Enjoy these details shots of the International Sports cars from the support paddock at the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.

Photo Gallery: Group C & Sportscars from the 2013 Australian Grand Prix is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

“This is a racing movie. It is not Driven.” Those are the words of award-winning director Ron Howard about the film Rush, which goes on general release in October.

The film is the story of the 1976 Formula 1 World Championship, the epic James Hunt versus Niki Lauda battle. The clips that Motorsport Retro has seen show that Howard means what he says. The cars are real, owned by collectors, and driven as they should be – at 100%.

The recreations of the triumph and tragedy are beautifully handled, and we think that Rush will soon be mention with the same awe as Grand Pix, Le Mans and Senna by both racing fans and those that like a good movie. As soon as we can, we will drip feed you some more clips.

Video: Rush movie preview is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

With over four hundred historic sports and racing cars taking over the grounds of Victoria’s iconic Phillip Island circuit for a massive weekend of historic motorsport, the Phillip Island Classic is one of the world’s great historic motorsport events.

This year’s event more than lived up to expectations, and you can get a front row seat with these photos from Derek Hanbidge.

Photography by Derek Hanbidge at deejay51.com

Photo Gallery: Phillip Island Classic is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Enjoy these shots from the paddock at the 2013 Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix

Photo Gallery: 2013 Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix – Paddock & Atmosphere is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

For the past 90 years, since 1923, BMW has been making bikes to take on the world.

In this video, they celebrate those years and the improvements, victories and battles that have driven them through the decades by cutting together nine decades worth of footage into 90 seconds.

Video: 90 Years in 90 Seconds is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The Mountain. It’s a compelling, evocative and powerful name for a place which has forged the legend of some of the greatest machines, drivers and events in Australian motorsport history.

It’s also a big, majestic and commanding title. Not at all like that of the machines which conquered it back in 1966, with a little cunning.

Minis had been crushing their more voluminous competitors at circuits and rallies around the world, but it would be their success at Bathurst that secured their position in Australian Motorsport history.

The story of how Bob Holden, Rauno Aaltonen, the BMCA works team and a Mini conquered Mount Panorama is a fascinating one and you can check it out over at the Shannons Club here.

Check it out in full by logging in to the Shannons Club.

Image thanks to Autopics.com.au

1966 Bathurst 500: How Mini Tamed The Mountain is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The guys at DK Engineering take a 250 GT SWB Ferrari, #2119 GT, to its spiritual home at Goodwood for a bit of a road test, remembering its history and what makes it such a wonderful motorcar.

Video: The Most Iconic Ferrari in the World is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Its hard not be moved by this stirring video, showcasing the emotion and danger of Formula 1.

Video: Formula 1 Gladiators is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The Sebring 12 Hours is the least well known of sportscar racing’s golden trilogy, along with the Daytona 24 Hours and the crême de la crême, the Le Mans 24 Hours. In its day it drew racing’s stars of the time.

By Andy Hallbery. Photos by Bernard Cahier

This month’s Sebring heralded the start of the road racing season in America, and is just as much of a challenge then as it is now. In its heyday, F1 stars would take on the world’s best, and the manufacturers too, would take on its challenge.

Think of that era, and you think of Porsche, Ferrari, Corvette, Aston Martin and Jaguar. Just as, in the same breath, you would talk of Andretti, Fangio, Foyt, Gurney, Ickx and McQueen. McQueen…? Steve McQueen…? Yes, the Hollywood star finished second in 1970, with Peter Revson, winning their class, and just seconds away from Andretti and overall victory.

The track has changed very little, while the cars have. As with tradition with 12 Hours starts in daylight and the chequered flags wave in darkness 12 hours later after the drivers have fought a track which has changed little over the years. On driver remarked that “12 Hours here is the same as 24 at Le Mans”, while another suggested that there are world rally stages with less bumps in.

