MSport Talk: Frank Motorsport Opinions & Debate

Following the tragedy at the Pocono round of the 2015 IndyCar season in which, as I am sure you are well aware, Justin Wilson lost his life the suggestion has again been made to enclose the cockpits of modern single seater racing cars. The question is: Is this the way forward? The answer, In my mind is, Yes, absolutely. In the last year there have been two high profile motorsport deaths as a result of just this, not to mention the incident involving Maria De Villota who would later die in 2013 as a consequence of her 2012 accident or Henry Surtees, hit by an errant wheel in 2009 at Brands Hatch. Many purists would say that open wheel racing and F1 / Indy Car in particular have always and should always be open top and that the drivers know the risks involved, this is to a certain extent true but in reality should there be as much as possible done to ensure maximum driver protection. When Senna was killed, the sides of the cockpits were raised to protect the driver’s heads from ...

2015 marked the 25 anniversary of the Silverstone Classic and, for the first time I spent the Saturday and Sunday at the event, for varying reasons, earlier in the year, at the media day we were informed that: "One day is not enough" and, well yes that is correct, the three day festival of "Rockin' and Racin'" really needs at least 2 days for one to fully appreciate all of the sidelines to the racing going on, on track. I spent the Saturday (fortunately as the weather his year was particularly grotty on the Friday and Sunday) taking in a number of the sidelines previously mentioned  here  when I previewed the event a month or so back.  So, now we shall try and decide what the Silverstone Classic really is, is it a historic race meeting? Or, is it a family friendly event for the car mad with the added bonus of historic racing as a sideline? Lets see if we can decide. Saturday: Saturday had always been marked down as an exploratory day for me to al...

Motorsport can be such a cruel mistress, 9 months after the horrendous accident at Suzuka, Jules Bianchi succumbed to his injuries. The world of motorsport quite rightly paid tribute to a driver who would have gone on to achieve so much more at the top level of world motorsports. There is nothing else left to add that hasn't already been said by others who knew and raced with him during his oh so short career so lets just remember him this way, hustling a uncompetitive Marussia around Monte Carlo and picking up a fantastic 9th place. Rest in Peace Jules #JB17

Thought I would step away from the real world motorsport for a moment and give you all my opinions on this nifty little mobile game from Invictus. Daytona Rush is a fairly basic but none the less fun arcade style "racer" for your phone or tablet device. The aim is simple, overtake many cars on the oval raceway by tapping or swiping the screen left or right to move your car, avoid other cars, make fuel stops when required and pick up repairs when you can if you have experienced contact. The more cars you pass the more money you make, the more money you make the more upgrades to the engine (faster car, better fuel economy), drive train (better lane changing), and bodywork (more resilient to contact) to improve overall performance. There are also various challenges to meet during the races well, I say races you are not scored on a position and as far as I have played you cannot win a race as you seem to just continue around the oval until you hit too many other cars resultin...

Now, maybe you think i'm being premature here but please bear with me. For the last few years Endurance racing has been on the up and at the heart of it has always been the Le Mans 24 Hour race, since the 80th running in 2012 when Toyota stepped up to the plate and ran Audi close endurance racing seemed to change, and change for the better as we now see drivers, teams, squads on it from the green light weather it be a 6 or 24 hour race with no quarter asked or given until the flag falls a minimum of a quarter of a day later. Le Mans 2015, for me, was one of the greats in a line of great Le Mans events, mainly because many thought - me included that Audi would once again triumph as they have done 13 times previous this century. I like many other was wrong, I even shrugged off the Porsche's qualifying pace and, when Audi started setting quick times in Saturday morning warm up I was feeling quite smug. All credit to Porsche though, they have worked very, very hard over the winte...

In July tens of thousands of people head to Silverstone to enjoy a weekend of top class international racing - among other things. No I'm not talking about the British Grand Prix, but the Silverstone Classic, a festival for want of a better word for the petrol head who maybe wishes to see great on track action and maybe a little more, with cars ranging from early 1900s right up to early 2000s there is something for everyone on display - and racing. Racing hard! Sports cars, Touring cars, GTs, Prototypes and F1 all feature in both high speed demonstration runs and proper (and on occasion sanctioned) races. For most the main draws will be the 1970s/80s FIA Historic F1, FIA Historic Group C and the Super Touring BTCC machines of the 90s but the line up will also include: Pre war Sports cars Pre 1966 GT & Pre 1967 Sports cars competing for the Gurads Trophy Sub 2 litre Touring car category (expect plenty of Lotus Cortinas) Historic Formula Juniors (around 60+ cars supposedly...

The weekend of the 16th/17th May I , like many settled down for the evening armed with a small arsenal of technology and proceeded to watch the - excellent I must say - coverage of the Nurburgring 24hr race, live by way of the Radio Le Mans internet page and YouTube. Now, this is not the first time that I and many other people whom I know via the various social media platforms have viewed an event, in fact this year so far I have watched, The Dubai 24 hour (in my lunch break at work!), The Daytona 24 hour, Bathurst 12 hour, Mugello... and so on, not to mention utilising various on boards from the various squads via, yes, you guessed it, the internet or YouTube. Now, I know these series / races are endurance events and so it would be hard to cover these in this much detail on a standard TV broadcast for events that wouldn't bring in the viewers that maybe the Le Mans 24 hr does, but I'm slightly straying from the point i'm trying to make. And that point is: Where will we...

