Great Read

Just as in April 1962, the motor racing world is on tenterhooks as a giant who once bestrode the sport lies in a coma in a hospital bed. While we…

Was Jean Behra the greatest driver never to win a World Championship Grand Prix? Paul Fearnley examines his case with the 1957 season where the Frenchman racked up non-championship and sports car wins as he raced with and against the likes of Fangio and Moss

A curious term, greatness. Some like to measure it in statistical terms, but naked numbers tell only a partial story – and sometimes not even that. Common examples? Stirling Moss…

It happened 10 years ago on the last lap of NASCAR's traditional season-opening Daytona 500. Everyone was jammed together in a massive pack, feet flat on the throttle in typical…

For most of 2009, a quarter of the drivers on the Grand Prix grids were from Germany. And, thanks to the long reign of Michael Schumacher, that country is statistically…

It takes time for certain cars to assume their place in history. Cars that achieve firsts are easy to recognise and remember, for their importance is clear to see from…

In 1985, Michele Alboreto's star was on the rise. The first Italian to drive for Ferrari for over a decade, he was on the podium eight times in the first…

When the flag waved to start the 1953 Indianapolis 500 it was already an infernally hot and humid day with the temperature in the mid-30s centigrade. At the time part…

The bodywork's glinting contours provide the answer to my four million-dollar question. The query had seemed valid: although undeniably beautiful, this car was essentially a flawed racing machine that only…

First, a few basic facts. During the 1988 season, the McLaren MP4/4 won all bar one Grands Prix, a fact which makes the team proud to this day. It is…

These Lunch With.... pieces start out as long and often colourful one-to-one conversations, over a pleasant meal. But they end up in black and white, as printed words. So I…

It was a remarkable opening lap of a remarkable circuit. Rhodesia's Gary Hocking had been drawn at six, his MV Agusta team-mate Mike Hailwood at three and his good friend,…

Team personnel rubbed their hands together to ward off the frosty chill as they left their hotels for the short run to the Hockenheimring, the circuit close to Mannheim in…

Some weekends you can come back from a Grand Prix with a notebook relatively clean. There will be a lap chart in there, of course, together with notes and quotes,…

Think for one minute about the hardest thing you have ever done in your life. Remember if you can the sleepless nights, the mental anguish that came from your own…

"I’d like to talk about Alan [he uses the English pronunciation] Prost,” says John Watson after some thinking time. He’s like that, always has been: he’s a thoughtful man. “There…

'He truly never met a race car that he didn't like. All US racing was clamped in an AJ Foyt stranglehold' It was a great racing civilisation that America had…