PROST vs SENNA BY F1’S OWN ‘MARLBORO MAN’
THE TRAGEDY OF JULES BIANCHI
by Mark Hughes & Nigel Roebuck
www.motorsportmagazine.com
90TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR
GULF LEGENDS Porsche 917s, Ford GT40s and that colour scheme…
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The inside story of Britain’s greatest sports car team
PARIS
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TWIN TRACK TEST SPECIAL
Jim Clark’s Lister
& the world’s oddest ‘racing car’ ‘I cleaned up at McLaren… …then invented ground effects!’p90 Cover Gulf.indd 1
DECEMBER 2014
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THE MOTOR SPORT MONTH
IN PICTURES
OCTOBER 19 2014
Fireworks brigade HOCKENHEIM, GERMANY
DTM
There were more pyrotechnics in the air than there were on track when the DTM season concluded at the German GP’s biennial home. Mattias Ekstrom finished 2.4sec clear of Mike Rockenfeller, with Brit Jamie Green completing an Audi 1-2-3. Champion Marco Wittmann’s BMW is closest to the camera, in fifth place. Note the empty grandstand straight ahead...
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F1 FRONTLINE with
Mark Hughes
Better by
MERCEDES W05 Central to Mercedes-Benz’s philosophy has been the engine’s split turbo concept, with the compressor mounted at the front, connected to the turbine via a long shaft that runs through the engine vee. This was a feature originally suggested by the Brackley chassis side of the team, with the Brixworth-based engine department then confirming after research that it was feasible from an engineering standpoint. The benefits this has conferred are significant. Moved to the front of the engine, the compressor is in a far less aerodynamically sensitive part of the car and, as a result, is physically bigger and more powerful than the conventional rear-mounted compressors of the Ferrari and Renault engines. It allows the intercoolers, which are cooling the charge air that has just been compressed, to be mounted closer to the compressor. This means there is less inherent lag in the system and the associated plumbing takes up less space. Old-fashioned turbo lag is effectively non-existent in these hybrid engines because any delay in mechanical power delivery can be compensated by brief bursts of electrical energy – as the electrics can be used to spool up the turbo instantly. But by taking inherent lag out of the system, the battery’s energy store is called upon less – and that saved energy is then available for accelerating the car or saving fuel. There is also a small but significant benefit in having the compressor in ambient air rather than close to the very hot exhausts. From a combustion perspective, fuel and lubricant supplier Petronas was part of the concept right from the beginning. Between the engine designers and the fuel chemists, the focus was very much on delivering an engine/fuel combination that had exceptionally high knock ceilings. The further the onset of knock can be postponed, the weaker the mixture can be, giving a more potent power/economy potential and – critically – the less cooling the incoming air needs and therefore the smaller the intercooling capacity can be. The combined effect of an engine with exceptional combustion characteristics and a big compressor has been much more power and significantly better fuel economy than any rival. There was even scope to surrender some of the mechanical grunt for electrical gain, by introducing flat exhaust collectors rather than the conventional ‘spaghetti’ shapes that tune the engine’s torque curve by allowing the exhaust gas freer exit. The flat collectors and short stubby primaries lost the engine about 15bhp, but the greater heat build-up within the engine boosted the power capacity of the heat-driven motor generator (MGUh) by more than that. The MGUh can either spool up the turbo or feed any excess through the kinetically driven motor generator (MGUk) and into the crankshaft – and there is no regulation limit on that. The flat pipes also conferred a small aerodynamic advantage. The packaging benefits of both the front-mounted compressor and the relatively small intercooling requirement have made possible further aerodynamic gains. Opting for a water-air intercooler rather than the bulkier (but lighter and more efficient) air-air unit allowed the intercooler to be incorporated into the chassis, again saving vital packaging millimetres and plumbing. With the compressor up front, fed by the closely adjacent airbox, the design team was able to sweep the back of the W05 down very sharply, within a much shorter space than either the Red Bull or Ferrari. This is evident by the bodywork blisters towards the bottom of the engine
design Our man gets beneath the skin of this year’s Formula 1 cars, pinpoints the key differences between the three engine manufacturers’ approaches… and explains exactly why the Mercedes V6 has won the power battle
