Car most suited to the conditions: Subaru WRX STI 320 As mentioned, the torrential rain that piled down on Millbrook for most of the day didn’t spoil things nearly as much as I thought it would, but it did mean driving most of the cars on offer with a mite more caution than would have been the case had the track been bone dry. Not so the new Impr… I mean, WRX STI. Working together, the C.Diff, SI-Drive and symmetrical AWD systems allowed me to stamp on the throttle pretty much wherever I pleased without any hint of unsettling the car. Having not driven the latest Evo X, I’m not in a position to compare the two, but the Mitsubishi would have to be bloody good to beat this.

Car least suited to the conditions: Vauxhall VXR8 Vauxhall’s PR team evidently agreed with this evaluation, as the hairy chested V8 super saloon was restricted to high-speed banking driving only, meaning no-one got to find just how much of a handful it would have been around a soggy hill course. I can, however, report that both the rate of acceleration and the noise it makes are absolutely sublime. Definitely not a car for shy retiring types though – I’d rather have something that’s likely to be less of a police magnet.

Car I most want to do a trackday in: Mugen Honda Civic Type-R This is one of the best hot hatches I’ve driven, if not the best. It has impossibly precise steering and that razor-sharp throttle response I love, but which is proving harder and harder to find these days as small-capacity forced induction slowly takes over. Add to that seats that redefine the word ‘supportive’ and the cacophony of on-cam VTEC and you have a car that I would happily have lapped the hill course in all day. But all good things must of course come to an end, except perhaps the manic grin that gets frozen onto your face after driving one of these. Downsides? It’s not cheap, and your spine would be reduced to jelly after a few weeks driving it on normal roads.

Honourable mention: Porsche Boxster & Porsche Cayman R I’d love to attack a track in either of these cars, but I’d really love to do it with 1970 Le Mans winner Richard Attwood in the passenger seat giving me some pointers. Dickie was one of the Porsche ‘Driving Consultants’ who sat in with anyone having a go on the day, but unfortunately I didn’t find myself next to him when I took first the Boxster and then the Cayman R out for spin. Both cars felt taut, poised and powerful, but the truth is I’m just not an accomplished enough driver to fully exploit a powerful mid-engined car on a twisty, soaking wet test track with little or no run-off area. I was able to get much closer to the limit in the front-wheel-drive Civic, hence why it gets the nod for now.

Most stereotypical car: Renaultsport Mégane 250 Cup for being troublesomely French After two minutes’ driving in the latest Mégane 250, the wipers stopped working. It wasn’t raining too heavily at the time, so I pressed on and finished my run around the hill course. As expected, the Renault was formidably fast, eager and grippy, but with the rain getting heavier I had no choice but to come in. I dropped it back to the Renault stand and informed the staff of the problem. An hour later I walked by and they were still fiddling about with the fuse box. Some things never change…

Honourable mention: Audi RS5 for being uninspiringly German Redline has had a VW Scirocco R on loan for the past week, and while we’ve all been impressed with its devastating effectiveness at getting places really rather quickly indeed, it’s all a bit uneventful and characterless. It was a similar story with the Scirocco’s bigger brother in the VAG stable, the RS5. It offers immensely swift progress in almost any gear and is very sure-footed, but it feels too much like everything has been smothered in cotton wool. Once you get over the novelty of its sheer pace, there’s not a lot else going on to keep you interested. Except perhaps the two best things about the RS5: The upshift noise (a little ‘pohf’ as some unburnt fuel is injected into the exhaust) and the downshift noise (a deliciously aggressive growl). End result: Test drive was punctuated with utterly needless changing up and down from second to third and back again, accompanied by demented laughter every time.

Most pleasantly surprising car: Peugeot 508 SW GT 200 HDi If you had sat me in this car and covered up the badge on the steering wheel, I would never have guessed it was a Gallic product. The interior of the new 508 is extremely impressive, with a genuine premium feel to rival the best Germany has to offer. The 508 is also a very handsome design outside, especially compared to the gawky 407 it has replaced, and the 200bhp oil-burning unit is a typically frugal yet torquey modern diesel, enhanced further on this car by a slick semi-auto gearbox. Ride comfort is excellent, the seats are superbly supportive and the handling is solid, if not show-stopping. I would hazard a guess that the even more miserly ‘e-HDi’ 112bhp model would probably feel a little underpowered, but in 200bhp form, the 508 has to be considered a frontrunner in the family segment right now.

Most disappointing car: Alfa Romeo Giulietta Cloverleaf 1750 Tbi While this car is definitely a massive step up for Alfa in terms of quality and general ‘solidity’ from the likes of the 159 (which I also got behind the wheel of yesterday), I just didn’t warm to the Giulietta at all. The big, chunky pedals are awkward and spaced too close together, there are some odd plastic panels on the steering wheel where your thumbs usually rest, and it commits the cardinal sin of not having a footrest next to the clutch. In fact, it doesn’t even have any space next to the clutch at all, so your foot has to hover awkwardly over it all the time – not too bad when attacking a switchback mountain road, I suppose, but it would be damned annoying in urban/suburban driving. And, while the Cloverleaf is not exactly a slouch, it doesn’t feel nearly as quick as its 235bhp would suggest. Disappointing, as I really wanted to like it.

Honourable Mention: Mazda MX-5 2.0i Sport Tech As the owner of a tatty but trusty Mk1 example of Mazda’s iconic roadster, I’m a committed member of the cult of Jinba Ittai (how sad does that sound?) But the latest iteration didn’t impress me. It’s a five-year-old design now, and the cabin feels quite dated and low-rent compared to the opposition. Packing a 2.0-litre engine these days, it’s obviously quicker than my Mk1, but the MX-5 was never about pure speed, and the all-important handling and feedback feel somewhat dulled compared to the raw, analogue thrills of the earlier car. This is still a good driver’s car in its own right, but it has lost something compared to its predecessors.

