Gordon Murray and Carlos Sainz Snr – evo Hall of Fame
The latest inductees to the evo Hall of Fame achieved astonishing things in 2024
It was late 2019 and late in the day on the Thursday of press week when the email landed. There were just 24 hours to go before the printer would start asking where the pages were, but as soon as we saw the subject matter we knew we had to replan a whole chunk of the issue. It was that big a deal.
By ‘we’ I mean evo’s star managing editor, Ian Eveleigh, who had to find space in the issue (I can’t remember what we dropped to make room), while art editor Rich Browne delivered the calmest ‘yeah, no problem’ response when asked if he could knock up a new cover for our subscriber copies despite his original already being signed off and on its way to the presses.
The subject of the email was the GMA T.50, the answer to the question: ‘Will Gordon Murray ever produce a follow-up to the McLaren F1?’ Nearly three decades after the F1 was revealed to the world, Professor Murray had an answer for us all. The creator of what is widely considered one of the world’s greatest cars – for some considerable time the world’s fastest, and which remains one of the most desirable ever made – was indeed developing a successor to it.
The T.50, with its naturally aspirated, large-capacity V12 engine, manual gearbox, lightweight philosophy, three-seat, central driving position layout and, for good measure, a fan to suck it all to the ground, was Murray’s experience, expertise and imagination combined with all the learnings of the F1 in an improved, even purer driver’s car.
In each of the years since those early, awe-inspiring sketches became public, Murray has been worthy of every bit of recognition sent his way. His obsessively high standards and attention to detail have always set him apart. So why are we honouring him now? Well, in 2024 the first T.50s were delivered to the customers at the top of the list and, crucially, evo was one of the few invited to drive it. Or rather, Henry Catchpole was, which is how he found himself in Spain with not only a T.50 but a McLaren F1 for company.
‘As I keep driving, keep pushing, never relaxing but constantly smiling, I’m struggling for reasons why this isn’t the most thrilling road car I’ve ever driven,’ he wrote in evo 323. ‘Imagine an Alpine A110 with the feedback and control weights of a Caterham Seven and an engine from another planet. Except you’re sitting in the middle. And then you realise that being in the middle has become more than just interesting. You really want to be absolutely at the centre like this, in perfect harmony with the car.’
Much more than an updated F1, the T.50 redefines what the driving experience should be when the goal is to deliver the purest, most engaging thrills possible in a road car. And all achieved without a major manufacturer in the background, writing the cheques and negotiating with suppliers. Gordon Murray Automotive is that rarest of things, a fearlessly independent car company that produces the machines its founder envisages and sees them through to completion, right down to every last detail.
The motoring media is full of stories about the latest super or hypercar manufacturer; companies that are going to rewrite the rulebook and produce a car that’s more powerful, faster, more exclusive and more desirable than anything that has gone before. They rarely make it beyond the first reveal before the business case starts to leak investment and the team drifts away.
There were sceptics when it came to GMA’s ability to fund such a project, but these were the kind of people who lap up a global OEM’s PR feed like it’s the last supper and have no idea how this rarefied end of the market operates. The T.50 sold out, the reserve list never shrank and the car’s development – and the company – survived the pandemic and continued on its path to launch. Which was delayed, but given the nature of the project, that was to be expected. Much larger manufacturers have taken much longer to develop less complex cars than the T.50.
Gordon Murray is also a man with a vision, and the T.50 wasn’t the only model in the plan. The T.50s Niki Lauda was presented as a more focused track model, the T.33 coupe and Spider as more ‘accessible’ derivatives. All to be built in the UK, all to feature that V12 engine and be sold globally. Building a limited run of a few cars is one thing, a series model line-up another. Just ask some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers with near-limitless resources at their disposal how hard it is to deliver one hypercar, never mind a family.
That the T.50 delivers in every area, without compromise, only adds to the achievements of our Person of the Year, Professor Gordon Murray.
How to pick a Competition Driver of the Year when 2024 has given us so many compelling contenders? Lando Norris had to be near the top of anyone’s list, having been the only driver to push Max Verstappen to what appears to be the Dutchman’s breaking point. And this in a season that many insiders say will be repeated in 2025 while Formula 1 awaits its major rules upheaval in 2026. Bring it on, we say.
At the other end of the motorsport paddock is James Deane, who this year became the first driver to claim four Formula Drift championship titles. In another year it could have been Jake Hill, who claimed his first British Touring Car title, or perhaps Romain Dumas for climbing Pikes Peak faster than anyone else in 2024 in his Ford F-150 Lightning Supertruck. Maybe Verstappen himself deserves it for what will surely be a fourth world title in a row? Or perhaps Thierry Neuville, currently homing in on his maiden World Rally Championship title. And it would have been hard to argue against any of them.
The term shortlist doesn’t really cover it, rather there was a very long one that we gradually whittled down until we arrived at a driver who has consistently been at the top of their game for nearly half a century, claiming dozens of victories and multiple titles along the way. One who no one would blame if they chose to hang up their Nomex and put away their Stilo for a slower pace of life. One who might settle for being the father of a Ferrari Formula 1 race winner. But Carlos Sainz Snr doesn’t entertain the idea of slowing down, even at the age of 62.
At the beginning of 2024, Sainz took part in his 17th Dakar, an adventure that started with Volkswagen in 2006. It took four years for him to claim the first victory he craved, and another eight before his second Dakar win would come at the wheel of Peugeot’s 3008 DKR in this most gruelling of events. His third came in 2020 behind the wheel of a Mini and this year saw a remarkable fourth overall win, this time in an Audi RS Q e-tron, the all-electric rally raid car that the German maker had been campaigning in the desert since 2022.
This fourth victory meant that not only was Sainz the oldest victor on the Dakar, but also the first to win the event with four different manufacturers. Although he didn’t add to his 47 Dakar stage wins this year – only the third time he has competed on the event without one – instead the Spaniard relied on his experience and guile to stay out of trouble, protect his car from the harshness of the terrain and use his calmness and craft behind the wheel to deliver consistently over the 14-day, 7891km event.
And yet his 2024 Dakar didn’t get off to the best of starts, Sainz finishing 48th on the prologue, putting him at an early disadvantage as the main event got underway. Not that this fazed the veteran, who quickly got himself into contention and took the overall lead on the second stage.
By week two he had built a 20-minute lead, and even a fightback by nine-times World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb, who cut that lead to 13 minutes on the penultimate day before hitting a rock and damaging his charge’s suspension, couldn’t prevent Sainz from claiming his fourth outright victory.
To compete in the Dakar is an achievement in itself; to finish it a goal many never achieve; to take victory is more than a dream. It remains a challenge like no other, a challenge that’s more human endeavour than a motorsport event. Securing a quartet of victories in four different vehicles with four different teams is unheard of. But these achievements – and the determination Carlos Sainz has shown throughout his career – are why he remains such a draw to spectators and team bosses alike: his 100 per cent approach to every competition makes for a spectacular watch and leads to unprecedented results.
At 62, Sainz is still at or near the top of his game an astonishing 45 years after he first started competing, in a Group 5 Renault 5 Turbo. Had Audi not retired its Dakar effort to focus on its Formula 1 ambitions (where Sainz Jnr is widely tipped to be heading after his two-year spell at Williams), Sainz Snr would be returning to the desert to defend his title with the four rings from Ingolstadt. Instead, he’ll be back hunting for a fifth Dakar win in 2025 with former employer Ford, as the Blue Oval takes on the unique desert challenge. In Sainz they know they have one of the most competitive drivers for the job. And evo’s 2024 Competition Driver of the Year.
