much less and within reach.
• The cars were professionally prepared by teams with full support.
• There were drivers from all over the UK, Europe, and beyond.
• It was an excellent way to hone driver skills without tech aids found on modern race cars.
• There was a full schedule of races at well known race tracks.
• Success in Historic cars would provide visibility and the chance to link up with higher level teams.

In the meantime, he and his father acquired a Winkelmann Formula Ford and entered the Cross Flow Cup race with the Classic Sport Racing Group (CSRG), to be held at Sonoma Raceway in April. The car needed work just to get it running reasonably, well but with Howden Ganley’s help, they made it ready for the race.

After sorting out some minor problems at the track, Horatio started at the back of the pack behind 36 other cars in the Qualifying race and finished ninth. In the final, he was running in third place before the clutch failed—however it had been a fun weekend and a good way to keep his skills sharp.

A Short Season

With COVID continuing to wreak havoc with commercial air travel and entry into countries restricted, Horatio realized there was no chance to secure a team ride for 2020. He finally arrived back in the UK in July, but without any firm commitments for a ride.

Fortunately, his father had purchased a 1972 Merlyn Formula Ford, which enabled Horatio to enter the Oulton Park Gold Cup in the Historic Class as an unsponsored driver. He successfully ran two races with two fifth place finishes.

He was then able to secure a ride in a more modern Spectrum Chassis Formula Ford (FF) with the Kevin Miles Team for the remainder of the season. He ran in the British FF Championship, finishing with two DNFs due to mechanical issues.

Next, it was time to move on to the Brands Hatch FF Festival to finish fourth and DNF (clutch). Unfortunately, he felt the team was not doing their best to support him, so he departed and entered his own 1972 Merlyn FF in the Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone.

Horatio completed both races finishing with two fifth place finishes. It had been a shortened, difficult season but he was gaining experience with each race.

Having watched Horatio race at Silverstone, Mike O’Brien contacted Horatio to talk him about joining his Classic Team Merlyn (CTM) for the 2021 HSCC Historic FF season. They came to an agreement, so Horatio departed for California and the winter break knowing he was set for the coming year.

A New Challenge

With testing beginning in March of 2021, Horatio returned to the UK in February to link up with CTM. The plan was to race a full schedule of eight race weekends at historic British tracks including Silverstone, Cadwell Park, Brands Hatch, Donnington Park, Oulton Park, and Mallory Park.

He was provided with a 1972 Merlyn Mk20A FF as his team car with the hopes of receiving an updated engine early in the season. Unfortunately, the new engine did not appear until the last race weekend—resulting in his car having mechanical issues throughout the season.

Despite these problems, Horatio persevered and had a great season, finishing with the most podium appearances of any other driver and never finishing lower than third (with the exception of the first race of the year at Snetterton).

The final race of the 2021 HSCC Classic Formula Ford Series was held at Silverstone and would present Horatio with a new challenge. He would not only race his familiar Merlyn FF but also a Lotus 22 Formula Junior (FJr), a car type he had never driven before. It would be a busy event, including a total of five races over two days—three in the FF and two in the Junior.

With a chance to advance in the Historic Formula Ford Championship standings, Horatio had great results in the first two races of the weekend, with a second and first (including pole position and a lap record) moving him into second place in the Championship standings with one race remaining.

Unfortunately, despite running a good race among the leaders, he ran into bad luck when he was penalized for an on-track incident. The penalty cost him a chance at winning the Series Championship—but nonetheless, he finished third in the final season standings, which was still a great year for his first full season of racing on unfamiliar tracks against top competition.

The results of the two Formula Junior races in the Lotus 22 FJr were amazing considering he had never driven a FJr before. Team owner Mike O’Brien had agreed to let Horatio race the car just before the race weekend, which he knew would provide a different driving experience and a great opportunity. A Friday practice session allowed Horatio time in the car to learn its characteristics—lighter and faster, but with less braking power than the FF (good to know in a race!). On Saturday, he qualified the Junior on the pole and set a lap record on his last lap.

Racing in the rain one day and dry the next, Horatio took pole position and established a lap record; not bad for a first drive in an unfamiliar car! He won the first race, and after a long duel with the eventual winner in the second race, he finished second—fantastic results for a first time driver in a Formula Junior.

This concluded his first full racing season in the UK (and a very successful one at that!). Leaving the UK to return to California for the winter, Horatio was very much looking forward to the 2022 season and a chance to build on the experience and success he had gained racing with Classic Team Merlyn.

The Velocity Invitational

It may have been the end of the season in the UK, but not in California—there was still one major vintage race to participate in: The Velocity Invitational, a prestigious meeting held at Laguna Seca in November. With a last-minute entry and acceptance, he raced a recently-acquired Lotus 26R. Adapting to the 26R quickly, Horatio won the GT Class qualifying race, then doubled up with a win in the final. Another good weekend at the track, this time to finish off the year.

During his off-track time at Laguna Seca, Horatio enjoyed the ambiance of the event and endeavored to meet as many people as possible to expand his number of contacts in the racing community. One such meeting was with Zack Brown, Head of McLaren’s Formula One effort. One never knows what might develop from such a casual meeting.

Plans for 2022

Over the winter months, Horatio’s main task was to put together a schedule of races for the coming season. Horatio focused on selecting specific events that would help expand his driving resume in a variety of prestigious historic settings and several different cars. Racing once again with Mike Davis’s CTM, he hopes to enter the Goodwood Members Meeting, the 60th Anniversary of the Silverstone Classic, the Oulton Park Gold Cup, the Lurani Trophy Races in Europe, and the Goodwood Festival of Speed. In the U.S., he is planning on entering both the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion and the Velocity Invitational, both at Laguna Seca.

In addition to their recent acquisition of a historic Lotus 22 FJr, the Fitz-Simon Family stable also includes a Winkelmann FF, Lotus 26R, and Merlyn FF. The plan is to race the 26R and the Junior in the U.S. events and possibly in selected races in the U.K. However, to start the year off, Horatio is headed to Sweden in March for something quite different—ice racing. Overall, if the schedule falls into place as planned, it will be an exciting (and very busy) year in the burgeoning career of Horatio Fitz-Simon.

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This was somewhat of a quagmire of things coming together—drifting as a motorsport was in its prime and gaining traction outside of Japan (particularly in the United States), while JDM car culture was also in a golden age.

The concept of ‘touge’ racing was just beginning to blossom in the western hemisphere (à la Initial D and Best Motoring), and this episode decided to produce a mish-mash of all those things; professional drifters racing Japanese time attack cars, using grip-style driving, in a tandem format, at an American venue. The clashing of many different worlds all at once.

Since that moment, I’ve been a fan of Yoshihara and have been following him on his social media accounts throughout his Formula D career. The drift legend recently announced his retirement from the competition, though it appears that he is hardly finished being involved with motorsport as a whole.

What’s Next for Yoshihara?

According to his latest Instagram posts, Yoshihara is now a driver for Spoon Sports USA and remains available as a hired gun for other performance shops such as Turn 14 and Evasive Motorsports, where he races in competitions such as Global Time Attack and Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. If I’m being completely honest, I’ve been even more fascinated with his exploits as a circuit/time attack driver than as a drifter, despite the latter having been his primary means of employment.

One of the highlights of his career was his 2011 season, during which he also starred (as himself) in a year-long documentary web series called Behind the Smoke. The series provided a behind-the-scenes perspective of what things were like for Yoshihara during the Formula D competition. He would go on to win the championship that year as well, which has remained his only one during his now-concluded drifting career.

Yoshihara’s Road to Drifting Fame

Being the best of the best at something during any point of your life is impressive enough, but this is more particularly the case when considering that Yoshihara’s path to glory wasn’t as smoothly paved or straightforward as most top motorsport drivers today. While Yoshihara was involved in drifting early on, it seemed like his life was on a more reserved trajectory as he settled for mainstream jobs in telecommunications and transportation, while still living in Japan.

Things would take a sharp turn (pun intended) in 2003, when Yoshihara was invited to compete in the inaugural Formula D (D1) season in the United States. Although he never competed professionally in drifting at this point, his reputation back home was enough to go on and he would accept the offer to move abroad and pursue his true passion. During his rookie season, Yoshihara still managed to finish within the top half amongst 32 total drivers, representing Pacific Rim Motorsport in a Nissan Silva S13.

Carrying that momentum into the 2004 season, Yoshihara would go on to finish 2nd overall in the championship and receive an individual award for ‘fastest entry speed’. He would achieve multiple top 5 finishes over the next several seasons (including the aforementioned 2011 title), switching allegiances to RMR Racing along the way in 2008, where he piloted a Pontiac GTO alongside teammate Rhys Millen.

2009 would see more changes, when Yoshihara signed for Falken Tire, first driving a Lexus IS350 under their banner before switching to a more successful—and eventual championship-winning—Nissan 240SX platform.

Yoshihara would jump into a Subaru BRZ for 2014 and remained competitive thereafter, although he was not able to reach the blistering heights set earlier in his professional drifting career. In the later stages of it, Yoshihara was hired to compete in other race series where he attained immediate success driving a Toyota 86 in the 2019 Global Time Attack and 2020 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Yoshihara finished both of those competitions with class wins (along with an overall win and the fastest lap in GTA). He continued to prove his mettle as a complete race car driver, with Mine’s president Michizo Niikura once describing him as “…not a drifter, but a great racing driver who also knows how to a drift”.

See You Around, Yoshihara

In addition to racing, Yoshihara also judges various drifting competitions and also provides instruction for aspiring drifters on occasion. As he remains heavily involved in motorsport, Yoshihara is also a spokesperson for multiple automotive organizations and brands.

We all wish Dai the best in his retirement, but don’t be too surprised if you manage to catch him at future drift events in some sort of capacity. Thanks for all the memories, Yoshihara-san.

The post Drift Legend Dai Yoshihara Announces Retirement from Formula D appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

I met Mr. Bondurant in the autograph line at Carroll Shelby’s Roast in Palm Springs, 1990. I remember him as an affable man who treated everyone with respect. You could have no idea of the exciting life he had lived or his accomplishments from a casual conversation with him.

Known as one of the great Cobra drivers, Mr. Bondurant earned the respect of Enzo Ferrari by beating his cars and his drivers. Mr. Ferrari referred to him as “Bondi” and later hired Bondurant to drive for him.

From the photograph below of the 1966-LeMans-winning Ford GT40, I find it easy to imagine Mr. Bondurant, seen standing behind the car, driving the winning entry. I understand he chose instead to drive Formula 1 for Ferrari. Given the rivalry between the two car constructors, it’s easy to see he couldn’t drive for Ford and Ferrari, not in the same year (even though Ford didn’t compete directly in Formula 1).

Bob Bondurant Standing Behind GT40 #2, the Chris Amon/Bruce McLaren 1966-LeMans-race-winning Ford GT40.

Not to take anything away from the entrants; Miles/Bondurant or Gurney/Bondurant. That would have been a team. It doesn’t seem right to have fielded eight GT40s at LeMans in 1966 without a seat for Bondurant. It’s easy to imagine Mr. Bondurant in the driver’s seat.

I can’t help thinking that a win, a podium finish, in 1966 at LeMans in a GT40 would have been a fitting follow up to the 1965 racing season where Mr. Bondurant won most of the GT Class races for Shelby American in Cobra roadsters and Daytona Coupes to secure the World Championship. As in the case of Ken Miles in 1966, things don’t always seem to work out the way they should.

I was fortunate to witness a panel discussion at Spanish Bay in Monterey California, 2018, where Mr. Bondurant spoke.

Left to right: Jacky Ickx, David Hobbs, Ken Gross (moderator), John Horsman, Bob Bondurant, and Dan Gurney.

I remember Mr. Bondurant poking fun at himself for selling the Daytona Coupe for $20,000 that he purchased from Shelby for $6,000 after Shelby retired the car from racing, and thinking he did great! The same car may someday sell for $20 million.

I’ll always remember Mr. Bondurant, as much for his Hollywood looks, great smile, and friendly nature as for his racing accomplishments. He seemed like a man who genuinely liked people. It no doubt helped him become a successful businessman and driving instructor.

One of the last of his generation of great Cobra drivers, a special breed from a golden age in sports car racing history that will never be repeated—Bob Bondurant did it as well as any of them.

RIP, Mr. Bondurant.

The post Remembering Bob Bondurant (1933-2021) appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

The pursuit of an education at the Art Center brought him to California from his native Florida, after which followed many pages of his life: jobs, a marriage, homes, the birth of his son, a divorce, different jobs and homes, a return to Florida to support aging parents, and retirement.

A little red 356 1600 Normal Coupe has been with him through it all.

How the Herbert Family Acquired Their Porsche 356

Jeff tells his story eloquently: “as we were a family very familiar with sports cars and sports car racing, I knew what a Porsche looked and sounded like. So, one day, when a red one came around the corner and down my street, it immediately caught my attention. And as I stared at the car going by, I noticed it was my father driving and he was waving back at me.

”Who knew that this car being purchased on that 28th day in November of 1966 for $2,200 would be with me for the next 55 plus years?”, he muses. “This is where our ownership of Porsche 356B Coupe, VIN 118340 began.”

“It turns out that Dad had seen the car on the way home from work one day at a used car lot for sports cars,” Jeff continues. “He had stopped and looked closely at the car and then came home to have a conversation with Mom about it.”

“Dad had admitted that he “had been bitten by the sports car bug (again)” and just had to have it,” remembers Jeff. “The used car salesman’s name? Will Cheatham, of course, pronounced ‘Cheat ‘em.’ Great.”

“Our special Porsche,” says Jeff, “is a 1962 356B T6 Coupe, ruby red with gray and black interior. It had the Normal spec 60 horse 1600cc engine, including Zenith carburetors, the popular and commonly purchased model of the time. We were the second owner of this car that was originally bought new at the A.J. Pearson dealership in nearby Orlando, with the port of entry for the car believed to be Miami.”

“This Porsche was the third to be owned in our family,” he says, “the first 356 being a black 1954 Cabriolet (which was totaled in a car crash in Ohio) and the second one a ’55 red Speedster. Those cars were long gone by ’66, as Dad had purchased roomier, more practical cars for a family that included three kids and a large dog.”

Jeff continues. “A few months after its purchase, Dad noticed that the carpets in the car were looking tattered and worn. My father was no stranger to tackling home improvements that ranged from laying linoleum floors to knocking out entire walls, so reupholstering the little Porsche would be easy.”

“Mom was pressed into service on the sewing machine and the red upholstery that included a foam backing, which would be cut from the patterns that were taken from the car.” At this writing, 90% of the upholstery is still there—somewhat faded, but still intact.

“While at the local shopping mall,” Jeff finishes, “we were walking back out to our car when we noticed another Porsche driving by. When we got to the car, Dad immediately noticed that the tachometer was missing. We put two and two together and figured out it must have been that guy driving by earlier.”

But Jeff and his father found a way to solve the problem. “A used tachometer was installed,” he says, “which was from a Super 90 with a 5,500 RPM redline, as opposed to our base 60’s 4,500—this would come in handy for me much later. When I turned 16 in 1967, I learned how to stick shift on the Porsche. My actual driver’s license was earned at the wheel of the family car, a four door with automatic transmission.”

The Herbert Family’s Adventures with the Porsche 356

Herbert and his father often participated as corner workers/flag martials at local SCCA races, as well as at the 12 Hours of Sebring (for more than a decade) and nearly always took the Porsche to the races; at least one photo from Daytona of a factory Ferrari 512 shows the infield in the background, with the little red 356 clearly visible just at the left side of the shot (pictured above).

Over time, the car suffered some invasive rust damage and other issues, but was never substantially damaged by accident or theft. But ironically, Jeff at one point installed a silent, pager-monitored alarm system on the car, and on the same day he did so, someone broke in and was in the process of hot-wiring the ignition when the frantic owner confronted him. Police arrived, game over.

Another theft issue occurred when the car was parked in an underground parking structure overnight. Jeff came out to discover that anything that could be unscrewed, or popped off with a screwdriver was gone: headlights, taillights, reflectors, hubcaps, and such.

There was another unfortunate event that involved a confrontation between the Porsche’s passenger side window and a pellet gun, which shattered the glass.

Herbert the younger worked diligently to keep the car as close to its original condition as possible. But the reason for some of the rust is a more whimsical story, as Jeff recalls:

“Remember, back then you could drive a car on certain beaches,” he says, “so we did. That car collected lots of sand from the salty iconic beaches at Pismo and Daytona.”  Damaging, but certainly a more pleasant memory than some of the others.

Recent Events for Jeff Herbert’s Porsche 356

By the time Jeff made the firm decision to relocate to Florida in anticipation of his own retirement and to assist his elder parents, the Porsche was still complete and intact—yet no longer a reliable runner; the clutch had seized, and there were fuel system problems. So it was packed and shipped to his soon to be new home near Tampa Bay.

It bothered Jeff that the 356 was no longer up to the weekend jaunts he so enjoyed, and he decided that a deep servicing and mechanical semi-recommissioning was in order. He worked with a couple of local mechanics to get the car running and better sorted; the clutch was freed and repaired, and when dealing with leakage of the under dash fuel petcock valves, and the replacement of the fuel tank, he decided to attack the somewhat needy front bumper, which had a major dent removed.

Meanwhile, the brackets and mounting hardware were all refreshed. He cites this as the beginning of his “$2.95 restoration” or “elegant band-aiding,” as he likes to call it.

While crawling around under the Porsche, Jeff knew that sooner or later he needed to deal with the rust issue that would eventually eat away too much of the car. Serious bubbles had manifested themselves just above the front headlights. He was concerned about what—besides the copious bi-coastal sand—was hidden below the original undercoating and began tackling the fenderwells with wire brush heads at the end of his electric drill.

Of course it began at one corner of the right front fender well, and before long, he’d stripped most of the underside of the car. His next step was to grind away as much rust as he could get to and refinish the bottom of the car with rust-proofing chassis paint.

The fender bubbles got much the same treatment as the headlights and buckets were removed for cleaning and freshening. Next, the paint and rust were ground smooth and filled with as little Bondo as he could get away with.

Jeff’s next task was masking off the nose of the car and painting it with a red oxide primer material that did a credible job of mimicking the patinated, somewhat satiny-looking red paint on the rest of the car. The line between the two is visible, but it looks mostly all of a piece, and will hopefully mitigate further spread of the dreaded tinworm.

This was also a good time to paint a race number gumball on the hood, christening the car #22—a number which has a variety of meaningful connections to Jeff Herbert’s life. The car now runs and drives nicely and is a frequent flyer at nearby Cars‘NCoffee meets, as well as a participant in a variety of gatherings at a local “retired guy 356 group” that Jeff “hangs with.”

Jeff Herbert’s Future Plans for the Porsche 356

Jeff’s long game goal has always been to give his family’s Porsche the proper from-the-tires-up restoration it really deserves, yet he’s realistic that this will cost many tens of thousands of dollars to accomplish, and such a project isn’t in his near or long term financial window.

Whether or not to keep the car and enjoy it as it is is something Jeff has lost sleep and anguished over, further noting that a house move is also in his near term future. So rather than borrow money to deal with all of that, or to restore the car to the highest levels, he’s decided it’s time to move the car along to its next custodian.

As of this writing, the Porsche has had a weeklong auction run on Bring-A-Trailer, yet failed to meet the seller’s reserve. Jeff is in contact with at least one of the interested buyers in the hopes that negotiations can be reopened. Beyond that, he’s contemplating his marketing plan if nothing comes together.

This thoughtful owner is cognisant of the pending loss of his lifelong little friend, yet is ultimately comfortable with the decision, feeling that it will lead to the car enjoying the better and longer life it deserves. That’s the mark of a man who truly loves his Porsche.

