First off, any overall victory at Le Mans is impressive. But for Ferrari, even more so considering this year’s win marked the Scuderia’s 10th overall victory (the first in 1949, then 1954, 1958 and a subsequent string of dominance from 1960-1965). After its 1960-1964 win streak, the Commendatore, Enzo Ferrari, famously chose to focus his factory racing efforts and resources on Formula One from that point forward, arguably leading to Ferrari’s long 50-year absence from the top rung of the podium at Le Sarthe. But there is an interesting kernel of history buried in these observations that I’m surprised I’ve never heard mentioned before. In the 100 years of Le Mans history, Ferrari is the only manufacturer to have won both Le Mans and the Formula One manufacturers championship in the same year. And even more impressively, they did this “double” twice.

In 1961, Ferrari not only won Le Mans with Phil Hill and Oliver Gendebien driving the 250 TR, but Hill also won the Formula One World Championship in the famed 156 “Sharknose”. Then this herculean feat was repeated, in 1964, when Guichet and Vaccarella won Le Mans in the 275 P and John Surtees took the F1 crown in the Ferrari 158. If you stop to think about the amount of engineering and resources that would go into designing, building and testing, two completely separate and distinct world-beating racing programs like that… it’s a pretty stunning achievement.

Now, before you fire up your angry screeds to tell me what an idiot I am (I already know), yes, Porsche did win Le Mans in ’84 and ’85, the same years that the McLaren-TAG’s won the F1 title, but it’s not really the same thing. Say what you will about Ferrari, but you have to hand it to them, they build every component of their cars—chassis, engine, gearbox etc.—for all of their cars… F1, Le Mans, you name it. Porsche only supplied the engines for McLaren. And if you want to go way back and get nit-picky, an argument could be made for Alfa Romeo winning Le Mans and the Grand Prix championship in both 1931 & 1932, but there wasn’t a formal manufacturers championship back then, so it’s a more difficult comparison. But neither case should in any way detract from how impressive it was for Ferrari to win such vastly different disciplines, in the same year. Which, of course, raises the question…now that Ferrari has won Le Mans this year, what are the odds that they repeat their 1961/1964 double?

Hmmmm, at this stage of the F1 season, I’d say it’s not looking too promising!

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So, the two of us are happily motoring along to the steady purr of two cams, accompanied by dual Webers, when my daughter casually looks down and innocently asks, “What’s that pedal in the middle?” Of course, my gentle, fatherly reply was, “You’re f-ing kidding, right?” Apparently, she wasn’t. “Ah…that’s the brake,” I replied awkwardly.

To which my now drinking age daughter countered, “Right, that’s what I thought. So, if that’s the brake, what’s the other pedal to the left of it.” Ah! Now we get to the crux of the situation. When she rode in the Alfa as a small child, she was oblivious to the many switches, levers and pedals. Few kids care about the details… Go faster Dada, go faster!

But now, as a driving adult, I realize that she’s never really been exposed to a car with a manual transmission. Nowadays, in the U.S. at least, you’re hard-pressed to find a new car with a manual transmission. Slightly appalled—but relieved that she at least knew what the brake was—I then launched into a fatherly diatribe on the workings of the clutch and its actions on the transmission… yadda-yadda-yadda.

To her credit, she appeared politely interested, but seemingly unimpressed with my lecture so we soon returned to just the gentle, dulcet tones of the engine singing along at 4,000 rpm. However, a few minutes later, our shared automotive Zen was again broken, when my apparently now more observant daughter proclaimed, “That can’t be right, we’re going much faster than 45 miles per hour.”

Since I had recently invested some $300 in having my speedometer fixed —some 10 years ago the needle elected to leap to his own death at the bottom of the gauge — I looked down with alarm, only to see that we were, in fact, doing 60 mph with said resurrected needle pointing dead-nuts straight up as God had intended it to. “What are you talking about?”, I countered. “The gauge says we’re doing 60.”

To which my youngin replied, “No it’s not, it says 45 right there.” Confused, and now concerned that I had been gypped out of $300, I furiously scanned the gauge until I finally located what she was referring to. Much to my amazement (and horror if I’m honest) she was looking at the trip odometer! But in her defense, she has grown up in a digital world, not an analog one and the trip odometer numbers stand out more prominently than the 60-year-old white MPH numerals silkscreened on the formerly clear, now yellowing bezel.

As we motored on down the freeway, I wrestled with how I could have so completely failed as a father. Should I have denied her all those dance classes in lieu of a shifter kart? Should I have at least forced her to learn to drive on a stick? I was beating myself up thusly when I happened to spot an early Porsche 911 coming up in the lane next to us. As it pulled alongside, I gave the man behind the wheel a knowing nod of acknowledgement, as we all do, and then noticed what appeared to be his teenage daughter in the passenger seat next to him, presumably on the same father-daughter Sunday drive bonding exercise that we were…except she had this bored, please-come-save-me hostage look on her face that said this was not her Sunday dream come true. And this gave me hope.

At least my daughter wanted to be out there with me in the old car. And between her growing interest in Formula One and possibly the first inklings of an interest in classic cars, I began to believe that maybe it’s never too late to pass on the disease. But if she is truly bitten by the bug, I’ll now face the even more daunting dilemma… how is she going to learn to drive a stick? She ain’t learning on my car!

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Blink as you go by and you might miss it—as the Scots are pretty humble and low key about most things, including their heroes—but seeing this tribute to Clark got my mind thinking as I navigated my way around countless lochs and glens for the next few days. With a total population of just 5.5 million people, Scotland really punches far above its weight when it comes to producing world class racing drivers. In Formula One alone, Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark account for five World Championships between themselves, then you throw in the likes of Archie Scott Brown, Dario Franchitti, his brother Marino and David Coulthard and that’s a lot of driving talent from one sparsely populated country. By comparison, racing powerhouses like Germany has 83 million people to draw from, while Brazil has 214 million and the U.S. 331 million. So, what is the secret sauce that makes the Scots such great drivers?

In my personal experience of driving in Scotland numerous times over the past three decades, I’d say it’s the roads. For all its size and expanse, there is not a straight section of road in the entire country! Cumulatively, the country is made up of thousands of miles of twisty-turny, one and two-lane roads, with all manner of blind corners, off camber turns and uneven surfaces. When you add in the fact that the Highlands of Scotland also receives a total of 250 days of rain per year, you have the perfect breeding ground for talented, seat-of-the-pants drivers. In fact, I’d argue it’s a microcosm of automotive Darwinism, as you either learn how to deftly handle a car in Scotland or you won’t be passing your genes on to the next generation!

Fortunately, my family and I managed to log more than 500 trouble-free miles over hill and dale in our Highlands journey. But driving there does require constant vigilance and concentration… I suppose it adds new meaning to the country’s unofficial national anthem “Scotland the Brave.”

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Now, when you think of this rarest automotive maverick, who comes to mind? Most likely its names like Ferruccio Lamborghini, Preston Tucker or John DeLorean. Men who had a burning fire to see their deepest automotive fantasy brought to life and manifested into physical form. And, while these visionaries did ultimately see their dreams through to fruition, they each had vast financial and engineering resources at their disposal to aid them in the construction of their unique creations. In short, yes, they had the fever… but did they have the madness?

