Browse by Tags
Posted
Nov 01 2009, 04:00 PM
by
Jonathan Moore
with 3 comment(s)
There is a name that's synonymous with Le Mans: Jacky Ickx. The unassuming Belgian driver ruled sportscar racing in general and Le Mans in particular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but his career effectively spanned four decades. Ickx was a multi-discipline master: one of the old school of drive anything, anywhere, anytime – fast. An all-rounder of the highest ability; Europe's equivalent of Mario Andretti. Unlike many sportscar drivers who never made their mark in Formula 1, Ickx...
More >>>
Posted
Nov 01 2009, 10:44 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 39 comment(s)
While researching this blog post, I didn't want to make a standard Driver Profile of Paul Vlasblom like what we've been doing with the Formula D drifters. I wanted to turn it into a Q&A type of feature with lots of pictures of his cars, build projects and driving skills instead. Paul's career got started in 1998 when he was working for a Porsche dealership and and was racing a E30. He already loved to slide the little BMW but it never occurred to him it was a real sport. He won the...
More >>>
Posted
Oct 31 2009, 10:53 AM
by
Patrick McGrath
with 7 comment(s)
There aren't too many drift dynasties around. Let alone one quite as successful as these two brothers. Born and raised in County Cork, in the south of Ireland, James (L) and Mike (R) are the most successful brothers in the European drifting world. To get a better view of this story, we need to go back to 2004, where I first saw Mike competeing in an E30 325 BMW. . Like pretty much all Irish drift stories, this one again begins at the home of Irish drifting, the Rosegreen / Tipperary International...
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 28 2009, 05:30 PM
by
Dino Dalle Carbonare
with 19 comment(s)
It was hard to pick a second D1 driver to do a small retrospective on, following the post on Ueo's career as a professional drifter. There are just so many great drivers in Japan to choose from, but after much deliberation it just had to be Nobuteru Taniguchi. Taniguchi is one driver I have great respect for, having managed to build a racing career with his own two hands, starting off in small one make racing sereis making it all the way to Super GT. In fact as I write this he is preparing to...
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 20 2009, 04:30 AM
by
Dino Dalle Carbonare
with 29 comment(s)
With the D1 Grand Prix all done for a good five months I thought it would be cool to take a look back over the last few years and more to the point at some of the top drifters that have participated in the Japanese drift championship. I've picked two names that are synonymous with D1, drivers that for some reason or another are no longer competing at a professional level in Japan. First up is Katsuhiro Ueo, in my opinion the best AE86 drifter out there... ...driver of the unmistakable Racing...
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 13 2009, 04:10 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 11 comment(s)
Do we have any Schumacher fans in here? Schumacher haters? Personally speaking, I've had an on-off opinion of "Schumi" over the seasons. He was rather good at playing the villian racing driver for many years, although after a few seasons this became "the saviour of Ferrari" and then later on the centerpoint of total domination. I'm not going to attempt to write a full length Retrospective on Schumacher though. We just don't have access to a complete enough Formula...
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, 03:58 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 12 comment(s)
As we wrap up BMW month, there's one more big retrospective piece left to do - the M cars. For over 30 years M-badged cars have embodied BMW's motoring spirit on roads and racing circuits around the world. You've already seen lots of BMW's race cars this month, so let's take a look at the history of production M cars, dating back to the famous BMW M1 of the late '70s....
More >>>
Posted
Sep 22 2009, 08:57 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 18 comment(s)
One of the things that we've looked at it often on Speedhunters is the artistic aspect of car building and modification. When it comes to the relationship of artistry and the automobile, there's no better example than the BMW Art Cars. For over 30 years, famous artists from around the world have turned BMW's into their personal canvases - something that's one of the most creative examples of auto marketing ever.
Let's go back to 1975 and take a look at the history of the BMW Art Car program......
More >>>
Posted
Sep 16 2009, 03:12 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 22 comment(s)
The long history of BMW is filled with iconic models, but none of them are as influential as the 3-series. For over 30-years the 3-series has been a favorite of everyone from executives to weekend racers to housewives, and has long stood atop the sport sedan market on all corners of the globe. As part of our special BMW features this month, a look back at history this iconic model is in order....
More >>>
Posted
Sep 11 2009, 11:38 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 11 comment(s)
Around the office at EA, the Speedhunters audience is always referred to as "the hardcore" ... That is, you guys are so much more than casual automotive fans; you eat, sleep and breath this stuff... But among automotive enthusiasts there are the hardcore and then there are the REAL hardcore . People whose automotive knowledge reaches encyclopedic depths in whatever area they've chosen to specialize in. One genre of these car culture extremists are people who specialize in the cataloging...
More >>>
Posted
Sep 05 2009, 09:20 AM
by
John Brooks
with 18 comment(s)
Anyone misfortunate enough to stumble into my office will find scenes of confusion. Books and magazines sit cheek by jowl, references in the process of being checked, another pile of slides awaiting scanning, jobs waiting to be despatched. There are several boxes of photo material, film, prints and slides marked "random". Actually that are labelled something else but the auto editor won't allow me to type that word. As you are aware it is BMW month, so I thought it would be mildly amusing...
More >>>
Posted
Aug 13 2009, 11:01 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 10 comment(s)
As you've seen in the Speedhunters '09 Speed Week coverage, there's an incredible variety of machines that come out to Bonneville to run on the hallowed salt. From streamliners to motorcycles to pickup trucks, if it has wheels chances are you'll find it out there. Japanese tuners have long had an addiction to the salt, with cars like the JUN Z and Dandy RX7 making appearances over the years. However, some of the most famous Japanese cars to run at Bonneville weren't tuned in Japan, but right here in the USA by the guys at Racing Beat. As part of Speed month, we thought a quick look at these historic salt-going rotaries was in order....
More >>>
Posted
Jul 31 2009, 04:57 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 20 comment(s)
I grew up in England where, in the early Sixties I had a paper route. Somebody on that route subscribed to Hot Rod Magazine and I'd sit on the kerb under grey skies surrounded by grey cars and read about red and yellow cars under blue, California skies. I so wanted that life. In 1963, two American dragsters owned by Dean Moon and Mickey Thompson, visited England. My dad took me and my friends to see them and I was hooked on "Americarna." It took a long time to figure out how to make...
More >>>
Posted
Jul 28 2009, 12:22 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 11 comment(s)
A lot of the Retrospective articles we put together for Speedhunters tend to focus on lost golden eras of motorsports -- brief moments in racing history when the conditions were ripe for some truly wild race cars to hit the track. Perhaps it was the eras that burned short but sweet which resonate the most with us race fans... It's a bit like James Dean -- it seems a life cut short helps in the creation of legend. This rings true for the DTM Class1 era from 1993 to 1996. For four breathtaking...
More >>>