Steve Rider revives hidden gems of motor sport film

One of the most famous voices in sport is launching a unique motor racing archive dedicated to bringing forgotten racing footage to a new audience.

The venture, Racing Past Media (RPM), aimed in particular at pre-1981 Formula 1 content, will help bring new detail and perspective to the formative years of the sport, as the Formula 1 World Championship prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

It is being masterminded by Steve Rider who has presented coverage of the British Touring Car Championship since 1988, and for years was the face of BBC Sport as well as anchor for ITV’s F1 coverage.

RPM collates and manages content from a wide range of sources in order to assemble an easily accessible body of material for researchers and documentary makers. It has already signed agreements with ITV Sport, BRM and the John Tate collection and others are set to follow as the project gathers pace.

“This area of archive research has often been challenging and time-consuming,” said Rider. “We have been working on the detail now for around four years and have identified material that even the broadcasters didn’t know existed.

“With the growing appetite for documentary making it will be exciting to see what producers can make of this footage.”

The RPM team includes experienced Formula 1 producers and researchers, including leading film archivist Richard Wiseman, who has a long string of credits to his name including Ferrari: Race to Immortality, Villeneuve Pironi and Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans.

RPM will not only focus on grand prix racing. It will also include footage of world championship rallying and the BTCC.

Material researched, sourced and licensed through RPM has already found its way into forthcoming documentaries as well as branded content films for organisations such as UBS.

RPM has also worked closely with Motor Sport as a media partner to source rare footage which we are using to celebrate our I00th anniversary.