Issue 7

THE PIT STOP issue 7

q u a r t e r l y

m o t o r s p o r t

m a g a z i n e

IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO

CONTENTS

8 22 36 54 66 IN SHORT

YELLOW FLAGGED Jonny Tipler examines how Corvette got on at this year's Le Mans 24 Hours

LIVING THE DREAM The childhood dream Marino Franchitti got to play out at Goodwood Members' Meeting

BATTLING BEYOND THE RACE The illness Rick Parfitt Jr is fighting, and how it affects his racing

ROLE MODEL Jamie Chadwick explains why she's in W Series for a third straight season

LOTUS' LAST SUCCESS A deep dive into the Lotus 99T, the car that gave Lotus its last ever Formula 1 victory

MOTO GP'S SILLY SEASON IN FULL FORCE

SOL RALLY BARBADOS Luke Barry takes a look at this beautiful island rally

UNDERDOGS With Gary Anderson, we explore Jordan's 1995 Formula 1 season, and specifically, the Jordan 195

DAY AND NIGHT The Nurburgring 24 Hours from the view of Falken Porsche

THE ESSENZA: LAMBORGHINI'S LABORATORY ON FOUR WHEELS Stephen Brunsdon examines Lamborghini's racing car that will never race

GETTING THE SENNA EXPERIENCE

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FULL PICTURE

love so many things about creating The Pit Stop and writing the many stories we've published to date, but one of the things I love the most is that I'm constantly learning new things about the sport I love.

There's so many stories out there that only a few people have ever heard of, and it's a privilege to play a part in showcasing them to you, our readers.

One of those stories is featured in this issue. The story of Marino Franchitti and his chance to drive the Skoal Bandit liveried Porsche 956 at this year's Goodwood Members' Meeting.

'What's so special about that?' I hear you ask. Franchitti has driven plenty of historic machinery in his time. But this was different. The Skoal Bandit car played a pivotal role in his childhood and having spent time as a child pretending to drive the car, he was afforded the opportunity to get behind the wheel for real at the former RAF airfield.

Prior to interviewing Franchitti for the feature in this issue, I spoke to him immediately after his seat fitting in the car. Right there and then you could see the emotion. His smile said it all. He knew how privileged he was and he made sure he soaked up every single second of it. It was special to witness.

In today's world there are so many negative stories. The world's media is full of doom and gloom stories, only telling us what's going wrong. It's easy to forget that great and special things are happening. We shouldn't forget that. We mustn't forget that. And that's exactly why we write stories like this. There are so many special and heart warming stories in the world of motorsport and you deserve to hear them.

But there's also another side. We are all guilty of looking back on the past with rose tinted glasses and our cover article on the Lotus 99T is a reminder of that. We all remember Ayrton Senna as a true great of the racing world - and he was. But he wasn't without his flaws. And that's showcased in the story. He might not have been the person who completely sent Lotus under, but when you look back, it's clear he certainly played a significant part in its demise.

Were it not for his actions, there's every chance the Norfolk-based team could have set itself up to get back on to the road of recovery. We will never know for sure if that's what would have happened or not, but it's definitely interesting to consider. And it also reminds us just how differently we look on the past. We are programmed to remember the highlights and forget everything else in between.

I'm not saying for a second that we shouldn't consider Senna as one of the greatest racing drivers of all time. It's abundantly clear that he was. He could make a car do things that nobody else in the world has ever been capable of doing. There's only a few drivers able to be considered in the same vein, no matter how debatable that list is among the motorsport community. But it's just sometimes good to remind ourselves of the full picture. To remind ourselves that not everyone is perfect.

And I'm not singling Senna out. Schumacher was the same. He'd cross the line, making moves that were unacceptable, all in the pursuit of victory.

To me, that's what's special about these stories. Whether it's a cold reminder or a heart tugging moment, from the past or present, they all have their place and shouldn't be forgotten.

Rob Hansford Editor

EDITORIAL Editor Rob Hansford Photography Editor Brian Smith Contributors Luke Barry, Johnny Tipler, Ian Page, Adam Proud, Stephen Brunsdon Photography Contributors PHD Photo, Rob Overy, Ed Waplington, Matt Widdowson, Tim Glover, Rob Overy, Alex Denham, Gerrard Wilson, Grand Prix Photo THANKS TO Louie Cotton, Goodwood Estate, Hannah Corkish, Katharine Morgan, Rob Overy, Moto Historics, Marino Franchitti, Gary Anderson, Edd Straw, James Cornish, William Halkiw, Matt Beer, Peter Nygaard, Neil Barnard COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES Enquiries commercialenquiries@thepitstopmagazine.com 6 | THE PIT STOP

IMAGE BY ED WAPLINGTON

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YELLOW FLAGGED WORDS BY JOHNNY TIPLER IMAGES BY ALEX DENHAM / PHD PHOTO THE PIT STOP | 9

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e Mans never fails to deliver, even when a Toyota victory seems an inevitable conclusion. This year, we were guests of Corvette Racing, who are running two C8.Rs in the LM GTE-Pro class, and we tracked their progress as class-leading midfield runners.

Our genial hosts were head of Cadillac PR, René Kreis and his colleague Patrick Herrmann at the Corvette Village and in the pit garage hospitality suite.

My photographer colleague Alex and I were capably assisted by the rest of the support team, including photographer Lena Willgalis, Borre Zimmerman, Sebastian Becker and Alok Paleri from Oliver Gavin’s Driving Academy, located in our horse racing paddock enclave at Les Hunaudiéres hippodrome stadium, half a mile from the motor racing circuit.

Former Corvette racer Oliver Gavin was the perfect guide. Oliver has more or less retired now – his last outing was 2019 - but he won the GT class at Le Mans five times, and knows his stuff intimately. I chatted with him regularly throughout the 24 hours, and he joined the ubiquitous shuttles out to Mulsanne, Arnage and Indianapolis corners, giving chapter and verse along the way, more of which later; first, a resumé of runners and riders.

There are four main categories racing at Le Mans,

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this being the 99th iteration of the event, and the entry is headed by Hypercar LMH and LMDh, with just five cars from Toyota, Glickenhaus and Alpine. LMH can be hybrid prototypes, while LMDh prototypes can be hybrids built on one of four chassis from manufacturers Dallara, Multimatic, Ligier or Oreca. LMP2, the largest number of cars in the entry - 27 - calls for one of four chassis, Oreca, Dallara, Ligier or Riley-Multilmatic, powered by a single engine, the 4.2 litre V8 Gibson.

As it was, all were Oreca-based with a single Ligier, and the sonorous homogeneity of its engine note enabled me to nod off in the small hours of Sunday morning. With maximum engine capacity of 5.5 litres, LM GTE Pro encompasses six manufacturers and seven cars, including Corvette Racing, with arch rivals Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin with the AMR Vantage Ford, and BMW with the M8.

This year, LM GTE AM drew 23 cars, including Porsches, Ferraris and Aston Martin Vantages, with manufacturers and privateers including professional and amateur drivers locking horns with each other.

On the pre-race grid walk I spotted a number of topname drivers, some of whom I’ve interviewed over the years, including Brendon Hartley for Toyota, Richard Westbrook for Glickenhaus, Robert Kubica, Matt Bell and Alex Brundle in LMP2 cars, and Giancarlo Fisichella in a Ferrari 488 GTO; interestingly his

associated all-woman team, Iron Dames in their pink Ferrari, started 18th and finished eighth overall.

Oliver Gavin is a veteran of 19 Le Mans 24 Hours, and knows better than most how the race can unfold.

He describes the preamble: “There’s going to be certain adjustments to the programme - the way they have the week laid out - but there’s always a definite cadence to it: a specific test day, scrutineering, and then media work. You seem like you’re rushing a lot of the time to get somewhere, and then you spend a lot of time waiting, because they want to coral you, and then much like the driver parade in Le Mans, you’re waiting around a lot of the time.

It’s a theme of the way the event is run and the town operates, and that’s the whole build up through the week.” That traditional driver parade in Le Mans features a melange of classic and modern sports cars on which the drivers perch for a lap of the city centre.

The race team has been present at the circuit for 10 days before the start of the race, setting up, preparing for test day and scrutineering, and then testing the car.

“The closer you get to the race, the stress levels climb, and we’ve got a test day on the Wednesday before the race, and a qualifying session, and then we run all the way through till midnight on the Wednesday.

Then a sort of similar process again on the Thursday, and you have what’s called Hyperpole, which sets the top six cars in each class. And then there’s another two hours of practice which finishes at midnight on Thursday.” said Gavin.

So, on Wednesday and Thursday nights, the crew and the drivers are not going to sleep before 1am or 2am. Then, on the Friday, they come to the track early, and it’s a full day of preparing the cars, and then on race morning the crew are in the garages at 6.30am, and the race doesn’t start until 4pm. There’s a practice session at 10.30am, just for 15 minutes, and then they’re getting everything in order to start the race at 4pm.

The build up starts early too.

The cars are wheeled out and positioned in echelon along the pit wall, with the ubiquitous grid girls identifying race numbers. Then there’s the grid walk at 2pm, lasting 45 minutes or so, and then it’s cleared ahead of the warm up for the rolling start.

At 4pm, the lights turn green and there’s the yowling cacophony of 62 race engines as the class-split packs dash for the Dunlop Bridge. Drivers are at the wheel for two hour stints.

In the modern era where it is very structured, there

THE RACE TEAM HAS BEEN PRESENT AT THE CIRCUIT FOR 10 DAYS BEFORE THE START OF THE RACE

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are three drivers per car, and that’s mandated within the sporting regulations. So, for Corvette Racing, the driver who starts the race will do the first two stints, which is nearly two hours. And then the second driver will be on new tyres, and he’ll stay in the car for two stints, but he’ll keep the same set of tyres throughout those two stints. And then the third driver will do the next two stints, and that cadence continues all the way into the night. And round about midnight, the team will be looking to see whether it can extend the drivers for three stints in the car on one set of tyres.

This is because the Le Mans track surface is not particularly hard on tyres; Michelin has developed a tyre that delivers performance and is durable, and the drivers understand how to use it to get peak performance out of it over a long period. So, if a team can get its driver into the right rhythm and feeling, then three stints is achievable, and that means that at each pit stop they are only fuelling the car, which is roughly 35 seconds, whereas if it has to change tyres that’s another 16 or 17 seconds with the car stationary before it is released back out on the track.

The pitstop drill is extraordinarily well coordinated.

When the car comes in for a fuel stop they immediately plug the fuel probe in, and you’re allowed to change drivers, but no-one else is allowed to touch the car. As soon as the fuel probe is disconnected, four mechanics are allowed to touch the car – like, clean the windscreen or tear off one of the layers of film. It’s quite choreographed, how and where one mechanic runs and how quickly they run, and what they are carrying and how they go about they're work, because they’ve drilled it enough that they know very well the timings for a stop. The mechanic runs to a corner with the air gun and gets the wheel off, and the next mechanic runs around and places the wheel on the hub, and immediately the first mechanic guns the wheel on. The objective is to change four tyres in a 16 or 17 second period, with just four mechanics and two air guns. Clearly, Corvette Racing is very good at it, but so are Porsche and Ferrari who are the main rivals, and are monitored accordingly.

By driving three stints through the night in one go (nearly three hours of driving) it gives the other drivers a good rest. Then the next driver will see if he can also do three hours, by which time they are nearly through the night as it’s only dark from 10.30pm until about 4am.

At the time of year Le Mans is run, it’s light for a lot of it, whereas other 24 hour races like Daytona or Spa 24 Hours, the nights are definitely longer.

The drivers too have their own strategies. Oliver Gavin explains: “If you’re not the first guy in the car, you’re listening very intently to what the first driver is

saying on the radio, because you’re trying to get an impression of whether the team has made the right choices with the aero, the springs and the dampers, and the tyres chosen in consort with Michelin.”

It’s a long process to get the car to the point where it’s Le Mans ready, because it’s a unique race track.

This year particularly, the second year with the CR8, the car is a huge step forward, and all six drivers are happy with the car. This, says Gavin, is really unusual, “because everybody has a different style of driving a car, and you get different cues when you’re driving it.

Some people rely more on the feeling they’re getting through their backside or their hands or their feet, or visually, or what they’re feeling in the motion of the car. Everybody is built differently, and feel things in different ways, and so to have six drivers all saying, ‘yeah, we’re happy, we don’t want to change anything on the car.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen the engineers so happy, because usually they are frowning and deep in thought.”

Corvette Racing first came to Le Mans in 2000 with the front-engined C5R, placing fifth in class. After scoring a Le Mans podium on the rear-engined C8.R’s début at Le Mans last year, two cars were entered for 2022, #63 and #64. As the race evolved, they ran one-two in GTE-Pro at quarter distance, with the #63 C8.R leading most of the first six hours. Antonio Garcia was in the early part of his second rotation in the race leading Corvette after he, Jordan Taylor and Nicky Catsburg each did a double stint each into the twilight.

Garcia began second, but took the lead from Nick Tandy in the #64 Corvette in the opening 90 minutes. Tandy, Milner and Alexander Sims caught the wrong end of a safety car slow zone to fall off the pace of the sister car in the third hour.

Tandy got back in the #64 C8.R near the six hour mark in second place, and ran about 40 seconds behind Garcia as the race moved toward the halfway point.

Corvette Racing’s #64 C8.R made it back into podium position at half distance, after an up and down ride in the second quarter of the race. Nick Tandy was running second in GTE Pro after a couple of early race setbacks, including an unscheduled stop to change front brakes just shy of the seventh hour.

Alexander Sims, driving with Tandy and Tommy Milner, set the class’s fastest race lap in his second stint through the rotation. Four cars were on the lead lap in the class, though unfortunately #63 C8.R wasn’t one of them, following a lengthy spell in the garage to repair a broken left rear suspension. Just past halfway, Nicky Catsburg handed over to Antonio Garcia, who was at the wheel when the Corvette suffered its major issue.

We were not immediately aware of this, having

"IF YOU'RE NOT THE FIRST GUY IN THE CAR, YOU'RE LISTENING VERY INTENTLY TO WHAT THE FIRST DRIVER IS SAYING ON THE RADIO"

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THE CORVETTE DRIVING INTO THE SUNSET AT LE MANS

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been shuttled out to the Hunaudiéres tavern where we watched the cars from close up as they downshifted in rapid succession and braked dramatically to sweep around the Mulsanne chicane. The frisson was palpable. As twilight fell, we headed over to Indianapolis, the slightly banked left hander ahead of Arnage’s sharp right, mesmerised by the spine tingling engine noise as the headlights defined the curve. And, of course, the blare was incessant, punctuated by the rise and fall of revs and gear shifts, thwarting any realistic chance of sleep.

At breakfast time on Sunday morning in the Corvette camp, it’s not good news. The team’s GTE-Pro run has just ended with retirements of both C8.Rs. Alexander Sims in #64 was fighting to regain the class lead just before the 18 hour mark when a prototype competitor moved into him on the Mulsanne Straight. Contact on the left front pitched the Corvette hard left and nose first into the guardrail. It was a big impact. Thankfully, Sims exited the car unassisted, and was fine upon his return to the paddock. He had earlier set the fastest GTE Pro lap of the race. Only moments earlier, Corvette Racing had retired the No. 63 car due to significant mechanical damage, seen and unseen, at the rear of the car. It was unclear if this was a consequence of an earlier suspension issue in the race’s first six hours. Every effort was made to get the car back into the race but due to safety concerns for the team’s drivers as well as

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fellow competitors the decision was made to retire it.

