The Editor: Importance of saving old motor racing footage

How important is it to preserve evidence of past racing glories? On this, readers of Motor Sport and I will agree. One of the biggest and best investments we have made in recent years is digitising our entire back catalogue of magazines right back to 1924 and allowing subscribers to search for material via the archive section of our website.

However, old film footage of racing’s past is in danger of being overlooked when it comes to preservation. Last month I sat on a panel at the Broadcast Sport Summit attended by all the major sports broadcasters to discuss the importance of looking after archive film. Along with fellow speakers Steve Rider, Simon Owen, the grandson of Alfred Owen, owner of BRM from the 1950s, and Ben Foakes of Base, a company that hosts digitised film, we made the case for finding, cataloguing and making available old film archives.

The discussion was wide-ranging and included a wonderful story of how Steve and his team found some rare footage of Lewis Hamilton as a karting kid inside a trailer bought as a job lot…

“Old film footage of racing’s past is in danger of being overlooked”

However, the thing that stuck with me was the fact that so much of what we regard as the golden age of motor racing, from the 1950s to 1970s, remains uncatalogued in small collections, which is hard to access. We worked with Rider and his company Racing Past Media as part of our 100th anniversary celebration and he unearthed for us footage of pre-war Mercedes and Bentleys as well as evocative shots of Colin Chapman waving Jim Clark across the line and Graham Hill winking conspiratorially at the camera. It would be a shame if such moments of history should be lost.

Eagle-eyed readers will spot a few changes to Motor Sport this month. We have given the front third of the magazine a light refresh in order to make more of our excellent columnists and include some extra elements which showcase the breadth of racing we cover. We have a new page by Damien Smith highlighting what we regard as the stand-out drives of the past month; an expanded events section looking back at recent races as well as forward to what is to come; and there’s a new feature remembering old, sometimes forgotten, circuits. As I say, we see value in keeping our history alive.

As ever, we are keen to hear your feedback so please email us your views, thoughts or verdicts on any part of the magazine. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the January issue.

Joe Dunn, editor
Follow Joe on Twitter @joedunn90

Next magazine: Our February issue is on sale from December 24