F illustrator
GIORGIO PIOLA
ORMULA 1’S ADOPTION OF THE 1.6-litre V6 hybrid format has radically altered the competitive pecking order. Hand in hand with fairly swingeing aerodynamic restrictions, which rendered obsolete the accumulated advantage of fruitful development programmes, the complex new power units made it far from obvious where the optimum balance would lie between conflicting aero and mechanical demands. Plotting the points of triangulation between downforce/drag, power/fuel efficiency and driveability was a major challenge, even for the best funded and resourced teams, when the hybrid part of the equation was new territory. The lead teams of the three engine manufacturers – Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull-Renault – produced for this season three designs that, while looking superficially similar, diverge considerably beneath their skins. Here, with the illuminating aid of Giorgio Piola’s drawings, we show the inner layouts of the Mercedes W05, Ferrari F14T and Red Bull RB10 and the impact they have had on the season’s competitive shape.
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Hot air exit at the end of engine cover Turbo’s turbine
Front-mounted compressor key to the whole W05 concept
Conventional water/oil radiators mounted well forwards and bigger than those of Red Bull, probably because of lower airflow velocity at this part of car Water-air intercooler mounted within the chassis, giving better sidepod packaging
Additional radiators for hydraulics and gearbox
Flat exhaust collectors with short primaries cost mechanical power but internal heat increase boosts electrical power of MGUh
Mercedes Stiffening links to avoid vibration of the MGUh in the middle of the engine vee
W05
Oil tank in conventional location between engine and chassis
cover, which are there only so the bodywork meets the regulatory dimensional requirements. Because the hot turbine unit at the back was so much smaller without the associated compressor, it was possible to bring the gearbox significantly forwards, reducing the car’s polar moment of inertia – thereby making it more responsive to direction change and taking less from the delicate rear tyres. The shaft between turbine and compressor is conventionally just a few centimetres long. When the two components are at opposite ends of the engine rather than joined, however, the shaft is massively longer and subject to exponentially greater axial loads. A triangular cradle was devised to eradicate potentially catastrophic flexing.
RED BULL RB10 Using a conventional turbo-compressor layout, the Renault V6 imposed certain limitations upon Adrian Newey and designer Rob Marshall, something the Mercedes designers didn’t face. Furthermore, the best evidence suggests that the Renault engine does not have anything like the Mercedes V6’s resistance to knock. Quite aside from the negative implications this has on power and fuel consumption, it has meant that the intercooler requirement is DECEMBER 2014
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significantly higher. The car uses a conventional air-air intercooler, because the engine needs more charge cooling to keep the dreaded knock of detonation at bay: an air-air intercooler typically delivers air to the engine about 20deg C cooler than the more compact water-air intercooler. This, though, has impacted upon the packaging of the car, with an intercooler significantly bulkier than that on the Mercedes – and mounted towards the back, so as to be near the rear-mounted compressor. Without having anything like the same leeway as Mercedes to minimise the length of the installation, Red Bull instead concentrated on its traditional strength of tightly packaging the rear end. Seen from above in plan view, the RB10 has by far the slimmest waist aft of the cockpit. The exaggerated ‘coke bottle’ bodywork profile will accelerate the airflow over the brake ducts, diffuser top and rear wing, increasing downforce. But to achieve this has demanded greater length between cockpit and rear wheels. The implication is for a more rearward-biased weight distribution and a less centralised mass. Routing the inlet air to the compressor at the back of the engine has necessitated a visibly longer engine cover than the Mercedes and the siting of many major components can be seen to be further rearwards. However, the bodywork’s enhanced coke bottle profile has increased the airflow around the side radiators sufficiently to allow them to be WWW.MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM 31
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F1 FRONTLINE with
Mark Hughes GRAND PRIX NOTEBOOK