I joined Gavin for a debrief, just after the lead Corvette had been knocked out. Everyone in the team was pretty gutted, looking like the stuffing had been knocked out of them.

“Yeah, this race can do that to you,” he said. “For as beautiful as the race can be, and the elation you get, it can rip your heart out too. The emotion of the guys committed to this race, it’s extraordinary to see them working on this for months and months, and they’re obviously devastated.”

He explained what had happened: “The two prototype LMP2 cars that were running out of that first chicane were both being driven by ‘bronze’ drivers, the least experienced and least capable guys in the race, and the one that was over to the right was going slowly, and he’d been passed by the Oreca as he went through the chicane. Alexander was passing that slower car as it came off the chicane, but there was a gap between the car on the right hand side and Alexander on the left hand side. Now, the car that was behind the other LMP2 car was trying to come through the middle, and there was just enough room, but as that prototype was coming through the middle, the one on the right started to fade into the centre of the road, and it spooked the other driver, and he tried to sneak his Oreca over to miss the guy on his right, and he just drove into Alexander - and at that point you are doing 150mph -

and Alexander had no chance.”

It all happened in an instant. The culprit, François Perrodo in the AF Corse #83 Oreca 07 Gibson received a three minute stop-go penalty.

“It’s cruel luck, and this race can be so devastating,” reflected Gavin. “We’d looked so strong for so long, and it was looking very good. The team would have been strategizing about the rotation to get the fastest guy in the car for the finish, the tyre selection, predicting where the track temp was going to go, managing the car all the way to the end and looking to get the most performance from it. But that gets taken away literally in a split second. It’s so tough for all of the Corvette Racing group.”

Meanwhile, the #63 car had two issues: a left rear suspension failure, and then a puncture. The tyre failed because it started rubbing on the suspension, and they got the car back to the pits garage, but there was so much of it that was damaged because of that failure, and although they eventually got it fixed and out and running again, then they had an engine issue, which became terminal. “It’s a two car deal,” said Gavin, “and there’s an American analogy: you’ve got two bullets in the gun, and they recognise that the #63 had its issues today, but they still had the #64, and it

was that second bullet they were relying on, and for them to be taken out by some erratic piece of driving is just unbelievably cruel.” Should rookie drivers be competing with professionals? Part of the WEC and Le Mans 24 Hours is to allow the less experienced amateur drivers, the gentleman drivers that want to come and compete in this race, they bring funding and they bring sponsorship, and they bring the ability for cars to be racing here. “You see it time and again, where drivers with less experience and less ability have a big effect on other people’s races, and that’s super frustrating for the Pro team like Corvette Racing where they’ve got involved with somebody else’s accident. I understand why there are Am drivers in the race, and the bronze, silver, gold and platinum rankings, and I understand why those drivers need to be in the race, but it’s endurance racing, it’s four classes competing on track at the same time and we all know that this is part of racing, and the system by and large works.”

But Gavin is philosophical: “Paradoxically, you learn more lessons from a failure than a success.” And there’s no doubt Corvette Racing will be back at La Sarthe in 2023, keen to secure a podium.

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IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO

FERRARI AT THE FESTIVAL THIS YEAR'S GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED CELEBRATED MANY ANNIVERSARIES, ONE OF THEM BEING 75 YEARS OF FERRARI. AND PLENTY OF CARS WERE ON DISPLAY, INCLUDING THIS F60 DRIVEN BY MARC GENE.

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WORDS BY ALEX LAWRENCE IMAGES BY ALEX LAWRENCE / BRIAN SMITH 22 | THE PIT STOP

LIVING THE DREAM AT THE 79TH GOODWOOD MEMBERS' MEETING, MARINO FRANCHITTI GOT TO REALISE A CHILDHOOD DREAM.

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rowing up, we all had a favourite toy that still forms a strong memory, no matter your age now.

For me, it was my black Ferrari 355. I can still hear the metal chinking right now as I opened up the engine cover to inspect the detailed V8 engine, or opening the doors to expose the cloth seats with a steering wheel inside that actually turned the front wheels. It didn’t matter whether I actually played with it overly often or not. Every time my mum told me to have a clear out, it remained, taking

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pride of place on a shelf in my bedroom.

We’ve all been there, but it's very rare that we come face to face with our toy in a real life scenario. That’s exactly what happened to Marino Franchitti at the 79th Goodwood Members’ Meeting.

As you can imagine, racing cars dominated Franchitti’s childhood, whether they were real or not.

He’d spend hours playing Scalextric, racing his brother Dario, generally using a particular Le Mans racer as his weapon of choice.

“Scalextric is such an interactive thing for a child and so we all had a couple of cars,” Franchitti

explained to The Pit Stop. “I had a special Japanese car. You could change the ride height and gearing and all different things. I’m not sure what Dario had, I can’t remember, but that was my one and I just remember it vividly.”

That special Japanese made car was the Skoal Bandit liveried Porsche 956B. It only made a fleeting appearance in the World Sportscar Championship, but it made an impression nonetheless, finishing third in the 1984 Le Mans 24 Hours with David Hobbs, Philippe Streiff and Sarel van der Merwe at the wheel.

Its Scalextric self meant it was naturally a fond

favourite for Franchitti, and when he was offered the chance to drive the car at Goodwood’s Members’ Meeting, the offer was far too good to refuse.

“When you have a toy when you are a child and then it becomes a real thing, you have a real experience of it. It’s what you were imagining when you were a child, wondering what it would be like if it was real. It’s just something very special and it wasn’t something I thought I’d get the chance to do,” explained Franchitti.

“I’d seen the car in the past, but when I got the call, it was so exciting.

“Henry Perman owns the car and Henry is a friend

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THE CARS WERE TAKEN FOR A DEMONSTRATION RUN IN THE EVENING ON THE FIRST DAY OF GOODWOOD MEMBERS' MEETING

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"I THOUGHT THIS CAN'T BE REAL" - MARINO FRANCHITTI of mine. We were in Bahrain for the grand prix actually.

We were chatting away, talking about Members’ Meeting and he said ‘oh, I’ve got a load of my Group C cars there. Would you like to drive one of them?’ Of course I would! We didn’t really talk anymore about it, but I got a call from the guys at Moto Historics that were helping with running the cars with Henry and it went from there.

“They said they’d like me to drive the Skoal Bandit one day and the Rothmans car the next. I was pretty gobsmacked by that. I thought this can’t be real. I thought something was going to happen like I’d get covid or something, so I didn’t believe it until I got behind the wheel of the car for the first time.”

The dream did very much become a reality. Franchitti was presented with the Skoal Bandit 956B on the opening day of the Members’ Meeting, and time was given for him to get a seat fitting to ensure he was comfortable in the car. It was too good a moment to keep to himself. He had to share the experience with someone, and luckily there were a few on hand who he could do just that with.

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“The first time I got in it, my brother was at a Formula E race commentating so he couldn’t be there that weekend. I Facetimed him when I got in the car to show him round it and share that experience with him.

“There’s always that feeling that you don’t want to do anything wrong. It’s great to have that experience but you don’t want to mess it up. So it’s just learning from the Katana guys who built the car, who look after the car and they showed me how it works and what the controls are. It’s pretty simple to be honest. You plug it in and off you go.

“The first run on the Friday was into the dark so we brought the cars to the grid. And when we got to the grid my wife and son were there, and getting to share that with them - my son is nine years old now - and explaining to him why it means so much to me and showing him around the car was a really cool moment.

“It’s funny, sitting there in the car waiting for everything to go off, I could see across the pit straight that a few of my friends were standing at the fence. My friend Timo was there and the great, great grandson of the founder of the company that made this car was

FRANCHITTI COMPLETING HIS SEAT FITTING

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there and it was really funny just having that moment of waving to them as I pulled away.”

For Le Mans fans, especially Group C ones, it was as romantic an evening as you’d ever get with these cars.

They set off in unison around the Goodwood circuit, with the sun setting beautifully in the background.

For Marino Franchitti the fan, even seeing it would be pretty good. But having the chance to be a part of the procession, driving the car in that moment, took things to a whole new level.

“The dusk and the summer setting, as we ran into the first corner, the sun setting in front of us, all I could see was the outline of the two cars, I think it was Callum Lockie in one of the Rothmans cars at the front and then Shaun Lynn and his double winning Joest car so the Newman colours at Le Mans - and you could just for a split second imagine that you’re racing at Le Mans with other 956s and 962s.

“It’s very interesting. Going slowly you can feel these cars are very stiffly sprung. The ground-effect works at speed. But as you go faster and faster the car just comes alive. It just sucks down to the ground more and it’s just very easy to drive.

“All these cars that are successful like that are always easy once you get them closer to the limit. We weren’t close to the limit, but at higher speed the car just came alive. It was so lovely to have the feeling of the car but also the noise of the car. The first thing is when the boost kicks in, the waste gate when you lift off. I was just laughing, it was so cool.

“We blasted around the track for about 15 minutes and there were some parts where we got up to some nice speed and as I say, it’s amazing to have that experience in a car that’s very original but beautifully prepared so it feels just fantastic.

“I keep seeing pictures of it and it’s still one of those things where you just can’t quite believe it.

“The only thing I would have liked to do that weekend was see it from the outside as well. Seeing all the videos and pictures, especially the night running, it was just unbelievable.

“Shaun at one point was opening it up and then lifted off. The flames that came out of the side of the car, in the dark, ah, it was fabulous. Absolutely fabulous.”

Franchitti is a dab hand at driving a wide variety of machines, having driven at the Members’ Meeting, Goodwood Revival and the Goodwood Festival of Speed on many occasions. But each car still has its unique characteristics that need to be understood, regardless of a driver’s capability. For the Skoal Bandit 956, it was the suspension that required some understanding, with its stiffness becoming apparent very early on, but it didn’t take much to work out how

best to cope with it.

“It wasn’t surprising, but it was like ‘oh this is stiff'.

But then it’s like ‘I know what’s going to happen’ and it does exactly that. You get up to more speed and it just smooths out the ride. So the ride from being quite stiff smooths out because the car sucks down basically and the tunnels are so effective. It was lovely, it really was lovely."

Having one of your childhood dreams play out in front of your eyes is a once in a lifetime experience.

Franchitti knew there, in that moment, that an opportunity like this is unlikely to happen again in the same way. Naturally it stirs up a lot of feelings, reminiscing from the days where he’d try to beat Dario with his Scalextric car at home, to being able to share the moment with his son, helping him understand just how much the car means to him personally.

“It was really emotional, really. It was just joyful.

The emotion was happiness and joy. It was really cool.

Again, these are opportunities you think you are never going to get and when it happens, you truly pinch yourself. It’s something I will never take for granted and as I say, I’m really thankful to all the guys that made it happen. I think first of all, the Duke of Richmond for putting all these amazing events on.

“Members’ Meeting has become my favourite just for the huge breadth of cars. It covers all of motorsport from start to now, and road cars. It’s a very, very special event.

“I need to sit down and list all of the cars that Goodwood has allowed me to drive.

The opportunity of being at Festival of Speed, Revival, Members’ Meeting that I would never have got near.

“There’s some cars you have only ever seen in pictures and then you get the chance to drive them. It’s unbelievable. There’s nowhere like it.”

For Franchitti, Goodwood will always hold an incredibly fond place in his heart, but for reasons you probably wouldn’t expect. Of course, he loves driving the huge array of cars he’s been fortunate to have been given the keys to at the various events over the years, but more importantly, it’s also the place where he met his now wife.

“I love all the events for different reasons. The Revival is my favourite just because it was where I met my wife. I took my son last year, he races a little pedal car there. This is a very special place for me and that event especially. It’s hard to see past that.”

Franchitti will no doubt have the opportunity to drive more incredible cars in the future, especially since he’s a Goodwood regular. But regardless of what he drives, it’s fair to say that there will be few cars capable of giving him the experience that he had with the Skoal Bandit 956B. Magical memories that are simply priceless.

"IT WAS REALLY EMOTIONAL, REALLY. IT WAS JUST JOYFUL"

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IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO

MORE THAN CARS GOODWOOD IS FULL OF SPECIAL MOMENTS, AND NONE MORE SO THAN WHEN WAYNE RAINEY WAS REUNITED WITH HIS PREMIER CLASS DUCATI.

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WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY ROB HANSFORD / TIM GLOVER / ED WAPLINGTON

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eing successful in any walk of life while suffering with a debilitating illness is tough on every level. The amount of energy required just to keep going is unthinkable, so for someone to be able to thrive, they have to go above and beyond, not just once, but constantly.

It’s no different in the world of motorsport and in some instances it’s even harder. You need a good level of fitness to even stay in the mix, let alone fight at the sharp end of the grid at any level, be it national club racing or on an international scale.

Of course, capabilities vary, depending on the illness an individual is suffering with, but for people with crohn’s and colitis, there’s added complications that make it even harder. Yet despite the insanely difficult obstacles in his way as a sufferer of crohn's, Rick Parfitt Jr has found a way to defy his illness by competing in the British Touring Car Championship.

Many will know Parfitt as the son of Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt, or as a rock musician in his own right. But while music is Parfitt’s main occupation, he has also forged out a successful racing career for himself.

But while many would assume that being the son of a famous musician would mean that life was easy for Parfitt Jr, nothing could be further from the truth. Parfitt didn’t have anything to do with his father for 10 years, growing up with his mum, who had very little money, and so it wasn’t a case that everything was handed to Parfitt on a plate. But what affected his younger years even more was his diagnosis of Crohn’s disease at an early age.

PARFITT RACING THE BENTLEY CONTINENTAL IN THE BRITISH GT

“I was diagnosed with Crohn’s at nine and I struggled through all my teenage years which is an embarrassing thing to have when you’re in your formative years,” Parfitt told The Pit Stop. “These are the years that your confidence builds who you are as a person. And of course you don’t go to parties because you are worried about the loo situation and having a flare up, it can make you feel even worse quite literally, and the pain would be immense.

“I became a little bit of a recluse throughout my teenage years and then at 21 I had my first major bowel resection and weighed five and a half stone. On my 21st birthday I was in hospital and I couldn’t move, couldn’t walk and had drains fitted with blood pouring out of me and I thought, this is it. This is what my life is going to be and it took me to a very dark place.”

For those that aren’t aware of crohn’s or indeed colitis, they are similar autoimmune diseases that attack your intestines. The symptoms of colitis are limited to your large intestine, while crohn’s can affect both the large and small intestines, but in some cases symptoms between the two diseases can be similar.

Most notably, sufferers will have no warning when they need to go to the toilet, and sometimes this can occur between 20-50 times a day, and they can be losing blood on each occasion at the same time. Then there’s the excruciating pain that can be nowhere one minute and hitting you like a concrete wall the next, preventing you from being able to do anything at all.

There’s no pain like it, and sometimes, there’s nothing that can stop it, not even the hardest of painkillers available to doctors. And that's only half of it.

So it's easy to see how it can affect someone's

mental health, especially when suffering from an early age. Who wants to be in a position when they are 13 or 14 where they have to disappear to the toilet every 10 mins, and sprint there in the process, all with the fear they won't make it in time? It feels embarrassing, it opens them up to being made fun of by others, making life even harder than it already is.

But while socialising didn't come easy to Parfitt, he did find an outlet that helped him find solace away from life with crohn's.

“Motorsport kind of gave me my life back because after the first operation, those years really scarred me on a social level, which is a side of this illness that no one really thinks about.

“Apart from the physical issues which are embarrassing, everything else is mental. And socially it makes you awkward and so I became a bit of a recluse. I dressed like a bit of an onion, but karting gave me something. I put a race suit on and a helmet on and people weren’t looking at you for being thin or anything. They were just going, ‘look at that kid, he’s quick’.

