Indholdsfortegnelse for 07/12/23 i Autosport

Michael Schumacher and Max Verstappen. Two great Formula 1 drivers with some of the most dominant campaigns in history on their CVs. As Alex Kalinauckas outlines this week, there are a surprising number of parallels between the two multiple champions, as well as a few differences (see page 14). Verstappen has started 185 world championship grands prix and scored 54 wins (29%) and 32 poles (17%), as well as three titles. At the same point in his career, Schumacher had taken 68 victories (37%) and 54 poles (29%), along with five crowns. Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is that Verstappen is still only 26, while Schumacher was 34 back in 2003. The Dutchman could carry on for a decade or more, which means he’ll be threatening Schuey’s total of 91…

ELMS European Le Mans Series title winners Robert Kubica and Filipe Albuquerque will return to the championship in 2024 as part of a bumper LMP2 entry. The respective 2021 and 2020 champions will undertake full campaigns in ORECA-Gibson 07s run by TF Sport and United Autosports. Kubica will contest the ELMS alongside his World Endurance Championship assault with the extra Ferrari run on a customer basis by AF Corse and is the first driver nominated for the AO by TF ORECA. AO is the banner used by American PJ Hyett for his campaigns in the WEC and IMSA SportsCar series. Albuquerque will be racing for United for an eighth season in 2024 alongside his IMSA campaign with the WTRAndretti Acura squad, but it will be his first full ELMS programme…

McLaren’s impressive development across the 2023 Formula 1 season was a timely boost as it celebrated its 60th birthday. It’s not taken a title since 2008, but McLaren is still second on two important F1 metrics: grand prix wins and drivers’ titles. To honour the team’s rich history, a 60th anniversary celebration was organised by long-term former McLaren engineering and design employee Matthew Jeffreys and the team’s ex-sponsorship coordinator Richard West. Held in November at the Old Thorns Hotel in Hampshire, more than 300 past and current employees joined guest of honour Ron Dennis for a special evening. And Autosport was allowed to come along. McLaren’s story across F1, Indycar and Can-Am was represented by former staffers stretching back to employee number three Howden Ganley, as well as important relatives,…

Oh, what might have been. What if Jos Verstappen had been successful in getting the 2004 Jaguar F1 seat alongside Mark Webber that ultimately went to Christian Klien? Had he got his way, then perhaps Red Bull’s Verstappen era would have kicked off a decade earlier… Instead, it turned out that Verstappen’s frustrating 2003 campaign with the minnow Minardi was his last in F1. There had been hopes that the Faenza-based team, then helmed by aviation entrepreneur Paul Stoddart, could replicate its points-scoring form with Mark Webber from 2002, especially with its switch to Cosworth power. But reliability improvements from the teams further up the grid restricted Verstappen’s chances of sneaking into the top eight. There were also issues with Minardi’s last-minute deal for a Bridgestone tyre supply. And there…

The first season of GTP Version 2.0 had everything: white-hot competition, elbows-out racing and even deception. But it came down to another Acura versus Cadillac title duel. The championship was decided by a clash in the closing stages of the Petit Le Mans finale at Road Atlanta between Pipo Derani’s Action Express Cadillac and the Wayne Taylor Racing Acura of Filipe Albuquerque. In a winner-takes-all scenario, under the cover of darkness, race leader Derani took all of the track at Turn 1 as Albuquerque boldly tried to pass him around the outside. Contact was made and Albuquerque slammed hard into the tyrewall. The incident was reviewed by Race Control for an excruciatingly long time, but no action was taken, so Derani and season-long team-mate Alexander Sims were crowned champions. Even…

750MC The 750 Motor Club is set to visit Thruxton for the first time in seven years next season after securing a one-day fixture at the Hampshire track. Race dates are limited to just 12 per year at Thruxton amid strict local regulations and it is therefore always difficult for clubs to secure a spot. This has been especially tricky in recent years as, on several occasions, Thruxton has appeared twice on the British Touring Car schedule – further limiting the pool. But the 750MC is now due to return for the first time since 2017 on 4 May as the Classic Sports Car Club has opted to have a single-day meeting at Thruxton next year. The 750 Formula, BMW Car Club Racing, Campaign Against Living Miserably All Porsche Trophy,…