As in the middle of last century, dusk will go hand-in-hand with a jaw-dropping sunset, as the competitors continue to be beaten up in the fight against the track. At night, the speed differentials between the cars seem to be magnified. They are not, of course, the headlights helping the leaders to carve by the slower cars

Today the Sebring 12 Hours still draws an enormous crowd, watching cars of today and seeing cars of yesterday, and have a party. All the things fans do at Le Mans.

For us looking back on that age from the 1950s-70s, there can be no better person to have been there with his camera: Bernard Cahier, the good friend of many of the drivers, and of those we call legends. Here is Sebring as seen by Cahier.

Photos: Bernard Cahier, Cahier Archive, http://www.f1-photo.com/

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Photo Gallery: Sebring 12 Hours – a superstar age 1950s – 1970s is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

“World motorcycle racing champion, Barry Sheen M.B.E, this is your life.”

A young, surprised, and slightly bashful Barry Sheene beams as he is introduced to the classic television show, which goes on to tell his story as only they know how. Classic stuff!

Video: Barry Sheene ‘This is your life’ is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The start. It’s tension; excitement; pressure; ritual; preparation; anticipation. A few peaceful moments set to explode into first corner mayhem followed by hours pushing the utter limits.

If you’re Kimi Raikkonen, modern incarnation of the class, character and charisma of the old guard, it’s time for a snooze.

This short film revels in those few moments before the start of a race, checking in with legends of Formula 1 to see what they get up to as they prepare, head out to the grid and wait for the red lights to go out. Check it out, and enjoy.

Video: The Start is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Conrod Straight. Even today it stretches the longest legs in Australian V8s, providing ample room and even a little downhill push to reach top speed.

And back in the early to mid ’60s, the longest legs in the paddock belonged to Studebaker’s Lark.

The Lark may not have had wild supercar styling, but it had performance where it counted. Its mighty V8 happily sent it thundering towards 200 kilometres per hour down Conrod.

So why didn’t it ever manage an outright win in The Great Race? Studebakers and The Great Race: Potential Unfulfilled looks into the story of the Lark performance on The Mountain, and ponders just that.

Check it out in full over at the Shannons Club here.

Images thanks to Autopics.com.au

Studebakers and The Great Race: Potential Unfulfilled is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The team at SVRA produced this excellent video from their recent Spring Classic at Sebring.  Turn it up!

Video: Five minutes of great vintage onboard racing footage with pure sounds is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Back in the 70s, 80s and early 1990s a black number on a yellow background meant you were an elite racer, riding a 500cc prototype grand prix motorcycle in the premier category. The numbers from one to ten on a bike meant something. The coverted number one was obviously for the reigning world champion, while the 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 indicated where you finished the previous year. Not only did the numbers help identify the rider, it showed you who were the coming men and in a pack situation, it was a constant reminder of what the battle was all about. So when did the FIM allow the plates to change from the standard black on yellow? and  When did they stop enforcing the minium sizes and the one to ten system? And why?

Wayne Rainey

Wayne Gardner

Wayne Rainey

Freddie Spencer

Rob McElnea

Niall MacKenzie

Eddie Lawson

Jean-Phillipe Ruggia

Ron Haslam

Wayne Gardner

Ten 500cc Grand Prix bike number plates you could actually read is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Held in Paris in early February each year, Salon Retromobile is one of the world’s great classic car shows.

Salon Retromobile 2013 was no exception, bringing together over four hundred classic cars and a collection of magic machines that have taken to the skies or streets over the past hundred years. Highlights included a Traction Avant 15-6 Cabriolet, Renault Type RS01 Formula-1, Mercedes’ 1908 Lightning Benz, a Lotus 49, Porsche 935 and everything in between.

And you can take a walk through the stands and soak it all in with this video from Motors Television.

Image via Retromobile

Video: Salon Retromobile 2013 is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Cutaway BMW 3.0 CSL

Photo of the day: Inside the Batmobile is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Prepare for launch

Photo of the day: Ferrari ready for takeoff is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

Some people simply don’t understand the phrase, “No, you can’t do that.” Alex Zanardi, Alessandro Nannini and Robert Kubica are just some of those people. All three suffered potentially career-ending injuries, yet successfully climbed back into competition. All three had different injuries to overcome, but they did.

