Browse by Tags
Posted
Nov 05 2009, 03:40 AM
by
John Brooks
with 16 comment(s)
Yes Roll up, Roll up! It's motorsport's answer to the Circus. Barnum and Bailey on wheels. The 2009 Race of Champions is underway. It shifted venue from dingy North London to The National Stadium, Beijing, better known as "the Bird's Nest" and familiar to all as the home of the 2008 Olympic Games. This amazing facility with a crowd capacity of 80,000 is the largest steel structure on the planet. The Race of Champions has stuck to the traditional format, after a day or two of...
More >>>
Posted
Nov 05 2009, 02:10 AM
by
John Brooks
with 5 comment(s)
The picture is worth a thousand words, Mattias Ekstrom has won the Race of Champions for the third time, 2009 joining his successes in 2006 and 2007. In the final he beat Formula One legend Michael Schumacher. Ekstrom and Schumacher had fought their way to the final despatching the likes of Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel along the way. There was a packed crowd at Beijing's "Birds' Nest" stadium despite the wintery conditions. On the night Ekstrom was unstoppable, even by Schumacher...
More >>>
Posted
Nov 04 2009, 01:03 AM
by
John Brooks
with 29 comment(s)
The Bird's Nest Stadium, Beijing, is the home of the 2009 Race of Champions. Yesterday there was the traditional opening competition, The Nations' Cup, in which teams of two drivers representing countries or regions slug it out. Almost as traditional was the result...........Germany with Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher teamed up together has now won the competition three times in a row but Team Autosport GB pushed them very hard, Andy Priaulx beating Red Bull's F1 hero Vettel...
More >>>
Posted
Nov 02 2009, 05:30 PM
by
John Brooks
with 16 comment(s)
Was it really more than 25 years ago? That first time I met the quiet, slight Brazilian with the burning intensity in his eyes? Thruxton, a ex-WW2 fighter base in Hampshire and although it is close to Stonehenge it is not generally regarded as a place of dreams or magic. It is almost always windy and usually cold too, oh and don't forget the rain. Its main virtue as far as I was concerned was that it was around an hour from home. Back then I was a camp follower to the British Formula Three scene...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 30 2009, 12:35 AM
by
John Brooks
with 16 comment(s)
1968 was a year of revolution; politically, socially, culturally, even down to something as trivial as sport. Nothing was ever the same again, it was, perhaps, the End of Innocence. Politically, students and workers had taken to the streets in Paris during May nearly toppling the government. In the "Prague Spring" a Soviet satellite made a bid for freedom, bloody and brutal repression by the Russians was the final outcome. In the USA a presidential election year saw LBJ resign and Richard...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 26 2009, 11:59 AM
by
John Brooks
with 8 comment(s)
Minutes, hours, days, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries...........all will pass eventually, so too for motor sport. It seems only yesterday that I was heading for Germany and the first round of a brave new Championship. Hockenheim was the location and April 1997 was the time. Well like me the FIA GT Championship has got a little older, if not wiser and yesterday, after 132 races and 13 seasons the affair ended. For next year it will be all change but for now let's have a quick look at...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 20 2009, 02:00 PM
by
John Brooks
with 12 comment(s)
Can you imagine what qualities were needed to be THE top racing driver of the 60s. Big hair, wolfish smile, Mediterranean suntan, hairy chest on display, dolly birds on either arm............in other words a regular Carlos Fandango and yet it was much simpler than that..........all you really needed was a Scottish accent and a wee bit o' tartan. Jim Clark was acknowledged by all his contemporaries to be the best during his reign in Formula One, he was the leader of the pack, absolutely no doubt...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 19 2009, 04:01 AM
by
John Brooks
with 35 comment(s)
Formula One is not usually on the SpeedHunters menu, however we would like to salute the achievements of Jenson Button and Brawn GP who took the 2009 Drivers' and Constructors' World Championships at Interlagos, Brazil, yesterday. This achievement is all the more incredible as just eight months ago the team did not exist but it rose phoenix like out of the ashes of Honda's Formula One departure. After a disastrous 2008 season many long hours were put in through last winter developing...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 19 2009, 09:30 AM
by
John Brooks
with 9 comment(s)
If Juan Manuel Fangio was top dog when motorsport resumed in full after World War 2, who would take over his role when he decided to retire after winning a fifth driver's title in 1957? (Yes I know that he raced for part of 1958 but effectively he left the sport while still on top.) Then, as now, there could only be one answer.........Stirling Moss. Fangio was a link to the pre-war racing scene having competed against some of the great such as Tazio Nuvolari and Achille Varzi but Stirling Moss...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 18 2009, 09:30 AM
by
John Brooks
with 10 comment(s)
In any sport or indeed any form of social activity there is the alpha male, the leader of the pack, the head of the herd, the Numero Uno.........whatever the expression used everyone in the group acknowledges, even if only to themselves, that this individual is the tops. THE MAN. So too with motorsport, even in the ultra competitive arena of Grand Prix racing there is usually an individual who is recognised, sometimes openly, sometimes grudgingly, as the benchmark that all others must measure themselves...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 03 2009, 12:20 PM