MSV Snetterton Circuit has undergone significant resurfacing work in recent weeks, which is expected to reduce lap times for competitors next season. Work around the three-mile Norfolk track was completed by Aggregate Industries, the same company responsible for the resurfacing at Donington Park earlier this year, with more than 4000 square metres of surface having been relaid, including at Wilson, Agostini, Oggies, Nelson and Murrays. Times across a number of categories at MotorSport Vision’s Donington venue noticeably dropped by several seconds on the new surface this year and it is expected the same will happen at Snetterton in 2024 due to the completed work. Stuart Mills, Snetterton circuit manager, said: “We’re firmly committed to ensuring that Snetterton maintains its reputation as one of the UK’s best motorsport facilities. “We have…

Over the next few pages, you can read plenty about club racing grid sizes. Looking at these numbers is a very blunt method for assessing the health of a series – after all, it doesn’t take into account the unique set of circumstances that surround each particular category’s fortunes, but it does still give a useful point of comparison and a snapshot of how they are performing. And grid sizes really do matter. Speak to any club boss and the subject of rising prices is very likely to crop up. Whether that’s circuit hire, cost of hotels or the amount paid to medics on duty at race meetings, expenditure has increased in so many areas and that means entry numbers are even more important. Put simply, clubs cannot afford to…

The British Racing & Sports Car Club bucked the trend in 2022. While many other organisers faced a marked reduction in entries, its average grid size rose significantly. And, despite the continued tricky financial climate, it has been able to maintain its strong position in 2023, with only the 750 Motor Club boasting a higher portfolio-wide average. “It’s been a tough year, not quite as buoyant as the previous year, but we have a positive general feeling,” says club chairman Peter Daly. Endurance races have proven to be the BRSCC’s most popular, with the Clubsport Trophy topping the table on 39 cars and the longer, two-hour contests of the Supersport Endurance Cup also attracting a very healthy 30 in its first year with championship status. C1s declined a little but…

A “mixed bag” is how Classic Sports Car Club director David Smitheram describes the organiser’s 2023. As it celebrated its 20th anniversary of hosting standalone events, the club continued to demonstrate its desire to break from the mould and enjoyed contrasting success. A uniquely early February start proved a hit, with almost 170 entrants braving the Silverstone cold, while its Anglesey 24-hour event did not attract quite so many. “The event itself was brilliant,” says CSCC director Hugo Holder. “The marshals, drivers and officials loved it, but our bank balance didn’t love it!” Therefore, the CSCC is adopting a “more conservative” approach for 2024 – although this does include entering the sphere of organising championships as Kumho BMW, MG Trophy, Jaguar Challenge and Midget & Sprite Challenge are all coming…

BOOK REVIEW SPEED QUEENS: A SECRET HISTORY OF WOMEN IN MOTORSPORT Rachel Harris-Gardiner RRP £22.99 The motorsport industry is a male-dominated environment and there is no getting away from that fact. But, while the push for equality of all kinds is now front and centre, there have always been a strong few women that have pushed against the tide, as explained by Autosport contributor Rachel Harris-Gardiner in Speed Queens: A Secret History of Women in Motorsport. We start with a warning. Should you pick up this book – and we seriously recommend that you do – this is not a text that you can churn through in one sitting on a cold winter’s evening. It’s not an indictment on Speed Queens, it is just that the extraordinary level of information…

Jean-Marc Gounon has no shortage of candidates when it comes to picking a favourite car. But rather than the Ferrari F40 in which he had the race of his life at Nogaro in the 1996 BPR Endurance Series, or the Lola-Judd B98/10 in which he won four SportsRacing World Cup rounds in 1999, the former Mercedes and BMW factory driver opts for a car he only raced once – after a last-minute call-up at the 2003 Le Mans 24 Hours. Gounon wrestled the factory Courage-Judd C60 to seventh, but the result only tells part of the story. He’d been in the mix for fifth, as the best privateer, until his clutch went late on after a heroic drive filling in for the injured Boris Derichebourg. Aged 40, in his first…

FORMULA 1 In a first for Formula 1, all teams will field an unchanged driver line-up for a new season. The 20 racers who contested the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix season finale will hold station at their current employers for the 2024 opener in Bahrain, subject to any unforeseen absences. This small slice of history follows Williams deciding that Logan Sargeant deserves another year in the topflight. Sargeant has secured a one-year extension to a mixed reception, given he was outqualified 22-0 by team-mate Alex Albon, who also scored 27 points to the rookie’s one – albeit to become the first American to score an F1 point in 30 years. The ‘supertimes’ metric, which takes a driver’s fastest lap from each race weekend as a percentage compared to the outright…