No, what fascinates me and fills me with awe are the madmen, the craftsmen, that wake up one morning and say, “Mildred, I think I’m going to build that sports car I can’t get out of my head.” This week you’ll find a fascinating feature on just such a character, David Simmons, an Alfa fanatic who wanted a rare Tipo 33 Stradale so badly, he built one in his home garage… from scratch! That is true automotive madness, God love him.

And fortunately for us (and the hobby) he is not alone. Over the years, we’ve featured a number of these Mad Dogs… I mean craftsmen; guys like Jerry Shuck and his JS Can-Am Special, or Alex Bacon and his Alfa-based sports racer. High functioning hobbyists, like Simmons, that aren’t content to buy someone else’s dream machine, so they build their own…did I mention from scratch!!

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to spend time with a number of these touched, but gifted, individuals, including Simmons. On the surface they seem like you or I, a keen enthusiast passionate about their cars. But under that oil impregnated skin lurks a passion, an obsession, that is truly next level. In some ways, I feel lucky that this extreme form of the disease is not contagious… but I do have a few ideas rolling around in the back of my head.

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While my interest in the LBGP has ebbed and flowed over the past 48 years, with the various transitions from F5000 to F1 to CART/Champcar/IRL/Indycar/et. al., I have to say that this year’s event was one of the very best in recent memory for the overall quality of racing, up and down the board.

Interestingly, of all the racing on tap this weekend, the one I found the least compelling was the featured Indy cars! I know they have great, tight racing, but the Stepford Wife-sameness of the cars, with their Kirby upright vacuum-sounding engines just doesn’t get my juices going. However, if you wanted to watch some exciting, one-make racing, the Porsche Carrera Cup undercard was great fun. Throw 35 identically prepared Porsche 992s onto a concrete-lined street course and you’re going to get an action-packed race. Elsewhere on the bill, the inclusion this weekend of a race for historic 3-liter Formula One cars was obviously going to be a high-point, especially in lieu of my “Old Man” nostalgia looking back over my 48-year committed relationship with this race. But the real surprise for me this year was the IMSA race. Man, that ticked all the right boxes.

The IMSA race really reminded me of the “Good Ol’ Days”. It was a big, diverse field, with a ton of direct manufacturer involvement (Porsche, Acura, BMW, Cadillac, Aston Martin, Mercedes, McLaren, Chevrolet, Lexus, Lamborghini). But I think what made it the most appealing for me was the sound…finally, here was a race series with a heterogeneity of sound. In the GTP, the deep V8 rumble of the Cadillacs was distinct from the whoosh of the Porsches or the wail of the BMWs. Each car looked different, sounded different AND went like stink. But I have to confess that the real revelation for me this weekend was the GTD Corvette. The sound that Corvette makes is pure magic. The combination of its DOHC V-8 engine and flat-plane crank gives the Corvette a nasty, gnashy-gnarly howl that just puts my adrenal glands in overload. Sitting in the stands, listening to that thing growl on the overrun, so reminded me of listening to a similar sound being spat out the back of Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari 312T4, when he won at Long Beach in 1979. As I basked in this aural nostalgia, I commented to the friend I was with that that sound is the most visceral engine note, I’ve ever heard in my entire life… and at this point, that’s a lot of engine notes!

Near the end of the day, said friend and I sat in another grandstand to watch the Indycar practice. While visually the cars were clearly rocketing by, much faster than the IMSA contingent, their whisper quietness seemed to lessen the impact of their higher speed. After just a couple of minutes, my friend turned to me and said, “Well, at least with these you can carry on a conversation.”

Yeah, I think that’s the problem…

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As my dad has also written about, my mom became obsessed with the Netflix show Drive to Survive, like so many other Americans who were clueless about the European-centric sport. One weekend, while I was home visiting my parents, I watched a few episodes with her, including the infamous “Man on Fire” episode that showcased Romain Grosjean’s life-threatening crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix. I remember watching Grosjean pull himself out of the still-burning fire and thinking, these drivers are both insane and insanely impressive.

Suddenly, just like the start of a race, my love for the skill and artistry of racing went from 0 to 100 in a heartbeat, and my life changed forever.

I finally decided to take a break from the mind-numbing reality dating shows my father berates me for watching and sat down to watch Drive to Survive from the very beginning. Fourteen near sleepless days later, I finished the entire series and was fully hooked. Much to my father’s surprise, I’m now more of a rabid fan than either he or my mom! I follow all the drivers on social media, and I watch all the practices, qualifying, and races live, no matter the start time. I have my favorite team (Scuderia Ferrari), drivers (Charles Leclerc and Daniel Ricciardo), and even my favorite team principal (Guenther Steiner of Haas Ferrari).

Ultimately, I think what drew me into this sport was my love for the emotional and real human stories behind the drivers. In fact, my newfound obsession with following the drivers (and their fan accounts) even enabled me to stump my “Old Man” with an historical connection he wasn’t aware of. Shocking, I know.

One day, while on one of my deep dives into the F1 Twitter-sphere, someone posted a graphic comparing Fernando Alonso to Niki Lauda. I knew of Niki Lauda from watching Rush with my dad and from his death being documented in Drive To Survive, but I learned there are some mind boggling parallels between him and Alonso. Both Lauda and Alonso retired as two-time champions, in 1979 and 2018, respectively.  Both drivers retired and then returned to F1 after two seasons out, in 1982 and 2021. Both drivers, in their third season after coming back, were with British teams (McLaren and Aston Martin), and both cars had a German engine (TAG-Porsche and Mercedes). For Lauda, this third season post-return with McLaren led him to winning the Driver’s Championship. With all of the stars appearing to align, and Alonso getting third place on every podium thus far this season, will he have the same victorious season ending as Lauda?

It’s still too early to tell, but there are plenty of races for Alonso to continue to get points ahead of the Red Bull drivers. Or better yet, plenty of time to win his first race in 10 years, with his last win being in 2013 at the Spanish Grand Prix with Ferrari. For the sake of the story (and, honestly, to push Red Bull down a peg), I hope Alonso really is able to follow in the historic footsteps of Lauda. The only thing that would be more compelling to me is Charles Leclerc winning the Driver’s Championship with Scuderia Ferrari in honor of his late godfather Jules Bianchi (with current leader Max Verstappen falling victim to the “Bahrain Curse”!) But that’s a story for another day.

Speaking of Alonso, he took Twitter by storm last week when he posted a hilarious response to George Russell after regaining third place in Saudi Arabia.

Despite marinating in racing for most of her young life, Gillian Annis is an Executive Assistant in television production at NBC/Universal… and daughter of Editor-in-Chief Casey Annis

The post How I Stumped My Old Man with Alonso and Lauda appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Many moons ago, I unearthed a true barn find, a very original Lotus 51 that had been rolled off the track and stuffed into a storage unit in the late ‘70s. It was a surreal automotive experience you can read about here if interested (“Mr. Nutter’s Cave of Wonders”). After extricating the car, I restored it myself and then showed and raced it for several years, before “adulting” took hold of my life and I reluctantly sold it so we could buy our first home. Lame, right?

The car stayed local for a number of years and then was sold back east, at which point I lost track of it. Years later, it popped up on eBay, to briefly haunt my dreams (read “The Haunting”), before being sold overseas. I knew the car had ultimately made its way to Australia, but after another ownership change or two, the trail went cold… that is until I started spouting off about poor man’s Daytonas.

