The cars that dominated competition. The machines than borke records and left their mark on motorsport history.
Audi 90 quattro IMSA GTO: The Car They Changed the Rules to Stop Most race cars lose because something breaks, or because the driver lifts, or because the thing in front is simply quicker. The 1989 Audi 90 quattro IMSA GTO managed something rarer and far more telling. It lost a championship while being the … Read more
Maserati 250F: The Most Beautiful Car to Ever Win a War Denis Jenkinson, the great Motor Sport correspondent who rode shotgun with Stirling Moss to win the 1955 Mille Miglia, did not hand out praise cheaply. He had watched everything the 1950s had to offer. And of one particular afternoon at the Nürburgring he wrote … Read more
Ford Mustang GT3: the wild horse at Le Mans June 2024. Circuit de la Sarthe. Centennial of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Twenty-four cars line up on the LMGT3 grid. Porsche 911s. Ferrari 296s. Aston Martin Vantages. BMW M4s. McLaren Arturas. Corvette Z06s. Mercedes-AMG GTs. Lexus RC Fs. Mid-engine cars. Rear-engine cars. Mid-rear-engine cars. … Read more
Ferrari F40 LM and Competizione: Maranello’s Group B Debt, Paid Ten Years Late There are cars that arrive on time and cars that arrive late. The Ferrari F40 LM arrived late. It arrived three years after Henri Toivonen was killed in Corsica and the FIA killed Group B. It arrived two years after the road … Read more
The Ferrari that Ferrari didn’t build: the uncomfortable truth about the 333 SP Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. When Ferrari came back to sports prototype racing in 1994 after twenty years of absolute silence, the car that restored their dignity wasn’t built in Maranello. It was built in Varano de’ … Read more
Maserati MC12: The Supercar That Forced the FIA to Invent Balance of Performance Top Gear lapped one. The Stig set a time of 1:18.9 — one tenth faster than the Ferrari Enzo. Clarkson called it twitchy, oversized, and “either a racer, a GT car, or a detuned Enzo in a fat suit.” He couldn’t quite … Read more
Hoonicorn: a 1965 Mustang doing donuts on 1,400 horsepower of methanol Take a 1965 Ford Mustang Notchback. Steel body. The kind your dad watched go past the diner with fenders so wide they looked hand-drawn. Strip everything inside. Drop in a NASCAR-spec tubular chassis fabricated in Charlotte. Bolt up a 410 cubic-inch Roush Yates V8. … Read more
Ferrari 330 P4: The Most Perfect Reply To a Humiliation Ferrari never answered Ford with words. Ferrari answered with a photograph. Daytona, 5 February 1967, half past three in the afternoon. Three red cars crossing the finish line side by side, shoulder to shoulder, drivers revving their engines like men spitting in their rivals’ faces. … Read more
Ferrari 288 GTO and Evoluzione: The Last Ferrari Designed To Win Races That Never Raced There’s a room in Maranello’s engine department where a Ferrari is parked that shouldn’t exist. It has no licence plate. It has no race category. It has no calendar. It’s been sitting there for nearly forty years, preserved by the … Read more
Porsche 911 GT1: the legal loophole that won Le Mans Here’s the part most people get backwards: the Porsche 911 GT1 is not a road car they turned into a race car. It’s a race car they were forced to register for the road. Because if they hadn’t, the FIA wouldn’t let it onto the … Read more
LANCIA STRATOS: THE CAR THAT ONLY KNEW HOW TO WIN Here is the shortest version of the Lancia Stratos story: a small Italian company begged Ferrari for an engine, built the minimum number of cars required by the regulations, and won three consecutive World Rally Championships. Then its parent company killed it — not because … Read more
Lancia Delta S4: The Group B Monster That Killed Its Own Category The rally car that proved engineers could build machines no human could handle In 1985, Lancia unveiled a car that had no business existing. Not an evolution. Not an incremental improvement. A full-scale engineering assault disguised as a Lancia Delta. The Lancia Delta … Read more