After a nearly six-decade-long relationship with Little Ruby Red #22, will Jeff regret passing the car on to its next enthusiastic owner? He doesn’t believe he will. Will he miss this charming little car that’s been a cornerstone of his life story for so long? Without question.

The post Five Decades of the Porsche 356 appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

This website since its inception has covered The history of Grand Prix Motor Racing through the lives of its greatest drivers, people and events with a special focus on the history of Formula 1. At its core is the Grand Prix History Hall of Fame. Below we have taken you through our list of the top people in F1.

Fernando Alonso

There is no more relentless and forbidding competitor in Formula 1. His greatest qualities – among many – are the ability to pound out lap after lap in every grand prix at the absolute limit and always to get the best out of his machinery, however flawed.

Mario Andretti

The mere mention of his name conjures up an image of speed just as the proverbial sarcasm “Who do you think you are Mario Andretti ?” has been heard from police officers to back seat drivers. Even people with only a hazy awareness of the sport of motor racing recognize Andretti as the very essence of the professional race car driver. A driver who has won on everything with four wheels.

Antonio Ascari

Ascari was a very unlucky driver and it seemed he would always break in sight of the checkered flag but he had speed in spades. In 1925 he was at the peak of his career and at Alfa Romeo Antonio Ascari and Campari were fierce rivals. It was not enough to beat Campari, he had to destroy him and this would prove his undoing at 1925 French Grand Prix.

Alberto Ascari

Alberto Ascari enjoyed racing at the front especially while crossing the finish line. In 1952 he won every Grand Prix race that he entered and claimed his first World Championship. In 1953 he had a second title, during his career he was only driver who could compete with Fangio on the same level until Stirling Moss. Ascari was loved by the Italian fans and by many of his rivals, including his dear friend and mentor “Gigi” Villoresi.

Luigi Bazzi

Luigi Bazzi was called the soul of Ferrari. He had been there from the beginning and Enzo Ferrari recalled his trusted friend as “the founding member of the old guard of collaborators. Due to his quiet and unassuming nature to those on the outside he had the appearance of a mechanic or test driver but those with a better understanding knew that no engine ever left the racing factory without having come under his watchful eye.

Georges Boillot

Georges Boillot was a mechanic by training who began automobile racing in 1908. He helped create a novel range of racing cars as part of the Peugeot team and through his exploits he won the heart of France. At Dieppe, France, in June 1912, Georges Boillot won the French Grand Prix in his Peugeot L76.

Pietro Bordino

In the early twenties, Fiat driver Pietro Bordino, was the fastest of them all. Always on the absolute limit, no one could handle a car at high speed on tricky corners as he could. He was in a class of his own but was let down time and again by mechanical breakdowns while dominating races but the public forgave his lack of wins and idolized him for the style he displayed.

Jack Brabham

Black Jack he was called for his often dour expressions. Jack Brabham won three World Championships, two for Cooper where he led the push to rear-engined cars, and the last driving a car of his own manufacture. In has last season he lost a spectacular Monaco Grand Prix to Jochen Rindt but the fact that he was competitive even at the age of 43 in a young man’s sport only adds to his legacy.

David Bruce-Brown

In 1909 he beat Ralph DePalma’s Fiat in the Dewar Trophy and DePalma would later remark that David Bruce-Brown was “one of the greatest drivers who ever-gripped a steering wheel”. By 1910 this 20-year old won international fame through his victory in the American Grand Prize at Savannah over Victor Hemery. Hemery was one of the best drivers in the world but even he was taken in by the charms of the young lad.

Ettore Bugatti

Although his co-workers often had to scrutinize his designs for their technical feasibility, the final result was always a perfectly proportioned automobile, which, from an aesthetic standpoint, was impossible to resist. As a passionate horse lover, Ettore Bugatti liked to call his aesthetically meticulous creations “Pur Sang”, or thoroughbreds.

Rudolf Caracciola

Rudolf Caracciola, known as “Ringmeister”, for his mastery of Nurburgring. He was also especially adept when the conditions turned to rain. His career spanned four decades and many of his old racing trophies are on display at the Indianapolis Speedway.

Colin Chapman

Colin Chapman was the acknowledged master among F1 constructors at getting the most number victories out of the least amount of aluminum, steel, plastic and carbon-fibre. If his cars did not always inspire his drivers with confidence, they did know that when he got it right they could be unbeatable. As a result he ranks second only to Ferrari in the pantheon of great race car builders.

Jimmy Clark

Jimmy Clark and the Lotus of Colin Chapman were an unbeatable pair. In fact if he didn’t breakdown you would most likely find him in the winners circle. He took Indianapolis by storm and won on his third attempt. Considered the most naturally talented driver of all time his career was cut short when he was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim.

Cooper Cars

After the war thousands of returning soldiers had gained experience maintaining and driving all manner of military vehicles. Building cars and racing them seemed the logical next step. Into this environment came Cooper and their 500cc race cars. Sold in kit form and costing £575, Cooper Cars Ltd were the perfect example of being in the right place at the right time and automobile racing for the common man had arrived. Soon Britain would become the modern home of motor racing.

Juan-Manuel Fangio

Juan-Manuel Fangio “The Master” won more World Championships than any man. He was as close to perfection as any mortal could be. Once passing rivals Collins and Hawthorne by “straightening out” a series of curves at full speed.

Giuseppe “Nino” Farina

During the late 1930s with the Germans Mercedes and Auto Union dominating the Grand Prix scene Nino Farina found some success in minor races which race to the Voiturette class rules securing himself the Italian Drivers’ Champion three years in a row.

Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Ferrari the founder of the company that bears his name died in 1988 at the age of 90 but his legend lives on. Other marquees have their fans yet only one team has what could be called disciples. A team that has not won a World Championship for eighteen years yet exerts a mystical hold on the hearts of a nation. This is a nation without boundaries, their citizens are known as the Tifosi, their flag the Prancing Horse.

Emerson Fittipaldi

The first of the famous trio of great Brazilian drivers Emerson Fittipaldi became the youngest World Champion at the age of 25 driving for Lotus. Later winning another title for McLaren before moving to his own team, Copersucar. This under funded team led to personal bankruptcy and eventual retirement from Formula One. His second career as an Indianapolis winner returned the luster to his reputation.

Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton showed unusual ability at an early age, but his father, Anthony on his salary at British Rail could barely afford his son’s secondhand karts or the racing expenses. in 1998 McLaren signed Hamilton to the team’s young driver programme with an option on the 13 year-old should he ever make it into Formula One.

Graham Hill

Graham Hill the father of World Champion Damon was my boyhood hero. He epitomized how a race driver should act and look. The only man to win Indianapolis, Le Mans and the F1 World Championship. The 5-Time winner of Monte Carlo drove during what many consider the golden years of F1 against such legends as Clark, Brabham, Surtees, and Gurney.

Vittorio Jarno

Vittorio Jano’s P3 dominated the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa in 1925. With the race now an Alfa-Romeo parade the fans began to make their displeasure known and Jano in response ordered his cars to pit. While they were being refueled the cars were cleaned and buffed. During this pit stop he had a table placed in full view, whereupon he imperiously ate lunch, deaf to the howls of the spectators.

Camille Jenatzy

Using a pair of 25-kilowatt electric motors fed by batteries delivering 200 volts and 124 amps, La Jamais Contente produced approximately 68 horsepower. That proved enough to propel Jenatzy to a top speed of 65.8 miles per hour, or 105.9 kilometers per hour, and on April 29, 1899, Camille Jenatzy achieved immortality as the first to break the 100 KPH barrier in an motor car.

Niki Lauda

Out of all of the billions of words written and spoken about Grand Prix, probably no one has ever heard or read: “You know so-and-so? He reminds me of Niki Lauda.” Unimpressive in appearance even before his Nurburgring accident, Lauda nevertheless has a force of personality and Teutonic strength of will that in the ’70s and ’80s carried him to three Formula 1 championships spread over two careers, and success in the airline business.

Nigel Mansell

To the British fans he was “Our Nige”, to the Italians, “il leone”. Supremely confident in a racecar Nigel Mansell was a bag of insecurities out of one. It was said that he drove with a Union Jack on his helmet and a chip on his shoulder but if his mind was in the race you knew that you were in a knife fight if you wanted to win.

Guy Moll

An international racing driver for only two years, and works driver for less than one season. Yet in that short time he made such an impact that his name is forever written into the annals of Grand Prix racing. Enzo Ferrari remembered the Algerian, “…a debutante. His name was Guy Moll and he was showing that he belonged to the small group of top drivers. It is true that Moll was not the first foreigner that drove for me, but I acknowledge that he was the most sensational one.

Stirling Moss

Stirling Moss will always be known as the greatest driver never to have won the World Championship. But if the measure of a man is more than just honors but the respect in which he was held by his peers then he was a champion many times over. I will never forget my introduction to this man through his exploits during the 1955 Mille Miglia with Denis Jenkinson.

Jimmy Murphy

It’s said of some drivers that they were born to race. But for Jimmy Murphy it was death that led him to racing. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 left the 11-year old an orphan to be raised by his parent’s relatives, first in what remained of San Francisco but later to Southern California which would become a hot bed of racing in the U.S. As a mechanic Murphy rode with some of America’s greatest drivers; eventually he would surpass them all.

Felice Nazzaro

Only a year after Fiat was founded in 1899, two young Fiat shop workers, Vincenzo Lancia and Felice Nazzaro, brought the Turin firm a one-two finish at Padua. By 1907, at the age of 26, Felice Nazzaro was the greatest driver in the world and he would remain a threat to win any race he entered until 1924 after more than two decades at the wheel.

Alfred Neubauer

Alfred Neubauer the former race car driver for Austro-Daimler had his wife once tell him that he drove like “a night watchman..” Whether this caused him, when he became a team manager for Mercedes, to exact any revenge on his drivers is unknown! What is known is that this legendary figure was responsible for more innovations, along with some “crack-pot” ideas than any team manager in the history of the sport.

Adrian Newey

They say in F1 that Newey can see the air move across a surface. “If you have Adrian Newey on your team,” says Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, with whom in 1986 Newey won the first of 25 international titles, “then your team is going to be World Champion.”

Tazio Nuvolari

Tazio Nuvolari’s legend is full of exploits of daring and almost unbelievable personal courage and will to win. He would continuously beat better equipped rivals and come back from numerous injuries only to compete in bandages. In his entire career Tazio Nuvolari won almost two hundred major races and only came in second 17 times.

Ronnie Peterson

Ronnie Peterson or SuperSwede as he was called was a hopeless development driver. That being said his unworldly car control was a sight to behold. The image of Peterson coming through Woodcote absolutely on the limit with tires squealing and using just enough opposite lock and throttle to control his car has been described countless times. The people who paid witness knew that they were seeing something magical.

Nelson Piquet

The middle driver in the trio of great Brazilian Champions Nelson Piquet built a reputation on guile and cunning often beating seemingly more spectacular drivers. One of four championship winning drivers including Senna, Prost and Mansell who dominated Formula 1 in the 80’s and early 90’s. The results amounted to three World Championships and 23 wins and a place in the Grand Prix Hall of Fame.

Ferdinand Porsche

Declared the Car Engineer of the Century Ferdinand Porsche perfected many important automotive design features. He has received credit as the inspiration behind the legendary Auto Union race cars, as well as the Volkswagen “peoples” car. Air-cooled engines and torsion bar suspension have become synonymous with Porsche but there is a darker side to Porsche’s legacy, his involvement with the Nazi regime.

Alain Prost

Alain Prost “The Professor” won 4 World Championships but because he could be so calculating people tended to overlook his outright speed. When partnered with Niki Lauda his lap times left the Austrian in his exhaust. Prost won more races than any other driver yet he was criticized for quitting a race because he thought the conditions were too dangerous.

Guilo Ramponi

In 1928 Campari/Guilio Ramponi entry won the Mille Miglia beating a strong OM and Lancia opposition, leading the first OM home by around fourteen minutes. The following year the duo drove an upgraded Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 home in first place ahead of an OM by a mere 8 minutes — after a race that lasted 18 hours!

Jochen Rindt

Jochen Rindt dominated Formula 2 but the top rung of motor sport was another story. Determined to win the World Championship he joined Lotus with some misgivings, feeling that the cars were too fragile. In 1970 driving an old Lotus 49 he drove in one of the most stirring finishes in modern Grand Prix history when he caught and passed 3-time World Champion Jack Brabham at the Monaco Grand Prix on the last corner of the race.

Bernd Rosemeyer

Bernd Rosemeyer’s infectious personality made him a hero to the German people. His victory in the mist-shrouded Eifelrennen made him a legend. The young man from Lower Saxony in the words of Cyril Posthumas “… shot meteor-like across the motor racing firmament, driving three short but shattering seasons before his light went out …”

Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher “The German” in his short time in Formula One already has made a legend for himself. His 2 World Championships, wins with inferior equipment and his ability to destroy teammates with his raw speed force his inclusion onto this list with the majority of his career still in front of him.

Ayrton Senna

Ayrton Senna the greatest driver I ever saw was according to Stirling Moss “…the only driver who could be spoken of in the same breath as Fangio and Clark. The mere sight of his yellow helmet in a drivers mirror would raise any drivers pulse. His battles against Prost reminded one of the famous epic battles between Frazier and Ali with neither side giving quarter.

Jackie Stewart

Jackie Stewart was the first modern driver who spoke of the need for greater safety. Until he arrived on the scene race car drivers were not well paid. Beyond this he was fast, especially at the start of the race where he would roar off into the distance and demoralize all of his opposition.

John Surtees

John Surtees is the only man to have won World Championships on two and four wheels. An out-and-out professional, with a strong independent streak, he took on all-comers to win seven World Championships on motorcycles, one Formula One world drivers’ title and the North American Can-Am Championship for sports cars.

Leon Thery

Leon Théry became renowned for his methodical documentation in a ‘race log’ of circuit details, road conditions, tyres, engine reliability, and car performance. He would estimate what it speed would be necessary to win the race and then drove to the speed he had calculated in the race log. This would help him to earn the sobriquet of Le Chronometer. Interviewed at an Automobile Club of America dinner he stated that: “To be a successful racing man one must drive as if he were the only man in the race.”

Achille Varzi

Achille Varzi was as elegant in the way that he dressed as he was in the way that he drove. His name will forever be entwined with that of his great rival Tazio Nuvolari. Fierce competitors on the track they were friends off of it, yet except for a brief period early in their careers no team was large enough to hold these two great champions.

Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel was born on 3 July 1987 in Heppenheim, Germany. He began karting in 1991, aged three and in 1995 he started racing. Vettel won a series of karting titles and in 2003, he graduated to single-seaters. In 2007 he graduated to a spot in the Toro Rosso team. Scoring his first win, at the Italian Grand Prix the following year..

Gilles Villeneuve

Gilles Villeneuve spent the majority of his stint in Formula 1 with Ferrari. He was without question one of the two or three most popular drivers ever to work for Il Commendatore. His trademark was speed. He was absolutely uncompromising when it came to driving fast. Wet or dry, good car or bad, tough track or easy, for Villeneuve there was no excuse for not going as fast as (and sometimes faster than) possible.

Jean-Pierre Wimille

Jean-Pierre Wimille’s rise to greatness was interrupted by the start of World War II but at its conclusion it was he who was considered above all. Austere, rather aloof, and often withdrawn, his peak years before his untimely death, occurred while the attention of the world was on other matters. He had many admirers including a driver from Argentina by the name of Juan-Manuel Fangio.

Rob Walker

On his passport, under occupation, it read simply Gentleman, a description, a description to his many friends, one never more fitting. Someone once described him as “self-unemployed.” but never idle. By the age of 21 he had owned his 21st car. To say that racing was in his blood would prove an understatement.

The post The Greatest Grand Prix Drivers Ever appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

This article looks back on the people and races that contributed to Mercedes Benz Motorsport history.

An unforgettable victory by Mercedes Benz to remember is the 1931 win at the Mille Miglia. Rudolf Caracciola and co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian drove the Mercedes-Benz SSKL to victory, beating the local favorites to become the first non-Italians to win.

Another memorable moment includes the 1971 class win and overall second place of Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz at the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps behind the wheel of the first Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 AMG.

Two notable characters in Mercedes-Benz history: Juan Manuel Fangio and Rudolf Uhlenhaut. The incredible Argentinian racing driver Fangio was a contemporary of the brilliant development engineer Uhlenhaut. They encountered each other during the 1950s at Mercedes-Benz. Fangio was born 110 years ago, while Uhlenhaut was born 115 years ago. 

Juan Manuel Fangio- The Driver

The Formula One World Championship, founded in 1950, was dominated in its first decade by Juan Manuel Fangio. 

The Argentine racing driver became a five-time World Champion with four different manufacturers. In 1954 and 1955, he claimed the World Championship with the Mercedes-Benz W 196 R. 

On July 4, 1954, in his first foray in the race car, Fangio was able to claim victory at the French Grand Prix in Reims ahead of Karl Kling, his teammate.  

In 1954, he also managed to win the Swiss Grand Prix in Bern, European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, and the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. The season ended with a World Championship win for Fangio. 

The 1955 season started with victory for the Argentinian as he claimed a triumphant win at the Argentine Grand Prix. Despite the excruciating heat, Fangio was the only driver to maintain racing without opting for a change of drivers. He also claimed the win at the Italian and Dutch Grands Prix, giving him his second World Championship win with Mercedes-Benz.  

Following Mercedes-Benz’s withdrawal from motorsport, Fangio claimed victory in 1956 under Ferrari and in 1957 under Maserati.

Fangio retired in 1958 with 24 victories in 51 Grand Prix, a success rate of nearly 50%.

In 2019, to find out the greatest Formula One driver of all time, the magazine auto motor und sport used a comprehensive formula to compare all Formula One drivers with one another. After all the data were collected and computed, it revealed that Fangio ranked #1 ahead of Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton.  

The race director of Mercedes-Benz in the 1930s and 1950s, Alfred Neubauer, described Fangio stating: 

“He understood how to achieve the maximum in all conditions and to use his machine economically. That is to say, he wasn’t a wild daredevil, but had the ability, tactics, and capacity to see the machine as a whole and to adapt this whole to the requirements of that very moment.” 

Journalist and Fangio’s biographer Günther Molter described the racer saying: 

“Fangio was always shy, reserved, almost distrustful. And, on the other hand, even as a big star, he was always modest, unassuming and human.” 

Juan Manuel Fangio died on July 17, 1995 in Beunos Aires. 

Rudolf Uhlenhaut -The Developer

Rudolf Uhlenhaut was not just a gifted engineer; he was also an exceptional driver. At Mercedes-Benz, Uhlenhaut was able to make full use of both his talents. He was born in London in 1906 to an English mother and a German father. His father managed the local branch of Deutsche Bank. In 1914, the family moved to Brussels, and in 1919 they moved to Berlin, and eventually, to Bremen. In Munich, Uhlenhaut studied Mechanical Engineering.

In 1931, Uhlenhaut joined the testing department of what was then Daimler-Benz AG as an engineer. Initially, he dealt with the suspension set-up and chassis of the Mercedes-Benz 170 V (W 136) which was first introduced in 1936.

In 1936 Rudolf was appointed technical director of the racing department and he would continue to have the role, shaping race cars well into the 1950s. This signified that commencing 1937, all record cars and Silver Arrows that brought success to the brand all bore his signature.  

After the Second World War, Uhlenhaut resumed his work on the 300 SL racing sports car (W 194), the 300 SLR (W 196 S) racing sports car, and the new W 196 R Formula One racing car. It was a great advantage that Uhlenhaut himself was a great driver even at top speeds.