In my exchange with my newfound Tasmanian friend, I was heartened to learn that the old girl has shacked up with a very keen owner and enthusiast who seems to love her as much as I did. His collection is impressive and even includes a younger stablemate in the form of a Lotus 61 FF. However, in comparing the two he had to confide that the 61, “… does not feel as good, it may just be psychological, but it does not look as handsome either!” Once again, he and I are of like minds.

I closed with him by lamenting that this Lotus, for me, will likely always be “the one that got away.” To which he then very graciously invited me to come to Tasmania, stay with him and have an on-track reunion with my lost love. So very, very tempting. The only wrinkle is, after just getting back from a solo trip to South Africa, how do I convince Mrs. Annis that I long to galivant across the globe to be reunited with a lost love?

For now, I suppose I’ll just have to be content in the knowledge that I now know where the one that got away… got away to.

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the many exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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So with that said, I certainly understand why the collector car world goes gaga over the Daytona. It’s really one of the last, and arguably greatest, “Enzo-era” Ferrari V-12 road cars. And, as such, it has a price tag that lives up to the hype—$1.3 million for a concours standard GTB. But what if I told you there was an alternative, a “poor man’s” alternative, that has been all but forgotten by the collector cognoscenti and provides the same basic mechanicals, in a… prepare to gasp… more comfortable and better-looking package… for a fraction of the price?

This “working man’s” Daytona is the 365 GTC/4 and I have to say that, like my taste for Brussel sprouts and the herniated discs in my back, it has grown on me with advancing age. Back in the day, these were cheap as chips, no one wanted a 2+2 version of the Daytona, when you could have a real Daytona for $22,000 (my father had the option of buying either a Daytona or his Dino for that price, but that’s a tragic story for another day). Both had essentially the same chassis and 4.4-liter Colombo-designed V-12 engine (though the Daytona’s had downdraft carbs and a dry sump, while the GTC had sidedrafts and a wet sump), resulting in the Daytona having a mere 12-HP advantage. What the GTC also gave up to the Daytona in additional weight (about 500-lbs), it made up for in one of the most luxurious and comfortable interiors in any Ferrari up to that time…. and then there was the styling. Time has been exceedingly kind to the GTC, in my opinion. Due to its sidedraft carburetors, Pininfarina was able to give it a low, sleek sexy profile that looks like a blade slicing through the air. I will admit here, by contrast, that for all my fanboy geekdom over the Daytona, I’ve always found its nose to look just a little ungainly, when viewed from the wrong angle. Heresy!

But here’s the kicker, yes you can do battle with the entire collector car world and try to purchase one of the 1,284 Daytona Coupes and pay upwards of $1.3 million for the privilege, or you could buy a more comfortable, equally as beautiful GTC/4, that makes all the same sounds, performs nearly as well, and can potentially bring two Lilliputian-sized humans along in the back, for just $350,000.

Crazy-talk? Maybe. The 10-year-old me, would have spat on the 57-year-old me for even suggesting such an outlandish notion. But I suppose age and financial fluency has a way of tempering the tastes of even the most snobby Ferrari enthusiasts. Afterall, I could buy a lot of Brussel sprouts with the million dollars saved.

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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Then, a few weeks ago, I was at an Alfa Romeo Owners Club event when a friend told me it was coming back, for a special, one-day, invite only event they were calling “Lattes & Lincolns”. He asked if I’d like to bring my Alfa as one of the 300 invited cars? Ah…yeah!

So now that my Alfa is running so well — and I’ve committed to being a good boy and driving it more frequently — I was stoked at the opportunity to drive it down to Irvine this past Saturday and show it amongst the automotive cognoscenti. That is until I woke up Saturday morning to the latest in a continuing series of Biblical rain storms we’ve endured the past few months. [Insert, author screams and shakes his fists at the heavens, here]. I so wanted to drive her down to the show but, while I have rediscovered the joys of my soft top, that car has not seen so much as a drop of water in the past 25 years. If I were to even drive it on a wet road, let alone in the rain, I know I’ll irreversibly set in motion the rusty demarcation of every scratch and untreated part, as well as the slow dissolution of every square centimeter of genuine uncoated Italian sheet metal. Nobody puts Baby in the rain…

Despite my bitter disappointment, the wife and I trundled down to the show anyway in her less-than-car-show-worthy Volvo SUV. And, while there were certainly a significant number of rain-aversive wimps, such as myself, that took a pass, there was still a solid 150-200 cars that braved the conditions. Organized by Ford PR legend John Clinard, the event was once again hosted in the parking lot of the Ford Design Center and featured a host of rare Lincolns, including the wildly futuristic Lincoln L100 concept car, with its massive space-age interior. Elsewhere scattered around the parking lot were Ferraris, Porsches, a clutch of exquisite coachbuilt Alfas, a Bugatti Veyron and even one of Dan Gurney’s Eagle Indy cars.  Standing next to the Indy car, my wife asked what year it was and before I could respond a petite, well-dressed woman turned around and in a German accent said, “1968”. “Oh, hey Evi!”, was my response to Dan Gurney’s wife Evi, who I haven’t caught up with in some time.

Between catching up with Evi and other friends, and poking around all the rare and interesting cars (you don’t see a mid-engined Matra Bonnet every day!), Lattes & Lincolns absolutely lived up to its storied past. Now, if I could just convince Clinard to hold just one more under drier conditions!

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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First off, in what alternate, multi-verse would you expect to see an Aston Martin finish on the podium of a Grand Prix? Not even the Marvel Cinematic Universe could have dreamed up something that seemingly outlandish. This notion is all the more absurd if you’re at all familiar with Aston’s history in Formula One. Aston first entered Formula One in 1959, the year that all the front-running teams were moving over to rear-engine racecars. Of course, Aston entered the front-engined DBR4 and was properly shellacked. Never one to give up on a bad idea, the boys from Newport Pagnell, then came back for another beating in 1960 with a rear-engined…. no, I’m just kidding!… of course, they came back with another front-engined car, the DBR5! Anyway, you get the picture, Formula One was not really Aston’s cup of tea.

But then, 60 years later, in struts billionaire car enthusiast, Lawrence Stroll, in 2020. Stroll backed a moving truck up to Aston’s shop door and proceeded to shovel money into the ailing manufacturer like a fireman feeds coal into a locomotive. Not only did Stroll invest in the production and modernization of the road cars, but for good measure, he bought the struggling Force India Formula One team and turned it into Aston Martin Formula One. Since then, the Aston team has lived up to its F1 heritage by being a struggling backmarker, just like they were in ’59 & ’60…. or so it seemed.

But Stroll had a plan…and it involved at least one or more semi-trucks filled with cash. First, he hired away Red Bull’s Chief Aerodynamicist Dan Fallows and made him Technical Director and then he went all in, when the opportunity arose, and hired 2-time World Champion Fernando Alonso away from Alpine. Considering, Stroll had to pay $5 million to entice the now 40-year old Alonso to join Aston, many doubting pundits (including yours truly) considered this a fool-hardy move. Uh… genius move, you mean!

There’s no question that the new Aston Martin has the pace to now be a front-runner. But the secret sauce that put Aston on the podium for the first time in 64 years was unquestionably Alonso. Alonso clawed his way through drivers like Hamilton and Leclerc with pure racecraft the likes of which we haven’t seen in F1 in a long time. It was like watching a master class — inside fakes, to late apex lines that set up for exciting passes under acceleration at the exit. You know who it very much reminded me of? Another supposedly over-the-hill Grand Prix driver named Juan Manuel Fangio.

