Classic Gilles – 1979 South African GP

I couldn’t contain my delight when I discovered all this AP Archive footage from the 1979 South African GP. Gilles Villeneuve didn’t win anything like the number of GPs his talent deserved – but here, at least, is one of those victories. I’ve voiced-over this video as best I can (all the footage was either […]

Live Show – Ep 7: Gilles Villeneuve remembered; Enaam Ahmed on-line

This was a different sort of show for two reasons: 1) I decided to focus our AP Archive segment on just one race – the 1979 South African GP. This was partly because we uncovered some amazing and quite extensive colour footage from that race and partly because it was won by Gilles Villeneuve. And […]

Jack Brabham’s last-corner heartbreak

At Monaco, Jack Brabham seemed to have his second win of the 1970 season fully gift-wrapped. With Jochen Rindt closing fast, however, the slower car in front of Jack before the last corner of the last lap suddenly posed a problem. Jack couldn’t afford NOT to pass Piers Courage’s DeTomaso, so close was Rindt – […]

Kyalami 1978 revisited

Enjoy this hitherto little-seen colour AP Archive video of the 1978 South African GP at Kyalami. Niki Lauda stole the pole for Brabham-Alfa when no-one was looking on Friday morning; the race was led by Lauda, Mario Andretti, Jody Scheckter, Riccardo Patrese and Patrick Depailler; but it was Ronnie Peterson who seized the lead on the […]

One of the greatest of F1 drives – Monaco, 1965

This race had it all. A titanic win for Graham Hill (father of Damon). In-fighting between the two very quick Ferrari drivers. A fast drive by a young rookie named Jackie Stewart. The debut of a future World Champion – Denis Hulme. Plus an F1 Lotus plunge into the Monte-Carlo harbour. In conjunction with APArchive, […]

A surprise phone call to Ian Scott-Watson

We surprised Ian Scott-Watson on his 90th birthday by phoning him during The Racer’s Edge Live on April 23, 2020. Currently self-isolating in the house he designed himself in Greenlaw, near Duns, Scotland, Ian was largely responsible for bringing Jim Clark to the attention of the world at large and of Colin Chapman in particular. […]

Chatting with Gordon Murray

It was, of course, a lot of fun to chat to the brazenly-creative Gordon Murray, the South African who came to Europe to design and build racing cars – and who went on to dominate the world. Gordon was working in a small office at Brabham, under Ron Tauranac, when Bernie Ecclestone bought that team […]

F1 braking systems with Mercedes’ Mike Elliott

Mike Elliott, Technology Director of AMG-Mercedes Petronas F1, talks us through the braking systems of the Championship-winning Mercedes F1 car. The temperatures and the g-forces involved are mind-blowing; and, until the new F1 regs arrive (probably now in 2022), the brake suppliers in F1 will remain in fierce competition. Mercedes generally use Brembo calipers with […]

F1’s unlikeliest winner

All bets were off by the time they arrived at The Glen in ’66. Jack Brabham and his fabulous Brabham-Repcos had secured the world championship; John Surtees had switched mid-season from Ferrari to Cooper-Maserati, thus ending Maranello’s realistic title challenge (despite producing a car that could have won it). Dan Gurney had debuted his gorgeous […]

Ferrari win at Monza! Surtees-Bandini 1-3!

When I found this footage in the APArchive I couldn’t help re-living the titanic 1964 Italian GP at Monza, for this was the race when John Surtees and Lorenzo Bandini finished one-three for Ferrari. Coming off wins in Germany and Austria, Ferrari were under massive pressure to complete the hat-trick in Italy – and they […]

F1’s craziest starter

Let’s recall the antics of Raymond “Toto” Roche, who for many years was the Race Director and Official Starter/Finisher of the French GP. He once started a race with a red flag – and on many occasions narrowly missed death as he sprinted from the grid. Either way, he inevitably played a major role in […]

Goodbye Sir Stirl. And thanks.

After a long illness, Sir Stirling Moss passed away over the Easter weekend. The irony, I’m sure, would not have been lost on him. At Goodwood, on Easter Monday, 1962, his career came to a premature end. And now this. I revered Sir Stirl not only as one of the greatest racing drivers of all […]

The Racer’s Edge Live (Ep03)

Here’s a recording of the live show we aired on Thursday, April 09, 2020. It includes all the chat and questions that sped us quickly through the hour and finishes with some footage I think you’ll love – shots of Paris, 2004, when a certain Ferrari driver brought the city to a standstill. I’ll be […]

Designing a new F1 car with James Allison

I’m a huge James Allison fan, I have to confess. He’s literate, lucid, intelligent, very knowledgable about a lot of subjects – and he’s creative, too, as we’ve seen over the years in F1. At “Lotus” he gave us the forward-facing exhausts; and in recent months we’ve seen the intriguing steering/camber system on the 2020 […]

2019 Merc steering wheel analysis

A big thanks to AMG Petronas Motorsport for this short video about the 2019 F1 Mercedes steering wheel. It’s introduced by Valtteri Bottas and explained by Evan Short, Mercedes’ Team Leader, Trackside Electronic Communications.