Cars I drove that didn’t fit into a snappy category: Skoda Fabia vRS and VW Polo GTI Keen to stay on top of the hot hatch market, I sampled both Skoda’s Fabia vRS and the new VW Polo GTI. The current model of the Czech supermini is based on VAG’s PQ24 platform, whereas the equivalent VW uses the more recent PQ25 development of this chassis. Despite this, I found the Skoda to be the more pleasing companion around the hill course. It’s not any faster than you’d expect it to be, but does handle very sweetly and the DSG box, as always, works well. The Polo I found to be a bit more of a handful as I understeered, torque-steered and wheelspun my way around the track. The weather conditions and my admittedly modest driving talents may have had something to do with that, but it’s hard not to get the impression that VW has given the Polo slightly more power than it can properly handle. One thing I noticed about both cars is how little support their ‘sports seats’ seem to give when you’ve just stepped out of a full-on supercar bucket seat.

Funniest moment of the day: Passengering in a Rolls-Royce Phantom around the hill course They say a Rolls-Royce is a car for your chauffer to drive, and a Bentley is the one you drive yourself. Pity the poor chauffers who have to heft this beast around, so. Let’s be fair, though – the hill course is the last place on Earth this car was designed for, and you can’t help but marvel at just how far beyond the conventional definition of ‘luxury’ car the big Phantom goes. But the lumpen, wallowly ride around Millbrooks’s twists and turns had me and my colleagues in stitches, and had I been behind the wheel myself, I’d likely have crashed it from laughing too hard.

Honourable mention: Driving the immaculate, 30,000-mile 1988 Ibiza that SEAT brought along After a day spent driving the latest and greatest the motor industry had to offer, it was quite an education to get behind the wheel of this 1988-vintage Ibiza, one of the last SEATs designed before the full integration with the Volkswagen Group. It’s not completely bereft of German influence however: both Karmann and Porsche were involved in its development. As I wrestled with the non-assisted steering around Millbrook’s city route, the Ibiza’s spartan cabin reminded me most of a 750cc Fiat Panda I had the use of for a couple of months when first learning to drive. With a steering wheel set somewhere between the usual car and bus angles, bizarrely quirky wiper and indicator controls (not stalks, but sliding switches), and a juddery, imprecise gearbox, it really served to illuminate just how awful everyman motoring was a little over 20 years ago. But I’d be lying if I said that manhandling it around the city course wasn’t at least mildly amusing, and there is something appealing about its utterly unpretentious, boxy styling, both inside and out. It looks almost clean and minimalist next to the amorphous blobs that most superminis and small family cars have grown into these days. And one final oddity: it was still being produced in the 21st century under license in China as the ‘Nanjing Yuejin Soyat.’ Stick that in your automotive pub quiz knowledge bank…

Car of the day: Jaguar XJ Supersport 5.0-litre V8 Supercharged I’m struggling to find words here. This thing is bigger than my house but feels lighter than my MX-5. Its interior manages to be both sumptuously luxurious and mind-bogglingly futuristic – there are no physical dials, just a beguiling animated display screen that slightly brightens the area of the speedometer/tachometer that you’re currently passing over. Even with the traction control turned on, it demands respect and quick reflexes when being driven hard. It barks like a demented wolfhound when you downshift or stamp on the loud pedal. And yet, once you’ve finished thrashing it around some B-roads like a hot hatch and deafening yourself with supercharged V8 howl, you can shift up to sixth and glide home smoothly and serenely on the motorway at Warp 5 in an environment quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Utterly astonishing. I want one, now.

Honourable Mention: Audi R8 Spyder 4.2 FSI Quattro Audi’s piece de resistance was high on my to-do list for the day, and it delivered in spades, giving me bags of Quattro-inspired confidence on the hill course, even when the rain was sheeting down. It looks stunning in red, makes a glorious noise and is an absolute rocket on almost any type of road. But I was expecting all that to be the case – it fulfilled my expectations, but didn’t exceed them. One minor niggle: this manual-gearbox example had a clinky metal gear gate. I hate clinky metal gear gates.

And now, the ones that got away…

1. Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG This was a strange one. As you would expect, demand was high, and the Mercedes PR girl had a list as long as her arm of people booked to drive the firm’s latest supercar, yet no-one seemed to have heard of anyone who actually got to drive it. I felt better about missing out on the way home when I found out a Mercedes chaperone occupied the passenger seat all day.

2. BMW M3 GTS and BMW 1M BMW weren’t booking specific times to drive their two orange hellraisers, so every time I passed by the stand, there was inevitably a queue of three or four waiting their turn. Not wanting to pass up on 30-40 minutes of potential driving time, I ended up giving them a miss.

3. Citroen DS3 Racing Affordable hot hatches like this are core to the Redline target market, so it was put down as a definite must-drive at the start of the day. Sadly, as I crested a rise on the hill course in the Peugeot 508 SW late in the afternoon, the little black-and-orange Citroen came into view, beached and looking decidedly secondhand after an altercation with the armco and/or a muddy bank. The unfortunate driver sat in the front, head in hands. Fortunately no-one was hurt, and it served as a timely reminder for me to continue driving within my limits, as I had done up to that point.

4. The Bentleys – all of them The aforementioned Citroen incident closed the hill course for about 20 minutes, which unfortunately coincided with the time I had booked to drive one of the sizeable Bentley fleet present on the day. But with an appointment chez Porsche scheduled immediately afterwards, I had no choice but to pass it over.

5. Er, photos You may have noticed this post is illustrated entirely with SMMT and manufacturer press photos. My surprisingly capable 12MP camera phone stayed on my person all day, but the combination of atrocious weather (leaving many of the cars in a right filthy state) and a very hectic schedule (I didn’t even make time for lunch) meant I pressed the shutter precisely zero times during the day. Maybe next year!

“In today’s cars, YOU are the power behind the wheel. For the good driver, the feel of the steering wheel in his hands and the response of the car to the touch of his foot on the accelerator mean real pleasure. He can project his thoughts ahead to prepare for the foolish moves of the poor drivers, and he is ready for defensive action against them. At the same time, the good driver enjoys taking a curve smoothly, speeding along open highway, and being in full control of his car at all times.”
- Margaret O. Hyde, writing in ‘Driving Today & Tomorrow’ (1965)

Question: What should hardcore petrolheads be most concerned about these days? The obvious answer would seem to be the inexorable rise of the ‘green’ car, whether in hybrid, electric or hydrogen-fuelled form. But the truth is, it’s not. When you get down to it, these are just new technologies, like fuel injection, turbocharging and anti-lock brakes once were. They will be assimilated into the mainstream of car culture before very long and we will find ways to enjoy them, as we always have. Yes, the first examples of such cars have been depressingly dreary, but soon someone will make an affordable version of the Tesla Roadster, and car enthusiasts will forget they were ever worried about the electric revolution in the first place.