SINGAPORE, JAPAN & RUSSIA Rd 14 MARINA BAY, SEPTEMBER 21 2014 1 LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 2 SEBASTIAN VETTEL Red Bull RB10 3 DANIEL RICCIARDO Red Bull RB10
2hr 00min 04.795sec 2hr 00min 18.329sec 2hr 00min 19.068sec
F A S T E S T L A P LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 1min 50.417sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 60 laps, 188.749 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 1min 45.681sec
Rd 15 SUZUKA, OCTOBER 5 2014 1 LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 2 NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 2 SEBASTIAN VETTEL Red Bull RB10
F A S T E S T L A P LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 1min 51.600sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 44 laps, 158.579 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 1min 32.506sec
JULES BIANCHI’S SLICK TYRES WERE 17 LAPS OLD AS HE crested the hill that is the beginning of Suzuka’s Dunlop Corner, a long left-hander. Double waved yellow flags were showing and a flashing yellow light shone out from the gloom of spray and fading light where Adrian Sutil’s Sauber had gone off. Bianchi crested the rise still on the dry line that had formed through the wet surface but, with the rain increasing once more, the standing water was beginning to flow across that line. His worn right-rear found a wet patch, the car snapped suddenly sideways, he instinctively corrected it but as the rears then found dry grip once more so it was impossible for him to get the opposite lock off quickly enough – and the Marussia ploughed straight on across the gravel trap and at barely unabated speed hit the tractor that was removing Sutil’s car. With Bianchi on a life support machine as we went to press, it was a brutal reminder, 20 years on from F1’s last fatalities, that it remains an inherently dangerous sport. This incident overshadowed all else in F1 subsequently. The Japanese Grand Prix was red-flagged and the result declared nine laps short of its allocated distance – a result that had Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes at the head of the pack for the third successive race. Two weeks earlier he’d triumphed over an inopportunely timed safety car around Singapore’s night-time streets. One week later he was able to cruise to a dominant victory in the Russian Grand Prix. These results have elevated him back ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg in the championship for the first time since Spain in May. Hamilton’s run of form was akin to the ace 400-metre runner’s extra kick going into the final straight and seemed to leave Rosberg somewhat detuned. In the process it helped cement Mercedes-Benz’s first world championship for constructors (an award that had still to be invented during the last era of Mercedes F1 domination, in 1954-55). 34 WWW.MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM
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1hr 51min 43.021sec 1hr 51min 52.201sec 1hr 52min 12.143sec
Rd 16 SOCHI, OCTOBER 12 2014 1 LEWIS HAMILTON 2 NICO ROSBERG 3 VALTTERI BOTTAS
Mercedes W05 Mercedes W05 Williams FW36
1hr 31min 50.744sec 1hr 32min 04.401sec 1hr 32min 08.169sec
F A S T E S T L A P VALTTERI BOTTAS Williams FW36 1min 40.896sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 53 laps, 192.467 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 1min 38.513sec
SINGAPORE WITH ROSBERG EFFECTIVELY OUT OF THIS BEFORE IT EVEN started – an electrical short in the wiring of the steering controls caused by a service substance contamination – this should have been a straightforward, if humidly exhausting, evening’s work for Hamilton. It was shaping up that way until his race was complicated by the timing of a safety car, before he’d run both tyre compounds as required by the regulations. With several of his rivals having already made the switch and therefore not needing to stop again – including the second-placed Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel – and Hamilton’s formerly comfortable lead wiped out, the stage was set for a mesmerising display as the Mercedes driver sought to sprint away upon the restart to build up the necessary margin of 27 seconds that would allow him to complete a stop without losing his lead. Could he do this before his softer tyres overheated themselves into uselessness? Rosberg’s car was wheeled off the grid and would start from the pitlane, needing a drop start as Nico had been unable to get it into gear. Running near the back with almost none of the electrical storage’s extra 160bhp available and with continuing gear selection glitches, he would never be a factor and retired when he was again unable to select a gear at his first stop. Hamilton took off into the lead from pole, the Red Bulls of Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo squabbled into Turn One in his wake, Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari tried going round the outside of both but locked up and had to take to the run-off area. Alonso rejoined ahead of the Red Bulls and voluntarily surrendered a place to Vettel as the pack charged up Raffles Avenue through the kink of Turn Six and into the tight left DECEMBER 2014