“Also it put me into a circle of people who were all passionate about motorsport and karting. And so all we would talk about is that, and so that helped me form some character and brought back some selfconfidence. I could just talk to people on a normal level about stuff. So I have a lot to thank motorsport for.”

“I’ve always said my life began at 22-23. For the first time, I felt that I was in remission and then I went a bit crazy,” Parfitt chuckled. “I had a few crazy years. I was able to hold a job down, I worked at Autosport for 12 years selling ads and just working in something that I loved. But at the same time, I was still singing in town and had management, and a deal that fell through, all sorts of stuff. But then of course it came back with a vengeance in 2008 and 2009 and in January 2010 I had my second big bowel section, and so yet again, I had it done and got a bit better again, which was pretty tough.

“It was then getting really bad again in 2016 and 2017, and in 2018 and 2019 it was horrific, so I had to have the third one done which was a ‘biggy’. It was in January 2020 and it was one of the last major

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SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS AT THRUXTON

operations to happen before covid hit, so I was very lucky because it was a bit of an emergency as well. So I was in all sorts of trouble.”

Crohn’s and colitis is not only physically draining, but also mentally draining.

It takes so much effort to put one step in front of the other, to keep pushing on with life despite feeling totally fatigued and often feeling useless. But Parfitt has refused to give in. His coping mechanism is to push on anyway, to try to lead as normal a life as possible, to prove people wrong that you can experience everything you want in life,

regardless of your health status.

“With regards to how it’s affected my mindset, I’ve always been of the opinion that you can achieve anything and I wanted to go out and prove a bit of a point,” explained Parfitt. “So when I got the opportunity to race a car I took the opportunity with both hands. ”My first car race was the celebrity race at Silverstone Classic. I won that against Neil [Primrose] from Travis. Neil races a lot and people were a bit excited by that and I got offered to race in the Ginetta GT5 challenge. Lawrence [Tomlinson], the owner of Ginetta, said ‘come on Parff,

"I'VE ALWAYS BEEN OF THE OPINION THAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING AND I WANTED TO GO OUT AND PROVE A POINT."

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let’s get you in’.

“So I did that and I don’t think people took me seriously at all, even though I had quite a decent karting career. I was a factory driver for seven years for Bizkarts and I won the Le Mans 24 Hours, I won the Dubai 24 Hours, loads of other stuff as well, and so I did quite well in that. But nobody took me seriously in cars.

“From GT5, I did much better than people expected me to and the next year I begged, borrowed and stole from friends and family and got a budget together. I just scraped a budget together, got two lap records that year and was really formulating where I wanted to go.”

And from there, Parfitt wasn’t making a small step up the ladder. He took a leap, heading straight to British GT. But despite the major step up in class, he

immediately found success.

“I got the opportunity to team up with my then team-mate, but obviously still a rival, to partner up to go into GT4 in British GT and we promptly won that in our debut year, which was amazing.

“I defended the title in 2014. We finished fourth. We had a lot of breakdowns, we should have won it and then I got called to be in the Ginetta factory squad in GT3 in 2015 and that was a tough car. I led the first ever GT race. I had a brief period leading it with a car that definitely wasn’t as good as the others. And then I got the call from Bentley and it went from there.

“I teamed up with a young driver called Seb [Morris] who was a crazy little driver and of course we signalled our intent by giving Bentley their first ever pole position straight away at Brands, and then we gave them their

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first ever race win in 2016. We finished third in the championship and then in 2017 we beat everybody and it was amazing."

Parfitt’s racing achievements were well deserved, especially considering what was going on behind the scenes. What was going on that spectators couldn’t see.

“What people couldn’t see was that my crohn’s was just getting progressively worse in 2016 and 2017 and onwards. There were times I was so ill that I’d just be

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lying on my motorhome floor just curled up in a ball and having to take so many painkillers just to be able to get in the car.

“Adrenaline can really help, but I was regularly pretty much collapsing after my stints. And of course, even when you are feeling well, stuff with crohn’s is an issue. Like needing to go to the loo and chronic fatigue because you don't absorb as well. I still have that today. I have to really manage when I’m testing and everything else and the race days because I know

PARFITT RACING AT BRANDS HATCH IN THE BTCC.

once I hit a wall that’s it. I really hit the wall hard and this is something that I have to overcome more than the others. And I don’t think anyone realises how much of a disadvantage I’m at.”

Parfitt isn’t wrong about the disadvantage. There’s so many different symptoms with crohn’s that in one way or another, he’s never fully fit when in the cockpit in comparison to his competition.

“There’s obviously the loo situation that everybody knows about, but mentally when you’re flaring up it

feels almost like contractions,” Parfitt explained when talking about his symptoms. “The pain builds and it builds and it builds and it gets to a point where you cannot bear the pain anymore and you just want to give up. And then it subsides and you feel like being sick and frequently are sick. And a few minutes later it comes again, and then again, in this massive wave.

That drains you and you are literally powerless. It’s the worst thing because it’s relentless. It’s unforgiving, relentless pain that just makes you cry and you can’t do

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anything.

“There was one race at Silverstone where I was in such a bad way. I was second on the grid at Silverstone 500 and I said ‘guys, we need to minimise the amount of time I’m in the car because I’m in such pain’. And the team manager, Stuart Parker would come and get me and tell me to ‘get ready, psych yourself up, we’re going’. And I remember going round the lap, trying to put heat into the tyres and I was nearly being sick in my helmet.

“I just knew I couldn’t fight this young lad who was on pole. I was in second. I was like ‘I need to get ahead, I haven’t got the energy to be in a fight’. And so I was so ready for the start, even though I was feeling so sick, I was just so pumped that I just totally did him on the start and I scampered off into the distance.

“I was thinking the further I can get away, the sooner I can get into the pits, and that’s what I did. I put nine seconds on a young driver who was apparently the next big thing. So that was quite good.

“Oddly enough, my wife, Rach, and the team said that when I’m ill I tend to drive at my best. I sort of don’t give a sh** about anything else other than just getting it done and I haven’t got time to feel nervous or anything. I feel so bad and so fatigued that I actually drive better than I’ve ever driven.

“They had this joke that Stuart would come to me and ask how I was doing. I’d say ‘not good’ and he was like ‘oh, great!’ I was like ‘that’s not helpful!’ But yeah, there were several times where it was like that.”

Parfitt ended up finishing his full-time British GT career as a double champion, but he didn’t want to end his racing there. Instead he changed approached and joined the British Touring Car Championship in 2021, providing a completely different challenge.

“It’s a whole different thing [to British GT]. This is brutal, this sport, and also last year I was in a totally new car. I’d never driven front-wheel drive, but by the end of the season I was matching all the team’s laptimes. I got my first purple sector at Silverstone. I was really knocking on the door of points every single round before being bundled off.

“So I switched this year to a car that had won the championship, but was also a race winner in all hands and so I was really excited. But sadly it’s not turning out that way with the new regulations that have come in.”

Hybrid technology has been introduced to the BTCC this season, and it’s affected the preparation for many teams in the off-season with a lot of outfits struggling to get it integrated completely. Parfitt has been hit harder than most on that front, with him being completely unable to test his Uptonsteel Euro Car Parts Racing Infiniti Q50 before the season began.

“This car isn’t the same car. The engine didn’t fit because the new M-Sport engine didn’t quite fit into the car, so everything had to be redesigned to accommodate the engine. As a result, we lost all pre-season testing and with the new hybrid kit, which is causing all sorts of issues at the moment, the car

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TOM WALKINSHAW RACING RAN THE WORKS JAGUAR OUTFIT

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doesn’t handle and go like it did last year.

“We’re way behind everybody. I signed up for a car that I thought I could go on the offensive with this year, but at the moment, unfortunately I’m developing what is essentially a brand new car again. So we are very much on the back foot at the moment. But saying that, it will come good. It will just be a longer burn.

“I wanted to be challenging straight away, but I think we’ll only be able to truly be competitive from mid-season onwards I’d say. But it will come and that’s just one of those things.

“I don’t think I’ve had the best crack at the whip at BTCC at the moment and I don’t think that will happen this year. And whether I continue next year because I have been racing for 11 years, I am the second oldest on the grid, [Jason] Plato is the only person older than me and he knows his stuff. So being a rookie - which I am effectively - at my age, is asking quite a lot. You have to go so far out of your comfort zone. In GTs you could get into a rhythm. You had time in the car. With this, it’s an all-out bar fight from the moment it goes green, and there are no prisoners taken.

“Everyone is fast. You have to remember, I’m an amateur against a whole grid of pros, so not many people would put themselves in that situation because you are exposed. It’s just you. There’s not an amateur and a pro class, it’s just you against four-time champions. So the fact that I’m qualifying less than a second off these guys, people seem to forget it’s actually pretty good. It’s just a fact that if you qualify 0.8seconds off pole, that’s 27th on the grid in BTCC. That’s crazy close.”

So far this season, Parfitt’s best result in the BTCC has been a 21st at the opening round at Donington Park and last year, his strongest finish was 16th at Thruxton. It’s fair to say then that he hasn’t exactly

been fighting at the sharp end. So why would he continue if he knows he’s going to struggle to win a race? Well to him, he’s already winning.

“I don’t need to win a race to feel like I’ve won. If that can help inspire a few others that you are not defined by this illness or these illnesses, that it does not define what you can and cannot do, you might have to fight a little bit harder but the reward will be on a personal level even greater because you know that you have achieved something that is really hard.

“That is a motivating factor, and I’ve had so many letters and people contacting me saying they weren’t going to have surgery because they were too scared and that ‘I’m going to get it done thanks to you’.

“At Knockhill last year, someone came up to me and said her mum couldn’t be there because she was too unwell. But she gave me a card from her saying that I was her motivation for getting the operation.

She was still waiting to get it done and was too unwell to be there, and it was just amazing that through this platform I’ve been able to connect with so many people and that makes me really, truly happy.”

And that’s what it’s all about. Parfitt doesn’t have to win races to make an impact. He’s one of the most visible drivers in the paddock, taking the time to interact with fans, and is actively helping raise awareness for crohn's and colitis. It’s about more than just the results on the track. It’s about fighting to prove that if you put your mind to something it is achievable.

“For me, to have even got to a grid like this - the highest form of motorsport in the country - has meant that I’ve had to fight harder - and continue to have to fight harder - than pretty much anyone else on the grid. So irrespective of where I finish, for me, I’m always winning.”

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IMAGE BY ED WAPLINGTON

LIGHTS ON MIKE NEWTON DRIVES THE MG LOLA EX 257 AT BRANDS HATCH IN THE MASTERS ENDURANCE LEGENDS RACE.

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ROLE MODEL HAVING WON W SERIES ON TWO CONSECUTIVE OCCASIONS, JAMIE CHADWICK HAS CARVED OUT A NEW CAREER FOR HERSELF.. NOT ONLY IS SHE RACING TO WIN, BUT SHE'S INSPIRING A NEW GENERATION.

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ritish driver Jamie Chadwick is one of the world’s highest profile female racers, and it’s happened over a relatively short period of time.

Having begun her career racing in the Ginetta Series, she moved onto British GT in 2015, before transitioning into single-seaters just two years later, competing in British Formula 3. And in 2018, Chadwick became the first ever woman to win a British F3 race, after taking the chequered flag at Brands Hatch.

It was an impressive start to her career, but the 23-year-old really cemented her place on the map when she took part in the inaugural season of the all-female series, W Series in 2019, winning the title at the first time of asking. And, after the series was cancelled and

JAMIE CHADWICK IS BACK FOR HER THIRD YEAR IN THE SERIES

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moved online in 2020 due to the global pandemic, Chadwick came back to successfully defend her crown in 2021.

These successful campaigns led to Chadwick becoming the development driver for Williams Racing, further reinforcing her presence in the male-dominated world of motorsport. And in 2021 she also got the opportunity to compete in the inaugural season of Extreme E with Veloce Racing, dovetailing her Extreme E commitments with W Series.

But despite having won both seasons of W Series, and having collected a significant amount of prize money along with it, Chadwick still hasn’t made the leap to international Formula 3 racing. Instead, she’s back racing in W Series for a third consecutive season, but she has good reason to stay put.

“It's still just such a massive opportunity,” Chadwick explained to The Pit Stop. “Every year the opportunity just gets bigger and bigger. If you look this year, some of the circuits we're going to - Japan, Miami - the opportunity is still so great.”

The biggest significance of W Series is the fact it is funded and therefore presents a real opportunity for drivers who don’t necessarily have the biggest wallets.

“It takes out a huge barrier for everyone in the sport,” she explained. “Naturally, I think everyone that hasn't got a huge financial backing gets to a point where it's hard to keep progressing in the sport because each year it gets more and more expensive. So, in that sense, it was a no-brainer.”

The issue of finance is something that crops up in every corner of the motorsport world and readers will

be no stranger to the constraints it puts on people’s careers. It can be stifling, preventing drivers from making the progress they need and deserve.

And that concern extends to Chadwick, but although eyebrows were raised when it was confirmed she wouldn’t be returning to Extreme E for a second year, it was less to do with money than it was availability.

“With Extreme E, it's a championship that I've got a huge amount of time for. I loved my involvement with it, but it requires quite a lot of commitment and last year I missed two races because of clashes,” Chadwick explained. “I couldn't give myself full commitment to the programme and I just don't think it's a championship that allows that.”

W series is not only an attractive series due to its financial model, but it also provides drivers with an opportunity to compete in the same sphere as F1. Now in its second year supporting the F1 race weekend, and embarking on a new broadcasting direction in the UK with Sky Sports, the series has come a long way from being a little-known outfit on the DTM calendar, and Chadwick has seen real difference being made because of it.

“The Formula 1 package has made a big difference with the attention that it's getting. When it first started there were a lot of sceptics and a lot of people that didn't see the need for it, myself potentially included.

But now I think it's gone from strength to strength. It's created its own audience.”

It is certainly undeniable that W Series really has forged its own path and given broader exposure and opportunities to drivers who would not be anywhere near the heights they are now. And despite Chadwick’s experience and talent, it’s likely she would also have fallen victim to being an 'also run' in a male-orientated world.

It goes without saying that increased exposure - however good for your career - comes with added pressures and pitfalls. Racing on national tracks in a national series affords you a level of anonymity that helps you craft and hone your trade. You can make mistakes and learn from those mistakes in relative privacy; something that being part of an F1 weekend might not necessarily allow.

But that doesn’t mean being in the spotlight is a negative, and Chadwick argues that the spotlight shone on W Series has actually helped her and her fellow colleagues.

“I think it's great in terms of giving more opportunities and shining a spotlight on women in sport which I think is having multiple benefits”, Chadwick explained. “It's giving [women] as drivers more opportunities. If you look at the grid, there are a lot of drivers now that are racing or have professional opportunities in Formula E and many other series, which is great!”

For Chadwick, the exposure doesn’t just lend its hand to her own career, but the idea of female racing

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as a whole. “I think what's great about it is shining a spotlight on it. More people now can visibly see women at the top level of motorsport. Yes, hopefully that inspires a new younger generation to get involved as well.”

Putting her influence on the wider motorsport landscape to one side, W Series’ evolution has also helped Chadwick improve herself on the track as a driver, giving her new insight into top tier racing.

“One of the great things about a championship now being on the Formula 1 package is you are learning these tracks, so that helps a lot. The approach is always the same, but you've got Formula 1 level stewards who are having to adhere to standards of the highest level, and I think that helps from a learning point of view.”

