April 2014 issue of Motor Sport Magazine

Win!

A TRIP TO LE MANS p131

Hunt, Brawn & McGuinness star 2014 HALL OF FAME Prost, www.motorsportmagazine.com

90TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR

PAUL TRACY Indycar heavyweight who never pulled his punches THE RETURN OF RON DENNIS and the real story behind his F1 exile PETER REVSON the true racer behind a playboy mask

Ecclestone’s in the dock and on the rocks…

TIME FOR A

FORMULA 1 REVOLUTION Our vision for a brighter, post-Bernie Grand Prix future

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THE MOTOR SPORT MONTH

IN PICTURES

JA N UA RY 1 3 - 1 9 , 2 0 1 4

WRC round one MONTE CARLO

LAT

It’s Meeke, but not particularly mild... Northern Irishman Kris Meeke got his full-time Citroën career off to a fine start, taking third place on the World Rally Championship opener in Monte Carlo. Sébastien Ogier won for VW, ahead of Bryan Bouffier (Ford Fiesta). Elfyn Evans (Fiesta) was another high-flying Brit, in sixth.

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F1 FRONTLINE with

Mark Hughes

Talk about a revolution The future of Formula 1 has never been more uncertain.

Here, Motor Sport presents its vision of how Grand Prix racing can be reborn. It’s radical – but echoes of the past are clear

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ROAD TESTS www.motorsportmagazine.com/author/andrew-frankel

MINI COOPER

Newcomer differs significantly from its forebear, which isn’t necessarily a good thing... | BY ANDREW FRANKEL

I

T MIGHT SEEM A STRANGE thing to say about a car whose success has outstripped by far the highest hopes of its creators, but replacing the Mini presented a problem that forced even the finest brains in BMW’s engineering and design departments to stop and ponder.

In essence its customers split into two groups, both of which wanted subtly but significantly different characteristics from the new car. Traditional Mini buyers, including most in the UK, could scarcely have been happier with the current car and wanted it merely updated, so it was a little more practical and, on long runs, a touch more civilised, but not at the expense of its unique character. The others, including prospects in the US – the only Mini market larger than the UK – wanted something else: a car that looked like a Mini but with substantially fewer

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neuroses. They didn’t like the fact it darted about every time you moved the wheel, nor that it snapped out of stabilising understeer the moment you lifted the throttle mid-corner.

BMW could hardly design an entirely different Mini for each group, so one would have to do for both. To complicate matters further, the new Mini would be first to share its platform with a BMW. Having remained stoically wedded to rear-wheel drive for decades, BMW has finally given in to the economies of scale and designed one architecture that will underpin not only every one of the myriad versions of the new Mini, but also every BMW smaller than a 3-series.

Mindful of those who read this magazine, I turned my attention first to the new Cooper S. It’s grown in every dimension, especially the wheelbase, but still looks little different from the last Mini. There’s a new engine under the

FACTFILE £15,300

ENGINE 1.5 litres, three cylinders, turbocharged POWER 136bhp @ 4500rpm TORQUE 162lb ft @ 1250rpm TRANSMISSION Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive 0-62MPH 7.8sec TOP SPEED 130mph ECONOMY 62.8mpg CO2 105g/km

bonnet, however, a 2-litre turbo replacing the 1.6 and producing a very understressed 192bhp with a useful slug of extra torque. The car I drove also had a brand new paddle-shift automatic transmission and electronically adjustable dampers, a first not only on a Mini but for any car in this class.

It might still look like a Mini, but it doesn’t drive like one any more. This is a car that’s all grown up and has left childish things far behind. And I guess, for most people most of the time, this has to be a good thing. But Mini buyers aren’t most people. While I am sure the new car will appeal to an entirely new constituency of punter who’d never have considered it before, there are some who bought a Cooper S precisely because you could steer it on the throttle. For them, the new car is likely to come as a dire disappointment.

Over and above everything else, the new Cooper S is abidingly competent APRIL 2014

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New Cooper S (in yellow) has one more cylinder and various extra trimmings, but fails to match the cheaper, standard Cooper in terms of chassis balance or sheer driving vim

– and I use that word to damn with all the faint praise I can muster. The ride is better, though still not brilliant, but its refinement compared to the old Cooper S is a world apart. You can barely hear the new engine as it delivers an even spread of torque from scarcely more than idle to little less than peak power.