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ALL IMAGES LAT
Lewis Hamilton became the first Russian GP winner since Benz driver Willy Scholl, 100 years beforehand
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ROAD TESTS www.motorsportmagazine.com/author/andrew-frankel
C O RV ET T E C 7 ST I N G R AY A wonderful V8 soundtrack, plus complementary chassis balance | BY ANDREW FRANKEL
I
T’S BEEN MORE THAN 60 years since Chevrolet first named a car after a fast, small military boat, a period during which the Corvette brand has come to mean even more than its parent marque. This year marks the introduction of the seventh generation Corvette, and with it another name exhumed from the past. Welcome, then, the Corvette C7 Stingray. Now there’s a name to mess with at your peril. Calling a car Corvette gives you a reasonable amount of latitude in the result: it should of course be fast and be driven through its rear wheels by a V8 engine in its nose, but it can be tuned for sporting purposes, touring purposes or any blend of the two. But call it a Stingray and you’d better be sure the car delivers in full. But this Stingray is no special high-performance derivative – that’ll be the forthcoming 625bhp supercharged Z06. This is the base model, the burger and fries version that will be bought by thousands of Americans still in love
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with this blue-collar working class hero. And they’ll pay just $51,995 (about £32,600) for the privilege. Less enticingly, given that the car remains unavailable in right-hand drive, over here that price almost doubles to £61,250, or £64,250 if you want the convertible. That pitches it straight at the Jaguar F-type. Is there a single thing such a car could learn from one that retains a plastic body, pushrod engine and transverse leaf suspension? Plenty, as it turns out. I must now declare an interest. I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for a Corvette. Indeed, when I sit and sketch my ideal sports car it always has a large normally aspirated engine at one end, driven wheels at the other, a lengthy wheelbase between the two and lightweight, shark-like clothing. A Corvette, in other words. I like the noise they make, I like their classless nature and I’ve always liked their shapes. But I’ve never been blind to their failings and I know as well as anybody how cheap, shoddy interiors, crass ride
FACTFILE £61,520
ENGINE 6.2 litres, 8 cylinders POWER 460bhp@6000 rpm TORQUE 464lb ft@4600 rpm TRANSMISSION seven-speed manual 0-62MPH 4.2sec TOP SPEED 180mph ECONOMY 23.5mpg CO2 275g/km
and lack of long-distance refinement let them down. I know also that when you drive them as fast as you can, their handling reverts to that of a large puppy – fun but hardly fluent. The interior of this Corvette isn’t going to cause insomnia at Jaguar. The cabin appears less cluttered, but its materials still feel more Walmart than Waitrose and the switchgear is fiddly and less intuitive than you’d wish. It’s progress, but hardly a transformation. The car I drove had a seven-speed manual gearbox, which suggests there remains in the engineering department a lurking suspicion that quantity can still make an effective substitute for quality. It can’t. And even if its shifts were as sweet as jam in treacle it would still have one gear too many. I’d happily have a 20-speed automatic transmission, but if there are three pedals for your feet then six ratios suffice for your hand. It is possible that at first I failed to accord this car the respect it turns out to deserve. I drove it initially on the road and was mildly irritated by its still DECEMBER 2014
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unremarkable ride and having to drive in the ditch, because the car was so wide that’s where its left-hand-drive configuration put you. So when a straight came and I pressed the throttle to the floor, it was more in the spirit of due diligence than eager anticipation. I heard a sharp growl and then expletives filling the air as the Stingray appeared to want to leap into the next county. A cooking Corvette it might be, but it still has a 6.2-litre engine producing 460bhp and a kerb weight on the interesting side of 1500kg, giving it a power to weight ratio comparable with a brand-new Porsche 911 Turbo. Pushing on a bit harder, the car felt precise, taut and communicative, words I’ve not always associated with its predecessor. This warranted further investigation and a theatre less restrictive than these narrow country lanes. The car was better, far better than I’d expected on the road, but a racetrack is a somewhat tougher discipline. Would it behave like most cars set up for the road and start to struggle when subjected to loads you’d never put through it in public, or would it reveal talents that ran more than skin deep? I’ve thought hard about which word to use to describe what happened next and I think ‘incredible’ just about covers it. That’s because the track happened to be Castle Combe, which is not only very fast but also exceptionally bumpy. Truly