In a male-dominated sport, it’s not just how you are perceived as a female in the general public’s eyes, but there is also a battle to be fought on how you are seen from within the sport. Having spoken to lots of drivers from all backgrounds, it can be a brutal environment and F1, despite moving in the right direction in many ways, can still be a difficult landscape.

Having a welcoming W Series paddock - with a large number of women in and around it - must contribute to a positive and supportive experience, and Chadwick sees signs that it is also trickling down to the F1 paddock as well.

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“There are so many more women in all sorts of job roles,” she said. “I think that does play a big impact on more women getting involved in the sport because straight away you're not one of 50 men, you're one of more like 20 - or even less than that now.”

There is hope that Chadwick and W Series can create a domino effect, pushing its influence onto a F1 race weekend: the more it changes and the more women we see, the more women are going to get involved in the sport.

Being a high-profile female driver taking part in a F1 race weekend, Chadwick has become a leading example for young people, and females in particular, at what can be achieved in the sport. And while it’s something that sits in the back of her mind - with her primary focus on racing and winning - she is conscious of the fact that she’s in a position of influence for the younger generation.

“I'm obviously doing everything I'm doing for myself and what I personally want to do in the sport. But with that in mind, yes, I still want to encourage the next generation to also get involved in sport for the right reasons. I think it's important that we showcase what women are capable of in the sports. I take a lot of responsibility with that, and I want to make sure I can do the best job for the younger generation as well as myself.”

Moving back to W Series, there’s a question to be

had as to whether the series could be linking in more closely with its male counterpart in the same way that football teams have women’s teams that are very much part of the same club. Could F1 teams set up and field a team within W Series?

“Potentially, yes!” Said Chadwick when asked the question. “ I think the ambition from W Series is to have more teams get involved in the series.

“We also have the academies that I'm part of with Williams and Jess Hawkins involved with Aston Martin. So, I think it's definitely great that the [F1] teams are getting more involved with women in the sport, and it would be cool to see them in W series as well.”

Chadwick has signed up with Jenner Racing this year, a team founded by media personality Caitlyn Jenner. Sporting excellence is no stranger to Jenner and Chadwick explained how she came to race for Jenner’s team.

“I was told about it through W Series. When I was looking at options for this year, I wasn't expecting to join Jenner Racing, but I was told about it just before it was actually announced that Caitlyn was going to have a team.”

Chadwick then had a phone call with Jenner, explaining her mission and what she wanted to achieve in the sport and in turn Jenner explained her reasoning for being involved in the series.

“We just aligned so well that it was a bit of a no-brainer to team up with them this year and try to get that third title with them.”

And it’s clear from the young driver that the team boss is hands-on with the business of running a race team. “It's quite cool because obviously she's got huge sporting history, so she understands sport,” said Chadwick. “She is just a very inspirational person. She was very involved in Miami at the weekend [W Series’ season-opener]. It's great to have someone like that as

"WHEN I WAS LOOKING AT OPTIONS FOR THIS YEAR, I WASN'T EXPECTING TO JOIN JENNER RACING"

CHADWICK HAS WON FOUR OUT OF FOUR RACES THIS YEAR

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THE DOUBLE CHAMPION IS ON COURSE TO CLAIM A THIRD CHAMPIONSHIP TITLE

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a team boss.”

Both Chadwick and Jenner will be hoping for a successful 2022 and winning a third title will be the number one goal, but racing at the highest level is still the target for the W Series champion.

“Formula 1 is still very much the goal so we need to work backwards this year and prepare as best as possible for whatever the next step is, and make sure we're in a position so that we can hopefully step up and have more opportunities for next year.”

It will have crossed people’s minds that competing for a third year in W Series, having clearly been top of the class, might suggest that there has been a lack of interest from other feeder series such as FIA F3 or F2. Or that despite W Series’ best efforts, there are still some considerable barriers swaying teams from taking a female into that category.

It’s something that has not been lost on Chadwick, but funding is equally to blame for a lack of seats in those series.

“It's one of the biggest factors, yes,” she began.

“Definitely funding for the seat - and a competitive seat at that.”

Of course, it goes without saying that although you might secure a seat, that’s not to say it will be a competitive seat and for Chadwick it’s about having a fighting chance at being at the sharp end of the grid as much as it is about being on the grid itself.

“Getting a competitive seat and with the preparation required including testing and everything in the off season. It does come down to funding, but it's something that we're working on and I'm hoping we could overcome that barrier for next year.”

Despite a lack of race seat, Chadwick is no stranger

to the F1 paddock, as she enters her third year as development driver for Williams. That in itself is a great achievement for both Chadwick and W Series.

“I've been with them for three, nearly four years now, and I have a great relationship with the whole team. It's amazing to get that kind of access to the Formula 1 team and to learn as much as possible from them.”

“It's just useful to immerse yourself with a team at that level. You start to understand what's required of the driver at the highest level. So, I can start to implement those things now, even at W Series level. I'm hoping to evolve that role into something a bit more in the future.”

Chadwick has grown considerably since she began single-seaters in 2017. She’s a completely different driver, and she’s definitely grown as a person. But she believes W Series has helped make the biggest change to her career.

“It's given me this opportunity to be racing professionally and with that the opportunity to continue racing. I don't think I would have been in single-seaters still without it.”

But Chadwick is still racing in single-seaters. She is carving out a successful career for herself, and she’s the perfect role model for any young female wanting to begin a racing career. And she has some wise words for those reading.

“Don't let anything stop you. I think it's a sport now with so many opportunities, particularly for women in the sport. So, keep pushing! Don't be put off by the fact it's seen as a male-dominated world because the opportunity now is greater than ever.”

RACING ALONGSIDE THE #69 G-DRIVE RACING LMP2 CAR

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IMAGE BY GRAND PRIX PHOTO

PIERS COURAGE PIERS COURAGE IN THE MIRROR OF HIS WILLIAMS BRABHAM-FORD BEFORE THE 1969 GERMAN GRAND PRIX AT THE NURBURGRING. HE HAD TWO PODIUMS THAT YEAR, FINISHING EIGHTH IN THE FORMULA 1 CHAMPIONSHIP.

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LOTUS' LAST SUCCESS

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THE 1987 SEASON SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONE TO REMEMBER FOR LOTUS. THAT DID TURN OUT TO BE THE CASE, BUT ALL FOR THE WRONG REASONS.

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W

hen you think of Lotus, naturally Colin Chapman comes to mind. One of Formula 1’s greatest geniuses, he created a team that is still one of the most successful in F1 history, despite the fact it hasn’t raced since the 1994 Australian Grand Prix.

When the times were good, they were really good.

But when things were bad, Lotus really struggled and it all began to fall apart in the latter half of the 1980s.

All through the 1960s and 1970s Lotus was a force to be reckoned with. It picked up seven championship titles through that 20 year period, but as the turn of the 1980s beckoned, its competitiveness began to dwindle.

The Ford Cosworth DFV engine that Lotus had used so loyally was no longer competitive against its rivals and as the turbo era dawned, things had to change.

Having spent the first half of the '80s flailing at the back end of the grid, Lotus switched to Renault engines for 1984. It propelled Lotus back towards the sharp end of the field, with the ultra-famous black and gold John Player Special colours dominating the TV screens once again.

A young Ayrton Senna joined the team’s ranks from 1985 and with the Brazilian driver managing to pick up a number of victories here and there, he helped the

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team secure third in the constructors’ championship in 1986 and then again in 1987. But in 1988 things were about to change in more ways than one, and it wasn’t all for the better.

Although Lotus had been competitive in the two previous seasons, its Renault engine wasn’t as competitive as its rivals. It was an unreliable and thirsty powerunit, and Renault’s financial state meant it wasn’t in a position to sink huge amounts of money into development in order to eradicate the issues.

Renault was struggling, so much so that it had withdrawn its own works team from F1 in 1985 before it subsequently informed Lotus that it would no longer be supplying the outfit with engines beyond 1986.

You could argue that being forced to change engines was a silver lining, given Renault's competitive struggles and the fact that Lotus was given plenty of notice. It should have been the perfect chance to take control, allowing the outfit to find a strong engine so that it could be in a position to overhaul the mighty Williams and McLaren.

In a bid to shoot for the stars - and to appease its star driver - Senna, Lotus plucked for Honda. The Japanese manufacturer had the best engine at the time, and Senna made it clear to the team that he would have no interest in staying on with Lotus if they didn’t use Honda power, but the Japanese marque attached conditions with the agreement.

THE LOTUS 99T FEATURED A DISTINCTIVE YELLOW LIVERY

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FRANCHITTI AND DARREN TURNER IN THE PADDOCK

The first of those conditions was that Lotus couldn’t have identical machinery to the constructors’ champions. Those engines were saved for Williams.

It wasn’t totally disastrous considering Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet had won the constructors’ title for Williams in 1986, but it wasn’t ideal either.

There was a second condition too. Lotus had to sign Satoru Nakajima to race alongside Senna. Nakajima was a total F1 rookie. Up until that point, he had spent his career racing in Japanese Formula 2, Formula 3000 and the World Sportscar Championship, but at the age of 34, he’d never graced the grid of a grand prix.

It wasn’t ideal, far from it, but it was enough for Lotus to keep Senna in its stable, whilst also guaranteeing it would be competitive at least from a power related perspective.

And so, the Lotus 99T was born. But for the first time in 20 years, it was dressed in colours not bearing the JPS name. This time it was all about the Camel sponsorship.

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By the mid 1980s, the Lotus coffers weren’t as full as they once were. Lotus needed more money if it was going to keep pace, and it desperately needed to bolster its development capabilities. Senna was also demanding a vastly improved salary but JPS just simply couldn’t reach the budget Lotus was looking for.

However, Camel could. And so Lotus signed a deal with them to run their yellow livery for three years, at a price of $7million a year.

It all seemed rosy for the Norfolk-based team. It had finally got the extra funds to keep Senna onboard, be in a position where it could develop the 99T and have an engine that was still capable of battling with the very best. But the ever wiley Senna scuppered the team’s plans.

When Senna agreed to drive for Lotus for 1987, his contract stated that JPS would sponsor the car.

However, with JPS making way for Camel so that Senna’s demands could be met, the Brazilian found a loophole. He claimed Lotus was in breach of its

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TWO OF THE 99T CHASSIS HAVE BEEN REUNITED AND FORMS PART OF A PRIVATE COLLECTION IN CANADA

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SENNA PLAYED A PIVOTAL ROLE IN HIS LAST YEAR AT LOTUS

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contract with him, and as a result, it made his deal null and void. It left Lotus with no choice but to renegotiate if they wanted to keep their lead driver, and in the end, the additional money it had received from Camel to spend on car development, got used to pay Senna’s demands so he would remain with the team.

Lotus had been stitched up like a kipper to the highest degree. Senna now had everything he wanted and knew he was in total control of the team. But the team was left in an ever increasing precarious situation financially.

Despite the depleted budget, the 99T that Lotus produced was still a strong car, although it did look considerably bulky compared to its predecessor and

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rivals Williams. The 99T featured electronic active suspension, which had been brought across from the Lotus 92 that competed in the 1983 season, but it came at a cost.

The system wasn’t exactly light, adding just over 20kg of weight to the car. It wasn’t ideal. The increased weight meant more drag, and more strain on the Honda engine. It was rumoured that the engine lost approximately 5% of its power as a result, meaning it was even slower than the Williams.

There were question marks about the active suspension too. Some in the Lotus camp didn’t feel it should be used, but after pre-season testing, Senna declared it had to be retained, and as so often

SENNA WAS ADAMANT THE 99T WAS FASTER WITH ACTIVE SUSPENSION THAN WITHOUT IT happened at Lotus during the Brazilian’s tenure, what Senna wanted, Senna got.

Senna was adamant the 99T was faster with active suspension than without it, and his technical nous, already at that young age, was enough to convince Lotus to follow his lead.

And so, the team went to the opening race of the season in Brazil, feeling quietly confident about their

chances, but reality quickly struck, and it hit hard.

On the face of it, if you look at the qualifying order, Senna lining up third on the grid behind the Williams pair of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet wasn’t bad at all. But the laptimes said something completely different. Yes, Senna may have been third, but he was 2.280seconds off Mansell’s effort. And Nakajima was even further behind. He could only manage 12th, over

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SENNA DRIVING THE LOTUS AT THE 1987 MONACO GRAND PRIX

AND NEXT TIME OUT AT IMOLA, SENNA DIDN'T WASTE ANY TIME IN SHOWING WHAT THE CAR COULD DO six seconds off pole position.

It was a big wake up call. Williams had laid its stake in the ground early doors. It was going to be the team to beat and everyone had a lot of catching up to do.

However, the opening race of the season was a tale of two halves for Lotus and Senna.

One the one hand it was almost disastrous. Senna retired with an engine failure 50 laps into the 61 lap race, having spent much of the race running second.

But there were positives to take.

Williams also faltered, with Mansell getting a puncture, meaning it was McLaren’s Alain Prost that won the grand prix. But beyond that, the Lotus was quick in Senna’s hands. He had been running second before his engine gave way. There was some promise in the 99T. And next time out at Imola, Senna didn’t waste any

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time in showing what the car could do, putting the 99T on pole, 0.120s faster than Mansell.

Unfortunately, a win eluded Senna. Mansell’s Williams proved too powerful over the course of the race, and the British driver went on to beat Senna by over 20 seconds. But Lotus had its first podium and points of the season. It was up and running, and able to get itself in the championship hunt.

All so often throughout the 1987 season, the tables for Lotus constantly turned like a revolving door. Senna crashed on the opening lap of the Belgian Grand Prix, but he won his first race of the season next time out at Monaco. Up until that point, it was Nakajima who had been the consistent driver.

He may not have stolen any headlines or been at the forefront of the grid, but his sensible and methodical approach meant he was able to score points in both

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San Marino and Belgium, although he finished 10th in Monaco.

But Monaco proved to be a turning point for Lotus’ talisman. He arguably lucked into victory around the streets of Monaco, when Mansell retired from the race after his exhaust broke by leading, but at the following event in Detroit, Senna was in a league of his own.

Senna’s Lotus didn’t have the might to fight Mansell for pole position in qualifying, the Lotus ending up over a second adrift of the Williams, but on race day it was a different matter.

10 laps into the race, Senna was running second behind Mansell, and nearly ended his race after coming close to the wall. His brakes overheated and went

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soft as he turned in, but he narrowly avoided any considerable drama. However, he was immediately handicapped.

In order to keep the brakes alive, he had to let them cool, meaning he slowed down by three seconds a lap.

It allowed Mansell to run clear into the distance, but luck soon turned back in his direction.

The Williams driver began to suffer with cramp, and so was forced to pit in order to eradicate the pain. It handed Senna the lead and from there he never looked back. The chasing Alain Prost was forced to pit from second with his own brake and transmission issues, promoting Nelson Piquet to the runner-up slot, but he was too far behind to make any impression on Senna.

In the end, Senna crossed the line 33.819s ahead of the Williams to claim his first true dominant win of the season. He had laid down a marker, proving that he was still going to be a force to be reckoned with, no matter how strong his machinery was compared to his rivals around him.

What Senna and Lotus didn’t know at the time though was that would be his last win for the team, and Lotus’ last win in Formula 1 altogether.

The podium evaded Senna in France, and although he went on to claim three podium positions on the trot between the British and Hungarian Grands Prix, he simply didn’t have a strong enough car underneath him to truly battle with Williams on a level footing.

By the end of the Austrian Grand Prix, the 10th round of 16 that year, it was Piquet who was leading the championship, with 54 points, 11 more than Senna in second. The title hunt wasn’t over, but it was going to be a tough ask to achieve it.