It’s nigh on impossible to predict how Aston’s F1 fortunes will unfold for the balance of 2023. But, I can tell you one thing… Stroll got more than his money’s worth in Alonso. All hail the Nuevo Maestro!

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Interestingly, the Lotus Cortina was the brainchild of then-newly hired Ford UK public relations director Walter Hayes. Ford was on its early ’60s “Total Performance” kick and the UK arm of the company had basically zilch that fit the bill. Desperate for something to tout, Hayes, who prior to taking the job with Ford was a newspaper editor, decided he’d enlist the aid of a bright young lad who had occasionally written for him… that lad, of course, being one Colin Chapman. Hayes pitched the idea to Chapman that Lotus could take Ford’s new, but decidedly staid, Consul Cortina sedan, and hot it up with the twin-cam Ford engine that Chapman had been developing for the Lotus 23 with the help of Keith Duckworth. Originally, Chapman was only supposed to convert 1,000 examples to satisfy the homologation requirements, but it proved to be so potent and popular that production went on for three years and produced a total of 7,399 examples across two model generations.

In many respects, the Lotus Cortina became one of the first modern “sleepers”, outwardly pedestrian-looking sedans that hid giant-killing performance under their skin. I was fortunate enough to test drive one a few years ago and I can certainly attest to the car’s remarkable potency (I’ve featured my Cortina Profile, below in the archive articles section, if you’d like to read more).

In fact, even 60 years on, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a faster, more responsive, normally-aspirated 1600-cc sedan than the Lotus Cortina. And, really, how many 60-year olds can claim to being just as potent as they were in their youth?

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In the off chance that you’ve either been off on a Tibetan solitude retreat for the past several months or in a coma, there has been a lot of media hype building into next month’s start of the 2024 F1 season. But of all the drivers making appearances and posting wacky videos online, who do you see the most? Reigning champion Verstappen? Multiple past champion Hamilton? No, the media darling of the 2024 race season is unquestionably Daniel Ricciardo… a reserve driver. Huh?

You have to hand it to him, while he is/was a decent if not occasionally gifted driver, Ricciardo’s real talent was in creating a cult of personality far bigger and more valuable than his behind-the-wheel accomplishments. With the help of the Netflix series “Drive to Survive”, I would argue that Ricciardo built an image and a “brand” so big, he became a valuable asset just for his media attention alone. Of all the drivers in Formula One, who would you guess has the most social media followers? Hamilton is the top with a staggering 42.8 million. Next comes Verstappen with 14.4 million. But that makes sense, right? These are two multiple World Champions. But guess who is the third most followed driver in the world? Yep, Ricciardo with 11.7 million and growing.

If you think about it, it kind of makes sense that a driver with a massive media following would have outsized value, compared to a lesser-known driver with equal driving talent. F1 runs on money. Where does that money come from? Advertising. What is advertising looking for? Exposure. Where do you get exposure? Conventional and now social media.

So, in this new business construct, an influencer… I mean driver, like Ricciardo, doesn’t even have to drive to be valuable to a team like Red Bull, if he is generating massive exposure for them. The fact that Daniel is also a serviceable driver that could step in when required is almost a value-added. Plus, as a bonus, with him siphoning off most of the apparent pre-season PR duties, it relieves a lot of that load off of his “on track” teammates Verstappen and Perez.

So now, in 2023, one of the biggest, most visible personalities in Formula One, is a driver, who doesn’t drive. I’m beginning to think that Kim Kardashian might have a future at Williams!

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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The Design Concepts of Jean Bugatti

As a freethinking engineer and designer, his automobile creations were exceptional, daring to break norms and conventions. Today, his work continues to inspire the team at the home of Bugatti in Molsheim. “Jean Bugatti was an artist of the highest order that so happened to craft his work in the automotive sphere,” says Christophe Piochon, President of Bugatti Automobiles. “And for that, we can all be thankful, because Jean’s work was extraordinary; his conceptions at the time weren’t just forward-looking, they were otherworldly.”

As a young man, he ambitiously added a new dimension to the Type 41 Royale his father presented to the world in 1926, designing the Type 41 Royale Roadster Esders, an elegant two-seater convertible. And the Esders marked the start of not only Jean’s design journey but the beginning of the Jean Bugatti era of the business, guided by his beautiful designs and ingenious creations. By 1936 Ettore passed the baton onto his son, giving him full responsibility of the company at the tender age of 27.

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But one detail I didn’t think to share at the time was that when I went to pick up my car at the shop, I was surprised to see that they had put the top up on it. Now, ordinarily this wouldn’t be any great revelation, but in the almost 20 years that I’ve owned this car the top has only been up once…and that was the day it was delivered to me off the back of a transporter! Of course, keep in mind, I live in Southern California where the weather is arguably nice all the time. Plus, as I’ve already confessed, I drive the car so in frequently that, when I do, it is only in good weather. So, if you’re driving a convertible, in nice weather, why wouldn’t you drive with the top down? Thererfore, all of my driving in the Alfa has been with the top down.

But when I picked it up, it was uncharacteristically cold that day, and I was in a hurry, so I drove it home with the top up… and it was like driving a completely different car! Insulated from the whipping wind and the noise, it was a completely different experience. I would imagine its akin to your spouse of 30-plus years dressing up in that naughty nurse or bad pizza-boy costume… kind of spices up an otherwise “routine” experience.

In fact, I enjoyed the ride home, with the top up, so much that I left it up. Since then, I’ve been a good boy and have taken the car out several more times over the past 2-3 weeks and, each time, I’ve driven it top up. And, much to my surprise, I’m still really enjoying it. If your fortunate enough to own a convertible, I can’t recommend the experience enough. You’ll discover all kinds of new things about your pride and joy.

However, one major drawback is that now that I’ve finally had a chance to take a good, long look at my convertible top, I realize that if I’m going to continue to use it, I really need to replace it. There’s something to be said for “Out of sight, out of mind”… it’s certainly much less expensive!

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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Obviously, Ford officially returning to Formula One is a big deal since, despite only being an official supplier from 1967-2004, they still rank third overall in wins with 176 and are only eclipsed by Mercedes (213) and Ferrari (243). Amazingly, 155 of Ford’s wins came from a single engine design the DFV, but that’s really where the air quotes start…since that’s arguably not really a Ford.

Now, before you start firing off those poison-pen emails telling me what an ignorant dufus I am (no argument), my point here is that when you really get down to it the DFV was a Cosworth. The brainchild of engine boffins Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin, the DFV engine was really one of the first “nameplate” engines in Formula One, i.e. an engine built by a specialist house with financial support by a major manufacturer. And, arguably, one of the best investments Ford ever made! So, while the name on the cam covers said “Ford”, it could just as easily have said “Maserati” or “Daihatsu”, had the money been right.

In fact, if you look back over the past 50 years of Formula One, a lot of the “manufacturer” engines were really in name only, having been designed and built by cottage outfits like Cosworth, Hart and Ilmor.

And speaking of Ilmor, even today a number of F1 engines are quasi-nameplate. All the Mercedes engines are designed and built in the UK in the Ilmor factory that Mercedes purchased in 2001, after company founder Paul Morgan was killed in a plane crash. In fact, even the Aston Martin engine is a Mercedes, which is arguably an Ilmor! Likewise, Red Bull has their own powertrain development company now (as a result of Honda’s departure), and essentially this new Ford deal will see the Blue Oval pour buckets of cash into this new powertrain project, but likely have little direct engineering involvement other than sharing its expertise in advanced battery technology for the new energy recovery systems that come into effect in 2026.

