Soon after the chequered flag came down at the twilit Abu Dhabi circuit to close the 2018 Formula 1 season Fernando Alonso’s last of 17 drama-packed campaigns – three of the cars broke out into a display of impromptu donuts. Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari were joined on pit straight by the retiring Spaniard’s pirouetting McLaren; soon afterwards the 2018 Champion and Vice-Champion gave the Spaniard a guard of honour. They were bidding a respectful farewell to a fellow Championship winner, and Formula One was saying goodbye to one of its all-time greats.

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James Hunt’s last-gasp victory at the 1976 Japanese Grand Prix was the culmination of one of the most dramatic and controversial seasons in Formula One history. Four decades later, rose-tinted memories and Hollywood histrionics have skewed the narrative – but few are in a better position to put it straight than James’ son Freddie Hunt.

How Mike Hawthorn won Jaguar’s first Le Mans race – but left a trackside holocaust in his wake that would change racing forever.

The 1955 Le Mans race was always set to be a memorable one. After a promising second-place finish for its D-type the previous year, Jaguar returned to La Sarthe with a revised version of the car it had purpose-built to win the world’s greatest endurance race. Title-holder Ferrari was back with a gaggle of six-cylinder 121LMs. And Mercedes, which had just proved the potency of its new 300SLR sports-racer by winning the Mille Miglia, had thrown its Tyrolean into the ring with an all-star team that included Moss, Fangio and Kling. Practice times had been front-page news; everything was in place for an epic Coventry-Modena-Stuttgart showdown.