I have a Triumph GT6 sitting in my garage that I keep coming this close to selling, but when I see these technicians from the Triumph Experimental Division in their neckties and shopcoats lovingly laboring over these crisp white frames it makes me want to abandon my plans to sell and instead suit up and get her properly prepped.
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
Looking at this photo of an unidentified racing driver Dan Gurney from 1960, it’s hard to believe that “The Intimidator” was still available when people were deciding on a nickname for Dale Earnhardt after his masterful 1987 season.
Thanks Gary for identifying Dan Gurney for us!
Even better! Captain Ned was curious about this image, so he emailed AAR Racing. Incredibly, he received a reply from Evi Gurney herself. Evi says that Dan was experimenting with face protection well before his contemporaries—which led to the first full face helmet for driving.
“During the years that followed he worked with Bell Helmets in California where he helped to develop the first full face helmet. He had seen motorcycle racers wear similar ones at Ascot Raceway in California. Dan wore the first full face helmet at Indianapolis in 1968 and then also introduced it to Formula I racing at the British and German Grand Prix in 1968. He was at first a bit ridiculed but within months other drivers adopted the full face helmet and now we cannot imagine how they ever raced without them.”
Evi’s complete message is in the comments.
thanks, Captain Ned.
BARCboys‘ photo archives never fail to turn up a unique angle on the races they travelled to. Dave Nicholas’ shots from the 1965 Sebring Endurance Race are no exception. The race was a wet one and the sparse accommodations for spectators at the race makes me wonder if a greater percentage of competitors or spectators made it to the end of the race. Thankfully, Dave stuck it out to document the race.
What interests me just as much, though, are these images that Dave managed to capture of the Mecom team making some final preparations on Friday night—and look like they could well have been included in our factories at work series. I always enjoy seeing the pit facilities from years past and while Sebring may be an extreme example owing to its reputation as a “primitive racetrack”, the team garages at LeMans or Monaco were little better.
Seeing the Hansgen/Donohue Ferrari 250LM and Cannon/Saunders Lola T70 wedged in here between the tractor and the steel tubing, though, really illustrates the shocking range of difference in amenities between contemporary racing facilities and those of 40 or 50 years ago. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about when I talk about the kinship that vintage racing teams had with Hot Rod garages. They were damn near the same thing.
Walt Hansgen and Mark Donohue’s Ferrari 250 LM finished 11th overall (4th in class). John Cannon and Jack Saunders qualified in 6th, and were fast runners in the opening laps of the race, but dropped out with a failed oil cooler after 55 laps.
More of Dave Nicholas’ photos on BARC Boys’ 1965 Sebring Gallery. Sports Car Digest did a lovely profile of the race that’s well worth a read.
Reddit’s “I Am A” forum is always a fascinating peek into people’s lives. The premise is simple enough, someone pops on and starts a thread with “I am ___, ask me anything”. r/IAmA has hosted a variety of fascinating discussions with a wide variety of diverse and public people such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, military whistleblower Justin Watt, and comedian Louis C.K. It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity for people to directly ask questions of someone, without the filter of a more traditional interviewer acting as our proxy. Plus they’re just a good read (I got distracted from writing this post and read all three of those I linked… Focus!).
Recently Jacques Couture, a founder of the Jim Russell Racing School North America and racing instructor to Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve, Al Unser, Jr., and myriad other famous and not so famous racing drivers started a thread.
What a rare and tremendous opportunity for motorsport enthusiasts to interact with such an influential figure in the sport as Couture.
Q: Motor racing is well known for rewarding those with money over those with talent. Were there any students that you thought were unbelievably talented; maybe even better than Gilles Villenueve; but due to lack of funding ended up never getting anywhere?
A: Absolutely. over the 35 years i ran the school. there have been hundreds of extremely talented individuals that have come through that showed great promise, but just didnt have the money to continue.
Q: We hear a lot about drivers like Gilles, Senna and Prost, but who’s the greatest unsung F1 driver of the last 30/40 years?
A: There are quite a few great drivers who just never got the break they needed. Chris Amon is one. exceptional driver who was always right behind the front runner waiting for that mistake that never came.
Q: What is the biggest difference between teaching Jacques who had probably some aptitude and a beginner without any knowledge (Celebrities)?