But, make no mistake, the above diatribe is in no way intended to be a diminution of the significance of Ford’s announcement. Come 2026, we’re finally going to see a real battle of the ages, between all the major heavies—Ford, GM(most likely), Mercedes, Ferrari, Audi, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Renault and most likely Porsche. What a field, right?! But keep in mind, maybe only a third(?) of those prestigious names will actually be physically engineering their own powertrains. The rest will be carrying on the now time-honored tradition of Nameplate Engineering, pioneered by Cosworth and Ford… way back in 1967.

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

Click here to sign up…it’s 100% free, with no commitment.

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The world works in strange ways and the classic car world, in particular, is both strikingly strange and remarkably small. For the past 12 days, I’ve been in Cape Town, South Africa. I didn’t come here for cars at all (I came to race surfskis of all things!), but somehow cars seem to find me regardless of how remote the location. As luck would have it, I learned while here that renowned car broker and friend of the magazine Marc Devis was also in Cape Town, so we agreed to have breakfast before I flew home. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Marc walks into mine… so that was the first small world coincidence.

Then, what were the odds that right next door to the hotel that I randomly chose, there would be a classic car showroom? Laude Classic cars (www.laudeclassics.com) was not only next door, but in what has to be one of the great, genius moves of the ages, the owners have built out a full, sit down coffee bar in part of the showroom that serves breakfast and lunch! Is it a coffee bar with cars as decorations or a classic car showroom that serves coffee? Doesn’t matter. What a brilliant way to amortize the cost of the space and guarantee regular showroom traffic.

So, Marc and I sit there enjoying our breakfast and coffee, BS-ing about cars and having a generally grand ol’ time, when the owner, Dean Knoop, recognizes Marc and stops by to say hi. The three of us chat for a while about cars and the market, before I ask Dean if the current state of the exchange rate has hurt his business. What he said, kind of floored me, “No, it’s the opposite! Because the Rand is so devalued against the Dollar, Euro and Pound, we are selling cars like crazy. All exports. The prices are low, and like you in California, all of our cars are dry because they never see snow or bad weather.” Damn! It makes perfect sense once I hear it, but it just never really occurred to me that there could be both good cars and currency leverage here.

So, if you’re looking for good value, Africa may be the last great frontier for inexpensive, dry cars. Of course, a lot of what’s here are British classics, and right-hand drive at that, but Laude had a Ferrari and a Maserati in the showroom, so you never know what treasures you’ll discover here at the bottom of what is apparently an ever-smaller car world.

Casey Annis’s editorial is one of the exclusive features you’ll find in our FREE weekly newsletter, as well as all the previous week’s breaking news, latest content, curated articles from our vast archive and select interesting cars for sale.

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I’ve owned a 1962 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider Veloce for nearly 20 years now and I am, apparently, a neglectful owner. This fact was recently brought into sharp focus when I had to have it towed into the shop because it wouldn’t run on more than three-ish cylinders. I knew deep down what the ailment was, the same one that claims the lives of millions of Americans each year, inactivity. Only instead of a clogged coronary artery, my Alfa had goobered up Weber carburetors. Sadly, there’s no Lipitor for Webers.

When I asked my Alfa guru what I could do to avoid this, he said the same thing he told me the last time this happened three years ago, “You just have to drive it more. The gas is just sitting in there and the ethanol in it is corroding all the passages.” I know he’s right, but it makes me feel guilty and neglectful, like a bad pet owner that leaves the family dog to fend for itself…for one to six months.

I always have the best of intentions to drive her, but there’s always some reason why I don’t take her out. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. All the Christmas decorations are piled up around the Alfa like a medieval embattlement. Sometimes I assuage my guilt, by at least going out and letting it idle in the garage. But then the wife complains that it makes all the laundry smell like exhaust fumes…she says that like it’s a bad thing.

So after a modicum of self-flagellation, and an $800 carb rebuild, I had said missus drive me to the shop to pick it up.  After the above-mentioned dressing down for not driving it enough, I climbed behind the wheel, she fired right up and I headed out for the 30 minute drive home. With trips to both the cardiologist and the mechanic, there’s nothing like heading home with that clean-bill-of-health feeling. You feel bullet proof! I accelerated with confidence onto the freeway and felt a renewed love and connection with my little car as she strongly purred along.

In fact, by the time I got home, I was so pleased with the experience, I thought to myself, “I really should drive this car more.”

PS- If you’d like to see the poor, old, neglected girl in action, Petrolicious did a fun video on her and I which you can see by clicking below.

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In my experience, most auto enthusiasts tend to live dual lives, we have our automotive life (cars, car-friends, events, etc) and then we tend to have a separate parallel life (work, family, other hobbies). But I always find it a little surreal when—once in blue moon—these two separate lives intersect.

As you read through the Racecar Profile and Fast Exposure installments this month, you’ll see the name John Sprinzel pop up numerous times. Not only was Sprinzel an accomplished rally driver from the 1950s through to the early ’70s, but he was also instrumental in the aftermarket tuning and performance of the Austin-Healey Sprite and the very special Sebring Sprites.

In 1957, Sprinzel (and partners Len Adams and George Hulbert) founded Speedwell, where they tuned and prepared Austin A35s and Morris Minors for rallies and competition. By 1959, Sprinzel sold his share in Speedwell to a young mechanic and up-and-coming driver named Graham Hill, and took up a position with the Donald Healey Motor Company as their Manager of Special Equipment. At the DHMC, Sprinzel focused on the race preparation of the Austin-Healey Sprite for both rallying and road racing, including development of the now legendary Sebring Sprite. By 1960, Sprinzel purchased the business from the DHMC and opened his own John Sprinzel Racing, which would further develop and homologate the Sebring Sprite, with an all-alloy body, into what would become known as the Sprinzel Sprite.

During this time and into the early 1970s, Sprinzel continued to race in a variety of his own and others vehicles, including several years as the Triumph rally team’s captain, as well as rallying stints with BMC, Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot and Saab. By 1973, Sprinzel retired from racing and went into journalism for a few years before pursuing other interests.

I first came in contact with Sprinzel in 2009, just after we had run an interview with him (Click here to read our interview with Sprinzel) about his racing career. That first email was riddled with puns and jokes, which I would later come to realize is quite indicative of Sprinzel’s affable, if not jovial, good nature. I also found it interesting that he signed his name “Aloha John.”

From the closing question in our interview with him, I knew that around 1979, John became enamored with the then new sport of windsurfing and, in fact, became so besotted that he sold all his holdings in the UK and moved to Corfu to open a windsurfing school! Not only did John teach windsurfing, but he also raced and competed on an international level. And so it is here, where my intersection of disparate worlds comes in. John had two clearly separate lives, his automotive life and his windsurfing life, which struck a chord with me, because I too was living a similar dual life. I had my automotive life, but also enjoyed a dramatically different existence racing prone paddleboards in long distance, open ocean races.