At its most basic level, being a car enthusiast is about appreciating and enjoying the symbiotic connection between man and machine that comes about when the perfect lap is strung together in a qualifying session on a racetrack, or a winding mountain road is attacked in a sweet-handling roadster. Neither of these things are threatened by the emergence of green technologies – a well-handling electric car will be just as satisfying a tool for carving up B-roads as a well-handling petrol-engined car is today.

But what does threaten these experiences is the emerging trend of the automation of the private car. At last year’s Sao Paulo motor show in Brazil, Fiat unveiled the Mio concept car (right), which the company’s design head said was intended “for a world where the driver can be simply a passenger and can have the vehicle controlled through intelligent means.” Sounds like pure hell to me.

Volvo, meanwhile, are getting in on the act in a less flippant fashion. The Swedish manufacturer’s latest S60 and V60 models are already available with pedestrian-detection and low-speed collision-avoidance technology (left). While these systems sound wonderful in theory, I would be of the firm belief that all the pedestrian-detection and collision-avoidance technology any driver needs should be found in their head. If a driver is regularly missing these kinds of hazards, they shouldn’t really be behind the wheel of a car in the first place. Part of the problem with driving today is that many people seem to treat it as a passive activity, and the presence of technologies like these in cars can only reinforce that tendency.

But Volvo aren’t content to leave things there. They’re already trialling European Commission-funded automated road-train technology (SARTRE) that will allow a single driver to lead a tightly spaced convoy of cars along a motorway. The idea is that you will join one of these convoys upon joining the motorway, then relax, read or surf the web until you get to your exit, at which point you take over control of the car once again and proceed to your final destination. From a pragmatic point of view, it’s a nice idea, mixing the relaxing nature of long-distance train travel with the door-to-door convenience of a car.

But Volvo and the EU’s efforts are not the most advanced stage that this trend has reached. Late last year, Google caused quite a fuss when it revealed to the world that it had been running fully automated cars (left) in the heavy urban traffic of the San Francisco Bay Area for some time. “Your car should drive itself. It just makes sense,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s then-CEO said at an industry gathering last October. Er, no. A perfectly executed heel-and-toe downshift makes sense. Feeling a slight tug on the wheel as the back end tries to break loose around a tight hairpin makes sense. And making a snap decision to take the scenic route home on a warm Friday evening makes sense. Eliminating all those things with technology does not.

But why not replace the drudgery of daily commute with some ‘me time’? And why not see if computers can help reduce the fatality rate on our roads? I’ll tell you why. Because automated cars are just one more way that the human race is becoming more passive and more eager to shift the blame for our failings away from ourselves as individuals. It was the computer’s fault. It was the government’s fault. It was society’s fault. Driving a car should be a metaphor for life. You’re in control. It’s your responsibility if things go wrong. So give it the attention and respect it deserves.

The 500bhp, supercar-killing feast of technology is an order of magnitude faster and more powerful than anything I’ve taken the wheel of before, so I jumped at the chance. One phone call later and I was booked in for Sunday afternoon at 12:25. I couldn’t have picked a more typical English February day for it if I’d tried. The drive up from Corsham, near Bath, took place under an unending sea of murky grey cloud and soggy drizzle. Silverstone is a fantastic race track, but on days like this it becomes one of the most bleak and miserable places on the face of the Earth, and the extensive construction work taking place there at the moment ensured it was nice and muddy around most of the perimeter road.

While pondering the highly entertaining race you could have around the track with the various pieces of assembled construction equipment, I made the first of two planned stops on the perimeter road: Bridge corner. I walked into the same spectator enclosure where, just under two years previously, I had stood under blazing sunshine watching the first practice session of the 2009 FIA GT Championship, hypnotised by the noise and the speed that the cars were carrying through the treacherous, blind, downhill right-hander. Things were looking rather sad this time around, however, as the track surface was covered in the muddy wheeltracks of construction equipment, the tyre walls were lying in a jumble having been pulled apart, and the spectator fencing had also been removed. Bridge, along with the Abbey chicane and the Priory left-hander, have been rendered redundant by the construction of the new Stadium section, which I experienced for the first time at last year’s FIA GT1 World Championship round at the track. A response to a question on Silverstone’s official Facebook page indicated that there’s merely some ‘earthworks’ taking place around Bridge and that the track surface will remain intact. But with the catch fencing and tyre walls having been dismantled, it looks unlikely that the corner sequence will be used again anytime soon, even for historic or club racing, despite some reports that October’s Britcar 24 Hours will use the ‘Bridge Grand Prix’ layout.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. My next stop before arriving at the Experience Centre was Club corner, directly opposite where the very impressive new pit complex is gradually taking shape. Even in what looked to be a three-quarters-finished state, it’s a very dynamic and dramatic structure that forms a stunning centrepiece for the newly revamped track, and it should bring with it some vastly improved facilities, too. For one, the days of Silverstone staff sellotaping extension cords to the floor of the press room should soon be a thing of the past!

But on to the purpose of my visit – the GT-R. It was definitely the right car to be driving on a day like this – some other poor punters had booked in for a single-seater driving on the Stowe circuit, and were emerging thoroughly soggy from the cars after their runs. The Stowe garage complex thanfully eliminated the need to stand around in the rain for any length of time, and before long I was nosing the sleek black supercar out of the garage and heading for the track entrance, which is just on the run-up to the Vale left-hander. The instructors at Silverstone deliver a near-constant barrage of instructions, and there are cones and marker boards everywhere, so there was never any doubt about the correct line to take at any point around the track. The GT-R experience took place on the Southern Circuit, which meant I experienced the Hangar Straight, Stowe, Vale and Club; as well as the new Abbey and Village corners, before heading back around onto the Hangar straight.