WEC/IMSA Dane Cameron and Matt Campbell will swap places in the Porsche Penske Motorsport LMDh line-up next season. Cameron will switch over to the IMSA SportsCar Championship to replace World Endurance Championship-bound Campbell. Australian Campbell was confirmed in the #5 WEC 963 Hypercar entry alongside Michael Christensen and Frederic Makowiecki when the grid for 2024 was published last week. Now Porsche has confirmed that his seat in the #7 GTP class 963 with Felipe Nasr in IMSA will be taken by Cameron. Porsche motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach described the switch “as a logical change” in what otherwise is an unchanged line-up across the two arms of PPM. “Our goal continues to be to optimise the overall package for contesting the two major championships,” he continued. “This applies to the vehicle…

FORMULA 2 The closest approximation we can get to what will be the grid for the FIA Formula 2 Championship for 2024 took part in last week’s three-day post-season Abu Dhabi test. It was also the last outing for the series’ Dallara F2 2018 spec car, which is being retired after six years of service. Several of the teams had already announced drivers for the upcoming year in the build-up to the test. The presence of other participants, including 2023 F2 rookie sensations Victor Martins and Ollie Bearman remaining on board with ART Grand Prix and Prema Racing respectively for the running, merely confirmed what most had already been tipping. But there were some changes to the established line-ups. Rodin Carlin’s confirmation of Zane Maloney for a second season and…

EXTREME E Nico Rosberg’s RXR pairing of Johan Kristoffersson and Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky were crowned Extreme E champions after a dramatic finale in Chile’s copper capital of Antofagasta. The Swedish duo arrived in South America with a narrow lead over Acciona Sainz racers Mattias Ekstrom and Laia Sanz, and beat them to victory by just 0.35 seconds on Saturday. Ekstrom led up to the Switch Zone, from which Sanz struggled to get away. Ahlin-Kottulinsky soaked up the pressure for the win, with Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team third thanks to the efforts of Fraser McConnell and Cristina Gutierrez. When Kristoffersson went up onto two wheels and dropped to fifth at the start of Sunday’s final, that jeopardised RXR’s title hopes. Then Tanner Foust ran into McConnell at the Switch Zone, promoting the…

HE WON SO MANY Formula 1 races. Often they were with such crushing performances that there ended up being a discussion about how he acted during the regular airings of his team’s national anthem. Back in the early 2000s, Michael Schumacher’s regular ‘conducting’ of the Ferrari mechanics joyously belting out Il Canto degli Italiani drew criticism from former Italian prime minister and president Francesco Cossiga. In 2023, there were countless skits and memes acknowledging that the Dutch/Austrian national anthem combination ringing out after every Max Verstappen/Red Bull walkover is now as familiar to the close of a grand prix as the thumping Brian Tyler-composed refrain is to the introduction. There are plenty of Schumacher/Verstappen comparisons, and what ties them together nicely is the familial bond between the two camps –…

Across Park Lane from the gleeful shrieks from Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, the gleeful shrieks of the Loake family emanated from the Grosvenor House Hotel at the climax of the 2023 edition of the Autosport Awards. But GB3 star Joseph Loake’s elevation to the pantheon of those who have earned the prestigious Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award was just one highlight of this most star-studded of annual shindigs. With Immy Barclay and Natalie Pinkham on hosting duties, and Bryn Lucas interviewing celebrity guests from the floor of the Great Room, the Awards glided us through the standout performers, machinery and moments from the 2023 season. Stars such as Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri sent thank you messages for their Awards successes by…

HISTORICS Briton Nigel Greensall not only added two more championship titles to his extraordinary CV but also celebrated his 100th race start of the 2023 season at Historic Sportscar Racing’s Classic 12 Hours over the weekend at the Sebring International Raceway. The eighth running of the Pistons & Props retrospective, which showcases the Floridian airfield circuit’s international history, featured four groups of cars tackle four races towards an aggregate result. Defending Endurance Challenge champion Greensall and Francesco Melandri again contested the full series and regained their title in US-based Melandri’s Ligier LMP3 on what Greensall describes as “my favourite track”. They also added the BRM Historic GT crown in Melandri’s IMSA veteran Porsche 993 GT2 (inset). “Both cars were on the same grid, so Francesco started the Porsche, I started…