A: Someone who has no experience is actually easier to teach because they have no bad habits you have to reverse. Many people with some racing experience, in the beginning, may be more difficult to teach because they may have one or more bad habits you have to deal with first before they can progress.
later on though, once those bad habits are broken, someone with experience, such as Gilles and Jacques, will then progress much more quickly.
Click on through for the full discussion, and thanks to Ral for writing in and pointing me in the right direction.
It’s easy to forget that before karting became the dominant proving ground for Formula 1 drivers that World Champions once came from a variety of motorsport traditions. Rindt, Lauda, Fitipaldi, and Rosberg all spent their formative years in a Formula Vee.
I thought I knew my Vee makers reasonably well, but this one I’m not so sure of. Can anyone Identify what FV Jochen is driving here? Is it a Beach?
Ed wrote in to identify Rindt’s Vee as an Astro. Thanks, Ed! (Editor’s Note: Well, in the comments below, Chris also thinks it looks like a Beach. That makes two of us, what do you think?)
More Formula Vee history at The Vee Centre.
Friend of the blog and VSCDA racer Ted Sodergren sent in this marvelous set of photos he shot as a young reporter covering the Indianapolis 500. I’m always so excited to see candid shots of Formula 1 drivers hanging out in the pits and marvel at the access racing fans had to these iconic competitors in the early days that I forget that the same also holds true for the Indy drivers.
Ted, of course, had a press pass to help in capture these marvelous images of the competitors and their rides. And what a time to capture these machines it was. The rear-engine revolution came a bit slower to Indianapolis than it did to Formula 1, but you can see here the effects that were taking hold at The Brickyard with only one or two holdout front-engined competitors.
It was a milestone 500. It was the first nationally televised Indy 500, and was the first of Ford’s dominance as an engine manufacturer at Indy for the next 6 or 7 years. This coincided with Ford’s dominance in Formula 1—a tremendous period of motorsport supremacy.
Thanks for these, Ted. And look for his ’66 shots here soon.
These photos shot by Jim Miner at the 1960 running of the Nuburgring 1000km caused quite a sensation when his daughter, Kat Miner, uploaded them to her Flickr. There was a tremendous outpouring of interest from the vintage racing community, and it’s easy to see why.
Even in today’s Hipstamatic and Instagram faux-vintage photo effects, there’s something noticeably otherworldly and atmospheric about these shots captured by the young serviceman stationed in Frankfurt. The colors are somehow both vivid and lush, but also cold and chillingly dramatic. The blue tones are amplified, making the greens so vibrant, but also giving everything a foreboding mood. They are haunting.
Even though there’s only these few photos from the day, they hint at a wonderful story. Partly, I think that the fact that there’s so few is what captures my imagination about the event. There’s no shortage of photos from any modern event. Everyone has a camera in their pocket and many spectators spend the bulk of the race looking at the action through their phone’s screen while they snap away hundreds or thousands of images.
These photos though—and I readily acknowledge I’m reading more into this than I should—seem considered and carefully shot. After all, film and processing was never cheap enough to click away with the fury of a digital photographer.
Whatever the case, let’s at least sit back and appreciate how marvelous these photos are… And keep scanning those old slides and negatives, people!
This is what a lot of 1963 must have looked like for Jim Clark. His confident expression at the Spa drivers’ meeting before the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix says it all: He was about to own the rest of the year.
The late 60’s were a fascinating time for racing. I think I’m most drawn to the era because—for better or for worse—it was such a transformative period. Perhaps nowhere was this more true than in Porsche’s Le Mans pits. We were, after all, on the verge of a ridiculous procession of Porsche Le Mans wins throughout the 70’s and 80’s.
But look at this photo from the Porsche garages in 1969. The boys from Stuttgart had their hands full with the early 917s and the holdout 908s. These were state-of-the-art machines from a racing workshop that was starting to share more with the aviation industry of the time than the auto industry.
But look at these tools! My grandfather’s mower repair shop was better equipped than this. No pneumatics. No carefully sorted trays of perfectly polished stainless. There’s no apparent sorting of the wrenches by size. Hell, the sockets are just laying out! It’s just a pile of mismatched tools on an old plank of wood.
It’s part of why I love this transitional time so much. In many ways, it was old dogs with new tricks. Fresh technology and traditional skills. New engineering by old shop-hands. I’m sure, like always, I’m romanticizing things too much but this image strikes such a chord with me about the era. And it doesn’t even have a car in it.
Also, what I wouldn’t do for one of these jackets.