It was all over too quickly, of course, but three laps on an extremely damp track was enough to get a tempting inkling of the GT-R’s capabilities. First, there was the hammer-blow acceleration out of corners, accompanied by a satisfying growl from the twin-turbo V6 under the bonnet in front of me. This was exhilarating but not unexpected. More suprising was how incredibly light and nimble the car felt – so much discussion of the GT-R revolves around its sheer bulk, but any impression of it as being large or unwieldy disappears as soon as you start threading it through corners at speed. The combination of this handling finesse and the lightning stabs of power available whenever you mash the accelerator would make the GT-R truly magic on a twisty B-road, and that environment should be considered as much its natural habitat as the sweeping bends of Fuji Speedway or Silverstone.

I already knew that I badly wanted one of these cars before last weekend. My day out at Silverstone allowed me to quantify exactly how badly… it was a bittersweet trip in more ways than one.

In passenger cars, it seems likely that electric motors are all going to have roughly the same technical characteristics, and, more importantly, will all sound the same (i.e. completely silent). In Ireland, thanks to the rather uninspired tax regime that prevailed until mid-2008, we’re used to almost every engine on the road being a wheezing, asthmatic, small-capacity four-cylinder that can barely keep the car it is powering moving forward. But in the UK and the rest of Europe, the roads have long been a feast of tractive variety, with 5-, 6-, 8-, 10 and 12-cylinder lumps in straight, vee and boxer configurations, with or without superchargers and/or turbochargers attached. Each of these configurations and combinations produced a different exhaust note and different power and torque curves, and they all demanded different driving styles to extract their maximum performance. But next year sees the introduction of the EU’s new Euro 5 emissions standard, which signals the end of the road for a range of current production-car engines, many of which fall into the above categories.

Firstly, there’s the Volvo-developed, 2.5-litre, five-cylinder Duratec ST, which powers the outgoing Ford Focus ST and was also shared by several Volvo models. Five-cylinder engines like the ST represent a ‘best of both worlds’ compromise between the economy of a four-cylinder and the power of a six-cylinder. They’re still small enough to be mounted transversely in a front-wheel-drive car’s engine bay, and the addition of a fifth cylinder also allows for overlapping power strokes. For day-to-day driving, they offer levels of power and smoothness approaching those a six-cylinder engine but with fuel economy closer to that of a four-cylinder.

Honda’s K20, as found in the current Civic Type-R, is also destined to be phased out in Europe this year. This extremely high revving, naturally aspirated four-cylinder is almost more famous for being swapped into older Civics and Integras at this stage than it is for powering the Accords, DC5 Integras and latter-generation Civic Type-Rs that come from the factory with one. It’s also favoured by Lotus Elise owners, particularly those who race their cars, as a replacement for the temperamental Rover K-Series unit fitted to first generation of Elise. Various version of the K20 produce from 160 to 200hp and it also incorporates the latest version of Honda’s VTEC variable valve timing to improve efficiency at low revs and increase performance higher up the range.

At completely the other end of the engine spectrum, we have Volkswagen’s V10 TDI unit. VAG TDIs are normally associated with efficiency, but the emissions put out by this 10-cylinder lump have seen it fall foul of the Euro 5 standards. It first appeared in the Volkswagen Phaeton, and as a relatively quiet and refined engine that delivered bags of smooth torque, it was ideally suited to powering a massive luxury saloon. Dry-sumped, it even found use as a racing engine, competing at the 2004 Le Mans 24 Hours under the Caterpillar badge. The V10 TDI in the Phaeton displaced 4.9 litres, but a 5.0-litre version was later installed in the Touareg SUV, and it is this engine doing all the work in that famous video clip of a Touareg pulling a Boeing 747. The V10 TDI was also named as International Engine of the Year in the above-four-litre category for two years in a row.

Then we have the joker in the pack – Mazda’s 13B Wankel rotary unit, as found in the soon-to-be-defunct RX-8. Rotary engines have never won any fuel-efficiency contests, but despite the latest Renesis MSP (Multi Side Port) iteration of the 13B boasting a host of modifications to reduce emissions and weight, it, too, falls under the Euro 5 axe. There’s some light at the end of the tunnel, here, though – Mazda is said to be working on a next-generation ’16X’ rotary that will power a new lightweight sportscar that will be closer in spirit to the original RX-7. But for every ray of hope, there’s cause for despair – the delectable racket produced by Alfa Romeo’s 3.2-litre V6 will soon no longer be an option for new car buyers, however this engine officially ceased production in 2005, with enough surplus stock built to be fitted in Alfa GTs and 166s for a few more years.

Limitations in battery technology mean that electric cars are some way off from completely fulfilling our personal transport needs, so there is definitely life in the petrol and diesel engine yet. However, ever-more draconian emissions standards like Euro 5 are increasingly pushing development of new engines down a very narrow path. It’s likely that all of the engines mentioned above (with the exception of the 13B) will be replaced by a small-capacity, turbocharged unit.

Each of those engines had its own strengths, weaknesses, quirks and distinctive characteristics that helped define the experience of driving the cars they were fitted in. Their replacements, whether they are small-capacity turbocharged engines or battery-powered electric motors, cannot hope to replicate this diversity and will only contribute to the ongoing homogenisation of the 21st century motor-car.

His victory at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix for Toro Rosso, a team with a great many veterans of perennial tail-ender Minardi on its staff, was perhaps the ultimate F1 feel-good moment of recent years. That pole position and win in testing wet conditions properly announced Vettel’s arrival at the top tier of F1, and it was not surprising to see him promoted to the ‘senior’ Red Bull outfit for the following season.

The Red Bull team, too, made a good impression on me in its early years in F1. Whether it was the hilariously barbed pre-French GP press releases in the days when Red Bull energy drink was banned in France, or David Coulthard wearing a Superman cape to celebrate his Monaco GP podium, the outfit seemed to take over the function of bringing a bit of fun to the F1 paddock from Eddie Jordan, after the latter sold his eponymous team to Russian magnate Alex Shnaider at the end of 2004. But Red Bull head honcho Dietrich Mateschitz was not sinking millions into the team merely to be F1′s court jester. Soon enough, the big-money technical signings began, headlined, of course, by Adrian Newey, who joined as chief designer in early 2006. Red Bull clearly meant business.

