Lunch with Andy Priaulx
In these days of wall-to-wall Formula 1 television coverage, more people are aware of motor racing than ever before. Our fine world champion Lewis Hamilton is subjected to a degree…
In a working life spent in motor racing, most of it in Formula 1, Gary Anderson liked to do things his way. He preferred to work with smaller teams, striving…
"When I first started out in NASCAR in the 1960s,” says Darrell Waltrip, “it was pretty much just the good ol’ boys. Rough and ready on the track, rough and…
In these times of relentless specialisation in everything, including motor racing, true versatility is rare. In his day Mario Andretti was F1 world champion, won the Indianapolis 500 and won NASCAR’s…
Formula 1 drivers have to be extraordinarily fit: and a by-product of their fitness is that, if they have a serious accident, they are likely to recover much more quickly…
Andrew Cowan is a farmer, and he is a Scot: together, those ingredients can make a man resilient, resourceful and determined. Mix them with the talent to drive very fast…
Spend time with Professor Peter Stevens, and you learn a cornerstone of his philosophy: there should be as much satisfaction in designing something humble and workaday as in designing something…
In most branches of professional motor sport, the man who is doing the driving is not the same as the man who is doing the engineering back at the workshop.…
John Surtees has always been a man to speak his mind. Whenever he joined a team, he would be determined to concentrate the focus of everyone around him on maximising…
Motor racing is about much more than statistics; but in almost any driver’s CV there will be a statistic that points to the hallmark of his or her career. In…
A part from the name, Formula 1 today and Formula 1 of half a century ago have very little in common. The whole massive commercialised circus exists on a stratospherically…
Getting an audience with a Formula 1 driver these days usually involves a very brief time slot, an eaves-dropping PA to ensure that no comment can be remotely controversial, and…
The earliest use I can find in print of the expression “Racing improves the breed” dates from 1835. It refers, of course, to racehorses: breeding from winners could produce more…
Almost unbelievably, this year marks the 47th consecutive season that Frank Williams has fielded a Formula 1 team. The first Grand Prix with a Williams entry on the grid was…
In past Lunches With… I’ve talked to several British and European racers, from Dario Franchitti to Kenny Bräck, who strived to make it in Formula 1 but never got as…
Whoever coined the expression ‘Nice guys don’t finish first’ might have been thinking of Jan Lammers. Here’s someone who was already displaying astonishing car control as a schoolboy, and who…
Flying in from London I had to clear US immigration at Newark, New Jersey, which is not one of the world’s loveliest airports. At last I got to the end…