Is there anything more romantic than the Circuito Madonie?
Professional Italian Production:
And amateur shot 8mm:
Bellissimo.
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Tag: vintage auto racing
There must be a lot of information out there about the raceway in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Enough to fill Golden Gate Remembered, a book by Art Evans and Gary Horstkorta.
I have to admit, however, there seems to be precious little about the circuit online. Maybe that’s because it was short lived; the track only hosted events from 1952-1954 when, like other road racing circuits of the era, the spectre of safety required that events move to the closed, purpose-built tracks that have thrived since.
Also like other road racing tracks of the era, the Road Racing Course at Golden Gate Park still exists as public roads, and thanks to Google Maps’s Street View, we can take a spin around the track from our desk chairs. Google maps also helps us with the travel time of the track, at the speed limit of course. The 3.1 mile course should take your average commuter over 9 minutes. Roger Bartlow did somewhat better when he won the 1.5 liter class in the 1952 SCCA Nationals in his 1952 Simca Special, averaging 6 minutes 22 seconds. Even at the speed limit, the park roads look like a lovely drive in your classic. As is always the case with the Lost Tracks we feature, please send along photos of your car on the track if you visit these forgotten race courses.
What I’m lacking in solid track information though, I can help make up in informative reading elsewhere. Tam’s Old Race Cars has a photo gallery of early NorCal racing, which includes the image above of Masten Gregory in his Jaguar C-Type. He would go on to win the race.
Here are some images pulled from the 1952 Racing Program. Apparently the cover photo was shot off-track, as it seems there’s no clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the track, but a lovely composition nonetheless.
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Hans Herrmann’s Close Call
Now this is exactly the position you probably don’t want to be in. Then again, by nearly any measure, sitting on the track watching your BRM tumble through the air, throwing wheels, exhaust, and everything else, is probably a damn fortunate position to end up in. Considering.
This is Hans Herrmann, watching his BRM barrel roll through the air at the South end of the 1959 German Grand Prix. This race was run on the steeply banked AVUS track in West Berlin. The track might have been more economical to run in place of the Nurburgring, but is it ever boring. Looking much more like a modern Speedway than a proper Formula 1 track, it’s simply two very long straights with two banked hairpins at either end. It was at the south end that it all went wrong for our friend Hans here; dropping from 4th to 3rd to slow for the turn. Looks like he got a bit too close to the hay bales, and it was all over. This might be one of only a few examples of being safer without the driver’s safety belts. Whew.
Sports Car Digest posted a lovely series of photos from the ’67 Daytona race that look fantastic. What is it about 60’s color film processing that looks so romantic?
Here’s Lorenzo Bandini looking regal, poised over the #23 Ferrari 330 P3/4 that he and Chris Amon piloted to victory that year. Looks like Ferrari had the magic for Daytona in 1967. They brought home 1st, 2nd, and 3rd with the Porsche 910s & 906s, and Ford GT40s rounding out the rest of the top ten. Bandini and Amon repeated the feat at the following stop in the World Sportscar Championship, Monza. Despite the strong start, the rest of the season belonged to Ford and Porsche with the GT40 and 910 splitting victories for most of the rest of the season.
Take a look at the rest of the set, The shots of Piper & Attwood’s dull green Ferrari P2/3 alone is worth clicking over for. Maybe it’s the color shift of the film, but the years before TV-happy color shades make this era of motorsport color palettes my favorite. You would never see a car with a dull dark green, Semi-gloss navy blue, or less-than-TV-ready shines today. It makes the era feel all the more familial somehow.
Here’s the program cover for the race; handsome, don’t you think?
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Lost Track: Torrey Pines
It’s been some time since we’ve peered into America’s forgotten palaces of sportscar racing. This time, let’s head to the West Coast and it’s thriving sportscar scene of the 1950’s—arguably the epicenter of American sportscar racing at the time.
Southern California certainly has it’s advantages for the racing driver: the warm weather allows for year-round racing, the sportscar manufacturers adore the SoCal market. I remember years ago reading that 50% of all Porsches are sold in Southern California. Of course, it also helped that the area was famous for it’s young and wealthy film stars that were naturally drawn to racing as a thrilling way to spend time between gigs.
We’re going to head a bit south of Hollywood though to the San Diego shoreline. Torrey Pines is, of course, now famous to golfers for their two PGA courses. But lets look to the past, before the sorry chapter of golf’s destructive influence, back to the 1950s. Back to the frequent haunt of Phil Hill, Carol Shelby, Dan Gurney, and Masten Gregory. Back to the Torrey Pines Road Races.
The track was formed almost by accident. A 1951 race was scheduled to be held at Del Mar, but a last minute disagreement among organizers left racers without a venue. The suggestion was made to run on the blacktop service roads of the disused Army base Torrey Pines. The 2.7 mile track proved to be a huge success, drawing 35,000 spectators to some races, and hosting several California Sports Car Club races as well as three West Coast 6-Hour Endurance Races.