The auto gearbox is efficient, too, though entirely unlovable in smooth but hardly snappy action.

But nowhere is this car changed more than in the way it addresses the road.

The steering is far more linear and this has softened the off-centre immediacy of the old system. Coupled with that extended wheelbase, it helps make the Mini feel far more stable, but commensurately less immediate. It will still neutralise its stance if you cut the APRIL 2014

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power mid-bend, but gently, predictably and far less amusingly than before.

In short it is a Mini Cooper S for those who don’t actually want a Mini Cooper S, merely a car that looks like one. This will likely please more people than it annoys around the world, so you can’t blame BMW for the brutal commercialism that made its designers think this way: its job is to sell cars and many thousands of UK jobs depend on it doing that job to the best of its ability.

Still, the thought saddened me as I approached the standard Cooper.

In place of the previous normally aspirated 1.6-litre petrol engine, it now features a three-cylinder 1.5-litre turbo offering 136bhp.

And unlike the Cooper S, it was in back-to-basics spec, with a standard

six-speed manual and passive damping.

The fact it was better to drive than the Cooper S did not surprise me as much as you might think. In a dozen years of driving BMW Minis, I never drove one I preferred to a normal Cooper hatch. But even I was surprised by how much more driver appeal this slower, cheaper Mini possessed.

It’s down to a number of factors, all significant and collectively overwhelming. First is the fact that the Cooper is 75kg lighter than the Cooper S, second that almost every gram of this weight comes out of the nose, where it is least welcome. Third is the more compliant suspension that manages to provide a far better balance of ride and handling than the Cooper S, even when the latter has the alleged benefit of adaptive damping. Fourth is a brandnew manual gearbox that is as good as any in a road car this side of a Porsche Cayman. Finally, fifth is the new, three-pot engine, a rorty, characterful enthusiast in place of the sullen four-cylinder unit in the Cooper S. Not once in a day driving the Cooper did I yearn for the additional power of the S. Instead, I flung it up and down the gears and through every decent corner I could find on the island of Puerto Rico, where BMW inexplicably chose to host its launch. This is a car whose bare performance provides no indication of the enjoyment on offer, which derives instead from the feel of the chassis, the sound of the engine and the way its perfect blend of power, grip, feel and balance encourages you to drive harder. The chassis is still a little tamer than that of the old Cooper, but more than adequate compensation is provided by a far better engine and gearbox, not to mention ride and refinement that’ll take the sting out of long journeys.

But for BMW the greatest challenge is yet to come. What I want to see is Mini building on this base of excellence in a way that, for all its success and strength, it hasn’t managed in the past. Instead of designing all versions to be equal, one engineer admitted that they created one Mini and then modified that ideal to create its offshoots. And that is how it feels: able though the Cooper S is, it feels like a compromise between the new and old Mini worlds.

The Cooper proves that you can have the best of both – and will have to pay far less for the privilege.

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Photo special F1 Retro Book

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way we were The

Motor Sport’s new Grand Prix editor Mark Hughes has just published F1 Retro 1970, a season review ripe with fresh detail and perspective.

Here are a few edited highlights

Business as usual for a community in mourning B E L G I U M , J U N E 5 -7

S

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PA WAS A NINE-MILE BLAST ON CLOSED PUBLIC ROADS THROUGH THE ARDENNES forest, the course climbing and dipping through valleys, bordered by trees, stone walls and farmhouses. It was also prone to sudden severe rainfall, a terror ride that even by the raw standards of 1970 was unreasonably dangerous. Even for the most hardened pro this, yet more than the Nürburgring, was the big bogey track of the season. And Jackie Stewart was its sternest critic: his accident here in 1966 had triggered the safety battle that was still being fiercely fought, not least with this circuit’s management. “I defy any man to say he likes the place,” said Stewart in his book Faster, “to tell me that he doesn’t think twice before leaving home, and continue to think about it the night before he’s going to drive.”

