https://www.scmp.com/rss/13076/feed Matthew Marsh hosts the GoF1 Show, providing race analysis and interviews with Formula 1 personalities. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Matthew Marsh Matthew Marsh “The first night session couldn’t have been more stressful if there were snakes in the car and meteorites falling from the sky.” Antares Au isn’t new to 24-hour racing – he’s won his class at Belgium’s Spa and Germany’s Nürburgring – but nothing, he says, quite prepares you for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Last month marked his debut at France’s legendary endurance race, alongside fellow Hongkonger Jonathan Hui Kin-tak. They were two drivers on the 62 teams competing at this year’s race, and for a... https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3317839/meet-one-track-minds-behind-le-mans-24-hour-race?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/postmag/passions/article/3317839/meet-one-track-minds-behind-le-mans-24-hour-race?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Jul 2025 22:15:07 +0000 Zhou Guanyu loves visiting Chinatown in his adopted city of London, but it comes at a price: it’s hard to maintain a low profile. “I have to wear a cap because people keep recognising me,” he says, although he adds: “It’s great to have this kind of thing.” Happy to make time for those eager to engage with China’s first Formula 1 star, the Alfa Romeo driver is getting a taste in the UK of what he can expect when he finally returns to his native Shanghai. The pandemic has kept him away for two... https://www.scmp.com/sport/formula-1/article/3178659/formula-1-zhou-guanyus-fame-grows-china-and-london-cap-seems-fit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/sport/formula-1/article/3178659/formula-1-zhou-guanyus-fame-grows-china-and-london-cap-seems-fit?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 May 2022 02:00:13 +0000 In more than two decades as a racing car driver, I've been behind the wheel of a wide variety of amazing vehicles. Ferraris, Porsches, BMWs, prototypes, go-karts - you name it, I've driven it. And they all had one thing in common: they were powered by a petrol-fuelled internal combustion engine. However, my latest race, the Nürburgring 24 Hours in Germany, was different. I was driving the rarest Aston Martin in the world - so rare, in fact, that there is only one. It propelled three co-drivers -... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/motoring/article/1260024/emission-statement?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/motoring/article/1260024/emission-statement?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Performance-car engines are sometimes like comedians in that they depend on good timing. When a good comic delivers a punchline the audience can sometimes take a few seconds of silence to geddit - until they burst into uproarious laughter. In a similar way I was involved in an extremely good example of the advantages of torque over power the other week - and of how timing its use is important to avoid being a laughing stock. I was test-driving Aston Martin's new four-door sportscar, the... https://www.scmp.com/article/709064/torque-shows?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/709064/torque-shows?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 REMEMBERING AYRTON I remember when [Brazilian racing car driver] Ayrton Senna died like it was yesterday. I was at my local karting track - Rye House [in Hertfordshire, England - Hamilton began karting when he was eight]. I had just finished a race and my dad said: 'Ayrton just died.' I was shocked. I was young and shy and because my dad was quite hard on me I didn't want to cry in front of him. I went round the front of the car and I cried like crazy. CHILDHOOD DREAMS If I hadn't started... https://www.scmp.com/article/684285/lewis-hamilton?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/684285/lewis-hamilton?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000 The launch in Tokyo earlier this month of Aston Martin's DBS marked another step in the extraordinary growth of the venerable British marque. A little over a decade ago the company was on the Ford life-support machine. This year it has produced 7,300 cars - 10 times more than it managed seven years ago when chief executive Ulrich Bez took the reigns. An ex-Ford man (and before that Porsche and Daewoo), the 64-year old German leads Aston Martin from the front. His welcoming speech in Tokyo was a... https://www.scmp.com/article/620435/cut-chase?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/620435/cut-chase?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:00:00 +0000 'I usually get up about 7.20am. I'm from Bologna [in Italy] but we live in Padova, which is my wife, Daniela's, home town. My first job is to get our son, Niccolo, ready for school. He's eight years old. His mother takes him and, if I am not away racing, I collect him - that's my job. Niccolo is not interested in motor racing. His mother is happy about that. My interest in racing started in a sad way, when my sister was killed in a road accident. My parents were nervous about me... https://www.scmp.com/article/588187/alex-zanardi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/588187/alex-zanardi?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Apr 2007 16:00:00 +0000 A sharp corner in the Ocean Terminal car park required most of the Ferraris on the marque's recent 60th anniversary drive to make a three-point turn. Somehow, the confines of the Tsim Sha Tsui landmark seemed too stressful, perhaps because wide-open spaces are the correct environment for these thoroughbreds, but also because I've damaged more cars while parking than on the race track. Had the owner of the 1969 Daytona I was driving known this, he might not have so cheerfully handed... https://www.scmp.com/article/582669/joys-classic-drive-ferraris-harbour-fest?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/582669/joys-classic-drive-ferraris-harbour-fest?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:00:00 +0000 THE MOMENT WAS not lost on me, of course. Like most sports-car racing fans, I had watched Steve McQueen's 1971 homage to the world's greatest race a million times. And here I was, just like Steve, driving into the Place des Jacobins - the town square at Le Mans ... except I was driving a silver Alfa Romeo 159 rather than a black Porsche 911S. There also wasn't a blonde buying flowers from the stall by the cathedral. And I'm not Steve McQueen. But for a weekend I lived the part. This was not... https://www.scmp.com/article/559048/vintage-va-va-voom?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/559048/vintage-va-va-voom?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Aug 2006 16:00:00 +0000 WILLIAM IS GOING to become unbearable. My brother-in-law has always been stubbornly loyal to Alfa Romeo, leading the rest of the family to tease him by offering the number of a towing service in case he breaks down on the way over for Sunday lunch. Our opinion was unfairly based upon Alfa's reputation of a decade before, just as his love affair with the marque was nurtured and maintained by the memory of its classic cars of the 1960s. It is therefore rather annoying for us that Alfa Romeo ... https://www.scmp.com/article/559047/italian-renaissance?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/559047/italian-renaissance?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 03 Aug 2006 16:00:00 +0000 Alex Yoong is enjoying his motor racing again. He became famous in 2001 as the first Asian to race in modern-day Formula One, but two years with the perennially under-funded Minardi team eroded the Malaysian's reputation. After dropping out of F1 he raced in the United States and then Australia before grabbing the opportunity to create, and then drive for, the Malaysian A1 GP team. A front-runner in A1's inaugural season, Yoong won the penultimate round in Shanghai in March and shortly... https://www.scmp.com/article/547788/a1-experience-helps-yoong-regain-appetite-motor-racing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/547788/a1-experience-helps-yoong-regain-appetite-motor-racing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 May 2006 16:00:00 +0000 AT A COST of more than $3 million, it's hardly surprising that Lamborghini's Gallardo Spyder is a great car. Or is it? In the two decades after Ferruccio Lamborghini retired to his vineyard in 1973, the cars bearing his name were associated less with sporting prowess than with entrepreneurs of the red-light district. In the 1980s the cars from Sant'Agata Bolognese were resale suicide. That all changed in 1998, when Audi took over. In one sense, the German company is the antithesis of a super... https://www.scmp.com/article/537868/take-bull-horns?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/537868/take-bull-horns?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:00:00 +0000