GB4 Ginetta Junior podium finisher Tom Spragg is eyeing a graduation to GB4 next year after enjoying a first single-seater test at Brands Hatch last week. Spragg made his Ginetta debut in the final two events of last season, despite only having a couple of years of rental karting under his belt. He then progressed throughout this year with the Preptech UK squad, culminating in a maiden podium at the Donington Park finale. Now the 17-year-old plans a move to single-seaters as a useful learning step ahead of targeting a future drive at Le Mans. “I’m just getting some aero experience – I want to compete at Le Mans and the Hypercars now have got a ridiculous amount of downforce so it’s great to get a good baseline,” he explained.…

CIRCUIT RALLYING Michael Igoe and Will Atkins won last weekend’s snow-hit Donington Park Rally, round three of the Circuit Rally Championship, on their debut in a Citroen C3 Rally2. The crew had to recover from a lurid spin on the main straight on an icy opening stage that allowed Mark Jasper/Don Whyatt’s MG Metro 6R4 to lead. John Griffiths/Emma Morrison’s Ford Fiesta R5 and Ollie O’Donovan/Jack Morton’s Hyundai i20 R5 took up the chase, before Igoe usurped them all on stage three to take a one-second lead over Jasper. O’Donovan moved into second on stage four of six, with Griffiths losing out in his pursuit after a spin and stall. Igoe took victory by 12s over O’Donovan, with Griffiths third and Dave Welch/Andy Smith’s Subaru Impreza fourth, after Jasper’s Metro…

Stubbornly high inflation, a squeeze on incomes and weak economic growth. The UK’s financial situation during 2023 does not exactly sound like the ideal conditions for motorsport to thrive. And yet, there have been encouraging signs of resilience in the club racing world, with some impressive entries over the past year. Yes, it has not been easy for organisers (see p61) and it is far from a successful picture across the board, but the fact that 65 of the 124 English/Welsh categories (52%) with comparable data to last year either grew their average number of starters or stayed the same versus their 2022 figure is pretty remarkable. Like last season, 10 series again averaged over 35 cars per round, with the 750 Motor Club’s 116 Trophy leading the way for…

Not many club championships reach their 40th anniversary, given how different categories fall in and out of favour. Fewer still have the same coordinator throughout those 40 years. But that is the case with the CNC Heads Sports & Saloons, which celebrated John Leck’s final year at the helm in style and was one of the British Automobile Racing Club’s success stories of 2023. Entries did fall in 2022 but they were resurgent this year and its numbers grew by over 40% to an average of 33. “They took an interesting decision to reduce entry fees,” says BARC group chief executive Ben Taylor. “Not by much – about 15-20% – and they were rewarded by a huge surge in numbers. John has done an amazing job for so many years…

One of the many key factors in determining the success of a club is whether it listens to its members and implements ideas they suggest. The Castle Combe Racing Club certainly prides itself on doing just this and is hoping a competitor-inspired decision to switch its Hot Hatch category from a series to a championship next year will prove fruitful. It has long been the best performing of the Combe portfolio, although – for a second consecutive season – Hot Hatch has suffered a modest decline. But despite its popularity, CCRC chairman Ken Davies says the club is constantly listening to what competitors say. “Lots of email exchanges swap around through the year and it’s about giving the customers what they want,” he says. “Hot Hatch converting to a championship…

Sadly, the Vintage Sports-Car Club’s 2023 season was shrouded in tragedy. Roger Twelvetrees’ fatal accident at the club’s popular August Mallory Park meeting was another reminder of the dark side of the sport, although the way competitors rallied around to support his family in the aftermath has been pleasing. “Roger’s certainly going to be missed in the wider motorsport community,” says club secretary Tania Brown. “Given it was a tragic event, it’s been wonderful how the club and wider community have come together. Roger’s son William has been absolutely fantastic and really appreciated the warmth from the club around him.” Prior to that point, the VSCC had enjoyed a successful season with some great entries, particularly at its Silverstone ‘Spring Start’ event, where Peter Greenfield’s Alfa Romeo 158 ‘Alfetta’ was…

