For the first in an occasional series of posts highlighting some of the best in in car camera footage.
A lap of Le Mans in 1956 with Mike Hawthron in the D-Type Jaguar. Amazing footage as they strap two camera’s on Hawthron’s Jaguar and a microphone to his chest and send him out while the roads of Le Mans are still open to the public.

According to a report on Autosport.com a consortium led by Prodrive boss David Richards has bought luxury car maker Aston Martin from Ford.

Richards has a strong motor-sports pedigree having run sucessful rally teams, been World Rally Champion co-driver and being part of the group that holds the commerical rights for the World Rally Championship series.  Richards has confirmed that Aston Martin will remain committed to motorsport in the next few years. He has been involved with Aston Martin throughout its current sportscar projects, which are overseen by his Prodrive operation. “We’re not going to be running away from sportscar racing with me as chairman of the business,” Richards told autosport.com. “The company has supported us right from the build-up to our involvement in GT racing, so you’ll continue to see us at Le Mans this year with further enthusiasm from our investors.”

 Richards has also spent time in Formula One with both the Benetton (now Renault) and Honda teams. Richard’s own ProDrive organization is set to join the Formula One grid in 2008. So will we see a British Racing Green liveried Aston Martin F1 car next year? Here’s hoping.

According to a report in the French newspaper L’Equipe, ex-F1 and Champ Car champion Jacques Villeneuve has been added to the already impressive line up of drivers for Peugeot’s return to Le Mans.

Autosport.com says that the newspaper report claims that Villeneuve will join Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais and Ferrari test driver Marc Gene, plus Stephane Sarrazin, Nicolas Minassian and Pedro Lamy for the assault with the new 908 car.

If he wins the 24 Hr Classic with Peugeot, Villeneuve will become the first person to win:

• The F1 World Championship
• The Indy 500
• A US national open-wheel title (ChampCar)
• The 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The late Graham Hill is currently the only person to have won the F1 World Championship, the Indy 500 and Le Mans.

According to reports on Autosport.com that 3-time Champ Car champion Sebastian Bourdais has given up on his long held ambitions to land a seat on Formula One, however he has confirmed that he will participate in next year’s Le Mans 24 Hour as a member of the new Peugeot team.

Meanwhile Bourdais winning move on the last lap of last weekend’s Champ Car finale in Mexico is coming in for some criticism.

 Ricardo Rodriguez was a true racing phenomena, bursting onto the international racing scene at a young age and immediately proving himself as both a winner and potential champion. Born in Mexico City, Ricardo started racing bicycles and then graduated to motorbikes winning several national championships before we has even 14. As a teenager he switched to saloon car racing. He made his international racing debut at just 15 and won his class in a race at Riverside and repeated the victory in that year’s Nassau Tourist Trophy race.

He tried to enter for Le Mans in 1958 but was denied due to his age. He did however make his debut at the classic 24 hour race the following year at just 17 years of age, and in 1960 came second in his class making him, at 18, the youngest person ever to be on a Le Mans podium.

In 1961 Ferrari offered him a guest drive in one of it’s Formula One cars for the Italian Grand Prix, where Rodriguez stunned everyone by qualifying second, just 0.1 seconds off the pole time, and dicing for the lead until a fuel pump failure took him out of the race.

He joined the Ferrari team on a full time basis in 1962 and was always impressive even if they didn’t always get the results the team wanted. He also scored a victory in the Targa Florio sports car race that year.

When Ferrari elected not to compete in the season ending non-championship Mexican Grand Prix Rodriguez arranged a one-off drive for Rob Walkers private Lotus team so he could run at his home event. During practice he entered the difficult Peraltada corner at high speed, clipped the edge of the banking and left the road. No-one knows what caused the accident, there are some suggestions that the Lotus’s suspension broke, others cite Ricardo’s unfamiliarity with the oversteering Lotus compared to his regular Ferrari which had a tendency to understeer. Ricardo died from his injuries and perhaps the brightest young star in the history of GP racing had been lost.

The circuit where he lost his life was renamed in his honor.