I stumbled across some photos recently of the 1959 Monaco Grand Prix. I’m always struck when I see these how close to the action people were. On balance, of course, I’m glad that spectator safety has improved in the decades since these photos were shot. Today though, and in terms of seeing the event, you’re much better off watching a race on television than attending. Of course there’s always the excitement of a live event, and the people and atmosphere are always half the show.
The last Grand Prix I attended — the ill-fated 2005 USGP — I found myself wandering the field during what became a Ferrari practice session and could get no closer to the track than 30 or more feet. That was a spot to watch one turn through three fences and over the tope of a tire barrier; so I could see the top third of each car. I suppose it beats getting hit with debris from a crash, but neither is really a solution.
This clip of 1966 LeMans highlights, which looks to have been pulled from an episode of Legends of Motorsport (where’s a Legends of Motorsport DVD box set, Speed Channel?) has some very nice details, including voice over narration from Graham Hill, Bruce McLaren, John Surtees, and Carroll Shelby.
The absolute highlight, though, has to be the footage of the go-kart racing on the carnival midway starting about 3.5 minutes in. Excellent footage of some 9 or 10 year old boys sprinting and leaping into their sportscar bodied karts complete with bucket crash helmets and miniature Dunlop blues. The voice over by John Wyer, while they race is describing the race at LeMans, but meshes very well with the karting action. Great stuff.
“When you click home the ignition key on the sketchy dash of a Birdcage, a strong red light burns deep within the broad, thumb-sized starter button. To me that light became a symbol of the vast power lurking with this apparently ramshackle piece of machinery, like glowing coals in the crater of a slumbering volcano.”
So begins Karl Ludvigsen’s review of the motoring experience of the Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage for the April 1961 issue of Car and Driver. I wonder why mass market car magazines don’t review racing cars today. Maybe they do and they’ve just fallen so far off my radar that I haven’t noticed.
Veloce Today has the complete text of Ludvigsen’s review on their site: well worth a read.
There are, after all, problems with buying an authentic 1967 GP car. Firstly, they’re mighty expensive. Let’s face it, every Formula 1 car driven in any year is a collectible piece of kit. But 1967 is widely considered to be the absolute high-point of Formula 1. Well, by me anyway. Every driver that scored points in ’67 is an absolute legend: Hulme, Clark, Brabham, Rodriguez, Surtees, Stewart, Hill…. Need I go on? So any of these cars that would come up for auction will certainly command top dollar.
Secondly, They’re tiny. Of course Formula 1 cars are smaller than your family truckster. But 1967 was still the era when racing drivers were almost universally slight fellows. I’m over 6 feet tall, I’m never going to fit into Jim Clark’s Lotus 48B – maybe Dan Gurney’s Eagle (at 6’3″, maybe F1’s tallest driver).
What’s more, even if you could afford one of these marvelous machines, you’d have to have much more money than that to drive it the way it should be driven. These are, after all, delicate machines that have difficult to find replacement parts should you meet the armco. Although if you do have one, I encourage you to drive the hell out of it.
A small workshop in the UK, however, have solved all of these problems. Stuart Taylor Ltd. is manufacturing a small block Chevy powered formula car under the name F1-67 that wonderfully captures the essence of the 1967 Formula 1 season. They’ve wisely chosen not to replicate any particular Formula car, rather their design is evocative of the era without looking to terribly much like any particular car. And it is lovely. The attention to period-appropriate visuals in the bodywork is particularly fun. Although the body is fiberglass, there are rivets located along seams to imitate the look of aluminum construction. I can’t imagine those rivets are functional, are they?
The small block Chevy is certainly an easier and more affordable engine to maintain than any Formula 1 engine, and it still looks the part from a distance (up close, you can see an anachronistic amount of electronic bits surrounding the velocity stacks). The power is transferred through a reconditioned Porsche 911 4-speed. I bet it’s a damn fun drive. In addition to some modern visible electrics, there are a few other bits of modernity that look out of place. I don’t know when the brightly colored red and blue anodized plumbing fittings were introduced — for all I know they were in use in the late ’60s — but they always look too modern to my eyes.
But I’m not here to nitpick. I think this is a fantastic project and I hope they sell a ton of them. I’d love to see a spec series start of these cars, each painted in tribute to a particular ’67 race livery. Who’s in? More pics at the F1-67 Gallery.