WEC/F1 Alfa Romeo is assessing a World Endurance Championship attack now its involvement in Formula 1 has come to an end. After a six-year partnership, the Italian manufacturer was forced to cut ties with the Sauber team (right) at the end of the 2023 season ahead of Audi taking control of the Swiss operation in time for its 2026 grand prix return. Alfa Romeo did assess a tie-up with Ferrari customer Haas, but talks didn’t progress far since American payment firm MoneyGram already holds title sponsorship there. As such, Alfa CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato reckons WEC is now the most likely route to maintaining a major motorsport presence post-Sauber. He told Autosport: “We weren’t interested in aiming to do a copy/paste operation [with Haas] in the style of the one done…

ASIAN LE MANS SERIES Ex-Formula 1 driver Nikita Mazepin moved a step closer to competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours when his 99 Racing team emerged from last weekend’s Asian Le Mans Series season-opening doubleheader at Sepang with the points lead. The series, which awards additional 24 Hours entries to its champions, kicked off with two four-hour races in Malaysia. Well, that was the intention, but the first was abandoned 10 minutes short due to torrential rain. Louis Deletraz was in front in 99’s TF Sport-run ORECA (also shared with Ahmad Al Harthy) from Matthieu Vaxiviere’s AF Corse version, but the field could barely stay on the track as the conditions significantly worsened. The 99 crew were foiled in the Sunday race when a lengthy caution deep into the…

SUPER FORMULA Newly crowned IMSA GTD Pro champion Ben Barnicoat is an unexpected addition to this week’s three-day Super Formula test at Suzuka. The 26-year-old Briton claimed IMSA honours with Lexus, and it is with parent marque Toyota’s powerhouse TOM’S team that Barnicoat is set to run on Friday, the third day that is designated for rookies. He is understood to have been testing single-seaters in the UK recently, seven years since moving from European Formula 3 to GT. New Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire, who is expected to race in the series next season, is testing with Toyota squad Team Impul over the first two days, with Jota World Endurance driver Oliver Rasmussen taking over for the Rookie running. Euroformula Open race winner Juju Noda, daughter of ex-F1 driver…

The off-track political spectacle of the 2023 Formula 1 campaign rather reflected the action on-track. Plenty of potential flare-ups, but nothing that spilled over from a cold to hot confrontation. But at the Abu Dhabi finale, existing ingredients of one particular political dynamic recipe did begin to rise. This is the fear from Red Bull’s rivals that its planned closer ties with junior squad AlphaTauri to lift its competitiveness on a cost-effective basis for an organisation that owns two teams might actually lead to a benefit for the energy drinks giant’s main operation. When Autosport asked McLaren CEO Zak Brown if his squad – which reversed a pace deficit to Red Bull clocked by rivals at around a second in lap time across the 2023 campaign – closing the remaining…

Many different aspects can come to define an era of motorsport history, from car types to rulesets. Max Verstappen is now establishing his era of Formula 1 domination to follow those of Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and so many more. But often a gaggle of great drivers arrive together, and their personalities and battles find permanent homes in fond memories. Rewind 20 years, and it was Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen who were starting their journeys to becoming future world champions. Their F1 arrivals were spread across 2000-01 and, as they got up to speed, their achievements were registering in a very different media landscape. Tabloid power was arguably at its height, and magazine culture still held so much sway on how fans understood their heroes.…

It’s easy to be wistful about defunct racing series of yore, be it CART-era Indycar, Formula 5000 or the sportscar leviathans of Can-Am, but bringing back a reimagined version of a well-loved category carries a risk of its own. What if you build it and nobody comes? What if it’s sacrilegious to the memory of what went before? What if it mirrors the past and drifts into oblivion again? Back in the day, IMSA’s GTP class pre-dated FISA’s Group C rules and spawned some of the most fantastic and best remembered sportscars of the past 50 years. It ran between 1981 and 1993 and featured epic machinery including Porsche’s ubiquitous 962, Nissan’s fearsome ZX-Turbo and NPT90/91, Jaguar’s legendary XJR range, Ford’s undercooked Probe (and an earlier front-engined Mustang!), Toyota’s striking…

MSV MotorSport Vision is due to run a third American-themed event next year, with a new fixture at Snetterton added to its roster. The American SpeedFest at Brands Hatch and US AutoShow at Oulton Park are popular meetings and now Snetterton will enjoy its own American experience. Full details of the 14-15 September event are yet to be revealed but the Legends Cars championship – which is joining MotorSport Vision Racing’s portfolio for 2024 – is due to attend alongside Bernie’s V8s, which usually features various American machinery. “You can expect American-themed racing, extensive car displays and many references to American culture,” said MSVR competitions manager Joe East. “In addition to this we are hoping to add a celebration of America’s military personnel, owing to the strong connection with bases…