Senna was second to Piquet in Italy, but it wasn’t enough to prevent him from confirming that he would leave Lotus at the end of the season to go and join McLaren. He’d had enough of life with Lotus, and felt McLaren was the best place for him to truly fight for his first world title.

And at the following grand prix, Senna’s result would have no doubt vindicated his feeling that leaving the team was the eight thing to do, after having a

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HEADING OUT ON TO THE FAMOUS LE MANS PODIUM

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SENNA RETIRED FROM THE BRAZILIAN GRAND PRIX WITH AN ENGINE FAILURE

disastrous weekend at Estoril for the Portuguese Grand Prix.

He could only manage fifth in qualifying, while his future team-mate Gerhard Berger went on to claim pole position for Ferrari, and by the end of the race he was seventh, two laps down on the lead, with Nakajima in eighth.

It was the clearest evidence yet that when the active suspension didn’t work, it really didn’t work. There were so many variables to it, that it was hard to find the sweet spot. Find it, and you’re there with the best of them. Land wide of the mark and you are left sailing in no man’s land, unable to battle with anyone.

And that’s what made the Lotus 99T such a hard car to love. In the right conditions it was brilliant, despite the fact it was fatter than its counterparts, but it was

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also temperamental, having the ability to undo all the hard work that had gone into finding the ultimate setup.

In some respects, it was probably a mistake for Senna to insist on the active suspension. For sure, it might well have worked in pre-season testing, around one track where he was fortunate to be able to complete lap after lap for hours on end to refine the setup.

He was never going to have that luxury during the middle of the season, and it was clearly never fully considered just how temperamental the car could be.

Would the car have been any better without it? That’s hard to say. Nobody will really ever know the answer to that. It had it and that’s that. But it does beg the question.

The Spanish Grand Prix was equally tough for Senna, finishing fifth, over a minute behind eventual winner Mansell, and next time out in Mexico he failed to finish altogether, retiring from the race with a clutch issue.

But there was at least a glimmer of positivity towards the back end of the year at one of Lotus’ most important races - Japan. It was Honda’s home race, Nakajima’s home race and it ended up in an unlikely double point finishing result.

After qualifying it looked as though it was going to be another tough event for both drivers. Senna was eighth on the grid with Nakajima 12th, but come race day it was a different story.

Senna climbed his way through the order to get himself up to third, and at the start of the final lap of the race, he made an audacious move on Stefan

Johanssen for second. It worked, the Brazilian made the move stick and he went on to take the podium spot behind Berger, while Nakajima finished his first home grand prix in a respectable sixth position.

But that was as good as it was going to get before the year ended. Nakajima retired with a hydraulic failure in the final race of the season in Australia, while Senna was disqualified for running with illegal brake ducts after they were deemed to be too big.

It was not the ending Lotus or Senna would have wanted, far from it. To end in disqualification, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But while there was a remarkably large feeling of disappointment at the end of the season, it wasn’t a total disaster either.

Lotus finished third in the constructors’ championship, with Senna also third in the driver’s standings. There wasn’t a championship trophy to celebrate, but given the circumstances and the results, it was also a solid achievement too.

As was mentioned earlier, Lotus was no longer flush with money, even less so after Senna scuppered the team for an additional few million pounds. So in some ways, ironically, it was Senna that caused his own failure.

Had he not pushed for the bigger pay packet, Lotus would have had funds to increase its car development programme. It could have done more testing and evaluated the active suspension system in more detail to help optimise the setup. But the lack of cash meant it was simply impossible to do.

As was often the case with Senna, the inherent self interest took over, and was detrimental to not only Lotus but also himself. It was clear the 99T had plenty of potential. It might not have been as slim as the Williams, but on its day it was just as fast. So imagine what could have happened had there been a bit of extra money to refine it and make it even better.

And if it had won the championship it’s also very possible that the team’s fortunes would have been entirely different.

Of course, we can’t live in an ifs, buts and maybes world, but it does make you wonder. Was Senna the true cause of Lotus’ demise, or was he just another catalyst in an array of issues that meant it was inevitable that this once great team was always going to fold at some stage.

We will never know, is the real answer. But what we do know is that Lotus was never the same again.

Nelson Piquet came onboard for 1988 to partner Nakajima, but he could only muster a trio of podiums.

After that, Lotus became a declining team, falling from grace until it hit rock bottom in 1994.

With the team completely out of money, it became a revolving door for paying drivers, with its legacy ending with a double retirement in the Australian Grand Prix.

We might never be able to pinpoint the exact cause of Lotus’ demise, but we do know the 1987 season did have an integral part to play.

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IMAGE BY GRAND PRIX PHOTO

MIAMI VICE THIS YEAR WAS THE FIRST TIME MIAMI HOSTED A FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX, AND MAX VERSTAPPEN RELISHED THE LAYOUT, BEATING CHARLES LECLERC TO WIN THE RACE.

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SOL R BARBA WORDS BY LUKE BARRY IMAGES BY GERRARD WILSON

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re-event preparation for a rally doesn't usually involve swimming with turtles, drinking as many rum punches as you could wish for and unwinding in the hotel swimming pool. But, then again, rallies aren't usually like Rally Barbados.

It's one I'd always heard about, but one I only finally got to experience this year. Suffice to say, I'll be going back.

I won't need to produce the hard sell for some of you. The idea of white beaches, palm trees, sunshine with a sprinkle of high-octane rallying has already convinced you. But if you're currently getting splinters sat on the fence or simply just not convinced a trip to Rally Barbados is worth your time, here's why you should reconsider.

When was the last time you went to a rally competing, marshaling, working in an official event or media capacity or purely along for a watch - and felt genuinely welcome? Felt like people actually wanted you to be there.

I'm fortunate enough to call rallying my job, and as a result go to several different events in different parts of the United Kingdom - and sometimes further afield - each year. Aside from one particular rally (which I shan't name, there's far too much of my career to go

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to get away with that just yet!) I've never really felt particularly unwelcome, but Barbados made me realise what it's really like to be welcomed.

Granted, it's in the rally organiser's best interest to keep me on their side so to speak - but the same is true for rallies all over the world. And none of them have ever arranged travel for me across the rally, my own personal hire car, my hotel room (at a fantastic resort) and transport to and from the airport with the rally director himself.

I felt like a VIP. Anything I wanted, anything I needed? No problem, whatever you need. And this doesn't just extend to the rally, this is a core trait of what makes Barbados a delight. Everybody is so appreciative that you've made the trip over to their small 166-square mile island, and they want you to enjoy your time there.

Consider this testimonial from Stuart Deeley, who was driving a rather gorgeous Toyota Celica GT-4 ST165: "We had a problem before the rally and I found somebody to help me fix it, but they insisted that they do it. I'm here to enjoy the rally, so enjoy it. I kept trying to pay them but they've so far evaded me."

Or from Tom Preston, who brought his Ford Fiesta Rally2 home in ninth place this year: "It’s a holiday in a rally, you don’t normally get that. A lot of the family

don’t usually go to Wales or somewhere where it’s pissing it down but here it’s lovely.

“And at the same time one of the big things is the spectators are all absolutely mad for it. You can tell in the week before the rally and everything they’re massively into it, so that’s a lot of it as well. It’s good, and you can see by the times it’s very close. You can find seven seconds and be four or five places up.

"They’re very short stages but you’ve got to be on it to try and get a good result. With the kids, family commitments and holidays you’re just looking for a bit of fun more than anything so it’s good to do it somewhere competitive where it’s also fun.”

There's a lot to unpack from Preston's comments - chiefly the fact that Barbados is a holiday in a rally.

This is how the rally organisers actively promote it, and it's absolutely how it feels. If you're a rally fan, why not combine a relaxed time with family and friends for a weekend's sport? And equally, if you're not a rally fan there really aren't many events as accessible as Barbados.

Secondly, there's the passion from the locals. Let me tell you, you haven't seen passionate rally spectators

until you've seen the Bajans. The smile across local driver and frontrunner Stuart Maloney's face when asking me about them really said it all.

"It's like a party, isn't it?" he grinned. I really couldn't put it better myself. Anybody that's been to a rally in the UK will know that it's quite a hardcore experience.

Your route has to be planned to perfection, often involves some mountaineering, some miserable weather and always, always mandates a super early start.

In Barbados, it's the most chilled out experience you can imagine. Sadly I didn't have the chance to join the party in full but the jealousy I felt was real when I arrived at junctions and saw it all unfolding.

Gazebo tents pitched, barbecues burning, drinks flowing, card games at play - this wasn't a day out spectating rallying. This was a chilled day out that just so happened to be situated next to a rally stage. How perfect is that?

And then there was Bushy Park. Barbados' one and only purpose built racetrack is naturally a heavy feature of the rally, with cars - and Rally HQ - stored there in the lead-up to the event. But it also hosts the final stage of the event in a dramatic superspecial stage under the lights.

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Despite the rain - and trust me it rained, ringing out my T-shirt later was like turning the kitchen sink tap on - the crowd were in absolute raptures. The scream when the driver of the #0 car performed a few donuts at a tight hairpin felt more like being in the stands when the home team scores a winner in a football match. I've never, ever seen something like that on a rally stage before, and likely never will.

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And then what about the last of Preston's points: the competition. Because as much as there's plenty to distract you on the side of the stages, there are plenty of reasons to revert your attention to them.

For the uninitiated, the entry list might not inspire.

Dane Skeete, Stuart Maloney and Frank Bird aren't names familiar to those with just a passive interest in rallying - even though drivers like Kris Meeke, Elfyn

FORMULA 3 RACER ZANE MALONEY ADDED A REAL CURVEBALL TO THIS YEAR'S CONTEST Evans and Simon Jean-Joseph have all been in the past.

But even if you don't know the main players, grab yourself a programme and get to know them. Brief aside, the official programme was of good quality too which definitely can't be said for all rallies.

Formula 3 racer Zane Maloney added a real curveball to this year's contest. Taking on the best Bajan rally drivers (including two of his uncles) was a

far different task to fighting tooth and nail with fellow teenage racing drivers around Europe, but he ramped up the hype when he won the pre-event King of the Hill contest.

That earned him the #1 door plates for his first ever proper rally, but ultimately he wouldn't quite manage to finish there. Rally Barbados is a rally to really respect.

The roads are unusually rough for a Tarmac rally,

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the drops can be punishing and the heat - cockpit temperatures of well over 65 celsius were reported throughout the weekend. Imagine sitting in that with fireproof overalls and a helmet on - no thanks.

This is less of an issue for the local drivers who are accustomed to such humidity, but making any advantage pay at the start of the rally while the international visitors (of which there are many) is where the Bajan heroes really earn their crust.

The two Skoda Fabia Rally2-driving Maloneys Stuart and Zane - gave him a really good run for his money, but Skeete and his Subaru Impreza S12B WRC were the combination to beat across the two-day event.

It was almost like a game of chicken. Who dared go first? Stuart Maloney and Skeete traded times throughout the first day - Skeete initially quickest before Maloney hit the front and Skeete then pulled it back, only for Maloney to take a big swipe out of Skeete on the final stage of day one.

But it was the first stage on day two that ultimately decided the rally. Zane Maloney had been, by his own

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admission, a bit of a slow starter on the first day but picked up his pace to pose a real threat to the two leaders ahead.

But the youngster's challenge ended on the day's opener as he got his line wrong in a pair of switchback corners, ran wide on exit and ripped his rear-right wheel off against a pole as he took a trip into someone's yard. He laughed: "Thinking back I could have probably avoided the pole but if we had avoided the pole someone might not have their house!"

With one Maloney out the way, Skeete only had Stuart to worry about and he's disposed of him on that Kendal stage, roaring into the lead to place his rival on the back foot. Did this spook Maloney into his eventual mistake? Either way, when approaching a crest for the first time in that direction, Maloney overcooked it and a heavy landing sent him wide and into retirement.

"It was pointless for me trying to drag it," he said, "because the damage it would have done and the time it would have haemorrhaged, I would’ve still not been fighting. I mean I was fighting for the win, not for fourth or fifth place."

By biding his time, Skeete was unleashed and he duly romped home to claim a hugely popular win - his second on the island: "It’s great man," he said. "It’s second time now, trying to catch my father. He’s at 13 [wins], so we’ve got a long way to go."

Driver of the rally was perhaps Frank Bird who, on his first visit as a driver, was surely capable of victory had it not been for two driveshafts breaking, an electrical glitch and co-driver Jack Morton suffering in the extreme heat on the first day. Slipping to ninth, the British driver - who normally races a Mercedes in

Germany - climbed all the way up to a sensational second only to be unclassified due to going over the time limit when repairing a broken wheel at the end of a stage.

Only in Barbados could this unfold and the crew not feel too frustrated or agitated. Because ultimately Rally Barbados isn't really a rally, it's an experience. I implore you to experience it for yourself. No matter if you're the biggest rally anorak going or don't even know what a rally is, there's something in it for everyone.

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

OLD AND NEW THIS YEAR, MORE THAN ONE TEAM IS RUNNING THE BMW 3 SERIES. NOT ONLY IS TEAM BMW ON TRACK VIA WSR, BUT CAR GODS WITH CICELY MOTORSPORT IS ALSO RUNNING A 3 SERIES.

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under WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY PHD PHOTO / GRAND PRIX PHOTO 102 | THE PIT STOP

dogs

E

veryone loves an underdog. It’s the sense of achieving the unthinkable that gets everybody excited. Defying belief, rising to the fore and beating the giants. It’s what blockbusters are made of.

It’s exactly what Jordan was when it joined Formula 1 in the early 1990s. A plucky British team based at Silverstone - the heart of British motorsport - trying to take on the greats such as Ferrari, Williams and McLaren.

Of course, across its first few seasons it was naturally trounced by the big teams most of the time, despite showing flashes of brilliance and tremendous pace.

But in 1995 Jordan decided to try to sit at the big table, when it secured its first works engine deal with Peugeot.

Jordan had been on a steady rise through the F1 ranks in the early 1990s and in 1994 it achieved its best result in the constructors’ championship, ending the year fifth. It also secured its first podium result, when Rubens Barrichello crossed the Pacific Grand Prix finish line in third position, and the Jordan 194 chassis was regularly competing for the third row of the grid in qualifying, and even took pole at Spa in the damp.

But in 1995 change was afoot. Jordan left behind its trusty Hart engine deal and made the switch to Peugeot. For the first time it was running a fully-fledged manufacturer’s engine single-handed. Its aspirations of becoming a true major force no longer looked like an unfounded dream. If it could build a competitive car,

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this tiny team, on a small budget, could put itself into the big league.

However, nothing is ever that straightforward, as Jordan's original technical director Gary Anderson explained to The Pit Stop.

“The thing was, it was the first year with Peugeot and that was quite a difficult thing. I had a really good working relationship with Brian Hart for a couple of years before, so that made things very easy. You just suggest something to Brian and he was up and running, whereas with Peugeot it was a pretty different deal.

“They [Hart] worked the way engineering should work, which is you need to go off, test it and prove it.

There was never any gut feeling with them [Peugeot].

So that led to a few more compromises with the car than I would have liked.”

As ever, the reason for moving away from Hart engines was related to finances. Eddie Jordan was offered what seemed to be a fantastic deal. At that stage, for a team like Jordan to be able to run a car manufacturer’s engine on an exclusive basis, it was always going to be an offering that was too good to resist, even if Peugeot's previous partner McLaren's experience might have offered a warning.

“Ron Dennis didn’t want Peugeot anymore. He had Peugeot for 1994 and McLaren were now getting involved with Mercedes so Peugeot had to find somebody else to take it all on.