Sunday just gone I decided to forgo the F1 and watch the first round of the 2015 World Endurance Championship. And I am glad I did, the race had just about everything, action throughout the classes, not too many stoppages (full course yellow periods - which I feel worked extremely well) and drama at the front of the field - on more than one occation with the demise of the leading Porsche in the 2nd hour and the final moment steward decisions. Now, lets concentrate on that for a few moments. The number 7 Audi, which won the race finished near as makes no difference 4 seconds ahead of the 2nd placed Porsche. However in the dying moments of the race and after 6 hours of racing the Audi was penalised for leaving the track while lapping an Aston Martin and gaining an advantage by keeping the chasing Porsche behind the slower GTE mobile. The Audi was already a good lap ahead of the chasing cars before it made it's final "spalsh n dash" pit stop and, around 45 secs ahead bef...

A question that has been asked for a good many years now, many a time a website, blog or magazine (remember them) would ask the question, tens of thousands of fans - keen to have their voices heard and the magic and spectacle of the sport (apparently it is still a sport) return would answer and then... The FIA bans drivers from changing their helmet designs. So, I expect you are all excited to know just what I would do to bring the action back to the series. However, it will not be a quick fix, some suggestions may work others, maybe not, we will probably never know, I would be interested to see who does and does not agree with these proposals. We shall start with the racing itself. Here goes nothing! Racing: The cars need to be able to pass one another, cleanly and on track, and not only because one driver has better tyres, or has DRS or can use a KERS system to make his car faster than the car he is pursuing, the cars need to be able to get close to the back of the car in f...

Monday morning the 30th of March saw many people thinking Bernie Ecclestone had put his calendar forward rather than his watch when he announced the consideration of a separate F1 championship for female drivers. This of course was met with the sort reaction that double points, artificial sprinklers, the treatment of smaller teams and the loss of complete free to air TV coverage has been met. Conspiracy theorists may say that a different ludicrous F1 regulation change / announcement is imminent and this has been put out to weather the storm but lets deal with that if and when it comes. IMO a female only category is wrong, just plain wrong, does that mean we can only have female car designers, pit crew and strategists? will Claire Williams and Monisha Kaltenborn have to move to this new series? of course it wont. we have females in F1 already its simply most female racing drivers are not (yet) good enough to reach the top of the sport. Personally I want to see a championship where...

The words spoken by the great Mario Andretti on learning of the death of his team mate Ronnie Peterson following his first lap crash at the 1978 Italian Grand Prix. I was hoping not to have to write anything like this but if I am to seriously blog about motor sports then I need to write about the good times and the bad. This time it is bad. On Saturday the 28th March 2015 a fan, probably just like you or I was killed while watching a race at the Nurburgring. You have probably already read about it and seen the pictures and video. I won't include any of that here but will, send my thoughts and condolences to all involved. I hope you will too dear reader. The incident occurred at the Flugplatz section of track, at time of writing not all details are known but video shows Jann Mardenborough's Nissan GTR leaving the track at the section airborne - perpendicular to the track not too dissimilar to an F2 incident at the track involving Manfred Winklehock at the same part of the ...

Episode 1: BTCC Silverstone 1992, Finale. I am going to start a separate feature within my blog here of great races that I have seen, these will be sorted into three different categories, live trackside, live / as live / highlights TV broadcast and discovered / viewed long after the event via DVD or YouTube for example. We Start with one of the reasons the BTCC is as popular as it is today. The 1992 title showdown at Silverstone. This race falls into the second category as I watched the race on Grandstand (remember that!) on BBC TV and probably as a recorded highlights programme. The race itself is now a part of BTCC folklore and possibly the reason why many fans watch the series now. 3 drivers went to Silverstone that year looking to take the championship, defending champion, the late Will Hoy, John Cleland and Tim Harvey. However these guys would line up in the middle of the pack, Cleland 7th, Hoy 9th and Harvey 12th on the grid, whoever was going to win was going to have t...

The weekend just gone I watched - like many of you two specific motor races. The Australian Grand Prix, and the Miami EPrix. Now, as I have mentioned before I am an F1 fan of 30+ years vintage so I know my stuff but of the two, this weekend the E won over the the F. I was skeptical at first over Formula E, yes, I know green racing can only be a good thing and we have to look to the future as gas, oil etc will run out eventually but, and it is quite a big but, I feel the FIA have got something wrong. We have some big name drivers in FE, plenty ex F1, some endurence stars, up and coming youngsters and a good range of top drawer teams ranging from experienced set ups such as ABT and Andretti to former drivers (Trulli) and "manufacturer" squads (E.Dams Renault) among others however I can't help thinking something is not quite right. don't get me wrong the racing so far has been very good, (a cynic may say the Bejing final lap 1st place crash was staged to give the ser...

Well, over the last few weeks I have come to realise that open wheel racing is dead. Prototypes, GTs & Touring cars is where it is. #B12hr — Tom Taylor (@taylortom1976) February 7, 2015 I had no resposes arguing the case for the single seaters. With all the uncertainties in the world of F1 at the moment and their mentality on focusing on the big matters of the sport (one helmet design, per driver, per season!) I found myself pondering this very question.  We don't yet know, at time of writing, how many teams will make the grid at the Australian GP.  Even less certain is how many will still be around come November, and this is the sad part; I have been an F1 fan for over 30 years, I have watched more than half of the championships since its 1950 inception and I'm just not interested this year. I asked the above question of my followers one of whom you may be, thank you if you are.  During the Bathurst 12 hour race, a race that I settled ...