Even if it weren’t chock full of fantastic Alfas, this video from Petrolicious would be worth watching just for Manuel’s story of his father catching him taking a turn with a bit too much verve.
Keep up the good work, guys.
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Month: April 2013
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1961 Formula Junior at Monaco
Our earlier post about the ex-Team Tyrell championship winning 1961 Cooper T56 for sale had me wanting to see her in action. If you can find Tony Maggs’ Cooper in this very brief clip of a 1961 Monaco Formula Junior race, then you have better eyes than me. The car would have been wearing number 126 for the event.
Let’s take a moment to set aside the provenance of Steve McQueen’s car collection and the fervor that the mere mention of his name seems to send rippling through the racing community. Let’s ignore that baggage for a moment: that baggage that makes people spend one-and-a-quarter million dollars on a bone stock 911S; that baggage that makes people spend 150K on a well-worn old husky 400. Let’s ignore all that… Just for a moment. Let’s simply look at this beautiful little Cooper T56 and let her hold her own without the Hollywood associations.
Let’s just look at it for what it is, because—like the 1970 911S and the 1970 Husqvarna 400 Cross—this Cooper is a piece of motoring perfection that stands on its own just fine, thank you very much. Iconic design and racing lineage? Yep. There aren’t many machines with as close a familial tie to the rear-engined revolution and the Owen Maddock-designed T43 that shook open-wheeled racing to its very core when Jack Brabham took her to the 1957 Monaco Grand Prix.
Imagine the joy you would get walking up to this little piece of fantastic in your garage. Walking past that little ridge that flows along the engine cover that harkens to it’s larger cousin on the D-Type Jag and certainly to the mighty T51 that gave Cooper the constructor’s championship in 1959. Sure, you might not beat Jack Brabham’s 1959 Monaco GP fastest lap time of 1:40.4 with a 994cc BMC formula junior engine in place of the T51’s Cooper Climax. Then again, with the better tires you’d be running today, you might get close.
Ok. Let’s face the inevitable and bring Mr. McQueen back into the discussion. The truth is that this example of the T56 has a remarkable history even without the Cooler King. The car was one of the two Cooper Works cars campaigned by Team Tyrell in 1961. With Tony Maggs winning at Goodwood, Magny-Cours, Monza, Kalskoga, Rouen, Zandvoort, Oulton Park, and Montlhery this car won Tony and Team Tyrell the European Formula Junior Championship for the season. After the season, the car was returned to Cooper and subsequently snatched up by McQueen while Steve was in Europe pickup up a Mini Cooper and attending John Cooper’s racing school. After taking the T56 back to the States, Steve captured a few wins with her in California. Indeed, this may be the car and the string of races that finally alerted the studio to Steve’s dangerous extracurriculars that famously resulted in the ultimatum that continuing to race would be the end of his acting career. The bastards.
After Steve and this Cooper parted ways, the car continued on to greater successes stateside with Al ‘Buster’ Brizzard winning SCCA championships with this car (fitted alternately with the BMC, Alfa, or Cosworth engine). The car eventually made its way back to Steve McQueen’s racing mechanic, Skip McLaughlin, for many years before its magnificent restoration by Hardy Hall. Today the car is on offer from the Canepa Collection and looks ready to grid up at the Goodwood Revival.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
More information at Canepa’s inventory page and information on the restoration at Hardy Hall Restorations.
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Ron Howard’s Rush Trailer Released
If the trailer is anything to go on, Ron Howard has taken his look at the rivalry between Hunt and Lauda very seriously. Even better, there are darn few obvious uses of CGI racing in these clips. I don’t know why Hollywood can make perfectly realistic dinosaurs or Gollum, but every instance of CGI auto chases plows straight into uncanny valley and looks like crap.
These weren’t little GoPros hanging off of the Maestro’s Lancia. Each of these cameras had to be loaded with film, started up, and run a few laps. Then they had to do it again and again so that you don’t see the giant camera in the other angles. It’s easy to dismiss the complexity of these earlier onboard films when we can easily toss a half-dozen or more digital video cameras on a car at every possible angle. It’s part of what makes early onboard footage so precious.
Looking through the slow motion montages in this clip, I have to believe it was part of the inspiration for Saul Bass’s racing sequences in Grand Prix.
via Retro Formula 1
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Hermann Lang’s Nürburgring
With the future of the Nürburgring in some doubt, I think it’s worth celebrating how much of this master class from Hermann Lang (with voice over from Graham Hill) still applies today. Let’s hope that Mr. Lang’s example is applicable for at least another 50 years. Save the Ring!
Thanks for sending this one in, Bret!
How hard do you think that Alfonso de Portago would laugh if we could tell him that racing teams have models in the pit lane who’s job it is to shield the drivers from the sun? De Portago didn’t need someone to cover his head when it started to rain before the 1957 Cuban GP and he certainly didn’t need it for the sun. A Shell ad wedged in the windscreen of his Ferrari 860 does just fine, thank you very much.
I don’t know that the 1970 running of the LeMans 24 Hours race is particularly pivotal for the public at large, but that particular running is just so cemented in my mind. I’m sure the documentation of it in the form of McQueen’s LeMans is the key reason. Also significant for Hans Herrmann and Richard Attwood’s victory that gave Porsche their first outright win at the race: A feat they’d repeat 15 more times and started Porsche down their road to winningest team in the event’s history.
These images from Flickr user ZANTAFIO56 only serve to further add to the importance and beauty of the race in my mind. He seems to have been all over the track, with some marvelous shots from several corners of La Sarthe and the pits as well. More of Zantafio56’s shots at his flickr set. Fantastic!
I just realized that this is my third 917-centric post in a week. I’ll take a break from her now. I promise.