By Andy Hallbery

Zanardi’s situation is well documented, especially here on Motorsport Retro , returning to racing – and winning – after the sickening Indycar accident that cost him both legs, and oh-so-nearly his life.

Kubica’s accident came in a rally, the metal barrier shearing his car, and but for a sinew or two, his arm with it. At the time, the Pole, with one Grand Prix win to his name, was on the verge of the big time. He too desires a return to F1, and a test in a DTM car proved that the speed is still there, but not – yet – in the confines of a single-seater. “If all the races were at places like Barcelona, yes,” he says of his recuperation. “But Monaco? No way, not yet.”

An accident in 1990 severed Nannini’s right arm completely just below the elbow when he was thrown from his helicopter as he crashed while landing at his home in Siena. Like, Zanardi, we thought his racing career was well and truly over.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Groundbreaking microsurgery allowed doctors to sew Nannini’s right arm back on, the nerves were reattached, and all this happened to Sandro without barely the blink of an eye or a second thought.

There were doubters who at the time thought the then-ground-breaking surgery would not work, among them his former Benetton teammate and very good friend Nelson Piquet. The Brazilian was one of the first to visit Sandro in hospital, and advised that his arm would be better gone. “Yes, that’s true,” admits Nannini. “Nelson had a friend who had lost a limb, a leg I think, and had it sewn back on. Since, he regretted doing that, feeling that he would be better with a prosthetic limb. I wouldn’t even let myself think about what Nelson was saying. The doctors had rescued my arm, I was going to race Formula 1 again, and that was that. I didn’t want anybody to fill me with the slightest doubt.”

Nannini’s will saw him not only in the cockpit of a Formula 1 car just over a year later, it was his beloved Ferrari, the team he was – as the story goes – already signed to for 1991 when his accident happened. In the adapted #27, the helicopter crash was a memory.

Just two years after his accident the happy Italian was back at Monza, and this time he was racing. It wasn’t a single-seater like the Grand Prix winner had been used to, but that didn’t matter. Sandro was back doing what he loved, and the car was red. He was racing in Italian Touring Cars in an Alfa 155 GTA – and winning!

Many years later we are sitting talking in one of his Nannini cafés and with the espressos, the ever-present smile and cigarette. This is trademark Nannini, the driver the fans loved.

The only give away was his right hand which was now naturally curled up in a ball that he constantly tried to straighten, and that he now smoked using his left hand instead of is right one. A short puff and he is smiling his way down memory lane.

“You can’t imagine what kind of emotion coming back was for me,” he laughs. “I remember before the start my heart was pumping like crazy. I felt like I was a kid in my first Fiat Abarth races. But all those feelings vanished when the race started. By the time we hit the brakes for the first corner, I was grinding my teeth and slamming on the door of those trying to overtake…

“It was like waking up from a dream, “ he continues, “and I restarted acting like a racing driver, as if I’d never been away.”

To those outside too, including family, Sandro was the old Sandro, save for his new technique of holding his cigarette with his curled up hand. The muscles had withered, and it was a deal smaller than it had been, but first and foremost, he was a racing driver. At races, he kept the glove on, one less thing to worry about. There was however, a slightly new mindset.

“Nobody really thought I could come back from the accident,” he recalls. And without saying it, his demeanour suggests that he felt very much alone during his recovery. “Nobody really thought I could do it,” he smiled. “Neither the doctors nor my family. When I talked about my plans, they just listened to me almost condescendingly, just to keep me ‘up’, and thinking positively. But I didn’t want to give up, because I knew I could do it.”

And he did, that season led to an offer from Alfa for a works car in the DTM and subsequently the ITC. His teammates included Nicola Larini, Michele Alboreto, Christian Danner, Giancarlo Fisichella, Gabriele Tarquini and others.

