Rob Widdows

1 month ago | motorsportmagazine.com | Damien Smith |Rob Widdows |Simon Taylor |Mark Hughes

Formula 1 in 1973 boiled down to Lotus versus Tyrrell: Lithe and balanced 72 versus stubby and twitchy 005-006. But were either the best car of the season? Silverstone that year is remembered for the shunt triggered by Jody Scheckter, F1’s newest bad boy, whose McLaren M23 slewed in the teeth of the pack. His team-mates, Peter Revson and Denny Hulme, howled through a shrinking gap, while others screeched and squawked into a growing pile of expensive scrap.

Jan 9, 2025 | motorsportmagazine.com | Rob Widdows

“I told [then-team principal] Marco Piccinini that things had to change, they needed to get serious, so he stopped the Italian sit-down lunches in the paddock and then blamed it all on me when the newspapers ran stories with headlines like ‘Barnard stops the Ferrari lunches’,” says Barnard. “I mean they just had to get more organised.”Plenty of drivers have found themselves under fire from Italy’s passionate fans and media, including Sebastian Vettel and even Niki Lauda.

Nov 12, 2024 | motorsportmagazine.com | Rob Widdows |Mark Hughes |Cambridge Kisby |Matt Bishop

Can it really be 30 years since Michael Schumacher perpetrated his first high-profile professional foul in Formula 1? Yes, it can be and it is, to the very day, because he did it on November 13 1994, in Adelaide, which is 10-and-a-half hours ahead of London, which means that, although this column is being published by London-based Motor Sport at around lunchtime on November 12, it is already as near as dammit November 13 Down Under.

Nov 7, 2024 | motorsportmagazine.com | Rob Widdows

“Stommelen’s car had broken in half and fuel had escaped, together with water, the mixture running down the gutter. Rolf, his legs broken, was still in the cockpit, but nearby were the bodies of four marshals. “Cresting the brow he had lost the rear wing, which put the car out of control. Carbon-fibre, then a new material in race-car construction, had been used for the wing centrepost: it was this that had failed. “By supreme irony Stommelen hit the very guardrails secured by his own mechanics.

Oct 29, 2024 | motorsportmagazine.com | Rob Widdows

Jochen Mass, grand prix winner, Le Mans winner and still racing historic cars, is a man who can look back on a career that has seen him on the grid for almost every category of the sport. A versatile all-rounder, yes, but also a man who is as happy on the sea (he’s a former merchant seaman) as he is on the track, who thinks and speaks deeply about life, about the highs and lows of such an eclectic career.