nigel roebuck my friend james hunt
Pirelli bites back: “People have On the road: Porsche’s forgotten how boring F1 was” snappy new Cayman
Britain’s first ever Grand Prix victory www.motorsportmagazine.com
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90 years of the
le mans
24 Hours Milestone days (and nights) at the world’s greatest motor race
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july 2013
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Champion Audi vs Challenger Toyota plus Anthony Davidson: “We drive flat out more than F1 drivers” LeMans Cover.indd 1
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the motor sport month
in pictures
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Argentina Rally WRC Cordoba, argentina
red bull
Sébastien Loeb reaches for the sky on his return to the World Rally Championship. This was the third in only four rallies in 2013 for the ‘semi-retired’ nine-time champion, yet he beat points leader Sébastien Ogier by 55 seconds to win for the eighth consecutive occasion in Argentina. Ogier lost 40sec with a spin on the seventh stage.
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road tests www.motorsportmagazine.com/author/andrew-frankel
P o r s c h e cay m a n S
Muscle and fine manners from Stuttgart | by andrew frankel
L
iving in the Wye Valley I am blessed with an abundance of great roads within three minutes of my front door. So long as you travel outside obviously busy times, you can plot a course to practically anywhere on roads that’ll satisfy your hunger for driving and, in the meantime, reveal any faults that might lie within a car’s dynamic characteristics. Which is handy when you earn your living as I do. But there’s one road I hardly ever use. It’s not that it’s far away, dull or always choked with traffic. On the contrary I can be there in 10 minutes, it’s always
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deserted and if there’s a better stretch of Tarmac in this part of the world I’ve not yet found it in 18 years of looking. The problem is that it’s lethal. It has all the usual challenges such as tightening radii, camber and surfaces changes and none is the least problematic when you know where they are. The real hazards are the impossibly high hedgerows and murderously concealed side turnings from roads and, critically, fields. Around any corner you have to accept you could find a tractor doing 15mph or a trail of mud and cow pats leading from a field gate right to the point you’re minded to reapply the power. In my more honest moments I’ll admit
factfile £48,783
engine 3.4 litres, six cylinders Power 325bhp @7400rpm, Torque 273lb ft @45005800rpm Transmission six-speed manual, rear-wheel drive 0-62mph 5.0sec Top speed 175mph Economy 32.1mpg CO2 206g/km
I’m actually quite scared of this road. It doesn’t go anywhere I can’t reach more quickly by another route, so the only point of going there is to drive and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Put it this way, if the next time I visited I discovered a radar-enforced 40mph limit along its length, a small part of me would actually be quite relieved. Every so often, a car turns up that does little less than demand you take it to this road. This will be a car that’s so much fun that wherever you drive it, and however much pleasure it provides, you know you’ve not derived maximum enjoyment until you’ve driven it on the best road you know. j u ly 2 0 1 3
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So recently I went there in the new Porsche Cayman. It wasn’t an automatic reflex. It had been so long since I’d visited the road it didn’t even occur to me at first. Instead I set off on my usual 100-mile test route over to the mountains and back to find out more about Porsche’s newest product. The Cayman is, of course, a rebodied, coupé version of the Boxster, equipped with more powerful engines and a more rigid body structure. As the Boxster is the cheapest and, at least until now, quite the best Porsche you can buy, it’s fair to say the omens were good. Cleverly Porsche delivered a car in ‘S’ specification with three pedals and dark grey metallic paint – precisely what I’d choose were I in the market for one. It’s the first really good-looking Cayman, too. For far too many years Porsche has struggled with design as much as it has excelled with its engineering. Among recent signs of improvement, though, the Cayman is substantially the strongest. I like its silhouette and more muscular lines, even if some of the detailing, like the rear wing and badging, are needlessly fussy. At first it wasn’t quite what I’d expected. Its ride was firmer than anticipated and almost harsh over some broken surfaces, which the council still hasn’t repaired 18 months after they appeared. And it didn’t seem to steer as sweetly as earlier Caymans I’ve driven. This is the first of the breed to abandon hydraulic steering in favour of an electric arrangement and, as it has in every other Porsche so affected, it shows. There’s no lack of accuracy and the gearing is perfect, but that background chatter through the rim – something that kept you company on every journey, however fast you were driving – is gone. The feel is there but you have to up the tempo to find it. It is almost as if Porsche has programmed two strategies into its steering software: one for just tooling about and another for pressing on, where feedback through the wheel needs to be synthesised. But there was plenty else to enjoy here. The 3.4-litre engine is one of Porsche’s best recent efforts, spreading its 325bhp over such a wide area that you’d neither be slowed nor inconvenienced if you were jammed in third gear. From less than 3000rpm to more than 8000, the flat six hauls and howls its way around the clock. But j u ly 2 0 1 3
