May I make a confession? I increasingly fear I’m perhaps just a bit ‘slow on the uptake’. Or otherwise is it common to experience a sudden jolting realisation of quite…

Motor racing trophies embody an enormously wide range of aesthetic, commercial and cultural taste. How often has one seen an eye-popping podium presentation of some garish oversized fridge magnet to…

How nice it was – compensation for a fundamentally boring opening race of this year’s Formula 1 World Championship – to see the beaming 41-year-old Fernando Alonso back on the…

Motor sport’s governing body used to be the FIA’s Commission Sportive Internationale – or CSI. Over many years it came in for a few brickbats from unhappy constructors and entrants,…

Only recently have I realised that marketing folk and the enthusiast-journo in me will never quite understand each other. In 2000, I remember Melbourne Airport festooned with posters bawling ‘The…

The passing of time can obscure reputations. Relying on the written word and second-hand reports can amplify inaccuracies through repetition and like the old game of Chinese whispers result in…

There’s always a tinge of compassionate sadness when one sees any long-time employee forced from a company after more than 20 years’ service. One feels right now for Mattia Binotto,…

Real history is staggeringly complex. Therefore simplified history sells any subject short. Conclusions drawn from it alone will surely mislead. This is why there may always be room for a…

Sitting beside me here is a small squared-section bottle. It contains clear liquid and is securely capped by one of those over-centre, thick-wire latch systems used for 1950s ‘fizzy pop’…

One of Jackie Stewart’s proudest possessions is his boyhood autograph book. While his big brother Jimmy was campaigning his Healey Silverstone and later the developing Ecurie Ecosse team’s Jaguars and…

The Cooper-Zerex sports car’s homecoming, see page 12, marks its survival as perhaps frontline road racing’s greatest-ever ‘transformer’, having in essence run in no fewer than seven distinct configurations. The…

Back in the mid-1960s I was with Motor Racing magazine and a newly-launched stablemate named Miniature Auto. Alongside my motor racing fixation I was an avid model maker, and at…