Fast-forward to the midpoint of the 2010 season, and we find that Red Bull’s investment is bearing fruit: Nine pole positions, five race wins, both drivers in with a shot at the championship and the team itself showing strongly in the constructors’ standings. But as the year has progressed, the team’s lack of experience fighting for world titles when compared to the likes of McLaren or Ferrari has become more and more obvious. Firstly, there has been the less-than-perfect reliability record, but far more significant has been the abject failure to manage the relationship between Vettel and Mark Webber, combined with a pervasive arrogance that has rankled both fans and the media.

Eddie Jordan’s punditry is without doubt my least favourite element of this year’s otherwise-excellent BBC F1 coverage. Much of what he says verges from the bizarre to the downright illogical, and there is great amusement to be had watching David Coulthard’s and Jake Humphrey’s facial expressions as EJ spouts his latest hair-brained theory. However, I think he was absolutely spot on to question the sincerity of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner’s radio message of congratulations to Webber on the slowing-down lap of Sunday’s British GP. To my ears, it seemed to be delivered in the same bristling, aloof tones that Horner used to explain Saturday’s decision to take the latest design of front wing off Mark Webber’s car and fit it to Vettel’s machine for qualifying, after the latter’s wing fell off during a practice session and there were no spares available. He couldn’t even bring himself to name the two drivers in that instance, instead constantly using the cop-out phrase ‘left-hand side of the garage’ to refer to Vettel.

Silverstone was, of course, only the latest instance of embarrasingly poor driver and media-relations management on Red Bull’s part. Shamefully, senior figures in the team initially blamed Webber for the collision in Turkey that cost them a 1-2 finish, before making fools of themselves by backtracking awkwardly in subsequent interviews. Veteran F1 journalists have remarked on the arrogant, uncooperative streak that seems to have infected the Milton Keynes team ever since it became a true title contender, and there could be no greater illustration of this than the TV footage of a journalist being shoved out of the way by two Red Bull PR lackeys while simply attempting to do his job and get Vettel’s reaction in the paddock following the Turkish GP crash.

The other two top teams of the moment, McLaren and Ferrari, have both ‘opened up’ considerably in recent years, with the polarising figures of Ron Dennis and Jean Todt stepping aside in favour of the far more amiable and media-friendly Martin Whitmarsh and Stefano Domenicali, respectively. Sooner or later, Red Bull will have to learn, like them, that talking down your nose to the media does you absolutely no favours in the long run. Without its mass audience, Formula 1 is nothing, and everyone fortunate enough to be involved in this great sport has to remind themselves of that on a daily basis.

After Silverstone, Mark Webber is pretty much the only principal Red Bull figure with any honour or credibility left. He has dealt with the situation by doing what he has always done – put his head down and get on with it, ignoring the politics as much as possible. Vettel, on the other hand, seems no longer to be the affable young man that named his car ‘Kate’s Dirty Sister’ and joked about Fawlty Towers with the British media. He was sullen and dismissive when interviewed by a patient Lee McKenzie after Silverstone, and his on-track behaviour has degraded considerably this year. The Turkey crash happened because of his aggressive jink to the right while he was alongside Webber, while at Silverstone, he pulled off a downright dangerous ‘chop’ in Webber’s direction as both cars pulled away from the front row at the start of the race.

A colleague of mine recently interviewed the Northern Irish sportscar driver Jonny Kane, one of Webber’s former sparring partners in British Formula 3. He remarked how Webber was an incredibly tough but also completely fair driver to race against and ‘when you went into a corner with him wheel-to-wheel, you always knew you would both come out the other side in one piece.’ Webber’s actions when Vettel went to pass him in Turkey, and when he moved alongside him going through the first corner at Silverstone, would seem to match up with Kane’s assessment of the Australian’s style – he gives no quarter, but doesn’t overstep the mark. Such drivers have to be given the same respect they give to others, otherwise things are inevitably going to end in tears.

Vettel, it seems, isn’t willing to accept that his opponent will not just back down when intimidated, and this arrogant attitude has, and will continue to, cost him dearly. Before this season, all the talk was of how quickly the Button-Hamilton relationship at McLaren was going to turn sour, but however intense things might be behind the scenes, those two at least manage to put on a genial facade when they appear together, and also to not take each other out when racing hard together, as they did in Turkey. So far this year, in stark contrast to Red Bull, McLaren’s drivers have shown respect for each other, and the team has shown respect for the media and fans. On that basis alone, they deserve to beat Red Bull to the title, and I sincerely hope they do.

The 1994 Formula 1 season was one of high controversy, even by F1′s lofty standards in this area, with hasty technical changes coming in the wake of Senna’s and Ratzenberger’s tragic deaths at Imola, Schumacher’s black-flag controversy at Silverstone and, of course, that incident in Adelaide that saw the young German clinch the first of his seven world titles.

Historians frequently comment that the most interesting memoirs of any given period are those written by the ordinary folk, not the pompous blusterings of those in charge, and this is clearly what Steve Matchett, mechanic and jackman with the Bennetton team, had in mind when he set out to write his account of what turned out to be an infamous season. The cover promises ‘the inside story of Bennetton’s championship season,’ and although there are some interesting nuggets in here, such as a perfectly sound explanation for the fuel-rig filter controversy and a gripping account of the Hockenheim pitlane fire, there is no really juicy behind-the-scenes stuff on offer (probably becuse Matchett was still employed by Benetton when the book first appeared in early ’95), which disappointed me slightly.

Matchett’s writing style is workmanlike rather than elegant – appropriate, perhaps, for a mechanic – and the book is aimed at the layman or the casual fan rather than the hardcore enthusiast, who will not find anything particulary revealing about the fact that F1 teams have to consider different tyre compounds and plan different refuelling strategies at the different circuits. From a historical perspective, though, Matchett’s recounting of the day-to-day operations of an F1 team is fascinating, as it really shows just how much testing was going on in the mid-’90s. It seems like every second day they’re piling into the minibus and heading for Silverstone to try out a new rear wing or shake down a newly rebuilt chassis – all a thing of the past now.

Some of Matchett’s divergences on the subjects of property restoration and wine collecting can be a bit bemusing, but overall this is a worthwhile read that illuminates very well the perspective of the mechanics and what happens on the days between Grands Prix, away from the glare of the media and fans.