“It wasn’t the most reliable package, they weren’t

THE 195 FEATURED A UNIQUE SIDEPOD DESIGN

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THE CAR TOOK TO THE TRACK AT GOODWOOD MEMBERS' MEETING

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the easiest to work with, and Ron came along to Eddie with a sponsor and the Peugeot deal.

“I was told as Ron Dennis was putting the deal across to Eddie, Eddie thought it was a free engine as such. An engine from a works engine manufacturer, which was correct. At the end of the day, Brian Hart, he would have spent something like £5million on an engine package a year. Peugeot were spending £25million.

It had gone from 10 people involved to 100 people or whatever it was. So it was a much bigger project.

“But they didn’t know as much as Brian Hart did. Some of the problems they had were fundamental things that needed to be fixed. So we had to put pressure on them to look at things with more gut feel than always the theoretical.

“But it was important to Jordan Grand Prix because we needed to survive and when you get a free engine and sponsorship with it, it’s going to help you isn’t it?”

Working with a manufacturer for the first time was always bound to bring changes, and it also altered the operating structure of the team, with Anderson having to spend more time with Peugeot than he would have perhaps liked, and it took him away from car development.

“Managing the relationship, yes, keeping them on our side as well,” Anderson said when asked if a lot of his time was spent managing Peugeot’s relationship with Jordan, rather than working on engine development. “There were some fundamental things, for example, they had a valve system and the head would just fill up with oil. The air valve cylinders would have oil in them. The engine would just cut itself off and shut itself down, so you wouldn’t get a Charles Leclerc smoky failure or anything because it would shut down electronically. But it was going on in the background and they weren’t getting anywhere with it at all. I said to them, ‘I think this is what’s happening, have you seen some of the bits?’ And they said ‘no,no,no, it can’t be this, this just happens’. It just doesn’t because you have no mechanism for scavenging from the head and the oil coming in is just relying on gravity to get down through some hole.

“At the next test was one of the guys who was fairly well up in Peugeot. He was like me, he liked to do things. We did some modifications to the back of the head, some pipework down into the scavenge inlet, to the scavenge pumps and we never had that problem again.

"WE HAD TO PUT PRESSURE ON THEM TO LOOK AT THINGS WITH MORE OF A GUT FEEL"

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“It was just done at the circuit because it’s the logical thing. But that’s what Peugeot were like. They really were a theoretical group, but you needed to be able to compromise between both [approaches] to make it work right.

“So time spent dealing with Peugeot, going across to France, meeting with them, which we used to do on a Tuesday after every grand prix because it was seen to be better meeting there than them coming to us because that’s what they deemed to be better. So we did it.

“Usually it was with one other person just to put forward the point of view that we were where we thought we were and what we needed to do for the car and what we needed from them for the engine. But that took a lot of time and a lot of effort away from the time you’d spend on the car itself.”

The Peugeot relationship was no doubt a tricky one to manage, but manage it Jordan did. And the end result was the 195. On the face of it, the car didn’t look vastly different to its predecessor, but it was in fact a totally new car that featured some unique design aspects compared to its rivals, particularly around the front wing and sidepod areas.

“I was never one for just copying what other people had done,” Anderson explained. “I thought we had brought a fair amount of innovation into Formula 1, by thinking our own way. So my feeling was, the narrow sidepods and the tall vertical inlets was that we got a longer leading edge on the sidepod. The front corner going backwards was a much longer leading edge. So I was pursuing trying to get the airflow under that area better and get the airflow between the front wheels and the chassis, rather than trying to take it underneath the chassis and then bring it back out again.

“I could never quite get my head around the logic of that. The rear intake has got a changing flow. It never flows all there. As the speed goes up it props up and the air has to go somewhere. The more that affects the underfloor, the more changes there are to the aerodynamic performance of the car. And that’s proven right, that’s a positive thing.

“But in reality, getting the chassis higher makes the front wing work better. If that works better it means you can make it work more consistently and you get better airflow. It’s all a circle of events.

“It was at a time where change was taking place as far as that area was concerned. It wasn't defined by

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THE JORDAN 195 GOT A DOUBLE PODIUM RESULT IN CANADA

any black and white means just yet, so it was still an area of experimentation. We went one way and others went another way. And as I say, maybe if I spent more time on the chassis project, perhaps we would have recognised it and done something about it.

“But we were small, doing the best that we could to move forward, all of that stuff was done for logical reasons. We felt it was a direction to take and we

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needed to optimise it. We never quite optimised it as good as some others.

“The car wasn’t bad. It wasn’t as good as it could have been, but it wasn’t bad. We had a second and third at Canada. It was by luck with others falling out here and there as well, but we were still there to have a fight.”

1995 didn’t get off to the best of starts for Jordan,

with double retirements in the opening two races.

Reliability, particularly with the Peugeot engine, was a considerable issue. But having said that, the car still had pace, especially over one lap.

The evidence of that was there for all to see at the second race of the season in Argentina. Despite both Rubens Barrichello and Eddie Irvine failing to make it to the finish line, Irvine was still able to get the car up to

fourth in qualifying. A similar feat happened two races later when the Jordans lined up sixth and eighth on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Canada was the obvious highlight for Jordan. Both cars made it onto the podium, with Barrichello ending up second with Irvine four seconds further back in third.

It was the best result in Jordan’s history in that point, but as Anderson admits, the team still needed others

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EDDIE IRVINE DRIVING THE 195 IN 1995

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around it to falter to finish in big point scoring positions.

“The competition was tough. We needed help from the others to have a problem but we were part of the competition. If you were there at the chequered flag, which is important anyway, you’d usually pick up a decent haul of points. But for a small team to finish second and third, it was a good day out.”

“Peugeot were ecstatic. They didn’t see it much further than the actual race result. I’ve always been fairly realistic in that I knew we got that result because

someone else didn’t. But still at the end of the day, we were there fighting. So the opportunity came to us, somebody else had problems. We took it. It was Jean Alesi’s only win, so it was the same for him really in a way. He was always there having the battle but never quite made it.

“You’ve got to give credit as that’s what happened, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to see the bigger picture.

“I’ve always looked more at qualifying and

practices, more to qualifying, to see the true potential in a car and the race becomes more of a how you run the race, how it unfolds as opposed to speed. And as I said, it wasn’t slow, but it wasn’t as quick as I’d have liked it to be. “’95 and ’96 was a bit of getting it back together again with a big engine manufacturer as opposed to pulling results out of it. So you were very happy when you had a result like Montreal because it gave everyone a lot of motivation. But I still looked deeper than that,

than just that one day.”

It was apparent throughout 1995 that the 195 wasn’t the strongest car of the field by any means, but it also wasn’t a catastrophic failure either. Although Barrichello and Irvine were faced with more retirements than they’d ideally have liked, when they finished, it was usually in a strong position, and the car’s limitations weren’t so bad that it created any major issues with the drivers.

“I think the most disappointing thing was the

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reliability issues that we had. I’m not criticising Peugeot by any means because they were new to Formula 1 as such, but we had some basic fundamental problems that should have been handled and weren’t.

“It was Rubens’ third year in Formula 1. He probably expected more but I don’t think he had any major problems with it. Again, I think they were in the competition, if they tried harder, they probably got a better qualifying position or race result. So it wasn’t all that they should be at the front, with a God-given right to be winning races.

“They were quite content to be in the battle fighting for it and Eddie being able to go off to Ferrari showed that somebody must have seen there was talent there and to show talent you have to have a car that you can show it in.

“I don’t think it was all bad by any means and I think

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we were probably guilty of trying too hard to find that magic bullet. I think we all know now there’s very few of them and by doing that you sometimes go in the wrong direction.”

The biggest proof that the car had potential was in the qualifying pace. It was fast over a single lap, often qualifying within the top seven cars, sometimes higher, but with points limited to the first six positions in F1 back in 1995, the final results didn’t always show just how good a car it was.

“If you finished seventh all season long, we’d have been having a great season, but we wouldn’t have any points on the board. It was a very different Formula 1.

There’s 20 cars now and 10 of them get points. I think we would have scored points in any race had that been the case back then, but it wasn’t. So you were fighting a tougher battle to score points in the race. That’s the

way it was.

“But we could qualify in the top 10 fairly consistently, but as I say it was a different Formula 1.

“With Peugeot behind us, we had aspirations to be front three rows, front two rows or whatever and score points - be it big or small - most times out, but it didn’t work out that way. But you’ve still got to keep your aspirations. You’ve still got to have the fight, the will and the want to move forward all the time and that’s where the design took us. We wanted to try and find the solution to make it a better package.”

It’s fair to say that Anderson isn’t overly fond of the 195. Why would he be when he wasn’t overly hands-on with its design and creation compared to other chassis during his career with Jordan? But that’s not to say he didn’t respect it and that it wasn’t a solid F1 car.

In the end, Jordan ended the 1995 season sixth in

the constructors’ championship, having amassed a total of 21 points, three fewer than Ligier in fifth, while Barrichello and Irvine were 11th and 12th respectively in the drivers' championship.

At the end of 1995 Irvine bailed on Jordan to move to Ferrari, but Barrichello stayed put for a fourth season, such was his loyalty to the team.

Peugeot also stuck around for another two years with Jordan before the Silverstone-based team switched to Honda in 1998. While it may not have been as fruitful as either party hoped when the Jordan-Peugeot project began in 1995, it certainly paved the way for Jordan to become one of the true privateer underdog greats of the era, and a title challenger in 1999.

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

NAPA IN THE BTCC RANKS NAPA HAS JOINED THE BRITISH TOURING CAR CHAMPIONSHIP IN 2022, HAVING TAKEN OVER THE NAMING RIGHTS AT MOTORBASE. THE TEAM IS RUNNING ASH SUTTON AND DAM CAMMISH FOR THE YEAR, WITH THE PAIR DRIVING A FORD FOCUS.

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DAY AND

NIGHT A HECTIC 24 HOURS ON TRACK IS MATCHED

BY THOROUGHGOING HEDONISM IN THE TRACKSIDE FORESTS

WORDS BY JOHNNY TIPLER IMAGES BY FALKEN MOTORSPORTS / JOHNNY TIPLER / N24 THE PIT STOP | 121

I

t’s my favourite race. I won’t go into the differences between the Nürburgring 24 Hours and Le Mans, but, for starters, the German epic has a more relatable entry – as in, contemporary touring and GT cars that you or I might own more accessible viewing places, and plenty more ups-and-downs topographically. Crazier, local spectators too.

The ADAC Nürburgring 24-Hours dates from 1970, superseding endurance racing events on the old Nürburgring that consisted of 12, 24, 36, 84 and the Marathon de la Route 96-hour timespans, which were not overseen by a single governing body. The N24 is held on a combination of the Nordschleife rollercoaster and the modern, relatively sanitised, grand prix circuit, creating a lap distance of 25.3km or 15.8 miles. Situated in the Eifel Mountains – glorified hills, more like - the Nürburgring is subject to varied weather

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conditions that are apt to douse the track in rain, fog and sunshine, possibly all happening at the same time on different parts of the circuit. It’s a big event, too, with 210 qualifiers and as many as 800 drivers. With the hosts of team personnel thrown in, accommodation anywhere within 20 miles of the circuit on race weekend is at a premium – or else join the 230,000 race fans camped out around the circuit.

The entry list for 2022’s 50th edition kicked off with an eye-watering mix of supercars, ranging from Audi R8 LMS GT3, Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3, Lamborghini Huracán GT3, Aston Martin Vantage GT3, Porsche 991 GT3R, Glickenhaus Racing SCG004c and BMW M4 GT3, to KTM X-Bow GT2, Dodge Viper GT3, Toyota GR Supra GT4, Ferrari 488 GT3 and Porsche Cayman GT4.

Pole position was set by the #26 Octane 126 Ferrari, the Italian marque’s first pole since 2011. The 2022 race distance ended up equalling the distance record – 158

laps - set in 2017, and the fastest lap went to Phillip Ellis in the #12 Bilstein AMG – 8m11.639seconds.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, slightly, but in the statistics department, the 2022 winning car was a fourth evolution of the Audi R8 GT3, the first 24-Hours win for the EVO2 version of the Audi R8 LMS. There are sometimes controversial outcomes, but the final result remained unchanged after a post-race 32 second (and €5,000) penalty was handed to the race-winning #15 Phoenix Racing Audi squad for keeping the engine switched on during refuelling – though that wasn’t enough of a sanction to offset their 55 second victory margin. If you think that’s severe, how about the penalty dealt to Hans Wehrman from the #125 Huber Motorsport Cup 2 Porsche team who had his ‘Ring permit revoked and was excluded from the remainder of the race after passing through a double-yellow zone - where the speed limit is 120kph - at 220kph.

I’m a guest of the Falken Motorsport Team, hence the focus on their two Porsche GT3Rs, #33 and #44.

Falken has competed in the Nürburgring 24 Hours since 1999, and for 2022, they committed to running two Porsche 991 GT3Rs. These are GT3-spec cars though the category they are entered in for the 24 Hours is known as SP9 – a class which competes for the overall win and is reserved for top-line FIA-spec

GT3 machinery. There are other categories which permit GT3 cars such as SP-X, though cars entered in that class are usually either cars not yet homologated, or feature modifications that place them outside the FIA ruleset. The Falken team is operated by Schnabl Engineering, based in Butzbach, and employs 37 crew across both cars. Falken’s motorsport activities are all part of its general tyre development programme. The Nürburgring 24 Hours is a unique endurance event in the modern era as it remains the only major 24-hour race globally that features open tyre competition, as opposed to having to run single brand control tyres; this means Falken is able to go head-to-head with multiple rival tyre companies. Often, the number of tyre manufacturers present at this event gets into double figures, with global brands supplying tyres, from the factory-supported SP9 GT3 field all the way down to the categories reserved for private teams running classic touring cars. Historically, Falken’s best result at the 24 Hours is a third place finish in 2015, with Peter Dumbreck, Martin Ragginger, Alex Imperatori and Wolf Henzler.

After two trouble-free practice days, Jaxon Evans, Sven Müller, Marco Seefried and Patrick Pilet - who drove both Falken Porsches in the race – qualified their 991 GT3Rs #33 on 25th on the grid, while Klaus Bachler,

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Alessio Picariello, Martin Ragginger and Patrick Pilet in #44 would start from 33rd spot. At 2.00pm the cars are wheeled out onto the grid, and with half-an-hour to go the drivers show up for a photocall, by which time the start-finish straight is totally rammed with milling fans, grid girls and pit crews. There’s a hands-off attitude to crowd control at this event, and the fans are well behaved, though no one can stray into the pitlane during the race these days without full flameproof kit on. I join a small posse comprised of Falken PR people and a few fellow journos, and we make our way out to where the GP circuit links up with the Nordschleife to catch the thundering pack on the first lap. At just gone 4.00pm, they burst into sight, and somewhere in the midst of the cacophonous horde are the mint-and-blue Falken GT3s. Between gaggles of cars, we stroll further, and the leading batch roars by again, a little more spread out. Within a couple of laps, they’re lapping the backmarkers.

Both Falken 911s have gained a few places at the end of the first lap, though on lap two, Sven Müller

(#33) had to pit briefly for an early tyre change after a contact – though according to the regulations It was too early in the race to be able to undergo a full service stop. There was drama at 40 minutes into the race, as Pilet was tagged by another car and slid off the track at Höhe Acht, tapping the barriers and requiring a fresh splitter and bumper panel, speedily fitted in the pits, while the driver remained in the car. Just over an hour after the start, the first scheduled pitstops began. Car #33 refuelled and took on fresh rubber, as Seefried clambered aboard. Next, at the three-hour mark, Evans took the wheel of #33 for his first-ever N24 race stint. Shortly before 10.00pm, both Porsches switched to softer tyres, while driver changes saw Bachler and Müller in the cars, and by 10.30pm, #33 was up to 16th.

