Here’s something you aren’t likely to see again: A team owner and his pit crew rebuilding a gearbox in pit lane.
Just because Colin Chapman was in a shirt and tie doesn’t mean he couldn’t get his hands dirty in a Hewland from time to time.
Category: Grand Prix
Man, it’s been a rough few months for vintage motoring enthusiasts.
Salvadori is perhaps best known for his 1959 LeMans victory sharing an Aston with Caroll Shelby but his long career included races in all manner of cars. From Formula cars to Touring, to Sports Racing, to… Hell… anything with wheels, “Salvo” was an intimidating competitor and well liked racer.
The BRDC’s notice summarizes his career in concise terms, which might seem incongruous with the enormous variety of successes that he achieved: “He established outright or Class records for every circuit he raced on in England and won 98 races during his career, including the 1959 Le Mans 24 Hour race in an Aston Martin DBR1, co-driving with Carroll Shelby.”
Not many drivers from those days make it to 90, and Roy was nearly one of those statistics. He had two serious crashes at Silverstone 4 years apart. After a roll at Stowe Corner in 1951, Salvo suffered a severe head injury which resulted in lifelong hearing loss in one ear and tinnitus in the other. Again at Stowe, this time behind the wheel of a Maserati 250F in 1955, Roy’s crash was so gruesome and his prognosis so poor he was administered last rites.
In today’s racing environment when drivers are so specialized, it’s difficult to comprehend Roy Salvadori’s variety. Again from the BRDC notice: “At the Goodwood International Easter Meeting in 1955 he won the F1 Glover Trophy race in a Maserati 250F, the Chichester Cup for F2 cars in a Connaught and the Sports Car race in an Aston Martin. Furthermore, he was second in the other two races that he entered that day.”
Truly a great racing driver, and a truly great loss.
Here’s an interview Roy did with Cars for the Connoisseur in 2003.
Categories
Spa. 1958.
Let’s take a spin around Spa in her configuration for the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix, shall we?
Categories
Race #1
The 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The first Formula 1 world championship race.
Man, those Talbot-Lagos are pretty.
Edit: Ugh. Video is gone. Thanks, Bernie.
Edit 2: Found another video and replaced the original embed.
Categories
Team Alfa-Romeo’s Sartorial Flair
Looking at this photo of (left to right) Fangio, Nino Farina, Felice Bonetto, and Toulo de Graffenried in the pits at Monza’s 1951 Italian Grand Prix, I can only assume one thing… That the Alfa-Romeo team had a mandated waistband altitude regardless of driver’s height.
April 23, 1962’s non-championship Glover Trophy race should have been a minor blip on Stirling Moss’ calendar. But when his car had troubles and fell behind he redoubled his efforts and fought hard to climb back up the field. Only to have it all come down again when, after taking the fastest lap, his car careened off the track and crashed into an embankment.
It was an hour before he was extracted from the car. More than a month that he was in a coma; five months to fight off the paralysis that afflicted half his body.
I was among those saddened when Sir Stirling announced his second retirement from racing recently and would no longer be among the vintage racers in the pits at Goodwood and the Monterey Historics and others. That he was around to take part in vintage racing at all is a marvelous bit of good fortune. He’s a tough one.
More at Motorsport Musings, and a hat tip to Scuderiadank.
Clear the next two hours from your calendar, pour yourself a beer, and watch Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell get airborne on the Nordschleife.
via Pistonheads
Categories
Gran Premio di Siracusa
Every season I try and give F1 another shot. But more and more I find myself hoping for another series to follow. Something more accessible. Something more inclusive of its fans. Something…. different.
I guess I’ve just never quite forgiven F1 for the 2005 USGP farce.
This footage from various running of Sicily’s non-championship Grand Prix of Syracuse only fuels my desire for a racing series that’s about the race and not the championship. Can you imagine contemporary non-championship races for Formula 1? Or even a reinvigorated Formula 2 (or, better yet, 3). The idea of Moss and Fangio and Ascari and, later, Siffert and Clark running alongside hometown hero local entrants sounds thrilling. The advances in racing technology at the top-levels makes this kind of thing all but impossible today—the notion of a wealthy enthusiast dropping in at Ferrari and buying a customer F1 car is almost laughable. But these images remind me that this type of participation was once commonplace.
The Fifth Rand Grand Prix at Kyalami foreshadowed the international stage that Kyalami, only a year after its construction, was quickly becoming. This Non-Championship race in the ’62 Formula 1 season drew top talent from the British Formula 1 teams in particular with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, and John Surtees along with American Richie Ginther competing on the grid on a December afternoon. Clark won from pole, with Lotus team mate Trevor Taylor three-tenths of a second behind him.
Thanks again to Andrew Duncan who has been sharing with us scans of his program collection from his boyhood visits to Kyalami. See more of the Duncan Collection here.
Somehow Graham Hill even managed to look dapper behind the wheel of this replica of an 1896 Henry Ford Quadricycle. With a top speed of 20 Miles per hour and no brakes, Henry’s contraption was probably a walk in the park for Graham, who seems to be enjoying himself in this shot from ’63; taken while he was on his way to 2nd place in the world championship.
via Jaguar Car Forum