Everyone had extra reason to be hyper-attuned to the sword at their necks; on the Tuesday before the race, Bruce McLaren had been killed testing his Can-Am car at Goodwood, a 130mph impact with an obsolete concrete bunker for a marshal’s post that was no longer there. The shattered McLaren team withdrew its Belgian entries and a black cloud fell over the entire community. Just two years earlier, Spa had been the venue for Bruce’s first grand prix victory for his team, the foundation of a golden future he wouldn’t see.

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{ LUNCH WITH }

PAUL TRACY

This ever-determined, hard-charging Indycar driver didn’t always mind his Ps and Qs but invariably gave his all in the cockpit writer

S I M O N TAY LO R | photographer M I C H A E L M c N A M A R A

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HESE DAYS YOUR AVERAGE professional racing driver tends to be slight and slender. He is unfailingly polite to team personnel, to sponsors and to rivals, and speaks to the media in unexceptional sound-bites while a PR holds his elbow.

Behind the scenes a team of shrewd legal brains guards his business and financial interests, while his job is to be publicly well-behaved.

So if, out of the cockpit, he seems bland and predictable, that’s the price of motor sport’s ever-increasing commercialisation.

But Paul Tracy was never your average professional racing driver. For a start, he’s a big guy: when fully race-fit, he carried at least a stone more than his rivals. His driving style was always aggressive, and face to face he could be aggressive too. He spoke his mind, especially when he was angry, and became known not only for his speed on the track but for his public arguments off it. For much of his career the nearest he had to a manager was his father – also a man known to call a spade a shovel.

Yet over 18 seasons Tracy scored more than

two dozen Indycar victories, driving for the great teams like Penske, Newman-Haas and Forsythe.

His unshakeable work ethic saw him clocking up tens of thousands of test miles, always hunting for more speed. And in 2003 he was a dominant Champ Car World Series champion.

Paul lives in Arizona these days, in the expensive Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale, where we meet in the swanky Royal Palms resort for a light lunch at T Cook’s. Nearby he has a fine house, a garage full of classic cars and hotrods, an apartment building or two, a motorcycle parts company and other businesses. But he is a Canadian, born at the end of 1968 to an Irish father and an English mother.

“Dad raced a Velocette in Ireland and in England, until he hurt himself in a crash. He emigrated to Canada in the ’60s with his two brothers, and they ended up in Toronto painting people’s houses. Then he heard about the CN Tower being built.” At more than 1800ft, this was the world’s tallest structure until 2007, and is still the tallest in the western hemisphere. “Dad marched into the mayor’s office and said, ‘I want to paint this tower you’re putting up.’ They hadn’t invented WWW.MOTORSPORTMAGAZINE.COM 89

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Retrospective Peter Revson

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Forty years have passed since the sport lost one of its most misunderstood – and underrated – talents writer

ANDREW FRANKEL

’D KNOWN ABOUT THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY of Peter Revson for years, but never felt inclined to read it. Revson’s was a supporting role on the global motor racing stage: not a bit part for sure, but he was certainly no superstar either. Besides, Revson only got that far thanks to being a Revlon heir and along the way appeared to have acquired an ego of similar proportion.

Why else call your autobiography Speed with Style? It was a book I could do without.

❖ IT IS COMMONPLACE FOR DRIVERS who die before their time to earn a place in history based not on what they had accomplished, but what those close to them thought they might have gone on to achieve. So Chris Bristow was a world champion in the making, as were Ricardo Rodriguez, Tony Brise and many others. By contrast Peter Revson might have the unique distinction of being remembered as less of a driver than he actually was. It turns out all I thought I knew about Revson was wrong, even the reason behind the title of his autobiography. Forty years after he died testing at Kyalami, a reassessment is due.

So let’s start five days later at the All Souls Unitarian Church on Manhattan Island, where Revson’s family joined the motor racing community to say farewell. The eulogies were read by Roger Penske and Leon Mandel, then publisher of AutoWeek and co-author (but not ghost-writer) of the biography that had gone into production on the very day Peter died.

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ALL IMAGES MATTHEW HOWELL

HALL OF FAME 2014 Our fifth annual awards night drew star names to London as four more racing heroes were honoured with membership to our club for the best of the best

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JAKOB EBREY

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Interview Oliver Jarvis

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He’s not yet a fully fledged endurance aristocrat, but Oliver Jarvis – Audi Sport’s foremost British racer in the post-Allan McNish era – is forging a solid reputation writer

SIMON ARRON

T’S A TALE ALMOST AS OLD AS THE WHEEL. Promising young kart racer switches to cars, surfs his way through a few junior categories, collecting victories and titles en route, but then comes up against a sizeable barrier that can be hurdled only with a cash-stacked briefcase.

