The Great Goodwood Gift Guide: What to buy in February
Christmas has long gone, your books are back on the shelves, you’ve watched the DVDs and built the model kits, so you need some more fun. It’s OK, we get it. Here, then, is the pick of the latest cool motorsporting gear for race fans.
Remember, too, the enormous range of Goodwood gear on offer at http://www.goodwood.com/shop. Everything’s available all year round, of course, but now’s the time to snap up something to be shown off at the Members’ Meeting in less than two months’ time.
Formula 1, car by car, 1970-1979
£50 (www.evropublishing.com)
The second in Peter Higham’s detailed, decade-by-decade flashback series charting the F1 World Championship since 1950 covers the 1970s – an era of fat slicks, high airboxes, howling Cosworth DFVs (and a few Ferrari flat-12s and Matra V12s) and the emergence of downforce. All the winners are here – Brabham, BRM, Ferrari, Hesketh, Ligier, Lotus, March, McLaren, Penske, Renault, Shadow, Tyrrell, Williams and Wolf – but it’s the obscurati that so appeals in this superb visual encyclopedia. If Amon, Connew, Eifelland, Ensign, Hill, Kojima, LEC, Maki, Merzario, Rebaque, Token and Trojan float your boat, this book is for you.
Lego Speed Champions Ford Fiesta WRC
£12.99 (www.argos.co.uk)
Lego’s Speed Champions series continues to excite the child in all of us and there seems no stopping the Danish brick-building guru. New-for-2018, among other kits, is this M-Sport Ford Fiesta WRC, complete with outlandish, 2017-spec aero kit and lamp pod. It says 7-14 years on the box but you can just ignore that…
Subaru Impreza Group A Rally Car Owners' manual
£17.24 (www.haynes.com)
One of the most iconic rally cars in the history of the sport, the Subaru Impreza, gets the long-overdue famous Haynes Manual treatment. The car that put the Japanese manufacturer on the cult-car map, thanks to numerous wins with Colin McRae, Carlos Sainz, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg, is analysed in detail by Andrew van de Burgt, editor-in-chief of Autosport and WRC nut. Packed with pics, stats, facts, figures and technical scrutiny, it retells the competition history of a WRC legend in an informative and readable fashion.
Le Mans and WRX season-review DVDs
£14.99 (Le Mans) and £16.99 (WRX) (www.dukevideo.com)
Part of the holy grail of Duke’s season-review catalogue, the Le Mans 24 Hours DVD, 2017-style, brings four hours of highlights from the French classic. As usual, all the best bits, with on-board footage and interviews joining the LMP1, LMP2, GTE Pro and GTE Am battles, are here.
The fast and frenetic World Rallycross season gets a two-disc marathon for its highlights of 2017, a year in which Johan Kristoffersson dominated in the VW Polo, despite the best efforts of team-mate Petter Solberg, WRC king Sébastien Loeb, Gymkhana legend Ken Block and SuperSwede Mattias Ekstrom.
Scalextric BTCC cars
£40.99 – pre-order (www.scalextric.com)
Three of the stars of the 2017 edition of Britain’s biggest and best-loved series, the British Touring Car Championship, are set to join the slot-car ranks in 2018. The West Surrey Racing BMW 125i M Sport machines of Andrew Jordan and Colin Turkington and the Team Dynamics Honda Civic Type R of Gordon Shedden all feature easy-change pick-ups, ‘magnatraction’ and working lights all round, and are digital-plug ready. Time for your own bit of door-banging and paint-trading…
Adrian Newey – How to build a car
£10 (www.amazon.co.uk)
For the first time, F1 design genius Adrian Newey has shared some of his world-beating secrets. With unrivalled insight into what’s required to build F1 World Championship-winning cars for Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, this honest, amusing and forthright book – which has been critically acclaimed by the mainstream and specialist motoring press – examines what makes Newey the man tick. It’s an autobiography and instruction manual in one and all the more splendid for it.