The 6-Hour races proved very popular, and the story of the last 6-hour race held at the track in 1956 is worth a share. In the opening laps, and in front of 10,000 spectators, it was a Jaguar D-Type 1,2,3 leading the field with Phil Hill in a 2-liter Ferrari Mondial in 4th. The field was moving fast, racing straight out of the gate and pushing the big-bore cars—with Pete Woods’ D-Type opening up several laps on his next closest competitor. Pushing hard in the early stages of an endurance race, though, is not without it’s price and by the second hour of the race most of the big boys were in the pits and out of the race. They were by no means alone; only 15 of the 59 entrants in the race finished the complete 6 hours. Naturally, the Porsche 550s were there to take up the places of the fallen monsters. By the end of the six hours, Jerry Austin was able to maintain a 3-lap lead in his D-Type to hang onto victory—holding off the Jack McAfee and Jean Pierre Kunstle Spyders that ended up 2nd and 3rd.
Unlike some of the other tracks featured on our Lost Tracks series, it wasn’t dwindling fan enthusiasm or a horrific crash that brought Torrey Pines to and end. The city of San Diego simply thought that a pair of golf courses would be a greater attractor of tourism dollars to the area. This is why more racers need to find themselves seats on city boards.
Read more about the 1956 race in the Official Program and see the complete results at Racing Sports Cars.
More Lost Tracks here.
Update:
F Scheff has collected some great memories and photos of Torrey Pines on his site.
Digging through the Life Magazine archives recently uploaded and indexed by Google, there’s a great deal of vintage motorsport to explore. This time, we’ll go to one of my very favorite tracks for some quick shots of the 1960 Road America 500. And what better way to do that than to ride along in a Briggs Cunningham Lister Jaguar.
Here we are driving up the short uphill straight after just passing turn 5. Today we’d be approaching the Toyota bridge just as the hill crests before we get on the brakes for the slightly blind turn 6. It looks like we’re closing on Wayne Burnett’s Ferrari Testa Rossa.
Whew, that was a quick lap. We’re already back to the finish line. It looks positively quaint compared to the main straight of today’s Road America. The building on the right looks absolutely grand. It looks like we’ve caught up with our Briggs Cunningham teammate in the #60 E-Type lightweight and just ahead of him it looks like Wayne has held us off.
No, I don’t know why that Porsche is facing the wrong way either.
Let’s thank our host for the trip.
The photo isn’t labeled, but I think that’s Ed Crawford (correct me in the comments if I’m wrong).
We’ll see more of the Life archives in the future. Check out our complete series.
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French Grand Prix, 1961 Rheims
In theory, this video has a lot stacked against it. Rheims was never the most popular track on the calendar, and Formula 1 fans objected to the 1.5 liter engine requirement imposed for the 1961 season. Even so, this looks a lot more exciting than the current season of F1.
As you may have read recently, Life Magazine has dug up thousands of images from its archives and released them as hosted content for search on Google’s image search. With such a deep bounty of vintage photography, I’ll be posting a few images at a time over the next few weeks.
Take this crop from the 1953 LeMans 24 Hours race. This was, of course, before the disastrous crash in ’55 in which Pierre Levegh careened off the course, killing more than 80 spectators. So you’ll notice the immediacy and danger that led to such tragedy—and made spectating much more interesting—in this photo of Alberto Ascari’s and Luigi Villoresi’s Ferrari 340MM Berlinetta. That little fence and hay bales wouldn’t hold in a horse, especially not this prancing one. Ascari and Villoresi DNFed that year, completing 229 laps.
Here’s a shot of the start of the race—how thrilling that classic running Le Mans start must have been to see. Missing from this shot (unless that’s it peeking out from behind Fangio’s Alfa Romeo #22) is Tony Holt and Duncan Hamilton’s #18 Jaguar C-Type that won the race that year.
And here is the sprint for the start itself. Prominent in this shot are the cars of the Briggs Cunningham team in the foreground bearing racing numbers 1, 2, and 3. Phil Walters and John Fitch took the #3 car to third place.
I’ll close with a couple of fantastic shots of the Nash Healey pits. First, just this lovely atmospheric shot of the calm before the 24 hour storm.
And here’s a shot of Nash Healey #10. Bad luck for Pierre Veyron and Yves Giraud-Cabantous that year, the car DNFed at lap 9. I don’t think Yves even got behind the wheel. But look at that tail! What a marvelous, almost whimsical extravagance; predating the long-tail Porsches by a good 15 years.
There you have it, Life Magazine’s archives of the 1953 24 Hours of LeMans. Excellent photos, and I’ve only just begun to dip my toe into the archive. Look for more in the coming weeks.
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Superb Monaco Grand Prix Historique Video
This video is beautifully shot, Alex says it’s only a working file, but it’s looking fantastic so far.