Alfred Neubauer, the race director described him as: 

“the only designer who ever understood how to personally drive a heavy car at race speed around a track. He does not need to rely on the assessments of the drivers”.

Uhlenhaut also used his skills to develop several Mercedes-Benz series vehicles – his other responsibility as the leading engineer. He considered the task much more challenging than developing race cars. Uhlenhaut once stated: 

“It is much harder to design a good passenger car than a racing car. A racing car has to win races. A passenger car must be robust, must be comfortable, must look good, must have good suspension, must be affordable … and much more.” 

In his role as the passenger car development director, he greatly impacted many series vehicles by Mercedes-Benz with his influence spanning almost 40 years.

At the conclusion of his career, he even created the Mercedes-Benz S-Class of model series 116, which made its debut in 1972, the same year of his retirement. His technical expertise matched perfectly with his clear and modest demeanor.  

Uhlenhaut contributed greatly to the company on an international stage with expert knowledge, charm, and charisma. He passed in Stuttgart on May 8, 1989. 

Rudolf Caracciola – Victory after a 16-hour Non-stop Race 

In 1931, Rudolf Caracciola and his co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian registered for the Mille Miglia along with 150 other teams. 

During these economically challenging times, they participated in the race as a private team rather than a factory team. They entered the race with the legendary Mercedes-Benz SSKL (Super-Sport-Kurz-Leicht or super-sport-short-light, W 06 RS). It was the fourth and final model of the S series, with only four having racing-exclusive specs.  

The roads to Rome were narrow, and it was only the road from the starting point and towards the finish, through the town of Brescia, was Caracciola and the other racers able to drive at full throttle for many miles. The team had a record finish time of 16 hours, 10 minutes, and 10 seconds with an average speed of 101.6kph. 

Since 1955, Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson have held and kept the record for the Mille Miglia. They finished the road race in just 10 hours, 7 minutes, and 48 seconds, beating their teammate Juan Manuel Fangio in their Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (W 196 S). They achieved a record average speed of 157.65kph, which has not been challenged since.

Mercedes-AMG victory in Spa-Francorchamps 

For AMG, the 1971 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps was the first international success in motorsport after they claimed the class victory and second overall finish with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 AMG with Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz behind the wheel.  

With roughly 80 participants, the 1,635kg heavy saloon was an obvious underdog. Though the Spa-Francorchamps’ old, 14,863km course gave the luxury saloon a bit of an advantage. 

Heyer and Schickentanz were able to get ahead of their competitors on the long straights, although they were at a disadvantage when braking and around the corners.

They made up for it at the fastest racetrack in Europe near Monza, where the ‘red pig’ as the Mercedes-Benz was called by fans, was always part of the leading group.

After 24 hours, only 18 teams crossed the line, with the ‘red pig’ claiming second place. Only Dieter Glemser and Alex Soler-Roig in the Ford Capri RS 2600 were ahead of them. Glemser became the Mercedes-Benz factory driver from 1963-1965, and until today, he works as a Brand Ambassador for the company. 

In the 1970s, Mercedes-Benz was a long way from factory involvement in racing, however, AMG desired to make a name for their young company, by privately using a competition touring car.

AMG head Hans Werner Aufrecht picked the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 (W 109) which was introduced in 1968 as their base vehicle. The displacement of the eight-cylinder engine was increased from 6.3 to 6.8 liters, the drivetrain produced 315 kW (428hp) in the race and offered a powerful 620Nm torque. The four-door saloon had a top speed of 265kph. 

They received the base vehicle from a car that was damaged in an accident and arranged a new bodyshell. Two years of detail work produced a touring car that was lighter than the series model by a full 195kg.

After the race, even the German evening news, ARD Tagesschau, reported on the victory. The ‘auto, motor und sport‘ magazine dubbed the vehicle as a “stroke of Swabian genius”.

The AMG name became an overnight sensation. Unfortunately, the original vehicle that was used was converted to be used for aircraft tires test drives and no longer exists. 

From July 20 to September 19, 2021, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.8 AMG will be exhibited in the atrium of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, allowing visitors to experience it free of charge.  

[Source: Daimler]

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Although his background includes activities from semipro basketball to tool and die making, the Two Lives he is most known for are big band leader, and committed lifetime automobile racer and enthusiast.  Don Ricardo was both for many of his 80 something years. 

I visited his Pasadena, California home several times; a subtle but large Spanish rambler nestled in the hills just a few minutes from the Rose Bowl and well equipped for car collecting.  The main garage holding a dozen cars with ease, more in a pinch.

Don Ricardo was a musician since childhood (violin and drums) and is perhaps most noted as the leader of “Don Ricardo’s NBC Orchestra” on radio during the 1930s and 40s. 

His group often appeared on the ticket with headline bands such as Tommy Dorsey and was a popular fixture on the Hollywood and LA nightclub circuit. 

A trained machinist and tool and die maker, he applied for a job at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and worked there from 1940-1945; the technology he worked on was codenamed the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb), although Ricardo pledged he didn’t know that at the time.  He figured it was something to do with defense, but didn’t have any clue as to the ultimate magnitude of the project.  After the war, Ricardo was caught up in America’s discovery of European sports cars and racing.

Although his collection was somewhat varied, he was foremost known as a Mercedes-Benz man.  His brightest three-pointed stars are 300SL Gullwings; two 1955s, and a ’57. 

Amazingly Ricardo was the first owner of the earlier pair and only the second caretaker of the ‘57.  One was a rare (1 of 29) alloy-bodied Gullwing, with which Don set class land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats; it also so saw competition action a quarter-mile at a time in the stock sports car classes at the Winternationals drag races in nearby Pomona, California. 

Ricardo’s Bonneville record run had every opportunity to end in star-crossed disaster, according to author photographer Dennis Adler:

“What happens when the driver’s door pops open on a 300SL— at 150 mph?  For everyone except Don Ricardo, that’s a purely hypothetical question.  In 1967, during a record run at Bonneville, that’s exactly what happened to him. Vibration freed the latch, and as the dry salt bed flashed by in a hot, white glare, the door suddenly flew open with a deafening roar, its support struts held, and the entire left side of the gullwing Mercedes-Benz left the ground. Fate was with Ricardo that day. He managed to keep the car going straight, resisted the impulse to hit the brakes, and let the speed evaporate until the car dropped back onto all four wheels. He drove back to the staging area, tied the door closed with rope, and went back out to set a Class E, Grand Touring Sports Class record of 153.771 mph for a two-way trip through the measured mile.” 

In spite of the rapid escalation of speed records during the 60s and 70s, Ricardo’s record stood for decades, only eclipsed in the late 90s.  

It took some special mods to push even the lightweight Gullwing to its record speed. 

The engine was rebuilt and hopped up by soon legendary F1 and sports car racing star Lothar Motsenbacher with an 0.080 inch overbore of the cylinders, and a custom crankshaft to increase the stroke, for a total of about 3.2 liters displacement. 

The ForgedTrue racing pistons amped the compression to 11.0:1, and California hot rod and racing cam grinders Harmon & Collins spec’d up a special high lift stick, plus the entire engine was carefully balanced. 

The Bosch fuel injection and distributor were recalibrated, and the stock single exhaust hit the shop floor in favor of a thunderous sounding dual straight pipe set up.   

A 3.25:1 rear diff ratio, full underbody aluminum bellypans, Koni shocks, and special Firestone high-speed Bonneville tires, along with mandatory safety gear, and plenty of careful assembly and prep rounded out the job. 

Other Mercedes and/or Benz cars in his stable included a 1911 Victoria Touring car, a stunning and historic gray and black 1923 Targa Florio 28/95 that now belongs to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, this car ran a massive naturally aspirated 7.2-liter single overhead camshaft inline-six that was derived from an aero engine. 

This “short wheel-based” roadster was commissioned by the American Mercedes Company of New York City in 1923 and delivered in 1924; Ricardo acquired the car in 1986 and owned it the rest of his life. 

Additionally, he held a 1927 K sports roadster originally built for film idol Rudolph Valentino.  More three-pointed stars were his 1928 SSK, a ’63 300SL Roadster, and a 1969 standard wheelbase 600 plus one of the factory recreated three-wheeled 1886 Patentwagens. 

Ricardo’s tastes tended to run eclectic from there, up and down the classic and modern ranges.  His 1938 Horch convertible coupe was a concours favorite, and his garage included a Lynx Jaguar D-Type replica, wonderful in its raw aluminum coachwork. 

His penchant for 300 SL coupes certainly set the tone for other marques in his collection including a gull-winged DeLorean DMC-12 plus a Ford-powered Bricklin SV1, another gull-winged oddity.  Plus the one and only Giannini Monza coupe – it was destined for series production in Italy in the early 1970s, but that mid-engined sports car project was scrapped when the all too similar Fiat X1/9 came to market. 

Add to all of this a Studebaker Avanti, a Model T, and a genuine article Jaguar D-Type, no surprise as Ricardo often raced Jaguars prior to getting big in to Mercedes-Benz in the mid-50s.

Ricardo’s home garage/shop complex, somewhat like many of his cars, had a patina all its own: not a well-polished and clinically sterile television or movie sound stage built to resemble a garage, but one with real tools hanging on the walls, along with posters and memorabilia tacked up wherever they’d fit. 

There were machine tools, battery chargers, spare parts, and cases of oil all about.  This was a man who used and enjoyed his cars while sharing them with others. 

As noted, a friend and I used to spend an occasional Saturday or Sunday at Don’s place, helping him fettle his cars; airing up tires, charging batteries, checking fluids and a wax job here and there, the car chores that a guy in his 80s was having a tougher time keeping up with. 

He was always very generous with us, maybe asking us to do something specific here or there, but more often just diving in on the things we noticed or just felt like doing.  Lunch was always on Don, and the storytelling was epic.

In February of 1996, the San Gabriel Valley Section of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America hosted an open house/fundraising event at his home to help fund the production of a documentary film about Don’s legendary life.  The program was called “Don Ricardo; the man, the music & the motorcars.” 

I was there as were a film crew and dozens of friends and MBCCA members; it was a lovely day, the music played, and Mr. Ricardo was in rare form as host and storyteller.  I cannot locate any evidence that the film was ever finished or produced, but I’d certainly like a copy if it ever is. 

Don Ricardo passed away on August 15, 2001.  His widow and three children quietly dispersed his car collection, which found new homes worldwide. 

Author Adler recount this further story about his introduction to the finer points of racing and collecting Mercedes-Benz;

“I was doing alright in my Jag until the 300SL came out, and some local guy just wiped my tail off the map in nothing flat, so the first thing I did was go down and trade my British roadster in on a new 300SL. I had every option available, special paint, special tires, the works, [Rudge wheels], and that car cost me $9,300. People say they were selling for $5,600 back then, and I tell them, ‘not with all the options.”

When he went to pick up the car at the dealership, it wasn’t to be seen.

“They told me it was on the way over, and all of a sudden, there’s this big screech, and here comes a red 300SL tearing into the driveway with all four wheels locked up and sliding right into the service area. The driver’s door opens and out jumps this young kid who worked for the dealer as a parts runner and driver. He says, ‘Is this your car?’ I nodded. ‘Boy, it’s a good one!’ he said. He didn’t hurt it any, just cleaned the tires off a little, but he was going like hell on that little side street. That was my introduction to the car and the kid — His name was [future F1 and sports car racing star] Richie Ginther.”

Photos by the author and courtesy Don Ricardo and Scott Grundfor

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Following a long battle with cancer, Sabine Schmitz was taken from us much too early at the age of merely 51. Her passing was a shock to many, with her unrestrained zest for life being called on in her fight against the condition to the very end.

It has been a great time since parting farewell to a racing driver has struck the motor racing community so profoundly. SpeedBee, as enthusiasts affectionately named her, was a legend during her own lifetime. 

Countless gestures in the paddock of the Nürburgring reinforced the heartache experienced by the community. During the Nürburgring Endurance Series season-opening round, nearly all teams paid respect to Sabine Schmitz with a special remembrance.

Several racing cars carried her name as the additional driver. Other vehicles resembled rolling books of sympathy. Virtually everyone had an intimate story or funny tale to share that connected them to the Nürburg native. Her death clearly underlines how much many people valued her.

At times underestimated in Germany, contributed by her down-to-earth nature, Sabine Schmitz was internationally renowned. She won over the public thanks to her lighthearted and positive disposition, her witty banter, and, it goes without saying, her audacious drives through the Green Hell. Her glowing personality quickly transformed her into an early YouTube celebrity – whether it was driving a GT3 Porsche, a Ford Transit, or at the wheel of the ‘Ring taxi.’

Over 30,000 Laps n the Nürburgring

The champion of the Endurance Series and two-time victor of the Nürburgring 24-hour race took great delight in terrorizing her passengers between Hatzenbach and the Hohenrain chicane. Subsequently, several of them had to drastically modify the theories of their own driving skills and shared their memorable adventures around the globe.

She remembers lapping her favorite track greater than 30,000 times, the initial time in her mother Ursula’s vehicle– without a license. With her featuring on the BBC car program Top Gear, Sabine was propelled into the international spotlight.

Sabine Schmitz wasn’t especially taken in her by her star status. The ‘Nordschleife Queen’ retained her feet firmly on the ground and forever approachable.

In her own amusing way, she developed very personal memories out of every selfie, and would never reject an autograph request. Thousands of pictures, photos must be out there with her autograph on them.

Reliably, she always had a kind word at disposal – her quick wit was though both loved and dreaded. Her laughter was infectious with neither friend nor foe spared. “He looks like he’s off the rails again today …” she’d cry out when a teammate took an unintended slide along the guardrails. “He’s so slow I could’ve done an oil painting of him,” was one of her playful catchphrases when an opponent was not quick enough, whom she viewed from the saddle of her horse someplace along the circuit.

Sabine Schmitz was the greatest ambassador for the Nordschleife, the Endurance Series’s soul, and the heart of the 24-hour race on the Eifel circuit. Fans and motorsport enthusiasts have long declared their desire to dedicate a passage of the Nordschleife to her. In doing so, she will remain a part of her beloved racetrack always and remain in the memories of her countless supporters.

[Source: Porsche AG, photos courtesy of Porsche AG]

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In the letter, Porsche wrote:

“Dear Mr. McQueen, It is a great pleasure to extend my warm congratulations to you on your outstanding performance at the 12 Hours of Sebring. You can imagine how delighted I was that you posted such a brilliant result in a car of our brand.”  

Ferry Porsche

At 40 years of age, Steve McQueen’s success was not restricted to the Hollywood screen, but also an eager racer.

Undeniably, what McQueen and Revson were able to do was nothing short of amazing at the classic long-distance race in Florida.

Despite their Porsche 908/02 Spyder KH (Kurzheck or short tail), nicknamed ‘Flounder,’ being outmatched by their more powerful competitors in the higher class, they were still able to lead up to the final stages of the race.

It was only during the last lap that a Ferrari, driven by Mario Andretti, took the lead. McQueen crossed the finish line just 23 seconds after 12 hours at race pace.  

Always having the drive to win, McQueen hated being second, but even he knew that the second-place finish was a great feat in more ways than one. Just two weeks before, he injured his left foot at Lake Elsinore in a motocross race and arrived at Sebring with a cast and on crutches.  

McQueen nonchalantly explained to the reporters who were eagerly awaiting updates:

“The foot’s broken in six places. We had to shorten the left pedal in the car and glue sandpaper to the sole of my shoe for me to be able to work the clutch.”  

Steve McQueen

He never did think to back out of the race, stating, “I had given my word.” 

That summed up McQueen- The Hollywood cool guy that always pushed the boundaries and broke the rules, not only in his blockbuster movies like Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, and The Towering Inferno, but the same in real life and in racing.  

His son, Chad, described his passion, stating, “He loved racing. It was his drug.”  

He grew up in Missouri and Indiana. When he was 14, he was in a home for delinquent youths. By the time he was 17, he enlisted himself in the Marines as a tank driver. When he was 22, he auditioned to get one of the highly desired, and very limited spots in Lee Strasberg’s famous Actors Studio in New York – considered to be the best drama school in the 1950s. 

To pay for bills, McQueen took to truck driving and being a dishwasher, and added to the finances by racing his Harley-Davidson.

Before the 1950s ended, McQueen was able to buy himself his first new car: a black Porsche 356 A Speedster.

Like his colleague James Dean, the actor was also attracted to Porsche. His Speedster combined the best of both worlds- a daily driver with the characteristics of a club racer.

In 1959, McQueen entered nine races from Sports Car Club of America. On May 31, in Santa Barbara, in his first official race, he won in the novice class. McQueen later shared:

“I was hooked. Racing gave me a new identity and it was important to me to have that independent identity.” 

In the summer of 1959, McQueen traded his Speedster to get a more powerful Porsche 356 A Carrera. He eventually entered his first race in a true race car, a Lotus Eleven.

Throughout his 20-year career, he acquired more sports cars and racing machines. He was a collector, amassing not only cars but also motorcycles and aircraft.  

His obsession with his toys was his means to deal with everything happening in his life, as he once stated:

“I can really only relax when I’m racing. I loosen up at high speeds.”  

His assistant director, who had worked with him for a number of years, Clifford Coleman, shared, “He had to overtake you, that was his personality. That’s why he was so successful. He had to win.” 

His passion to win was not only limited to the racetrack but extended to his collection. When McQueen learned that Bruce Meyer from Beverly Hills, another race car driver, was able to acquire his Porsche 356 A Speedster for $1,500, he did not lay off Meyer until the latter gave it back to him. McQueen kept the car for the rest of his life.  

Even McQueen’s films were made according to his rules. Since he was one of the biggest actors in the 1960s, he got what he wanted. He was able to insert his cars and motorcycles into the plotlines, like in The Thomas Crown Affair where he drove his VW Buggy in a madcap beach drive with Faye Dunaway.  

For Bullitt, he insisted on doing the stunts himself, especially for the legendary chase scene instead of a stunt double, a potential disaster-awaiting for a Producer. Having their main star injured would mean dealing with losses worth millions. 

Yet despite having the success of numerous blockbuster films, he could not resist the call of motocross races. 

Racing under the pseudonym, Harvey Mushman, McQueen enjoyed anonymity provided by the helmet. However although he could hide behind the helmet from the public, he was not able to hide his driving style.  

Coleman recalled:

“He was strong and fast. That was evident in the way he rode a motorcycle – very aggressively.”  

It was not long before he developed increasing attention for his racing, especially considering his co-drivers were some of the best in the world like Innes Ireland, Stirling Moss, and Pedro Rodriguez.   

Using his own company Solar Productions, McQueen financed his own racing team. The peak of his career was on March 21, 1970 at the 12 Hours of Sebring, one of the ten races in the World Sportscar Championship season.  

At the time, hoping to repeat their previous year’s world championship victory, Porsche brought seven cars to the starting line – four of them being 917 KH models.

Despite this, all focus was on McQueen and his co-driver Peter Revson that registered the 908/02 as a private team. McQueen and the 908/02 already had a history as he had driven it to victory in Holtville and Phoenix.  

Porsche driver Kurt Ahrens who drove one of the 917 with his co-drive Vic Elford had his eyes on McQueen during training. The now 80-year-old recalled:

“McQueen had a lot of talent, and he was ambitious, practically obsessed. And he was fast, even if not quite as fast as Revson.” 

As the 3-liter Spider could only produce 350hp, it was an uphill battle against the 5-liter class that produced 600hp. 

To make up for their slower lap times, the team decided not to change tires or brake pads for the duration of the whole race. Ahrens shared, “We were all surprised how consistently they drove; the rigors of the race were considerable. The track was made of concrete slabs; it gave us a good rattle.”  