by
John Brooks
with 7 comment(s)
In a very short period of time the motor race known as Petit Le Mans has acquired “Classic” status. It is now regarded in the same league as its yahoo, elder cousin, the Sebring 12 Hours. Some of this status is because of the association with the Le Mans 24 Hours and some of the status is due to the challenging Road Atlanta track. It is popular with teams, drivers, fans, even photographers, all of whom enjoy the undulations and sheer flat out speed of the place. Generally a pretty good...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 02 2009, 06:21 AM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 10 comment(s)
In part 2 of our McLaren F1 GTR Retrospective, we are going to look at the 1996 season. McLaren Cars made a number of improvements for the 1996 season with revised aerodynamics, cooling and fuel system. Many components were re-engineered. As I explained at the beginning of the month , a new test car, Chassis ‘10R’ was completed and used to announce the 1996 season, although ironically the car still carried some 1995 aerodynamics. We needed a livery which jumped out of the page and also...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 01 2009, 04:40 PM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 13 comment(s)
As our BMW Feature Month comes to an end, I have been asked to give my personal reflections on the golden years of the McLaren F1 GTR. Grab yourself a coffee….it’s a long one! With the aid of Rod's images from his recent visit to Rahal Letterman and John Brooks extensive collection, I'll attempt to cover the two seasons in which the short-tail GTR changed the face of GT racing. It may not have been part of the original McLaren F1 project, but the story of the McLaren F1 GTR was...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 29 2009, 12:40 PM
by
John Brooks
with 7 comment(s)
"Blow,Winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout til you have drenched our steeples, drown'd the cocks!" I did not actually see King Lear out in the storms that hit Road Atlanta during the middle of the Petit Le Mans last Saturday but I saw plenty of candidates for the role of the Fool, me for one. Sitting in the warm, dry media centre contemplating a two hour session in the pit lane, I looked at the weather radar on John Dagys' computer and could...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 26 2009, 05:01 PM
by
John Brooks
with 11 comment(s)
" A Rainy Night in Georgia, A Rainy Night in Georgia, It seems like it's Raining all over the World" We had dodged the monumental thunderstorms for most of the day but eventually the monsoon hit Road Atlanta and turned the track into a lake in places. The lightning was also an issue as no one wanted corner workers and other personal working outside to be exposed to unnecessary dangers. Finally the track became undrivable, so the although the race was running behind a safety car under...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 25 2009, 08:41 PM
by
John Brooks
with 14 comment(s)
Friday dawned in Georgia with those of us sporting media track access passes dragged from our beds to attend the mandatory photo meeting. Coffee and grumbles were, as ever, the order of the day at the hot and steamy Road Atlanta track. On the circuit things had a familiar ring, with BMW topping the GT2 class during the final practice session. And still at the top of the timesheets was the #08 Peugeot. Plus ca change............... Friday at Petit Le Mans is also the day when the fans can get up close...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 25 2009, 12:00 AM
by
John Brooks
with 12 comment(s)
Yes, it is time for SpeedHunters' Petit Le Mans coverage to start in earnest. Hartsfield International, Atlanta's airport will be Check-Point Charlie for Motorsport pros this weekend. Heading East will be Linhbergh who should hook up with a West bound Rod later today. Me? I am already here in the humid confines of Road Atlanta. The official sessions leading up to the race are now underway, so here is a quick look at what is to come. SpeedHunters will be looking at all aspects of the event...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 17 2009, 09:00 AM
by
John Brooks
with 3 comment(s)
I was ploughing through the archive today looking for material for a couple of SpeedHunters' BMW assignments when I came across this shot, I thought why not? It was taken on the opening lap of the first ETCC race held at Spa back in July 2004. It has a strong BMW theme and I remember being pretty pleased with it at the time, double page spread in Sport Auto as I recall, making Editor Schurig happy. Of course it is pure luck to get such symmetry but as Gary Player once said " the more I practise...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 16 2009, 10:24 AM
by
John Brooks
with 4 comment(s)
One of the best bits about the 2009 Le Mans Series has been the support races organised by Classic Endurance Racing. Grids around the 50 mark and all manner of interesting machinery. We will be bringing you a feature on this later in the year but for now I would like to have a quick look at the BMW element that raced on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit last weekend. The BMW M1 from the ProCar era is a popular choice for this form of competition, being relatively affordable, easy to drive and work...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 10 2009, 01:00 PM
by
John Brooks
with 26 comment(s)
In his masterpiece, The Waste Land , TS Eliot asserted that "April is the cruellest month". Back in 1997 it must have seemed so to those of us anticipating the opening round of the FIA GT Championship to be staged at the HockenheimRing. For the teams there were days without end as they struggled to get their new cars ready for the contest, parts to be assembled, tested and refined and hopefully, made fast and reliable. April had been a cruel time at Hockenheim in Aprils past, 1968 saw the...
More >>>