There was trouble brewing. At the start of the 58th lap, around 1.00am, #44's race came to an abrupt end.

Alessio Picariello was pitched into a spin by a rival SP 9-class competitor, and came to rest on the track at the exit of Turn 2 on the GP circuit. A recovery was

THERE WAS DRAMA AT 40 MINUTES INTO THE RACE, AS PILET WAS TAGGED BY ANOTHER CAR

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IT CAN SEEM LIKE ORGANISED CHAOS FROM THE PIT GARAGES

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possible, but an Astra from a tin-top class crashed into the stranded #44, damaging its right rear wheel.

Picariello managed to haul the wounded Porsche back to the Falken pits, but the damage was deemed too heavy to repair, making it an early retirement, after some nine-and-a-half-hours of racing. Meanwhile, #33 was now 11th. As dawn broke, Müller had gained another place, and #33 was the best-placed Porsche, his pace identical with that of the race leaders.

At 6:30am, Pilet was in the driving seat, and moved #33 up to 10th. True to meteorological form, there was some rain around 8.00am, but the team elected to go with soft slicks nevertheless. A slow puncture meant another pit stop, dropping the car to 11th. At 9.15am, the car pitted for a brake pad and disc change, accomplished within the allotted time window of two minutes. At 12.30pm, Seefried was in the car, making good headway as he clawed his way back to 10th. By 1.00pm, there was occasional rain, and Müller elected to stay out on slicks still, though conditions were tricky, mainly on the Grand Prix track, which didn’t drain as well as the wilderness of the Nordschleife, which was merely slippery. It was enough to change his mind, and at 2.00pm he pitted to swap for a set of intermediates.

At 4.00pm, after covering 3,984km, #33 crossed the finish line as the highest-placed Porsche out of the 135 classified finishers.

This year’s N24 was the fourth occasion that Falken had occupied that status in the overall results.

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Conversely, the 2022 race was also the first time that the team had posted a retirement since 2017, though through no fault of the driver. The 2022 race distance equalled the race distance record – 158 laps, first set in 2017 – and ten different cars from seven different GT3/ SP9 marques had led the race overall during the 24 Hours.

Falken drivers are charming – and accessible. I chatted with some of them in the team’s lounge above the pits garages, and they told me about their N-24 race highlights over the years. Klaus Bachler is a Falken Motorsports stalwart who’s been with the team since 2017, and was part of its maiden overall race win in 2018.

He recalled his first Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2013.

“It was my first night stint on the Nordschleife. The conditions were horrendous, so much so that my teammate had thrown up in the car before I got in it for my stint – so it was not the best seat in the house!

Out on the track I was also contending with the rain and fog. Eventually, the race was red flagged. Quite unbelievable weather that year.”

Frenchman Patrick Pilet is a Porsche factory driver who’s enjoyed success in every major endurance race in the world. He’s a Porsche Carrera Cup France champion and has had multiple podium finishes at the Le Mans 24 Hours with Porsche’s factory GT team. “One crazy moment was in 2018, the year that I won the race overall, when I was approaching Mutkurve with three

slow cars up ahead. I ended up having to overtake all of them by driving with all four wheels on the grass - at 150mph… It’s always a risk doing something like that because you don’t know what the grass will be like; well, anyway, it’s never smooth and flat!”

Porsche factory driver Sven Müller has already notched-up multiple podium finishes with the Falken team, most recently at last year’s season finale when he narrowly missed out on overall victory together with Martin Ragginger. He is a Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup Champion - the single-make series that supports the Formula 1 world championship - and has a podium finish in the Spa 24-Hours on his CV. Kiwi Jaxon Evans was new to the Nordschleife and Falken Motorsports, having obtained his Nordschleife racing permit just last year. In recent years he’s racked up wins in Porsche Carrera Cup Australia and France, in multiple seasons competing in the Mobil 1 Porsche Supercup and the FIA World Endurance Championship. He was picked as a Porsche Junior in 2019, before being promoted to a Porsche Professional in 2022.

Old hand Marco Seefried returned to the Falken team in 2022, having helmed a BMW M6 GT3 for Falken Motorsports in 2017. He has three class wins at the N24 to his name in 2021, (SP9 Pro Am) 2011 (SP8) and 2010 (SP7).

“I’d have to go back to 2008 for my craziest moment, and the race hadn’t even started,” he said.

“I was in the Rinaldi Racing SP7 class Porsche 997, and during the warm-up lap we had a water leak and lost all the coolant. In that 911, the max temperature it

can display on the dash is 140°C, and from Höhe Acht onwards, both the water as well as the oil temperature were flashing up 140! I was convinced it was going to be a DNF before the race had even started. I radioed the team to say I was going to pull over somewhere and stop the car, but the team owner said ‘no continue and come back to the box.’ Remarkably, I made it back, turned off the ignition, but the engine kept running. I think it was glowing it was so hot! I thought, ‘That‘s it now we are truly done.’

“But they found the leak right away, filled it up with fresh coolant and bled the system, and sent me back out. I couldn’t believe it: the engine ran, though we had to chuck two litres of oil in it at every pitstop. I was sure the engine would die but, ironically, although we did retire in the night, it was because of the transmission not that engine!”

A longstanding Falken Motorsports driver since 2011, 2022 was Martin Ragginger’s 12th time competing in the N24. He was part of Falken’s third-place crew in 2015 the team’s best result in the race to date. “Craziest race? It was a qualifying round for the VLN endurance series back in 2009. I was driving the Wochenspiegel Porsche 911. Heading from Flugplatz to Schwedenkreuz, a quick section, and a BMW moved to the left - all good, as I wanted to overtake right - but he then decided to go right, pushing me onto the grass. I was a passenger and lost the car. That was a big impact; I don’t think there was a wheel left attached to it by the time it stopped. I ended up in hospital, but it all ended okay. And I keep coming back!”

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Erstwhile Falken pilot Peter Dumbreck once described his personal race strategy: “I take each stint as its own race, and I try and do the best job I can do in my stint, hand the car over in as good a condition as I can. Then I go and rest, get a massage and a powernap, and then I’ll know roughly what time I’m getting back in the car for my next race stint. Dusk and dawn are the two nicest periods. For sure, you’re going to drive at least once during the night, but the best time to drive is just as it’s getting dark, because you can adjust so you keep your speed.”

Talking of visiting the scenery, a midnight ramble

from Brunnchen around to the Karussell is highly entertaining. Having been already established for days in a variety of self-built scaffold towers, treehouses and camper trucks, spectators have by now become more preoccupied with braziers, bonfires, barbecues and ad-hoc catering wagons, and the noise of drumand-bass vying with dub and heavy metal emanating from beatboxes cranked up to ‘eleven’ simply drowns out the race engines. Smoke and fumes are of an entirely different nature to anything emitting from the race cars as they drone past at unreduced speed.

Headlights penetrate the gloom and define the tarmac,

"THE BEST TIME TO DRIVE IS JUST AS IT'S GETTING DARK, BECAUSE YOU CAN ADJUST SO YOU KEEP YOUR SPEED" - PETER DUMBRECK

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with marker lights flashing and those at the marshal’s posts warning of cars overtaking or incidents. Fireworks, strobes and thunderflashes punctuate. It can be a sensory overload. The top snappers’ vantage point is the outside of the Karussel, and four of us head up there, stomping through the undergrowth and up to the Armco surrounding the most famous hairpin of any racetrack. Cars rush up the approach and are pitched into the banked concrete loop, hanging a front wheel as they do so. The drone of the engines is interrupted by the scraping of Kevlar fins and air dams, the air heady with the stench of oil and burned plastic. Add to that the wafts of barbecues from across the track.

This is undoubtedly the place to see the cars at their wildest, cocking wheels as they drop into the banking, suspension compressed by g-forces as they hurl around the 180-degree turn, then another wheel wags as they’re shot out at the other end, climbing again on the way to Höhe Acht.

We trundle round to Brünnchen where the track is almost completely graffiti’d by the fans, who are magnetised to the fence. Diverse factions colonise particular areas on an annual basis, staking their claim with asphalt scrawls. The volume of the babbling German PA commentator mostly drowns out the music, but the reverie is clearly brewing. The impending hardcore Rock Am Ring festival has much to answer for. Cars hurtle through from Wippermann, and we ease along to Pflanzgarten to see the cars in flight, one of several places around the Nordschleife where cars get airborne for a split second as drivers push them to the limit, and the undulations in the track are constant.

Cars plummet downhill, and just before slowing slightly and turning right into Schwalbenschwanz, they get all four wheels off the deck. The landscape is so varied that each bend and every dip provides a different aspect and backdrop to see the racing from. What’s most impressive is the velocity, the indomitable noise, the speed differential and the decibel factor. The faster cars including the Porsches deploy flashing lights as they come up to lap slower cars.

We head back to the pits to watch the driver changes from within the Falken garage and lounge.

They are well-rehearsed operations, accompanied by wheel swaps, screen cleaning, and refuelling, which takes the longest. A siren blasts, cars rush in, waved into their designated bay by a lollypop-wielding mechanic, on-board air jacks elevate them, and the job’s done by two mechanics per wheel and two to refuel, while drivers help one another out and in, swapping seat inserts and belting up in the process.

Unless there’s some bodywork to gaffer-tape, the car is stationary for less than three minutes.

At 4.00pm Sunday, the chequered flag is waved, and it’s all over. In the garage, the Falken mechanics, techies and fitters are tired but elated nevertheless, and with good reason: the mint-and-blue-hued GT3R #33 has finished 10th, and it’s the highest-finishing Porsche.

Other than losing #44 early on, it’s been a relatively trouble-free race for the Falken crew. The other Falken drivers are equally upbeat, exchanging hugs and handshakes with everyone around them. It’s a great vibe, and it’ll certainly be on my agenda for next year.

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

THE JUNIORS IT'S NOT AS CHEAP AS IT ONCE WAS TO MAKE YOUR WAY UP THE SINGLE-SEATER LADDER. BUT FORMULA 4 IS STILL A GREAT TRAINING GORUND FOR YOUNG DRIVERS

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THE lamborghini's laboratory on four wheels

ESSENZA:

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T

hese days, Lamborghini is a renowned name in motorsport, but it hasn’t always been that way. Indeed, the company founded by Ferrucio Lamborghini in 1963 wanted nothing to do with racing.

Having plied his trade as a mechanic at Ferrari – a company he subsequently became disenfranchised with and left to form his own brand – Lamborghini thought racing as nothing more than an unnecessary extravagance that spent money rather than earn it.

He wasn’t wrong, but throughout the various eras of Lamborghini since, the brand has become not only one of the most desirable on the road, but also a force to be reckoned with on the track.

Its track record since the creation of the Squadra Corse racing division in 2013 has been spectacular.

Over 500 Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVOs have been dispatched off the production line in Sant’Agata Bolognese – the same production line as the ordinary road cars – with more than 40 championships won during this time.

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Quite the feat for a company which was better known for its failures in Formula 1 and the World Sportscar Championship in the early 1990s than taking on the world of GT racing and succeeding.

But perhaps the most striking piece of engineering Lamborghini has developed in recent years has been a car which will never race. It’s a hypercar, but don’t let that trick you into thinking it’ll join the Hypercar class at Le Mans. Lambo already has a burgeoning LMDh project, but that’s a different story.

Instead, what we’re talking about is a behemoth, a veritable internal combustion monster.

The Lamborghini Essenza SCV12.

As the name suggests, it’s powered by Lamborghini’s iconic V12 engine. And despite being part of the Volkswagen Group, make no mistake, this is a real Lamborghini engine. Not an Audi. In fact, all V12 engines in the back of Lamborghinis are built, produced and dispatched from Sant’Agata Bolognese.

To see it is one thing, but to get a real sense of what the Essenza is, you need to feel it, experience it.

“It’s a very special car,” explains five-time Le Mans

EMANUELE PIRRO HAS BEEN DEVELOPING THE CAR

24 Hour winner Emanuele Pirro, who was one of the official test drivers for the Essenza. “With a loadbearing transmission at the rear and an incredibly powerful engine, [it was] born to race but not compete, and destined to unite elegance, design, and top performance.

“This was the first time that I was involved from the very beginning of a project and followed the whole gestation period, as if it were a living creature. It was an emotional and really stimulating experience.

“Throughout my career I’ve contributed to the development of several cars, but this was the first one where I followed every single step of the evolution, able to give my contribution at each stage.”

How to develop a trackday hypercar Pirro certainly knows what he is talking about, having helped Audi dominate Le Mans in the 2000s.

The importance of driver and car being at one with each other is not to be understated. While the Essenza SCV12 is not meant for competition, it is in fact a race car, which means it undergoes the same development work – and more – than your regular Huracán GT3 EVO. “Finding the right balance has been a real motivation; a case of just chipping away, but we did

it: without ever accepting compromises, working as if we were doing an endurance race the following day.

Suspension, brakes, tyres: everything has to be perfectly calibrated to allow even non-professional drivers to enjoy the enormous potential of this car without feeling intimidated by it.”

“Our journey with the Essenza SCV12 was a beautiful and fascinating one,” added Pirro. “That might seem like a banal thing to say, but it’s true.”

True to Lamborghini’s ethos, the Essenza SCV12 is a powerful, naturally aspirated V12 machine which is produced in limited supply. Just 40 cars have been built, with customers ranging from semi-professional drivers to loyal gentleman customers.

You’ll see the cars at selected events across Europe, with the Essenza appearing on the bill of SRO Motorsport’s GT World Challenge in the form of the GT1 Sports Club.

One thing which stands out most from the Essenza is its roar, even on the pitlane speed limiter. It pops and bangs as it trundles down the pitlane, replaced only by the progressively high-pitched scream as the V12 finds it voice. The gears cutting make your eyes water, the downshifts are music and the sound of the throttle applied almost immediately after sends shivers down

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the spine.

THE CAR IN DETAIL Speaking after the official launch of the Essenza SCV12 in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Essenza SCV12 Liaison Manager Adriano Tozzi said that the design of the car

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from the firm’s Centro Stile department went hand-inhand with the mechanical and engineering build of the hypercar.

And it’s easy to see that cohesion between the two: “Essneza in Italian translates to ‘essence’ which means the tradition of Lamborghini. That is to say, innovation and emotion,” Tozzi explained.

“When thinking about the purest track machine, our engineers along with our mechanics and designers started with three main things in mind. These were the engine and transmission, track orientated vehicle dynamics and the design and aerodynamics.”

At the heart of the car is the naturally aspirated V12 engine, which is derived from the road car and brought

up to 830hp thanks to the ram effect created by the snorkel air intake on the top of the car.

As for the transmission, the six-speed gearbox was specifically conceived in partnership with Xtract and is unique in that it is a structural load-bearing part of the chassis, complete with the suspension installed on the back as one element.

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On top of that, there’s carbon ceramic brake discs and ABS to assist with stopping of the car, as well as a full range of traction control settings.

If that all sounds like a driver’s dream, there’s more.

Inside the car is other-worldly. The cabin is built around a carbon fibre monocoque, meaning that, unlike other Lamborghini race cars, there is no roll cage to clamber in over to get into the driver’s seat.

On the steering wheel, there’s a pre-loaded clutch,

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engine mappings, traction control options galore and, more importantly, plenty of space for the driver too.

