The Goodwood Festival of Speed and the 100th anniversary of Pikes Peak ... it's a huge weekend for motorsport history.
At Lord March's Goodwood House estate in West Sussex, England, BMW's centenary as a manufacturer is being celebrated, but so too is the 50th anniversary of Australia's late Sir Jack Brabham becoming the first and only driver to win the Formula 1 World Championship in a car of his own construction.
That was the BT19, designed by Brabham's long-time business partner Ron Tauranac, now in his 90s, and with the Australian-built Repco engine in the back of it.
That world title in 1966 was Brabham's third, after earlier successes with Cooper in 1959 and '60.
The Brabham team won the world title with the BT19 again in 1967, with New Zealander Denny Hulme the victorious driver that year.
Hulme died of a heart attack at the wheel of a BMW in the 1992 Bathurst 1000. He also was famous as half of the 'Bruce and Denny Show' when the sports cars built by his fellow Kiwi Bruce McLaren dominated the CanAm series in North America.
Those glory days also are being celebrated this weekend at Goodwood.
Australia's Mark Webber, fresh from the Le Mans 24-Hour which he led last weekend before Porsche's sister 919 Hybrid triumphed as the leading Toyota TS050 faltered in the final minutes, will be among the many notable drivers participating at Goodwood.
The fastest official run up Goodwood's 1.86km hillclimb – with nine turns and an elevation change of 92.7 metres – was by German Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren MP4-13 at 41.6 seconds in 1999. F1 cars are no longer allowed official timed runs there, although Finn Heikki Kovalainen did one unofficially in less than 40 seconds in a Renault R25 in 2006.
Attendances are huge at the Goodwood festival, above 100,000 each day every year but capped at 150,000 after the crush of 158,000 in 2003.
Two Aussies going up America's Mountain
Pikes Peak, otherwise known as the Race to the Clouds, is America's second-oldest motorsport event after the Indianapolis 500, the open-wheeler classic run for the 100th time a month ago.
While it is the 100th anniversary of the hillclimb in Colorado it will be the 94th running, with some years skipped – as with the Indy 500 – because of war.
Pikes Peak is an invitational climb for four and two-wheel machinery to the summit of what is known as 'America's Mountain' – and the second most visited mountain in the world after Japan's Fuji.
The climb is 19.99km, starting at 2862 metres above sea level and rising – through 156 turns – to 4300 metres at the summit.
The thin air robs engines of up to 30 per cent of their power on the way up, as well as slowing the reflexes and sapping the mental and muscle strength of the competitors.
Australia has two representatives among the 100 invited to compete this year – Sydney's Jeff Denmeade and Gold Coast-based GT racing impresario and owner of New Zealand's Highlands and Hampton Downs circuits Tony Quinn.
Denmeade has competed several times before, scoring a class podium in an Australian-made Skelta in 2012, and this time is in a 2006 Mitusbishi Lancer Evo.
Quinn, a rookie at Pikes Peak, is driving his custom-built Monster Tamer – the heavily-modified Ford Focus with a 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged engine from a Nissan R35 originally built for last year's Race to the Sky in NZ (which Quinn resurrected, only for it to fold again due to objections from neighbouring farmers).
"I feel pretty special to be part of Pikes Peak," Quinn said.
"As a rookie I had to give the organisers the names of a couple of referees who could vouch for me. Having the legendary 'Monster' Tajima and Robby Gordon in my corner certainly helped me secure an invite."
Quinn said after reconnaissance of the course some weeks ago in a Ford Mustang convertible that "thankfully my fear of heights didn't bother me at all".
"One of my biggest fears was that I wouldn't be competitive and that my guts would be churning inside, but it's actually a really enjoyable road to drive," Quinn said.
"It's very steep and tight in places, but it's beautiful countryside – quite majestic and I'm really looking forward to it now.
"I think the car will go really well and I'm looking forward to posting a good time.
"The stars have to align for you ... if they don't any mistake you make will be punished."
The fastest time up the climb was by nine-time rally world champion Sebastien Loeb in a Peugeot 208 T16 PP – a creation said to have cost US$14 million to develop for the event – in 2013.
That was the first year the once-entirely-gravel course had been fully sealed.
