Heinz Melkus was born in 1928, in Dresden, and from an early age developed a passion for cars. Heinz was...
February 2018 The Crystal Palace Trophy, Crystal Palace, June 11, 1962. At the start, it’s Roy Salvadori on pole in the Reg Parnell Racing’s Lola 4, with Bruce McLaren’s Cooper 55 alongside and Trevor Taylor, in the works Lotus 24-BRM, on the inside. The eventual winner would be Innes Ireland,...
From 1964 to 1978, a series of flat-bottomed formula cars were manufactured to serve as steppingstones to Formula One and...
Over the course of nearly seven decades of Formula One history, only three men have ever won a World Championship Grand Prix race in a car of their own construction. Of course, none of them actually designed or built their cars all by themselves, they simply conceived, established, directed, managed...
A.J. Foyt Donald Mitchell Healey 1 • Colin Chapman and Michael Allen form Lotus Engineering Company (1952). 3 • Sprint...
Forty years ago, in 1977 and ’78, Mario Andretti was the man to beat in Grand Prix racing aboard Colin...
It was seeing Raymond Mays’ ERA that first drew a young John Sismey to mechanical engineering. After a grammar school education, he worked as an apprentice machinist with Peter Brotherhood Ltd. of Peterborough. National Service beckoned and a spell with the Royal Air Force honed his mechanical and engineering abilities...
Ron Harris was a wealthy man who had a company distributing 16-mm films, obviously prior to the days of video,...
December 2017 When Colin Chapman was investigating four-wheel drive for his Lotus Formula One cars, he designed the Type 63,...
December 2017 Le Mans: The Official History 1930-39 By Quentin Spurring This fine volume is a welcome addition to others in the series and steps back to the decade of Le Mans 24-hour racing immediately prior to the Second World War. The era begins with the Bentley Boys continuing their...
Robert “Bobby” Bell, a retired British racing driver and motor racing expert, as well as a VR subscriber, has been...
When the FIA announced the 1984 Formula 1 calendar, I saw that Dallas Texas had been given the 9th race...
Katsuaki Kubota scored his second and third straight Masters Historic F1 race wins with his JPS Lotus 78 (above, photo courtesy of Masters Historic Racing), following up his success in Austin with a pair of dominant victories in the support races for last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix. Kubota prevailed in...
1970 Nomad-BRM Mk3 After the war years in the UK, a certain Churchillian spirit prevailed, which left many with an...
My racing started during the spring of 1962 at the Goodwood racing circuit, I was racing a Lotus Elite. I went on to drive an Elan and then a Ferrari 250LM with Peter Clarke. It was in the Ferrari that I did my first Daytona 24 Hours. I shared the...
November 2017 The Targa Florio; Sicily, May 4, 1969. This is the Nomad Mk II with BRM power. It was driven by...
November 2017 Great Cars no: 10 – Lotus 18, The Autobiography of Stirling Moss’s ‘912’ by Ian Wagstaff In a little...
Masters Historic Racing staged a pair of Formula One races last weekend, the first the European season finale at Estoril, Portugal, the second a support round at Formula One’s United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The Estoril contest proved contentious, as first heat...
Following victories for AC Cobra drivers at Donington and on the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit earlier in the season, lithe...
VR’s European team will host the reunion of the Nomad-BRM team at the forthcoming Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show, with...
Equipe Classic Racing is planning to launch a new competition class in 2018, especially for Pre-1963 GT and Production racing cars running on Dunlop Historic tires. Building on the success of its clubman series for pre-’66 FIA GT cars under 2700 cc, and following a season in that series that...
1983 Tyrrell 012/01-Cosworth The Tyrrell proved to be nimble and responsive around the dunes of Zandvoort. Photo: Pete Austin Since the...
Does the recent passing of a cornerstone in the Lotus community mark the end of an era? Just as we...
Winning the 1970 Monaco Formula Three race was seen as my ticket to a Grand Prix future. I’d made my F3 debut the previous year, in 1969, so winning such a high-profile race early in my career was a great boost for me. It wasn’t an easy win either, as...
Last weekend’s 20th annual Goodwood Revival once again celebrated motor racing history with its usual full slate of races despite...
Formula 5000 was a racing series for open-wheel, single-seat racing cars built to a specific set of rules. The engine of choice was the venerable small block Chevrolet V8 of five-liter displacement. It started as a bright idea in 1967 and ran successfully until politics among the governing body, race...