It might lack in cabin refinement, relatively speaking, but the new Corvette makes amends with its poise
there are places here where a road car is more likely to find itself out of its comfort zone than anywhere this side of the Nürburgring. Yet the Corvette performed as if its engineers had done the entire chassis development programme at this Wiltshire circuit. It clung on hard, generating massive grip, but that was perhaps not too surprising given the car’s weight, double-wishbone suspension and four vast contact patches. That merely made it fast. What made it memorable was its absolute refusal to become upset, flustered or even mildly inconvenienced by the worst Combe could throw at it. It would approach Quarry corner at better than 140mph, soak up the bumps, shed the requisite speed and flick left over Avon Rise in one smooth, majestic unflappable movement. Indeed it had that kind of high-speed stability you usually only find in cars with at least a little bit of downforce. But the Corvette was still able to demonstrate what’s possible with considered tuning of those leaf springs and anti-roll bars, plus just a little bit of black magic in the form of magneto-rheological dampers and an electronically controlled limited-slip differential that can vary the degree of lock according to traction requirements. This is why it streaked away from Combe’s chicanes yet felt balanced through its quicker curves. It will do the smoky sideways stuff too if you want, but you have to know how to ask it, for it is no longer the car’s natural state. So once you forget all you thought you knew about Corvettes and get over that rather inelegant interior, what’s left is a remarkable, capable and enjoyable high-performance sports car, one that’s quicker and better to drive than any Jaguar F-type and stands comparison to the best 911s, save the GT3. So will the Stingray become the first Corvette to make it big in Britain? I doubt it very much. The fact it’s left-hand drive only will back it into the smallest niche imaginable. Even were that not the case, the sad truth is that when people who wish to spend more than £60,000 on a sports car are faced with the choice of a great car or a great badge, they’ll opt for the badge almost every time. But don’t blame the car: this is not just a great Corvette, but a fine sports car by the standards of the world’s best. WWW.MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM 55
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Sports cars JW Automotive
Feast of
Endurance Synonymous with Gulf, GT40s, 917s and Le Mans wins, JW Automotive is a racing legend. We spoke to director John Horsman about life under ‘Death Ray’ John Wyer and the racing heritage underpinning the team’s successes writer
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SIMON ARRON
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GETTY
Spa 1000Kms, 1970: Pedro Rodriguez plunges towards Eau Rouge; JW team-mate Jo Siffert, taking the wide line, is just out of shot
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A oing
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His track record spoke volumes for his potential and there were many who placed great faith in Stefano Modena, a young Italian who preferred to eschew the spotlight. When he reached Formula 1, however, his career momentum simply petered out…
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Interview Stefano Modena
SPIRING TO SING AT LA SCALA IS ONE dream, but others would prefer to score for Juventus. Some think only of designing the perfect suit. There is one Italian, however, who was surely destined to race a red Formula 1 car. This is the story of the enigma that is Stefano Modena. Touted as a future world champion, his rise to the Grand Prix grid was meteoric, but he never made it to Maranello. Over the years, many people have not known what to make of the wild-haired, bohemian character who, having won the 1987 FIA F3000 championship, had his first taste of Formula 1 in a Brabham-BMW on the streets of Adelaide. The word in the paddock was that he was a moody fellow, a bit weird and scruffy, not a perfect fit in the sanitised world of suited sponsors and political correctness. But he was very quick, they said, and could spring a surprise.