Perhaps the greatest legend in Pikes Peak history is New Zealander Rod Millen, who set the gravel-course record in 1994 at the wheel of a highly-modified Toyota Celica with a run in little more than 10 minutes – a time only bettered more than a decade later by which time the climb was three-quarters sealed.
Millen was five times 'King of the Mountain' and a 10-time class winner and will be inducted into the Pikes Peak Hall of Fame before this Sunday's competition.
Millen's son, Rhys, is another champion of the mountain and back there this time, as is Frenchman Romain Dumas, one of the drivers of the victorious Porsche at Le Mans last weekend – and on which Australian Jeromy Moore, previously of the Triple Eight V8 Supercar team, was the chief engineer.
At Pikes again too is Japanese great Tajima, the first driver to break 10 minutes on the climb and who these days competes in electric cars and also will become a Hall of Famer on Sunday.
'Sore losers' Toyota still probing Le Mans failure
Toyota says the heart-breaking failure in its TS050 Hybrid that came within a couple of minutes of the company's first victory in 18 attempts at Le Mans was a "defect on the air line between the turbo and the intercooler".
"The team attempted to modify the control settings to restore power and this was eventually achieved, allowing the car to complete the final lap," Toyota said.
"However, it was achieved too late to complete that [final] lap within the required six minutes."
Toyota said the problem was not related to the engine issues its two TS050s had at the Spa Six-Hour in Belgium in May.
"Comprehensive investigations are underway to determine the precise reason for this issue with the aim of establishing counter-measures to avoid any repeat in the future."
Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda said the company had tasted "the true bitterness of losing" the world's toughest circuit race.
Vowing to continue the quest to conquer Le Mans, Toyoda said: "We at Toyota Gazoo Racing are sore losers."
PlayStation graduate gets double time
The winner of last year's Australian Nissan PlayStation GT Academy, Brisbane "postie" Matt Simmons, gets to do some serious endurance racing this weekend.
The third round of Europe's Blancpain GT Endurance Cup is a six-hour race at France's Paul Ricard circuit.
Simmons and his co-drivers Sean Walkinshaw and Romain Sarazin share the advantage of having tested their Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 there earlier this year.
The race is twice as long as that in which Simmons had his most recent outing – three hours at Britain's Silverstone, where the trio finished seventh in the pro-am class.
"Six hours is awesome, because it means double the time in the car," Simmons said.
"And that means double the fun."
The only longer race in the Blancpain GT Endurance Cup is the Spa 24-Hour late next month.
The races are streamed on NISMO.tv.
Teenage star back home for one-off
One of Australia's young international open-wheeler prospects, Luis Leeds, will race on home soil next weekend.
Leeds, who has won two races in the British Formula 4 Championship this season and scored a shock victory in an F4 support event at last year's Mexican Grand Prix, will return to the Australian F4 Championship for the July 1-3 round as part of the Shannons Nationals round at Sydney Motorsport Park.
"Last year I never got a race win [in the inaugural season of F4 in Australia]; I kept coming second, so hopefully I can come back and tick off that race win," said 16-year-old Leeds.
He will be reunited with DREAM Motorsport for the Sydney event.
Leeds is part of the Red Bull junior development program that groomed Daniel Ricciardo.
He's racing in Britain with the long-established and successful Arden team and is fourth in the championship.
His latest victory was at the Croft circuit in Yorkshire, where fellow Australian youngster Zane Goddard also won one of the F4 races last weekend.
The month-long break in the series has allowed Leeds to come home for a one-off return to the local championship.
Volvo calls up Dahlgren for WTCC
Robert Dahlgren, the Swede who raced a Volvo in V8 Supercars in 2014, is in the World Touring Car Championship from this weekend's round in Portugal.
Dahlgren is leading the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship for Polestar and will continue in that, skipping two clashing WTCC rounds later in the season.
In the WTCC Dahlgren will drive a Polestar S60 as teammate to Thed Bjork, who is 13th in the series.
Fredrik Ekblom, who is 12th in the points, eight ahead of Bjork, has been switched to testing duties to make way for Dahlgren.
The best finishes the Volvo drivers have achieved in the championship this year have been fourth.
The Swedish company is languishing fourth in the manufacturers' championship with 145 points, behind Citroen (523), Honda (351) and LADA (323).
The Portuguese round is at the brutal Vila Real street circuit.