Ayrton Senna’s first win was a borderline cinematic effort on a rainy Sunday afternoon at the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix, he was driving the Lotus 97T and the win would be Lotus’s first since the untimely death of Colin Chapman in 1982.
Senna’s long list of wins began with the car you see pictured here, this is chassis #2 and it’s owned by Classic Team Lotus – a company run by Colin Chapman’s son Clive. The car now makes regular appearances at motorsport events around Britain and was recently displayed at The Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Renault World Series, driven by Martin Donnelly.
I’ve added the start of the 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix below for those who haven’t seen it (or those who’d like to see it again). If you click through to YouTube you can actually watch the entire race – it’s divided into 13 parts.
Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The De Tomaso Pantera GT5 was, in some respects, the blue-collar version of the Lamborghini Countach. Both cars featured a sweeping wedge-shaped profile, big wings, flared wheel aches, roaring engines and more horsepower than half a dozen family sedans. When new, the Countach cost over $100,000 (in 1980s money) and required a king’s ransom in…
This BMW 2002 Tii-Specification Groupe 2 was built at the dawn of the ’80s by two legends of French motorsport – Sport Garage G.Benoit and Danielson. Sport Garage G.Benoit of Villefranche-sur-Saone in France were perhaps better known for racing the BMW 3.0 CSi in the late ’70s and early ’80s, but their expertise with BMW…
Thunderbirds 1965 is a 35 minute documentary about a successful project from three years ago to create three new episodes of the Thunderbirds using the same Supermarionation puppetry technology, and focusing on every detail to make sure the episodes would be exactly period correct and indistinguishable from the original episodes. The team behind Thunderbirds 1965…
This is thought to be the fastest Porsche 962 ever built – chassis 962-108. Legendary racing driver Derek Bell drove the car to victory at the 1989 Daytona 24 Hours, and he would later describe it as his favorite 962 – quite a compliment coming from a man who drove many of them, and almost…
This documentary from the 1980s tells the story of MG, the mighty little car company that produced some of the most influential and popular British roadsters of the 20th century. The film starts with the very first MG and discusses the company’s long history, showcasing many of its most popular (and some of the less…
This feature documentary titled Trip Through The River Rouge Plant offers a fascinating insight into the world famous Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan. At the time of its construction the River Rouge Plant was the single largest factory in the world, it was intended for automobile production however the first vehicles produced there were actually Eagle-class…
