Videos

Gordon Murray’s T.50s

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Gordon Murray’s cars – or in other words, the Mac F1 is not on my dream garage list. However, the new T.50s Niki Lauda is another story. Revealed yesterday and produced by Gordon Murray Automotive, the car is sex on wheels. Top speed of 330 km/h, up to 1500 kg of downforce and powered by an atmospheric V12 that delivers 711 hp (or 725 hp when the ram air induction system kicks in). AND, gorgeous. You can easily see the F1 in those lines, and it looks stunning.

GMA will produce only 25 models, at US$ 4.5 millions a pop, plus taxes. So I probably will never even see one in the metal, but I can wish Spark will make one in 1:43rd 🤯.

The coming of the disk brake

Just a few minutes ago, going through my YouTube page I found this gem, and had to share it. From what I understood, this short film was filmed in 2012, but released in late 2020. Just 32 minutes, but to hear Stirling Moss reminiscing about those “poetic times” was absolutely fantastic. And it’s not just Stirling Moss, but Norman Dewis as well. A true legend when it comes to Jaguar, he talks about how he got involved with the Jaguar C-Type and his almost victory (together with Moss) at the 1952 Mille Miglia.

The film doesn’t show much technical details about the project’s development, however the participation of Jackie Stewart, Martin Brundle and Derek Bell make these 32 minutes totally delightful.

What is the WEC Hypercar?

I just stumbled upon this video on YouTube, and it explains pretty well both the new LMH and LMDh classes. This year, since it will be the inauguration of the new class (classes?), things will probably be kind of slow. However, I’m confident that by 2022, if things work out, we may have what we last saw in the GT1 era. Just imagine: a plethora of gorgeous cars from many manufacturers racing down the Hunaudières!

Bottom line I’m really looking forward to this 🏁.

Railton-Mobile Special – one of the coolest LSR cars ever

On September 15, 1938, John Cobb took his Railton Special up to 568.58 km/h, a new world land speed record. The car was a technological marvel, with many ingenious solutions that made it basically a rocket without wings. The Railton Special was the first ever car to breach the 560 km/h (350 mph) barrier. On August 23rd, 1939, Cobb drove the car again to a new record, 594.97 km/h. After the war Cobb tried once again, this time with Mobile Oil sponsorship. On September 16th, 1947, the Railton-Mobile Special averaged 634.39 km/h. That record lasted 25 years.

LSR cars are something I always liked, and most of the famous ones are available in 1:43. However they’re really big (= take up a LOT of shelf space) and invariably quite expensive. Therefor, my admiration for them will unfortunately be limited to just knowing their stories 😏.

Ruf cars and Jay Leno

Last year, Jay Leno produced a video about Ruf’s CTR, also with an interview with Alois Ruf himself. Not only did he show the three generations of the CTR models, but also Alois Ruf and collector Bruce Meyer reveal very interesting tidbits about the cars. Being an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, it is a well-produced video and a very enjoyable watch.

When NASCAR Raced at Le Mans

I told this story here before, or at least mentioned it, but it’s nice to see some footage of the feat. Yes, in 1976 you had NASCAR cars racing at La Sarthe. Something that may sound utterly absurd, but as GT Rain explains in the video, at the time it wasn’t so out of the question.

Well, that was the one time NASCAR was interesting… 🤣😂🤣😂

Derek Bell at Le Mans in 1982

Surfing around YouTube, I found this gem. It’s a feature about Derek Bell’s perspective of the 1982 race – which along with Jacky Ickx, he won by the way. You will see a delightful 26 minutes of original footage from the race and behind the scenes.

Not counting the actual footage, which was awesome, I loved to hear Bell’s thoughts throughout the race. Also, I learned that at the time, refueling stops became much longer, because of the restrictions on fuel flow.

So all in all a very nice film 👍

This looks nice

I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the cars from Maranello, but I have to say this looks pretty good. It’s a Monza SP1, customized by Novitec. Ferrari only produced 500 of them, between the SP1 (monoposto) and SP2 (two places). I talked about them in 2018 when they were first released, but now Novitec made some improvements. And the SP1 looks mighty fine.