“Stirling, there’s still 12 minutes in the race!”
“Tea time is tea time.”
via Silodrome
Categories
The great thing about street courses is that anyone can just grab a rental car and drive around it. As Peter Windsor gives us a tour of the Montjuïc street circuit in Barcelona, I wonder if the scores of other commuters on these streets know that Jim Clark and Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt knew these streets well… not to mention the tragedies that occurred on Montjuïc mountain during the 1975 race.
If only I could have Peter Windsor and his encyclopedic experience of racing history riding shotgun with me on all of these spins around former street circuits. Thanks for sharing this, Peter.
Porsche’s 1972 LeMans garages were a buzzing environment with cars being tuned and prepared, and busy 1970s technicians with 1970s hair. Porsche’s star was bright indeed coming off of two straight years of wins and the factory was shining.
Wait a second. This doesn’t look like the workshop of a winning endurance racing team. These are the garages of the rag-tag up-and-comers in over their heads playing on a stage too big for them. These are the facilities of underdogs. I have been in lone racers’ shops that were better equipped than this.
Just look at this. This could be your garage. There’s no precision instruments here; not even a flashy (albeit utilitarian) immense tool chest larger than a kitchen counter. Just shove that table out of the way, maybe stack the chairs on it to clear up some floor room. Pull that 55 gallon drum over here so I can pop the engine up on it. Let’s start turning some wrenches.
This. This right here is why I love vintage racing. Looking at these guys, you almost get the sense that anyone could do this. That you could hatch a scheme to race in next year’s LeMans and June would roll around and you’d be there. And this is Porsche we’re talking about. Repeat this for Cooper Garages (or Lotus.. or BRM…) heading into Formula 1 and you see that the pinnacle of the sport in every corner was more likely to be filled with dedicated hot-rodders than aerospace engineers.
via Le Container
Here it is, the first post-war road race in the UK: the 1947 race at Gransden Lodge Aerodrome, Cambridgeshire.
Justin Lapriore has returned to Amelia Island for their 2014 concours and, just as in previous years, has created an absolutely stunning document of the event.
I can think of worse ways to start the day than rising before dawn with a Ferrari 330 P4. I love that the owner has that license plate. Hell, I love that he even has it plated.
You can really see that Justin’s reputation within the Amelia participants has grown alongside his growing video artistry. What used to be beautifully shot scenes of the cars simply passing by has expanded to give him a greater level of access: clipping a camera on the wing of Jochen Mass’ McLaren or going handheld inches off the bumper of Can-Am cars as they roll out of garages and along fairways. Wonderful, close detail shots with equally enthralling exhaust notes. Riding shotgun with Hurley Haywood ain’t bad either.
An aspect of the film that I enjoy is that the pure glory of these machines shares the stage with shots of the people that make these events happen. You start to get an idea of how much work a concours d’elegance truly is.
It’s one thing to gain this level of access, it’s another thing to do something with the opportunity. Justin Lapriore has delivered again on that front and many others. Great stuff, Justin.
The problem with digital photo archive tools is that there’s often little context, little attribution, and even less backstory. As a result, I don’t know anything about this image that I stumbled upon on Pinterest (or maybe it was Tumblr) and all image searches just lead me back to other pins or tumbles.
What I do know is this: Red Bull isn’t going to just tip over their Formula car and see what’s going on under there. This glimpse of race (low) tech of the past was a common thread that united hot rodders and shadetree mechanics with the pinnacle of motorsport. Now you’ll see greater kinship between Formula 1 technicians and aerospace engineers.
The same was true then, of course; but aerospace engineers and shadetree mechanics shared that kinship as well!
Categories
Period Barchetta Extravaganza Film
Wow. Just wow.
Categories
Gorgeous Scenery at Tour Auto
These photos from Tour Auto 2014 shot by Remi Dargagen for Classic Driver are absolutely stunning. Sure, he’s got some good subject matter in these exquisite sports and racing cars, but the environments are simply astounding. Really it’s shots like these that make me want to attend these kinds of events. All too often there are shots from staging areas showing a lineup of cars waiting their turn, or bedded down for the night. But seeing these machines in these environments is so tantalizing. Remi definitely focused his attention on the right things here. Marvelous.
Click through to Classic Driver’s article for the complete collection.
You don’t often see Toyota 2000GTs come up for sale. Certainly the most hotly coveted Japanese sportscar, it is also one of the few that, in my opinion, holds the stage with any late 60’s sportscar regardless of country of origin. This example on offer from Symbolic Motors in La Jolla California, is the very first left-hand-drive model to leave the factory. Whether this bit of build history makes her more valuable than the other 39 American market examples believed to still exist, I don’t know. What I do know is that I would have like to have picked this car up when it was advertised in AutoWeek magazine for $27,000 in February of 1987.
Something I’ve never really noticed, that I think this color accentuates, is those little access doors for the battery and filter. Can you imagine these little strictly utilitarian exterior panels being produced today?
I’d be wary to restore this one. It might be one of very few “driver” 2000GTs on the planet. The vast majority that I’ve seen tend to fall into the over-restored trailer queen variety. This example looks like you wouldn’t feel guilty about tearing up the coast for an early morning ride. We often value patina only when there’s a specific race history with the car, saying things like, “that’s the paint that Fangio touched” or some other specific sentiment placed on the original bits. But this is different, it’s more like the beauty of a broken-in leather jacket being better than a new one. There’s value in these things even when they’re not museum pieces.
She’s much prettier in red than I would have thought. You can blame my general distaste for red cars (a color best reserved for Italian machines), but it might also be my great appreciation for their stunning racing livery. More information at Symbolic’s inventory page.
British Pathé has uploaded their full newsreel archive to YouTube; which means they’re finally embeddable. I’ll be digging through the reels and posting some favorites here in the coming weeks.