Lunch with...

We are in the Osteria delle Vigne, a typical Italian family restaurant just a few miles outside the town of Varano de Melegari. I sense that a culinary experience of…

Its streets are notoriously congested during Grand Prix weekends, but are little different at any other time of the year. Everyone seems to own an AMG Mercedes but opportunities to…

Scotland might be one of the world’s most beautiful inventions, but you wouldn’t know it on a day like this. ‘Drookit’ and ‘dreich’ are suitable terms, Scots adjectives that translate as…

Riverside, California, 1964. A psychologist is at the Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, interviewing racing drivers as part of a research project into what makes top sports people tick. From Europe there’s…

“Life without sideways is monotonous,” shouts Ari Vatanen as he slaloms up a dirt track towards his local restaurant. “We need salt in life and, for the rally driver, gravel…

For a driver who claims motor racing was only ever second to his commercial activities, Gordon Spice’s track record is striking. He never won Le Mans, but twice finished third…

It’s Sunday at Goodwood's Festival of Speed and Anthony Reid heads up the hill at the wheel of an Arrinera Hussarya GT3, an obscure Corvette-powered Polish supercar he has spent…

History records eight Formula 1 world championship entries, three starts and no classified finishes – but that’s an irrelevant detail from one of the most intriguing motor sport careers of…

Mst race fans would argue that Valentino Rossi, Giacomo Agostini or Mike Hailwood are the greatest motorcycle racers the world has ever seen. But the cognoscenti might disagree; some would…

I first met Paul Stewart in March, 2000. We were both attending the Australian Grand Prix, me in my usual capacity of hack, him as chief operating officer for the…

Given that he was versed in the fastidiously timed world of rallying from an age when most of his peers were cramming for their 11-plus, it is no surprise that…

We could hardly have chosen a better place to have lunch with John McGuinness. We are sitting in the dining room of the Midland Hotel in his home town of Morecambe,…

JJ Lehto is sitting across the table from me, in the elegant surroundings of Fawsley Hall Hotel near Silverstone, piercing blue eyes growing wider by the moment as he describes…

Tommy Byrne, retired racing driver and reformed hell-raiser asks the waitress what the soup of the day is. “Carrot and fresh coriander,” she says. “I’ll have the burger and fries,”…

By a strange quirk of history Jean Alesi’s CV includes just a single Grand Prix victory, achieved at Montréal in 1995. The charismatic Frenchman’s impact on the sport was so…

He’s designed several world championship-winning Formula 1 cars, he engineered both Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna during successful title campaigns and the 2017 season will be his 40th in Grand Prix…

Jacques Villeneuve has experienced one of the most unusual careers in the history of motor sport. By the age of 26 he had won the world championship, 11 Grands Prix,…