After a long illness, Sir Stirling Moss passed away over the Easter weekend. The irony, I’m sure, would not have been lost on him. At Goodwood, on Easter Monday, 1962, his career came to a premature end. And now this. I revered Sir Stirl not only as one of the greatest racing drivers of all time but also both as a friend and as a Top Man, as Sir Frank Williams would say. He was at once a human dynamo and the sort of guy with whom you could always have a laugh. Most of the jokes could not be reprinted or shared but in these three videos I hope you can get a feel for the sort of person he was. God bless you Stirl – and a big hug to Lady Suzy.
Here’s a recording of the live show we aired on Thursday, April 09, 2020. It includes all the chat and questions that sped us quickly through the hour and finishes with some footage I think you’ll love – shots of Paris, 2004, when a certain Ferrari driver brought the city to a standstill. I’ll be following this video with some shorter edits from the show, including the 1967 Rouen F2 race, but I hope you’ll enjoy this longer version too. The time seemed to fly my end; hope it did/does yours.
Next week’s TRE Live will be aired on our YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/peterwindsor) at 18:00 UK. The Chat panel on the live page seems pretty seamless so I look forward to hearing form you then.
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I’m a huge James Allison fan, I have to confess. He’s literate, lucid, intelligent, very knowledgable about a lot of subjects – and he’s creative, too, as we’ve seen over the years in F1. At “Lotus” he gave us the forward-facing exhausts; and in recent months we’ve seen the intriguing steering/camber system on the 2020 Merc F1 car. I’m sure James will say that this most recent idea should be credited to someone else – but then that is his way. The point is that he engenders the sort of empirical engineering we see only rarely in a template-driven era of F1.
He was on my flight to Australia and I was struck then by his courtesy and humility, too. You could argue pretty comprehensively that James is one of the most successful and sought-after people in the F1 pit lane, yet James had no qualms about turning right when he stepped into the long-haul Airbus, away from the first-class section. Other, less significant F1 people, from other teams, burned their money at the sharp end. James has no such delusions.
And so I welcome every chance that arises to hear what James has to say. This video not only provides a nice insight into the way he thinks and enunciates his words but also into the sort of structure and discipline involved in designing and building a new F1 car. So enjoy. There aren’t many engineers in the world – let alone F1 engineers – who can create word pictures like, “we fool the car into thinking it’s on the track” or “it looks like Arnie Schwarzenegger when you pull his skin off and it’s The Terminator underneath”. Or, “the drivers are physically absent but ever-present; their voices are built into our programmes and designs.” Or, finally, in summation: “Hopefully there’s still time to reflect on the beautiful thing that’s been created…”
With special thanks to AMG-Mercedes Petronas Motorsport.
A big thanks to AMG Petronas Motorsport for this short video about the 2019 F1 Mercedes steering wheel. It’s introduced by Valtteri Bottas and explained by Evan Short, Mercedes’ Team Leader, Trackside Electronic Communications.
I recently met a young (17 year old) Englishman who just might be the next Nigel Mansell. Nigel won 34 Formula Ford races in 1977 but no-one seriously rated him: he came from Birmingham, he had no money behind him and he said things as they were rather than as people wanted to hear them. Enaam Ahmed, who is of Pakistani descent, which is about as far from the motor racing mainstream as… Birmingham…also lacks the big finance. And, like Nigel in ’77, Enaam has also just blitzed a season. In his case it is the BRDC F3 Championship, a B-division of F3 that many of the “experts” will tell you is not particularly competitive or demanding. I would counter that is is still, withal, a series that is out there to be won.
To help move his season along, Enaam worked on the shop floor at Carlin – just as Nigel in 1979 drove a van for Team Lotus – and when Enaam wasn’t doing that – or winning British F3 races – he was writing letters to sponsors and investors, just as Nigel always used to post his ten-a-day. Ahmed isn’t racing British F3 because he necessarily wants to; he’s racing there because that was as much as his budget would allow. On the back of this success he of course wants to graduate to FIA F3, and to show his talent amongst better-known names – but that isn’t going to happen unless he raises the £900,000-or-so required for a full season in 2018 . Nigel and Rosanne re-mortgaged their house to pay for Nigel’s five F3 races in 1978; Enaam’s parents are looking to do the same.
Anyway, I was impressed by Enaam when I met him. He thinks logically, he comes over well and he is self-critical – which isn’t easy when you’re a 17 year old who has just won 12 F3 races in six months. I don’t know if he’s going to win Grands Prix one day but I can say there are no signs that this isn’t going to happen. He’s won the Junior World and European kart championships and now he’s dominated his British F3 season. He knows how to squeeze the brake pedal and when to rotate a car and he drives with his fingertips, not with his wrists.
Like Nigel.
So judge for yourself. We shot this interview in the offices of Motorsport.com. I think it gives a reasonable insight into what Mr Enaam Ahmed is all about.
The Spa-Monza double-header always poses a question: fly or drive? This year I chose the latter option and took the opportunity to visit some of the people and places I’ve always wanted to meet (or re-visit). Near Parma, for example, I called on the former Ferrari engineer, Enrique Scalabroni. He and his partner live in this gorgeous villa in the mountains. Enrique hits golf balls in the early morning – he’s surprisingly good – and works during the day from his office in the main part of the building. The thought occurs, as you sit outside at night, feasting on pasta, home-grown tomatoes and local white, that there aren’t too many places more delicious than this.
I had a schedule to keep, however, so I was off the next morning to see my friends at Prema Powerteam, the Italian race team founded in the early 1980s by Angelo Rosin and Giorgio Piccolo. Today, Prema have few rivals: in terms of single-seater race wins and championships, Prema are simply world-class. In F2 this year, Prema’s Charles Leclerc has been a revelation – a driver not only of immense skill and feel but also a human of courage and depth. Here’s a video I put together around a chat with Charles just before the Monza weekend:
la in the mountains. Enrique hits golf balls in the early morning – he’s surprisingly good – and works during the day from his office in the main part of the building. The thought occurs, as you sit outside at night, feasting on pasta, home-grown tomatoes and local white, that there aren’t too many places more delicious than this.
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