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GT3-variant 911 I am quite certain that, around a lap, this is the quickest Porsche currently on sale, not least because no other can touch the confidence it inspires. Which, in the end, is what made me modify my return journey to include the road. Illusory or otherwise, the Cayman had convinced me that, so long as I drove while leaving that margin for error required on any public road, it would be able to cope with anything we discovered along its length. And so it proved. That day and on that road, the Cayman proved that when it comes to chassis tuning, no other mainstream manufacturer is presently in the same
Frankel found the Cayman S to be a paragon of balance and poise. GT3 owners are already forming an orderly queue
you’d miss that gearchange. This is Porsche’s old six-speed manual transmission and unrelated to the seven-speed unit fitted to manual 911s. It is blessed with a quick shift and wonderfully mechanical feel that make it superior in every way (including its number of ratios, six being more than enough for my small brain). Up in the mountains I found a car of such capabilities I was aware of strange gasps and snorts that, in the absence of anyone else on board, must have been coming from me. Here was a car providing a level of response and poise you’d expect only to find in a highly specialised, dedicated performance machine and not in a civilised, comfortable everyday transport like this. I don’t know what kind of Porsche you’d need to get away from it, but in the current absence of any Turbo or
postcode as Porsche. It flattened the crests, breathed across the dips and, when a Peugeot stuck its nose a little too far out a concealed side turning, it shrugged off the speed like you might flick away a fly. The driver saw the Cayman and stopped, but even if he’d pulled out the Porsche had sufficient reserves to cope. I have a chum who used to own a second-generation 911 GT3. Last week he borrowed a Cayman S from his dealer for the day, came back and ordered his own in exactly the same specification as the car I drove. His dealer told him he was the fourth former GT3 owner so to do. And all I can say, as a man who still ranks the most recent GT3 as the greatest road-going Porsche of the last 40 years, is that I’m not in the slightest bit surprised. www.motorsportmagazine.com 39
22/05/2013 11:21
Nigel Roebuck Reflections
Nigel Roebuck
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uote of the day in Barcelona came from Lewis Hamilton, on the radio to his race engineer: “I can’t drive any slower…” Later, having finished 12th after starting from the front row, he looked inconsolable: “That was an experience I really don’t want to go through again…” Perhaps the Spanish Grand Prix marked the beginning of the end of this rather silly period in Formula 1. One hopes so, anyway. As Sebastian Vettel put it, “We’re not going at the pace of the car – we’re going at the pace of the tyres…” To some degree that has probably been true throughout the history of F1, but in the race at Barcelona there were 77 tyre stops, and four changes were the norm. To put it another way, for virtually everyone five sets were required for the 190 miles – and this at a circuit where Pirelli played it conservatively, with hard and medium the compounds on offer. In qualifying the two Mercedes were untouchable, Rosberg taking pole position for the second race running, but although Nico stressed that throughout practice his focus had been on a race set-up, when it came to Sunday afternoon he was hamstrung. Leading the opening stint of the Grand Prix, he was warned as early as lap three to ‘look after the left rear’, and once the first round of stops was done – eight or 10 laps in – the Mercedes, now on hard tyres, was picked off by Alonso, Vettel, Massa and Räikkönen in the space of a single lap. “It’s frustrating,” said Ross Brawn, the master of considered understatement, “to have a car that’s got core performance, but when we come to race it we’re just tiptoeing around on the tyres all the time. I do believe we have to think about this situation, because the whole