So seeing John’s “Aloha John” signature, I immediately knew he must be living in Hawaii somewhere, so I asked him what island. John responded Molokai, which is the least developed and least accessible of all the Hawaiian islands. Surprised by the strange double intersection of our lives, I wrote back to say that I was going to be doing a 32-mile race from Molokai to Oahu and what a small world it was. Then John—being John—generously offered to pick me up at the tiny Molokai airport (nee landing strip) and look after me while I was on his tiny, former leper colony island! I was struck by what an unbelievably generous offer this was considering we only knew each other via a handful of emails…but that’s John for you.

Flash forward almost a year and as I stepped off the tiny twin-engined commuter plane and walked across the hot Molokai tarmac there, standing in the bright Hawaiian sun was an unmistakably British looking man, wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, shorts and sandals—John Sprinzel!

Right from the moment we shook hands, it was like we had been friends for years. He loaded my gear in his truck and we trundled out onto the small, rough road that runs from the airport to the far side of the island, where my race would start from. As we made the long journey, John regaled me with a brief history of the island and its people. He went on to share how he and his wife had moved to the very provincial Molokai for the windsurfing and were at first mostly shunned by the native islanders as Haoles, or outsiders. But after years of investing their time with various social service programs on the small island and getting to know the native islanders, John revealed that he and his wife had eventually won their trust and respect were now treated like one of their own. In fact, so much so that John now sits as a commissioner on the island’s influential Planning Commission. No small feat, but also a clear testament to the type of people the Sprinzels are.

It’s been almost seven years, since I received a personal tour of Molokai, by one of the world’s legendary rally drivers. But as surreal as that still seems to me, I also know that if I were to go back tomorrow, I’d have much the same reception as if only a few days had lapsed, because that’s the kind of guy John is.

Aloha, John Sprinzel.

Editor’s note: John Sprinzel passed away the last week of May 2021, at the age of 90.

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It is with a profound sense of sadness and loss that I must share that long-time contributor and friend Mike Lawrence has passed away at the age of 78.  Mike preferred to say, “…that highly qualified medics were fighting the cancer on his behalf, with his body as the battleground,” but after many brave months of battle he passed away, at home, surrounded by his family on Dec. 21st .

Mike contributed his first “Last Lap” monthly column in our June 2000 issue of Vintage Racecar, and I have to say we hit it off right from the very beginning. Over the years, Mike and I developed a rapport that included a pun-filled form of “verbal jousting” that was immensely satisfying. It was like playing chess with Gary Kasparov, you knew you were the underdog, but when you landed a solid blow, you really felt a sense of accomplishment!

Mike’s writing, whether it was for us or any number of his myriad books, was always erudite and academic, yet slightly cynical with a dry wit—think Denis Jenkinson meets Monty Python.

After a year or two of corresponding only by email, we finally got to meet in person, when I ventured to the UK for one of the first Goodwood Revivals. Since Mike lived right there in Chichester, we spent the better part of the weekend together. Undoubtedly, one of my all-time favorite memories—of anything I’ve done in the past 22-plus years in conjunction with this magazine—was a dinner I shared with Mike that weekend. For some reason, the conversation turned early on to all the behind the scenes stories in Formula One that few if anyone has ever heard about. For the next several hours, Mike regaled me with outlandish and sometimes salacious tale after tale—the Formula One drivers sleeping with owners’ wives, the team’s smuggling drugs and diamonds across Europe in the fuel cells of their racecars and the team principal who was attacked by two thugs with a cricket bat in an alley, coincidentally after having a change of heart on a business deal. At some point in time I told Mike, “Jesus, you’ve got enough here for a best seller, let’s publish the book!” Mike agreed and thought it should be titled, “Grand Prix Babylon.”

I returned to California and immediately started to press Mike on the book. However, after a period of hemming and hawing he finally admitted that he had gotten cold feet. Mike confessed, “A lot of these people are still alive. We probably shouldn’t publish this until after they’re gone…besides I don’t want to be the next in line for the cricket bat!” Sadly, Mike was not able to outlive the statute of limitations on some of the most “choice” stories.

Last year, Mike told me he was going to have to take a break from his column so he could undergo treatment for Lymphoma. While he was often too sick to write even an email, I was able to keep in contact through his son Mark. After Mike passed, I told Mark that I was a little ashamed of the fact that after working with his father for over 20 years, I had to confess to not really knowing that much about his life before we met, other than the fact that he had a Ph.D. in Shakespearean Literature. A fact I used to often taunt him with, since we both shared the same advanced degree that neither of used any longer!

Mark shared the following:

“Much of his determination and self-belief probably stemmed from his early successes.  He won several awards for plays and poetry in his twenties, and commissions from BBC television.  His poetry was romantic and accessible, and the awards given to him were handed over by the likes of Robert Graves and Philip Larkin.

His play ‘Beeston Craig’ was a Frankenstein-like satire that broached media and race relations.  The story is that a white media pundit is killed in a fight and his brain is transplanted into the body of a black ‘full body donor’.  It was well ahead of its time and, at one point, it looked as though it would transfer to Broadway.  Unfortunately, oil-crisis linked currency fluctuation forced the main investor to withdraw.

By the mid 1970s, he temporarily stopped writing and turned to teaching full-time, becoming the head of department in a particularly rough ‘sink’ comprehensive school, where the pupils revered him.  They identified with him as a working class man like themselves, yet who was both deeply learned and pugnacious.  I remember him receiving a salute from a garage attendant who had been a former pupil.

Around this time he joined with a friend Rob Widdows, to produce “Track Torque,” a  motor racing radio program that gained a cult following.  He soon made the leap into full-time motor-racing journalism.  It was a rather glamorous life, staying at five star hotels in Monaco and Switzerland, while being coddled by motoring PR. He also accepted the (acting) editorship of ‘MotorSport’ magazine, which fulfilled a long held schoolboy ambition of his.

By the ’90s, the excesses of motor promotion seemed to have been reigned in, and he was somewhat jaded by it.  He felt that the real Golden age of motor-racing had passed.  He channeled his abilities into earning a doctorate in Literature at the University of Sussex, chosen I suppose because it was relatively local, he could easily have completed it in Oxford or Cambridge.  His dissertation was on the staging of illusion and magic in the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Johnson.

The thing I most wish I’d inherited from him was his photographic (eidetic) memory.  I asked him whether he used any menmotic techniques but no, it was simply an innate ability.  When recently someone mentioned a racing manager to him, Mike reeled off the name of his wife and children, without effort.  Similarly a walk around a town or cathedral would produce a stream of facts and observations about the subject.”

Amazed, but not surprised, by his early successes, I lamented to Mark how I wish I had known these details (and seen those press clippings!), when he was still with us. It would have been grist for a righteous email exchange!

While Mike has moved to the great beyond, I take some solace in the knowledge that Mike has joined his lifetime idol, Sir Stirling Moss, in the great paddock in the sky. One can only imagine the tales the two of them must now be sharing!

It pains me, but Dr. Lawrence has truly exited… stage left.

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One of my favorite automotive books is Doug Nye’s “Motor Racing Mavericks”. Published in 1975, it explores failures—high-end failures—in Grand Prix and IndyCar racing. “Failures” is a harsh word to apply to some; no turbine car won at Indy, but in 1967 Parnelli Jones came within three laps of victory when a $6 bearing failed. Turbine cars were banned along with four-wheel drive to which they were particularly suited.

Some came into the category of “what were you smoking when you thought of that?” Augusto Monaco was an Argentine engineer who relocated to Italy and who made his name in 1932 with a hill climb special nicknamed Chichibio, which he constructed with Enrico Nardi.

