When Formula 1 technology reached its incredible peak
While many look ahead to this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, we thought we’d take advantage of a relative lull in motorsport to turn the spotlight on the peak of Formula 1’s ‘gizmo’ era.
The cars – or, at least, the front ones – of the 1993 season bristled with innovative technology and this week’s special covers some of the main stories. Williams led the way with the FW15C (page 18), McLaren and Ayrton Senna provided the main opposition with a car better than many remember (p24), Benetton showed hints of its latent potential with Michael Schumacher (p30) and Ferrari… well, Ferrari struggled so much that it made changes that eventually led to one of the most dominant periods in the championship’s history.
As well as hearing from some of the key F1 players of the time, we also cover the other main motorsport tales from the era (p42), covering Indycar, GT racing, British Touring Cars and the World Rally Championship, where Colin McRae started to make his presence felt. We haven’t forgotten about the two big events coming up this weekend. Matt Kew takes a look at whether the Las Vegas GP can really live up to all the hype (p4), while Jamie Klein finds out why so many single-seater and GT stars are heading to the Macau GP (p46).
There’s plenty of National news at this time of year, led this week by the announcement of the winner of the prestigious Porsche GB Junior shootout (p59). Stefan Mackley also explains how the highly competitive GT3 and GT4 championships were won in British GT (p68) and picks out the top five drivers in each class.
Kevin Turner Chief Editor kevin.turner@autosport.com
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PIT & PADDOCK 4 What to expect from the Las Vegas GP 6 Fittipaldi brothers on track in IndyCar 8 Balance of Performance changes for WEC? 11 Dunne joins Macau GP star entry 13 Las Vegas Grand Prix preview 15 Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas 16 Opinion: Kevin Turner 17 Feedback: your letters
1993 SPECIAL 18 Williams and the sophisticated FW15C 24 The last hurrah for Senna at McLaren 30 Rise of the next F1 superpower 36 Ferrari starts another new chapter 41 Key stats from F1 1993 42 How Mansell conquered Indycar 43 The low-key start to a golden GT era 44 BMW kicks off Super Touring in the BTCC 45 McRae rises as Kankkunen goes fourth
FEATURES 46 Macau Grand Prix preview
RACE CENTRE 48 World of Sport: TCR World Tour; World Rallycross; MotoGP
CLUB AUTOSPORT 59 Wallis named as new Porsche GB Junior 60 Father-and-son Mazda racers banned 62 Racing Hondas series offers free entries 65 Star turnout at Velocity International 66 National report: Anglesey 68 British GT season review
FINISHING STRAIGHT 72 What’s on this week 74 My favourite track: Jamie Green
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Alexander Sims tries an all-electric tin-top, we look at the 2026 F1 engine regulations, and a Lotus racer breaks cover a er more than 50 years in the latest edition of our free supplement.
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