Time was that drivers would loiter here, hoping to scrounge the odd drive that might sustain their Formula 1 dreams. Sometimes this paid off – Damon Hill’s tenacity in the unloved Footwork Formula 3000 chassis kept him on the radar for long enough to earn him better opportunities and, ultimately, a Williams F1 test contract – but more usually it didn’t.

In more recent times, the average age in one-make racing championships – once the preserve of 30-plus businessmen with disposable income – has come down as kart graduates see greater career potential in saloons, GTs and sports cars. And then there are those such as Oliver Jarvis, who reach a crossroads and divert from what was once considered the mainstream.

The son of former FF1600 racer Carl Jarvis, Oliver switched to cars in the winter of 2002 and raced initially in Formula Ford before stepping up to Formula Renault and winning the 2005 British title. At the end of that season he won the BRDC McLaren Autosport Award and committed to British F3, in which he finished second to Mike Conway.

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Dakar Rally Race2Recovery

Tinker, tailor,

soldier, fly

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It’s 6.30am and I’ve just woken up face down on the hot Tarmac in the pitlane of the Potrero de los Funes circuit in San Luis, Argentina. I can hear trucks moving and so scramble from my one-man tent into the blazing sunshine. Squinting towards the pitwall I see the form of Race2Recovery team founder Tony Harris. “I thought you’d f***** off already!” he grins.

Welcome to the Dakar Rally bivouac writer

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ALEX HARMER

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RACING LIVES BY GU Y ALLEN

Jean Behra World championship Formula 1 victories proved elusive, but the Frenchman won many a heart with his spectacular style Behra’s first taste of competition came on two wheels, racing under his own steam around his home town of Nice.

By the age of 17 he had graduated to motorcycles. But the outbreak of war brought early progress to a halt.

Mont Ventoux, 1950. While at a motorcycle event, Behra borrowed a car, entered the hillclimb and won.

I’ll arrange a meeting.

Allez Jean!

Employed by a local bicycle shop, the young Frenchman developed his short, powerful frame, and picked up a love for all things mechanical.

The arrival of a new talent had not gone unnoticed. Amédée Gordini was the first to make an approach.

Following liberation, Behra made up for lost time and secured his national title four years in a row.

Reims Grand Prix, 1952. The Ferraris of Ascari and Farina were hot favourites for the non-championship F2 race, but Behra hadn’t read the script.

Cars offered an exciting new challenge.

Within a year he had made appearances in the Le Mans 24 Hours and Monte Carlo Rally.

With the offer of a works drive, Behra would be upholding French honour in the little blue Gordinis, in Formula 1 and myriad sports car events.

Behra’s enthusiasm and apparent disregard for his own safety led him to score impressive results for Gordini, but all too often he was let down by fragile cars.

¿Estás bien?

Taking an early lead, Behra danced the underpowered Gordini T16 around the closed road circuit ahead of the chasing Ascari. When the Ferrari finally fell by the wayside, Jean was left to sail home in first place.

It was a true victory for the underdog and in ‘Jeannot’ the French public had found a new hero.

The early phases of the gruelling Panamericana road race highlighted Behra’s frustrating position. The lightweight Gordini was particularly unsuited to the poor Mexican roads, yet Behra was quickest on the long opening stage.

On the second he pushed too hard and was lucky to survive when his car plunged into a ravine.

Underfunded Gordini was unlikely to bring Behra the success he deserved, so he began to look elsewhere.

His timing was unfortunate. Mercedes team-mates Fangio and Moss dominated the 1955 season. When the German team withdrew at the year’s end, Maserati signed Moss as its number one, replacing him a year later with Fangio.

A move to Maserati would allow Jeannot to display his undoubted pace in more reliable machinery. The Italian team would be home for the next three years.

Behra accepted his position as the team’s number two with grace and continued to throw himself into racing with characteristic abandon. Victory on the biggest stage eluded him, but skill and consistency brought plenty of success in other arenas and he secured fourth place in the Formula 1 standings.