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An irascible motorcycle cop in a ’70s British TV advertisement for Renault pulled up next to the car he had been chasing and asked the driver gruffly, “Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?”  The man at the wheel just turned to the cop and grinned…because he was Stirling Moss! And that just shows the unprecedented popularity this hyper-energetic, extraordinarily efficient human being, who is one of the greatest racing drivers of the 20^th century has enjoyed since the early ’50s. Despite his being in his 80s, walk into a London restaurant with him today and the diners will start nudging each other and whispering, “That’s Stirling Moss.” He is an institution.

Britain was not the only nation that wrung its hands in anguish as its battered hero lay unconscious in hospital for a month after his horrific accident at St. Mary’s corner, Goodwood, on April 23, 1962. But the world heaved a huge sigh of relief when Moss eventually pulled out of it and began charging around the hospital’s corridors in a suspiciously fast wheelchair.

Stirling is a highly articulate man with a roguish twinkle in his eye, a love of life and a sense of fun that seems to know no bounds. He is also a man only the churlish would deny a place in their list of the five greatest racing drivers of all time.

His success rate was phenomenal in a sport that was not as kind to him as it might have been. I am sure Stirling is sick to death of reading about him being a king without a crown, the driver who was runner-up to four Formula One World Champions, and does not need me to say he long ago came to terms with this weird quirk of fate. But he did.

Anyway, one only has to look up his entry in any motor racing “Who’s Who” to be reminded of his stunning achievements.

Alfred Moss, Stirling’s father, was not only a successful dentist but was also a gifted amateur racing driver, who competed in the Indianapolis 500 in the ’20s: our hero’s mother Aileen was an enthusiastic rally competitor. As children, Stirling and his late sister Pat were outstanding show jumpers before both graduated to cars, in which Pat became the world’s top woman rally driver of her day.

Stirling started by racing a BMW 328, in 1947, and the following year broke into 500-cc F3 racing to become its undisputed star. From 1950-’52, he also raced for the under-financed and under-developed British HWM F2 outfit and was invited by Enzo Ferrari to drive one of his cars in the Bari Grand Prix, way down there on the heel of Italy. But after struggling across post-war Europe and down the length of Italy to claim his drive, Moss was told the car had been reassigned to Piero Taruffi without so much as a by your leave. A slap in the face if ever there was one that embittered Stirling towards Enzo Ferrari for years to come.

In 1953, Mercedes-Benz had let slip that they would be coming back to Grand Prix racing in a year’s time. American writer Ken Gregory, Stirling’s manager at the time, and Alfred Moss campaigned for a place in the German team for him, but wily old Alfred Neubauer was not so sure. He wanted to see Moss Jr. compete in a full-blown F1 car before he would say yes or no.

He got his proof. Stirling was pulling away from Juan Manuel Fangio’s state-of-the-art Mercedes W196 in the 1954 Grand Prix of Italy until waning oil pressure put his private Maserati 250F out of the race. But Neubauer had got the message and invited Moss to join the M-B team for 1955.

And what a year that was. Moss won his homeland’s British Grand Prix at Aintree in the Mercedes-Benz W196 and the ’55 Mille Miglia navigated by the late Denis Jenkinson in a 300SLR in which he set an unbeaten record average speed of 98.5 mph. He and Juan Manuel Fangio were battling Mike Hawthorn’s Jaguar for the lead in the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans before Pierre Levegh’s disintegrating Mercedes killed over 80 people, injured many more and the German team withdrew from the event. And Stirling and Peter Collins drove the 300SLR to victory in the 1955 Targa Florio to give their Stuttgart employers the World Sports Car Championship. But Mercedes retired from racing at the end of 1955, so Moss moved to Maserati as their team leader and won the 1956 Monaco and Italian Grands Prix for them in the fabled 250F.

Steadfastly patriotic, Stirling achieved a long held ambition to lead an all-British team into combat when he joined Vanwall in 1957. He won the British Grand Prix at Aintree again that year with Tony Brooks, the GP of Pescara and relished beating the Lancia Ferrari D50s in the Italian GP at Monza to win. The following year it was more of the same, but this time Moss led Vanwall to the Formula One Constructors’ World Championship. The British team withdrew at the end of ’58 and Moss moved to Rob Walker’s private squad to score a string of Grand Prix victories in the gentleman entrant’s Coopers and Lotuses.

Stirling still had little time for Ferrari after their shabby treatment of him at Bari, but his mood was mellowing. He was down to drive a Ferrari Dino 156 for Rob Walker, in 1962, until the Goodwood accident shattered his career. Imagine what could have been—a privately entered Ferrari beating the works team!

Hardly a year after Goodwood, Moss tested himself at the wheel of sports racing car, but decided to retire. He felt he was not at the top of his game any more, but now believes his retirement decision may have been premature.

But what a glittering career he had had. Stirling Moss won 16 world championship Grands Prix at a time when there were nothing like as many F1 events as there are today: 20 non-title GPs; 12 World Sports Car Championship races, including the 1954 12 Hours of Sebring; 12 other major races, among them four Tourist Trophies, the 1956 Australian GP, the 1956, 1959 and 1962 Grands Prix of New Zealand; and 159 other less exalted but hotly contested races.

Stirling was knighted in 2000 and said at the time, “I can’t begin to put into words just how much receiving this honor and being able to share it with my wife Susie has meant to me. Motor sport and this country have given me so much. And to know that I am remembered 40 years after my forced retirement has to be the best feeling in the world.”

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Now available on Netflix is “A Life of Speed: The Juan Manuel Fangio Story.” The 92-minute movie originates in Argentina and so it is no surprise that it is more fanzine tribute than balanced assessment. Air-brushed out is Argentina’s dictator Juan Peron who, directly and indirectly, influenced Fangio’s career. So too is Fangio’s long-time partner, Andrea Berruet, who bore Fangio a son whom he refused to acknowledge. Paternity was established only after Fangio’s body was exhumed and a DNA sample was taken.

Ms. Berruet appears in many an after-race celebration but is never identified. The moniker, “El Chueco,” appears on screen several times but we are not told that it was his nickname from the time when Fangio was a useful amateur footballer and it means “bandy legs.” His contemporary drivers usually called him, “the old man.” Calling him “Maestro,” though he was one, is a recent invention.

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Bristol, once a significant marque, has relocated to the “Great Paddock In The Sky.” For some time it had been on life support and a car make in name only. In 2011, it had been acquired by Kamkorp a privately-owned small group of engineering companies, among them Frazer-Nash Research Ltd. This caused excitement in some sections of the motoring press, which is not renowned for its knowledge of history.

All but three post-war Frazer Nash cars had Bristol engines and Frazer Nash and Bristol Cars had once been partners, but the new bedfellow was Frazer-Nash, with a hyphen. Both companies had been founded by Archibald “Archie” Goodman Frazer (-) Nash but that was their only connection. Cadillac was founded on the remains of the Henry Ford Company, but Cadillac has no connection to Ford.

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For most of my adult life I have lived within two miles of the Goodwood Motor Circuit. Between the last in-period race meeting in 1966 and the first Revival Meeting in 1998 it did not lie fallow. It was used for testing by F1 teams until 1982. It hosted club sprints and rallies, track days and was even used as a movie set (for “Dance With A Stranger”)

A few weeks before the first Revival Meeting, I was with Stirling Moss, Ken A. Gregory, Stirling’s former manager and a co-founder of BRP (British Racing Partnership) and Tony Robinson, once crew chief of BRP. Stirling expressed a wish to see the place where he had crashed in 1962 on the 23rd of April, St. George’s Day and the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It was the first time he had returned to the spot.