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weekend is just preoccupied with trying to look after the tyres…” Some will continue to trot out the line that ‘it’s the same for everyone’, suggesting that if Ferrari and Lotus can make the ultradelicate tyres work for the duration of a Grand Prix, then it’s up to the rest to match them. As an argument in itself, that is difficult to refute: while there was great debate about whether three or four stops would be necessary, Ferrari from the outset firmly decided on four and planned its strategy accordingly. On single-lap performance, Alonso and Massa could not match Mercedes, Red Bull or Lotus, but they had faith in Ferrari’s race pace: unsure of how many stops the likes of Vettel and Räikkönen would be making, they knew it was essential to make up places at the start, and Alonso’s typically brave and opportunistic move around the outside of Räikkönen and Hamilton was the highlight of the afternoon. Thereafter Fernando drove just as fast as his tyres allowed and, once he was into the lead, on lap 13, the Spanish Grand Prix looked like his to lose, his only real concern that Kimi’s light-footed Lotus would very probably go the distance on three stops. At half-distance the black car, having made one stop fewer, was in the lead, and briefly Räikkönen considered the possibility of victory: “We were on old tyres, though, and Fernando’s were newer – and it’s too easy to overtake, so there was no point in really fighting because you cannot hold him behind…” A moment on lap 32 defined the race, I thought. Alonso was leading from Massa, with Vettel third and Räikkönen, after the second of his three stops, fourth. When Kimi caught Seb, he was simply allowed through – and this owed nothing to the fact that they are mates: Vettel’s racing instincts will have been screaming within him, but he didn’t fight because he couldn’t: he was simply driving at a prescribed speed, thinking only of his tyres. Later in the race, with his fourth stop nearing, he got a radio message: “OK, Sebastian, you can use up your tyres…” Go fast, in other words. This is not Formula 1 as we have known it, and if perhaps there is some rejoicing in the paddock that Red Bull’s wings have been clipped – at least sometimes – by outside influences, I found myself in
All images LAT
Fragile tyres continue to breed F1 friction, why Kimi Räikkönen might make a perfect future foil for Sebastian Vettel... and fond memories of James Hunt, 20 years on
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“when it comes to the race we’re just
tiptoeing around all the time”
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Worse for
wear Argument over F1’s current tyre policy is dominating this season. We ask Pirelli for its take on balancing endurance with spectacle writer
ed foster
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ietrich Mateschitz, the owner of Red Bull, has a point when he says that Formula 1 is no longer about racing. A ‘race’ implies a competition of speed, but the nature of the current Pirelli tyres means that the fastest car and driver might not win. In fact, if the Spanish Grand Prix is anything to go by, it’s actually a disadvantage to have the fastest car over one lap – just ask the two Mercedes drivers who locked out the front row in qualifying. j u ly 2 0 1 3
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Pirelli balancing act
Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton became moving chicanes during the Grand Prix, the latter even saying over his radio that he couldn’t drive any slower as he slumped to 12th position. Nowadays Formula 1 is all about ‘tyre management’ and driving at 80 per cent, not fighting for positions that don’t need to be contested. “It’s just gone too far,” wrote Martin Brundle in his post-race report for Sky. Even Pirelli’s motor sport director Paul Hembery admitted four stops were too many and that the Italian tyre manufacturer would change its constructions, to make them more durable from the Canadian GP onwards (although the j u ly 2 0 1 3
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FIA subsequently forbade such a switch). But rather than condemn Pirelli for ruining F1, especially as it has only ever worked to the brief it’s been given, let’s rewind a few years. Grand Prix racing is a sport, but also entertainment. During the ‘Michael Schumacher years’, when you knew who was going to win even before you left home on Sunday, the entertainment factor was seriously lacking – and the audience switched off. It was too predictable and there was no overtaking, very little actual racing. At the start of 2007 the Overtaking Working Group was set up in order to devise a solution. But when the fruits of its labour were
introduced in the 2009 regulation overhaul, Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams had come up with double diffusers. The rear downforce generator undid much of the work the Group had done, and still there wasn’t enough overtaking. At the end of 2010, though, tyre supplier Bridgestone left the sport after 13 years and created an opportunity to do something different. Enter Pirelli. The Italian tyre manufacturer was told to heed lessons from the 2010 Canadian GP, when tyres played a critical role. “It was felt that fans loved it,” says Hembery, “that it was exciting. There was lots of movement and lots of overtaking.” Pirelli did exactly as it was www.motorsportmagazine.com 65