It should also be noted that McQueen had a broken foot, but even that did not stop him. Their pit strategy worked, and it gave them their impressive second place.  

The factory team Porsche led by Leo Kinnunen, Jo Siffert, and Pedro Rodriguez came fourth, after a pit stop that took longer than expected, a result not what Porsche was aiming for.  

In his letter to McQueen, Ferry Porsche stated:

“Your finish enabled us to keep the lead in the Manufacturers’ World Championship, and for that I would like to thank you.” 

Both the head of Porsche and McQueen were looking forward to the much-awaited event in the annual racing calendar with enthusiasm – the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

McQueen was planning on joining the race alongside Formula One champion Jackie Stewart in a Porsche 917. Unfortunately, for insurance reasons, and having to go up against Hollywood brass, McQueen backed down, seemingly for the first time in his life. 

He contented himself to preparing from the trackside for his racing movie, Le Mans with having the 908/02 from Sebring as a film car. Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams were tasked to get authentic racing scenes. They ended up getting a ninth place but were subsequently disqualified due to a controversial rule violation.  

The race would produce the long-awaited triumph for Porsche as Hans Hermann and Richard Attwood was able to give Porsche their first overall victory at Le Mans in their red-and-white 917. 

It was not long before McQueen started shooting the scenes for the movie that he has dreamt of for so long.

It was always his dream to make the ultimate film about racing, and Le Mans was his pet project.  The production of Le Mans was not smooth sailing with the movie on the verge of collapse several times, threatening to ruin him financially and it took its toll on his marriage to Neile Adams. 

John Sturges, the first director of Le Mans, was fired after wanting to add a love story with the 24-hour race as the backdrop. It was unacceptable for McQueen because for him, the race was the love story.

Lee H. Katzin, being the second director, gave to McQueen’s desires. Le Mans was released in 1971 with it taking many years before it got its cult status.  

For the driving scenes in Le Mans, McQueen acquired the services of the best Le Mans professionals including a future five-time overall winner, Derek Bell.

Soon McQueen himself was roaring through the track in the 917. Bell recalled:

“Steve’s passion for speed was obvious: he wanted to drive full-throttle all the way. That’s probably why we got along so well.”  

On November 7, 1980, at a young age of 50, Steve McQueen died of cancer. 

[Source: Porsche]

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It was in the winter of 1964 when Patrick “Paddy” Hopkirk competed in the Monte Carlo Rally. For competing race drivers at that time, the Monte Carlo Rally was a challenging adventure for all who competed, and the race was broadcast on TV live. The 60s was also the era when car manufacturers throughout the world used rally races as the ideal stage to display their flagship models. As a result, automobiles of various weight and performance classes raced against each other with a handicap formula implemented when allocating points.

At the time of 1964, Paddy Hopkirk had an extensive racing career, winning hillclimb races and being victorious in the Circuit of Ireland five times. In 1962 Paddy finished third place in the overall placings at the Monte Carlo Rally driving a Sunbeam Rapier.

Even today when reminiscing about the driving characteristics of the classic Mini, Paddy shows enthusiasm. “The Mini was a very advanced motor car. Its front-wheel drive and the transversely mounted engine at the front presented significant advantages, just like the fact that the car was small given that the roads had lots of bends and were narrow,” explained the Northern Ireland rally driver as he recalled his greatest achievement.

Paddy Hopkirk and his co-pilot, Harry Liddon began the Monte Carlo Rally in Minsk, which at that time originated as a star rally from nine different European cities. He volunteered to start the race in Minsk because he had never experienced driving on Soviet roads and wanted another level of challenge and adventure on his part. The six Mini works cars and the other cars in the racing field would only meet up in Rheims, France.

On the roads of France, Paddy’s Mini Cooper S was starting to build a duel with a Ford Falcon driven by Bo Ljungfeldt, a Swedish driver. Although the race started off well, there had been heavy snowfall on the day before the race. When they came on Col de Turini, heavy and powerful vehicles significantly slowed down. That did not happen to Paddy’s little vehicle as it powered on. “The Mini performed particularly well going downhill, and the tests had all been uphill and down dale so that we’re able to make good anything we lost going uphill when we were driving downhill” Paddy Hopkirk explained. 

Despite Ljungfeldt making up 17 seconds during the “Night of the Long Knives” and gaining a 30-second lead in the final circuit race of the Monte Carlo Grand Prix track, success would be Paddy’s. It took quite a while once the cars passed the finishing line before all times were compared and all points tally counted. With great news to Paddy, the classic Mini was declared number one in the overall placings, giving Mini its first overall victory in the Monte Carlo rally.

Hopkirk’s triumph received international praise and acclaim with jovial celebrations erupting throughout the United Kingdom for their most illustrious rally driver. He was flooded with congratulatory telegrams and messages from thousands of fans, celebrities, and even the British Government. He and his beloved car starred in ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium‘- a popular TV show of that time. Most memorable to Paddy was receiving an autograph card from the Beatles themselves with the words, “Now you are one of us, Paddy!” 

The MINI Cooper S would continue to see great success in the Monte Carlo Rally in future years. It took 2nd and 3rd places in overall standings in the 1965 and 1967 events respectively. Hopkirk himself finished in overall 6th position during the 1967 event and with the following year crossing the finishing line in 5th position. With the sun setting on this golden era for the Mini, Hopkirk changed to other models and won many races including the Acropolis Rally.

During the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, Paddy Hopkirk forfeited his lead in order to rescue a team from their burning car that was involved in a dangerous car accident.

Around early 1970, Paddy retired from professional rally driving and started a career in importing automobiles to Northern Ireland. In addition, he sold accessory products with the brand of his name.

Today, among others, he is an ambassador for IAM RoadSmart, a charity organization helping to improve driving and riding skills through courses and coaching. His other involvements also include working on the Board of Management of the British Drivers’Club and supporting WheelPower, an association devoted to promoting wheelchair sport.

Recently, in 2016, Princess Anne gave him the award of Member of the Order of the British Empire.

[Source: The BMW Group]

The post Paddy Hopkirk: Legendary Mini Cooper Rally Driver appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

“The news of his death represents a very sad loss for us. Our thoughts are with his family,” says Michael Steiner, Member of the Executive Board, Research and Development. “We thank Hans Mezger for his extraordinary engineering achievements, which he has done for motorsport in general and for Porsche in particular. His innovations for our series sports cars will remain unforgotten forever.”

Hans Mezger was born on November 18, 1929 in Ottmarsheim, a small village near Ludwigsburg on the outskirts of Stuttgart. The youngest of five children, his parents ran a country inn. Art and culture were very important to the Mezger household. From an early age, aeroplanes and flying also fascinated the young Hans, and he occasionally undertook a trip to Kirchheim/Teck with a group of gliding enthusiasts from his neighbourhood.

As if from nowhere, right in the middle of his carefree childhood and adolescence, and while at grammar school, the Third Reich and Second World War emerged. On April 18, 1945, just three weeks before the end of the war, the 15-year-old Hans Mezger only escaped being enlisted by a stroke of luck and a faked medical certificate from a German commander. Eventually, Mezger continued his grammar school studies in Besigheim through the 6th grade, then followed by German A-levels in Ludwigsburg. “In 1946, I experienced my very first car race. It was at Hockenheim where old pre-war race cars lined up, along with Hans Stuck, whom I photographed with my old camera,” Hans Mezger described his first motorsport experience immediately after the Second World War.

Hans Mezger decided to study mechanical engineering at the Technical University, now the University of Stuttgart. However, at this time the universities were very crowded because the young men who had returned from the war were given preferential treatment for admission. Mezger used the university requirement for a twelve-month internship to practise numerous stages such as machining, welding, model making and a few weeks in the grey cast iron and aluminium foundry. “At that time I was riding a motor scooter, an NSU Lambretta. Apart from my brother’s 250 cc DKW it was my first and last motorised two-wheeler. I rode the Lambretta until 1960, when I bought my first car, an old and quite worn-out 356. It was not until years later that I came into contact with motorised two-wheelers again, when in the late 1970s it became necessary to develop new motorcycle engines for Harley-Davidson.”

After graduating in 1956 at the time of the German economic miracle, there was a veritable flood of job offers. “There were 28. But Porsche was not among them. I wanted to join Porsche because the Type 356 sports car inspired me. So I applied, got an interview, and the company offered me a job in diesel engine development. Until then, I didn’t even know that Porsche had such a thing. But I envisioned working on sports cars. They showed understanding and that’s how I started in the calculations department at Porsche,” said Hans Mezger about his start at the Zuffenhausen sports car manufacturer. A little later in 1958, Hans Mezger and his wife Helga got married. This was followed by the move to their first flat together in Ludwigsburg and, shortly afterwards, their two children, Daniela and Oliver.

Things then began happening one after the other. Hans Mezger gained his first experience with the four camshaft engine Type 547, developed a formula for calculating cam profiles and became part of Porsche’s first Formula 1 project in 1960. He was involved in the development of the 1.5-litre eight-cylinder Type 753 as well as the corresponding chassis of the 804.

“On this Formula 1 project I also learned a lot about the design of combustion chambers. This also directly benefited the design of the 6-cylinder boxer engine for the later 901/911. Ferry Porsche, with his visionary leadership of the company, his human qualities, dignity and great dedication, became my role model. I wholeheartedly shared his philosophy of racing in order to build the best sports car for the road, was impressive and had a lasting impact on myself and my work during the entire period I spent at the company,” he reported from that early era at Porsche.

His career included designing the world-famous “Mezger engine” for the 901 and 911 in the early 1960s. In 1965 Mezger was promoted to head of the department for race car design initiated by Ferdinand Piëch. This department was the key to a new quality and dynamism in motorsport for Porsche. It was an exciting, fascinating time in the mid-1960s. “Sometimes we also worked around the clock – like in 1965 when we created the Ollon-Villars Bergspyder in just 24 days and shortly thereafter the 910.” With its construction of a tubular frame, fibreglass body and design for new Formula 1 tyre technology, it became the blueprint for all the race cars that were built in the years to follow.

Porsche also relied on this design principle for the development of the 917 in 1968. With the 917, the first overall victory for Porsche at Le Mans was now finally possible, and once again Ferdinand Piëch relied on the skilfulness of Hans Mezger, who was responsible for the overall construction of the vehicle and its 12-cylinder engine. The 917 dominated at Le Mans and in the World Sportscar Championship in 1970 and 1971.

In 1972 and 1973, and right from the start, the 917/10 and 917/30 showed good responsiveness even on the curvy stretches of the Can-Am series, thanks to a novel exhaust turbocharging technology developed by Porsche itself. For the first time, turbocharging was successfully given a responsiveness that allowed racing cars and series-production vehicles to be used on all race tracks and public roads. A technology that makes Porsche a pioneer in this field and Mezger and his team brought to series production in 1974 in the form of the 911 Turbo. Many other victorious developments followed: for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the World Sportscar Championship and the US Indy series.

But perhaps the most outstanding project took off in 1981 when Ron Dennis and his McLaren racing team set out in search of a powerful turbo engine for Formula 1. In the end, Porsche was chosen and the decision was made to design and build a completely new engine, as well as to provide on-site support during the races.

Again, Hans Mezger was the creative mastermind behind the 1.5-litre, V6 engine with an 80-degree bank angle, which would later produce more than 1000 PS. In 1984, Niki Lauda became world champion with it, and again in 1985, followed in 1986 by Alain Prost. The TAG Turbo won a total of 25 races, plus the two Constructors’ World Championships in 1984 and 1985. “This was a resounding success and also the most significant development contract for Porsche from an external company.

Always closely connected to Porsche

His commitment to Porsche has made him reject all offers from other manufacturers throughout his career and he still owned his 911 Carrera 3.0 in Grand Prix white – a coveted Porsche classic which has “his” engine. His loyalty and connection to Porsche was unbroken. He was available to journalists, technicians and interested fans as a discussion partner. The Porsche Museum hosted a celebration for his 90th birthday with family, friends and former companions. He accompanied Porsche at events, trade fairs and festivities until the very end.

Career and Highlights at Porsche

1956–1960 Technical calculation department in the design department.
Responsible for valve control of all engines, among other things.

1960–1962 Move to the Porsche Formula 1 project team.
Collaboration in engine and chassis design.

1963 Design of the 901/911 engine. Responsible for design and
further development of all racing engines.

1965 Design and project management of the Ollon-Villars Spyder.
Management of the newly established department for race car design.

1966–1970 Design of the 910, 907, 908, 917, 2-litre
four-cylinder engine for the 914 production sports car.

1971–1973 CanAm race cars 917/10 and 917/30 with turbocharging.
1974–1976 Design, development and further development of six-cylinder turbo engines and the Type 935 and 936 race cars.

1977–1978 Development of the water cooling and four-valve concept for the Type 935 and 936 six-cylinder turbo engines.

1977–1980 Design of the four-cylinder engine for Harley-Davidson. Development of the Indy engine based on the Type 935/936. Further development of the 935/936 race cars and engines.

1981–1982 Development of a 2.65-litre engine based on the 935/936 for Group C (956/962).

1981–1987 Design, overall project management and further development of the “TAG-Turbo – made by Porsche” Formula 1 engine.

1987–1988 Design of the Type 2708 Indy 2.65-litre engine.

1990 Design of the Type 3512 12-cylinder Formula 1 engine

[Source: Porsche AG]

The post Remembering Hans Mezger (1929 – 2020) appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Ahrens Jr. started his racing career in 1958, proved himself first in Formula 3, and was the Formula Junior German Champion in 1961, 1963 and 1965. He was considered to be one of the most promising German talents in formula sport, and moved up to Formula 2, where he enjoyed further success. The next step was Formula 1, where he lined up alongside Jack Brabham and Jochen Rindt in the Brabham-Repco at the German Grand Prix on the Nürburgring in 1968 — but this would be his only Formula 1 start.

This Formula 1 experience showed Kurt Ahrens the demands placed on a professional driver in the premier class of motorsport. For him, however, motor racing was above all there to provide a counterpoint to his everyday work in the family business, a recycling company. For this reason, he decided against a career in Formula 1.

“I was needed in the company, and that meant I could not afford to do the whole thing professionally. I enjoyed driving at the weekend, but on Monday I had to put all that behind me again,” said Ahrens.

From then on, Kurt Ahrens made a great success of his race weekends — as a Porsche works driver. During the week he worked in his parents’ business, but on weekends he was one of the fastest drivers on the track. Ahrens was partnered in many races for the Porsche works team by Hans Herrmann, who became a good friend. However, he celebrated his greatest victories alongside other works drivers. Together with Jo Siffert in a Porsche 917, he won the Austrian 1,000 kilometres in the inaugural race at the newly built race track in Zeltweg in 1969, for example.

The first triumph for the 917, in the last race of the year, was a glorious conclusion to a season marked by extensive testing and development work. For Ferdinand Piëch and the overall 917 project, this first victory by Kurt Ahrens and Jo Siffert was of the greatest importance, because the 917 finally proved its performance capability on the Österreichring circuit after its disappointing failure to finish in Le Mans. In October 1969, Ahrens was also involved in the crucial test drives in Zeltweg, which ultimately resulted in the successful short-tail version of the 917 for the upcoming season.

In the following year, Kurt Ahrens was able to seamlessly follow up on this success, winning the 1,000 kilometre race at the Nürburgring in a Porsche 908/03 at the side of Vic Elford. He repeatedly showed how very fast he was, even under tough conditions. The Porsche racing team considered him to be a thoroughly honest, straightforward team member and an excellent test driver with a pronounced technical awareness for the car. He had only one serious accident in around 12 years in motorsport, when he aquaplaned a Porsche 917 into the crash barriers on the VW test track in Ehra-Lessien at around 250 km/h in April 1970 during a test drive. The car was smashed to pieces, but fortunately Ahrens was not injured.

Ahrens shared the cockpit of the 917 long tail with Vic Elford in Le Mans in 1970. The heart of the Circuit de la Sarthe — then around 13.5 kilometres long — was the legendary Mulsanne Straight, which at the time did not yet have any chicanes: six kilometres long, a slash through the landscape, made for the 400 km/h mark. “Not a problem,” said Ahrens. He was always completely at home in the further developed 917. But that was still different in the year before. “It was an absolute nightmare – the car fishtailed excessively at 350 km/h and the rear lifted when braking hard. Rolf Stommelen and I had to ease off the throttle around 380 km/h,” he remembered. So Ahrens and Elford kept their foot down. The clock stopped at 3:19.08 minutes. This time put the pair right at the front in pole position. They held the lead for a long time in the race, until a technical defect forced them to retire.

That same year, Kurt Ahrens retired from motorsport at the age of just 30 to spend more time with his wife and four children and to look after the business. A remarkable fact: he competed in more than 300 races, but never had an accident or wrote off a car. Today, Ahrens still accompanies the Porsche Museum to historical motorsport events all over the world.

[Source: Porsche AG]

The post Happy 80th Birthday to Kurt Ahrens appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

In just his second race for Lotus, Senna took the first of 41 career F1 victories — six for Lotus — and a legend was born. The performance stunned his rivals and lay down a marker that would see him go on to become a global sporting icon and a national hero in his native Brazil. Despite his tragic death in 1994, he remains a racing legend.

Rain, as ever, is the great leveler for on-track performance. It requires sensitive driver inputs, instinctive car control and a sympathetic approach to the mechanical set-up. One weekend in Estoril revealed Senna could excel in all.

It was also the setting for Senna’s first-ever F1 pole position, and he went on to claim another 15 for Lotus. His record of 65 F1 pole positions is eclipsed only by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton.

In the race, Senna got off the line well and led a Lotus 1-2 after the first lap. With a clear road ahead, he began to pull away from team-mate Elio de Angelis and the chasing pack. The race was one of bravery and attrition; conditions worsened and, in an era before safety cars, pit-to-car radio or yellow flags, cars were pulling off the track or hitting the barriers.

Senna remained calm and composed in his Lotus and, after two hours of brutal racing, crossed the line first. Just nine cars were classified as finishing.

Senna later commented: “It was a hard, tactical race, corner by corner, lap by lap, because conditions were changing all the time. The car was sliding everywhere – it was very hard to keep the car under control. Once I had all four wheels on the grass, totally out of control, but the car came back on the circuit. People later said that my win in the wet at Donington in ’93 was my greatest performance — no way! I had traction control!”

The Lotus 97T chassis was the first in F1 to use bargeboards that were placed between the front wheels and sidepods. This aided airflow around the side of the car and is a concept that still exists in motorsport to this day. The car took eight poles and three wins that season with Senna and de Angelis at the wheel.

Through the analysis of the data produced by active suspensions, Lotus was able to monitor driver reaction times. It revealed that when Senna was testing and racing his Lotus 99T in 1987 — the first active suspension F1 car he drove — his response times for steering inputs when losing grip were measurably faster than those of other drivers. Put simply, it meant Ayrton could be at maximum grip and the highest possible speed for longer. This goes some way to explaining how he dominated so often in the wet, and was never demonstrated better than at the Estoril circuit 35 years ago when he won his first Grand Prix.

Clive Chapman, Managing Director of Classic Team Lotus and son of Lotus founder Colin Chapman, said: “For Team Lotus, Ayrton joining was a vital piece in the jigsaw, as the team faced the challenge of F1 without my father. Ayrton’s technical abilities, driving skills, hard work and motivational powers all proved to be more vital ingredients to the Team Lotus mix, which led to success almost immediately.”

Today, the Lotus 97T in which Senna won at Estoril is owned and maintained by Classic Team Lotus. Like Lotus, it is based in Hethel, Norfolk, and uses a team of knowledgeable designers, engineers and mechanics to preserve classic Lotus F1 cars for their owners. Classic Team Lotus is also the owner of the archive images showing Senna and his 97T.