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And Behra’s reputation as a fearless competitor grew with every near miss.

Broken bones and the loss of an ear saw him sit out the closed season, while various burns and scrapes left their mark on his stocky frame.

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Venezuelan GP. A refuelling fire puts Behra in hospital. Further accidents decimated the Maserati team.

Out with the old... and in with two new teams for ’58. A Formula 1 campaign with BRM would allow Behra the freedom to compete for Porsche in sports cars.

The contrast with his showing in sports cars could not have been greater.

GET BACK!

**** !

A disastrous finale to the ’57 season heralded the end for Maserati’s racing department.

Mike Hawthorn’s retirement, and the tragic deaths of Musso and Collins, had left Enzo Ferrari in search of front-line drivers.

But his stint at BRM was a great disappointment. The temperamental side of Behra’s nature was often in evidence during a season in which his P25 retired from all but two championship races.

On occasions he could be accused of giving up when events weren’t going his way.

Early results were modest. A fifth at the Dutch GP did little to mask disquiet within the squad. Frustrated by his lack of form, Behra was spurred on by the prospect of racing in front of an adoring home crowd on his return to Reims.

Behra and Herrmann took their Porsche RSK to third at Le Mans, with Jeannot going on to clinch the French and German sports car titles.

But a maiden Formula 1 win still eluded him.

The situation came to a head when Behra pushed too hard and broke a piston. Tavoni was furious!

I’d keep your head down if I were you!

Behra and Tony Brooks were given the opportunity to form the core of a restructured team. With the Dino 246 at his disposal, Behra would surely shine.

Jean fell back on his relationship with Porsche, pouring his energy into a new project under his own name.

Jeannot was firm favourite for the French GP, but inexplicably found himself outpaced by his team-mates.

Accusations of favouritism were hurled at team manager Romolo Tavoni. Behra’s resolve started to crack.

Avus, Berlin, August 1959. The first Behra-Porsche was due to be driven in the German Grand Prix.

Following a heated argument, Jean’s temper got the better of him.

He was dismissed with immediate effect.

A support race was held a day before the GP. Desperate to impress in front of the watching F1 teams, Behra carried too much speed into the treacherous Nordkurve, lost control of his Porsche and crested the top of the banking.

Thrown from the car, Behra’s body struck a flag pole. He was killed instantly.

The Behra-Porsche was a Formula 2 car contructed in the fledgling team’s Modena base. Jean was instrumental in its design and developement.

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Following his sacking by Ferrari, Jean was determined to break back into Formula 1.

Aged 38, his will to win was undiminished.

Brave and with style to spare, Jean Behra possessed an extra little something that transcends statistics.

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LAT

Anthony Reid in action at Silverstone during the 2012 season and, right, Foster struggling to fit the same Chevron’s cabin

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Insight Chevron GT3

&

HEART SOLE

The ingredients? A treacherous Donington Park, the latest GT3 racer from a small, ambitious company and a 6ft 7in writer who is too tall for the cabin. That didn’t work, but the car does…

“D

writer

ED FOSTER

O YOU THINK YOU’D FIT IF YOU TOOK YOUR SHOES OFF?” They’re not words many will associate with racing cars, but ex-BTCC and Le Mans driver Anthony Reid might have a point. I am halfway inside Chevron’s GT3 challenger and, despite swapping my full-face helmet for Reid’s more slender, open-face alternative – to help me place my bum a bit farther back in the seat – I still can’t move my legs. Fine if you’re on a bus to work, not so good if you have to tame 438bhp at a wet and slippery Donington Park. To be fair, no one else has a problem; it’s just me and my 6ft 7in frame…

Shoes off and I can now move my legs: not much, mind, but enough to reach the throttle and depress the clutch. I can access the brake if I move my foot away from the pedal box, flick it through 90 degrees and then shove it back in again. Not a perfect set-up.

“Honestly,” says Chevron Cars Ltd owner David Witt in his Sunderland drawl, “you’ll be absolutely fine.” Witt runs a clothing company that supplies Marks & Spencer with one million garments a week. His passion is racing cars, though, and through that he became involved with Chevron Cars Ltd. This GT3 represents the firm’s future, a car David Witt hopes will put the name back at the forefront of GT racing.

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