This video of a Porsche 917 lapping is great in a way that most videos I’ve seen of 917s—or any other racing machine, really—usually aren’t. It’s because of what isn’t in it. There’s no damned royalty-free terrible music. There’s no barely understandable commentator over the barely audible track loudspeakers. There’s no clapping or “oohing” and “aahing” from a crowd. There is only that miraculous engine note.
It’s why Victory By Design
But that sound… That sound is crystal clear.
Category: Video
I love how the victorious Nuvolari just shrugs at the end. So confident. And how great is it to see a glimpse of the dancer-turned-racer Hellé Nice?
Edit: Feeds are down. I’m leaving these links here on the off chance that the Goodwood team archives the all-day feeds at these address. Dear Goodwood team, please archive the raw film dumps at these addresses.
Thanks again to Goodwood Revival and Forty One Six for bringing this to us this year.
Update: Archived for your viewing pleasure.
Categories
Goodwood Goodies: GT40 Onboard
The live stream may be done for the day, but we can still enjoy some of the on-track action at this year’s running of the mighty Goodwood Revival. Let’s ride along with Kenny Brack in what looks to be a quite slippery session with and entire field of Ford GT40s. This is what a whole lot of power with not a whole lot of grip looks like. Kenny has fast hands.
Brave.
Thanks, Goodwood.
The Vintage Sports Car Drivers Association always has a fantastic grid for their Formula Vee group. With 20 or more racers, it has to be one of the most densely packed Formula Vee grids in the States. Last weekend’s Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival, though, brought even more out to the track to celebrate Formula Vee’s 50th anniversary together with a FV-only feature race. (Edit: Paul just wrote in to tell me that the event drew 34 Formula Vees for the weekend. Yowza!)
What I like most about Jeffrey Tschiltsch’s onboard footage here is that it really showcases one of my favorite aspects of the group: they manage to run really tight. Even towards the end of this video, there’s still five or six cars within a few seconds of each other; never more than a turn apart. Keeping together as a pack and drafting one another in the long straights at Road America makes these little 1200cc powered racers an exercise in true racecraft. After all, there’s not a lot of horsepower to rely on when you make even the smallest mistakes. Sure, taking advantage of every newton of momemtum and using every aerodynamic advantage to try and win is true for every race group, but this particular formula really manages to deliver on similar performance and racing characteristics across a variety of builders. It’s just such a joy to watch.
I have to also give kudos to Jeffrey for actually using YouTube’s usually annoying commenting tools to give some honest commentary for the video, pointing out some hairier moments, some near misses, and even his own mistakes to give us some insight into the on-track thoughts and analysis of the moments that defined the race for him. Thanks for sharing these, Jeffery.
Man, I love Road America.
Categories
Birdcage on the Track
Here it is, the best reason you’ll see today for having quality speakers attached to your computer. This… This is why you don’t put a soundtrack over racing car footage. Just listen to that Maserati hum.
I love the idea of these driving resorts, and I hope that Bilster Berg is a huge success. There’s a lot of love in this video of racing drivers’ reactions to their initial experiences on the track. Directed by GT Racer’s Alexander Davidis, there’ll be some familiar faces here for fans of the series. But there’s also some tremendous vintage racing machinery in the form of E-Type Lightweights, 911s, Austin-Healeys.
One thing in particular stood out as drivers describe the difficulty in learning the track and the learning curve in coming to terms with its compact complexity. One driver says it requires many, many laps before you start to get it right; another driver says a couple of hundred laps would be necessary to learn it properly. That sounds about right for a track that has been described as a mini-Nürburgring.
Did you catch what Derek Bell said, though? “To come back on my own without other cars, just sort of do five or six laps to get it all together”.
A couple hundred laps vs. Five or six laps. That right there is the difference between even a highly skilled racing driver and Derek Bell.
I particularly enjoy the atmosphere and anticipation in the first half of this video piece. You know that my blood gets pumping seeing these classic endurance racers on their home turf, so that really says something.
I love seeing the drivers rehearsing their leap into the car. You can almost taste their excitement that they’re actually going to do a LeMans start. They’re actually going to run across the road and fly into the pilot’s seat; reaching for the shifter and the ignition and the clutch, while somehow maneuvering into their safety belts with a HANS attached. I hope that the LeMans Classic always preserves the running start—even if only symbolically.
Categories
A Nürburgring Love Story
I can’t speak German. I suffer from the same clichéd American point-of-view that zee Germanic languages sound threatening and guttural. I know that’s not fair and I’m working on it.
This video helps. Somehow the hushed reverence with which this narrator describes the Ring makes German sound like a soft, romantic, seductive language.
Then again, it’s hard to go wrong with Von Trips, the Ring, and a Bolex camera.
Not that it needs to be said, but Save the Ring.
I love that this is becoming a thing.