Fighting hard

I recently met a young (17 year old) Englishman who just might be the next Nigel Mansell. Nigel won 34 Formula Ford races in 1977 but no-one seriously rated him: he came from Birmingham, he had no money behind him and he said things as they were rather than as people wanted to hear them. […]

Travels in Italy

The Spa-Monza double-header always poses a question: fly or drive? This year I chose the latter option and took the opportunity to visit some of the people and places I’ve always wanted to meet (or re-visit). Near Parma, for example, I called on the former Ferrari engineer, Enrique Scalabroni. He and his partner live in […]

The amazing Walter Rohrl

I’ve been a massive Walter Rohrl fan since March, 1980, when in thick fog he pulled out a lead of 4min 59sec on the second Arganil stage to win the Rally of Portugal with his Fiat 131 Abarth. Walter was peering out the side window for most of that night, driving with total commitment, but […]

The new cars arrive…

New regulations for 2017 mean new F1 cars from all the teams. At first glance, thanks to tighter restrictions dictating front- and rear-wing shape, they’re looking ever-more similar; delve deeper, as Craig Scarborough does in the adjoining videos, and significant differences between the cars are still apparent. With their wider Pirelli tyres and increased downforce, […]

F1 charity auction

I’m very pleased to announce that we are auctioning a number of unique F1-related items in aid of charity. The catalyst for the fund-raising is a little girl I know who is battling cerebral palsy. She plays in the school band, she laughs and screams with the others…but most of the time she’s either in […]

F1 tech update with Scarbs

Time for another F1 tech update with the excellent Craig Scarborough. Although many of the mid-field teams are now concentrating on their 2017 cars, development continues unabated at the sharp end of the grid. Here are some separate thoughts on Mercedes, Red Bull-Renault, Ferrari and McLaren-Honda, with the final video focussing on the remaining teams. […]

Monza’s always fun…

…and you invariably leave on Mondays with some regret. Here are some of my thoughts as I drove across Northern Italy after another weekend at the autodromo: Nico Rosberg won impeccably; Lewis Hamilton, F1 global ambassador extraordinaire, is still massively under-used by the F1 world, particularly as the USGP approaches; Ferrari, re-structured, are looking good; Daniel […]

Chris Amon – in his own words

We lost Christopher Arthur Amon on August 3. “Arthur”, as Nigel Roebuck and I used to call him, was more than just a very classy racing driver; he was a gent, a sportsman, a grazier, a lovely guy full of humility and understated charm. We’ll miss him terribly…but then I guess we have to be grateful […]

Austria, Silverstone…

…and now the Hungary-Hockenheim double-header. For Lewis Hamilton, a sweet-tasting August lies ahead. In these two videos, I look back at those two most recent races – at his battle with his Mercedes team-mate, Nico Rosberg, and at the rise and rise of Red Bull-Renault Images: LAT Photographic

All four seasons in one day

…and four days of video on one page Video blogs, that is. Here are some of my thoughts after each of the four days of Silverstone, from Thursday afternoon onwards. It was a huge, magical event; I hope these vids give you a small taste of what occurred. With special thanks to Alpinestars, Globe, LAT Photographic and British […]

Caspian Collations

Lovely city; not sure about the circuit. Mind you, as compromises go, this one isn’t bad:street races are complicated to organise and expensive to sustain but at least when they’re over you still have the ancient castle and the elegant boulevards. It’s the dormant, Eu500m supercircuits – Turkey, India, Korea (with probably a few more to come) […]

The Canadian Collection

Some video thoughts from three absorbing days in Montreal…

Magic on the Cote d’Azur

Anyone watching the action from Monaco’s Casino Square, or the exit of the tunnel or the entry to the swimming pool will know it: will know that it doesn’t get much better in these places; that you are close to human beings of extraordinary talent, doing more with their hands, feet, eyes, brains, heart, lungs, muscles and […]

Hey Bruce! What happened to the livery…?

Wonderful to see Michael Turner (right) in Monaco (above with Paul-Henri Cahier) – particularly on the occasion of McLaren’s 50th birthday. I may be wrong, but I don’t think too many of the people closely associated with the original McLaren F1 team are in town – apart from Michael, of course, and I think Howden […]

Now that was a motor race…

There was plenty to talk about after the Spanish Grand Prix, not the least of which was that first, amazing, win for Max Verstappen. When I predicted a few weeks ago on this site that Max would win a race in 2016 with the Red Bull A-team I certainly didn’t imagine that both Merc drivers […]

Another first corner skirmish…

It was 50 years ago that Graham Hill summed it up: “Difficult to believe that a bunch of so-called racing drivers can’t all head into the first corner without running into one another…” He was talking, of course, only a few moments after the famous 1966 Indy 500 rolling-start multishunt. As on-the-button as Graham was back […]

Shanghai Breezes

A friend in the LeTV (Chinese TV) studio generated some nice art after the race in Shanghai: it was a colour-coded lap chart – all lines, peaks, troughs, zigs and zags. It was that sort of race. About the only thing predictable/normal was that Mercedes would win – but even that was coloured by Lewis […]

Melbourne Musings

A Happy Easter to everyone. Strange, given the past wonders of Good Friday Oulton and Easter Monday Goodwood/Thruxton, that the motor racing world this Easter morn lies relatively quiet. Perhaps it’s a good thing: time to pause, time to reflect. (My mate Alan Gow, who runs the ultra-successful British Touring Car Championship – but never […]

Enter the 2016 F1 cars

No big new F1 car launches these days. No pre-paid tickets to Paris or Bologna. No Marlboro watches, BMW duck-down jackets or Ferrari leather folders. Just Barcelona in mid-February. Misty mornings. Dodgy wifi. And closed garage doors. They eventually broke cover, though, the new 2016 cars. And when they did so we were watching with […]

They built racing cars….

Pure and simple. For F1. And, in order to finance those F1 projects, every other type of racing car too – from Formula Junior to big-banger sports cars. Cooper and Brabham. Two titans of the sport. Cooper gave us rear engines, Jack Brabham the sight of a brilliant driver winning races and championships in a […]

How they finished

With the first of the two Barcelona tests due to begin shortly (Feb 22), let’s take a last look at how they finished, team-by-team, in 2015. With me in the TRE studio is my friend, Craig Scarborough: