Issue 11

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THE PIT STOP issue 11

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 MATT WIDDOWSON


CONTENTS

8 18 32 46 60 IN SHORT

THE F1 ICON THAT WAS NEARLY SYNONYMOUS WITH FAILURE A look back at how Mika Hakkinen came close to throwing away his world championship titles

UNFINISHED BUSINESS Mark Blundell explains why he still feels he has unfinished business at Le Mans

MORE THAN A RACE Derek Warwick looks back at his Le Mans 24 Hours career, and why it meant more to him than any other race

BEATING THE ODDS A deep dive into Richard Attwood's Le Mans career and how he won with Porsche in 1970

100 YEARS OF LE MANS A look back at the history of the world's greatest endurance race

LAMBORGHINI UNVEILS ITS 2024 WEC CHALLENGER


30 YEARS OF THE FESTIVAL OF SPEED A deep dive into the history of Goodwood's marque hillclimb event

60 YEARS OF MCLAREN CUSTOMER RACING We take a look at McLaren's 60 year history as a customer racing provider

THE YO-YO EFFECT Phil Hanson talks about his fledgling Le Mans career and how he's already experienced most things the race has to offer

VETTEL'S LEGACY Garth Kenardington takes a look at the work Sebastian Vettel is doing with Race Without Trace

SUCCESS OR FAILURE Ian Page examines whether W Series should be considered a success despite it collapsing

SPRINT RACES ARE WORKING FOR MOTOGP

78 102 116 128 138 HOW A PROSPECTIVE NEW TEAM PLANS TO SHAKE UP F1 THE PIT STOP 5


I

LEGACY

t's funny how timing works out. 2023 is a landmark anniversary for so many events, brands and races. This year alone, Goodwood is celebrating not only its 30th anniversary of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, but also of the circuit itself and the Goodwood Revival. Beyond the world of West Sussex, Le Mans has celebrated the centenary edition of its 24 Hour race while McLaren and Porsche are celebrating landmark birthdays. Usually here at The Pit Stop we make a point of not running themes through a single issue. We are all about providing variety to you at all levels. But for this issue, we had to go with a theme, one that we hope you will enjoy. With Goodwood's celebrations of the Festival of Speed, Le Man's 100th birthday and the 60th anniversary of McLaren's inception, we had to go down the route of anniversaries, telling the incredible stories they all have to offer. Le Mans as a race has so many stories hidden away in its locker, and so naturally one story was not enough. Instead, we've included five stories, not only about the race itself but also about the experiences of several drivers that have tackled the event over the course of several different eras. And although the race has now been running for 100 years, it never ceases to amaze me how many different experiences it provides drivers, teams, officials and fans alike. It's a race that cannot be described as uneventful in any way. Even races that could be considered less dramatic than others still had plenty of action and have great stories to tell. That's the beauty of the race, and it's why we all love it so much. The same goes for Goodwood. It's hard to believe that it's now 30 years old. When the idea to put on the Festival of Speed came about, it was only there to serve a purpose - to enable people to remember the role Goodwood had to play in the world of motorsport. It was there to help regain publicity while Goodwood worked on getting the track re-opened. And now it is one of the cornerstones of British motorsport. The world flocks to the event ready to reminisce and scoff on nostalgia while also appreciating the present and the future. For us here at The Pit Stop, it's one of our favourite events of the year. There's nowhere else like it. And it's not just the fans that love it either. Many think that a lot of these drivers and riders rock up to do a job, drive their machine up the hill and then go home. But you only have to spend a bit of time with them, watching them gaze in awe as any other fan in the grounds to realise that's not true. The same can be said for Sebastian Vettel. This year he attended the Festival of Speed to raise awareness for Race Without Trace. He wants to show the world you can drive V10 F1 cars without harming the world with fossil fuels. Now a driver of Vettel's stature could have easily done his media piece, waved at the camera a few times, taken his magnificent cars up the hill and then disappeared out of sight. Not Vettel. Instead, after taking his cars up the hill, he went to the tent where they were being kept for the weekend and invited a few spectators behind the tape where he then spent time showing them around. It was fan engagement of the highest proportion, but it wasn't like he needed to do it. He wanted to do it. And it's the atmosphere of the Festival of Speed that encourages that. It's great to see. All weekend you see a different side to these mega stars. They love it just as much as you and I. And seeing them getting involved and getting so excited about the other machinery around them makes you realise one thing: they might well be super-human behind a car, but out of it they really are just the same as you and I. A fan.

EDITORIAL Editor Rob Hansford Photography Editor Brian Smith Contributors Gareth Kenardington, Ian Page, Adam Proud Photography Contributors PHD Photo, Ed Waplington, Matt Widdowson, Grand Prix Photo, Indira Flack, John Brooks, Robert Clayson THANKS TO Matt Beer, Peter Nygaard, John Brooks, Robert Clayson, Duke of Richmond, Katharine Morgan, Hannah Corkish, Sam Smith,Roger Ormisher, Kevin Ritson, Indira Flack COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES Enquiries commercialenquiries@thepitstopmagazine.com 6 | THE PIT STOP


IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO


THE F1 ICON THAT WAS NEARLY SYNONYMOUS

WITH FAILURE WORDS BY GARTH KENARDINGTON IMAGES BY GRAND PRIX PHOTO / MCLAREN

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M

ika Hakkinen in a silver McLaren. It's a late-1990s Formula 1 image synonymous with success. The combination that delayed the start of the Michael Schumacher/Ferrari era. The man who could actually outpace and outrace Schumacher in the car that allowed him to show it. Twenty grand prix wins. Twentysix pole positions. Two world championships Nearly three. Hakkinen is an F1 legend. The 1990s Silver Arrows McLaren-Mercedes iconic cars in the Adrian Newey aero magic pantheon. But it would not have taken much at all for that image of Hakkinen in a silver McLaren to evoke thoughts of wasted opportunities. He could so easily have been not the man who held Ferrari at bay, but the man who let Ferrari win when it was still inferior. And two barely fathomable crashes in Italy would've been the most galling - and best remembered - reasons

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why that happened had it come to pass. Melbourne 1998. McLaren's front row duo Hakkinen and David Coulthard are eight tenths of a second clear of Schumacher in third. On race day they win by a lap over Schumacher's team-mate Eddie Irvine (Schumacher himself is an early retirement with engine failure). The intra-team power balance at McLaren is made very clear when Hakkinen loses the lead by mishearing an instruction and making an errant pitstop, and Coulthard is ordered to hand the lead back to him. On the evidence of that weekend you would've expected Hakkinen to run away with at least that season and probably the next too. As it turned out, he only prevailed over Schumacher in a last-round decider in '98. There was bad luck involved there, though. And a stronger than expected Ferrari challenge. Melbourne 1999. The McLaren speed advantage is bigger still, Schumacher in third on the grid a painful 1.3s off Hakkinen on pole. Yet by the time Schumacher is sidelined with


HAKKINEN AND IRVINE BATTLING AT THE JAPANESE GRAND PRIX IN 1999

a broken leg at that July's British Grand Prix, Hakkinen has only just squeezed out an eight-point championship lead over him. Come the end of the season, Hakkinen beats Schumacher's understudy team-mate Irvine by just two points. No F1 historian would put Irvine remotely in Hakkinen's class as an F1 driver, yet Hakkinen nearly loses a world title to him despite having a superior car. Many things conspired against Hakkinen that year that were out of his hands. Reliability problems, McLaren tactical miscues, a clumsy first-lap punt from Coulthard in Austria. Half a dozen races where Hakkinen did little wrong and points were robbed from him. But then there was also Imola and Monza. And 20 points tossed away that he could only blame himself for. And those were the ones that would have really lingered in the memory had 1999 turned out to be the year that Ferrari's two-decade F1 drivers' title drought ended, not 2000. Hakkinen was actually two points behind Irvine going into round three at Imola, having retired from Melbourne with a throttle problem on a day Irvine inherited victory and then overcome a gearbox scare to win at Interlagos. At Imola, he left everyone absolutely standing at first. By lap 17 he was nearly 13s clear of Coulthard in second and 17s ahead of Schumacher in third, Irvine another 8s back in fourth. A lighter fuel load helped, but his lead was already such that his strategy was on

course to work no matter what anyone else tried. Then, coming out of the final chicane, Hakkinen put a wheel on the grass and suddenly turned sharp left into the outside wall, an almost pathetically tiny error instantaneously prompting a car-shattering shunt. Monza, four months later. Hakkinen is only one point clear of Irvine, now his official main title rival in Schumacher's absence. But all looks golden for him on Ferrari's home ground, as he leads by 8s over Jordan's underdog title threat Heinz-Harald Frentzen while Irvine toils in eighth. Then Hakkinen locks the rear brakes going into the first chicane. The McLaren spins and stalls so quickly that he's thrown the steering wheel out of the car before it even stops. He storms away and breaks down crying in the Monza park trees, infamously caught on camera by the helicopter crew. That's an unforgettable part of 1990s F1 history. But it's not the defining image of the 1999 season because Hakkinen did enough - just - to still win the title, mainly thanks to being absolutely unstoppable at Suzuka in the race he really couldn't afford to lose at the end of the season. Hakkinen and McLaren made heavier weather of their titles together than they really should have given their pace. To be so far ahead at the start of the year on raw speed yet have to scrape the title at a lastround decider is needlessly close to failure. When that narrow escape from humiliation element to those title wins is remembered, it's often Hakkinen's

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FORMER F1 ENGINEER ROB SMEDLEY IS THE MAN BEHIND THE PROJECT

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errors that are cited first. But there were far fewer of those than there were McLaren mistakes or failures. And while the 1999 McLaren was a very fast car, it was not an easy one. None of them were that season, as the additional groove in what had become much harder tyres as Bridgestone inherited a control supply with Goodyear's exit meant every design on the grid pretty unpleasant to drive. At both Imola and Monza, Hakkinen was under far more championship pressure from Ferrari than he would've been if his McLaren had been more reliable that season. He was trying to make up for his team's fragility, in a car that was unpredictable when on the edge. “The ‘99 car was difficult to drive," Hakkinen admitted many years later. "The regulations changed, with the extra groove in the tyres. The car became much more nervous from the rear end. Racing drivers don’t want that. "It’s OK to have a nice front end, it’s good to have

that, but at the same time if you have a rear end which is not there, it’s unpleasant. It takes the confidence away. “But those accidents weren’t caused by that. What these two accidents have in common, yes, both of them were in Italy, funnily enough. But what is in common with these two accidents is that they both happened when you had two-stop tactics in the race. "It was a calculation that we really need to create a certain lap time compared to our competitors to be able to finish first. So that means every lap time has to be in a certain window - not two tenths slower, it has to be spot on all the time. "And when you do that, when the driver has to perform fighting against the clock all the time, you need to take risks. You need to drive flat out. And when you take risks, shit can happen. “We had a discussion in Imola, that it’s going to be a difficult one. Imola was purely my mistake, no doubt about it because I was just too greedy, pushing too

"THE CAR BECAME MORE NERVOUS FROM THE REAR END. RACING DRIVERS DON'T WANT THAT"

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hard on the kerb and going too fast. “And Monza was I would say 50/50 with the team, and that hurt a lot in Monza, that was really bad.” Hakkinen was a far deeper and more complex character than his 'Iceman' (the original, pre-Kimi, one) reputation portrayed him to be. The full brutal details of everything he went through when recovering from the Adelaide 1995 crash that nearly claimed his life, the mental exhaustion that led to his retirement after 2001, the calm bluntness with which he confronted

Schumacher over his weaving after putting such an epic defeat on him at Spa in 2000, and those tears in the Monza trees were all evidence of that. And the story of how he came so close to losing the title in a 1999 season he should've walked is more complicated than just those Imola and Monza errors too. They were just the spectacularly painful chapters of a story that Hakkinen and McLaren ultimately earned a happy ending to. Just.

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IMAGE BY ED WAPLINGTON

GT WORLD CHALLENGE VALENTINO ROSSI TOOK TO THE BRANDS HATCH CIRCUIT EARLY ON IN 2023, RACING IN THE FANATEC GT WORLD CHALLENGE WITH HIS WRT BMW.

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UNFIN BUS 18 | THE PIT STOP


ISHED INESS WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY JOHN BROOKS / PEUGEOT

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S

tarting out in the junior ranks of motorsport, you never know where your success is going to lie, if at all. And while every driver has their hopes pinned on a certain championship, they never truly know whether that will be the case or not. For Mark Blundell, success in sportscar racing was never really in his mind since his primary focus was winning in Formula 1, But when the opportunity to go endurance racing and to compete at Le Mans came about, it didn’t take long for him to find some success. Heading into 1989 Blundell was at a bit of a crossroads in his carer. He’d been methodically rising up the single-seater ladder, racing in International Formula 3000, while also dipping his toe into Japan, with a one off outing in Japanese Formula 3000 in 1988 with Footwork. Naturally, Formula 1 was the ultimate goal for Blundell - one he did go on to achieve - but there was no opening on the grid for 1989. And so with no serious international single-seater racing prospects propelling themselves into Blundell’s orbit, he decided to head to sportscars, and immediately landed himself a seat with a factory team: Nissan. “For me, the programme was the start of my ‘professional career’ as I would term it,” Blundell explained to The Pit Stop. “I was retained by Nissan as a professional driver. It was an incredibly busy season because I was also doing F3000 and Williams Grand Prix testing. “The World SportsCar Championship back then was quite healthy, and it was well represented by

several manufacturers. So, to come in with Nissan in collaboration with Lola - because they were manufacturing the chassis side, and that was one of the areas that was positive for me - was great. I had a good rapport and relationship with those guys from when I first started racing back in 1984. “So yeah, all good but it was not without its problems because the programme was quite, to a degree, underfunded I would say in certain areas. But then in other areas maybe overfunded and it was just about trying to get the balance right. I think Le Mans was also a little bit of a shock to the system for them." Making a Le Mans debut should have been a moment that Blundell would never forget in a positive way. Instead, the race was over almost as soon as it began. Driving the Nissan R89C alongside Julian Bailey and Martin Donnelly, they managed to put the car 12th on the grid for the 1989 edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours, setting a best time of 3m24.090s. But an innovative approach prevented the team from getting much further beyond that. “When we arrived, I believe at that point we were undertaking to become the first team to run carbon fibre brakes,” Blundell explained. “To put it mildly, this was a disaster. I think they lasted one or two laps. “Julian Bailey was driving the car and he ran into the back of one of the Jaguars because his brakes failed.” On the sixth lap of the race, coming to the end of the Mulsanne straight, Bailey’s brakes gave up and he crashed into the rear of John Nielsen’s Jaguar. It spun Bailey 180 degrees, with the front end of the car

BLUNDELL'S FIRST DRIVE AT LE MANS CAME WITH NISSAN

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BLUNDELL ON THE PODIUM AFTER WINNING LE MANS IN 1992

in tatters. The bonnet had gone, but worse still, the suspension was damaged beyond repair. The race was done and so too was Blundell’s first real experience of Le Mans. He might have been able to soak up the atmosphere over the duration of the weekend, but he never got the chance to take part in the race itself. A similar fate was bestowed on Blundell the following year in 1990. Again, racing with Nissan, Blundell’s car failed to finish the race, retiring after 142 laps with a transmission failure. But at least this time he’d been able to get behind the wheel and experience the race first hand. It didn’t take long for success to head Blundell’s way though. Just two years in fact. Having made his F1 debut with Brabham in 1991, Blundell got the chance to join McLaren as test driver for 1992. He was getting himself nicely acquainted with the world of F1 and sportscar racing was now largely over and done with as far as he was concerned, but a call from Jean Todt changed that for that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. After a recommendation from Derek Warwick, Todt called Blundell to ask him to be the third driver for the lead Peugeot 905 Ev0 1B. And when Blundell joined up with the team ahead of the race, he instantly knew it was going to be a different kettle of fish compared to his previous two visits with Nissan. “That was to a degree kind of like a Formula 1 car dressed in sportscar clothing,” Blundell explained when

describing what the Peugeot team was like. “It had an incredible power unit, a very well-funded team, and a huge amount of preparation went in beforehand. We undertook two 36-hour tests previous of taking on Le Mans. So yeah, a very good experience indeed.” Blundell was right to be impressed. Along with Warwick and Yannick Dalmas, they qualified second for the race, behind the sister Peugeot, but in the race it was a different story. Dalmas, Warwick and Blundell ended up dominating, crossing the line to win the race by six laps at the end of the 24 hours, beating the #33 Toyota TS010. It was incredible victory, one that Blundell still looks back on in awe. “For me it was an interesting season because I had walked away from the Brabham situation in F1 and gone to McLaren. McLaren called me up, and I took the reserve and test driver role with [Ayrton] Senna and [Gerhard] Berger. So, that was my main focus, but obviously, the Peugeot opportunity came up headed by Jean Todt at the time, to join them in the squad at Le Mans, and join Yannick Dalmas and Derek Warwick. “So, it was nice in a way to have a 100% scoring record. Of course, I only did one race that year, but to win it was good and that car was very, very special. “With a French manufacturer like Peugeot, there was quite a lot of pressure being added to get some sort of formal result because of the allegiance there and the heritage. Being at Le Mans, at a French race,

"THAT WAS TO A DEGREE KIND OF LIKE A FORMULA 1 CAR DRESSED IN SPORTSCAR CLOTHING"

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and a huge amount of French funding went into it from sponsors. “Also, there were two Brits in one car, there was us two [Blundell and Warwick] and Yannick. But it was it was all very well structured. We all enjoyed it immensely and we all enjoyed each other's company as teammates. “I think that was one of the primary things where it worked so well. We all had a huge amount of respect for each other, and everyone delivered. All the team personnel did a fantastic job. “Actually, I think we all looked at each other at the end of 24 hours, in admiration of what the car and the

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team had achieved because I think it could have done another 12 hours quite easily. It was that good. Almost bulletproof.” Soon after celebrations ended, Blundell was back to the world of F1, but the itch for more success was there. He’d won the toughest race in the world. And when the opportunity to head back to the Le Sarthe circuit came about three years later via his F1 employer McLaren, he jumped at the chance, although things didn’t go the way he hoped. McLaren never entered a factory works team at Le Mans, but in 1995 it had six customer cars in the race. One of those entries was submitted by Gulf Racing,


with the car owned by Ray Bellm. Bellm had contested Le Mans several times in the past, having raced alongside his business parter Gordon Spice on five previous occasions, two of which resulted in class victories. But in 1995 he decided to take a McLaren F1 GTR to Le Mans, and employed Blundell and Maurizio Sandro Sala to race alongside him. In qualifying trim, the F1 GTR was unable to match the speed of the pacesetting Peugeot WR LM94 entered by Welter Racing. Its two cars dominated qualifying, with the Courage C34 Porsche hot on its heels in third. By contrast, Blundell’s car was the second

fastest McLaren F1 GTR, but he could only muster 11th on the grid, 12 seconds down on the pole position time. The race was a different story however. The Gulf Racing McLaren proved to be competitive in the opening phase, and reflecting on how events unfolded, Blundell feels it’s one that got away from him. “It’s a little bit of a frustration - that race,” explained Blundell, “because if you reflect back in the early stages of it, pace-wise we were pretty competitive. It's just regretful that Ray had a couple of excursions. You’ll see that Ray in the end lost a bit of confidence and myself and Maurizio Sandro Sala had to pick up the reins between us and carry off the rest of the race.

BLUNDELL DROVE THE MCLAREN F1 GTR IN 1995

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“But I think we came from last to fourth [third in class]. If we hadn’t have had that downtime and time loss, I think we had every possibility of winning like the sister car that did. So yeah, took a little bit of grind that one.” Despite its competitiveness, the F1 GTR was not a car Blundell enjoyed driving, because of one simple point: it wasn’t designed to race. “It wasn't actually a great car in terms of being a racecar. It was a great car for a road car, but it was never intended and designed to be a racecar. So, a huge amount of work had to be undertaken to get it into sort of some configuration that was raceable, and to give it an element of balance. “I mean, the upside of it, the engine was superb. The BMW power unit, the torque was just linear. So that was one of the biggest aspects, and one of the most helpful points in driving in the rain with it because you could maximise that torque in a high gear to get you around. Balance-wise, though, because the engine was up quite high and the centre of gravity was not quite ideal. It was also one of those cars that had a loose back end on it. "It wasn’t the best racecar in the world, but I think at that point in 1995, the conditions suited it, and allowed it to achieve the best possible result.” A stint in the US racing in CART IndyCar prevented Blundell from having a fifth attempt at the legendary endurance event, but in 2001 Blundell linked up with his old team-mate Bailey to tackle Le Mans with MG. That opportunity came via Lola, but both 2001 and 2002 ended in retirement. It wasn’t to be, the MG’s engine just wasn’t robust enough for the demands the race places on a car.

IN 2003 BLUNDELL SWITCHED TO BENTLEY FOR THE LE MANS 24 HOURS

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But in 2003 - what transpired to be his final attempt at securing a second Le Mans victory - Blundell finally got his hands back on fully competitive machinery. Using the iconic Speed 8, Blundell joined David Brabham and Johnny Herbert to drive the #8 Bentley. The car looked beautiful. It looked like the real deal from the outset, with its beauty perfectly matching its pace, and Bentley secured a 1-2 on the grid, with the #8 car second to the #7 car of Ivan Capello, Tom Kristensen and Guy Smith. For the first time since 1995, the chance of winning a second Le Mans 24 Hours was there for taking, and Blundell knew it. The #8 car might have been the slower of the two Bentleys in qualifying, but on race day it was more than a match for the sister car, regularly setting faster laptimes. The #8 car went on to set the fastest lap of the race with a time of 3m35.529s, nearly six tenths faster than what the #7 car managed, but the outright pace wasn’t enough to win, with two problems forcing the car in for unscheduled stops. In the end, Blundell had to settle for second position in 2003, with the #8 car ending the race two laps down on the winning #7 Bentley, and it’s race Blundell looks back on full of disappointment. “[It was] like my final year, with final memories of disappointment, of not being able to be a Bentley boy and take away the win,” said Blundell. “Again, if you reflect and look back in the history books, you'll see that we were the fastest Bentley on the track in terms of performance and lap time. We just got hindered by two incredibly cheap little pieces of kit - basically battery terminals - two batteries and two


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BLUNDELL DRIVING DOWN THE MULSANNE STRAIGHT

ON THE PODIUM IN 2003

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lots of terminals failed on us, which required us to pit on two separate occasions. That took us out of sequence and put us on the back foot. “So we came second, but the win was there for sure in terms of performance. If only we’d have had the durability from the car, we would have been on the top step. But fortunately, the sister car did the job and won. I think all of us, me, Johnny and David, we all had a little bit of a lump in our throats over that one.” The reliability issues still very much hurt Blundell. He is adamant that victory would have been in the bag had those two issues not manifested themselves, but although he knew victory was going to be close to impossible after the second stop, he, Herbert and Brabham still never gave up on trying to win until they saw the chequered flag. “Because it's 24 hours, you never say never, and you always look at previous years and there's been plenty of results that have been off the back of something going wrong. “Sometimes, you can get around it, if it’s one little issue. Normally, when it's more than one issue, it’s more of a difficult task. In saying that, when you look back

in the more modern years, it's very rare these days, that things do go wrong and that’s the level of what sportscar racing has achieved today. “I don't think we were in a position of saying ‘our race is done’, and we fought to the very end. But, when you’ve had two pit stops more than your sister car, it's always going to be a really difficult one to recover.” That 2003 race with Bentley proved to be the final time Blundell would grace the Le Mans 24 Hours with his presence on the track. The pursuit of a second victory eluded him, despite a few close calls. And it’s an itch that still niggles away at Blundell to this day. He had his time, he was successful, he enjoyed racing in the 24 hour race, but he still believes there were missed opportunities that still grind away at him when he lets his mind reminisce. “To have the win with Peugeot… it was brilliant to do it with a French team at an iconic French race. And to do it also with Derek Warwick as a team-mate, you know I have a huge amount of respect for Derek. “So yeah, I mean really good memories and great times. Just at times, I think there’s a little bit of unfinished business there, but it’s a bit too late now!”

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IMAGE BY ED WAPLINGTON

TRUCK RACING IT'S NOT JUST CARS AND BIKES THAT CAN RACE, TRUCKS CAN TOO! THE BRITISH TRUCK RACING CHAMPIONSHIP TAKES PLACE OVER SIX ROUNDS, BEGINNING AND ENDING AT BRANDS HATCH.

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more than a

race WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY JOHN BROOKS / ALAMY / ROBERT CLAYSON THE PIT STOP | 33


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or some racing drivers, racing at the Le Mans 24 Hours is a dream come true. It’s what they live for, it’s what they strive to achieve from the first time they turn a steering wheel. But it’s not the case for everybody. Some don’t even see it coming, focusing on tackling the world of single-seaters, aiming to be crowned the greatest driver there is. But sometimes life takes you down a track that you don’t see coming, and sometimes you’re far better off for it. In many ways, that’s what happened with Derek Warwick. He had his eyes firmly set on championship glory in Formula 1 when he started racing and the first stage of that dream swiftly became a reality when he got his first chance with Toleman at the 1981 San Mario Grand Prix. Those early years with Toleman were a struggle. He barely qualified for races at first, and when he did he often retired, only finishing two grands prix in 1982. Warwick fared better in 1983, picking up points positions at the final four races of the season, but by the time he’d started scoring points, he’d already picked up a second job - one he wasn’t very keen on at first. “My first [sportscar drive] was in 1983,” Warwick explained to The Pit Stop. “I drove the Kremer Porsche CK5, which was undoubtedly the most dangerous fucking car I have ever driven in my life. “I was in Canada driving for Toleman, and I got this phone call to ask ‘would you drive at Le Mans?’ “I just said, ‘absolutely no way. How much?’ And they said ‘£25,000’ and £25,000 in those days, for me, was like a fortune. So, I drove this car at Le Mans.” Racing in sportscars had never been on Warwick’s agenda, and he wasn’t keen on Le Mans, despite the prestige of the race. But once he got his first taste of the event, his perception changed immediately. “I was hooked. It was just special, amazing,” said Warwick. “The camaraderie - instead of trying to screw your team-mate over, you’re actually making them your best friend. It was really cool. From that day on, I was hooked on sportscar racing and definitely Le Mans. I just absolutely love the place. It's just amazing.” But while Warwick enjoyed this new collaborative approach to racing, it wasn’t totally straightforward. “I had a bit of an issue with the team-mates at Kremer [Patrick Gaillard and Frank Jelinski] simply because they couldn't keep up with my pace. So, they kept on turning the boost up. So, in the end, I got it drilled and lockwired, so they couldn't touch it. “But then I thought in the race, ‘actually I want it to blow up because the fucking thing was just so dangerous’. So, I cut the lockwire and allowed them to just boost it until it blew at 10 o'clock in the evening.” The engine of the Porsche CK5-83 expired six hours into the race after the head gasket failed. But Warwick did put the car 14th on the grid in qualifying, which wasn’t a bad effort for a driver that had never driven a

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Group C car prior to that weekend. Warwick didn’t really care about the result in that moment. The atmosphere had very quickly captured his heart. “I love Le Mans, I love the Mulsanne, I love Indianapolis, I love the Dunlop curves. I just love the circuit, it's just brilliant. The feeling of doing a threehour stint, the feeling of driving at midnight to three o'clock in the morning, the feeling of the sun going down and blinding you, and the sun coming back up and blinding you. The smell of bacon at six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning. “That was all part of the charisma, the amazing feeling of Le Mans. You obviously were very aware of the history of Le Mans, very aware of the dangers of the circuit. So, it was a mixture of love-hate really. But for me, it was 90% love and 10% hate in terms of how many drivers it had killed over the years.” These days everyone still knows racing is dangerous, but for drivers it often doesn’t feel that way from within the cockpit. Safety standards are so high now it does enable drivers to feel almost invincible once they are in the car. But back in the 1980s, at the height of the Group C era, that feeling was totally different. The cars did feel scary, it did feel dangerous and drivers had to be on their guard, aware of the possibility of serious consequences from any accident. And Warwick began to adopt an approach that he hoped would save him if he were to ever crash the Kremer car in the race. “It was the fact that there were so many places on that circuit where you're doing 200mph, nearly 250mph, 400 km/h on the straight,” Warwick said when explaining what made the cars feel so dangerous. “It wasn’t one of those things that you grab hold of it like a Formula 1 car and turned it in, and it quickly moved. The thing just floated on the straight, it was a bizarre feeling and you knew that any jerky movement… You had to be very gentle. “You had to caress the car along the straight because it would just move. It was so finely balanced because of the long tail in order to get the fuel economy. It just made it special. "You knew that there might be an accident during the course of the weekend. And what I realised when I arrived and saw the car, is I thought, this thing, if you do have a crash, is going to at least break both legs because there was no structure at all. So, I spent a lot of the practice sessions going along the Mulsanne [straight] with my foot flat on the throttle, counting to three and counting how quickly I could get my legs back. “And then I moved my left foot over to the throttle, then got my right leg back. And then on the in-lap, I'd see how quickly I could get both legs back because I knew if something broke or you ended up pushing it too far and you ended up crashing, it would take your legs with it. So, I knew as soon as I thought I was going to have an accident, I'd bring my legs back, because I'd


WARWICK'S FIRST TASTE OF LE MANS CAME VIA THE KREMER PORSHE

quite like my legs.” Although he didn’t know it at the time, showing the world what he could do on the sportscar stage in 1983 would prove to be a fortunate twist of fate. Two years later Warwick was in F1 full-time achieving reasonable success with Renault. The results he'd put together over those two years caught the attention of Lotus, and Warwick agreed to join the team for 1986. But it never happened. It was meant to be his shot at the big time in F1, and with Renault pulling out of the championship, it was also his best option at fighting for a first world championship title. But one man stood in his way - Ayrton Senna. Senna wasn’t happy that Lotus was about to sign what was seen to be a second star driver. He wanted full focus on himself and so he audaciously vetoed the signing. Knowing that Senna had become almost indispensable to it, Lotus agreed to Senna’s demands, and Warwick never got the second seat, which instead went to inexperienced Formula 3 graduate Johnny Dumfries. All of a sudden Warwick was stuck without a drive

in F1. His career was on the verge of quickly falling down around him. That was until Tom Walkinshaw and Jaguar's sportscar team came to the rescue, and it didn’t take long before he started winning again. “Jumping into the Jaguar even though it was big, it was heavy, it was a V12, it was still a winning car,” Warwick explained. “Us racing drivers every now and again like to win. So, to get back into a car that you can compete with and race with, was just fantastic.” A first victory came at the second round of the season at Silverstone, and Le Mans was up next. And when he arrived for the Saturday morning parade, the emotion hit Warwick like a tonne of bricks. “I remember on the Saturday before the start of the race on the parade, there were so many Brits there with Jaguar, flags, Union Jacks,” said Warwick. “I actually cried, I actually got very emotional over the whole thing, I had tears. “That's sportscar racing. That's Le Mans. It brings that kind of emotion, atmosphere, that no other race in the world does.” Unfortunately for Warwick, the race did not go to

"I ACTUALLY CRIED, I ACTUALLY GOT VERY EMOTIONAL OVER THE WHOLE THING. I HAD TEARS"

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WARWICK RACING FOR TWR JAGUAR

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plan. He, Jean-Louis Schlesser and Eddie Cheever had put the car fifth on the grid for the race, but a puncture, followed by a suspension failure, caused the car to be retired after 239 laps. Warwick saw out the season with Jaguar, but as soon as he could he was back to F1. “I loved my time at Jaguar, and we would have won the world championship had the thing not gone on to 10 cylinders at the last race, and we missed the championship that year by two points. So, it was a good introduction. I loved driving for Jaguar, but an opportunity came up to get back into Formula 1 with Arrows in 1987, and I jumped at it.” However, it wouldn’t be long before sportscar racing came back into Warwick’s orbit, saving him again after Lotus - which he eventually did end up at when it was at a much lower ebb - hit financial trouble at the end of 1990. Once again, Jaguar came to the rescue, and this time the Le Mans 24 Hours would prove to be more rewarding. “In 1991, I was without a Formula 1 drive, Lotus had gone bust. So again, Jaguar’s, Ross Brawn rang me. He said, ‘Derek I've got an absolutely stunning car here that needs you,’ and Tom Walkinshaw flew his plane over, picked me up. We went there and had an hour or so with Ross, I was completely born. That little XJR-14. It was just the most amazing car you will ever find. It was just beautiful to drive. “Going back to Jaguar was special. Working with Ross Brown was special and the car was just unbelievable. I remember the first time we drove the car was on what was then the South circuit at Silverstone. It was just a makeshift circuit with a makeshift pits. I drove it out for an installation lap, came back in and Ross opened the door. I said: ‘mate, this is a rocketship'. “He said: ‘how do you know, you’ve only done one lap’. I said: ‘Ross this is a rocketship’. Anyway, I went back out, and just before the makeshift pits there was a flat right. It wasn't really flat, but obviously with the right car it was flat. In my first lap with warm tyres, I took it flat, and when I got past the makeshift pits, everybody was ducking down under the barrier because they thought the throttle was stuck open. So that's the impression that gave everybody. It was absolutely stunning.” Heading to Le Mans, the team was buoyant about its chances. Warwick had won the two previous rounds at Monza and Silverstone, and he had the hat-trick in his sights. That third victory never materialised though. A difficult qualifying session meant the car started from 24th on the grid, and although it did work its way up the order, it never managed to truly fight for victory, although Warwick still feels it is a race he should have won. “It's funny, you know, we should have won that

race,” he said. “We had a few mishaps during the course of the race. I had a brake problem, which spun the car into Indianapolis in the last couple of laps or something. “That was a miss, it wasn't a finish, it was a miss, and finishing the race is good. 24 hours flat-out racing is what a racing driver wants to do.” Naturally, there were feelings of frustration about missing out on a first Le Mans 24 Hours victory, but in 1992, all that changed for Warwick. At the end of 1991 he'd decided to walk away from Jaguar and Tom Walkinshaw Racing, instead heading to Peugeot to work under the guidance of Jean Todt. Warwick knew that the team had great potential, and didn’t hesitate in getting down to work - and he put the hours in too. “The very first test I went to, we just ran the car until it stopped,” Warwick explained. “So that was over 36 hours, we just kept on running it and then we'd fixed whatever that was, and we'd run it again until it stopped. So, they’d set themselves up for Le Mans. But by coincidence we used to finish the race, the six-hour races as well. So, it put us in good stead. “Some of my team-mates were a bit lazy. The French contingent didn't like doing the night time stints, that's for sure. There were a couple of times, I think I drove like 12 hours in the night because they went back to the hotel to freshen up and get a couple of hours' sleep. I used to come in and say: ‘who's taking over? Oh they're not here yet'. So, I’d go back out again. “But I loved it. I just loved driving the cars. I loved being in the car. Whether it was a triple stint or a quadruple stint, I didn't care. I just wanted to drive more because I then knew more about the car than they did which paid dividends during the course of the year.” Peugeot selected French driver Yannick Dalmas to partner Warwick in 1992, but heading to Le Mans, Warwick was allowed to decide on the third driver. Naturally, he wanted someone he knew he could work well with, and so he approached Mark Blundell. “I brought Mark Blundell in. Jean said I could have whoever I wanted as long as he was available. I spoke to Mark, he jumped at the chance, and he came in, and was a part of our team. “Yannick was amazing to work with, but a bit fragile. I could turn him on and off like a switch. You’ve got to understand with us racing drivers, it’s not just about the speed. It's about mental strength as well, and he was a bit fragile with that. “So sometimes I had to encourage him, encourage him to be quick. He would get very despondent very quickly if things didn't go completely right for us, and with motor racing, you know it's never going to be right all the time. ‘92 was different to ‘91. In ’91, we ran out

"I DROVE IT OUT FOR AN INSTALLATION LAP, CAME BACK IN AND ROSS OPENED THE DOOR. I SAID: 'MATE, THIS IS A ROCKET SHIP."

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DRIVING FOR PEUGEOT AT LE MANS IN 1992

of pace, to finish the race and to win the race. We had a few hiccups that lost us the race. Whereas in ‘92, we ran flat out. “We ran flat out for, I don't know, 22 and a half hours. We were pushed all the way by the sister Peugeot and the Toyota. So, people say, oh, you know, you only run at 80-90%, I'm sorry, but that's bollocks. We ran flat out. “Sure, we were very laborious with the gear change, but that throttle was down on the floorboards for the whole race. The race went well for us, we didn't care about qualifying. We concentrated on race set-up and that won us the race at the end of the day.” Although qualifying wasn’t the primary focus for the #1 Peugeot, it still qualified second behind the sister car of Philippe Alliot, Mauro Baldi and Jean-Pierre Jabouille. But when the race got going it was a different story. The #1 car soon took to the lead once the race got going and the team never looked back from there. They totally dominated the race, getting themselves into a lead of over six laps by the end. But what was so impressive was the fact it was done while being considerate of the car. The drivers knew the gearbox was fragile. It needed to be nursed to make sure it would last the full race distance, and it did. But knowing the race was almost within grasp, nerves began to set in over the last 75 minutes. “The most difficult part of that race was the last hour and a quarter because we had the pressure off from the other cars, and then all the noises came,” said Warwick. “You then are not tuned into driving that car

as economically and as fast as possible. “You were now trying to get it home. The gearbox is making different noises, the gearchange felt more clunky, the engine didn't sound quite right because you had more time to concentrate on the things around you in the car. So, it's quite difficult.” The car did make it home, and in the hands of Warwick, but that wasn’t the initial plan. Before the race, the team agreed that Dalmas would drive the car for the final stint, but with victory in sight, Todt changed his mind, gifting Warwick a very special moment for a very important reason. “The last nice thing - and it shows the respect I had from Jean - is he knew that 1991 for me was difficult. “I lost probably the most important person in my life with my young brother Paul. He was something special and losing him in ’91 and keeping the speed that I did was, at times, very difficult. I'm a very emotional guy and losing your brother is... it's not easy. But he knew that I wanted to pin something on him. I wanted to stand up on a rostrum and say, ‘this is for Paul'. “So, with half an hour to go, Yannick was driving the car, and they brought him in to just clean it, top it up with fuel, put new tyres on it so we had enough lead that we could make sure that the car finished the race. And he put me in it. He said: ‘Derek, get your helmet’. “I said: ‘what, what's going on?’ He said: ‘I want you to finish the race’, and that's the respect that Jean had for me and the work that I put in that car. To take a Frenchman out of a French car, winning a French race, and such an important race, was typical of Jean. The most important thing was thanking the person that worked hardest in the team. I'd like to think that, I've

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IN 1992 WARWICK SHARED THE PEUGEOT WITH MARK BLUNDELL AND YANNICK DALMAS

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WARWICK DRIVING THE COURAGE C36 PORSCHE IN 1996

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never asked him that question, actually. “But I finished the race and when I crossed that finish line, the emotion that came out was just ridiculous. Paul, the hard work that we put into that race, or I'd put into that race. I think I probably drove 10 hours of that 24 hours or even more, I think, 10 and a half hours. So, the emotion all came pouring out, but then afterwards getting on that rostrum, lifting Jean up in the air, having that 24-hour trophy, was just one of the most special moments in my life, for sure. “It was something that I could say to Paul ‘this is for you,’ and it meant a lot to me. Winning the world championship was also great, but winning Le Mans is special, so special. I will never forget it, never forget it.” But even with the emotions at such a high level, Warwick still found time to crack a joke from within the car, one that didn’t impress the team at the time. “I did something very stupid as I remember, right at the end, as I came out onto the Mulsanne, with half an hour, 20 minutes to go, I came on the radio and said ‘the car has stopped, the car stopped. We have a problem!’ “Apparently, in the pits everybody was a fucking headless chicken, running around everywhere because ‘what the fuck’s going on?’ Of course, you must never tempt fate, and I look back now and think, 'oh, fucking hell, that could have so gone in my face!' “So yeah, it was funny just simply because Jean was mad as hell with me, he really was. But at the time, I was so in control of everything that I just thought it was the funniest thing. “You’ve got a lot of downtime, a lot of preparation

to do, a lot of intake of water and carbs, and for a change, it all worked, and Derek Warwick has won the 24 hours of Le Mans. It was pretty special.” Warwick had finally done it. On his fourth attempt, he’d bagged the overall victory, winning one of the greatest races in the world. And the emotion in Warwick’s voice when talking about that race says it all. He gave it everything, he won it for his brother, Paul, and it’s a memory he will always treasure. Warwick did make one more appearance at Le Mans, racing a Courage C36 Porsche alongside Jan Lammers and Mario Andretti four years later in 1996, but the Courage did not have the pace to win, despite the level of talent in the car. In the end, Warwick, Lammers and Andretti finished 13th overall, but still got a class podium, being the third LMP1 car home. But that would be Warwick’s final outing at Le Mans. Five attempts, two podiums and one outright victory. That’s not a bad return for a driver tackling the most demanding race there is, especially one who never had any aspirations to tackle it. Winning at Le Mans is special for so many reasons for so many drivers, but for Warwick nothing will ever come close to 1992. It was more than just about winning the race, even if he can’t always put it in to words. “I've got no real pictures of me or trophies or anything like that in my house because I think I've always kept that life, a little bit separate. But if you come into my study, I've got my 24 Hour Le Mans trophy right in the centre. So that’s what it meant to me.”

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IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO

EAU ROUGE THE EAU ROUGE CORNER AT SPA FRANCORCHAMPS MAY HAVE BEEN ALTERED SLIGHTLY OVER THE YEARS, BUT IT'S STILL A HUGE CHALLENGE FOR BOTH CARS AND DRIVERS.

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THE PIT STOP 45


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BEATING THE ODDS

WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY PORSCHE

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“T

he world’s a completely different place to what it was in the 1960s or 1970s.” Richard Attwood’s not wrong, especially when it comes to endurance racing. And he’s someone that can accurately comment on the subject. He’s been there, seen it all and raced the Le Mans 24 Hours in three different decades. “Le Mans, as far as I can tell, is a completely different race,” Attwood explained to The Pit Stop. “Where cars would fail, today they’re pretty much bulletproof, and the three drivers they have are having to drive completely flat-out. It’s completely different because we had to manage the car. Today, the cars are managed from outside, in the pits or someplace in Europe somewhere. It’s something I don’t fully understand. “Once we set off driving, we were in charge of the car basically. You got a signal one time a lap and all the information was on that. It really was what I would call a regularity trial because if you stretched the car it

would more than likely break. We had to manage that.” Attwood’s first experience of the race came via Lola in 1963, which he was racing for as a works driver at the time. Unfortunately for Attwood, that race would end in retirement 15 hours in. And that became a common theme for the first few years. His Ford GT40 caught fire while he was driving in the opening stint of the 1964 race, and his attempts in 1966 and 1967 also ended in disaster while at the wheel of a Ferrari for privateer Maranello Concessionaires. 1968 did provide a change in fortunes, though. Racing alongside David Piper driving a Ferrari 275LM, the pair finished seventh overall and second in class. After five attempts Attwood finally had some success to put on the board, but beyond that he’d already started to show the world how versatile a driver he was. He might not have won Le Mans outright during those years, and most of those races may have ended in retirement, but he’d proven he was more than capable of driving a wide range of different machinery competitively and efficiently. But one thing that helped Attwood was the fact that he always tried to pick the cars that he knew would suit

CARS LINING UP FOR THE START OF ONE OF THE HEATS

ATTWOOD DROVE THE FORD GT40 AT THE LE MANS 24 HOURS IN 1964

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him. “Cars of that era weren’t very different,” Attwood explained. “The GT40 was a very comfortable car to drive, it was an enclosed car. I always got on well with the GT40. I only drove it once and that was in ’64, I never drove it again at Le Mans. It would’ve been nice to drive at Le Mans, but in '64 and '65 they didn’t finish anyway, and I knew that. So, I didn’t want to drive one, there’s no point in driving a car that’s not going to finish. “I’ve tried to pick [cars I want to drive]. Ronnie Hall in ’66, he had four cars entered. One was a Dino. Well that was completely off my list because it was a disaster. You spent more time looking backwards than you did bloody forwards! “At Le Mans, I always had a car that was fairly quick, so I didn’t have to do that too much. So the Dino was out. Then they had a GTC competition one, aluminium. That was entered for Piers Courage. That car was out because it wasn’t fast enough either. “It was between the Ferrari 365 P2 and a GT40. So, the GT40 it was out and really the P2 was the only car I was going to drive anyway! Of course, after qualifying, I knew that wasn’t going to finish either. Maranello Concessionaires were due to win the GT Championship that year. It was Roy Pike and Piers Courage, they won that class. So, they had some success that year, but it was pretty dismal in the other ones. “I say they’re all the same. Every car I drove at Le Mans was quite predictable, with handling and everything, they were very progressive and nice. Of course, I knew the [Ferrari 275] LM quite well anyway, and even up until Le Mans, it was a wonderful car for long-distance events, because it just had such a good engine. I don’t think it ever broke while I was driving, it had fantastic reliability. That was at the back end of Ferrari’s wonderful series of wins, wasn’t it? But, certainly things had turned for the worse by 1969.” After Attwood’s success driving privateer Ferraris in the mid-1960s, Attwood got the chance to drive for Porsche in 1969. It was a huge opportunity, one that Attwood was not going to let pass him by, but when he drove the 917 for the first time, he quickly realised just how different and dangerous it was to drive. “I was driving this Porsche 917 longtail which was completely underdeveloped and I can’t understand why it really didn’t change its configuration throughout the whole of that year,” Attwood said. “I mean nobody knew much about aerodynamics anyway, but the previous year you had F1 cars with wings on sporks and some things quite ridiculous to get the downforce on the rear wheels. But that was an extremely rudimental and silly idea. “I knew that the 917 was going to be a problem because the 908 also had a longtail. We were testing

it at Monza for some reason, and they were very, very light. They were a slightly smaller car, they maxed out at 195mph, and Monza had no chicanes, everything was like a flat-out line pretty much. “The corner behind the pits was called Ascari, it’s a chicane now, and my team-mate completely lost control of his 908 longtail there, which was easy to do, and destroyed the car. He wasn’t hurt but it was an amazing accident. “From there I knew – because I first saw the 918 at the Geneva show for '69 - and it looked a monster. It was on a plinth and it was at a certain angle so that people could look inside the car, and I knew it was going to be a different thing altogether, because it was a similar idea with aerodynamics but loads more power. “The extra horsepower wasn’t going to help that much, the shape was designed to go through the air unbelievably efficiently but without any real form of spoilers or anything that would keep it on the ground, as they didn’t want to use the air to do that.” Normally drivers are itching to get behind the wheel of a new car for the first time, but that wasn’t the case for Attwood with the 917. Far from it. “The first race of that year was at Spa, which must have been something like March time, maybe April, because it was the first race in Europe. The two German guys, Gerhard Mitter and Udo Shutz were driving. I just thought, it’s a German car, a German team. All the factory drivers were shying away from it because we’d heard the stories of testing it. It was the last thing we’d want to drive. I didn’t want to drive it. I didn’t go anywhere bloody near it. “The qualifying was in the dry. I spoke to Udo Shutz about it, he said his room was close to the road, and when he woke on race morning, he could hear the hissing of the tyres because of the rain. They had tossed a coin the day before to see who would start the race, I don’t think I’d have wanted to do it. Gerhard Mitter won or lost the toss – I don’t know how to put it – and Udo was clear that he wasn’t going to be driving straight on. “But that car did about two or three or corners and mysteriously the engine just blew. I said: ‘do you think that Gerhard gave the engine a big rev?’ And he said: ‘yes I think so!’ He didn’t want to be killed and he just saw the race finish for him. So that made the mystery about this car even worse! “The next time, they tried to enter the car, they were determined that it was going to race. I can’t remember how it happened but there were 10 development drivers and we all refused to drive it around the Nurburgring because we knew that it wasn’t going to finish anyway! So, what was the point of testing the car? They didn’t push it because I think they knew it was true. But again, they were determined to get it to run. “David Piper had an interest in possibly buying a

"ALL THE FACTORY DRIVERS WERE SHYING AWAY FROM IT BECAUSE WE'D HEARD THE STORIES FROM TESTING IT"

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RACING AT LE MANS FOR PORSCHE IN 1969

917 so Stuttgart rang David. They said about driving a works car around the Nurburgring, and the money was really quite good. Liz [Piper] said yes straight away, she didn’t care about the car. About three quarters of an hour later, they rang again, and this time David picked the phone up. David didn’t probably know too much about the car anyway. And they asked him to just be a co-driver. “David got hold of Frank Gardener because he was always strapped for cash and they actually finished the race. But they were only in the short-tailed car – the short conversion of the longtail, so, they didn’t have the same aerodynamic nightmare. “But it wasn’t a completely good car anyway. I think they finished seventh or ninth. Of course, the 908 was streets ahead, it probably lapped it. So it finished its first race. “Well, the next race comes up, it’s Le Mans, and I’ve never tested this car. My name’s down in the entry list as driving with Vic Elford, and I just thought ‘it’s my turn.’ I didn’t even question it really. But when I drove it first off, I was completely horrified I think. “It was horrendous in that any speed at around 200mph or more, it just got less and less manageable.

As we peaked down the Mulsanne straight - any car I’ve ever been in before is usually flat around the peak - but in this car you couldn’t do that. You had to back off, brake, and slow down. It just showed how bad it was. “In fact, the story of that race was a separate story really. Suffice it to say, it was only meant to last about six hours but it didn’t break until 21 hours. “So, I’ve gone through all the night, driving this horrendous car. Vic said he liked the car, but I don’t believe him. It was just ready to bite you. It broke with three hours to go, we were six laps in the lead. “The one thing that has mystified me is why the hell someone in the Porsche pits didn't tell us we didn’t need that sort of lead. We should’ve started to ease back hours before then because we were miles in the lead all the way through! It’s a mystery that I’ll never understand." Attwood’s first attempt at the Le Mans 24 Hours for Porsche had ended in retirement, but rather than feeling frustrated or disappointed to lose a win that was so close to being his, Attwood had a huge wave of relief flood over him.

"THE NEXT RACE COMES UP, IT'S LE MANS, AND I'VE NEVER TESTED THE CAR"

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“When it broke, I was absolutely not a happy man. But I was better off than when I was driving it. The relief that I actually hadn’t died with that car was tremendous,” he said. “The concentration it had taken to drive it at anything like competitive speed was just sapping energy like crazy. I couldn’t have cared less about the race. I was out of the race and it was brilliant. I was never going to drive it again, that type of car, and I wouldn’t. “The longtails were 20-25 mph faster down the Mulsanne straight, which was a big advantage at Le Mans but I never drove one again. I didn’t need that speed. I think it did just under 250 mph the final version, 215-220 mph was enough for me. “There are many reasons I can describe why that car was the way it was, and I can prove it. Digby Martland drove it with John Walsh, and Walsh died on the first lap in a car that he didn’t know how to handle. Apparently, he was passing loads of people on the straight, and I think he just got carried away in the moment. He just lost control completely in the middle of White House. “People wouldn’t believe this, but the track was virtually full of wreckage, fire and god knows what, but the race carried on. “That shows the difference in the years. The 24-hour race went on for 24 hours without any interruption,

without any pace cars, yellow flags. Even if there was rain, or whatever might have happened in June in France, you would race. Nothing stopped for it, that was the tradition of the race. “Digby was John’s co-driver. He qualified for Le Mans, did three flying laps in the day and three at night. Digby knew more driving the car, but I’m pretty sure John drove first. I’ve never spoken to him about it, I’m pretty sure he’d have been horrified as I was, because I’d never driven it before either. “On his last flying lap, he thought, everybody’s scared of racing this thing, I better see what it’s all about. He went a little bit faster, not a lot, and he completely lost control of the car. He spun, didn’t know what the hell was going on, he went 600 metres. He drove it straight back to the pits and went home. “That describes that car. We had to drive it to a level that was fast enough, but also with safety in mind. You couldn’t drive it flat-out. It had a lot of power. Well, you could just about in a straight line. “[But] the straights were cambered, so to overtake something, you’d be taking your life in your hands. “If it had rained, I would either have died, or come in, run out of courage, and said ‘I can’t drive like this’. I actually think they would’ve allowed me to stop. “But it didn’t rain at all thank god. If it had, I don’t know if I’d have had the balls to come and say I can’t drive it. That’s what Digby did, he said: ‘this car’s

ATTWOOD WON THE LE MANS 24 HOURS IN 1970

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MORENO GETTING READY TO HEAD OUT ONTO TRACK AT THE 2022 FESTIVAL

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CROSSING THE LINE TO WIN THE RACE IN 1970

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greater than me, I’m going!’” For 1970 though, things were different. Porsche had approached Attwood to ask what car he would want for Le Mans that year, and he instantly knew what would not only be faster but also safer. “I said I wanted a short-tailed car with a 4.5-litre engine because the gearbox would break otherwise,” Attwood explained. “There was a 5-litre engine out there, it was a stonking motor. It was quite a lot quicker and had a lot more torque. “But in ’69 we had a 5-speed box, in ’70 we had a 4-speed and we weren’t allowed to use a first gear. So, we had to trundle through Mulsanne and Arnage in second gear without the same torque they had in the 5-litre. “We were shedding loads of lap time out of both of those corners. We were losing another god knows how much because of having a smaller engine and a slower short-tailed car. I had no idea what our lap times were compared to the long-tailed car or other 5-litre shorttailed cars, but it was not looking good. “We lined up 15th on the grid. I told my wife: ‘we have absolutely no chance in this race because we’ve got to wait for 14 cars to have a problem to get anywhere near the front.’” Attwood was adamant that any chance of a victory was now out of the window. He felt that he’d chosen the wrong configuration of car, and his dream of winning outright was once again going to be dashed.

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But Attwood’s negativity was premature. “I watched the start of that race because Hanns [Herrmann] started. “I said ‘I want Hanns to drive with me’. He was the driver at Le Mans, definitely for me. These were the three reasons why we were going to be able to compete. “So, I watched the start of the race and (as happens at Le Mans sometimes and very often), it was like a grand prix. It was very prestigious to go by first on the first lap. It then carried on being like a grand prix. “Anybody in a 512 Ferrari or 917 Porsche had a chance to win, and they all realised that. It was battle galore. “At Le Mans, you settle yourself down and if someone goes for it, you let them go because the cars didn’t last. Amazingly, after about 10 hours it had stayed dry and I came in for a scheduled stop. They told me I was in the lead and I didn’t believe it. It was just ridiculous. It was like a made-up story about a car winning Le Mans. It was fiction but it was fact." But then the rain hit. A downpour overnight soon evolved into a storm, and chaos ensued. “In one accident, three 512s went out. All sorts of things happened. Jo Siffert passed the pits and I knew he wouldn’t come around again, so that car was out. The biggest challenge we had to winning was finishing to be honest. “We were far enough in the lead, I think we won by


ATTWOOD ON THE VICTORY PARADE AFTER WINNING IN 1970

about five laps but it could’ve been closer. Just being on the circuit in the horrendous rain we had, it would’ve been so easy to slide off. The other thing we had, was there was so much water getting into the ignition, it was misfiring quite badly. At certain stages we just wondered if the engine was going to get drowned and stop. That was very much a possibility. “I tried to keep the engine warm by keeping the clutch in, keeping the engine on higher revs, and pulling all sorts of tricks to try to keep the engine firing. “The rest of the race was dramatic for the drivers, but not really for anybody else. And that’s how we won it.” At the seventh time of asking, Attwood had finally won the Le Mans 24 Hours, not just won but dominated. Attwood and Hermann clinched the win by five laps to the Martini International Racing Team 917L, a race in which only six cars made it to the end. The effort left Attwood completely wiped out. He had no energy to celebrate or party, but subsequently found out upon returning home that he had the mumps. Eventually the win did sink in, the scale of the achievement did hit home and it spurred Attwood on to tackle the race again in 1971, driving a Porsche 917K again. This time victory was not to be Attwood’s but he and Herbert Muller did finish second, two laps behind Gijs van Lennep and Helmut Marko.

1971 should have been Attwood’s last race at Le Mans. He planned for that year to be his swansong, but in 1984 he was persuaded to return and drive an Aston Martin Nimrod NRA/C2B. “That came about because Mike Fallon was in the team, and Richard Williams was running it,” said Attwood. “Ray Mallock and Drake Olson were driving the fast car and me, Mike Salmon, and John Sheldon, who was a pay driver, were in the second car.” The Nimrod was a competitive car, but the race ended for Attwood just seven hours in after Sheldon crashed out, marking an end to Attwood’s Le Mans 24 Hours career. Many forget that Attwood drove for teams other than Porsche, and some equally forget just how long his sportscar career turned out to be. And that’s just remarkable in itself. And while the history books might suggest that Porsche was the dominant manufacturer at Le Mans during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Attwood proved that there were still plenty of odds to beat – and he did just that. “The 917 was the fastest car, as long as you could make it finish the race, a 917 was going to win that race,” he said. “But in 1970 I had no thought that would be the one to win that race, but it just goes to show what can happen, doesn’t it?”

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IMAGE BY ED WAPLINGTON

DRIFTING DRIFTING MIGHT BE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STYLE OF DISCIPLINE TO CIRCUIT RACING, BUT THERE'S NO DENYING IT GENERATES PLENTY OF ATMOSPHERE

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100 YEARS OF LE MANS WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY BUGATTI / PORSCHE / MERCEDES / AUDI / ALAMY / PHD PHOTO


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he Le Mans 24 Hours. It’s a Mecca for teams, drivers and motorsport fans alike. It is and always has been the ultimate test of human and machine, pushing absolutely everything right to the limit for a full 24 hours. It doesn’t matter how good you think you are as a driver, or how invincible and dominant you believe your car to be, nothing is guaranteed and that’s what makes this great race so well loved the world over. And what made this year’s race even more special was the fact that it was celebrating its centenary event. Yes, that’s right. The Le Mans 24 Hours is now 100 years old. In some respects, it feels mad that the race has been going that long, and that drivers and cars could even last the full 24 hours in the early period. But surprisingly, 30 cars completed the inaugural Le Mans 24 Hours in May 1923. Andre Lagache and Rene Leonard won the very first Le Mans 24 Hours for Chenard-Walcker SA, beating the sister car by four laps. The race was held around the streets of Le Mans, using a very similar configuration to the one used today. Naturally, since that first race in 1923 the race has evolved and developed, and so too have the cars and the drivers. But the essence of it is still exactly the same. You still need to push both yourself and your machine to the absolute limit for an eye-watering amount of

BUGATTIS AT THE FIRST LE MANS 24 HOURS IN 1923

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time. For some, just completing the race is a huge success in its own right, such is the challenge. It should never be underestimated just how hard it is to complete the race, even with two or three drivers sharing a car. Changeable conditions and sleep deprivation play a major part in that challenge, along with reliability of the car. But the buck doesn’t just stop with them. There’s also the mechanics and engineers who are servicing the cars and if needed repairing them around the clock. It’s a huge effort for all involved. And nobody is aware of that more than nine-time winner Tom Kristensen. “It is the toughest race,” Kristensen said to The Pit Stop. "When you are there, if you just go there during the night, don’t go to sleep too early. Just go somewhere and you will realise that you have to be brave to be fast at night at Le Mans. “In this sense there is no doubt that everyone who has been to Le Mans, they tend to come back. That’s for a reason.” Of course, over the years there have been several incidents that led many to wonder whether the race would make it to its centenary anniversary, most notably the disaster in 1955. In the early stages of that race, Aston Martin’s Mike Hawthorn was engaged in a titanic battle with the Mercedes of Juan-Manuel Fangio. Hawthorn’s crew had called him in to the pits as he crossed the start/finish


AFTERMATH OF THE DISASTER IN 1955

straight to begin his 35th lap, but as he came to the end of the lap and headed to the pits, disaster struck. Hawthorn had just lapped the Austin Healey of Lance Macklin and in a bid to minimise any time loss to Fangio, Hawthorn braked as late as possible when coming into the pits. In 1955 there was no pitlane in existence like there is today. Cars pulled over towards the side of the start/finish straight next to the garages. Hawthorn’s thought process was entirely reasonable when it came to braking late. It was the best way to minimise any time loss to Fangio, and with advanced disk brakes on the Aston Martin, Hawthorn could leave his braking a lot later than most. And this caught Macklin out. Macklin swerved to avoid Hawthorn, but in the process he collided with the Mercedes of Pierre Levegh. Fangio was just behind and managed to avoid the collision, making his way through unscathed, but Levegh’s car was pitched up into the air. Levegh was thrown from the car and died immediately, while parts of his Mercedes flew into the crowd, killing 83 spectators. Naturally there was a lot

of controversy over the incident, even more so when the expected red flags never came out. Instead the race went on, although Mercedes withdrew its remaining cars. The way that race was handled created uproar within the motorsport community, and subsequent endurance races were cancelled. But instead of cancelling the race altogether, safety measures and improvements were immediately implemented to ensure a repeat disaster never occurred. Motorsport is dangerous though, and in the early years, all the way through to the scarily dangerous Group C era, there were several deaths resulting from crashes and retirements. But among the sadness, grief and disaster, the race has also provided plenty of great racing, monumental moments and downright amazing feats of endurance. None more so than Eddie Hall who, in 1950, became the first and only driver to complete the full 24 hour distance driving a car solo. Hall had a co-driver lined up for the event, but never used him, instead deciding to go the distance alone.

HALL HAD A CO-DRIVER LINED UP FOR THE EVENT, BUT NEVER USED HIM, INSTEAD DECIDING TO GO THE DISTANCE ALONE

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STRATEGY STILL PLAYS A MAJOR ROLE IN TODAY'S RACE



Amazingly he not only made it to the end of the race, but also finished eighth overall having completed 236 laps. Soon after regulations were amended to prevent drivers from ever tackling the race solo again, given the safety concerns and it didn’t take long before the race became a real focus for strategy, something that still has a major role to play today. As the race emerged from the 1950s the cars began to get faster and faster. Cars switched from open cockpit to closed cockpit, pushing speeds up even higher to the point where in 1966 the famous Ford GT40s were doing speeds of over 200mph down the

Mulsanne straight. The 1960s is largely remembered for the rivalry between Ford and Ferrari, but it was also a period in which manufacturers used the race to showcase the abilities of their greatest sportscars. However, a decade later that would change and cars would begin to move into the prototype phase, with Porsche becoming a dominant force with its 917, 935 and 936. But it was also a period in which danger once again rose to the fore. The cars scared the drivers. They knew they had to drive these beastly machines, but they didn’t want to. That feeling continued into the 1980s with the rise of the Group C machines.

GIJS VAN LEEP ON HIS WAY TO VICTORY FOR PORSCHE IN 1976

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SAUBER MERCEDES ON THE GRID IN 1989

These cars took the demands of racing at Le Mans to a whole new level. Drivers were outright frightened driving the machines, with several later admitting that they sabotaged their cars on occasion so that they didn’t have to drive them again. Porsche was once again a dominant force through the 1980s, but in the latter half other manufacturers like the returning Mercedes started to make their mark. The Group C era was no doubt one of the most dangerous of Le Mans, but it also caught the attention of manufacturers around the world, and in the late 1980s there was an influx of Japanese manufacturers with Toyota, Nissan and Mazda all fielding cars in the race. Nothing ever stands still for Le Mans though. Prototypes might have been at the fore in the early

1990s. But with the demise of the World Sportscar Championship, it didn’t take long before productionbased GT cars were being sent to race in the legendary event, before prototypes returned again in the early 2000s. While popularity with the fans has never really wavered, it has fluctuated a lot between manufacturers over the last 100 years. They’ve come and gone so many times, with the race essentially becoming a revolving door. The early 2000s was a particularly difficult period with Audi and Cadillac being the only regular presence at the sharp end of the grid in the early part of the decade. That was again repeated in 2018 when Toyota was the only works manufacturer contesting the top LMP1 class.

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AUDI BEAT TOYOTA TO WIN THE RACE IN 2013

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WHILE PORSCHE TOOK VICTORY IN 2016

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But as Le Mans turned towards its centenary event, the tide began to turn. The World Endurance Championship’s new hypercar regulations have enticed plenty of manufacturers back to the very top class, including past winners such as Ferrari and Peugeot. The top class looks healthy once again and Kristensen believes the heritage and 100-year milestone for the race has also made an impact on that resurgence. “I think it’s these modern times and you have at the same time to respect the enormous heritage of the 100 year anniversary of the very first Le Mans race,” said Kristensen. “With that in mind it has really created a lot of focus for all teams, manufacturers and drivers. And that’s why it looks really healthy at this stage. “You see a lot of cars coming towards the hypercar, but also the LMDh with a great bridge to American sportscar racing, mainly due to the Rolex 24 at Daytona, but also to the whole championship in IMSA. “So I see that where the more competitors, the more drivers and competitors who can fight for the outright victory, that’s very positive and very good news.” The new hypercar regulations is no doubt the beginning of another strong era for the Le Mans 24 Hours, and the prospect of hydrogen power being implemented in the future also plays into that. With pressure on manufacturers to find more

sustainable ways of going racing, Le Mans is once again at the forefront, paving the way for the future. And it’s that approach from the Le Mans organiser – the ACO – that has impressed Kristensen. “The ACO is doing a lot of work in this direction, opening all kinds of let’s say... every genius input will have a chance at Le Mans and that’s what I like about it. That it’s very open-minded. You can go towards that way. “But yes, hydrogen, we know some team manufacturers are working very hard on that there’s no doubt, but everything is possible there. “If tomorrow somebody will come up with a new idea, the first thing they will think of is going to Le Mans because that will be the best place they can prove the technology. They can prove their new vision of it. And at the same time, it goes hand in hand with the toughest race in the world. “I want to be open. I’m not a racing driver anymore but I am still a racer and I’m happy to help broadcast the event. I am the proud ambassador of the centenary race. “So in that sense, it’s up to me really to be open and hopefully surprised by brilliance. Whichever man, woman who comes up with it, any country, any team, I am there to welcome it and I look forward to see how

TOM KRISTENSEN TALKING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF LE MANS

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THE START OF THE 2023 RACE

the future will unfold. “You just see there’s a lot of energy going towards Le Mans. There’s a lot of dreams, and that’s still going. That’s likely higher than it has ever been in general. “For me, as a driver, that’s over. I had my 18 years there and that was absolutely fabulous. And of course, I am humble and proud that every time we finished I was on the podium with my team-mates. So that’s something I look back at, I tell my grandchildren. “But looking forward I am open-minded and I am very welcoming everything which is going in the direction because it looks very healthy at the moment with the state of the us, with the state of IMSA, with the stage of the FIA, with the state of the ACO.” 1992 Le Mans victor Mark Blundell agrees with Kristensen, believing that the future power source for the automotive world will be showcased at Le Mans before anywhere else. “I think [hydrogen power is] going to happen at some point,” Blundell explained to The Pit Stop. “It’s no different to what we’re seeing with hybrid and electric energy powering racing cars. “So I think that’s going to be the case. But I also think there’s a huge amount still to come on the sustainable fuel side. There’s a lot more efficiencies to be driven out of that. “But again, motorsport’s a great platform for that and testing technology, so if it’s going to happen, it’ll probably be in Le Mans first before it’s anywhere else.”

There can be no arguments about the ACO and Le Mans being open-minded. And that’s exactly why Garage 56 exists. That slot on the grid is reserved for innovative new approaches to go racing. And for the centenary event, a whole new beast tackled the race in the from of the Garage 56 NASCAR driven by Jenson Button Mike Rockenfeller and Jimmie Johnson. And it is this entry that showcases the ethos of Le Mans. It’s all about beating the odds. Before the NASCAR even turned a wheel many expected it would be entirely useless tackling the La Sarthe circuit, since NASCARs are primarily used for tackling ovals. But it didn’t fail. It held its own and made it the full distance and its pace compared to the GT cars was eye-opening. Ferrari upset the applecart in the centenary edition of Le Mans to become the first non-Toyota to win the overall race since 2017 when Porsche emerged victorious. It was also the first time Ferrari had won the overall event since 1964. And while it might be frustrating for Toyota, the fact that a new team won the race in a new era of regulations is a real advantage. It breathes new life into the race, attracting more exposure and new fans who will fall head over heels in love with the legendary endurance event. That’s exactly what the Le Mans 24 Hours does. It makes you fall in love with racing. Speak to any driver of any period and they all tell you just how emotive Le

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NASCAR'S PROJECT 56 CAR


Mans is. There’s a reason why they try and return as often as possible. It might not have the glamour Formula 1 provides and cars might not have the same levels of downforce either, but it’s the difficult nature of the race that motivates the drivers. It doesn’t matter if they’re racing GT cars, LMP2,

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LMDh or hypercar, every driver is in the same boat and making it to the end is a great achievement. Drivers can go and race week in, week out and not bat an eyelid, but Le Mans gets them in more ways than one. It’s not a race, it’s more than that. It’s the ultimate test, the ultimate challenge. Finishing is the victory, winning is just the cherry on top.


FERRARI CROSSING THE LINE TO WIN THE 2023 LE MANS 24 HOURS

People often say they miss the days when drivers were gladiators. You look at F1 and think it’s all so easy compared to the ‘old days’. If that’s what you think, go to Le Mans. You cannot underestimate just how hard it is. Those drivers – whether pro or amateur – are still gladiators. The Le Mans 24 Hours has been the greatest

endurance race for the last 100 years, and it still will be for the next 100. Just look at the history books, they don’t lie. Teams, drivers and cars might change, but the race doesn’t. It is and always will be the toughest race in the world, and that’s exactly why we all love it so much.

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

ORGANISED CHAOS TAKING A SNAPSHOT OF A PITSTOP CAN MAKE IT SEEM LIKE IT IS TOTAL CHAOS WHEN CARS ENTER THEIR PITBOX. BUT NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. EVERYONE KNOWS THEIR JOB, THEY JUST NEED TO EXECUTE IT QUICKLY.

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30 WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY PHD PHOTO / INDIRA FLACK

YEARS

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0

OF THE FESTIVAL OF SPEED

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S

tepping into the grounds of the Goodwood Estate is always a unique experience. It’s like the seasons in the year, it’s constantly changing its appearance depending on what’s happening. One day you can rock up in the grounds of Goodwood House surrounded by luscious green fields, with sheep grazing away and the next you’re surrounded by hay bales and 80,000 people. But that’s not just what makes Goodwood special, it’s about the events, the atmosphere and of course the nostalgia, and no event does that better than the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Every summer for the last 30 years Goodwood has played host to its flagship hillclimb event, but as with everything Goodwood does, it’s not like any other hillclimb in the world. It brings together the past, the present and future alongside the greatest drivers and riders to have ever graced the world – all packed into four days. Look one way and you can ogle at the greatest cars to have ever competed in Formula 1. Look the other and you witness the likes of Casey Stoner, Kenny Roberts and Giacomo Agostini getting ready to take to the hill on their MotoGP bikes. It really is the Aladdin’s cave of the motorsport world. The event has now become so big that it’s a

flagship not just for Goodwood, but for the motorsport community as a whole. The whole industry waits with bated breath for the dates to be released, and it’s one the majority of people working within motorsport will be able to attend given that Goodwood ensures it does not clash with an F1 race or the Le Mans 24 Hours. But becoming a cornerstone of the motorsport calendar wasn’t the original intention for the Festival of Speed when it was launched in 1993. It was created to serve a very different purpose. “I came back to live here in the ‘90s, I wasn’t quite living here then but I was thinking about what we were going to do and trying to open the track seemed like ‘is that something we even think about?’” The Duke of Richmond explained exclusively to The Pit Stop. “So we started having conversations with the local authority which started off not too bad, but then became rapidly obvious that it was going to become very difficult. “So because we were struggling with the track then I thought was there something else we could do and also see if people might still remember Goodwood motorsport. “Ian Bax actually, who was a BARC official at the time, we met at a funeral and he was saying ‘you ought to do a hillclimb at Goodwood’. And then I thought ‘wow, it’s something we could do’. And then of course, it wasn’t really a hillclimb but we thought, well could we

CASEY STONER IN THE ASSEMBLY AREA IN 2023

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STIRLING MOSS ON THE START LINE IN 1994

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THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AT THE FESTIVAL OF SPEED IN 1996

"WE EXPECTED 2,000 PEOPLE, WE GOT 25,000. THEY ALL BURST THROUGH THE BARRIERS" - DUKE OF RICHMOND do it in a different way? “And the real piece of luck was that Derek Ongaro, who was the FIA track inspector, came down to just talk me through the circuit and what might be needed. He was just trying to be really positive and helpful about what we might have to do if we were ever going to reopen the circuit. Then I brought him up here [Goodwood House] and said ‘what do you think about this as an idea? Would this work?’ “We were going to start over by the Kennels actually, which was super quick, and go that way and all the way up and he thought about doing it from here and he was really positive about it. "Dennis Carter who was the CEO of the BARC at the time, and Dennis and Derek were very positive about it, so without them it would never have happened. “I think everybody was a bit surprised the first year. There was a piece of string and all these cars roaring up and [Ongaro] said it was like a rally stage. “We had a very tumultuous, very, very emotional first year with all sorts of high points and low points.

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There were some big accidents. It was just a massively emotional weekend, but I remember at the end of it, I guess the real excitement was that we’d suddenly got something that people really wanted. It was like a rock and roll event or something. “We expected 2000 people, we got 25,000. They all burst through the barriers, we don’t know actually how many people were here. Nobody had a ticket and yeah it was pretty chaotic. But it was like ‘wow, gosh, OK well this is something’. “And when I saw grown men cry when the V16 went up and things, not having heard it for years, and just bringing all those cars together. Nobody had really thought about the punters before. No-one had really thought about the enthusiasts before. It was all about the drivers, and that sort of you’re taking part. You take part in motorsport, you don’t really go and just enjoy the cars unless it’s a grand prix or something. “So this idea of having all the cars there for everyone to enjoy and see super-rare things they haven’t seen for ever or dreamt they’d ever see, that was a very different approach.”


Getting hold of the cars was no easy feat, but with the help of Doug Nye - who is still very much involved today - and Robert Brooks, they made it happen. They didn’t have much time though. Planning for the inaugural event began in October 1992 and the first Festival of Speed was held on 19-20 June 1993. But when the doors opened for the inaugural event, there was no time for the Duke of Richmond to enjoy it - far from it. “It was all fairly tense,” he explained. “There was very bad weather just before it as well, so it literally got finished last minute. Again, another reason I think very few people would have been able to do it and we were is because we’ve got our own works team here. So even though it’s small, we’ve got our own carpenters, decorators, electricians. So that first few years we were just doing it ourselves. “Obviously we did bring people in, but our own team, our managers and things were not used to doing that sort of thing at all, but we could use them to do it and they really did do it. And for years actually, the whole Goodwood property team, Estate team were very involved in this. “So everyone was really involved. There was a big celebration at the end, we’d pulled it off. It was a big team effort.” The pressure and the effort did take its toll though. Despite the fact that FOS was a hugely successful

event, in the early years the Goodwood team always declared that year would be the last, although that never turned out to be the case. “We used to never agree to do it again every time. After the first one we said ‘never again, never again. Then I got so enthusiastic - it’s a bit like childbirth or something, you forget about it fairly quickly. So we then thought ‘OK, we’ll give it another go'. “I can remember my PA at the time, we had a filing cabinet in here, so a drawer for each year and it came to the next year and we still hadn’t decided. I remember her going ‘not another Festival of Speed!’ Because it meant another filing cabinet. “We used to be quite late in deciding it and I remember the first few years we never said we were going to do it again. We always said we’d just wait and everyone puts so much effort into it, everyone was so exhausted and absolutely destroyed by the end of it that it was kind of like ‘we’re never doing it again’ for a bit and then we’d slightly recover. “I can’t believe we are still doing it.” When FOS opened for the first time, its vision was just to showcase Goodwood itself and remind people of its heritage. The event was created to satisfy the Duke of Richmond’s own desire to see cars and bikes back in the grounds of one of motorsport’s most iconic locations from the 1950s and ‘60s. But he never imagined it would become the

EDDIE IRVINE AND JOHN SURTEES AT THE FESTIVAL IN 1996

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cornerstone of British motorsport that it now is. “Not in our wildest dreams!” Was his response when asked if he ever thought it would become as big an event as it has. “We just thought it would be nice to get some people together with some great cars and nobody was really doing that, so we thought there was an opportunity with Goodwood with my love of cars. We just had the opportunity and we wanted to do something to try and bring the cars back to life and it just turned out there was a huge amount of pent up demand that everyone really wanted it to come back.” Besides the cars and bikes taking to the hill, there’s always one other very significant and popular aspect of Goodwood that everybody keenly waits to hear about every year: the theme. Themes have become a big part of FOS with anniversaries and milestones celebrated each year, and that’s famously portrayed also by the Central Feature located right in front of Goodwood House. And that decision to incorporate themes into the event came about very early on. “We decided very quickly we needed to have a different theme every year,” explained the Duke of Richmond. “Just to help us select the cars really. But fundamentally, the basic concept has stayed the same. A lot of it stayed bizarrely the same and we’re just so lucky with the layout as well. We haven’t built any of this. Obviously in terms of permanent structure we have to work with what we’ve got and just the way the car parks are and how the site works, we’ve obviously had to design the event around the existing site. It just works. “I remember being really, really worried the first year. The biggest worry was that we didn’t have a return road. So we thought how are we going to do that? They’re going to have to come back down again, that’s really lame. And we looked at, we could create one almost at the top and build a crater road almost to bring them back down again. But we couldn’t do it. “But that’s become a big part of it now. “If they all just went up you’d never see them again. In a way, that would lose [something] because them all coming back as a gaggle together is a great sight. And time-wise you’d need even more cars to go up and we’ve just got nowhere to put them. We’ve just go no room now. Every space for every car is rammed. Every hotel is rammed. So we’re running the maximum amount of cars we can." The Central Feature has also become a real highlight of the event over the last 30 years. First introduced in 1997, it’s now become one of the main elements of the weekend, and its complexity and size has also evolved considerably in that time. “It didn’t exist to start with. A DB7 which had just been launched the first year on a plinth, that was the Central Feature. We built it the night before. We got the whiskey bottle out and we were all there trying to get it finished!

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“This is a bit more involved now. Gradually they just got a bit more involved. We started just doing things out there that were a bit more involved and then one manufacturer said ‘can we do one of those’ and we said ’yeah, OK, we can do that’. And then suddenly they all did. We designed it and built it and the manufacturer becomes the client if you like.” Goodwood is so lucky in many aspects, but none more so than the layout of the site. Very few fundamental changes are needed to be made in order to make FOS a workable event. Of course, temporary structures are constructed in the build up, but the fundamentals, like the hillclimb course itself, were there already. It’s an original road that’s never had to be adapted


ADRIAN NEWEY HAVING A QUIET WORD WITH JACKIE STEWART AT THE TOP OF THE HILL

STEWART LEADING CEVERT IN MONACO

"MOLECOMB IS A REAL CHALLENGE FOR PEOPLE, THEY ALL WANT TO GO PILING STRAIGHT ON THERE" - DUKE OF RICHMOND and it’s full of challenges, like the dart around the Flint Wall three quarters of the way up. But Molecomb is the most difficult corner for a few reasons. “How this whole site works for us is just a piece of luck really. And everyone loves the bit of road. Again, the road could be really dull, but it’s quite demanding, quite fast. “Molecomb is a real challenge for people, they all want to go piling straight on there. In the first few years we had a speed trap very close to that corner. So they were going up through the straight and then the speed trap number came up and then they were at the corner. So of course, they were all just going for the speed trap and that had to come down pretty quickly. They were all just going straight on, they weren’t bothered with

the corner. “It’s blind, you can’t see it as you come into it. That’s really the problem and it’s much more different than you think. You just can’t see it. That’s the one that gets everybody.” Naturally hosting an event of this size is no easy feat, but for the Duke of Richmond there’s one specific element that’s the hardest, and it’s the most important aspect. “I suppose it’s just the detailed planning,” he said. “In a way, the weekend itself happens. It’s in real time, you’re very much present. But in a way, like now, we know what’s happening. We’ve cracked it in a way. We know what’s coming, that’s all good. It’s really when you’re feeling your way, trying to get the right content,

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get everyone to come because there’s so much goodwill in it. “We can’t pay people to come so they’ve got to want to come. “Some people don’t want to come, some people really want to come every time, other people don’t want to come very often. But touch wood, most people want to come. And then there’s obviously the guys with the cars. You’ve got to get them from America or persuade them to come, then you’ve got the whole business of transporting it. Logistically it’s huge. It’s a massive site. Someone said it’s the biggest greenfield site in the world right now. “I think in terms of value it’s probably bigger than Glastonbury, in terms of the sheer builds. Because Glastonbury is just a few stages. In terms of real buildings and the whole cost of the site, it’s huge. For us it’s huge let alone when you’ve got all the manufacturer stands on it. It’s tens of millions to build it." The challenges are more than worth it though. Not only is a smile put on the hundreds of thousands of people who turn up for FOS each year, but the event consistently creates some hugely iconic motorsport moments, and in some cases recreates them. From Stirling Moss and Denis Jenkinson being reunited with the 722 Mercedes SLR they won the Mille Miglia with in 1995, to Agostini riding his bike into Goodwood House, not to mention Dougie Lampkin riding his trial bike across the grounds, into the house and onto the roof. You just don’t get those moments anywhere else in the world. But for the Duke of Richmond, the fact that so many iconic cars have driven in what is essentially his back garden is what makes the event so special for him personally. “What’s amazing is nowhere in the world has had more great cars than out there. It can’t have because no-one does the breadth anyway, let alone the quantity. And we’re very keen on motorbikes as well, so mixing cars and bikes together, no-one really does that either. So that’s a cool thing to do. “The Formula 1 batch sits with the motorcycle batch, they sit together. And so in the assembly area they are all in there together and it is absolute mayhem! We should have stopped it long ago but we’re still doing it because it is completely crazy. You’ve got all the F1 cars going down, all the bikes going down and when they are going down together to the start it’s all quite random. So yeah, that is a big moment.” And it’s not only the Duke of Richmond that loves that aspect of FOS. The drivers and riders love it too. “There’s just more and more people, there’s a collection of MotoGP this year,” Karen Chandhok explained to The Pit Stop when asked how he’s seen the event change over the last 14 years he’s been attending the event. “I’m a big MotoGP fan, so very excited to see all them here. I’ve had a chance to meet some of the riders and look at the bikes. I mean, it’s incredible.”

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2023'S CENTRAL FEATURE FOR THE FESTIVAL OF SPEED

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MANSELL AT ESTORIL IN 1992. HE WENT ON TO WIN THE RACE BY 37.5 SECONDS

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SEBASTIAN VETTEL DRIVING UP THE HILL IN 2023 TO PROMOTE RACE WITHOUT TRACE

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Marino Franchitti agrees with Chandhok, highlighting that the mix of people cars and bikes is what makes FOS so iconic. “Anytime I’m at Goodwood, whether it’s revival, Members’ Meeting or the Festival of Speed, is special,” said Franchitti. “What’s most special about this is you get such a mix of old and new cars. You get to meet guys you look up to who are racing at the top level of any motorsport. You get to meet legends from the past, and it’s always incredible to see people kind of out of context. “So like last year Mario Andretti getting to drive I think it was Ascari’s car which was something that had inspired him as a kid and to get to see him - a man in his 80s - being like a kid, it’s such a special event for that. And just the different cars you get to experience this weekend, jumping between very modern Le Mans cars and cars from the ‘70s. It just doesn’t get any better. Other people try to imitate it, but this is just one of my favourite events in the world.” Talk to any driver or rider in the paddock at FOS and you get the same response as that given by Chandhok and Franchitti. ‘Mad Mike’ Whiddett feels exactly the same. Drifting might be his game, but to see and meet the mix of drivers that attend FOS, along with watching some of the most iconic historic cars and bikes of motorsport tackle the hill, some of which is done at speed, is what brings him back each year. “There’s no event in the world where you can walk past and see Sir Jackie Stewart walking past and then Sebastien Loeb and all the different genres of motorsport and all the different eras,” Whiddett explained. “And actually to see some of the old world

champions reunite with their cars from the ‘50s and ‘60s, and like they don’t just cruise up here as a museum piece. You see the cars crash, go into the hay bales, they’re sideways, they’re spinning out. The drivers are enjoying and reminiscing back those moments they had back in those early days. “The highlight for me was definitely the first year coming and just seeing the faces, and just the fan engagement you have at these events is incredible because the fans can actually get up and meet their heroes, the Formula 1 drivers or whoever it is and it’s just a far more casual environment.” It doesn’t just stop with the hill though. With Goodwood always looking to innovate and grow the event, the team decided in 2005 to add a rally stage to the bill. Located at the top of the hill and designed by rally legend Hannu Mikkola, the course winds its way through the woods to create a proper full forest stage. And adding the stage to the FOS bill had more than one advantage. “The rally guys are great and easy and they all love coming,” explained the Duke of Richmond. “It’s a great stage and we needed to move people around the site. So we can get them up there and we need to get more people up there really.” It can be a bit of a walk for certain people to make it to the rally stage, but it's worth it at the summit. Just like on the hill itself, there are so many iconic cars and drivers that have taken to the stage over the years. From various cars previously driven by Colin McRae to Nasser Al-Attiyah driving his Dakar Toyota Hilux through the forest, there’s no shortage of variety. And in 2023, Rally1 cars from the World Rally Championship also took to the gravel.

THIERRY NEUVILLE TACKLING THE RALLY STAGE WITH HIS RALLY1 WRC HYUNDAI

FRANCOIS CEVERT SAT IN THE PITLANE DURING THE 1973 SEASON

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NIGEL MANSELL TOOK HIS 1992 F1 TITLE-WINNING WILLIAMS UP THE HILL IN 2022

Naturally fans flock to FOS to see the historic cars. A lot of the event is about creating nostalgia, recreating memories from years gone by. None more so than in 2022 when Nigel Mansell took the 'Red Five' Williams FW14B up the hill. For one weekend only Mansell mania was back. It was like stepping into a time machine and hurtling back to 1992, helped by the fact Mansell was able to wear the same liveried overalls from that season. It was the same when Mario Andretti attended in 2021 and drove his championship winning Lotus 79. Those who were at the races in those years can cast their mind back and pretend they’re there again, while others who weren’t can experience what it would have been like if they were. But it’s not just the past that Goodwood has paid homage to across the last three decades. The Duke of Richmond is also very keen that future technologies are showcased at FOS. “There’s a huge focus on the future,” he said. “We do this conference as well, we have this thing called Nucleus which is like a Davos motor industry during the weekend. So we have a lot of the CEOs here, a lot of the tech disrupts here as well. We set an agenda of future mobility and connectivity and they all come together and discuss it. So we are very keen to be a convener of future thinking. We think the Festival of

Speed can be a good platform for that. “Future Labs has become a huge part of the event. That was a big commitment and a big thing to do really. That’s become a real success. We’re just trying to create something that also hopefully inspires people to go into engineering, inspires people in terms of new technology and I think to be able to see the whole history of mobility in one moment like that, that’s a very exciting thing.” It’s amazing to think that in the space of three decades FOS has gone from what was essentially a basic clubman style event to a huge global must-attend weekend. But just because it’s now a flagship event for the motorsport industry, it doesn’t mean Goodwood is going to stop there. The Duke of Richmond wants to continue the growth, he wants to continue the innovation and wants to ensure that technology is increasingly showcased. “We’ve grown every year or so for the last 30 years so we’ll carry on growing. I think the content change, the world’s changing, cars are changing as we’ve seen already. So we’re very keen to keep pace with that. I think the tech part will become more increasingly important. It will become more and more of a tech show in a way. A tech show in a unique environment and we’re always looking at whether we can take the Festival of Speed international. We’ve got very near it a

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THERE'S ALWAYS PLENTY OF VARIETY ON SHOW AT THE FESTIVAL OF SPEED

few times. How does that work? What can we do with the brand so we can get it across a bigger audience and how do we become all things, if you like, to do with cars and motorsport? Because in many ways we are the only brand that does represent all genres of motorsport. We’ve got Indy, NASCAR, Paris-Dakar, F1, everything all together. So we’re in a unique position really and old and present and future all together. “We think about that a lot. The whole EV debate and everything a few years ago, everyone was quite depressed about it. I think that’s all much more positive now. I don’t think suddenly all the cars in the world are going to have to go electric. The pursuit of driving may become more of a leisure, to enjoy driving, which I think is a bit of a shame. But I think the joy of driving may be more of a leisure activity. “Like the Festival of Speed or you go to your local track at the weekend and you drive your car. So I think the real joy of it might be changing in the sense that driving is probably going to become less and less fun on the road. But the people’s will and wish to enjoy it and their love of cars, I don’t think that’s gone anywhere.

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I think actually there seems to be more. We sold out quicker this year than we’ve ever been sold out. So people seem more excited by their cars almost than ever. “So I think post-covid people have been ‘wow, this isn’t all bad. There’s lots of excitement and good here, and I can love my pre-war Alfa, and I can love my electric car and I can have all these things and they do different jobs.’” Who knows what the next 30 years will look like for FOS. Nobody possesses a crystal ball after all. But while we can’t categorically state what the vision will be for a 2053 FOS, we do know what will very likely still be there: the passion and nostalgia. That’s what makes FOS what it is today. It’s the love of motorsport in all forms and at all levels. Franchitti was right in what he said about FOS. People can imitate it, try to replicate it and take inspiration from it. But there’s nothing really like it. It’s one of a kind, one that annually reminds us just how great the sport is and always has been.


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IMAGE BY PHD PHOTO

LAPPI ESAPEKKA LAPPI'S SWITCH TO HYUNDAI FOR THE 2023 WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP SURPRISED MANY, BUT HE'S ALREADY PROVING IT WAS A GOOD DECISION. HE'S QUICKLY SETTLED INTO THE TEAM AND HAS ALREADY PICKED UP THREE PODIUMS IN THE FIRST EIGHT EVENTS.

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THE PIT STOP 101


YEARS OF


McLAREN CUSTOMER RACING

WORDS BY ROB HANSFORD IMAGES BY PHD PHOTO / MCLAREN


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he McLaren brand has reached yet another milestone by celebrating its 60th birthday in 2023, but it’s easy to forget one important element that has enabled it to get this far. While the majority of fans will naturally have the team’s Formula 1 exploits jump to the forefront of their mind when thinking about what McLaren has achieved over the last 60 years, there’s also another part of the business that has helped support there business: customer racing. Sometimes, it can be easy to believe that McLaren’s customer racing division is something relatively new for the brand, but it’s not. It’s been there right from the very start when Bruce founded the company in 1963. When McLaren built his first race car, the M1, he knew that he needed to find a way to fund the business and help it grow, and he quickly diversified into the customer racing arena. McLaren started out building and selling Formula 2 cars and struggling for capacity, these builds were sub-contracted out to Trojan, which had taken control of struggling outfit Elva. And in 1964 McLaren struck a deal with it to produce 24 customer cars based off McLaren’s own M1. The cars sold like hot cakes, and drivers went about

racing them in sportscar races across Europe and North America. It quickly became apparent there was a market for these prototype sportscars, and with the M1A being successful in terms of sales, McLaren and Elva soon went on to produce the M1B and M1C, with both cars achieving success worldwide, notably in the Can-Am series in North America where McLaren and its customers racked up 43 victories by the time the series ended in that form in 1974. Linking up with Trojan and Elva ended up being a great decision by McLaren. The team could offload the car builds to a company with the capacity to produce them, but still be involved in the design and the success of the cars. Can-Am laid down strong foundations for the partnership, and it continued right into the 1980s, with several teams in the United States Auto Club IndyCar championship running with McLarens, as well as several privateer Formula 1 outfits. In the 1980s McLaren and Trojan dipped their toes into the European sportscar arena, with Peter Hoffmann driving a McLaren C8 at selected rounds of Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft (DRM) between 1982 and 1984. The car provided to be quick enough in the right conditions, with Hoffmann claiming a few podium positions, but it was often too fragile and

MCLAREN'S CUSTOMER RACING DIVISION STARTED WITH THE ELVA


unreliable, preventing it from having any major success. It was during this period that McLaren’s customer racing division went through a quiet patch. All attention turned to the F1 team and many forgot that McLaren was involved in customer racing. That was until 1995. With the launch of McLaren’s road car, the F1 GTR capturing people’s imagination of being able to drive a car with F1 technology on the roads, seven race-going versions were purchased by customers and sent to race in the BPR Global GT Endurance Series. The car dominated the series. The F1 GTR won all

but two of that year’s 12 races and six of those seven cars were sent to Le Mans for the 1995 running of the legendary 24 hour event. If its exploits in BPR hadn’t been enough, its performance in the Le Mans 24 Hours proved it was the real deal. Competing in the LMGT1 class, the GTR occupied the first four positions, and was also the overall winner courtesy of Hokusai Kaihatsu Racing. Mach One Racing also made the podium in an F1 GR with Andy Wallace, Derek Bell and Justin Bell at the wheel, while Gulf Racing and Giroix Racing Team were fourth and fifth overall.

THE MCLAREN F1 GTR WON THE RACE IN 1995




It was a huge feat, and it proved that McLaren was just as strong creating sportscars as it was racing in Formula 1. McLaren Automotive’s director of motorsport, Ian Morgan, believes that result helped firmly put the customer racing division back on the map. “Absolutely, yes,” was Morgan’s response when The Pit Stop asked if that was a significant turning point for the company’s customer division. “I think it was very much a key part of the technology part of it as well, with what we did with aerospace industry and carbon chassis in Formula 1. It was something we wanted to bring across to the road car domain and thankfully due to how the Formula 1 team was operating at that time we were then able to produce a road car in the F1 that took us back to Le Mans. “To go and win on debut with that car was amazing. That year of ’95 has been talked about a lot, it’s still an amazing story and I was lucky enough to work with JJ Lehto in the early days of single-seaters and to see him have success in a car with a McLaren name was just amazing at that point in time. "I think that set us back on track for what we wanted to do. It’s taken a while to get from there to where we are now, but there’s a big customer programme that spun off the F1 road car that then eventually reignited in 2011 with the first 12C.” Since 2011, McLaren has gone on to produce several sportscars that have then been used in a customer racing domain, with its most recent car the Artura being used widely throughout Europe and North America, including in IMSA and British GT. But even though McLaren wants its cars to be at the forefront of modern technology at all times to ensure they can be worldbeaters, Morgan highlights that it is still important the cars retain McLaren’s heritage within them as well. “It’s very important to keep that. We mustn’t forget, we must make sure people keep remembering what we do. And I guess it’s slightly different to us. We don’t have assets around us that we can just walk people around the factory here, but we have MTC [McLaren Technology Centre] and you can’t walk up and down the boulevard without being reminded of what McLaren makes and we make sure our customers can go on that journey as well. “When they come and visit us they can feel part of that and hopefully want to become part of that because it’s an important story. It’s a brand that was born on the racetrack that then became a road car company as well and we kind of merge in the middle of that which is quite a nice position to be. We’re not as extreme as F1, but we’re not just road cars. We’re harnessing both sides of that to bring into the middle and I think people like to see that. “It’s good that we still have a lot of cars running, whether it’s Le Mans Classic or Goodwood, to see cars that have got that heritage still running.

“I think it inspires everybody. It inspires our engineers and our marketing people. Our customers as well, they go 'you can’t sit and watch that happen without feeling something special' because it is special.” McLaren’s approach to sportscar racing is so different from many other brands. While others will field works teams in addition to providing cars to customers, McLaren feels that approach is wrong. “We think it’s wrong as a brand to be racing at this level, at GT3 and GT4, against your customers. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing to do if you want them to be successful. We want the car to be successful, but ultimately it’s customer racing and that’s what we want and we will support our teams to do that.” There’s no denying that over the last 60 years McLaren’s approach to customer racing has changed. Initially it was a way to further grow the overall company and to pay the bills for F1, but now it sits within a separate business area of the McLaren Group, generating revenue that drives growth in other areas, including in expanding the customer division itself. And it has no plans of stopping. Right now, McLaren has cars racing in championships all across the globe, but it also has its own one make championship. And in the years to come, expanding that will be a primary focus of the business. “Going forward we see the one make championship as quite a big part of what we want to do,” said Morgan. “Getting customers involved. It’s a good way for us to be able to bring people through the whole motorsport journey. "That’s sort of more of an entry level thing where they can come in and be part of the brand at a race event, go on if they wish and they feel the desire to move up to the higher levels of GT3. But enable them to be connected with a brand, competing with a brand, meeting with like-minded people at those events, enjoying nice hospitality and having a nice weekend. “It’s focused around the people owning and buying the cars and buying the packages rather than the pro drivers that work with them. It’s very much an Ambased concept and that’s ultimately where most of our customer base for road cars are coming from. “Again, we need to [grow] organically, but our plans are to have more of those on more continents and to be growing over the next few years.” It’s not just the one-make championship where McLaren feels it can grow. Right now its core business is selling GT3 and GT4 cars, and it believes that there will also be considerable growth areas in the GT3 market, and there’s one event in particular Morgan hopes McLaren can return to. “GT3 is pretty much… every championship is going that way from WEC next year with IMSA, and all the strong SRO championships are all GT3 focused in the GT category. So we’re there, want to be there, we want

"TO GO AND WIN ON DEBUT WITH THAT CAR WAS AMAZING"

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THE MCLAREN F1 GTR ALSO WON ITS CLASS IN 1997

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DESPITE CARRYING DAMAGE, VETTEL STILL FINISHED THE RACE IN SIXTH

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to support our customers wherever they want to be racing. “But WEC and ACO [Le Mans 24 Hours organiser] is a tricky one. We really have to understand what we can do as a manufacturer. There’s a limited number of places. We want to be there, but we don’t know if we can be yet, but at some point hopefully. “100% as a brand we want to be there. We just need to find a way. They are obviously prioritising customers with hypercar and LMDh. We don’t have one of those programmes, and we haven’t had the ability in the past having not had a GTE car to have had many years of history running cars recently. "But we have history of Le Mans over that period with the F1 GTR, so we’re hoping sooner or later we’ve

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got our feet firmly under the table there as well.” Naturally, growing a business further takes time, it takes money and it takes perseverance. But McLaren has proven consistently over the last 60 years that it’s entirely possible to do that in the customer arena. And now it has a firm hold on Europe and North America once again, the brand is starting to look at other continents where it could send cars to race. Right now, McLaren has around 75 customer cars racing worldwide, including in Bruce’s home nation of New Zealand, but Asia is one area the company would like to focus on further. “Asia is probably the next focus, with the basis that our Trophy championship covers Europe as wide as we can,” explained Morgan. “We’ve got a lot of activity


THE ARTURA TAKING TO THE GOODWOOD HILL

going on in Europe and the US is our biggest road car market and a big motorsport market, so we want to be there. "But then our next focus after that is Asia. The wider area, there’s a lot going on within everywhere from Japan, China, Thailand down to Asia-Pacific. Australia’s growing quite heavily, we’ve got an awful lot of active cars in New Zealand, partly because of the name of the brand. But it’s good to see those guys run week in, week out. Very little support from us but it’s great we can do that with the cars as well. “Asia’s probably the market that we get people coming to us saying when can we do something with one-make, or have a more accessible McLaren Racing model outside of the current GT infrastructure. So we are looking very much to expand out there as and when we can.”

There’s no doubt that McLaren will continue to grow from a customer racing perspective in the future. Its Artura programme is going from strength to strength, and so too is its 720S GT3 car. There’s a reason why half of the British GT grid currently drives a McLaren. They’re strong, reliable and fast cars that leave their drivers knowing that they always have a chance of fighting for victory. They are at the top of the game both from a performance perspective and a technological one, and 60 years on McLaren’s customer division is truly flourishing. It might be easy for some to forget about how McLaren operated at its inception, selling customer cars so it could go racing at all, but six decades on and now with a very different purpose, it's still proving to be a solid business model that’s still growing.

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6 0

Y E A R S O F I N N O V A T I O N F U E L S O U R F U T U R E .

The Bruce McLaren Racing LTD was founded in 1963 when Bruce McLaren began producing his own Formula 1 race cars. Passion for innovation led to our road car division where Bruce’s spirit still inspires every car built today. Celebrate our 60th anniversary with us and learn about key milestones we’ve achieved along the way.

ARTURA

720S

P1

MP4-12C

MP4/13

F1

MP4/2

M20

M6GT

FOREVER FORWARD


RELENTLESS PROGRESS. BENCHMARK BE ATEN.

750S

MCLAREN 750S

R E L E N T L E S S P R O G R E S S . B E N C H M A R K B E A T E N . McLaren strives to push boundaries. To relentlessly seek better. It’s what drives McLaren on road and track. And it’s what defines the new 750S.


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T

here’s one word that you will very rarely ever associate with endurance racing: uneventful. And that word couldn’t be any less relevant at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Racing cars at mind-bending speeds for 24 hours is always going to create drama. Drivers will make mistakes, cars will suffer reliability issues and crashes will take place. The demands on both man and machine means it’s almost inevitable. Most drivers will come across all of the highs and lows the Le Mans 24 Hours has to offer over a prolonged career, but few have experienced it as

HANSON CONTESTED THE 2023 LE MANS 24 HOURS WITH UNITED AUTOSPORTS

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quickly as Phil Hanson. Hanson made a quick rise through the ranks to make his Le Mans debut. In 2017 he started the race for the very first time at just the tender age of 17. It’s something that most people could only dream of. He’d only been racing cars for a year before joining the small family team Tokwith Motorsport for its first attempt at the legendary race. Tokwith wasn’t really ready for the world of Le Mans. Hanson and team-mate Nigel Moore had won the Asian Le Mans series in 2017, but Le Mans was a different level. Thankfully for Hanson the team brought experienced driver Karun Chandhok in as the third driver for Le Mans and his advice helped the debutant


remain calm under pressure. But although the team was small and not exactly ready for endurance racing’s biggest stage, the three drivers managed to execute a strong race, bringing their LMP2 car home ninth in class. It was a huge achievement for Hanson. He had very little experience of racing cars full stop and yet he proved he was capable of racing not only competitively but also with maturity. Hanson felt that inexperience though, and it wasn’t until he returned the following year with United Autosports that he started to believe in his own talents some more. “It’s funny. You say you go there with a top 10 in

mind, or just to finish the race as that’s an achievement in itself. But there’s still part of every driver going ‘what if this happens? What if somehow a miracle happens and you manage to step on the podium or win?’ Every driver, no matter what level somehow convinces themselves that they have a genuine shot of winning Le Mans,” Hanson explained to The Pit Stop. “And I think it wasn’t until I went back with United the second time in what was a much more competitive package of driver line-ups and cars and with experience from Le Mans the year before, and racing at a high level that you start actually then giving yourself a more realistic idea that you can actually challenge for wins.”

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HEADING UP TO THE DUNLOP CURVES

"I WON IT, I DID ALL THE HARD WORK, I'VE GOT THE TROPHY, THE HISTORY BOOKS, BUT NONE OF THE GLORIOUS MOMENTS" - PHIL HANSON Hanson would challenge for wins, though. He came up short a few times following his debut in 2017, but in 2020 his victory dream became a reality, with he and team-mates Paul di Resta and Felipe Albuquerque finishing fifth overall to win the LMP2 class. “For me, it took me three years before I ended up winning Le Mans,” Hanson explained. “I mean, most people don’t ever achieve that in their lifetime, so I don’t know why I say it took me three years. Three years is pretty short really. But three years of coming close. “In 2018 Paul crashed and had we stayed out we would have ended up on the podium with other cars falling out. We probably wouldn’t have been there purely on pace merit but that’s what would have happened because we were running a strong race. “The next year we had no mistakes, we did the perfect race, all as fast as we could, but we were held back by a limiting factor with the car not being quick enough and we ended up fifth. Then a year later we won.”

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The #22 United Autosports car won the LMP2 class by over 30 seconds in 2020 to take fifth overall. Hanson had his first Le Mans win, aged just 21, becoming the youngest British driver to ever win LMP2 at Le Mans. It was a huge feat, one that proved to Hanson he is more than capable of fighting at the very top level, but it was also one that was left feeling slightly hollow and it’s a feeling that is motivating him to try and win the race again. “You kind of create these expectations of where you could possibly finish, and having won it, I have absolutely no interest in doing anything else apart from winning it again,” said Hanson. “Before winning it, if you’d have asked me ‘do you feel winning it is getting a podium?’ I’d have said yes. Now it would feel like a massive loss really finishing second or third. It’s funny really how your expectations change once you’ve achieved something. “One of the reasons I’m really motivated to [win it again] is because I won it during covid. And whilst it


was one of the most difficult years to win it with the really challenging field of cars and really strong lineups, it was a really shit year to win it to be honest. “Masks in all the photos, no fans, none of that. So in many ways the glory of winning Le Mans wasn’t really enjoyed by the team and me. So I won it, I did all the hard work, I’ve got the trophy and the history books, but none of the glorious moments. “That’s something everything asks you all the time - what was it like winning Le Mans? Well, actually I was wearing a mask, stood on the podium I was just looking down to the team, when everyone else says it was euphoric. You were stood on the podium looking over a sea of fans, you’ve just won the biggest race. That’s what’s chasing these moments. “Every time you win it, it adds something. It’s a strange one. I feel like none of us would be satisfied. If winning something once was enough then you’d never make it out of karting because as soon as you’d won your first race you’d stop.” It’s fair to say Hanson has experienced most elements that Le Mans has to offer. Although his victory wasn’t followed by the electric atmosphere that comes with a huge crowd in attendance, it takes nothing away from the fact that he did take the win in the world’s

greatest endurance event. But he’s also experienced some lows in the race as well, one that was excruciatingly painful for him in 2022. “Last year we had the shortest Le Mans I’ve ever experienced. It could also be the longest Le Mans I’ve ever experienced,” said Hanson. “We got taken out in the first six seconds of the race and so we had 23 hours and 59 minutes to pound around three laps down. It doesn’t sound horrendous when you think of three laps, but it’s easy to forget that Le Mans has a three and a half minute laptime. So it was game over basically after six seconds. “I think I’ve experienced a lot of the ups and downs that Le Mans has to offer to be honest. I don’t think much more can surprise me. It can’t get any worse than the race we had last year.” Having your race virtually ended that early on is painful no matter the length. But when you still have just of 24 hours to contest, it makes it even harder. You need to dig deeper to find the motivation to carry on. It would be so easy to throw in the towel and retire the car. But the #22 car didn’t do that at all. Hanson’s team-mate Will Owen was behind the wheel for the start of the race in 2022 and it was he

HANSON (CENTRE) WITH FILIPE ALBERQUERQUE (LEFT) AND FREDERICK LUBIN (RIGHT)

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WILL OWEN CRASHING OUT SIX SECONDS INTO THE 2022 LE MANS 24 HOURS

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who was sent into the gravel after being pinched between the WRT LMP2 cars of Ferdinand Habsburg and Rene Rast. But rather than retire, Owen brought the car back to the pits for repairs and then continued. The win might have been out of the question, but the team still fought on, and eventually completed the race, finishing 14th overall and 10th in class. No small feat given there were 18 LMP2 cars starting alongside a further nine LMP2 Pro-Am cars. But regardless of the finishing position, the level of preparation that goes into the race means nobody wants to give up at the first hurdle. “The weekend itself, we don’t approach it any different to any other weekend. We always try and win and as does every other team,” said Hanson. “There is more preparation that goes into Le Mans, the fact it’s a 24 hours race. But there’s also no race in proximity to Le Mans, so it gives teams time to prepare for trying to do the last rebuilds, last shakedowns, final tests here and there to make sure whatever philosophy you’ve been chasing for the last year you can nail for Le Mans. So it kind of caters for that too, that there is sort of three weeks off before the Le Mans test. And in that period everyone is working extra hard. It’s like the first race of the season really.