The news of the G-Class’ right-hand-drive return got me thinking about other models out there that have defied the trend of the mandatory facelift-after-three-years, replacement-after-five-years cycle that has swept the car industry over the last 20 years or so. Such models are important – they serve as a reminder to those who should know better that no, just because the manufacturer has come out with a replacement, it doesn’t mean that what you have has suddenly become useless and obsolete. Truly great engineering stands the test of time, and the list of cars that have escaped the marketing department’s axe for unfeasibly long periods is an impressive one.

There are the obvious candidates, of course – the well-known and much-loved ‘people’s cars’ like the VW Beetle (built in Mexico until 2003); the Citroën 2CV (produced from 1948 until 1990); the Mini (1959-2000); and the car that got India motoring, the Hindustan Ambassador (a rebadged Morris that has been on the go since 1958). Indeed, licensed production of discontinued European models in developing countries has been the saving grace of many iconic cars. VW enthusiasts in Ireland have recently cottoned on to the fact that the Mk I Golf is still being produced in South Africa (albeit not in GTI form), and elsewhere, Fiat’s venerable 128 (introduced in 1969) is still rolling off production lines in licensed form in both Egypt and Serbia. Most impressively, Peugeot’s 504, which was built in Nigeria and Kenya until 2006 and in China until 2009, ended up outliving its 505 replacement (which itself was no flash in the pan, with a production run of 18 years in France, Argentina and Africa).

But it could be argued that such developing-world ‘specials’ don’t count when it comes to collating the list of truly timeless designs. Economic, social and technological factors have meant that these stalwarts were ideally suited to the needs of the countries that assembled them for long after their European creators had forgotten about them. And the era of badge-engineered Western hand-me-downs may be coming to a close, as home-grown models like the Tata Nano help to futher expand the reach of the automobile around the globe. The true automotive living legends, in my book, are those that are still doing what they were designed to do, in the market that they were designed to do it in, simply because no-one has been able to come up with a superior replacement. And, pehaps unsurprisingly, the vehicles that fall into this category are uncompromising, no-nonsense creations, designed to do one thing properly and one thing only.

You have the original Land Rover Defender and the aforementioned Mercedes G-Class, vying for the title of the ultimate rugged off-roader. And then you have the classic two-seater sports cars like the Caterham 7 (previously Lotus 7) and the daddy of them all – the Morgan 4/4, with an astonishing production history stretching all the way back to 1936. Of the latter two, the Caterham is perhaps more worthy of appreciation from an engineering point of view, as its makers continue to hone, refine and perfect the basic concept year on year, whereas the Morgan is a more staunchly traditional product, but both approaches have their merits. There is no sign of either the Morgan or the Caterham disappearing from showrooms anytime soon, and the G-Class is currently scheduled to remain in production until at least 2015. A stripped-out sportscar and a go-anywhere off-roader make for a pretty potent two-car garage, and all of these models rank pretty high on my list of cars to own before I die, so long may they continue to defy the relentless drive for (sometimes-unecessary) improvement.

As the first few rounds of this year’s F1 season have demonstrated, rain can make for some very interesting motor races, but few things ruin the experience of a spectator or an on-track photographer (not forgetting the intrepid marshals) more than a sustained downpour. In grim expectation, appropriate clothing was duly squeezed in before departing for the newly-revamped ‘Home of British Motor Racing.’ The Thursday before the race meeting had seen the official unveiling of the new Arena section of the track, which bypasses the legendary, blind, downhill left-hander at Bridge in favour of a new, slow right-hander and a hairpin that leads on to the old National straight, now renamed the Wellington straight. But although the ribbon was officially cut on the Thursday, a great deal of work remains to be done at the Northamptonshire venue ahead of the British Grand Prix in July. The new pit complex on the straight after Club corner has only just been started, and will not be used until the 2011 F1 race. Elsewhere, while the tarmac and runoff areas of the new track section were sufficiently complete to allow racing to take place, the surroundings were a hodgepodge of mud, tarmac, construction vehicles and stacked-up pieces of grandstand waiting to be reassembled.

But no matter. Come Saturday lunchtime, the important things were that my flight had proceeded without incident, I was standing next to the entry of Brooklands corner, there were GT cars on track and it wasn’t raining… for now. Speaking of Brooklands, one upside of the new layout is that this corner, which was previously part of a series of frustrating slow left/rights preceding the pit straight, has been transformed by the new Arena layout. It now falls at the end of the old National straight and is thus a very heavy braking area heading into an ever-tightening corner, making for a significant challenge. The Arena section itself is less impressive from a driver’s point of view, although the new Abbey corner, which turns right where the old circuit turned left into a chicane before Bridge, is pretty quick by all accounts. There follows a slow right-hander and a long hairpin which opens out onto the Wellington straight. The obvious intention of this segment was to promote overtaking, and on the evidence of the weekend, passing is certainly possible here, with the added bonus of the passed driver being afforded the opportunity to retake the place around the subsequent hairpin by virtue of having the inside line. And with multiple, varied vantage points just a few minutes walk from each other, it’s a photographer’s dream, too.

Once the flag fell, GT3 provided quality racing as usual, if not quite reaching the most furious levels seen last year. The influx of Audi R8 teams has hurt the series’ diversity a little, but the new BMW Z4s both look and sound fantastic. Saturday’s Qualifying race was all about young Philip Geipel, who outshone his illustrious co-driver Ellen Lohr with a very quick, consistent and committed opening stint before handing over to the former DTM star, who let a 17-second lead dwindle to nothing before losing further places with a spin at Brooklands. In the Championship race, the top five ran nose-to-tail for a large portion of the first half, until early leader Christian Hohenadel masterfully pressured Porsche pilot Kevin Estre into a spectacular high-speed spin at the entry to the new Abbey corner to take the lead, which his co-driver Daniel Keilwitz clawed back from Hexis Aston Martin driver Manuel Rodrigues in the second half of the race, despite having to serve a drive-through penalty. He was also helped by Paul van Splunteren putting his Porsche into the gravel at Maggots while leading comfortably.

The latter was also racing in the pair of GT4 European Cup races, which were won handily by Dutchman Paul Meijer in an Aston Martin. Behind him, PlayStation gamers-turned-racers Lucas Ordonez and Jordon Tresson both had weekends to forget, largely due to mechanical issues, and Ordonez’s seventh in race two was the best placing either of them achieved. The grid for these races was disappointingly thin when compared to the same event last season, but may grow in subsequent rounds. Lotus, for one, had an example of their new Evora Cup car on display in the GT4 paddock area in an effort to drum up some interest.

