Drivers, designers, engineers, founders…The people who shaped motorsport ando those changing it now. No protocol.
Fangio: The Man Who Won With His Head When the BBC or Sky pundits reach for a yardstick of greatness, they tend to say a modern champion is “the best since Fangio.” Not since Senna, not since Clark. Since Fangio. The name has become the floor of the conversation, the bedrock figure every other great … Read more
Giuseppe Merosi: The Engineer Who Drew Alfa Before Jano, and Whom Nobody Mentions Ask any motoring enthusiast for the key engineer in Alfa Romeo’s history and they’ll say Vittorio Jano. Press them for the next generation and you’ll get Orazio Satta Puliga or Giuseppe Busso. Press harder, you might get Carlo Chiti of Autodelta. What … Read more
Stirling Moss: The Champion Who Chose Not to Be One Ask any British kid of a certain age what their dad said when a copper pulled him over for speeding, and you’ll get the same answer: “Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” Not Hawthorn. Not Fangio. Not Hamilton, decades later. Moss. The name … Read more
Jeremy Clarkson: The Man Who Taught Me to Tell It A mechanic learns to love cars with his hands. Mine were black with grease before I could spell properly. My father put them there. He didn’t sit me down and explain torque curves or combustion cycles. He just handed me a wrench in his workshop … Read more
Ettore Bugatti: the patron who thought he was an artist When James May stood in front of a Veyron on Top Gear and called it the greatest car of the century, he was looking at a machine engineered by Volkswagen with a thousand and one horsepower, a four-turbo W16 and a price tag bigger than … Read more
The man who lost his name and built a bigger one Picture the kind of bloke who’d queue politely at a Baden-Württemberg bakery on a Saturday morning. Check shirt, glasses, big hands resting on the counter. You’d walk past him without a second glance. And then you find out he is the “A” in AMG, … Read more
Amédée Gordini — The Sorcerer Who Took On Ferrari With Nothing A Workshop Against the World There is a man standing in a workshop on Boulevard Victor in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, sometime in the early 1950s. The floor is concrete. The tools are worn. The parts bin is half empty because there is … Read more
Same Brain, Two Worlds: The Man Behind Your Wheel and a Miura’s Chris Harris once said the best engineering solutions look obvious in hindsight. He’s right. And there is no better proof than the small lever that holds your bicycle wheel in place. You’ve used it a thousand times without a second thought. Flick it, … Read more
Vittorio Jano: the engineer who designed the engines that won for Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Ferrari, and whom almost nobody remembers Here’s a question. If you walked into Goodwood next summer, stopped any ten people in the paddock, and asked them to name the most influential engine designer in the history of Italian motorsport, what … Read more
The Italian Who Walked Away From Henry Ford Detroit, 1920. The Rouge plant was still being built but Highland Park was already running flat out, churning out Model Ts at a pace nobody in Europe could match. Henry Ford himself sat down with a 27-year-old visitor from Turin and offered him a job. Stay in … Read more
The Engineer Ferrari Tried to Erase There’s a car that regularly sells for over fifty million dollars at auction. It is, by most measures, the most valuable automobile ever made. The man who engineered its engine never saw it win a race. He was fired before it crossed a finish line — handed a sealed … Read more