And as Lamborghini’s head of motorsport, Giorgio Sanna explains, the ‘laboratory of ideas’ the Essenza project has utilised modern technology and philosophies to make one of the most sophisticated cars the brand has ever created.

“The Essenza SCV12 was born as a ‘laboratory’ of ideas. This allowed us to use technical solutions usually

found in racing prototypes, such as the suspension installed directly on the load-bearing gearbox, which is an innovative solution for a GT car.

“In addition, it features the new carbon fiber monocoque chassis without steel roll cage, resulting from technical collaboration with the FIA, thanks to which we’ve started a process that will lead to an exponential improvement in safety for GT racing drivers in the future.”

THE CUSTOMERS You might be wondering: just who would be able to afford such a machine? Well, if you were planning on saving up for one of these beasts, it might take you a fair while before you can stump up the cash as the Essenza SCV12 comes in at a cool €2,000,000.

But what the lucky 40 customers get for their money

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THE ESSENZA SCV12 WIILL COST

€2,000,000

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is the full Lamborghini experience.

The programme is split into three distinct pillars: trackdays, tailor-made events and dedicated storage services.

Lamborghini Squadra Corse organises special ‘official’ trackday events at five of Europe’s best circuits, including Imola, Monza, Paul Ricard and Vallelunga, which offers customers a chance to work with engineers to optimise the Essenza to suit their driving styles.

On-site support is tailored to the owners, meaning that seat time is not wasted.

Customers can also organise their own events, if they are unable or unwilling to travel long distances to any of the five official events.

Lamborghini will deliver the car and send their own team of engineers, mechanics and personnel to any circuit the owner wants, providing the same tailored services too.

And on top of all that, owners don’t even need to worry about storing their Essenza, as Lamborghini will take care of that as well.

And as for the driving sensation? Lamborghini Factory Driver Marco Mapelli, who has been a key development member of the Essenza project sums it up perfectly.

“Essenza SCV12 is not only a fast car that can deliver exhilarating experiences, but it’s also equipped with an incredibly comfortable and spacious cabin.

This is a unique feature appreciated by all gentlemen drivers, for whom it is intended.”

“Along with the aerodynamic load of over 1200 kg at top speed the stiffness of the car contributes to ensuring extraordinary driving precision. This makes it possible for the driver to tackle curves at speed without any appreciable correction of the steering angle.

“All-in-all, the Essenza is a very fast car, very enjoyable to drive, but also thanks to the innovations, a very easy car to drive.”

Now, if you had a spare €2,000,000 to splash out on a trackday hypercar, surely the Essenza SCV12 would be right up at the top of that list?

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IMAGE BY BRIAN SMITH

RALLY3 FIESTA THERE'S VARYING LEVELS OF RALLYING MACHINERY AND THE FIESTA BEING DRIVEN BY WILLIAM CREIGHTON ABOVE IS A RALLY3 CAR. HE'S CURRENTLY SEVENTH IN THE WRC3 CHAMPIONSHIP WITH 30 POINTS TO HIS NAME.

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TOBY’S JOURNEY Since his last column, Toby Trice has taken his first steps into the Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge.

Here's how he's got on in the opening races:

H

i everybody! The last time we spoke I announced that I was making the move to the Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge for 2022, and I’d just completed my first test in the car. And I can safely say it has been one hell of

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Jakob Ebrey

a ride since!

The Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge has been a joy of a championship to join to date. Moving up to slick tyres, a lot more power, a mid-engined car, joining Porsche. They’re all big things and ticks a lot of boxes of what I want to get out of my time in motorsport. I’m really, really happy to be finally racing as a Porsche category racing driver.

This year, we headed to Silverstone for the first race weekend, and being new to the championship, we had very little expectations. We just wanted to get a round under our feet and see what it was like and build a platform to work off from there. We’d had very little testing prior to Silverstone so we literally turned up on

the Friday to just see what we could do with the car. It was a bit of a test weekend for us in many ways.

We built the car setup throughout the weekend.

SVG Motorsport has done an amazing job getting the balance there on the car and by the end of Silverstone, although we finished in sixth and fifth - but with a penalty - and then sixth again in the third race, which are results we wanted, we came away with a lot of data.

We made a lot of improvement over the course of that weekend. I was more comfortable in the car and the team were more comfortable with the car. It was a really positive start.

From there, we headed to Thruxton in Hampshire for our first British Touring Car Championship support race weekend. It was my first time racing at Thruxton and it was simply phenomenal. It’s a great circuit, super quick with a lot of mid to high speed corners. The average lap speed is insane in this car.

Again, we kind of showed our hand pretty early on

Jakob Ebrey

into the weekend. We had a very good result in race one with a fifth place finish, and it gave us a really good opportunity for race two. I was really happy and confident with the setup and I managed to get a great start in the second race to get up to fourth.

I was feeling quite happy and comfortable with that position until I was taken out after three laps of racing going into the final chicane, which was really frustrating. I pitted, we changed the tyres and I went back out so I made it to the finish line, but it wasn’t to be at Thruxton unfortunately. But, I was trying to be optimistic and trying to understand all the changes we could make in the team.

Nonetheless, we took that momentum to Croft, which was again another new circuit that I had never been to. Given it was a new track for me, we wanted to be realistic on what we could achieve, but our goal for the weekend was a fourth place finish in the race.

I qualified in sixth, so we were slightly off that target position, but I found some pace in the data that we took into the race and it allowed me to take another step on the Sunday, to claim two third place finishes, securing my first podium results of the season.

It was also my maiden podium as a pro Porsche driver, and not only one, but two of them. So I’m really

happy. We had so much coverage on the ITV4 live broadcast, which is amazing, and all my sponsors were there which really rounded everything off perfectly.

We had an amazing weekend and it was a really great turning point for us to build on as the championship continues.

There’s now three race weekends left on the calendar, with Oulton Park up next. We then go on to Brands Hatch, which is my home circuit, and then to Donington for the final round of the season.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how we do at those races, especially Brands Hatch, which is my favourite circuit in the UK, and let’s hope we move further up the order.

I’m now fifth in the championship standings and fourth is a realistic and achievable target. And there is even the possibility of getting up to third, which would be a serious finishing result for us.

If we do that in our first year, it will be an amazing achievement, not only for myself, but also SVG Motorsport and my partners considering we all came in fresh to the Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge GB. There’s plenty to be excited for, so yeah, wish us luck and see how I got on in the next issue!

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IN SHORT

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Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool

MOTO GP'S SILLY SEASON IS IN FULL FORCE

BY ADAM PROUD

Silly season. It’s named that because that’s exactly what it is, silly. Yet this year’s MotoGP ‘silly season’ is perhaps a little more exciting and intriguing than past years, especially recently.

But why does it have a different feel to it, you may ask? Well, that’s what adds to the silliness of it all, there isn’t just one reason. Usually there’s a domino effect that starts off a wave of movements in the rider market.

But a few factors have been at play in 2022 and it’s turned into a bit of a tsunami of movements.

Off the top of my head, I can’t remember a recent year where there was this much rider movement alongside so much speculation and drama.

We’ve had the bombshell news that Suzuki is looking to depart MotoGP at the end of the year, along with Ducati having a refresh of its line-ups, and then add RNF taking on Aprilia bikes next year. That’s just to name a few factors.

These changes, and others on that note, have already set into motion some movement of riders. But usually by now, with the summer break underway, we would have essentially a clear image of what the grid will look like next year. However, that just isn’t the case this season, with six of the 11 teams on the grid yet to officially confirm their full line-ups.

Repsol Honda, LCR, Ducati, Pramac, Tech3 and RNF are those teams in question.

The two Ducati powered teams in that list are the two that so far look to be certain with who they’ll go for. Jorge Martin or Enea Bastianini are competing for that top seat on the factory Desmosedici, with the one who loses out on that seat looking set to join Johann Zarco at Pramac.

But it’s the other teams that heading into the summer break still had a foggy image of who will be joining them come 2023.

We’ve had riders such as Miguel Oliveira being displaced from his seat on the factory KTM, turning down an offer to be demoted

to the Tech3 squad, creating numerous speculations of where he’d end up.

It looked like he was set for a seat on one of Gresini bikes, after being spotted with the team in the paddock, which then led to a special live-streamed interview being scheduled between the 27-year-old and the MotoGP promoters. It just so happened Gresini scheduled an announcement on the same day, at the same time.

But suddenly the talk of Oliveira heading to the outfit diminished, when Gresini announced Alex Marquez would be joining the team alongside the returning Fabio Di Giannantonio.

That added more fuel to an already blazing fire in this year’s silly season.

The shock news that Suzuki were discussing the possibility of quitting MotoGP was arguably the catalyst of all of this. As two top riders in Joan Mir and Alex Rins suddenly had their futures thrown into doubt and were sent scrambling for a seat.

And who could say no to either of the two? Mir, 2020 world champion, and Rins, a consistent front runner who just needs to find that extra push that will see him be a genuine title contender.

It’s hard to say that there’s a chance Suzuki will be staying in the premier class as of now. With its two current riders actively looking for a seat elsewhere, should the Japanese manufacturer choose to remain on the grid, the chances are they will have to search for two new riders and field a completely fresh line-up.

There’s still plenty of questions to be answered on 2023’s MotoGP grid, but one thing is for sure. It’s going to look a lot different this time next year.

Honda, LCR, Tech3, Ducati, RNF and Pramac had at least one seat still up for grabs come the end of the Dutch GP. An unusual amount given the time of year it is.

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Image credit: PHD Photo

GETTING THE SENNA EXPERIENCE

BY ROB HANSFORD

Calum Lockie is no stranger to driving incredibly precious and special racing machinery. He’s carved out a career for himself as a historic racing specialist. But even he couldn’t help but get excited about the car he got to drive at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

He’s used to driving both vintage and contemporary machinery, and has driven the hillclimb at Goodwood before, but until this year, he’d never been behind the wheel of a Formula 1 machine in the Sussex Downs.

And it wasn’t just any F1 machine either. He drove an F1 icon Ayrton Senna’s first ever Formula 1 car.

“The only thing I’ve taken up [the Goodwood hill] before was the Sierra Cosworth RS500 - the Kaliber car that belongs to Julian Thomas who I race with - and Martin Brayne’s Ford Group C C100. So I have taken a Group C car up the field before. But this is a new departure thanks to Geoff Page Racing, and a very exciting opportunity.

“I mean Senna’s first [F1] race car, it doesn’t get much better than that does it?”

It’s not hard to see why Lockie was so excited to drive the car.

Obviously Senna was one of the greatest racing drivers to grace F1, but even putting that to one side, the car itself left a huge mark in the history books.

The Toleman TG183 never won a race, it never even made it to the podium. But it was competitive and it gave Ayrton Senna the opportunity to make his mark in Formula 1.

Every hardcore Formula 1 fan will remember Senna’s nearvictory in the Monaco Grand Prix in 1984, but Senna was driving the TG184 in that race, the TG183’s successor.

In fact, Senna started the year driving the TG183 and although he retired from the opening round in Brazil, it wasn’t long before he was making an impact, achieving two sixth place finishes in South Africa and Belgium, despite starting the race considerably down the order.

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Of course, Senna’s talent helped him achieve those results, but there’s no way he could have finished his first three races with two points finishes without a car capable of fighting towards the sharp end.

The TG183 wasn’t the complete package, but it wasn’t a dud either. It could cope with the competition. Senna just managed to extract every ounce of performance out of it to bring home the two consecutive top six finishes.

It’s therefore easy to understand why Lockie was so happy to be driving the car. But driving on the Goodwood hill does mean he was restricted by just how hard he could drive the car.

“You give it a damn good blast off the start to get a wiggle on and some smoke of the tyres and warm it up a little bit,” said Lockie when asked how hard he was driving the car.

“A little bit careful into the first corner, careful into Mulcombe because that claims a lot of scalps, and careful into Flint Wall.

We’re not doing timed runs, so it’s not about maxing. It’s about giving it a good show, giving it a good run, but with a nice safety margin.”

And what a show it was for the fans too. The drivers might love getting behind the wheel of these iconic cars, but the spectators also love seeing them, and hearing them thrash around the grounds of Goodwood House. There’s nothing like it.

And after the event was impacted for the last two years due to covid, Lockie was glad to see the event back in full force once again.

“It’s just amazing. Look at it. It’s a true world class event and you have to take your hat off to His Grace, the Duke of Richmond and his amazing team for putting it on again.

“Just look at it. Tens and hundreds of thousands of people here, having a wonderful time.”

Image credit: Red Bull

PADDON'S RETURN TO THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

BY ADAM PROUD

A stint of over two years tackling the regional branch of rallying is beginning to merge back into a bout on the international stage for Hayden Paddon.

Having spent the majority of 2019 contesting the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship and the whole of 2021 dominating the New Zealand Rally Championship while unable to leave the country due to COVID-19, the 35-year-old is back on the international scene with rallies in Italy and Latvia already under his belt at the time of writing.

However, being a round of the European Rally Championship, the latter of the two brought a bit more importance to it, as it was the first major event Paddon has completed since Wales Rally GB in 2019. And it also signified his first drive in the Hyundai i20 N Rally2 car.

He and his team got the car just days before Rally Liepāja began, leaving him with no time to get a feel for his new Hyundai before being thrown into the deep end and going straight onto the special stages.

This was evident for Paddon, too. A rocky start to proceedings on the first day led to him confessing he had very little in the way of a good feeling with the car and reserving the rest of proceedings to adapt and learn with the Rally2 machinery.

After all, the big test was yet to come for the Kiwi.

Having spent almost three years away from any rallying outside his home country, you’d assume that it would have taken him some time to get back up to speed with the competitiveness and toughness that international rallying brings.

Yet Paddon is launching right back into the thick of it.

Three WRC rallies in the form of Estonia, Finland and his home of New Zealand have been pencilled in for him to contest in 2022. By the time he reaches his home rally, with hundreds more kilometres under his belt in the i20 N, is it too bold to suggest he could be on for a class win? Don’t forget he dominated those roads last year.

Despite one mistake on the Latvian stages, which caused him to drop out of second place and down the order, Paddon did look to already have a good rhythm, despite being certain that wasn’t the case.

On the second day of Latvia, he seemed much more confident, a symbol that the 2016 Rally Argentina winner can learn the ropes with ease and in quick time at that. So maybe it is wise to suggest he will be in the running for victory by the time WRC heads to New Zealand.

When 2023 eventually arrives, Paddon will have competed in at least three rallies using the Rally2 Hyundai. Add that on to the testing that will be done within that period, and he will be brimming with confidence in the car.

Paddon is already aiming to be back in the WRC paddock full-time come 2023, with the view that he will contest the WRC2 championship on a regular basis. So expect to see him running right at the front consistently should that aim come to fruition.

The last time he was a regular in WRC? That was back in 2018, where he was in the top level of rallying, completing eight events in that year with Hyundai.

It’s been a strange four years for Paddon. 2020 and 2021 were spent locked down at home with only regional rallies in his reach. But now there’s a new chapter on the horizon, a period of national rallies is coming to an end and the Kiwi that has become a consistently strong driver in the highest form of rallying is back.

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

MONACO THE MONACO HISTORIC HAS BEEN RUNNING SINCE 2009 AND CELEBRATES A VARIETY OF ERAS FROM THE WORLD OF FORMULA 1.

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THE 2022 EVENT WILL BE HELD FROM THE 13-15 MAY, WITH THE TICKETS NOW RACES TAKING PLACE ON THE SAME ICONIC CIRCUIT THAT HAS HOSTED F1 SINCE 1950.

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