Around and about, October 1989
Both Ferrari and Lotus have announced their driver line ups for 1990. Alain Prost will partner Nigel Mansell while Derek Warwick and Martin Donnelly represent a clean sweep in the Norfolk team.
Nelson Piquet has joined Benetton for 1990. Alessandro Nannini will remain in the team as his number 2.
Riccardo Patrese will stay at Williams in 1990 and both Mauricio Gugelmin and Ivan Capelli will stay at Leyton House March.
Leading F3000 driver Eric Bernard has been signed up by Gerard Larrousse’s F1 team for 1990.
After an unhappy for season in which he was able to qualify for only one race, Piercarlo Ghinzani has announced his retirement from Formula 1.
Joachim Luethi, owner of the Brabham team through his company Kingside Establishment has been arrested in Switzerland on fraud charges.
Congratulations to McLaren International, Sauber Mercedes and Chamberlain Engineering for winning their respective championships.
Although not definitive at the time of going to press, Jean-Louis Schlesser looks likely to win the World-Sports-Prototype Championship for Drivers. Only if team-mate Baldi wins at Spa and the Frenchman is lower than second will it be decided at the last race in Mexico on October 29.
Andy Wallace and Jan Lammers have resigned with the TWR Jaguar team to contest the 1990 WS-PC.
The Proteus Technology Aston Martin WS-PC team has announced that both David Leslie and Michael Roe have been signed for next year’s championship.
At the recent Mid-Ohio race in America, Teo Fabi finally gave the March-Porsche 89P its first CART victory.
The Autoglass Tour will go ahead in the last week of September, but probably with little more than 30 entries, although included are some well-known names such as Johnny Herbert, Jimmy McRae and David Llewellin in Ford Sierra Cosworths and Derek Bell in a Vauxhall Astra GTE.
In a recent race at Watkins Glen, which even attracted such luminaries as Jacky Ickx and Brian Redman, a 1967 Lola T70 beat a large entry of Ford GT40s to win the Aston Martin two hour endurance race. With forty cars starting, including ten GT40s, the race soon developed into a series of classic battles that were so reminiscent of world endurance racing twenty years go.
With only four laps remaining of the 44 lap event, the Shallet/Simpson Lola passed the GT40 of Bob Stillwell to take victory
We apologise for the lack of a road test this month, but deputy editor Gordon Cruickshank has been involved, as passenger, in an extremely serious road accident. We are sure that all our readers will join the staff and contributors of Motor Sport in wishing “GC” a full recovery. It is a particularly cruel blow coming as it does soon after his triumph in the Pirelli Classic Marathon. His marvellous prose and sharp mind will be sorely missed in the meantime in the magazine.