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GETTY
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Behind the wheel Bentley Gooda Special
giant Gentle
The distinctive Gooda Special Bentley proved to be a crowd favourite when it raced at Goodwood last March – and it’s every bit as engaging behind the wheel as it is to behold
Y
writer
R I C H A R D H E S E LT I N E photographer M I C H A E L B A I L I E
OU DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO LAUGH OR CRY but make a noise somewhere in-between. It just looks so, well, improbable. It arrives as a Bentley and departs as an Italianate GT, the bluff front end being instantly recognisable, the dramatically arced roofline and cropped Kamm tail rather less so. Then there are the go-quicker stripes and roundels that suggest it’s a racing car, except the Gooda Special has only ever ventured trackside twice in competition as far as we are aware. What’s more, its circuit forays were some 47 years apart. Delve more deeply into the car’s history, however, and it transpires that this most rakish of Crewe ships was also a concours queen. It’s nothing if not a contradiction. But then so much about this remarkable machine is mired in obscurity and conjecture. It rather goes with the territory. As is so often the way with these things, web forums are awash with hypotheses. That the car is a modified R-type Continental (it isn’t). Either that, or it’s some sort of Bentley prototype (ditto). But by concentrating on what it isn’t, you’re in danger of missing out on what it is: a highly distinctive one-off that is a riot to drive.
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Prior to racing at Goodwood, this modified R-Type was put through its paces around the old circuit @ THE MOTOR SPORT DIGITAL EDITION
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Lunch Alistair Caldwell ST DS.indd 1
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{ LUNCH WITH }
A L A S TA I R C A LDWE L L He rose from cleaner to team manager at McLaren, walked out on Bernie Ecclestone and then found a way to fund a passion for fine cars
writer
S
SIMON TAYLOR | photographer JAMES MITCHELL
PENDING A DAY OR EVEN an hour with Alastair Caldwell, listening to his fund of stories about Formula 1 from the inside 40 or more years ago, is an unforgettable experience. As a callow, penniless 24-year-old, Alastair arrived in England from New Zealand one Saturday in 1967. By Monday he’d found the little unit in Colnbrook that was the McLaren factory, knocked on the door and asked for a job as a mechanic. No vacancies: so on Tuesday he started there as a cleaner. He rose rapidly to be McLaren’s team manager, and went on to do the same job at Brabham and ATS. Then he turned his back on F1 – “I never made any money out of motor racing” – and set up a storage and warehousing company, the first of its kind in Europe. It has made him a wealthy man. Now he indulges his passion for adventure in long-distance historic rallying, campaigning a wild variety of cars from his collection in gruelling events from Australia to Alaska, from China to Peru. He chooses lunch at the Crooked Billet in
Stoke Row, but he suggests I go first to his house, a substantial pile off a private road in Maidenhead, to look at his toys. At the bottom of the long, lush garden are several garages. In one his two full-time mechanics are working on his AC Aceca 2.6 while his high-spec rally Austin A35 awaits attention. In another there’s a delectable 1938 Alfa Romeo 6C with aerodynamic Superleggera body, rubbing wheels with a MkI Lola-Climax, a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, a BMW 700 coupé, a Ford Model T Speedster and a couple of motorbikes – one a classic Royal Enfield built under licence in India. Typically, Alastair bought it in Delhi and then rode it across Asia, through some pretty inhospitable countries, and back to London. And then there’s his Ferrari GTO. Not an original one, but a perfect tool-room copy, inside and out, which Alastair has had built from all-Ferrari bits around a 330 four-litre V12. Every one of his cars has been rallied, over massive distances. His tale of changing the Alfa’s shock absorbers in Mongolia, and then its head gasket in Uzbekistan, is a classic. In the Rolls – bought in a forlorn state at auction for £8000 because it was the most unlikely rally WWW.MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM 91
