Along with the map and video from earlier today, here are some photos from the 1966 or 67 road races held on the temporary street circuit along the beach in Tijuana. There’s some street action with the Formula Vees entering turn one at the end of the long beachside straight, the drivers in the production class lining up for their LeMans start, and some track shots of some MGAs and Sprites. Excellent stuff here.
Now that looks like a happy bunch of drivers.
Mexican road racing offered more than just the Panamericana, my friends. This is the temporary street course created for the 1968 Tijuana Internaccional races. The program included Formula Ford and Vee races, as well as production based classes – and even featured a LeMans style running start. ¡Me Gusta!
Hand drawn is almost always best, don’t you think? And when in doubt, add some Speed Racer-esque accent illustrations.
Here’s some video from the same venue a few years later. Fabulous projected 8mm film cans, complete with projector fan noise and voice commentary from the driver.
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.
Also note: the track test car is the very example we saw in last week’s Art Appreciation post.
I would like one very much, thank you.
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.
(via LoudPopVoyager)
I woke up late on Sunday and turned on Spike TV’s “Powerblock” of automotive shows for a few minutes while I got up and around. During the episode of Muscle Cars, there was a brief spotlight on the early 60’s Pontiac GTO variant, the Catalina. The Catalina was a 2+2 (a designation borrowed from Ferraris of the period), and was available with beefier horsepower than even the coveted GTO. During the segment, they cut to a Catalina owner who commented that, “you never see these at car shows, and never on the street, they’re very rare”. Compared to the GTO perhaps they’re rare, but in the 61-67 era the show focused on, Pontiac kicked over 25,000 Catalinas out the factory doors. Rare, eh?
Now this; this is rare. This Maserati powered 1953 Bandini 1500 is on offer from Digit Motorsport in Arizona. It wasn’t uncommon for Bandini importer, Tony Pampeo, to bring rolling Bandini chassis into the United States and then add a engine, typically a Siata, Alfa, Fiat, MG or Offy. This time, however, Tony dropped a Mille Miglia stalwart Maserati A6 in the Bandini. Bellissimo!
The Mille Miglia eligible car looks immaculate following her €90,000 bare chassis restoration. The sale includes the documentation of the restoration, and certification from Dino Bandini as to this gorgeous barchetta’s authenticity. Remarkable. Now this, my friend, is something you never see at car shows. This is rare.
More photos and information is available at the dealer’s info page.
As always, if its Bandini, then Cliff has photos and information on it at Etceterini’s Bandini page.
I recently came across this wonderful Racing Driver meets Scooby Doo edition of the Michel Vaillant series of comic books, “17 Het Spook Van De 24 Uur”. Originally published in French in Belgium – first printed as an unrelated side-story in the Tintin comics, this story follows dashing racing driver and industrialist Michel Vaillant as he competes in the 24 Hours of LeMans. The Scooby bit is the haunting of the track by a mysterious specter. I’d love to tell you more about the story, but inability to read the Dutch language version I located leaves me wanting.
Like our last look into the world of racing comics, there are some beautifully rendered racing machines, this time rooted in the real world. Take a peek.
Part of the allure of the Michel Vaillant series is exactly this realism. Vaillant has competed in, and won natch, in the 24 Hours and Indianapolis 500, and competed on the track at Monza, Spa, and others. This notion of a comic hero that lives in a reality rooted in the real world isn’t necessarily new. The Marvel (New York) vs. DC (Metropolis/Gotham) approaches have been an interesting study in the immediacy of comic books and their real world environments.
In the world of racing, though, Michel Vaillant is unique in this. Many a real-world racing driver has claimed that an early interest in the Vaillant stories was the root of their passion for the sport. It’s easy to see why. The stories, and again I’m just going by the imagery here, are more realistic than the cloak & dagger and romance of the stateside Grand Prix series of comics. The realism must have been the allure for many a young racing fan and would-be driver. It isn’t always pure fantasy and melodrama that pulls people in. Now if I could only find an english language version of these, I’d really be in business.
