Great Read
John Miles beckons me over with a crook of a gloved index finger. He points to a smear of blue paint on the inside of the monocoque. "See that? This…
Great Read
No mistakes this time Long Beach, California, April 8th EACH YEAR the running of the United States Grand Prix (West) through the streets of the town of Long Beach in…
Great Read
Only four Indianapolis 500 rookies in 100 years have started from pole: Teo Fabi in 1983 is one. Prematurely balding and softly spoken, his puppy-ish face often apparently bemused, occasionally…
Great Read
Alan Brinton was a good old-school journalist. He was 1950s Fleet Street personified. He addressed everyone as “old boy” or “my dear”, could actually touch-type but, cast adrift by the…
Great Read
In order to appropriately mythologise Jackie Stewart, he really should be dead, the better to fulfil the time-served, cruelly macho parapsychology of his chosen sport. Not suburban-dead, felled by atherosclerosis…
Great Read
Today’s media like to give our heroes convenient labels. Stirling Moss is “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship” – a glib line which says nothing about The…
Great Read
John Godfrey Parry Thomas, holder of the Land Speed Record for nine months in 1926/7 (and 10 days in 1924), was cut from a very different cloth to his more…
Great Read
Jan Magnussen is under few illusions about his Formula 1 career. "I let myself down," he says, "and that always hurts. I planned to be world champion and it didn't…
Great Read
On 17 July 1937, during practice for the German GP, Bernd Rosemeyer fought his wayward Auto Union round the Nürburgring in 9min 46.2sec, a time that staggered the pitlane. By…
Great Read
Argentinian Grand Prix, Buenos Aires, 1979 I've always considered Argentina in 1979 to be my first real Grand Prix victory. I'd won in Sweden in 1977, but only because of…
Great Read
You are Peter Collins. Young, handsome, living a glamorous life with a film star wife — and quick. You have heaps of respect for Fangio, but today, it would seem,…
Great Read
The Hamilton phenomenon has rewritten the Formula 1 record books. But Lewis’s meteoric progress doesn’t diminish the achievements, 37 years ago, of a Brazilian tyro called Emerson Fittipaldi. Emerson was…
Great Read
United States GP (East), Watkins Glen, October 5th 1980 From start to finish, the 1980 season was an unbelievable one for me. It was an amazing year because I won…
Great Read
Between this year's Australian and Malaysian grands prix, Mrs C and I used up a free week with our first visit to New Zealand. On our travels around the wonderful…
Great Read
No racing driver has ever survived such a big accident. And it’s unlikely that a grand prix car will ever again be allowed to run flat out into an earth…
Great Read
Appropriately, it is November 29 as I write, and – just as in 1975 – there is a thick crust of frost on the windscreen of my car. That evening,…