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le mans ’20s 24 Hours 90 years of the
1923 Winning car: Chenard & Walcker Drivers: André Lagache/ René Léonard Distance: 2210km Original 17.3km circuit runs through Pontlieue. Layout used until 1928. 1924 Winning car: Bentley 3.0 Litre Sport Drivers: John
Milestone days (and nights) at the world’s greatest motor race
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s well as founding a legend, the very first 24 Heures du Mans has two rare boasts. First, despite unsurfaced roads, fragile tyres and pioneer engineering, only three of the 33 starters failed to finish – a ratio unmatched in the 90 years since. The second odd fact about the 1923 race is – nobody won. Why? Because the ACO set up this test of endurance as a rolling three-year trial for the Rudge-Whitworth Cup. Theoretically there would be no victor until 1925. Decided by a maths-fest of average speeds and percentage gains, the three-year ploy soon fizzled out. But you can’t have a race and no winner, so the honours for greatest distance in that first 24 hours fell to the 3-litre Chenard et 72 www.motorsportmagazine.com
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Walcker of Lagache and Leonard who whistled past the makeshift pits 128 times, ahead of a sister car and a Bignan. A French whitewash, in fact; not surprising as there was only one foreign entrant, John Duff’s 3-litre Bentley, running second until a punctured fuel tank lost him and Clement more than two hours, dropping them to fourth after Clement had to cycle out with fuel. That first event was to be a test of touring cars which had to retain wings, lights, horn etc and prove they were practical four-seaters by carrying 10st of ballast for each empty seat. The Autocar described the route as “a triangular course not much more than 10 miles round, with a hairpin, two right-angled turns and several twisty bits”. That hairpin, in Pontlieu village,
Snapshot race
1923 ❖
was by-passed after 1928 but on June 18 this year its racing history is recalled with a recreation of the bend as it was then, with period signs and barriers and a display of cars invoking the feel of those early years when locals were pinned in their houses by thundering bolides. In later times drivers would run to their cars and erect the hood before getting going, the origin of the Le Mans start, but in 1923 veteran racer Charles Faroux dropped the flag on a grid much like today’s Grands Prix – two by two. Heavy rain and hailstones made the inaugural event as big a test of man as machine. “The men were blinded with mud and water,” reported The Autocar, “and suffered extremely from sore eyes”. Out on the muddy, rutted roads the worst bends were lit by acetylene lamps, j u ly 2 0 1 3
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Duff/Frank Clement Distance: 2077km New rule stipulates that cars must cover 20 laps with hoods up. 1925 Winning car: Lorraine Dietrich B3-6 Drivers: Gérard de Courcelles/ André Rossignol Distance: 2234km Famous Le Mans start used for the first time.
1926 Winning car: Lorraine Dietrich B3-6 Drivers: Robert Bloch/André Rossignol Distance: 2552km First grandstands built and 100kph average achieved. Mulsanne Straight asphalted.
1927 Winning car: Bentley 3 Litre Super Sport Drivers: Dudley Benjafield/Sammy Davis Distance: 2370km
1929 Winning car: Bentley Speed Six Drivers: Woolf Barnato/Henry Birkin Distance: 2843km
1928 Winning car: Bentley 4½ Litre Drivers: Woolf Barnato/Bernard Rubin Distance: 2670km
Stars of the decade John Duff
André Rossignol
offside
First driver to take back-to-back victories, in 1925 and ’26, and first (with Robert Bloch) to break a 100kph winning average. But LorraineDietrich pulled out before the 1927 race, leaving Rossignol unable to challenge Bentley.
while above the “replenishment pits” hung electric lights. But out on that endless straight you were on your own, with all the risks of erratic lights: Frank Clement recalled, “it was dreadful; we had holes a foot deep”. At changeovers, tired and muddy drivers were regaled with hot soup, roast chicken and champagne, while spectators enjoyed jazz bands, a cinema and fireworks, a tradition that endures. And Brits were already flocking to watch. Despite the confusing triennial scheme this first 24 Hours was a huge success, boosted by the Chenard/Bentley duel. W O Bentley, who decided to go only at the last minute, said “by midnight I was certain this was the best race I’d ever seen”. It wasn’t hard to decide that his cars should return… Gordon Cruickshank j u ly 2 0 1 3
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Woolf Barnato Most successful of the ‘Bentley Boys’, WO calling him “the best driver we ever had and the best British driver of his day.” He drove at Le Mans in 1928-30, winning all three.
