Ian Mark Bamsey - IMB as he was known on the pages of Motoring News at the start of his career - obtained a BA Honours degree in Town Planning but instead set about documenting motor racing.

Upon that initial vocational switch he won the Guild of Motoring Writers’ 1977 Sir William Lyons Award as the most promising of aspiring UK automotive scribes. That led him the following year to join the staff of Motoring News in London (nowadays known as Motorsport News).

By 1980 Bamsey was European Formula Two Championship correspondent and International Racing News Editor of Motoring News. He left the weekly towards the end of 1981 to create his own Automobile Sport yearbook.

In 1982, with the support of the Haynes Publishing Group a monthly magazine followed. Haynes’ expertise was in books not magazines. Editorially acclaimed but commercially befogged, the Automobile Sport venture lasted until 1984.

Having the wisdom acquired through that experience of publishing Bamsey resolved to focus upon the technical side of racing. He therefore studied racing technology prior to launching the Racecar Engineering project in 1986. Initially this produced books published by the Haynes Publishing Group and carrying the Racecar Engineering imprint.

In late 1990, independent of then-recession-hit Haynes, Bamsey launched Racecar Engineering as a quarterly magazine. He didn’t have the funding to properly promote it nor to make it as lavish a production as he wished. So, after publishing well-received Winter, Spring and Summer issues, in mid 1991 he joined forces with Q Editions.

The owner of Q Editions, Quentin Spurring had the necessary resources. Bamsey had the Autumn issue ready but ‘Q’ kept delaying it as he was preoccupied with lucrative publishing projects for Castrol and Mercedes. 

Eventually Q was ready to send it to press in January 1992. Unlike the previous issues it had some adverts and a new look from Q’s designer. Since it was now too late to call it ‘Autumn’ it was agreed to call it volume 2 issue 1 and to roll it out on a bimonthly basis.

Racecar Engineering continues to thrive to this day, having along the way become a monthly. However, with its early success way beyond reasonable expectations, Q had decided he wanted full control of it. That led to Bamsey departing in mid 1993 and to his founding the rival Race Tech monthly in 1995.

In 2003 Bamsey created Race Engine Technology as an even more tightly focused sister journal. In 2005 this spun off into a dedicated publishing company with Bamsey relinquishing the reins of Race Tech and his equity in it to concentrate 100% upon RET.

Having edited 159 issues of RET and having experienced the steady erosion of its original premise by engine-competition-wrecking rule makers, in 2025 Bamsey left to establish a new project. This fourth project is due to be revealed in 2026.

IMB's Vanishing Act

Readers of Race Engine Technology (RET) were puzzled as to the sudden disappearance of founder Ian Bamsey, who edited it for 159 issues, having created it in 2003.

Bamsey remarks: “issue 160 failed to explain why I had abruptly disappeared from the pages of RET, after more than 20 years editing this creation of mine.

“My original mission for RET was to document the technology arising from race engine designers and developers competing against one another. Alas, for the majority of professional series revised rules have eliminated this rich rivalry.

“Disenchanted by the steady erosion of proper motor racing, after more than 150 issues of RET it was time for me to leave the stage to those who can accept homogenised ICE (or EV) performance.

“Clearly from my perspective the time had come to embark upon a new mission. Originally conceptualised to run in harmony with RET, this will be my fourth project; before RET I founded Racecar Engineering (book imprint from 1986 / magazine from 1990) and Race Tech (magazine from 1995).

“Notably, in the acknowledgements section of his recent magnum opus on forced induction (which Motor Sport magazine has acclaimed his ‘Sistine Chapel’) Karl Ludvigsen stated that for his research: ‘lan Bamsey's writings about racing engines were pure gold’.

“You can rest assured that my fourth project will set a new gold standard!

“I am nurturing Project Four outside of RET publisher HPM, which declined the opportunity to be involved. It follows that I can no longer be contacted via HPM.

“I look forward to unveiling Project Four, my most significant mission ever, in September 2026, having in the meantime taken a long-overdue sabbatical.”