The Latest Breaking News from John Barnard

It was a sunny Californian day not impacted by bad weather, there was no multiple accident to thin out the field, no clever pit stop strategy, and safety car interventions were still a decade away.

“This is going in an Autosport Engineering supplement,” says Peter Thurston incredulously as he reveals his extraordinary Citroen 2CV8 racer, yet to turn a wheel. In place of a wheezing 602cc air-cooled flat-twin engine making a whopping 45bhp in racing trim sits a gruff 4.6-litre Rover V8. Even in mild…

McLaren’s impressive development across the 2023 Formula 1 season was a timely boost as the legendary team marked its 60th birthday. It’s not taken a title since 2008, but McLaren is still second on two of the most important F1 metrics: grand prix wins and drivers’ titles.

The first of its successes came on this day in 1988, when Alain Prost triumphed in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Here we look under its skin at the tech secrets that help make it such an F1 icon.