CATERHAM Father-and-son James and Tom Emson (270R), Tom Cockerill/Taylor O’Flanagan (310R) and Barry Benham/Stephen Lyall (420R) emerged as champions from the first Caterham Caribbean Cup at Barbados’ Bushy Park circuit at the end of last month. More than 40 UK racers and 27 cars brought Caterham’s 50th anniversary season to a climax on 25-26 November. In 270R, current champion Freddie Chiddicks and runner-up Charlie Lower met their match in the Emsons, with Tom making a superb Caterham debut. Lower’s brother Zach and Tom McEwing beat Emson Sr in the daily openers, but Emson Jr’s pace proved decisive in the other contests. Former Academy champions O’Flanagan and Cockerill were quickest in the 310R qualifying groups as the former won his sprints, as did soloists Geoff Price and Matt Sheppard, but O’Flanagan/Cockerill…

There is a recurring theme to Autosport’s club racing grid sizes feature over the past few years. The 750 Motor Club led the way in terms of average entries across an organiser’s full suite of categories in 2021 and 2022 – and it is now a hat-trick. Not that its competitions secretary Giles Groombridge is getting complacent. “There’s no magic bullet,” he says. “The 116 Trophy was our biggest grid and it’s low cost, offers a good chunk of track time and a lot of cars are shared with two to four drivers over a weekend. It’s perfect for the current economic conditions.” While the 116 Trophy and its new sister Sprint series – which is to get championship status next year – thrived, Groombridge says 2023 was still a…

It was the MotorSport Vision Trackdays-organised categories that once again led the way among MotorSport Vision Racing’s portfolio as these series continue to offer a low-cost route for new competitors into the sport. EnduroKa, Trackday Championship and Trackday Trophy all averaged well over 30 cars this season, while the new-for-2023 Mazda MX-5 based Miata Trophy proved to be more of a hit than the Turismo X contest it effectively replaced. “MSVT Racing do a great job with their championships and series,” says MSVR competitions manager Joe East. “There’s nothing radically different in their approach – they just focus on getting the basics of series promotion right. The customer service element is particularly important, and they do this extremely well, listening to feedback from teams and competitors, and acting on anything…

Unlike last year, when its grid sizes table was a sea of red, there are some encouraging green figures of growth among the Historic Sports Car Club’s portfolio this season. Its single-seater offerings performed well, with Classic Formula Ford 1600 up considerably, but the most notable improver was Historic F3. This mustered just 15 cars on average in 2022 but some massive grids – including 31 at Brands Hatch – helped boost its numbers by almost 50% this season as momentum builds ahead of next year’s 60th anniversary of the beginning of the one-litre F3 era. “We’ve seen the difference a major anniversary coming up can have and I do think the work the One-Litre F3 Historic Racing Association is doing will sustain that [growth],” says HSCC CEO Andy Dee-Crowne.…

Alongside the big players, there are also a plethora of smaller organisers that add further diversity to the UK racing scene. And one of the most successful of these smaller clubs has to be the Historic Racing Drivers Club, as evidenced by the numbers for its season-closer. “We had 128 entries for three races at Silverstone GP in October,” says founder Julius Thurgood. It is a seriously impressive figure and proves the HRDC is doing something right. “We try to not run two-day meetings and refuse to have championships,” explains Thurgood about the keys to the success. “It means you can dip in and out and, secondly, the attitude is focused on the social aspect of it and people behave better.” Its newest offering, the Gerry Marshall Trophy for Group…

Nino Farina (#2 Alfa Romeo 158) outdrags polesitting team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio (#6) to take the lead at the start of the 1950 French Grand Prix at Reims, as the pair are chased by the third works entry of Luigi Fagioli (#4). The Alfa trio ran in that order for the first third of the race until Farina’s car had fuel starvation issues. He pitted, fought back to third place, stopped again, then regained that position before being forced to retire. Fangio led home Fagioli, 26 seconds adrift; in a remarkable final podium place, three laps down, was Peter Whitehead’s privately entered Ferrari 125, which had started last. For classic downloads and DVDs head to dukevideo.com For more great photographs, visit motorsportimages.com…