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Interview John Hogan
The
money John Hogan SA GC DS.indd 1
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yman
with
soul John Hogan has worked out of the limelight during his 40 years in Formula 1. But as the sponsor man from Marlboro, he wielded great power within the sport he loved writer
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DAMIEN SMITH
photographer
HOWARD SIMMONS
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The Record A moment in time
{ RAC GRAND PRIX DE L’EUROPE • SILVERSTONE, MAY 1950 }
CROWN DUELS
There were some notable guests among the estimated 150,000 crowd as international motor racing moved into a bold new era writer
H
SIMON ARRON illustrator GUY ALLEN
ISTORY RECORDS IT AS the opening round of the freshly inaugurated Formula 1 world championship. The June 1950 edition of Motor Sport headlined it, “The Royal Silverstone Meeting” and there was, we were told, “glorious weather for their majesties’ visit”. King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, HRH Princess Margaret and Lord and Lady Mountbatten were introduced to drivers before the day’s main event and went on to watch the action from “various vantage points”, although there was a royal box located between the two grandstands opposite the pits. Nowadays, spectators rightly complain about limited access to F1 cars and stars – but the warning signs were always there. Pre-race favourite Alfa Romeo received preferential treatment, for instance. “To meet requirements,” noted our report, “they were
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given pits at the top end and the grass was cropped behind so that they could get down to work in their own roped-off paddock.” Not quite a three-tier motorhome, even so. Motor Sport also noted, “A bit of British enterprise behind the pits was the bright-red GPO mobile post office, complete with telephone and telegraph facilities, on an articulated Morris Commercial chassis registered GPO 1. Sir Algernon Guinness and his Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon displayed great interest, and Louis Chiron, in full racing attire, was one of the first to use it.” Much faster than anything else, the Alfa Romeo 158s led away – the noise and smoke at the start taking the Queen “a trifle unawares” – and finished well clear of the opposition. Juan Manuel Fangio retired with a broken con-rod, but team-mates Nino Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Reg Parnell cemented a 1-2-3. Yves GirardCabantous (Talbot) took fourth, two laps behind the winner. Not much of a contest, then, but it had been quite an occasion.
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Iron Age
Track test Lister Jaguar
The
This ex-Jim Clark Lister is still going strong after a long and busy life – and Motor Sport was offered a chance to put it through its paces at Goodwood writer PAUL PARKER photographer STUART COLLINS
Jim Clark guides the ‘Flat Iron’ Lister to fourth place in the 1959 British GP support race at Aintree
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ELCOME TO AN AGE WHERE DESIGN and detail were sometimes lacking, sometimes just what was needed, and what passed for aerodynamics were just smooth curves. Few realised then that more air was flowing under a car than over it. The Lister featured here is an example of how to produce a competitive sports racing car in period, especially if you had a potent proprietary motor and transmission available off the proverbial shelf. Jaguar’s XK engine (in D-type mode) and gearbox were obvious choices. HCH 736 was built during the latter half of 1957 and was bodily similar to the works Lister Jaguar. These two machines were the only examples of their kind, forerunners of the 1958 ‘Knobbly’ creation, similar but different. They had shorter parallel cockpit chassis tubes (approximately 12 inches rather than the 23/24 inches of the ‘Knobbly’), which joined together at the point where the rear suspension radius arms were located.
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