Henry Birkin Versatile and courageous, Birkin won Le Mans in 1929 with Bentley and in ’32 with Alfa. Mechanical failures robbed him of more success as he developed his supercharged Bentley.
car to remember
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War veteran, Hollywood stuntman, steeplechaser, racing driver… Duff lived an extraordinary life. The first British Le Mans entrant in 1923, he won the next year for Bentley and is still the only Canadian victor.
Bentley 41/2 “I think the whole thing is crazy. Cars aren’t designed to stand that sort of thing for 24 hours.” That was W O Bentley’s reaction when John Duff planned to enter his 3-litre Bentley into the very first Le Mans. By 1924, when Duff’s Bentley came home first, WO had changed his view and the ACO’s endurance trial became a prime goal. After two disastrous Le Mans races it came right in spectacular style for 1927 when the battered 3-litre Old No 7 limped away from a spectacular pile-up to snatch an improbable victory. But it was clear that the experimental 4½-litre car, sidelined by the crash, had the speed Bentley needed for next year. By 1928 Bentley had a guardian angel. Diamond millionaire Woolf Barnato baled out the sinking company and would prove a track hero, too. Race plans centred around boring out the four to 4½ litres, rather than the parallel six-cylinder range. The new 4½ produced 130bhp – and despite Bugatti’s comparing Bentleys to lorries, the race cars for the 1928 Le Mans only weighed around 1.7 tons. The 16-valve overhead-cam engine apart, the 4½ was relatively conventional, but thanks to WO’s railway apprenticeship it was built like a locomotive. Our own Andrew Frankel has raced many of them: “They’re so wonderfully engineered – a fabulous piece of British engineering you could race and then drive home in.” And
Bentley had an extra weapon: its cars were raced by wealthy sportsmen who brought to the marque an image of carefree, debonair style that seduced the public at home and abroad. The Bentley Boys were kings of the road. In that 1928 race the strongest opposition came from the US, Barnato and Bernard Rubin tussling lap after lap with the fastest Stutz and setting a new lap record. By Sunday afternoon the green British behemoth was leading – and overheating so badly that on the last lap Barnato coasted on the downhills. But he made it, first of a hat trick for the British marque at the French classic. The following year a race version of the 6½ would win, but a trio of 4½s rounded out a Bentley 1-2-3-4, confirming it as the archetypal Le Mans Bentley, an image later fixed for thousands of small boys by Airfix and Scalextric. “The drivers preferred the 4½ – it was lighter on the nose, handled better and had a beautiful gearbox,” says Frankel. “Bentley winning five out of seven Le Mans attempts put Britain properly on the racing map.” Tim Birkin tried to keep the big four competitive with his supercharged ‘Blowers’, which in 1930 proved sensationally fast – but also fragile. That year would bring the last of Bentley’s five pre-war Le Mans wins, and though it was another 6½ that triumphed, it’s the ‘bloody thump’ of the four that echoes loudest. GC
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understudy that stole the show The
In 1987 this 962C went to Le Mans as back-up. It returned with the winner’s laurels. Motor Sport was invited to try it at Porsche’s test track, with two stipulations: drive as hard as you like, for as long as you like… writer
a n d r e w f r a n k e l | p h o t o g r a p h e r j a m e s lipm a n
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Track test Porsche 962C
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Racing Lives by Guy Allen
Tony Rolt
He was a war hero, Le Mans 24 Hours winner, Grand Prix driver and free-thinking engineer. His profile might be relatively low-key, but his legacy is truly vast... As a pupil at Eton School the young Anthony Peter Roylance Rolt received a first-class education.
By the age of 18 he was already a veteran of the Spa 24 hours...
...and by 1939 was making a name for himself on the international scene.
He’s also acquiring a taste for motor sport at the Schoolboy Trials.
Winning the British Empire Trophy should set him up for a sparkling career.
But war in Europe was imminent.