Elsewhere, a great weekend of racing in headlining GT1 World Championship ended in controversy when RAC Tourist Trophy and Championship race winners Darren Turner and Tomas Enge were stripped of their victory hours after the chequered flag. The underside skid plank of their Young Driver AMR Aston Martin DBR9 was found to be fractionally too worn, and the second-placed Hexis Racing DBR9 was penalised for not serving a drive-through penalty within the required three laps. Such post-race reshuffles are never good for a race series, particularly one that is actively trying to increase its fanbase among more casual motorsport followers, but I don’t think this particular enforcement of the regulations was the biggest problem this weekend.

More significant was how the Astons got to be in such a dominant position in the first place. I don’t wish to denigrate the efforts of the teams or drivers concerned, but it seems the organisers may have overshot the mark slightly with the Balance of Performance adjustments made prior to Silverstone. The Corvettes, which had looked very racy in Abu Dhabi, were nowhere here, while the Astons also saw their lot reversed, going from midfield strugglers to dominant leaders in the space of a few weeks. For the second race in a row, this has been the only real sticking point for an otherwise very well-received championship, and it’s something GT1 will have to get a handle on sooner rather than later before the bickering rises to World Touring Car Championship levels.

But the series also faces a more long-term problem: where are the new cars going to come from, and how much longer will the older ‘grandfathered’ cars have to be run to make up the shortfall? It’s known that General Motors is not exactly thrilled at the continued presence of the veteran GT1-spec C6R Corvette in European GT racing, especially seeing as its new works Corvette is entered in the GT2 class – just try explaining to the marketing folk why the new car is finishing behind the old one! Aston Martin’s current race efforts centre around GT2 and the ACO’s LMP1 class, so a new contender from the British company is unlikely, too. The one firm possibility that has been mentioned to date is the little-known boutique manufacturer Veritas, which has announced its intention to enter a roofed version of its swoopy RS III supercar in the series. Enthusiasts are clamouring for Ferrari to build (or at least authorise) a racing version of its new 599 GTO, and Nissan’s involvement might possibly attract another Japanese manufacturer to do battle for national pride. And what of the Germans? BMW has launched a customer racing programme in GT3 this year with the Z4; Mercedes will do the same in 2011 with its stunning SLS. Could these efforts be the forerunner to a GT1 programme, as was the case with the works-blessed Ford GT, or will the two companies be happy to duke it out in the new-generation DTM in 2011?

GT1 don Stephane Ratel has stated his intention of returning to the glory days of the 1950s and ’60s, when sportscar racing was on almost equal footing with F1 and has self-imposed a deadline of 2012 to get his new championship ‘fully established.’ Realistically, any new manufacturers would want to be dipping their toes in the water sometime during the 2011 season if this schedule is to be adhered to, so the more news that emerges on this front as 2010 progresses, the better. Increased exposure and popularity for the series will do no harm in attracting new entrants, and this is one area that SRO has evidently been working hard at over the winter months, as both the TV and online coverage has vastly improved compared to the last year of FIA GTs. It’s likely that a combination of this and general curiosity over the new track layout contributed to the very healthy crowd seen at Silverstone over the weekend. And, with the exception of a washed-out Sunday warmup session for GT1, that crowd (and this writer) remained dry for the duration of the three-day meeting, in defiance of the gloomy weather forecasts. GT1′s next stop is Brno in the Czech Republic, but I’m already considering making a second trip to see this series (along with the 24-hour GT2/3 race) at Spa in July.

As someone told me recently, it’s time to think of this as a beginning – forget what you may have had or enjoyed back in the ‘good days’ and look on 2010 as Year Zero: time to clear the decks, start afresh and begin building something truly worthwhile. I’ve also got my first overseas motorsport trip of the year to look forward to – the FIA GT1 World Championship meeting at Silverstone. This event, too, is all about beginnings. FIA GT1 will be the first world-level series to race on the track’s new Arena layout, while the 2010 seasons of the FIA GT3 European Championship and FIA GT4 European Cup will both kick off, with new teams, drivers and cars making their debuts amongst their grids.

The folks over at 10 Tenths have been documenting the changes that have been made to the Northamptonshire airfield circuit over the winter, and while there is plenty of reshuffling of grandstands, reprofiling of banking and revamping of run-off areas going on, the major change is, of course, the removal of the fearsome Bridge corner from the ‘primary’ layout in favour of a new spectator-friendly section that takes in elements of both the International and National circuits and a new ‘Arrowhead’ hairpin. I’ve been a close follower of motorsport at a local and international level for almost a decade now, so I guess it was about time for a controversial change to be made to something I love, in order that I may regale those too young to remember with tales of how things were better ‘back in the day.’

Thankfully, Bridge corner itself is still extant, so the potential remains for it to be used in club and historic events, but I am eternally grateful that I did get to see top-level racing cars in their prime sweeping through it like they were on rails when I attended last year’s FIA GT round at the track. Somehow I don’t think a second-gear hairpin is going to measure up, even if it will probably give rise to more overtaking (not that passing through Bridge was totally unheard of, however). In the words of Maserati driver Bert Longin, “It is a shame that we will not be using Bridge any more, as it is a corner where you had a lot of speed and a lot of downforce and it was a corner where you feel, as a driver, you are really on the limit.”

So, evaluating the new Arena layout in terms of both racing quality and spectator enjoyment will be high on my agenda at the weekend, but I won’t be losing sight of the battle between the GT1 drivers for the Tourist Trophy. The first round of this well-received new championship has already taken place in the glittering environs of Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit, and the general consensus was that the SRO gang have done a lot right with the first proper sportscar racing world championship since the demise of the WSC in 1992. Media coverage is one shining example. A couple of years ago, you would have been lucky to find the FIA GT championship in the early hours of Saturday morning on Channel 4, but this year we have full live timing and streaming on the series’ website, as well as television coverage on ESPN, Bloomberg, Sky Sports and more. Of course, bringing the series to a wider television audience has necessitated cutting the length of the races in half (from two hours to one hour), which somewhat dilutes the endurance factor that is traditionally associated with sportscar racing, but the payoff is the close and furious sprint racing seen in Abu Dhabi. Now, if the ACO was not running its longer-format Le Mans Series events, there may be some cause for concern, but as things stand the two championships provide an interesting counterpoint to one another.