His rivals included Keke Rosberg, Klaus Ludwig, Bernd Schneider, Dario Franchitti, Alex Wurz, Yannick Dalmas and others. These were no second-rate championships, far from it. It was the cream of touring car and F1 drivers. Nannini’s 13 wins showed that his spirit and speed were undiminished, the talent of the Grand Prix winner still there. And the smoking humour came at his expense, courtesy of German TV, Vox.

Another coffee arrived as we began our photo shoot in his café. While not quite ‘embarrassed’ about his hand, it was rarely on display, usually in his pocket or behind his back. The smile though is constant, even when talking about the difficulties. “There was a moment in those years where things weren’t going so well for me and I thought ‘what am I doing here if I’m not able to compete to win? Wouldn’t it be better to leave?’

“Once you are used to fighting for victory, when you don’t obtain it you feel like you are missing something,” he says, “and even behind this so-called smiling face’ I suffer if I am only second. However I can’t say I’m unsatisfied because it’s almost a miracle that even now I am still racing, although not at that level. It’s still normal to aspire to the maximum.”

Photo: Charles Best/motorsportretro.com

Handicap or not, both Zanardi and Nannini beat world class racers on their returns, and Kubica is still aiming at the very top.

Does this sound familiar? “Frankly I cannot imagine that I won’t return to F1,” Kubica told my colleagues at Autosport. “Quite the contrary. I am convinced I will go onto the startline again.” Kubica is working hard on his strength, and his speed is not in any question. “If it was just about power, I could fix it in the gym. But it is more than that, nerves and muscles, which are much more complicated.”

He knows that while not in the near future that return is still in his sights (“unless they make F1 cockpits 20cms wider tomrrow!”), but that goal is tempered with realism. “Last year after the accident, I said that I was happy I survived,” he adds. “Then when you go to the hospital and see people who have no chance at all, you start to take life differently.

“Very often we do not appreciate what we have. When all is well and everything is in order with us, we find the opportunity to complain about the bad weather. But when you are attached to a hospital bed and you can’t even get up, you don’t care if it’s raining outside or not. In those moments you start to appreciate what you have, even if it’s not what you dream of.”

Photos: Bernard Cahier, Cahier Archive, http://www.f1-photo.com/

Charles Best. http://www.charlesbest.co.uk/tearsheets/23.html

Follow @MotorsportRetro and @Hallbean on Twitter and join in the Motorsport Retro discussion on the site’s page on Facebook

Exclusive: Alessandro Nannini on what Kubica faces is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

We are huge fans of the Morgan 3 wheeler here at Motorsport Retro. There is just something about its purity and quirkiness that we really admire.

Part of the appeal is the cool retro liveries available. And now with the release of the “Gulf edition” you can have your Morgan 3 wheeler in the classic blue and orange colour scheme and bask in the years of motorsport success it represents.

For Australian fans of the Morgan 3 Wheeler, it looks like the cars may go on sale in the second half of 2013 as the car has now successfully passed three separate crash tests, specifically for the Australian market.

Australian fans wishing to register their interest in the model can email chris@morgancars.com.au

Photo Gallery: Morgan release the Gulf edition 3 wheeler is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.

The Mercedes-Benz W196 which Fangio drove on the way to the second of his five Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championships is heading to auction at Bonhams’ sale at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Friday the 12th of July.

The 2½-liter straight-eight won two consecutive Formula 1 grands prix, the 1954 German and Swiss Grands Prix, with Fangio at the wheel, before it was passed on to Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling, who raced it in its final Formula 1 appearance at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix.

This is the only example of Mercedes-Benz’ W196 in private hands, and the only surviving car to have won a grand prix; at the hands of the great Fangio no less. It’s an incredible icon of Formula 1 history and one of the most desirable and illustrious racing machines that the sport has produced, so it’s going to be an interesting auction!

Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale will be held on Friday the 12th of July on the Tapestry Lawn at Goodwood House. Hit this link to their website for more info.

Via Bonhams

Image via Bonhams

Fangio’s Mercedes-Benz W196 Up For Auction is a post from Motorsport Retro, bringing you classic motorsport, cars, motorcycles and gear every day.