Calais, 1940. The German invasion of France was nearing the coast. Lieutenant Rolt found himself part of a small British force tasked with holding back an advancing Panzer Division.
Rolt was captured. As a prisoner of war he immediately set about fulfilling his obligation to escape. He’s becoming a continual headache for our officers.
No surprise he’s been brought here to Colditz Castle. He’s made seven escape attempts!
The high-security prison provided a new challenge for Rolt’s keen engineer’s mind. An ingenious plan was concocted with a small group of fellow prisoners.
Colditz was eventually liberated by the Americans in April 1945.
We’ll have to make the best use of the materials we can find, Tony. Wire, cloth, floorboards...
We’ve made a false wall in the castle attic. We’re going to build a glider.
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Rolt was promoted to Major and awarded the Military Cross and bar for his wartime efforts. He can finally get back on track, as both a driver and an engineer.
Amazing! Those guys built a plane up here, and the guards didn’t suspect a thing!
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A working relationship was formed with the vastly experienced rider, racer and mechanical pioneer, Freddie Dixon. So Tony, is it Dixon Rolt Developments, or Rolt Dixon?
Rolt’s time was now split between racing cars...
When in 1950 Silverstone was chosen as the venue for the first World Championship Grand Prix, Rolt jumped at the chance to take part.
...and engineering solutions that would improve their performance and safety.
Farina, from Fagioli, from Fangio!
Rolt shared an ERA E-Type with Peter Walker. The pair qualified 10th, but managed only five laps between them before retiring with gearbox trouble.
With a formidable reputation in endurance events, Rolt became part of the Jaguar team as it attempted to retain its crown at Le Man in ‘52.
They won! Jaguar came in first, second and fourth, Rolt and Hamilton four laps clear of Moss and Walker.
Duncan Hamilton is his regular driving partner and has also joined the works team.
The pair were forced to retire their C-Type at the first attempt. But a year later they were back.
With funding from tractor magnate Harry Ferguson, Rolt’s company had been developing a revolutionary viscous coupling for 4WD systems.
They nearly repeated the feat in ’54, taking the revolutionary D-type to 2nd, less than a lap down on the winning Ferrari. But the following year‘s edition of the 24 hours would be Rolt’s final outing at La Sarthe.
By 1966 the technology had been adopted by Jensen Motors.
The terrific Ferguson P99 has been developed to showcase the new fourwheel-drive transmission.
The 1980s saw a surge in demand. FF became technical partners to Ford, Audi, Fiat, Chrysler, GM...
Le Mans 1955.
Rolt had retired from second place when he saw the Mercedes of Pierre Levegh leave the track and plough into the crowd. 80 spectators lost their lives. The tragedy was a turning point in Rolt’s career. As a father of three, with growing business commitments, he began to wind down his competitive involvement.
He continued to take great pride in the fact that races were still being won with transmission systems that had their roots in his own work.
And we’re spearheading the 4WD revolution in rallying as supplier to most of the Group B teams.
The Jensen FF is the World’s first production road car with 4WD and anti-lock brakes. Stirling Moss took the P99 to victory in the 1961 Oulton Park Gold Cup – the last front-engined F1 win and the only one for a 4WD car.
A new company was formed in 1971. FF Developments continued to evolve its groundbreaking systems and began to forge links with major manufacturers.
Rolt sold the business in ‘94, retiring a wealthy man.
The last surviving driver from the inaugural World Championship Grand Prix, Tony Rolt died in 2008, aged 89.