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Before WWII, the company which became Jaguar was called Swallow Sidecars and it had diversified into making special bodies for cars, most notably for Austin Sevens. A Swallow body added about 15% to the cost of an Austin Seven, but was worth much more in street cred. In the 2018 movie, “Mary Poppins Returns” there is a standard Austin parked near the home of the Banks family but as the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious one flies off at the end, the Seven has a Swallow body. Gawd bless yew, Mary Poppins.

SS cars benefited from the styling genius of the founder, William Lyons, but were limited by bought-in chassis and engines. Many regarded them as All Show, No Go. Among their nicknames was “Wardour Street Bentley.” Wardour Street in London’s Soho district was home to theatre agents, movie companies, and the like. Lyons decided to make a car that would surpass any Bentley which at the time made sports saloons.

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Aston Martin has announced a collaboration with revived motorcycle company, Brough Superior, to make the AMB001, a limited edition track-only bike. It is unclear whether the 001 designation is a statement of future intent (up to 999 models or if it is a reference to 007.)

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Lloyd Ruby hailed from Wichita Falls, Texas, up in the north central part of the state, not far from the Oklahoma line. Born a year before the Depression, he was soft-spoken by nature — a wicked sense of humor notwithstanding — but not someone to be taken lightly. He began racing motorcycles at age 16, then enjoyed extensive success in midgets.

He might have focused solely on oval racing, but tested himself in sports cars as well, racing a Maserati 300S for his friend Ebb Rose in the old USAC Road Racing Championship. There he battled men with names like Shelby, Gurney, Miles and Pabst, winning three feature races over the course of four seasons. The first came in September of ’59 at Meadowdale in Rose’s Maserati 450S, the second at Indianapolis Raceway Park in ’61 with a 450S owned by J. Frank Harrison, and the last at Laguna Seca in ’62, aboard Harrison’s new Lotus 19-Climax. Even though Ruby was headed for Indycars, further success in sports car lay ahead.

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For the majority of VR’s readers, 2019 has been the 50th anniversary of Formula Ford, although it actually started in England in 1967. The nativity stories vary, but most come down to racing schools putting a perky standard engine into a racecar to create something that students could use and which was a lot cheaper to maintain than a Formula Three car (the then entry level to single-seat road racing.)

If a new category catches on it is because it is right for its period. The 1960s was a time when affluence increased and motor sport expanded. The decade saw karting take off and race driver schools flourish.

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Bentley is to make 12 “continuation” examples of the supercharged 4.5-liter Birkin “Blower,” one of those cars whose legend far surpasses its achievement. For a time it could claim to be the world’s fastest car, but it was built for racing and in that context it must be regarded as a disappointment.

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I was introduced to Eddie in 1979 by our mutual friend Nigel Wollheim, a remarkable man who spoke at least six languages fluently, and I mean fluently. Digressing for an instant, I once saw Nigel hold an impromptu on his company’s products with a dozen foreign journalists in a field somewhere in Greece during the world championship Acropolis Rally, deftly answering complicated questions in perfect English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Greek!  

American born Eddie also spoke Italian fluently, because he had lived in Rome since he was a small boy and spoke the language much better than I did at the time. But I got my own back on the pair of them later.

That year, I was working full-time for Pirelli’s UK subsidiary and part-time for the Group’s headquarters in Italy, an odd arrangement on paper, but one that worked well in practice. Eddie, Nigel and I were at Zandvoort for the European Formula Two Championship race and that’s how I took my revenge: I had chosen to attend that event, from a year’s worth of F2 fixtures, out of sheer bloody mindedness. Neither Nigel nor Eddie could speak Dutch – but I could, thanks to my wife Els who was born a few miles from Eindhoven! One has to assert oneself in life occasionally, right?

After having to put up with those two language prodigies for much of the 1979 European F2 season, I took great delight in holding unnecessarily long conversations with Zandvoort hotel managers, track officials and race technicians in fluent Dutch, well within earshot of Nigel and Eddie. But they took the linguistic ribbing in good part and slipped into English for much of the rest of the season!

Eddie had already won two F2 races by that time, the British at Silverstone and the French at Pau, in Enzo Osella’s orange-colored BMW-engined FA 2/79 and was in with a chance of the championship. He was a very formal young man then, probably due to his tender age of 21, and kept calling me “Mr. Newman”, a bit like a red rag to a bull, to an informal individual like me, but he could not break the habit.

At dinner the night before the race, young Mr. Cheever was in deep conversation with Nigel, probably in Swahili but certainly not in Dutch, and, unable to get a word in however I played it, I was studying the label of the bottle of wine we were drinking with our food, one Nebbiolo D’Alba Ceretto. I turned to the Osella engineer in charge of Eddie’s car at the time, Giorgio Stirano, and asked if he knew that particular brew. “I should”, he said proudly, “Mr. Cerretto’s daughter is my fiancé”. There then followed a long dissertation on the excellent wines and other products of the Alba region of Italy, (the Nebbiolo, Barolo, white truffles, olive oil) and an equally long one on the clearly delightful Miss Ceretto.

Turning to matters more in the public domain, I asked Stirano naively if Eddie would win the next day and Giorgio simply said, “Yes”. And that is what happened. Mr. Cheever won the 1979 Formula Two race at Zandvoort but did not manage to become champion. He certainly made up for it at Indianapolis one day in May 1998, though.

A few years on, I could hardly recover from the shock after attending the 25^th anniversary lunch of the very exclusive Club International des Anciens Pilotes de Grand Prix, run by the tall, distinguished Swiss ex-racer Baron Toulo de Graffenried.  He was a kind of Marc Surer of his day, who won the 1949 British Grand Prix and competed in F1, on and off, from 1950 to 1956 in a series of Maseratis and Alfas without a world championship race win but with a number of creditable points performances. I attended the Club’s celebrations on September 12 , 1987, to conduct interviews for my late friend and film director Brian Robins, who was shooting a video of the day for the club.

It was like overdosing not on heroine but a plethora of my motor racing heroes, who stood drinking and swapping old motor racing stories before going to the table for their hearty lunch. Wherever I turned, there was a famous driver from the past; Fangio, to whom everybody deferred but who was the epitome of courtesy to them all, Stirling Moss, Maria Theresa de Filippis the first woman to compete in a championship Grand Prix, Jose Froilan Gonzalez the first man to win a world championship Grand Prix for Ferrari, Manfred von Brauchitsch the last of the pre-war Silver Arrow drivers, Phil Hill, Cliff Alison, Maurice Trintignant, Henri Pescarolo, Chris Amon, Duncan Hamilton, Gino Munaron and so many more. Unfortunately, I could not speak to them all, as Brian had given me the list of people he wanted me to interview in a limited amount of time. But I shall never forget extracting a few words of von Brauchitsch in my halting German, enjoying the boistrousness of 1953 Le Mans winner Duncan Hamilton, not to mention trying out my Italian on the great Fangio. McLaren driver Alain Prost represented modern Formula One that day with just the right blend of reserved style in the company of such giants of his sport. 

The club video remained a private memento of the day for members only, but my deal with Brian was that I would do the interviews for free if I could have a copy. It was well worth forfeiting the money.  

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