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“The preparation that goes into Le Mans is probably the same that you would have for an entire season, but all for one race. But the length of practice and the race is probably the length of a full season. That’s probably a good way of explaining the amount of pressure that goes into the weekend. You’ve put in as much preparation as you probably would for an entire season for one race. That’s why there’s so much pressure for it, putting aside the fact that it’s an awesome event.” Over the last seven years Hanson has marked himself out to be something of an LMP2 specialist. During that time he’s won the World Endurance Championship, the Asian Le Mans Series, and the European Le Mans Series. And with victory at Le Mans itself, he’s just about ticked off every achievement going apart from IMSA. But with changes afoot in Europe, the LMP2 class won’t be the one to be competing for in the future if you want a career in WEC. While the LMP2 class will still be present at Le Mans, it’s disappearing from the championship as a whole, and Hanson is aiming to take the next step. He’s won Le Mans at LMP2 level, but what he really wants is to win in the top category, in the hypercar class.


“I found myself in LMP2 because it was the most competitive class to be in, it was the best place to make my name and have my presence heard,” said Hanson. “And having a couple of years behind me that haven’t been great in terms of results hasn’t been ideal because I am actually trying to make that step up to hypercar as we speak. So that’s currently my short term aspirations. “The long term goal of mine is to get into the top class, and with hypercars now being as big as it is with all the manufacturers present, that’s now the goal. And LMP2 still seems to be the best place to make myself known and make myself known by the manufacturers and show that I am capable of it and deserve a role. So that’s why I am still there toughing it out. “There’s new manufacturers coming in 2024 and drivers fluctuating between the manufacturers that I think might not make the cut, and I just want to be one of the ones that do. So that’s what’s also at play this year, the fact that I’ve kind of had two poor years in terms of results, and this year is a last push to win WEC and Le Mans because LMP2 at least isn’t going to be present at WEC, only at Le Mans. So it’s a sort of final hoorah with United to try and get that title back.” Hanson is still very much in that title fight at the time of writing this. After winning the season-opener

at Sebring, Hanson followed it up with a podium in the Algarve. He finished fifth at Spa on a track that didn’t totally suit the car, but at Le Mans had his toughest race of the season so far, ending up eighth in class after team-mate Frederick Lubin made contact with the Dempsey Proton Racing Porsche. The car was handed a three-minute stop and go penalty for that incident, all but ending any hopes of victory. But while Le Mans proved to be a disappointment once again, Hanson’s team is currently third in the WEC, and still very much in the hunt for winning another title. At the age of 24 Hanson still has plenty of opportunities to take another Le Mans victory, and with his performances over the last few seasons, there’s no doubt he has the potential to not only compete but win in the hypercar class should a seat be made available for him. But despite his young age, it’s fair to say he has experienced more than most at Le Mans. And that’s the beauty of the event. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how much talent you have, you never know what’s in store. The yo-yo effect hits full flow. You just have to jump on the rollercoaster ride and see wherein takes you.

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IMAGE BY WILLIAMS RACING

ALBON ALEX ALBON'S REPUTATION HAD TAKEN A DIVE AFTER STRUGGLING AT RED BULL, BUT IN 2023 HE'S REGAINED THAT ORIGINAL LEVEL HAVING EXCELLED AT WILLIAMS.

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WILL VETTEL BECOME MOTORSPORT'S SAVIOUR IN RETIREMENT? WORDS BY GARTH KENARDINGTON IMAGES BY PHD PHOTO

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S

ebastian Vettel's Formula 1 career was a kind of 'affection sandwich' in terms of how he was perceived, perhaps particularly in Britain. Much of the fondness for him in his teenage sensation years grew from the fact that despite being so young and so phenomenally talented (two factors that are often a recipe for tunnel vision when combined), he had such clear appreciation for motorsport's heritage. He got it. Putting aside his own racing exploits, he was passionate about motorsport itself for the same reasons fans were. Vettel's passion didn't wane, but perhaps it was expressed less openly, less often as his career went on. The fondness for him certainly waned. Maybe it was how predictable he made F1 during his most dominant years. Maybe it was his attitude around controversies such as the 'multi 21' team orders row with Mark Webber in 2013 or when he swerved into Lewis Hamilton during a Baku safety car. Maybe all those who yearned for Ferrari F1 success tired of him failing to see it through. Yet at a time when his on-track prowess was a shadow of his best days, Vettel rose in fans' affections again by letting far more of his character show through when at Aston Martin, and in particular for showing an awareness of issues that mattered far more than motorsport, from LGBTQ rights to the potential for

environmental catastrophe. No other F1 champion has used their platform to promote the needs of bees. So in retirement it's been entirely appropriate that Vettel has begun a new project that combines two of his best-loved traits: passion for motorsport heritage and environmental concern. The headline element of his Race Without Trace mission is that he's putting 100% fossil-free, synthetic fuel created by P1 Fuels into classic F1 cars from his personal collection. It's a 'drop-in' fuel that requires no modifications to the cars themselves, allowing machinery created long before environmental awareness was really on motorsport's radar to potentially keep running long into the future. The programme premiered at last year's British Grand Prix, where he stepped out of his 2022 Aston Martin into an ex-Nigel Mansell 1992 Williams-Renault FW14B running on the sustainable fuel for some demonstration laps. At this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed he not only brought out the Williams but also his own exAyrton Senna 1993 McLaren-Ford MP4/8 for the next stage of his project. That continued Goodwood's trend for embracing ways to make historic motorsport environmentally friendly, after it worked with F1 supplier Aramco on drop-in synthetic fuels for two classic GT cars at its Revival event last year - a programme it hopes to substantially expand in the future. The new fuel allowing those cars to have any kind of

VETTEL DRIVING THE WILLIAMS FW14B AT GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED

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operational future, let alone one in which their original sounds and performance are maintained for future generations to enjoy, makes this a hugely admirable endeavour. But it's also in some ways the easy part of Vettel's post-F1 environmental consciousness. As he admits himself, it's a toe in the water to show what might be possible. Drop-in synthetic fuels are a tiny part of the processing of self-examination motorsport has to put itself through to ensure it has a future. He's not claiming to have all the answers, but he wants everyone who cares about the sport to join him in asking the questions and helping come up with solutions. "The main idea is to demonstrate that you can have fun, but you can have it in a more responsible way," he says of the Race Without Trace project. "The world is changing. It's something that maybe not everybody has understood yet to the full degree, but it is happening and it will be happening more and more. "And obviously, I love motorsport and I would love motorsport to continue. The threat might be far away for a lot of people now today. But the world is changing. "The idea is to demonstrate that we can do it in a different way. My cars sound just like they did back in

'92 and '93. I think it will be just as thrilling. They're beautiful. And they sound beautiful. "It is an alternative. It might not be the full answer but I think it's definitely heading in that direction. Otherwise all these cars will disappear one day and that'll be a shame." Vettel - and anyone else involved in motorsport who raises their head above the environmental debate parapet - has faced accusations of hypocrisy. How can he reconcile the damage that the sport he owes his fame and fortune to has done to the planet with the stance he now has? He's been admirably open about confronting that. He admits that it was "probably not early enough" when he first started to consider the motorsport vs climate change debate. "It was probably something that I heard about when I was younger," he says. "Nowadays everybody has heard about and we are finding out that we can't outrun or run away from it." Asked if the conflict between his environmental beliefs and his job might've actually affected his performance in the latter years of his F1 career, Vettel muses for a moment before suggesting it didn't then makes a striking revelation: that he'd be kind of glad if it had.

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"If it impacted on my performance? I don't know, it's hard to tell, it's always hard to measure in racing," he begins. "But I would probably say no. "If it did, then I wouldn't regret it. "Because I think there are obviously problems in this world that are far bigger than a certain lap time in a position on the day. Even though racing is my life. And on the day there's probably nothing more important to me. "But to all of us, our planet is of far bigger interest than whether I qualify a little bit higher up or a little bit lower. "Putting things in perspective, what happens on the racetrack and what happens in Formula 1 is probably not important at all." Which is not to say he doesn't care about F1 and its future. Far from it. Goodwood itself lost a day to extreme storms this year. F1 had to cancel its 2023 Imola race at short notice due to flooding. Vettel pointed out that another two grands prix close to Imola on the calendar had their own scares.

And even beyond short-notice race cancellations due to the weather, he can see a future where governments see dispensing with motorsport within their borders as an easy win in drives to bring down carbon emissions or be seen to be making environmentallyfriendly statements. The often-discussed threat of environmental protesters disrupting motorsport is far less worrying to Vettel than the existential threat motorsport faces on a legislative level. "There is a direct relation between extreme weather and the changing world, the warming world," he says. "Provided you are not completely looking away, you see the climate crisis has an impact on a lot of people already today, a lot of places around the world. "Imola got cancelled. You had a massive drought in Italy and then all of a sudden seemingly never ending rain. And obviously the rain couldn't get into the ground. So it was just pushed to the next place and obviously, collected at a place like Imola and caused massive floods. "The race in Miami this year was under threat

"I THINK THERE ARE PROBLEMS IN THIS WORLD THAT ARE BIGGER THAN A CERTAIN LAP TIME"

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because two or three weeks prior again, it was flooded. And that's the actual track that was under the water so the race could have been cancelled if it happened three weeks later. "You had the forest fires in Canada. Different winds lasting a bit longer and probably Montreal would have been off the calendar. "So it is a real threat. It might be that next year none of the races is at threat, but that's not how it works. You need to recognise that the world is changing and it does have an impact in our lives.

"It's not so much the threat or risk that people that might glue themselves onto the track on a race day. "It's more the threat that at some point governments will be looking at things that they can cut and ban and maybe motorsport might be one of them. That's how far I'm thinking. And I don't want that to happen, to be clear, because I think it's a great sport. It would be shame if we would lose that because we just simply can't afford it anymore when you look at something maybe as boring as a carbon budget."

VETTEL BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE MCLAREN MP4/8

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He speaks of seeing "a lot of young kids growing up and having the sparkle in their eye, looking forward to maybe a career in racing and it would be a shame if they don't get the same chances" because motorsport is considered an environmental liability. "It will be very different, the world that they will grow up in," Vettel adds. "I think it's already different today and will be very different in the future. So in some regards you could say it's already unfair. "But it's about taking action and make all of us aware that we all do take action to a degree that we can. "Not everybody will be able to make changes. Not everybody's the prime minister and will be able to make changes that have a huge impact. "But we can all do changes that have maybe a small impact and there's a lot of us, so a lot of small impacts turns out to be a big impact."

And change and difference needn't mean "worse". As Vettel's exploits in environmentally-sound 1990s F1 cars prove. "Look forward to a brighter future," he argues. "Don't always be thinking that change will put us in a worse place. "Look at cities and cities of the future. I think they will be a better place," he argues. "Imagine less pollution in the air, less noise. Less cars driving around. That's, I think, a good thing. "Think of London. It's so busy. If it was less busy and there would be more places for people to walk, to cycle, more green... I think it would be a nicer London compared to today. A lot less polluted, less dirty. A lot more comfortable. "So I think we need to start looking into the future. Imagining that it's going to be a good place and not different to today and therefore a threat."

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IMAGE BY MATT WIDDOWSON

THE PIT JUNIORS WALL THERE'S IT'S NOT NO AS CHEAP FEELING ASLIKE IT ONCE IT WHEN WASYOUR TO MAKE CAR YOUR CROSSES WAYTHE UP THE SINGLE-SEATER LINE VICTORIOUS. AND LADDER. HERE BUT AT THE FORMULA END OF4THE IS STILL LE MANS A GREAT 24 TRAINING HOURS IN GORUND 2023, YOUFOR CANYOUNG SEE HOW DRIVERS HAPPY IT MADE THE FERRARI MECHANICS.

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SUCCESS

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OR FAILURE?

WORDS BY IAN PAGE IMAGES BY W SERIES

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T

he mood across the motorsport community is one of sadness. On 15 June 2023, the all-female racing series W Series filed for administration. It had perhaps been on the cards since key funding didn’t materialise, but just how did the series end up falling so hard, and with the creation of the F1 Academy, was it mission accomplished for a format which looked to challenge both those inside and those outside the industry? When it was publicly announced back in October 2018, W Series raised a few eyebrows. An ambitious project which looked to champion equality in the very male dominated world of motorsport, an all-female racing series, looking to challenge the industry’s mindset and help get a female driver in the upper echelons of the sport, namely Formula 1. W Series had high profile backers, including David Coulthard and Adrian Newey shouting about how it changes the status quo of the racing world. It also had its fair share of critics; people like Pippa Mann and Charlie Martin raised concerns that it forced segregation and made a point of separating people by gender. Ex-Sauber test driver Simona de Silvestro suggested the prize money offered for winning the series would be better spent investing into scholarships

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to support developing drivers. Whichever side of the fence you fell on, W Series certainly brought something new to the table indeed when it hit the track in 2019 for its first season it really did make you “rethink racing”. However, fast forward to 2022 and after the sixth race of the season, it was reported that the series was experiencing some significant financial difficulties. A Companies House report in September of that year showed the series having net liabilities of over £7.5 million to 31 December 2021, with debts to a number of people and companies, including Whisper, a media production company owned by Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard, and Velocity Experience, the company that provided hospitality services to the series. There were several doubts the series would be unable to finish the 2022 season and indeed these doubts were realised in October 2022, a week after the seventh race of the season. This resulted in the cancellation of the remaining three races, which included a single race at Circuit of the Americas and a double-header at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, due to financial issues. At the time W series had to make this announcement, CEO Catherine Band-Muir cited an investor negating on a contract and withdrawing


THE INAUGURAL GRID IN 2019

funding despite an agreed contract and that options were being explored and there was every confidence that W Series would be back… In November 2022, F1 announced the creation of F1 Academy, another all-female racing series, which debuted 2023. Since the arrival of F1 Academy there has been no public statement from W Series, and with the arrival of the administrators it would seem the series has come to a conclusion. I was fortunate to cover the W Series in its inaugural season in 2019 for another news organisation, and during that year I spoke to good people, who were wellpositioned and respected in the industry, and in perfect position to run the fledgling series. The drivers taking part were talented and competitive, racing hardware that - although not at the top of the spectrum - was fast and enjoyable to watch. The racing was good, and the spirit and vibe around the track was positive and indeed, by the time the season finale came around at Brands Hatch, it would have seemed the series had convinced more than a few sceptics. TV figures were good with the series harnessing social media, appealing to a younger demographic and with spectator figures and interest trackside trending positively, all seemed very encouraging. But the ultimate goal was always to feature on a grand prix weekend and share the same spotlight as the boys – and this was all part of the downfall. W

Series simply ran before it could walk. It pushed for a place at the top table without having established itself at the smaller ones first. Now, it would be wrong to leave it there, the problem was and is much more nuanced and there were several factors to the series resulting in calling it a day. Speaking to industry insiders, there is a feeling that the series could have benefited from a transitional year. Being on the F1 calendar has its limitations. Yes, you know you’re going to get the audience and Sky Sports have got programmes going out, so they'll find time for you. But in reality you’ve got to back up your place on the big table with the cash. The feeling is that it may have had a different outcome if the series had just learned a bit more about itself before it went in. But how can you turn down F1 when they say they want you!? There was, of course, the pandemic in 2020. We all know the effect this had on sport across the globe and W Series was no different. Moving from real world racing to sim racing, the series had a very successful Esports championship. However, much like other sports, it was far from the ideal solution. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what the impact of the pandemic was. Costs were saved from not having to transport drivers, teams, and cars around the world, but were lost from a lack of revenue from not being trackside, such as merchandise. TV revenue and figures would have

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TAMBAY WAS SIGNED UP TO RACE FOR THEODORE RACING MIDWAY THROUGH 1977

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MIAMI WEEKEND LAUNCH EVENT

certainly taken a hit from a series only existing online. With no cars and no drivers on track, did sponsorship money take a hit? It’s something that may never be answered. Even when the world started to open up after the pandemic, the cost of getting to race locations went up threefold. The cost of transport, getting the cars there, and then having to borrow another set of cars from New Zealand and criss-cross the oceans, the series just couldn't afford to fly. Covid had a huge impact on the freight costs, and again the feeling on the inside is that without the pandemic, the series may have at least made it to the end of the 2023 season. As we all know with motorsport, it is an expensive game, and it always comes down to money. W Series had a few good sponsors in place. Puma, Heineken, and Bristol Street Motors to name a few. But putting it quite simply, they needed and wanted a Red Bull to come along and say, ‘Oh, here's £20 million, we'll back you’. Yes, there was some interaction between the series and F1, there were joint interviews and events where drivers from the same nationality would be involved, but that is as far as it went. Whether that was a missed opportunity, time will tell. Whether F1 should have made teams take a female side on, much like football teams do may be a debate for another day. I

