Nigel Roebuck's F1 Legends

It is 21 years, I realise with some amazement, since I began covering Grand Prix racing for Autosport, and in that time I have come to know a good many…

The scene: the Glen Motor Inn, Watkins Glen. The date: September 1979. I am sitting at a table with a couple of colleagues, and studying the menu, unable to make…

Years ago, in a paddock somewhere, I fell into conversation with Murray Walker on Bernd Rosemeyer. Though he was long the other side of the grass before I was born,…

There were but five laps remaining in the 1996 Australian Grand Prix when Jacques Villeneuve got the message from the Williams pit: his oil pressure was falling, and if he…

Fitness is all-consuming in Formula One, I know, but still there is something depressing about the uniformity of drivers' tastes today. Favourite drink: mineral water; favourite food: pasta. An exception…

As a devotee of Messrs Cook & Moore, I recently learned with horror that most episodes of Not Only… But Also are lost for ever. Back then the BBC would…

In a book shop the other day, I noticed by chance a volume on the life and, for want of a better word, works of Mark Thatcher (no, please, stay…

In recent years there's been a spate of new circuits in world championship use, and I mean tracks not merely new to Formula One, but tracks new, period, built in…

Not many people have known Formula 1 from the inside better than John Hogan. For countless years he was 'the man from Philip Morris', the man responsible for Marlboro's involvement…

Late in the afternoon of November 22 1963, I was stopped by a policeman and reprimanded for riding my bike at dusk without lights. I carried on to school, chastened,…

As I write, two races in the 2006 F1 season remain, and Michael Schumacher, on the brink of retirement, is fighting for his eighth World Championship. As ever with Schumacher…

Places mean cars, don't they? Hear the word `Maranello' and you think of something red with yellow shields on its flanks. Similarly, 'Weissach' is synonymous with Porsche, and when I…

The demands of the season being what they are, I spend less time in my house in Normandy than I would like; but whenever! do get over there, a few…

One of the reasons I no longer stay in Monaco for the GP is that these days I find the place intensely claustrophobic. So many beautiful buildings have been swept…

At Goodwood, no one was more caught by the atmosphere than Dan Gurney. "Yesterday I played in Lord March's cricket match," he said. "I was on his team, and beginner's…

With some astonishment, I realised the other day that 40 years have gone since Jim Clark and Colin Chapman began a revolution at Indianapolis, and that 35 years have passed…

We will greatly miss the presence of Jean Alesi in the Formula One paddocks this year. Apart from being a 'real person' (increasingly an endangered species these days), he was…