Next Month
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21/05/2013 19:57
Le Mans Toyota’s challenge
“As it is, our chances at Le Mans are very, very small”
P a s c a l Va s s e l o n
Toyota had high hopes of Le Mans success when it launched the latest version of its hybrid sports-prototype. But now after the Spa 6 Hours it has grave doubts that Audi can be beaten writer
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Lunch AnthonyDavidson/ST/sa/gc/ds.indd 1
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{ brunch with }
anthony d av i d s o n From karting stardom to a testing time in Formula 1, this dedicated professional is now chasing victory at Le Mans
writer
s i m o n t a y l o r | p h o t o g r a p h e r j a m e s m i t c h e ll
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he British have always had a special relationship with Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans. It’s the arena that built the racing reputations of Bentley and Jaguar, and of a raft of drivers from Barnato to Bell, from Rolt to McNish. In fact, in the 80 races held so far, 42 of the winning drivers have come from the UK. It’s always said that there are more British spectators at Le Mans each year than at any motor race in this country except our Grand Prix. In my 30-plus visits to the 24 Hours, ever since I first watched that last-lap showdown in 1969 between Jacky Ickx’s GT40 and Hans Herrmann’s Porsche 908, the loudest cheers have always come from union flag-waving Brits enjoying themselves on the spectator terraces and in the camp-sites. In the lead-up to the race the roads south from the French coast are awash with UK-registered vehicles, from E-types to motor caravans, battered Minis to vintage Bentleys. Each year more and more of them carry real lovers of motor sport who are turning their backs on today’s F1, with its
artificial regulations and manipulative pit-wall strategies, its super-softs and DRS. At Le Mans they know they’re more likely to see a proper old-fashioned motor race. One Brit who had to turn his back on Formula 1 as a driver, and has now embraced endurance racing, is Anthony Davidson. Of course he desperately wanted an F1 career, and his speed, racecraft and dedication showed he had all the necessary qualifications. But a combination of circumstances and how the cards fell mean the record books only credit him with 24 F1 starts, in lesser teams – Minardi and Super Aguri. As is so often the case, the record books don’t tell the whole story, for between 2001 and 2008 he clocked up a huge number of miles in F1 cockpits testing for BAR, Honda and Mercedes. As a youngster, Anthony’s devastating pace in karting, and his winning form in Formula Ford and F3, marked him out as an F1 star of the future. It didn’t work out like that. But in 2008, when he first discovered top-line endurance racing, he felt he had come home. “The trouble is that after Formula 1 you feel anything else will be a disappointment, because the cars www.motorsportmagazine.com 127
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22/05/2013 12:45
Retrospective Sir Henry Segrave
Tiger Sunbeam
Sir Henry Segrave had a reputation for audacity, but 90 years ago a conservative approach helped him to win the French GP at Tours – a landmark success that reflected his happy knack of making things happen…
F
Paul fearnley
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Finally, Delage had taken upon itself to build the first V12 GP engine. A slurring whirligig of roller bearings that provided a terrific aural assault and fierce acceleration, its complexity caused severe delays and this otherwise orthodox car arrived at Tours almost terminally late. This singleton entry would at least start; and its big idea would eventually take hold. Amid this, Fiat of Turin provided a coolly red oasis of calm, form following function where innovative supercharging, another GP first, blended with convention. The dominant force of the 1922 Grand Prix de l’ACF at Strasbourg – despite a flawed back-axle design that almost cost it victory and claimed the life of driver Biagio Nazzaro – arrived stylishly late for practice and immediately set the pace on a typically triangular, steeply crowned, narrow course of converging routes nationales. The low-slung 805 was neat and natty – from its cowled prow to perky tail – rather than nutty. And its engine, boosted by a Wittig vane-type blower, was by far the most powerful 2-litre at 130bhp. In short this car went, stopped and did all things in between much better than rivals. ‘Fiat did not copy: it taught, after having created’ was a supporter’s pithy refrain.
Segrave and riding mechanic Paul Dutoit pictured 90 years ago on the roads of Tours, ahead of a famous, wholly unexpected British success offside
rench manufacturers were struck down with a weird strain of Grand Prix fever in July 1923. Gabriel Voisin’s aptly titled Laboratoire, a semimonocoque device with perversely accentuated aerodynamics and smoky sleeve-valve six-cylinder, was a Futurist statement befitting Le Corbusier’s preferred automobile designer. Quirkish Ettore Bugatti, who rolled out a ‘Barrel’ for the corresponding race the previous year, built a ‘Tank’ this time. Looking more like a hump in the road than an instrument of war, the Type 32’s stubby footprint demanded intense concentration and reactions from drivers compromised by a cramped working environment shared directly with a thrashing straight-eight. The cars of hometown Rolland-Pilain, outwardly conventional save for being left-hand drive, had ditched their too bold desmodromic valve actuation. But one of the three entries still featured an experimental straight-six fitted with Dr Schmid’s cuff-type sleeve valves; it failed to take the start and the idea failed to take hold.
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