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guess we can only see how F1 Academy will settle in and establish its relationship with its male counterpart to see if W Series could have explored that. Though the series did have some money there, it wasn't enough, because being on the F1 package is very expensive. Going to Singapore or to Austin, these locations are of course far more expensive in every which way than the locations on the DTM calendar back in 2019. Those of you who were following the series in 2022 will know the final blow was struck when an investor pulled out at the last minute and indeed it was the very, very last minute! So much so that the series was lucky to make Singapore, with race promoters shouldering the costs to get the series out there. Having followed the series myself, I witnessed so much love for W Series. Many people seemed to love and support the series, but they just didn't want to send their money over with their love. Why was that? Was there a degree of naivety on finding sponsors or indeed the right sponsors? Was the series getting into the right places to bring people, business on board? Only those in the inner circle will know the answer to that question. But one thing is for certain: a series with the sole aim of getting a female into F1 could be failing when their three times world


champion is still falling short of that F1 seat. Why invest in a business that is struggling to achieve its core aim? Yes, Jamie Chadwick is certainly much further in motorsport thanks to the series, having managed to get herself a seat in Indy NXT, but she is still far from a racing seat in F1. For winning the series, its champion could enjoy the spoils of a $1.5 million dollar prize fund, which Chadwick would have put to great use in funding her future motorsport projects. But there have been some calls for the prize for winning the championship not to be financial, but in fact be a scholarship or even a test with an FIA F3 team. An opportunity to sit down with the likes of Trevor Carlin and show off what that champion has achieved. And in winning the championship, you can’t come back, ensuring a different champion each year and a constant feed of good female drivers knocking on the doors of F3 teams. It’s clear the series was run by passionate people who genuinely believed in the cause and the feeling in the paddock was W Series was certainly putting pressure on itself to be the best the series it could, and get the best platform it could. To be there in the public eye and in the eye of those who can influence the world of F1. I don't expect the likes of Christian Horner and Toto Wolff on a weekend off to scroll through the

TV channels looking for DTM and then hoping they will catch a glimpse of the support races… but being there, being present at a grand prix weekend showcasing your message and what you can achieve is different. You can't look a gift horse in the mouth, can you? There has been talk that F1 should have bailed the series out. That, of course, should have been the case and knowing the series as well as I do, they would have said no. It’s got to stand on its own feet. F1 wouldn't do that to teams in F3 and F2, so why should they do it to W Series? They gave them the platform and they had to get up there and make the most of it, which they did. Just unfortunately people weren’t ready to invest. A question I often asked when in press conferences with W Series and never quite got a strong enough answer, was whether the series was looking to push out into schools and educational establishments and from that if there could be possible business or revenue opportunities. At the time, I felt like I got a disinterested response, which to me felt like a missed opportunity. On reflection, I feel like it was maybe a case of just not being in the right place to do that. Having spoken to those on the inside it was all relevant, but as is always the case with these things, there just wasn’t the money or the capabilities to do it all. The series had to prioritise, and I think there was a

THERE HAS BEEN TALK THAT F1 SHOULD HAVE BAILED THE SERIES OUT

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degree of letting organisations like More Than Equal and Dare to Be Different come in and do the schools thing. A racing series is there for racing. But there were small opportunities to connect outside of racing. In Austin, the series went to the local engineering college and American driver Sabré Cook spoke to female students because she had an engineering background. Those working for the series felt they did do as much of that as they could, but ultimately, they just didn’t have the capabilities, time and the people power to run anything like that. Of course, there are plenty of people within the industry that say despite W Series finding itself in the situation it does, it has been anything but a failure. That it is, in fact, mission accomplished, and I can see where they are going from. The series didn't fail because we've got F1 Academy. They actually did what we wanted to do: That set the stage for what followed and made sure that women had their own series that would be picked up by Formula One and the powers within. With the creation of W Series and what it stood for, F1 realised that it was full of white males. It was the ‘white male club’ and along with “we race as one”,

DIFFERENT TEAMS WERE INTRODUCED FOR THE 2022 SEASON OF W SERIES

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taking the knee and so forth, F1 realised it was not very diverse as a series and particularly where gender was concerned. Will we see the return of W Series? I don’t think so, and I don’t think we need it. We have F1 Academy which is continuing where W Series left off, albeit with slightly different parameters, but the aim and the message is the same. The drivers will have to find money, something W Series looked after, but with FIA F3 and F2 teams involved, surely it can only lead to good things? I for one don't think the W Series could return now. It’s been and gone and now it is time for someone and something else to fly that flag. It goes without saying that drivers who tackled the series will always be grateful to it for kickstarting their careers and in many cases resurrecting their careers. Quite a few of those drivers are now in the F1 Academy, and that is thanks to CEO Catherine Bond Muir, her vision and W Series. That is not a bad legacy, but the reality is W Series’ time has come and gone, and those who worked for it very much believe it is mission accomplished because we have an all-female series which is going to be there alongside F1. It is frustrating that F1 Academy is not broadcast


and outside of the “novelty” factor it doesn’t seem to get reported on but I very much hope this will change. W Series showed us all there is a great audience out there ready to embrace it. Speaking of great drivers, the motorsport landscape is full of past alumni following their dreams and taking their opportunities whether it be on track or in front of the camera. We’ve spoken about Chadwick already, who is in North America exploring Indy Car alongside her duties with Williams. Abbie Pulling is racing in F1 Academy. She'd previously run out of money, all but ending her career, but W Series came along, scooped her up and she’s gone from strength to strength. Alice Powell found herself in the same situation too, having to help her father out with bathroom renovations before the series came to the rescue. Jessica Hawkins is in an ambassadorial role for Aston Martin, and in Naomi Schiff, W Series gave Sky F1 one of the best female presenters out there. It wasn’t just drivers that got an opportunity through the series either. There were some great female engineers and mechanics who were given the opportunity to work on the cars. It wasn’t a box ticking exercise, everyone at W Series genuinely

wanted females to excel and progress their careers in motorsport. The truth is this has been one of the hardest articles I've had to write. Not only because I'm writing about something I genuinely believed in and how that has come to an end, but because I wanted to leave you as the reader to make up your own mind. I wanted to present the facts, the rumours, and what those in the know could share and let you decide whether it was an experiment that failed or in paving the way for current and future movements it was mission accomplished. Bond Muir once said, “if I'm still doing this in ten years' time, then I've failed”. For now, we still can’t accurately say if W Series did truly achieve what it set out to do. Time will tell on that, but there is one thing we can all be sure of. It did make an impact, it had a lasting impression that has begun to change the way inclusivity is thought about in the world of motorsport, giving females opportunities way beyond a race seat. So while in years to come we might not look back on it being a great success, we cannot deny that it’s been pioneering.

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TOBY’S JOURNEY Toby Trice is at the halfway point in his 2023 campaign of the Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge, and he's very much in the championship battle

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weekend, which in some ways was surprising. I got pole position for the opening race and went on to win it, which was amazing. So I was very happy to start the season with pole position and a win on the Saturday. But not everything has been entirely perfect. The Sunday races this year haven’t been that great in fairness. The second fastest lap in qualifying sets up the grid for Sunday and I’ve had a little bit of bad luck not capitalising on that second fastest lap as much as I’d like to, and that’s something I know I need to work on for the remainder of the year. But I’ve managed to get two wins on the board now. The first was at Donington for the opening race and I picked up another at Snetterton, which means I’m currently sitting fourth in the championship. As I write this I’ve just returned from Croft which

Dan Bathie

Hi Everyone! When I last wrote my column, I had announced that I was about to embark on a second year in the Porsche Cayman Sprint Challenge. And now I am writing to you having completed the first nine rounds of the season. The season so far has been incredible and I couldn’t have hoped for a much better start really. There was a lot of apprehension pre-season about whether I had made the right decision in switching teams to Redline Motorsport for 2023. But those fears were quickly put to bed when we undertook the first tests. The preseason tests went really well and I was very confident that when we arrived at the opening round I could hit the ground running and actually be able to fight for podiums. And I had that dream start right on the opening


racetrack, my campaign for male fertility has grown even more than I could ever have imagined. We are reaching out to more people and actually a lot more people are getting tested themselves and we are having lots of positive announcements in the last few months which is great. That’s what we are here for. It’s to raise awareness for fertility, make a difference, and at the same time have fun racing and get a good group of people together. I’ve got to mention the “bobble hat army’. It’s grown at a rate of knots. We’ve sold loads of hats now. They’ve been all around the world and it’s so nice to have that support from the Toby Trice family. We are making a difference while having some fun. Now I hope for some more success for the remainder of the season and see where we end up!

Dan Bathie

was actually my worst race weekend out of the three so far this season. I was ill during Friday practice and I was still not feeling great throughout the race weekend. Unfortunately I was a little bit off the pace in qualifying which didn’t get my race weekend off to the best start. But the final race of the weekend was the main highlight. I had an almighty battle with Joe Warhurst for the lead after starting P7, and I crossed the line first. However, unfortunately after an investigation post-race meant that I lost that win, which is really frustrating. But this is motorsport. We had some contact and I felt my racing was completely fair, but sometimes these decisions don’t always go in your favour. But overall, I can take nothing but positives from the season so far. We have shown on several occasions that we have the pace to win and fight for the championship, the car feels solid and the team have done a great job getting it setup. And beyond the

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IN SHORT

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Image credit: PHD Photo

LAMBORGHINI UNVEILS ITS 2024 WEC CHALLENGER BY ROB HANSFORD

Lamborghini unveiled its challenger for the 2024 World Endurance Championship at the 2023 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The all-new SC63 was unveiled to the world on the opening day of Goodwood's marque event in July, with Lamborghini claiming it is the most advanced car it has ever produced. Italian team Iron Lynx will run the team on Lamborghini's behalf, with one car being raced in WEC, while a second car will tackle the North American Endurance Championship races of IMSA Weather Tech Sports Car Championship. However, while the two cars will have split programmes, both cars will contest the Daytona 24 Hours in January and the Le Mans 24 Hours in June 2024. "The opportunity to compete in some of the biggest endurance races in the world with a hybrid prototype fits with our vision for the future of high-performance mobility, as demonstrated for road legal cars with the launch of the Revuelto," said Lamborghini chairman and CEO Stephan Winkelmann. "The SC63 LMDh is the step into the highest echelons and into the future of motorsports for our Squadra Corse." Unlike Toyota, Peugeot and Ferrari, who all use V6 engines, Lamborghini has opted to use LMDh regulations, meaning its car will be fitted with an all-new 3.8 litre turbo V8. Lamborghini is utilising a 'cold V' configuration which means that the turbos are mounted on the outside of the vee angle, and it believes this will aid with cooling, as well as making it easier for the engine to be serviced. And while the manufacturer believes this will aid its competitiveness, it also believes it could provide technology transfer opportunities for its road division. "Our LMDh car, the Lamborghini SC63 is an exciting challenge from both a technical and a human standpoint," said the company's chief technical officer Rouven Mohr. "The development of our internal combustion engine, aerodynamically efficient bodywork and the overall technical package is a process that has push us constantly to raise our own standards.

"Now it is time to put the wheels in motion, literally, on track in order to be ready and competitive for the 2024 season. "As we develop our LMDh car, we are also mindful of the technology transfer opportunities. We will take our learning experiences from motorsport and apply them where possible to out future production cars.” Naturally, Lamborghini hasn’t exactly been subtle in the styling of its SC63. The bodywork has been designed by Lamborghini’s Centro Stile design department in conjunction with the race design team, and the brand’s ethos is clearly visible throughout various elements of the car. “From the beginning, my personal briefing to the design team was that the car needs to be highly functional, but we wanted to create a car that is immediately recognisable as Lamborghini,” explained Lamborghini’s head of design, Mitja Borkert. “The main recognition of the front and rear of the SC63 is driven by the y-shaped signature light. The size of the cabin and the main character of the car is driven by the sporting rules, but we have also implemented our own brand styling cues throughout the car. “Integrated into the side panel of the body you can see a NACA duct that was inspired by the air intake of the Countach. When you look at the rear wheel arch, we gave the impression of acceleration towards the front, and this relates to the wheel arch design language of Lamborghini that can also be seen on the Revuleto.” Lamborghini has partnered with Ligier to develop and build its monocoque, the first manufacturer to do so on an LMDh project, and Lamborghini states that has added benefits as it has allowed it to specify its development requirements specifically around the push rod front suspension design and overall weight distribution. Lamborghini factory drivers Mirko Bortolottie and Andrea Caldarelli will race for the team next year, alongside ex-Formula 1 drivers Daniil Kvyat and Romain Grosjean. The remaining drivers will be announced in due course. The 2024 WEC season gets underway on February 24-25 at Qatar. THE PIT STOP 151


SPRINT RACES ARE WORKING FOR MOTOGP

Image credit: KTM / Rob Gray

BY ADAM PROUD

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and you’ve just sat down in front of the TV to find out who will take pole position for the MotoGP race in 24 hours’ time. Or at least that’s what you would have been doing 12 months ago. This year, it’s quite a different scenario thanks to a shake-up in the weekend format. On a Saturday afternoon in 2023 you’ll be tuning into to the first of two premier class races for the weekend: the sprint race. We’re halfway through the season already, so now seems like a good point to weigh up just how this new addition has implemented itself into the regular proceedings of a grand prix. I won’t lie to you, 12 months ago I was on the fence when the news broke that sprint races would be coming to MotoGP and was leaning towards the belief it would be more of a negative than a positive. To quote what I wrote in a column for The Pit Stop’s website in August 2022, I said: “At first it might bring quite a large element of excitement because it’s completely new, but as the year goes on will it really bring more fans back?”. My thinking was having a sprint race feature at every grand prix may make the change become a bit oversaturated, comparing it to F1’s approach to the idea of having a sprint race at just a few rounds per season. But I will gladly hold my hands up and say I was incorrect. So far, each sprint race has brought some fantastic racing and from a fan perspective has added even more of a thrill to a race weekend. The format and how it has been implemented just seems to work; the results of the sprint race have no effect on the starting grid for Sunday’s race, giving the riders every incentive to push without the worry of a fall or poor result negatively impacting them come the main event. For a championship as competitive as MotoGP, sprint races have so far provided yet more anticipation on who will be fighting at the front, much like the main race itself which – aside from Ducati’s race-winning dominance – still provides that element of uncertainty. However, there is still a factor which has arisen thanks to the sprint races, and is one I also discussed in my online column last 152 THE PIT STOP

year, and that’s rider fatigue. In 2023 there’s been countless injuries to riders, causing setbacks to their campaigns and for some essentially ending any hope of a championship fight. The addition of a second race for riders to contend with brings another session where there is zero chance to fully relax, unlike practice or qualifying where there’s an opportunity to come into the pits. No doubt this will have brought a strain on the riders’ physicality, especially at the beginning of 2023 when they weren’t used to the added race. With the sprint race being 50% distance of what Sunday’s main race provides, the need to fight is instant rather than building up the heat in the tyres, which is something reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia echoed after the first ever sprint in Portugal. “We had to adopt a completely different strategy than in a traditional race,” he explained. “Normally you have to wait for a few laps before starting to push and manage the tyres well, but in the sprint race, you must push right away.” This necessity to ‘push right away’ means risks have been taken on sub-optimal tyre temperatures, and that has brought in some of the mistakes and injuries we’ve seen in 2023. One example is Enea Bastianini’s broken shoulder blade, picked up after he was a passenger in a crash suffered by Luca Marini early in the sprint race at the season’s opening weekend in Portugal. That ultimately ruined Bastianini’s debut season on the factory Ducati, who only returned properly to racing at the sixth round in Mugello. As the sprint races continue to come and go, perhaps these kinds of injuries and crashes will be more infrequent than at the beginning of the year, especially as the riders get used to this brand-new addition. There’s plenty to be pleased about with the sprint races so far, of course there can be little things to tidy up, but so far with half the season gone, it looks to be a good change to the MotoGP format.


Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool

HOW A PROSPECTIVE NEW TEAM PLANS TO SHAKE UP F1 BY ROB HANSFORD

How do you bring a new Formula 1 team to the table? Naturally, a hefty bank balance does the job, but in this day and age you need more than that. You need to be able to go way beyond demonstrating you have money to stay afloat. Well, that’s the belief of one of F1’s new applicants, who plans to completely rip up the script and work in a totally different way to the other 10 teams currently on the grid if granted a licence from 2026. But how does a new team operate in a different way to everyone else? LKY SUNZ has an answer to that. Not only does it plan to utilize hip-hop as the ethos for the team, promoting inclusivity and diversity, unlike the other 10 teams, it plans to base itself primarily out of south-east Asia. “Traditionally Formula 1 is European, it’s got that traditional corridor in Europe. That’s the central base. But we think differently,” LKY SUNZ’s co-founder and chief commercial officer Andrew Pyrah explained to The Pit Stop. “We are dreaming almost. We are doing things that people say is impossible, but you can’t cut out an entire continent because of logistical reasons. That’s not forward thinking, and we are very cocksure in that it can be done. “It opens up a completely new demographic of person to be involved in a Formula 1 team, and to engage in Formula 1 as well because they obviously see it as a very Western sport as well. So we are fully committed to the region.” Although LKY SUNZ has plans to base itself primarily in Asia, it’s also fully aware that its entire operation can’t be based there initially. Instead, it plans to have a satellite base in Europe in the early stages of its existence, including its aerodynamic department. And to prove how serious it is, LKY SUNZ has already begun hiring people, including Tim Milne who has joined as head of aerodynamics. Milne is no stranger to Formula 1 either. Having started his F1 career with Renault in 2003 as an aerodynamicist, he has gone on to work for Honda and Caterham before heading up the

aerodynamic department of Manor between 2015 and 2017. It’s these first steps that help LKY SUNZ demonstrate that it’s putting in the foundations to prove its credibility to both the FIA and F1. Pyrah openly states that the team are dreamers, hoping to tackle F1 in a completely new way. But it also believes that its approach will only benefit F1 and its future revenue generation. “I think there’s lots of advantages to having us in the sport in terms of being able to affect directly and indirectly the sport and the Formula 1 teams themselves. “They’re business people, I get it. I understand that. I think sometimes you’ve got to take the blinkers off and see the bigger picture. We’re trying to do something for the good of Formula 1. Although it’s yet to get any feedback on its application, Pyrah is confident that the team’s pitch is strong enough to secure a licence for 2026, and it believes it’s not being naive about how competitive it would be from the outset. “We’re very realistic,” said Pyrah. “Our forecasts haven’t relied us being on the podium. We’ve been very realistic in terms of where we think we’ll end up. “The one thing in terms of my role is that my role is to make sure whatever happens on the track is inconsequential to how we’re viewed by audiences. I have this saying, I’ve coined this phrase that to win on the track, we’ve got to win off of it first. “That’s our approach. It’s a very phased process. We’ve got to make sure we’re winning off the track before we can win on it.” Right now, before it can think anything at all, it needs to win with the FIA and F1, and that’s going to be no easy feat.

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