There has been some (inevitable?) discontent, however, chiefly from the Nissan camp, and it’s hard to argue with their case. The four Nissan GT-Rs spent the majority of the two races in Abu Dhabi mired together in the lower midfield, whereas cars from the other five marques entered were spread throughout the finishing order. The word is that the Nissans will have at least some of their 30kg ballast removed ahead of this weekend’s race, which should hopefully keep everyone happy. There are some that would suggest that this sort of bickering could be avoided by adopting a tightly controlled silhouette formula like NASCAR, but I think it is worth the effort, and the occasional mis-step, to preserve genuine diversity of cars in the series. The more pressing issue for Ratel and the SRO, in my view, is a medium- to long-term one: how long will the Chevrolet, Maserati and Aston have to be ‘grandfathered’ under the new rules? Will those marques and/or their parent companies/tuners build new cars to the new rules or are there three others willing to make the step up? (my vote: Ferrari 599, Lexus LF-A and Porsche Carrera GT, please.)

Aside from the headliner, I’m also hugely looking forward to the GT3 and GT4 ‘support acts.’ GT3 has been one of the major success stories of European motorsport in the past couple of years, and appears to have mantained its momentum in the face of the ever-present recession. The class offered probably the most entertaining racing of any GT series in 2009, making a lot of people sit up and take notice. It’s disappointing not to see the distinctive Morgans from last year back for more, but I think the new BMW Z4 GT3 will provide a suitably quirky-looking replacement.

The main interest in GT4 for me will be seeing if 2010 PlayStation GT Academy winner Jordan Tresson can emulate the success of his predecessor, Lucas Ordonez, who finished second overall in the 2009 series. The question remains, however – were these just naturally talented racing drivers waiting to be discovered by any means, or did all those virtual laps really make a difference? Running a few laps on the PlayStation or XBOX to learn the basic layout of a new track is standard practice for pro drivers these days, but I’d love to see a proper in-depth study of the correlation between console and circuit prowess.

Right, enough ramblings, time to hit the hay and establish something resembling a healthy sleeping pattern in anticipation of an intense weekend…

Designed by Jeff Koons, this will be the 17th Art Car. Koons may be better known among art aficionados for his arguably vulgar kitsch-pop creations, but his plans for the M3 sound interesting. He photographed multiple race cars at speed, then stretched the images and incorporated them into a massive digital collage that will be printed onto the body of the M3. I just hope that that it photographs well itself! The news of this new Art Car came around the same time as the announcement of the Allure of the Automobile exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, where guest curator Ken Gross persuaded some of the world’s leading car collectors and museums to temporarily part company with some of the most stunning examples of species automobile ever to be realised in metal.

All of which makes this an opportune time to reflect on the extent (and limits) of the ‘cars as art’ phenomenon. Describing a particular car as ‘a work of art’ is common enough among enthusiasts, but how does this play out in the wider world? The average Joe may profess to having no great interest in cars, but a Porsche or Ferrari will never fail to draw a town-centre crowd of phone-camera paparazzi. So the right kind of car can stir excitement – is this enough for them to be considered art? By most accepted definitions of the term, yes – cars provoke emotions, and more often than not it is their creators’ intention that they do so.

But there is, of course, the caveat that it is not their creators’ intention to stir emotions just for the sake of it – on foot of the feelings of excitemtent, desire and envy stirred up, they want people to buy their creation. So is car design just an advanced form of marketing, or is it truly art? Perhaps a car’s production run has to have ended – the associated profit motive thus removed – before it can be truly appreciated for what it is. Is this why classic cars invariably seem ‘cooler’ than their modern counterparts, no matter how old you are or how long you’ve been into cars? And what of the practical, mass-produced family car, of any era? Can these be considered art, or is this status reserved for excessive playthings that have been hand-built by Italian master-craftsmen? In certain cases, I think they can.

I have always believed that particularly elegant and ingenious pieces of engineering have a strong artistic appeal, particularly those that are elegantly or ingeniously simple (or both). Indeed, some of my favourite car designs are racing machines – pure expressions of form over function whose intended purpose meant their designers could not indulge any artistic notions they may have had. Yet the ostensibly cold, hard science of aerodynamics has given us shapes as beautiful as the Porsche 917 and the achingly gorgeous Ferrari 330 P3.

By the same token, there is an artistic quality to ruggedly simple machines like the original Land Rover or the Citroen 2CV, so I don’t believe that artistic status is the sole preserve of the exclusive and the exotic, at least when it comes to cars. What I’m less sure of, however, is the extent to which art is present in modern car design. Top-selling models like Ford’s Focus and Toyota’s Auris are deliberately designed to be as unassumingly inoffensive to the paying public as possible, and even the most run-of-the-mill family car from the 1960s or ’70s is a sparkling gem when placed next to one of those examples of automotive ‘white goods.’ The aforementioned Atlanta museum exhibit, meanwhile, features no cars manufactured after 1961. Have the car designers of the world lost their mojo? Or simply run out of ideas?

The last car design I can remember being almost universally hailed as ‘beautiful’ was Ian Callum’s restrained, elegant and perfectly proportioned Aston Martin DB7, which was introduced as far back as 1994. In the late ’90s and into the 21st century, aggression and presence seemed to take over from classical beauty as the key element of GT and supercar design. Take for example the Lamborghini Murcielago or the Pagani Zonda: unmistakeable, yes; spectacular, yes; but beautiful? – no. Art? Hard to say. Perhaps from the gaudy, in-your-face Jeff Koons school, but they’re no Ferrari 330 or Citroen DS.

So, where does the relationship between cars and art stand at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century? The onward march of environmentalism has led to cars being perceived by the powers that be as merely one element of a grand, integrated and (of course!) sustainable transport network. Will the gradual diminishing of the car’s status as a symbol of personal freedom and individualism also choke its artistic qualities? My gut says yes – the more the car becomes an appliance that we take for granted, the less chance there is of us deriving inspiration and enjoyment from it. It’s just one more sweeping trend for the petrolhead to rail against as the 21st century marches on…