Lotus is marking the occasion with a new podcast revealing insights into Senna the man and his time racing for Lotus. The podcast — part of the recently launched US LOT Sessions — features an all-new and exclusive interview with Chris Dinnage, Senna’s chief mechanic in 1985 and today the Team Manager at Classic Team Lotus.

Describing the raw emotion of the weekend and the Lotus that catapulted Senna to stardom, Dinnage says: “Ayrton hadn’t tested the car in the wet — that was the first time he’d driven in those conditions. Estoril was when he really hit the scene, because people sat up and thought ‘hang on, he’s lapped almost everybody’ and we knew we had something pretty special.”

Dinnage adds it was this which made the difference between Ayrton and other drivers, explaining: “Ayrton had the same raw pace as everyone else, but he was only using 50% of his capacity as a human to drive the car at full speed, leaving him the other 50% to be really aware of everything that was going on around him. His concentration levels were unparalleled — I’ve never met anyone else like him.”

You can listen to podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and ShoutEngine.

[Source: Lotus; photos: Courtesy of Classic Team Lotus]

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Stirling Craufurd Moss was born into a motorsport family. His father Alfred, a wealthy dentist, was a talented amateur racer who could even lay claim to finishing 16th in the 1924 Indianapolis 500, while his mother Eileen used to compete in hillclimbs around the same time. Stirling and his sister Pat were accomplished horse riders, but the boy fell in love with cars and, at the age of 17, secretly ordered himself an MG, signing for it instead of his father, who was far from happy about it. However, realising how keen his son was to race, he decided to go along with it, allowing him to race his BMW sports car. Pat followed suit, but unlike her brother, she opted for rallying and was successful in this field.

In 1948, Stirling Moss bought a Cooper Jap 500 racing car. With it, he took part in 15 Formula 3 races, winning 12 of them. This was the start of an international career. In 1949, the young racing driver became a part of the British H.W.M. works team in Formula 2 and won the English Formula 2 championship title in 1949 and 1950. In 1950, Moss also won the Tourist Trophy in a Jaguar XK 120, beating the works racing car of the manufacturer. A year later, he headed the Jaguar team.

Moss came to prominence at the start of the 1950s and made his Formula 1 debut in the 1951 Swiss Grand Prix at the wheel of an Alta-powered HWM. His Formula 2 results came to the attention of Enzo Ferrari who put him in one of his cars for the 1951 Bari Formula 1 Grand Prix. When Moss arrived in Puglia after an eventful journey, he discovered his car had been entrusted to Piero Taruffi instead. The 21-year-old Englishman was furious and returned home vowing to never drive for the Scuderia.

Moss not only had clear goals regarding his sporting successes, but he was also very decisive when it came to the professionalisation of his career. As a result, he was one of the first professional drivers of this era to hire a manager who dealt with engagements and fees. How important this decision was became clear in 1953, when manager Ken Gregory approached Mercedes-Benz racing manager Alfred Neubauer: would the brand from Stuttgart like to hire Moss for the re-entry of Mercedes-Benz into the Grand Prix sport?

In the 1954 season, however, Moss still raced in Formula 1 in his own Maserati 250 F as the private team “Equipe Moss” (later “Stirling Moss Limited”). His gripping duel with Silver Arrow chief driver Juan Manuel Fangio at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza was one of the moments that left a great impression: Moss was in pole position until just twelve rounds from the finish, when he was hopelessly thrown back into the pack by a technical defect. Winner Fangio paid great respect to the Brit and called him the actual winner of the race.

By 1954, Neubauer had been convinced of the great talent of the British racing driver. He invited him for a test drive and hired him for the 1955 season as a works driver of the Mercedes-Benz racing department. Moss was to complete 17 races with the successful W 196 R Formula 1 racing car as well as the new 300 SLR racing sports car (W 196 S).

Moss made his Formula 1 debut for the Silver Arrows on 16 January 1955 at the Argentinian Grand Prix, where he was able to clinch 4th place in the heat of Buenos Aires together with Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling. A highlight of the season was his victory at the British Grand Prix in Aintree on 16 July 1955 ahead of his team colleague Juan Manuel Fangio. It was the first victory ever for a British racing driver at this Grand Prix. At two further Formula 1 races (the Belgian Grand Prix on 5 June 1955 and the Dutch Grand Prix on 19 June 1955), each time Moss came in second behind Fangio. He ended the season as runner-up in the driver standings.

Stirling Moss was his most successful in 1955 in sports car racing with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR racing sports car developed solely for this season. On 1 May 1955, Moss wrote motorsport history: in the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR racing sports car, the then 25-year-old British driver won the Mille Miglia in the best time ever achieved there. He completed the race that began on 30 April from Brescia to Rome and back on a challenging 1,000-mile route together with co-driver Denis Jenkinson at an average speed of 157.65 km/h.

With the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR, Moss also won the Tourist Trophy in Dundrod (Northern Ireland) and the Targa Florio in Sicily. This allowed him to secure for the brand from Stuttgart – alongside the win of the Formula 1 world championship by Juan Manuel Fangio – victory in the 1955 sports car world championship. At the height of its success, Mercedes-Benz withdrew from racing at the end of the season.

Stirling Moss would continue his career on other racing teams. He raced in racing cars by Maserati, Vanwall, Cooper, Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lotus and B.R.M, amongst others, and again and again proved himself to be a world class driver. Moss attained many victories and excellent finishes in Formula 1 (runner-up in 1956 to 1958, third place in the drivers’ world championship in 1959 to 1961) and in sports car races.

The final part of Moss’ career saw him race a Lotus for friend and privateer entrant Rob Walker, who was also heavily involved in sports cars. In fact, with this team, Moss drove several races in Ferraris after sporadic but winning appearances in 1957, winning the Nassau Trophy Race in the Bahamas in a Scuderia Temple Buell 290 MM, and in 1958, with victory in the Cuba Grand Prix, at the wheel of a Luigi Chinetti-entered 335 Sport. In 1960, Moss piloted a 250 GT SWB to victory in the Goodwood Tourist Trophy, the Redex Trophy at Brands Hatch and the Nassau Trophy Race.

More wins followed in 1961 in the British Empire Trophy, the Peco Trophy and again in Nassau and the Tourist Trophy. Wins in a Ferrari and Walker’s relationship with Enzo Ferrari led to an agreement that should have finally seen Moss drive a Ferrari Formula 1 car under the Walker team banner in 1962.

That year, Moss’ sports car season got off to a great start with a win in the Bank Holiday Trophy at Brands Hatch and a class win in the Daytona Three Hours, as usual at the wheel of the Ferrari 250 GT SWB. Sadly, the world would never see Moss race a Formula 1 Ferrari as he was seriously injured in a terrible crash, at the wheel of a Lotus F1 for UDT-Laystall, at the “100 Miles of Goodwood” on 30 April 1962. It left Moss in a coma and after testing a race car in the spring of 1963, he ended his active career at the age of 33.

At the time, the Brit could look back on his racing achievements, including 222 victories in 495 races in which he took part in no less than 84 different car models. This versatility underscores the prestige as one of the greatest motor racing drivers the sport has ever known, having raced successfully in all forms of motor sport and racing not only to win, but racing because he loved the racing itself. Among his more famous victories were winning the British Grand Prix twice, the Monaco Grand Prix three times, the Mille Miglia, the Targa Florio, the Alpine Rally, the Sebring 12 Hours and the Tourist Trophy.

In his home country of Great Britain, Moss was known as “Mr Motor Racing” and “the epitome of speed” during his active career. In ‘retirement’, Stirling Moss continued to stay closely connected to motorsport as an author and a racing expert, in addition to participating in historic car racing events until 2011. For his services, Queen Elizabeth II honoured him with “The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire” (OBE) in 1959. In 2000, Moss was raised to Knight Bachelor, making his title since then Sir Stirling.

With Moss’ death, the world of motor racing has lost one of its true legends. Rest in peace Stirling and thanks for all those on-track duels.

[Source: Daimler AG, Ferrari SpA; photos: as credited]

The post Remembering Stirling Moss (1929 – 2020) appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on 9 May, 1928 in a suburb of London. He grew up living at the Railway Hotel, Hornsey, which his father managed. One of the first significant events of Chapman’s life occurred in March of 1944 when he met his future wife, Hazel Williams, at a dance. Even prior to their marriage ten years later she was to be instrumental in helping Chapman make a name for himself in racing and car building, among other things putting up the initial 25 pounds sterling to get Lotus Engineering Co., Ltd., started in 1952.

Chapman seems to have been taken by fast machinery from an early age. He learned to fly at university, and, after earning a degree in civil engineering in 1948, he was for a short time a flying officer with the RAF. Aviation was to remain a lifelong passion.

When he got into car building he soon began to compete. He became determined to achieve great things as a driver. His approach to covering the financial requirements was to build a car for himself, demonstrate its qualities on the course, and then sell his innovations and services, and later copies (not always exact) of the cars themselves, to other enthusiasts in post-war England. The very first one-off he built was a modification of a 1930 Austin Seven saloon, and it was only as an afterthought that he decided to enter it in trials races.

He had never even been to a motor race before. From there he was off on a tenacious hunt for loopholes in regulations that would give him an edge. Many of these were of the very small variety, and allowed him to exercise and hone his novel engineering approach to the maximum.

“He used to build cars so they needed a complete rebuild after every race, but that was precisely the idea. He’d say they only need to do 250 miles so if they break down after 260 then we’re doing it about right. Of course what happened was they very often broke at about 240…” Peter Warr former Lotus team manager

Early on he held a position with The British Aluminum Company and relied on long hours, volunteer help and barter arrangements (in consideration for assistance he gave to BRM with their F1 suspension design he received a converted Ford Zephyr) to keep his car building operation afloat. It was tough going even after Lotus cars became well known as winners.

Chapman branched out from trials machines to sports cars achieving success at that level as well. At the end of 1954 he was able to quit his day job and devote himself entirely to Lotus Engineering and Team Lotus, the newly-formed competition arm of the business. He was also able to take on paid employees, among whom were names such as Mike Costin, Keith Duckworth and Graham Hill. Lotus Engineering built both road and competition sports cars for customers, and eventually Formula 2 and, in 1958, Formula 1 cars as well. Although single-seaters originally gave Lotus fits due to their having to adapt their fragile chassis to very high power to weight ratios, Team Lotus continued its on-track success in sports cars as Chapman continued to develop his engineering magic.

Lotus cars, though intentionally built sparingly, were not gimcracks. Chapman, above all, wanted his cars to win. Their notorious frailty was no accident. Chapman was unswerving in his devotion to minimalist design philosophy. Each part had to do as many jobs as it was possible to squeeze out of it. Although this trade-off was not always adequate, when it did pay off it was dynamite.

Chapman’s motivation for this approach was apparently not parsimony, but something more deeply-seated in his personality. It is tempting to relate it to his tendency to treat superficially many of the people he had dealings with, but more likely it was just a manifestation of his extraordinary talents. What Chapman left out in material substance he replaced with cleverness. It was as if automobiles were to him ephemeral things, spirits of his own creation, or rather spirits formed by the act of their creation. Their physical existence seemed to have little importance. Only their performance was meaningful. It took great urging from friends and family before, late in life, he would make even belated efforts to preserve examples of some of his historically significant machines.

“If Colin had a failing it was that he always looked for the next thing no-one had rather than develop what he had.” Peter Warr former Lotus team manager

Although his early cars were based on the space frame chassis (done up, as usual, better than the original), the chassis development that he is most famous for was the full monocoque that made its debut in the Lotus 25.

The 25 was the first of Chapman’s F1 world-beaters and carried Jim Clark to his 1963 championship. It was to be followed in due course by, among others, the 49, the 72 and the 79. The 49, a winner its first time out, popularized the engine as a stressed chassis member, and was Chapman’s masterpiece and the epitome of his insistence on extreme economy of design; the 72 sported novel features such as a wedge shape, torsion bar springing and inboard brakes; and the 79 was the pinnacle of ground effects, an ingenious madness of which Chapman was, again, a major innovator.

He did not, of course, conceive all of these cars by himself. Others including Duckworth and Maurice Phillippe made indispensable contributions. Chapman, in the best engineering tradition, was quick to borrow ideas from other sources including the aerospace industry. But his finger prints were all over the design and engineering of every Lotus while he was alive. As a matter of fact, news of Chapman’s untimely death was brought to Team Lotus while they were breaking in the 92 with its active suspension, the master’s last great technical revolution.

Colin Chapman’s story remains half told until Jim Clark is brought into it. Several Lotus drivers won races only because they were in a Chapman car. But many Lotuses won races only because Clark was driving them. Chapman and Clark were an odd couple to say the least – Chapman the brilliant and charming engineer cum salesman; Clark the reserved, thoughtful farmer from the Scottish Border country, and the driver that Chapman at one time had wished to be.

That they were close nonetheless was due almost certainly to the fact that each recognized the talents of the other in his particular sphere of motor racing, an enterprise they both loved. Both were known for parting with a pound reluctantly, although Chapman was significantly more sophisticated in money matters than was Clark, perhaps, as it turned out, too sophisticated for his own good (he even managed eventually to get Clark to pay his expenses from his Indianapolis expeditions out of his retainers). Chapman showed no prescience in signing up Clark since by that time the Scotsman’s abilities were becoming general knowledge. He got Clark and hung on to him because he built winning cars.

The fruitful relationship between the two, probably approached only by that between Tyrrell and Stewart, was as much a result of each adapting to the other’s natural shortcomings as anything else. Clark was too down-to-earth to be shined up by Chapman’s hard sell, and Chapman was too savvy to be over awed by the driving ability of which Clark was justifiably, and obviously, proud. Chapman was genuinely devastated by Clark’s death in 1968 in a Lotus 48 F2 car.

“… he would guide a junior through the needs and constraints of the current problem until his pupil reached the key to it. ” Then he’d say “you see, it designs itself!” and walk away. Hugh Haskell, former Lotus engineer

Chapman was always considered a hardware person and not a people person. Yet some of the greatest names in racing won for him, including Clark, Hill, Rindt, Peterson, Andretti and Fittipaldi. Stirling Moss, racing for privateer Rob Walker, gave a Lotus car its first F1 victory.

After Chapman’s death, but while vestiges of his influence still remained with the team, Senna chalked up victories in Lotuses. Great drivers are seldom found consorting with mediocre cars. The caliber of men who chose to drive Lotuses probably comprises the best witness to the high quality of racing machines that Chapman produced.

Chapman achieved his greatest fame in the U.S. by forcing the rear-engined concept on the technologically stagnant Indianapolis 500. Dan Gurney was the one who, after seeing the Lotus 25, persuaded Chapman that Indy would be worth a look. That look revealed, to Chapman’s glee, an obscene amount of money that, considering the competition, looked ripe for picking.

Gurney set up a deal between Ford and Chapman, and Clark did indeed nearly take the prize on the first try in 1963 in a controversial finish. The Lotus-Ford missed again in 1964, but by its 1965 victory the majority of the cars in the field were rear-engined. There was no great pioneering in the first Lotus Indy cars, not even the engine placement since Brabham had been there and done that. The Lotus 29’s combination of many 25 features plus a solid big block Ford engine was so far ahead of the traditional roadsters that it made the whole thing akin to shooting fish in a barrel. Lotus did break new ground in 1968 with a turbine powered car. It showed such promise in that race that turbine cars were promptly banned by USAC.

Not everything that Chapman touched turned to into technological gold. The Indy turbine cars had used four-wheel drive, and Chapman decreed that in 1969 so would the conventionally-powered Indy and F1 Lotuses. Alas this did not turn out well. The power train was cumbersome, the drivers complained about the common drive shaft passing through the cockpit over the top of their legs, and the cars were slow. They never competed.

It is difficult to overstate the influence, in so many different ways, that Chapman had on F1 as we know it today, what might be called “Big Formula 1.” At the end of 1967 Esso pulled its support for motor racing. The CSI, which at the time oversaw the sporting aspects of the FIA, recognizing the need for expanded financial opportunities for an expanding F1, withdrew the restriction on advertisements on racing cars.

“Formula 1 should be the pinnacle of motor racing. It should have the minimum of parameters controlling performance. There are only four parameters which control a racing car; one is the power from the engine; the second is the aerodynamical download it can produce; the third is the amount of grip which can be obtained by the tyres and the fourth is the weight.” Colin Chapman

Chapman was characteristically first in exploiting this opportunity, signing up Imperial Tobacco as the Team Lotus sponsor for 1968, in the process setting F1 on the road to a financial addiction to tobacco which has proved as difficult to shake as the real thing. English racing green gave way to Gold Leaf livery, and later to the stunning black and gold of the John Player Specials. There can be no argument about the monetary advantages that motor racing realized from tobacco sponsorship. It was inevitable that so much money floating around would attract attention, but curiously it was not Chapman but Lotus driver Jochen Rindt’s former manager, Bernie Ecclestone, via his Formula One Constructors Association, who got control of it.

Chapman did have a shot at running the money part of the F1 circus. During the great FISA-FOCA war of 1979 – 1981 a conspiracy was hatched by Jean-Marie Balestre to have Chapman replace Bernie Ecclestone as head of FOCA. It came to naught, but one both delights and shudders at the thought of what F1 might be today had this coup d’etat been carried off.

One of the casualties of the 1979-1981 unrest in the F1 world was another Chapman engineering marvel. In order to reduce chassis movement the suspensions of ground effects cars were so stiff that they were physically very hard on the driver. Enter the Lotus 86 and 88 incorporating aerodynamics and body work sprung separately from the cockpit. The 86 fell victim to the concession FOCA made in its truce with Balestre that did away with ground effects skirts. The 88 was ganged-up on and eliminated by assorted constructors and race organizers watching out for their wallets. Thereafter, ground effects itself was gradually all but legislated away. These triumphs of politics over progress was disheartening to Chapman for whom F1 had always been synonymous with the highest level of technical achievement. He seemed to lose much of his interest in the sport.

Towards the end of his life Chapman, never one to shy away from a chance to make some money, became entangled in the John DeLorean scandal. The British government welcomed the DeLorean – Chapman partnership with open arms when it offered to site the factory for DeLorean’s stainless steel wonder car in depressed Belfast, to the extent of putting up 54 million pounds of financing. Unfortunately several million pounds of this never made it to Northern Ireland. Rumor had it that its ultimate destinations were the pockets of DeLorean, Chapman and others. DeLorean’s arrest for allegedly dealing in a controlled substance and the simultaneous collapse of the DeLorean car business left behind a nasty mess indeed. Due to his premature passing, Chapman’s real part in this sad affair has never been completely explained.

Chapman tossed his cap in the air in celebration of an F1 victory for the last time at the Austrian race in 1982, which Elio De Angelis took in a squeaker from Keke Rosberg. Chapman’s death from a heart attack in December of  that year was shockingly sudden and a surprise to everyone who had followed his unparalleled career. Some of these were legal authorities looking into the DeLorean fiasco, but the great majority were friends and family of motor racing who knew they had lost an irreplaceable part of their sport.

I think that Jimmy was the only real friend that Colin had. Everybody else was a business associate.” Mike Costin co-founder of Cosworth

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“The news of his death represents a very sad loss for us. Our thoughts are with Ferdinand Piëch’s family,” said Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG. “His love of cars and his constant desire to drive forward technical progress will never be forgotten. Piëch was an automotive man through and through. We thank him for his passion and the courage with which he led Porsche to outstanding engineering achievements. Through strategic decisions, he laid the foundations for successful development of our company.”

