Racing and Competition

World GT Manufacturers’ champions Aston Martin embark on the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) finale – the 8 Hours of Bahrain – this weekend, aiming to record a level of title glory unprecedented in the British luxury sportscar brand’s history.

TWR’s Le Mans-Winning Jaguars by John Starkey is the concise history of Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR racing team, the development of TWR Jaguars, and their victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Daytona 24 hour race, and taking the World Manufacturers’ Championship.

Aston Martin’s Vantage GT4 clinched three more titles in the British GT Championship finale at Silverstone, ensuring that the luxury sportscar brand’s entry-level 4-litre V8 customer GT car remains unbeaten in the UK-based series since its debut in 2019.

2009 Formula 1 World Champion, Jenson Button will make his McLaren Customer Racing 720S GT3 debut in the Silverstone 500 race this weekend, November 7/8 – three years after he last competed in a McLaren, at the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix.

As the new McLaren Elva reaches the final stages of its testing and development program ahead of the first customer deliveries later this year, McLaren Racing’s rising star Lando Norris demonstrates the exhilarating experience at the wheel of this exclusive car at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix.

Vanwall Group, the successor to the legendary British Vanwall motor racing team of the 1950s, has announced the renaissance of the historic name with plans to build six new continuation cars to celebrate Vanwall’s six Formula One wins in 1958.

George Herbert Skinner (also known as Bert) and Thomas Carlyle Skinner (also known as Carl) created the Skinners Union (SU) brand. Experimenting with fuel mixtures in the early 1900s they made their first carburetor in 1904 and went on to form The SU Company in 1910. Carl Skinner had two children, Barbara (1911) and Peter (1914), both would become avid motorsport fans and drivers in their own right, but it was Barbara who had the talent to be naturally competitive at a time when women racing drivers had only recently been permitted to compete against men.

On May 29, 1960, Sir Stirling Moss drove his Lotus for almost three hours of punishing racing, battling through the rain on the streets of Monte Carlo to win the Monaco Grand Prix. It was the first victory in a Formula 1 world championship race for Lotus.

Brabham Automotive has built and delivered its first BT62 Competition model, having sustained production over the last few months.

As the Jim Clark Motorsport Museum in Duns, Scottish Borders, opens to the public for the new season, the partners who collaborated on the project celebrate 5-Star status awarded by VisitScotland. The museum opened to the public on 11 July 2019 following a £1.6million partnership project – the museum welcomed 13,000 visitors in its first six months as well as securing its first award, notably from the Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards. The new museum was visited and assessed by VisitScotland Quality Tourism Advisors and was awarded the prestigious 5-Star Museum grading – the first museum in the Scottish Borders to receive this accolade and one of only nine 5-Star visitor attractions in the region.

The McLaren 570S GT4 race car completed the most successful season since launch during 2019, ending the year on a high taking a 1-2 finish at the Gulf 12 Hour at the Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi with four graduates of the Pure McLaren GT Series and Customer Racing team Balfe Motorsport. With three series titles and victories scored in each of the championships contested during the season, the development programme has continued to progress. From here, McLaren Customer Racing has refreshed the 570S GT4 for the 2020 season which includes a new optional brake kit with a greater focus on longer endurance events.

Aston Martin Racing recorded another famous double victory in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), following one of its most emphatic performances as a manufacturer over a single event. The British luxury sportscar brand dominated the Lone Star 6 Hours at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, winning both the GTE Pro and Am classes having set the standard all weekend. Danish duo Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen increased their WEC GTE Drivers’ Championship lead to 26 points over their nearest rival with a lights-to-flag victory from pole position in the #95 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTE. It was their third victory from five races in the 2019-2020 season, having also won in Fuji and Bahrain. Neither driver put a wheel wrong in an inch-perfect display of driving that kept them just out of reach of […]

Aston Martin Racing’s presence at the pinnacle of US endurance motorsport is to be significantly increased, with the British sportscar manufacturer returning to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD class in 2020. Two Aston Martin Vantage GT3s will contest the blue riband Rolex 24 at Daytona race next weekend (25-26 January), while new partner team Heart of Racing will run a full season program this year. Aston Martin Racing has entered a Vantage GT3 supported by NorthWest Healthcare in the Rolex 24, alongside Heart of Racing’s entry. This works-run #98 car will be driven by long-standing factory drivers Pedro Lamy (POR), Mathias Lauda (A) and Ross Gunn (GB) as well as new addition, the AMR Junior driver Andrew Watson (GB), who stands in for 2017 FIA WEC GTE Am world champion Paul Dalla Lana. The Canadian picked up a minor […]

The Great British Rally by Graham Robson is the complete history of British international rally events, starting with the very first RAC rally of 1932, which included 1000 miles of road motoring, when a mere three driving tests were needed to produce a result. By 1951 an international permit had been achieved, a speed element was included, and the ‘Rally of the Tests’ ran until 1960. From 1961, the event took on a number of high-speed, loose-surfaced Special Stages, the Scandinavian influence became clear, and the event took on a World Championship qualification in 1973. In that time, competing cars had progressed from having perhaps 50bhp to at least 300bhp, and even more high-tech machines with 500bhp and four-wheel-drive would follow.

An amazing Group B MG Metro 6R4 with just seven miles on the odometer is heading to Silverstone Auctions sale on the 26th to 28th July at the Silverstone Classic. The legend that is Group B rallying, which sadly came to a premature end on the 31st December 1986 due to a number of fatalities, the most notable being Henri Toivonen, generated some truly remarkable rally cars. One of which was the Metro 6R4, (6 cylinder Rally 4 wheel-drive).

Aston Martin has agreed to an important new long-term partnership with the D’station Racing AMR team, signaling a high-profile return to the Japanese Super GT Championship for the British luxury sportscar manufacturer in 2019. The agreement, which features the highest level of partner support from Aston Martin Racing, includes a one-car programme in the Super GT 300 class (comprised mainly of customer and works-supported GT3 machinery) using the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3.

Aston Martin’s increasing commitment to historic motorsport has been cemented with the creation of Aston Martin Heritage Racing – an over-arching brand that unites the company’s assorted historic motorsport activities under one banner. In the first of several major new initiatives, Aston Martin has joined forces with Masters Historic Racing – one of the world’s leading historic race event organizers and promoters – to become its official automotive partner. The partnership places Aston Martin and its customers at the heart of the action, through a number of core activities. The most visible of these are the supply of Aston Martin road cars as Official Pace cars and Course cars for Masters Historic Racing. For 2019 this will see Aston Martin’s driver-focused sports car – the Vantage – head each of the grids at selected MHR race weekends, leading the field […]

Caterham Motorsport will host its first-ever multi-class endurance race, Caterham Motorsport Team Enduro, on Saturday 16th March at iconic British circuit, Silverstone, to act as the curtain raiser for the 2019 motorsport season. Created in partnership with the British Racing and Sports Car Club (BRSCC), the unique race format will see a mix of drivers from Roadsport, 270R, and 310R become teammates and race their own cars in ‘Super Teams’.