Red Bull 2026 livery launch – live from Detroit, Michigan

2021 F1 Bahrain test de-brief with Scarbs

Only one pre-season F1 test in 2021, so there was lots to be learned and tried in Bahrain. I talked to Craig Scarborough after the test about new developments on the cars, the outstanding pace of Red Bull-Honda…and what appeared to be a disappointing test for Mercedes.

Best Pics – Charles Coates, F1 photographer

Highly-acclaimed F1 photographer, Charles Coates, selects his personal favourite images in this exclusive series. Charles (otherwise known as “Tootall”) has been working professionally in F1 since 1989, mainly for LAT (London Art Tech) but also as a freelance. A familiar, unmissable figure at F1 races, Toots has forged close friendships with many of the great […]

The McQueen/Whitmore files

Shortly before he passed away in 2017 I recorded an interview with Sir John Whitmore in his Surrey, England, apartment. The subject: his friendship with Steve McQueen. Now, with Alex Rodger’s superb documentary, “Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie” being screened on Sky TV (UK) and Now TV (on-line app), I felt it was the right […]

From inside the Mercedes garage

Steve Etherington – official photographer of the AMG Mercedes F1 team – shares some favourite images from his year with the World Champions

Goodwood 2020

It wasn’t quite as we’ve known it…but it was glorious nonetheless. Here are some of my favourite cars and people, as seen on a golden Friday in Autumn.

Sir Stirling Moss by Nigel Roebuck

Nigel Roebuck, F1’s premiere journalist/ historian, became a Moss fan from the moment he saw him race at Oulton Park in the early 1950s. In this new four-part video series he recounts personal memories of Stirl – the driver he grew to know well and whom he considers to be the best that ever lived.

Jonny Williams’ Ten Favourite WilliamsF1 GPs

I’ve known Jonathan Williams for most of his life; indeed, here’s a pic I took of him with his Dad, sister and Ralt-Honda’s Dr Jonathan Palmer at the 1983 Thruxton Easter Monday F2 meeting. (What happened to THAT race? We used to LOVE Easter Monday Thruxton. What an atmosphere!) Jonny has always been, and is today, […]

A little bit of Eddie Jordan…

…is never enough… It’s always a pleasure to chat to Eddie Jordan, partly because he always makes me laugh, partly because he’s been there, done that and partly because he’s a Top Man (in the Frank Williams sense of the words). So I tracked him down during this lockdown on his yacht in the South […]

The Eagle has landed

Amidst all the turmoil of recent days it was stunning to watch the launch of the SpaceX Falcon9 mission. There was nothing particularly ground-breaking about it within the context of, say, Mercury, Gemini or Apollo….or was there? As a Tintin fan, I’ve always hankered after rockets that land vertically, thrusters down, but as a realist […]

Brilliant racing drivers

Chatting with Hitech’s Oli Oakes Oliver ‘Oli’ Oakes today owns and runs one of the most successful race teams in Europe – and must be on any logical short-list of F1 team owners of the future. More than that, though, Oli is a former World Kart Champion and Red Bull Junior F3 driver, which means […]

Some classic John Surtees…at Suzuka!

Sifting through the AP Archive the other day I came across this collection of gems – Honda-made footage from 1967-68 featuring John Surtees at Monza, Suzuka and Rouen. It was all mute, so I hope you don’t mind that I’ve added a few thoughts and a bit of music; and it was originally edited all […]

Sainz to Ferrari, Daniel to McLaren. Wow!

Good news all round, I think, to have Carlos Sainz in a Ferrari and Daniel Ricciardo a McLaren-Renault/Mercedes (post-2020). Carlos will bring a dash of Latin flair to the most glamorous team in racing; and Daniel will glide right in at McLaren alongside Lando Norris. Anyway, rather than reading about my opinions, here are my […]

Vettel splits with Ferrari

Here are a few thoughts on Sebastian Vettel’s end-of-season departure from Ferrari. I think this is a good thing for Ferrari in one sense – it’ll allow them to focus 100 per cent on Charles Leclerc, who is quite capable of winning a championship if the car is good enough – but in another it’s […]

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) […]