The fascination for cars already ran in his blood as the grandson of design engineer Ferdinand Porsche. He began his professional career in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen on 1 April 1963 as an employee in the engine testing department at Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche KG. After successful design of an oil cooler for the Type 904 race car and a 180 PS six-cylinder race engine, Piëch became head of the testing department in 1966. The legendary six-cylinder boxer engine of the Porsche 911 was developed to series maturity under his leadership. In 1968, Piëch was appointed Head of Development, before he assumed responsibility for the technology and external development areas in the Executive Board of Porsche KG in 1971.

Piëch placed particular importance on professionalisation of the Porsche motor racing department, which achieved countless motorsport successes under his leadership. He had the 917 race car designed in 1969, a car which is still today considered to be one of the most successful race cars ever. The first overall victory of the 917 in Le Mans in 1970 under his leadership represented the start of a new era for Porsche.

Due to the transformation of Porsche KG into a stock corporation and the decision that operational management positions should no longer be occupied by family members, he left the company in 1972 like all other family representatives. Ferdinand Piëch joined Audi in the same year. Since 1988, he was CEO of Audi AG, before taking over the position of CEO of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft in 1993.

Without him Bugatti would not exist in its current form. In 1998 Ferdinand Piëch in his role as CEO of Volkswagen AG bought the trademark rights to Bugatti, and not long after the Château and site in Molsheim, Alsace.

His idea for the reorientation of the legendary French brand came to him while on holiday, as he later explained. It was a sign of fate: In a small toy shop, Ferdinand Piëch wanted to buy his son Gregor a Rolls-Royce toy car. But the little one pointed to another model — a Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic. “For me it was a pointer to interest me for Bugatti and not only for Rolls-Royce and Bentley,” he wrote.

In 2002, Piëch was elected Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft. In 2015, he resigned from his mandates in the Volkswagen Group.

He remained associated with Porsche as a Member of the Supervisory Board from 1981 to 2015. In 1984, Vienna Technical University awarded him an honorary doctorate in technical sciences. In 1999, 132 car journalists and industry experts from 33 countries named him “Car Manager of the Century”.

[Source: Porsche AG]

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He was called die Pechvogel, the unlucky bird. He was known more for the races that he lost than those that he had won, but to dismiss him as a journeyman driver would do him a great disservice. While not at the level of his teammates Caracciola, Fagioli and Lang he was an extremely fast and courageous driver. What he was lacking was the sensitivity for his car that would guide him in when to push and when to hold back.

Born in Hamburg on the 15^th of August 1905, to a military family. His father had been a major in the German Army while his uncle was appointed Army Commander in Chief and promoted to Field Marshall by Hitler.

A military career was in the offing for the young Manfred but a motorcycle accident and a fractured skull made him unfit for military service. While convalescing at his cousin’s house he became interested in one of his cousin’s cars, a super-charged Mercedes. He persuaded his cousin to teach him how to drive.

While visiting a local movie house his attention became riveted to a newsreel that showed some racing cars. With his cousin’s support he entered a hillclimb near Salzburg on 8 September 1929. Driving a Mercedes he finished first in class. In 1931, still supported by his cousin, he competed in the Eifel GP and finished third to his future teammate Rudolf Caracciola and H. J. von Morgan.

In 1932 von Brauchitsch won the race that made him famous. Entering the Avus GP as a private entrant a friend convinced him that he needed an edge to compete with the works drivers. That edge would come from a special streamlined body fitted to a Mercedes SSKL. At first the car, which looked like a large cigar was considered something of a joke and nobody gave the car or driver much of a chance until he passed the works Alfa of Caracciola and won the race by a car length.

Von Brauchitsch was invited by Mercedes to join their team who were at the same time preparing all new cars for the 1934 season.

His first start for Mercedes occurred at the Eifel GP and von Brauchitsch won his first race for the works team. After this fantastic start to his professional career he was not to win another major race for three years. At the German GP he crashed and suffered several broken ribs, a broken arm, shoulder blade and collarbone.

Unbeknownst to the doctors he had also suffered a fractured skull! After returning to race in Switzerland the skull fracture was discovered and the remainder of the season was lost to von Brauchitsch.

1935 was a continuation of mechanical and mental breakdowns. His times in practice were always very fast but the race would be another matter. Von Brauchitsch was though a crowd favorite as he always gave of himself all that there was. At the Belgian GP his car failed but Fagioli, after being prevented from passing Caracciola pulled into the pits and refused to continue. Von Brauchitsch was summoned to continue in the Italian’s car, which had just been passed by Dreyfus and Chiron into fourth place.

Neubauer told his driver that he was to drive as fast as possible and try for a Mercedes 1-2 behind Caracciola. This was just the kind of challenge that von Brauchitsch enjoyed as he passed Dreyfus on lap 27 and Chiron on the 29^th at the famous Eau Rouge bend. As Harold Nockolds wrote in MotorSport,

“van Brauchitsch does not posses the genius of a Caracciola, a Fagioli or a Chiron, but he gets amazingly good results all the same. His approach to a corner is always rather ragged, and involves a great deal of vigorous work with the steering wheel and some violent use of the brakes.”

The next race could have been his greatest victory but the day belonged to another, Tazio Nuvolari. Von Brauchitsch’s name would go down in history, not as a victor but as the vanquished in the legendary German Grand Prix where Nuvolari raced into history. Von Brauchitsch had a seemly secure lead despite a furious charge by Nuvolari but he continued to drive as if the devil himself was on his tail.

He may well have been that day and von Brauchitsch in sight of the finish line suffered a burst tire allowing Nuvolari to claim a stunning victory. Von Brauchitsch ended his race in tears, oblivious to the cheers of the crowd and the commiseration of his teammates and rivals. At his hotel Chiron visited him and Nuvolari presented him with a bouquet of flowers. 1936 was more of the same and prior to the 1937 season there was a question of whether von Brauchitsch would continue with the team.

Neubauer still had faith in his driver and for the new year Mercedes was determined not to repeat the failures of the preceding season. To that end they fielded a new four-man team which consisted of Caracciola, von Brauchitsch, Fagioli’s former mechanic and future star Hermann Lang and promising British driver Dick Seaman.

It is ironic that the often-ragged von Brauchitsch would finally taste victory at the circuit that required the most precision but Monaco was always a race that he enjoyed. In the early laps he lay second to Caracciola with Rosemeyer hot on his heels. Rosemeyer tried all of his tricks to pass von Brauchitsch but not this year or this race. The steering on the Auto Union failed and Rosemeyer crashed into the sandbanks at the Gasometer hairpin.

Their main rival now out of the race everyone expected a routine Mercedes 1-2 but von Brauchitsch had other ideas. Setting a new lap record on lap 21 he was now right on his team leader’s tail. Neubauer began to wave his flag furiously to signal von Brauchitsch to hold his station. In response his rebellious driver would only stick out his tongue at Don Alfredo. Caracciola was up to the challenge and answered his teammate with a lap record of his own but the strain wore on his engine and he had to pit for new plugs. When he returned to the race he began a charge that saw him make up lost ground and to assume the lead when von Brauchitsch pitted for fuel and tires. Just as he re-entered the race Caracciola’s Mercedes appeared and off they screamed side by side as they passed the pits.

Von Brauchitsch was just able to squeeze into the lead. The whole team was in an uproar as half the team waved for von Brauchitsch to relent and allow his team leader to pass into the lead while the other half of the team urged their Pechvogel to press on! Von Brauchitsch had nothing to lose for losing is all that he had done for the last three years.

Caracciola now had the bit firmly in his teeth and on his next lap he set a record that wasn’t equaled for eighteen years. Caracciola was able to wrest the lead but his tires were now shot and he had no choice but to pit. Von Brauchitsch crossed the finish line first and the three-year drought was over, he had finally won another race.

After the race the Mercedes team held a great victory party and the two teammates/rivals joined in the celebration. Later that year Neubauer pulled Von Brauchitsch from a burning car during a pitlane fire caused by spilled gasoline. 1939 was the last year of racing before war engulfed Europe and the last race happened on the day, September 3, 1939, that England declared war on Germany. This was also the day of the Yugoslav GP. Von Brauchitsch thought better of it and caught the next flight out of Belgrade for Switzerland! Neubauer upon hearing of this was able to reach the plane before it took off and literally dragged his reluctant driver back to the circuit.

The race was won by Nuvolari and von Brauchitsch’s life went downhill from there. Being the son and nephew of military men was not of much use in post war Germany and after several failed businesses von Brauchitsch turned to Caracciola for help. Sympathetic to the plight of his friend and former teammate he arranged some contacts in Argentina for von Brauchitsch.

Unfortunately for von Brauchitsch he was not able to make a new life for himself there and returned to Germany a bitter man, just the sort of victim the Communists were looking for. In 1951 the German Grand Prix ace came under suspicion by the West German government for involvement in espionage. He was soon arrested but while out on bail he defected to East Germany leaving his wife behind. In a final tragedy his wife committed suicide the following year. If only Neubauer had allowed the plane to take off.

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Few drivers have entered Formula One racing with as big a bang as Lewis Hamilton and a seemingly charmed racing career nurtured in no small part by Ron Dennis, principle at McLaren at the time. Hamilton’s sensational maiden season in 2007 – in which he lost out on the world championship by a single point – remains one of the most remarkable rookie campaigns in history. Going from McLaren to Mercedes when the team was just hiding his stride made it seem all too easy. But without his innate talent it would have all come to naught as F1 is strewn with the remains of other young phenoms.

Lewis Carl David Hamilton was born on 7 January 1985 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire to Carmen Larbalestier and Anthony Hamilton. His grandparents had emigrated from Grenada to the UK in the 1950s. His parents separated when he was two and he went to live with his mother and half-sisters. When Lewis was six his father bought his young son a radio-controlled car, then a go-kart. He told his that as long as he did well at school he’d support his son’s passion for racing. Hamilton attributes much of his success to his humble upbringing in Stevenage. Winning came naturally to the young driver and soon he was entered in national events. By the age of 10 – with a little less than two years’ experience – he was crowned the youngest-ever winner of the British Cadet Kart championship.

In 1998 the McLaren boss signed him to the team’s young driver programme. Dennis’s belief in Hamilton’s talents was such that the contract even included an option on the 13 year-old should he ever make it into Formula One racing. At this stage, however, it was McLaren’s financial support that proved the bigger blessing for Hamilton, who up to that point had been supported by his dutiful father – and future manager – Anthony, who worked several jobs to keep his son racing. Multiple-World Champion Michael Schumacher said of him, “he’s a quality driver, very strong and only 16. If he keeps this up I’m sure he will reach F1. It’s something special to see a kid of his age out on the circuit. He’s clearly got the right racing mentality.”

Eventually in 2002 he opted for the highly-competitive British Formula Renault series. Fears he wouldn’t cope with such an upswing in horsepower proved short-lived. Attacking single-seater racing with the same resolute determination that had bore fruit throughout his karting days, Hamilton finished third in his debut season, before taking the championship a year later after a record-breaking 10 wins, nine fastest laps and 11 pole positions.

Although his subsequent move to the F3 Euroseries was less straightforward, Hamilton eventually found his feet, improving on fifth in the standings in his first year to win the title in his second. Hamilton was almost signed to Williams but BMW refused to fund him. Instead, he returned to McLaren and continued to win races in Formula Three. Hamilton ended the 2005 season having won 15 of the 20 rounds driving for the dominant ASM team. Autosport ranked him number 24 in its list of Top 200 Drivers. His foray into GP2 in 2006 proved equally thrilling. At his very best, Hamilton stunned onlookers with a string of spectacular performances. Outshining his more experienced team mate Alexandre Premat and a resurgent Nelson Piquet Jr with his bold driving style, he won the title ART Grand Prix

In 2007 Ron Dennis literally threw his young driver into the fire having Hamilton partner the twice World Champion Fernando Alonso. Hamilton won four Grands Prix in his debut season and led the championship for much of the year, developing an intense rivalry with Alonso both on and off the circuit. Only a mixture of bad luck and inexperience in the final two rounds deprived him of the title. It was an opportunity missed, but one which he put right the following season. With Alonso having returned to Renault, Hamilton again led the table for the bulk of the season, ultimately beating Ferrari’s Felipe Massa to the crown by a single point after a tense title showdown at the finale in Brazil, in which he famously took the fifth place he needed on the final corner of the final lap.

Hamilton started 2009 with a car woefully short on downforce and pace, and suffered the ignominy of disqualification in Australia after being judged to have deliberately misled race stewards regarding an incident with third place finisher Jarno Trulli. Whether Hamilton was coached into giving false testimony by his team has never been fully disclosed. Hamilton gradually turned his season around. July’s Hungarian Grand Prix saw him back on the top step of the podium. That was followed by another win in Singapore and a further three podiums – enough to propel him to fifth in the final standings. Jenson Button and Brawn GP secured the Drivers’ Championship and Constructors’ Championship titles respectively.

Although Hamilton had some storming drives stymied by dubious strategy calls in the 2010 season’s early races, successive wins in Turkey and Canada saw him stake a serious claim for a second drivers’ crown. However, with McLaren’s MP4-25 increasingly outpaced by its Red Bull and Ferrari rivals, he lost his championship lead at round 14 in Italy and never regained it. He went into the Abu Dhabi finale with an outside shot at the title, but ultimately finished fourth in the table, albeit comfortably clear of new team mate Jenson Button. German Sebastian Vettel driving for Red Bull would win his first of four consecutive titles.

The 2011 season was to be the toughest of Hamilton’s Formula One career. Frustrated by a car that initially lacked race-winning potential, a series of uncharacteristic errors – seemingly always involving Ferrari’s Felipe Massa – led to several stewards visits and an increasingly difficult relationship with the media, one not helped by their growing interest in his well publicized personal life. To add to his woes, Button had found his feet at McLaren and although Hamilton matched his compatriot’s three season wins with victories in China, Germany and Abu Dhabi, at the end of the year he found himself only fifth overall, three places behind his colleague.

It was the first time Hamilton had been beaten by a team mate over the course of an F1 campaign. 2012 would prove to be another unsatisfying year for Hamilton with unreliability ruining his championship bid. On the plus side, he delivered a much more composed season behind the wheel, his devastating speed helping him to seven pole positions and four impressive victories in Canada, Hungary, Italy and the United States. Such form indicated why Mercedes were so happy to sign Hamilton for the 2013 season onwards. Hamilton did not disappoint his new employers, as he enjoyed a relatively seamless transition to only his second F1 team. Victory in Hungary, plus a further four podiums and five pole positions carried him to fourth in the 2013 drivers’ championship, two places above new team mate Nico Rosberg. In 2014 things got even better for Hamilton who, armed with the hugely dominant Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid, saw off the challenge of team mate Rosberg and several moments of adversity to win 11 races and clinch his second world drivers’ crown. He carried that momentum into 2015, winning 10 times to become a three-time world champion and the first Briton to secure back-to-back titles.

Like many drivers given the right car Hamilton can be magical but any comparison with Fernando Alonso will find the Spaniard having the better of Hamilton when the car is lacking competitiveness. Currently with Mercedes that does not seem a likely issue. While Alonso struggles at McLaren, Hamilton continues to win races.

Is Lewis Hamilton the best Formula 1 Driver Ever?

If you’re a fan of Formula One racing, you know Lewis Hamilton. Even if you’re not a fan, you probably know him. If you’ve shown any loose interests in sports in general, chances are you’ve heard or read his name, somewhere, at some point. He has been that dominant, lording over the Formula One field for more than a decade.

To that end, debating where he stands relative to his current competitors has officially become pointless. It has been for a while. Everyone just assumes he’s going to win the championship each and every year, not by the skin of his teeth, but in a landslide.

Presently 35, Hamilton’s reign isn’t expected to end anytime soon. Even sportsbooks are hedging against his dominance. He was the odds-on favorite to win the 2020 F1 Championship by one of the widest margins in history.

This cannot be taken lightly. Charles Leclerc, a driver for Ferrari, is widely considered the closest thing Hamilton has to a peer right now—and even he isn’t considered to have a practical shot at the F1 title so long as Hamilton remains at or near his peak.

But while Hamilton’s place among his fellow F1 drivers is an open-and-shut case, his historical profile is less of a sure thing. That’s not an insult, by the way. Rather, it speaks to the profound, complex questions that are being asked about his still-ongoing legacy: Is he the best Formula One driver of all time?

Hamilton’s feats as a member of the Mercedes team speak for themselves. He debuted in 2007. Since then, he’s amassed 84 wins and 151 podium finishes. That’s absolutely mind-melting. Think of it this way: Hamilton has 250 career stars under his belt. He effectively wins races in which he participates 34 percent of the time. And he secures a top-three finish or better more than 60 percent of the time. He has also recorded 47 fastest laps during his time on the circuit—a ridiculously high number, for those who may not know.

And then there’s Hamilton’s coup de grace: His F1 World Championship victories. He has six to his name, including each of the past three and five of the past six: 2008, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Those anticipating a seventh—and fourth consecutive—championship aren’t alone. They’re in the majority. They’ll also have to wait and see when Hamilton gets back on the track. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted live sports action pretty much anywhere, and no one quite knows when motorsports, including F1, are going to return.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t much matter to Hamilton’s legacy. He could never drive another race, and he would still be in the greatest-of-all-time discourse. Granted, it would still help if he could break the record for career F1 victories. His 84 wins leave him seven shy of Michael Schumacher’s watermark of 91 (and seven world titles)—a touchstone Hamilton, who already owns the F1 all-time record for podium finishes, is almost destined to beat if he continues racing for the foreseeable future.

Again, though, Hamilton’s greatest-of-all-time stock is no longer tightly tethered to his outcomes on the track. The one-man dynasty he’s built says all it can. Any other statistical bumps are merely cherries atop the ice cream sundae that is his highly decorated career.

What really separates Hamilton in the best-ever discussion is the extent to which he has transcended the sport he dominates. He is a cultural icon in one of the most difficult periods for professional athletes.

Social media has lent itself to an always-on culture, which is at once a gift and a curse. Every athlete, including Hamilton, is a brand. This helps the best of the best get seriously paid—Hamilton has made nearly $500 million for his career as of February 2019, according to Forbes—but it also opens them to relentless, constant criticism. And this scrutiny isn’t specific to their profession. It spills into their personal lives. Everything they do is a headline. Every mistake they make is a misstep not only to be learned from, but to be publicized and politicized and used as a catch-all verdict on their value as both an athlete and human being.

Hamilton has navigated this part of his job description masterfully. And while numbers enthusiasts are quick to throw away more subjective arguments, his character has to be part of his resume. He has invited, maybe even created, a whole new subset of Formula One fans, in large part because they can relate to his background, and because he’s been willing to speak out on issues that journey beyond his sport.

That burden he carries, as both a cultural and racing icon, cannot be dismissed or downplayed. It is one so few athletes have had to bear, and it is one even fewer have embraced. Michael Jordan, widely considered one of the five most famous athletes of all time, was definitively apolitical during the prime of his basketball career. He was at once accessible—to fans, to media members—and wore a cloak of armor. He was candid without always revealing anything.

This doesn’t make MJ any less of an icon. Hamilton is just a different sort of icon, at a time when it’s much harder to be a universally revered one.

Between that and the list of on-track accomplishments that so obviously, so loudly, so decidedly speak for themselves, the question of whether Hamilton is Formula One’s greatest of all time isn’t really a question. He is.

Lewis Hamilton’s Best Races

There was never really any doubt that Lewis Hamilton would one day exceed Michael Schumacher’s record of 91 Grand Prix victories. In fact, most fans were pretty sure a few seasons ago that Hamilton would become the driver with the most Grand Prix wins in history: It was always going to be a case of “when”, not “if”.

Clinching that milestone will undoubtedly reignite the debate over Hamilton’s place among the greatest F1 drivers in history. Most will say that the numbers speak for themselves, citing Hamilton’s win percentage compared to, say, Schumacher (34.87% vs 29.55%). Others might point to the advantage Hamilton had with his car over the last several years. Indeed, when it comes to Hamilton, things can get pretty heated as some point to the driver as emblematic of modern F1’s.

There is no right answer to the debate, but we can agree that he has been one of the best drivers of modern times, and that he has delivered some thrilling performances. Below we are going to look at five of those most thrilling victories from the man who now has 91 to choose from:

2018 German Grand Prix

When looking back on this, there was quite a measure of serendipitous good fortune for Hamilton, who won the race from way back on 14th on the grid. What would have happened if Sebastian Vettel hadn’t made a critical mistake and crashed out on Lap 52? What would have happened if it hadn’t started raining? These are moot points though, as Hamilton cut through the field like a racehorse to put the pressure on the drivers at the front. Ignoring a call to pitstop (a miscommunication, we were told), he hung on quite easily and regained momentum in the World Championship.

2011 Chinese Grand Prix

It’s worth reminding Hamilton’s naysayers that the British driver didn’t always enjoy the advantage of the best car on the track. Such was the case in 2011 when he drove for McLaren against superior Red Bull cars. Nevertheless, Hamilton was magnificent in an intriguing battle with old foe Sebastian Vettel, overtaking the German with 12 laps to go after a daring dive on the turn. This felt like an old school race, and Hamilton seemed to love every minute of it.

2014 Bahrain Grand Prix

When it comes to the greatest F1 rivalries, we tend to look back at Lauda vs Hunt, Senna vs Prost, and so on. But we tend to forget how heated things got between Hamilton and his then Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg. The pair, who were childhood friends, threw everything at each other, leading to many fall outs and many physical collisions. The 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix was a masterclass, though, as Hamilton held off an incessant Rosberg lap after lap. One of the best lead-from-the-front drives you’ll ever see in F1.

2008 British Grand Prix

Like the other man on 91 wins, Michael Schumacher, Hamilton is also considered a master of wet-weather driving, and that was on show at Silverstone in the Brit’s 26th Grand Prix start. In fact, the conditions on track were atrocious, but Hamilton, starting in 4th, put on a masterclass of inclement weather handling, lapping almost everyone on the track and finished well over a minute second-placed Nick Heidfeld. This was the first race where the world really began to look at Hamilton and think, “this kid could be an all-time great”.

2018 Italian Grand Prix

Everything seemed set up for a Ferrari ‘home’ victory at Monza, with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen starting ahead of Hamilton on the grid. More pertinently, it was clear in qualifying that Ferrari’s cars had better speed and power. Hamilton was having none of it, however, and chipped away at the Ferraris, eventually passing Raikkonen with eight laps remaining. Luck and Ferrari’s in-fighting had an influence on the outcome, of course. But that’s what great drivers do – take advantage of everything the race lays out before them.

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Born in 1887 to wealthy merchant parents, he attended the Allen-Stephenson School in New York City, and then the Harstrom School in Norwalk, Connecticut, a prep school for Yale. This only served to prove that the young man was not cut out for academic pursuits.

He instead showed an interest in auto racing, wrecking his mother’s Oldsmobile in 1906. It is possible that he caught the bug from his half-brother, George McKesson Brown, who that year purchased a Benz racing car and engaged a German driver, Karl Klaus Luttgen, to drive it in the Vanderbilt Cup race on Long Island. The 21-year old schoolboy bluffed his way into the 1908 Speed Trials at Daytona first as a mechanic then as a driver who went out and won the event. Emanuele Cedrino – manager of Fiat’s New York operations took the young man under his wing where he was jokingly known as Cedrino’s millionaire mechanic.

His mother horrified that her son might actually drive a racing car threatened legal action against the organizers if they allowed her son to drive but drive he did. In a Fiat he promptly beat the 1904 record of 92.30 mph set by William “Willie K” Vanderbilt. When Bruce-Brown’s mother heard the news she momentarily got caught up in a wave of enthusiasm but the dread was always there that her son would die at the wheel of a racing car.

In 1908 he won the Shingle Hillclimb driving a 120hp Benz. In 1909 he beat Ralph DePalma’s Fiat in the Dewar Trophy and DePalma would later remark that Bruce-Brown was “one of the greatest drivers who ever-gripped a steering wheel” In 1910 two preliminary races were held on Friday, the day before the Grand Prize for light cars.

The first race for the Savannah Challenge Trophy was won by Joe Dawson in an Indianapolis built Marmon while the second race was won by Billy Knipper in a Lancia, that race’s prize being the George W. Tiedeman Trophy named after the local mayor. When Saturday arrived the morning was clear and cool. Two strong European teams headed the entry list, that of Fiat and Benz. Fiat had top drivers Nazzaro, de Palma and Wagner while Benz countered with the legendary Hemery, Willie Haupt and David Bruce-Brown. The race started at nine o’clock in front of 60,000 spectators with the drivers departing at thirty second intervals. For the next six hours the race was a battle between Hemery in the Benz against the Fiats of Nazzaro, Wagner and de Palma. While the leaders battled, Bruce-Brown made steady progress and soon the race belonged to the two Benz teammates, Bruce-Brown and Hemery but who would it be. Bruce-Brown crossed the finish line first but based on time Hemery still had a chance to catch the young American.

The veteran driver gave everything he had as he flashed across the line. The crowd waited for the official time keepers, and then it was announced that the young American had beaten the veteran Hemery by 1.42 seconds over a six hour race. Another American, Bob Burman came in third driving a Marquette-Buick.

Hemery was one of the best drivers in the world but even he was taken in by the charms of the young lad. He became the sensation of American motor sports, the rich kid taking on the best that the Europeans had to offer. In 1911 Bruce-Brown drove for FIAT in the inaugural Indianapolis 500 and finished 3rd. He added another American Grand Prize later that year.

He went to Europe in 1912 for the legendary A.C.F. Grand Prix at Dieppe. The French press called him the errant schoolboy in a man’s world. Driving a 14.1 liter Fiat with DePalma and Wagner. The Grand Prix was the most prestigious race in the world. Held over 2 days the race totaled 956 miles.

At the start Bruce-Brown leapt into the lead in front of a start-studded field. Setting the fastest lap he won the first day’s race by over 2 minutes. On the second day Bruce-Brown struck a dog and ruptured his fuel tank. After lengthy repairs he was able to continue but only after adding more fuel which unfortunately was against the rules.

He finished a disappointed though not classified third. Devastated by the loss he promptly challenged the eventual winner, Georges Boillot to a match race to be run in the United States. The Speedway Association who were building the Metropoliton Motor Speedway at Newark Meadows prompty offered a prize of 25,000 for only the winner, not of s match race but rather an invitational to the top drivers of the day. Legenday names like Lautenschlager, Szisz, Nazarro, Wagner, Hemery, and Haroun wiukd be invited but tradegy would soon strike.

A product of New York society Bruce-Brown was an amateur competing on equal terms with the best drivers in the world. On October 1, 1912 the fairy tale ended when David Bruce-Brown still only 25 died while practicing for his third American Grand Prize at Milwaukee. A tire on his Fiat had burst sending the car cart wheeling into a ditch and Bruce-Brown and his riding mechanic, Antonio Scudelari, were hurled into the air and landed in a field. They were rushed to the hospital, but died. David Bruce-Brown’s fellow drivers stood in the corridor outside his room and wept.

It all seemed so pointless as he was warned that his tires appeared worn and when out on the circuit he proceeded to race with his teammate, Terrible Teddy Tetzlaff in a display of youthful exuberance. What he might have accomplished during his lifetime can only be guessed. The racing world, especially the Americans were stunned.

In the New York Times, the race’s official starter, Fred Wagner, wrote, “Every one connected with racing and many of the public at large were inexpressibly shocked over the lamentable death of David Bruce-Brown. This young driver liked by all connected with automobiling… Mrs. Bruce-Brown will have at least one balm in her deep grief in the knowledge that her son was always a favorite and always was honest in his driving.” And a writer in England’s The Motor added, “Bruce-Brown was typically American in his style of driving… a driver determined to get the most of it from beginning to end. But coupled with this wild dash was a consummate skill in the handling of his car, which is given to few men to possess… the extraordinary combination of wild fury and calm reasoning shown in every movement of the American driver.”

The legendary Louis Wagner declared him to be the greatest road racer he had ever seen.

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Born in August 1899, the son of a French hotelier in Monaco he became that principalities most famous sportsman. Holding dual citizenship Chiron joined the French army prior to his 18th birthday, serving as an artilleryman during World War I. He later became the personal driver to Marshal Foch in 1919. After leaving the Army he started his racing career driving Bugatti’s.

He began by entering local events organized by the Moto Club de Nice. In 1926 he raced for Alfred Hoffman heir to the Hoffman-La Roche pharmaceutical company. One of Hoffman’s companies produced spark plugs and to promote his company he entered a Bugatti for Chiron. The Bugatti with Chiron as its driver made many visits to the winner’s circle. According to Rudolf Caracciola:

“Before a race he used to walk round his car, stroke it, talk to it as if to a horse and then sit smilingly at the wheel.” 

In 1928 he split his time between driving for Hoffman and the Bugatti works team. Hoffman’s wife Alice, but known as Baby attended all of the races and soon took an appreciation of their star driver. Romantic involvement was not far away, and became an open secret to all but her husband or so it seemed but Hoffman got his revenge when Chiron was fired and replaced by his best friend Rene Dreyfus.

In 1933 two of the greatest drivers in the world found themselves without a ride for the upcoming season. Rudolf Caracciola and Louis Chiron decided to pool their talents and formed the Scuderia CC. They bought a couple of Alfas and hired two mechanics from Milan.

Caracciola’s car was painted white with a blue stripe while the car of Chiron was painted blue with a white stripe. Both cars carried the team insignia of two Cs back to back. The team was almost finished before it started when Caracciola crashed prior to the start of the Monaco GP when his brakes failed during a practice session. Chiron continued to race and achieved several good results.

In 1934 He drove for the Scuderia Ferrari in an Alfa Romeo. At Manaco he led for practically the whole race only to have the steering gear brake. Gingerly he was still able to finish in second place to Guy Moll. Later he was able to score his greatest victory at the French Grand Prix.

Both Auto Union and Mercedes were there in full force. Chiron led the race at the start but he was closely followed by the Mercedes’ of Fagioli and Caracciola with the Auto Union of Hans Stuck fourth. Each German car in turn challenged the Alfa of Chiron. The French spectators were cheering wildly for even though Chiron was from Monaco, the French would claim him as one of their own when it served their purpose!

Now it was Fagioli’s turn, starting from the back of the grid due to a bad draw he closed on Chiron and looked ready to pass when his car suddenly slowed and finally stopped. Caracciola too stopped, as did Von Brauchitsch. Chiron led two other Alfa Romeos to victory and scored the last major triumph over the Silver Arrows until Nuvolari’s great victory a year later.

Largely at Caracciola’s insistence Louis Chiron was added to the Mercedes roster for 1936. He might not have bothered as that year belonged to Auto Union and in particular, Bernd Rosemeyer. The year started with Chiron making fastest lap during practice at Monaco. All was set for Chiron to produce a victory before his fans only to come to grief on the second lap.

The circuit was slick from the rain and shortly after the start the oil pipe of Tadini’s Alfa broke leaving a trail of oil as the Italian blissfully continued on his way. Chiron hit the oil as he entered the chicane only to continue straight on, followed at once by Farina’s Alfa, von Brauchitsch’s Mercedes and Trossi’s Maserati. A measure of revenge was exacted when Tadini himself joined his victims on the next lap!

Seven laps later they were joined by Fagioli’s Mercedes, bringing the total to three of the German cars out on the same corner. In fact Chiron’s career, at least when it came to results went into decline after his crash in the German Grand Prix later that year. He was released from his contract at Mercedes. In 1939 he was given some trials by the increasingly desperate Auto Union but eventually Chiron would retire to his native Monaco. His former girlfriend Alice Hoffman would marry Caracciola.

At the outbreak of World War II he found himself again in active service but with the collapse of France he was able to secure his way to the free zone. Later when that too was overrun he crossed over into Switzerland. While there, he helped in the smuggling of downed Allied airman out of neutral Switzerland into occupied France, then across the Pyrenees to Spain and eventually England.

After the World War II many of the pre-war drivers attempted to renew their careers. Amongst them were Louis Chiron as well as Achille Varzi back from his drug addiction. They were two old war-horses, their skills eroded by time and countless battles, driving more on instinct than ability.

To call them rivals no longer had any meaning, better to call them members of a brotherhood, relics from another age. Varzi the great Italian who had wasted away the last years of a brilliant career in a battle with morphine was now back to avenge his reputation. Chiron ever the stylist simply loved racing too much to retire easily as had his friend Rene Dreyfus. In 1948 they found themselves on the same racetrack in Switzerland racing against drivers too young to remember who they were. The practice session was run on a wet track and Chiron was following Varzi as he entered a curve in an elegant power-slide. But a corner that both had driven hundreds of times before took its revenge on the Italian and the car he was driving was soon heading towards the wooden barricades that lined the corner.

Witnesses told of how Varzi seemed to have survived the worse of the accident only to roll the car when it hit the curb. Varzi unprotected by a helmet that many of the younger drivers were now wearing was killed instantly. Chiron stopped his car immediately but there was nothing that could be done. The tears came freely as much for his fallen friend as for their lost youth.

Chiron would continue to race until his sixtieth birthday. Chiron was know for his polished driving style and his joie de vivre. It was said that he preferred driving in traffic on shorter circuits where his competitors were within site. Long distance racing like the Mille Miglia and the Targa Florio did not appeal to him nor did record breaking. The Germans called him the “Wily Fox” while others called him a perfectionist – to sobriquets attached to a more recent French driver known as the Professor.  

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To celebrate his 120th birth anniversary, a photographic exhibition has been organised at Enzo’s birthplace, within the complex that now houses the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena. It includes images depicting him at various stages of his life: from childhood to adulthood, from his career as a driver to that of a manager and manufacturer alongside unforgettable motor racing champions such as Nuvolari, Castellotti and Villeneuve.

“It seems incredible to think that Enzo Ferrari was born in the 19th century,” says Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne. “His lesson is more relevant than ever and his modernity unquestionable. He was a man with extraordinary vision and ability to manage people and resources as well as a strong entrepreneurial spirit and exceptional courage. One wonders what he could have achieved if he had had access to today’s technical resources and knowledge. The mark that he left on the world remains a source of pride for all of us at Ferrari and for the whole of Italy.”

Enzo Ferrari Photo Gallery

[Source: Archivio Ferrari]

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Born April 13, 1931, in Port Jefferson, Long Island, to John Gurney, a Metropolitan Opera star and his wife Roma Sexton, Gurney was undoubtedly one of America’s greatest motorsport talents, best known for winning races in Formula 1, Indy Car, NASCAR, Can-Am and the Trans-Am Series, as well as his founding and ownership of the All American Racers (AAR) Team with race cars of his own design.

From early on Gurney liked music of a different kind. The sound of 12-cylinder racing engines were much sweeter to his ears than any aria. As the grandson of F.W. Gurney, manufacturing magnate and inventor of the Gurney ball bearing, it made perfect sense.

Following Gurney’s graduation from Manhasset High school in Long Island, his family moved to Riverside, California, where he developed his driving skills by weaving through Southern California orange groves. Gurney graduated from Menlo Junior college and served two years with the United States Army, most of that time overseas in the Korean War.

Gurney has had three very successful careers, A) Racing Driver, B) Racecar Manufacturer / Inventor and C) long-term team owner. He was the Chairman of his company All American Racers, with son Justin Gurney, the President & CEO in charge of day-to-day operations and his son Alex who is Senior Vice President. AAR is involved in designing, engineering and manufacturing projects for the car, motorcycle and aviation industry, with its latest collaboration coming in the space industry as they contribute to SpaceX and their reusable rockets.

Gurney’s racing career, which started with a Triumph TR2 in 1955, spanned 15 years. During that time he became a top road racing star in America as well as one of the most popular F1 drivers of the era. He raced for the most prestigious Grand Prix teams of the time: Ferrari, BRM, Porsche, Brabham and later Eagle bringing a maiden F1 win to Porsche, Brabham (twice) and his own marque.

Gurney etched himself a place in racing lore with exciting battles against drivers like Stirling Moss, Jimmy Clark, John Surtees, Jack Brabham, Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart and many others on the classic European road racing circuits like the Nuerburgring, the Targa Florio, Monaco and Monza. He drove with equal success in Formula 1 and the Sports Car World Championship Series overseas and the Indianapolis, NASCAR, Can-Am and Trans-Am Series at home in the US, The cars he drove and the races he participated in are astonishing in their variety, more astonishing is the fact that most of the time he pursued these different venues within the same season which made him a busy international world traveler year after year.

In the 100-year history of Grand Prix Racing, Gurney remains the only American to win with a racecar of his own construction in a Formula 1 World Championship event. In addition, Gurney’s All American Racers is the only constructor in the United States to have designed and built winning F1, Indianapolis 500 and Sports Cars — all under the aptly named “Eagle” moniker.

Porsche owes its only success as a vehicle manufacturer in the Formula 1 World Championship to Gurney, who won the 1962 French Grand Prix in Rouen in an eight-cylinder Porsche 804. Just a week later Gurney led from start to finish to triumph at the Solitude racetrack near Stuttgart; his team-mate Joakim Bonnier took second place to secure a one-two for the air-cooled Porsche Type 804 in front of its home crowd.

While Gurney’s Porsche connection might best be remembered by the outside world for his F1 wins, it is a second more personal link that resonates more deeply. Gurney married Evi Butz, first a personal assistant to and then head of the Porsche Press Department under Porsche Motorsport chief Huschke von Hanstein in the 1960s. The couple met after von Hanstein asked Gurney to give Evi a ride to town during the 1962 Solitude Race weekend.

A true gentleman, Gurney was responsible for the tradition of champagne being sprayed by winning drivers and was the first driver to introduce the full-face racing helmet to Indy and F1 competition.

With his success, the Dan Gurney fan club flourished, with a worldwide membership that included people from behind the Iron Curtain. His boyish grin, his handsome face graced countless magazine covers, in fact, at one point, Car and Driver magazine launched a “Dan Gurney for President” campaign that is periodically resurrected.

Bobby Rahal, Road Racing Drivers Club President, said, “It is with the deepest sadness and regret that we have to say goodbye to one of the most magnificent people to have represented our sport on this earth. He was not only an outrageously talented race-car driver, influential businessman, team owner and car constructor, Daniel Sexton Gurney was a gentleman, in every definition of that word. His magnetic smile, his sense of humor and absolute love of all things motor racing is unsurpassed.”

“He was an international star, yet a humble celebrity. His devotion to his family was evident in the support he provided his sons to follow in his footsteps, on the race track and in the boardroom. With his wife Evi by his side, Dan could conquer the world. He conquered our hearts.”

“Dan became an RRDC member in 1960, just eight years after the club was established, and has been one of our most distinguished members for 57 years. We offer our sincerest condolences to Evi and the entire Gurney family.”

[Source: AAR; Porsche AG; Petersen Museum]

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Rudolf Caracciola was born in the town of Remagen, Germany on January 30, 1901 the son of parents whose family it was said originally came from Italy. When still a trainee at the Fafnir-Automobilwerke in Aachen, he started in the 1922 Avus race in Berlin and finished fourth in has class.

The following year he won his first race at the age of 22. After a run-in with an officer of the Belgian occupying forces, Caracciola thought it best if he left Aachen and became a Fafnir representative in Dresden. In 1923 He worked as a salesman at newly formed Daimler-Benz and was allowed to race on weekends if the race was within driving distance of the Dresden agency.

After convincing the general manager at Daimler to lend him a factory racecar he was required to enter the Grand Prix of Germany at Avus under his own name. This 25-year-old weekend racer started the most important race of his young career and promptly stalled his car. His mechanic Otto Salzar was forced to jump out and push start the lonely Mercedes. At last the car sputtered to life. Starting from dead last in a 44-car field was not what the young Caracciola had in mind. Shortly it began to rain and cars were flying off the track. One crashed into a timekeeper’s stand and killed the course worker.

The 500,000 spectators that were in attendence that day were to get the shock of their afternoon when it was announced that a new driver, one completely unknown to them had gone into the lead. But this lead was short lived as the Mercedes began to suffer from serious misfire. Caracciola pulled into the pits and in those days the driver had to do any repairs required on the car so Caracciola pulled each of the eight spark plugs out one by one. It was not until the last plug did he discover the culprit. By then it seamed that all was lost and he was urged to quit. Caracciola would hear none of this and chose to continue spurred on by a sense of duty to the factory.

By the 13th lap the rain had stopped but Caracciola had no sense of his position but still he soldiered on. After driving flat-out for nearly three hours and 243 miles he crossed the finished line totally exhausted. Only then did he learn that he had won the first Grand Prix of Germany. Caracciola used the prize money to good use setting up a Mercedes-Benz dealership on the prestigious Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. He also married his girlfriend, Charlotte, whom he had met in 1923 while working at the Mercedes-Benz outlet in Dresden.

Caracciola would gain fame throughout Germany racing the legendary white SSK for Mercedes. He was renowned for his wet weather prowess. In 1929 he scored one of his greatest victories at the Tourist Trophy in Northern Ireland.

Racing against the cream of Great Britain, including Bentley ace Tim Birkin, he came from a five lap handicap to win the thirty lap race in a rain storm. His victory in the 1931 Mille Miglia was not equaled by another non-Italian for 24 years until Stirling Moss won it in 1955.

The starting positions were still selected by drawing lots in the 1935 Spanish Grand Prix. Caracciola would have to start from the last row. His style had always been to get to the front as quickly as possible but this time things would be a little more difficult. The flag fell and Caracciola roared off down to the first corner. Mistaking the pedal arrangement in his Grand Prix car with his touring car, he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake. The leaders seeing this maniac charge from way behind could only give way and in spite of almost crashing out on the first corner did he garner the lead!

The year 1935 had been a special year as he returned to racing after suffering serious injuries to his body and his heart. His beloved wife, Charly, had died in an avalanche.

Still hobbled by injuries his come back victory at the Grand Prix of Tripoli had a legendary quality to it. That year he became European Champion. In 1936 he won the Grand Prix de Monaco but the year belonged to Bernd Rosemeyer and Auto Union.

Mercedes came back in 1937 and Caracciola was again European Champion. In 1938 he won the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara and won his third title. Rudolf Caracciola’s career was plagued by painful leg injuries and later ill health yet he continued to win many honors.

His battles with Bernd Rosemeyer and Auto Union ended in the World Land Speed Record for Caracciola and the tragic death of Rosemeyer. During World War II he lived in exile at his home in Lugano, Switzerland. After the war, his love of racing unabated, he continued to race through worsening health brought on by bone disease. After he retired Caracciola worked as a Mercedes-Benz salesman targeting allied troops stationed in Europe. He died at the age of 58 in 1959. According to the legendary Mercedes team manager Alfred Neubauer, with who he had a long and close relationship,

” … of all the great drivers I have known – Nuvolari, Rosemeyer, Lang, Moss or Fangio – Caracciola was the greatest of them all.”

The Full Rudolf Caracciola Story

Otto Wilhelm Rudolf Caracciola, more commonly Rudolf Caracciola, was a racing driver from Remagen, Germany. He won the European Drivers’ Championship, the pre-1950 equivalent of the modern Formula One World Championship, an unsurpassed three times. He also won the European Hillclimbing Championship three times: twice in sports cars, and once in Grand Prix cars. Caracciola raced for Mercedes-Benz during their original dominating Silver Arrows period and set speed records for the firm.

Rudolf Caracciola was born on January 30, 1901 in Remagen, Germany. He was the fourth child of Maximilian and Mathilde, who ran the Caracciola Hotel.His ancestors had migrated from Naples to the German Rhineland during the Thirty Years’ War, where Prince Bartolomeo Caracciolo had commanded the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress near Koblenz. Caracciola was interested in cars from a young age, and from his fourteenth birthday wanted to become a racing driver. He drove an “elderly 16/45 Mercedes” during the First World War and gained his driver’s license by the age of 18. After Caracciola’s graduation from school soon after the war, his father wanted him to attend university, but when he died Caracciola instead became an apprentice in the Fafnir automobile factory in Aachen.

When still a trainee at the Fafnir-Automobilwerke in Aachen, Caracciola started in the 1922 Avus race in Berlin (fourth place overall and winner in class) and the Opelbahn race in Rüsselsheim (winner).

After a scuffle with an officer of the Belgian occupying forces, Caracciola left Aachen and became a Fafnir representative in Dresden. In 1923 he won the Berlin ADAC (the principal German automobile club) race driving an Ego.

In 1923 Caracciola joined Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft as a car salesman at its Dresden sales outlet. He was allowed to enter races with the current Mercedes 6/25/40 hp racing car. The successes he notched up included victory in the touring car class of the 1923 ADAC Reichsfahrt rally. In 1924 he was winner in his class on several occasions and secured overall victory in the Teutoburgerwald race. That was the year he also met his future wife, Charlotte, nicknamed Charly.

In 1925 Caracciola won eight races at the wheel of the Mercedes 24/100/140 hp. In 1926 he won the German Grand Prix in a Mercedes eight-cylinder racing car. It was in this race that he first drew attention to his brilliant driving skills in adverse weather conditions; the victory was a textbook lesson in fingertip control by the “Rainmaster”, as he later came to be known. The prize money gave Caracciola economic security. He married Charly and in January 1927 opened up a Mercedes-Benz agency in Berlin, although he continued to compete in races.

In 1927 Caracciola won the race in which the new 26/170/225 hp Mercedes-Benz S model racing touring car premiered at the Nürburgring. That year he also went on to chalk up eleven overall and class wins. In 1928 Caracciola won five races in the successor model, the Mercedes-Benz SS, and he continued his winning form in the new racing tourer, the 27/180/250 hp SSK model. With the SSK he also opened the 1929 race season for Mercedes-Benz in the Monaco Grand Prix (third place). Caracciola won the International Tourist Trophy in Ireland in a Mercedes-Benz SSK in pouring rain at an average speed of 117.2 km/h.

Caracciola finished the 1930 Mille Miglia first in his class. The following year he won the race, the first foreign starter ever to do so, in a 27/240/300 hp Mercedes-Benz SSKL racing sports car. After a 16-hour drive from Brescia to Rome and back he and co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian finally crossed the finish line on April 13, 1931 as winners, posting an average speed of 101.1 km/h. In 1931 Caracciola also won the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring – another rain-affected race – and again captured the title of European Sports Car Hillclimb Champion.

When Mercedes-Benz withdrew from racing, Caracciola went to Alfa Romeo. In the 2.6-litre monoposto he won the German and Monza Grand Prix and the 1932 Eifel race. He became European Racing Car Hillclimb Champion and International Alpine Champion. Then in 1933 Caracciola and Louis Chiron set up the independent “Scuderia C.C.”, but he suffered a serious accident during practice for the Grand Prix of Monaco. This forced him to pull out of his racing appearances for the entire year. That winter his wife was killed in an avalanche.

Daimler-Benz signed Caracciola again for the 1934 season. For the new 750-kilogram formula the Stuttgart company launched the W 25 racing car, the first Silver Arrow. At the Italian Grand Prix on April 9, Caracciola was still troubled by the effects of the injuries sustained in his accident; in first place after 59 laps, he let Luigi Fagioli replace him at the wheel, and Fagioli brought the victory safely home. At the Spanish Grand Prix on September 23, Caracciola managed a second-place finish. New competition for Mercedes-Benz arrived in the form of Auto Union. These two racing departments would dominate the championship in the coming years.

In 1935, after a long race in sweltering heat, Caracciola won the Grand Prix of Tripoli. This was followed by victories in the Eifel race and at the Grand Prix of France, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain. A second-place finish in the Grand Prix of Barcelona and third place in the German Grand Prix rounded off the year. In 1935 he was European and German racing car champion. Mercedes-Benz won nine out of 14 grand prix events that season, with Caracciola accounting for six of them.

His string of successes came to an end in 1936. Although Caracciola opened the season with a victory in Monaco – in poor weather he once again demonstrated that his reputation as “Rainmaster” was entirely justified – the redesigned W 25 with short wheelbase increasingly caused problems. “Caratsch” posted his best results subsequent to Monaco at the Grand Prix of Tunis (winner), Barcelona (second) and Tripoli (fourth). At the German Grand Prix Caracciola and co-pilot Luigi Fagioli could manage only fifth. The star of that season was Bernd Rosemeyer, who won the European championship for Auto Union.

In 1937 Caracciola returned to the pinnacle of European motorsport. The 750 kg formula was extended for another year, and Daimler-Benz developed the new W 125 racing car specifically for this season. In the monoposto Caracciola secured his second European Championship title. His racing successes that season included victories at the German, Swiss and Italian Grand Prix and the Masaryk Grand Prix of Brno. In addition, Caracciola notched up successes in the international Eifel race (second place), the German Hillclimb Grand Prix (third place), in Monaco (second place) and the Donington Grand Prix (second place). He was European Champion and also secured the title of German Road Racing Champion.

In the open-formula Avus race in Berlin on May 30, Mercedes-Benz competed with different vehicle concepts, including three W 25 fitted with aerodynamic fairings. Caracciola won the first race of the competition driving one of these streamlined cars. He married Alice Hoffmann that year.

In January 1938 record-breaking attempts were back on the agenda. Over past years, Caracciola had set several records on autobahns and oval circuits. This time on the Frankfurt-Darmstadt autobahn he attained a speed of 432.7 km/h. To this day it is the highest speed ever attained on a public road. (See Mercedes-Benz W 125 Streamliner – Profile) It was a record marred by tragedy, however, since his friend and rival Bernd Rosemeyer would die in an attempt to break Caracciola’s record in an Auto Union car.

A new formula was drawn up for the 1938 races that limited displacement to 4.5 litres without supercharger and 3 litres with supercharger. Daimler-Benz designed the new W 154 racing car for this “3-litre formula”; it developed a maximum output of 453 hp from its V12 engine. In 1938 Caracciola won the Coppa Acerbo as well as the Swiss Grand Prix. He placed second or third in the Grand Prix of Pau (with Hermann Lang), Tripoli (third), the French Grand Prix (second), the German (with Hermann Lang, second) and Italian Grand Prix (with Manfred von Brauchitsch, third). Now 37, Caracciola won the title of European Champion for the third time and consolidated his reputation as the most successful racing driver of the era.

In the Grand Prix of Tripoli, for which Daimler-Benz specially developed the 1.5-litre voiturette W 165, Caracciola took second place behind Hermann Lang – a double victory for the Silver Arrows. But the premier racing car of the season was the redesigned W 154, with which Caracciola won the German Grand Prix on July 23. In 1939 he was German road racing champion; however, the European title that year was captured by the promising young talent, Lang.

Alice and Rudolf Caracciola lived through the Second World War in their adoptive country Switzerland. Caracciola was intent on racing in America after the war ended. However, in 1946 his car crashed during practice for the Indianapolis 500. In 1952 he actively resumed racing and finished the Mille Miglia in fourth position in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. But a serious accident during the 1952 Grand Prix of Berne put an end to his career for good. Caracciola was dependent on a wheelchair and crutches for a long time afterwards.

In 1956 he was given responsibility for the sale of Daimler-Benz cars to Americans and Britons stationed in continental Europe. Aged just 58, Rudolf Caracciola died in Kassel on September 28, 1959. A monument was unveiled in Remagen to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth in 2001, and the banked curve at the Nürburgring was named after him.

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Born in Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy on October 30, 1906. Nicknamed “Nino”, Farina was the son of Giovanni Farina who had established Stabilimente Farina, a bodywork shop in Turin, the industrial city where much of Italy’s car manufacturing industry was initially located it is also where Giovanni’s brother, Farina’s uncle created the famed coach building firm of Pininfarina. Growing up around cars Farina was also athletically and academically inclined. In his youth he excelled at running, soccer and in skiing.

At the University of Turin he received a doctorate in political science and became Dottore Giuseppe Farina.

In automobile racing he was a late bloomer though he “owned” and drove a two-cylinder Temperino, a very small motor car with 8-10HP 800cc V2 air-cooled engine from a company that was a client of his father he did not start racing until after he bought an Alfa Romeo in 1932.

He entered a local hill climb and his career almost ended before it got started when he crashed out breaking a shoulder and badly cutting his face. Undeterred, he raced Maseratis for a couple of years, crashing frequently but also showing enough promise to impress Enzo Ferrari, who recruited him to drive for the Scuderia Ferrari which was contracted with Alfa Romeo to race their cars.

At Alfa Romeo he soon became the number two driver to Tazio Nuvolari who he idolized. During the late 1930s with the German Mercedes and Auto Union dominating the Grand Prix scene Farina found some success in minor races which race to the Voiturette class rules securing himself the Italian Drivers’ Champion three years in a row (1937–1939). It was also under the great Nuvolari where he would develop his straight arm style of driving that he would be known for. Farina was a hard driver on the track and woe betold the driver who would not move over quick enough. Farina firmly believed that he could beat any driver of his generation and the only drive he really looked up to was Nuvolari admitting that in a straight fight the master would always beat the student.

Farina went on to take his first major race win, at the 1940 Tripoli Grand Prix in Libya. Sadly for Farina, he was just reaching his peak as a driver at the outbreak of World War II, and it would be another eight years before he would win another major race.

During the war he served as an officer in a tank regiment but luck held and he survived the war. After World War II Farina resumed racing and got married, to Elsa Giaretto in a high society wedding, who ran an exclusive fashion emporium in Turin.

Entering post-war Grands Prix in a privately owned Maserati, Farina took a win at the 1948 Monaco Grand Prix. When the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile announced the inaugural World Championship for 1950, Farina secured a drive alongside Juan Manuel Fangio and countryman Luigi Fagioli at the dominant Alfa Romeo team, driving the invincible 158 Alfetta cars and where they were know as the three “F”s.

The penning round of the season took place at Silverstone, England and the British Grand Prix. There were four Alfa Romeos entered for the race with the fourth driven by local hero Reg Parnell. Farina was fastest in qualifying and the other three Alfas were alongside him on the front row. At the start Farina took the lead with Fagioli and Fangio in pursuit.

Fangio retired with engine troubles and the order at the finish saw an Alfa 1-2-3 with Farina leading Fagioli home by 2.5 seconds with Parnell a distant third. Fangio won the next race in Monaco which featured the famous crash at Tabac Corner which collected Farina while he was running 2nd. Farina returned the favor at the Swiss Grand Prix on the daunting Bremergarten circuit where Fangio had his second retirement.

Both drivers would end the season with three wins a piece with Farina finishing three points ahead of the Argentinean. Farina at the age of 44, had won the first ever World Championship. It was the pinnacle of his long but interrupted career.

In 1951 Farina only won one race, the Belgian Grand Prix and his teammate Juan Manuel Fangio won his first title. At the end of the year Alfa Romeo withdrew from racing and for the fallowing year Farina moved to join Ferrari who since the war was building his own cars.

1953 turned out to be a better year for Farina winning the Italian Grand Prix and scoring three 2nd but the year belonged to the young Alberto Ascari who won the World Championship scoring five solid victories. For Farina it seemed the end was finally near.

He crashed badly in a sports car event at the start of 1954 and sustained serious burns. He returned to racing but needed amphetamines and morphine to cope with the pain. In 1956 he entered the Indianapolis 500 and failed to qualify but not before enthralling the Americans with his stories of racing in Europe on one hand and offering driving tips on the other. Finally quitting the sport in 1959 Enzo Ferrari would later remark that: 

“He was like a high strung thoroughbred, capable of committing the most astonishing follies. As a consequence he was a regular inmate of the hospital wards.”

The end finally came in 1966 when in icy conditions he lost control of the Lotus Cortina he was driving, and collided with a telegraph pole.

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Jochen Mass “is an extremely knowledgeable driver with a tremendous feel for racing cars. He is familiar with the racing history of every age,” said Sir Stirling Moss.

This is precisely the description that fits Jochen Mass: not just that, in his active days, he was Germany’s most successful racing driver, but he is equally at home in racing cars from the complete history of motor sport, knowing how to pilot them with great virtuosity. Whether pre-war or post-war cars, Mercedes-Simplex, Mercedes-Benz SSK, famous Silver Arrows such as W 25 and W 196 R, the Sauber-Mercedes C 9 or the rally racers of the 1980s: Jochen Mass is an expert at the wheel.

And he possesses an unrivalled ability to describe the peculiarities of vehicles from every age and to accurately compare their technologies and driving characteristics. In this way, Jochen Mass allows enthusiasts and visitors to share in his driving experiences. As he recently turned 70, Mercedes-Benz sends him the warmest congratulations.

Jochen Mass was born on 30 September 1946 in Dorfen near Wolfratshausen and grew up near Mannheim. His first career move was as a sailor on the world’s oceans. After that, however, he quickly turned towards motor sport. Having served his apprenticeship as a mechanic, in 1968 he began his varied career in motorsport with touring car racing. In 1972, he won the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. At the same time, he took part in Formula 2, finishing second in the 1973 European championship. In the same year, Mass made his Formula 1 debut in the Grand Prix of Great Britain at Silverstone, driving for the Surtees team. Having proved himself in top-tier motorsport, he went on to contest a total of 105 Grand Prix races for various teams, collecting 71 world championship points. Alongside Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips, he was until that time Germany’s most successful Formula 1 driver.

After his years in Formula 1, his career carried on apace: in 1984, Mass piloted a Mercedes-Benz 500 SLC (C 107) in the Paris–Dakar Rally. In this highly challenging event, simply completing the race represented a great achievement: he finished 62nd. After winning the German Sports Car Championship in 1985 and a stint as a works driver at Porsche, in 1988 he joined the Sauber-Mercedes team as a works driver. He drove in Group C for the same team until 1991. In the new Silver Arrow, the Sauber-Mercedes C9, Jochen Mass triumphed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1989 in the same team as Manuel Reuter and Stanley Dickens, going on to finish runner-up in the world championship in the same year. Three years later, in 1992, Mass moved to team management of the DTM. On land, water and in the air — Jochen Mass is a competitor through and through: in 1992, the trained sailor took part in a balloon race across the Atlantic. From 1993 to 1997, he worked as a co-commentator on Formula 1 broadcasts for the RTL television station.

Given this experience, it is hardly surprising that Jochen Mass is today active as a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador, taking part in historical events. He regularly competes in a team with other famous racing drivers. Sir Stirling Moss recalls their joint participation in the Mille Miglia in 2005 — fifty years after his triumph in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Moss: “I drove out into the night and, as agreed, handed over this great car just a short time later to my replacement driver — Jochen Mass. I did so with no misgivings whatsoever, as, for me, Jochen is a kindred spirit.”

Mass also served as Honorary Chairman of the 2014 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, where he was reunited with his Le Mans-winning Sauber Mercedes C9 on the silver anniversary of their Le Mans victory. A further selection of Jochen’s race cars were among the highlights of the Race Cars of Jochen Mass class.

[Source: Daimler AG]

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