Freshly-ironed Dunlop blues for SJYS on this special occasion: 50 years since the last Goodwood F1 race
Lord and Lady Chandhok
Richard Attwood – 50 years on from that shunt in the Belgian GP: “I was driving the Parnell Lotus-BRM. Lost it on the Masta Straight in the torrential rain. Had the brakes on, while I was spinning, for about 600 yards. Eventually ended up wrapped around a tree. Luckily a spectator or marshal dragged me free. A few burns but nothing too serious…”
The boys are back in town
Indy 1961 Ford Thunderbird Pace Car
Original interior of the Thunderbird. Lots of room for her to sidle up next to you…
Karun Chandhok to Brian Redman: “So what sort of speed were you doing with the 917s at Spa?”
Brian to Karun: “Just on 214mph going into the Masta Kink.”
Karun: “Say again?”
Strange relics were discovered beneath the surface…
A study in Pantones: Team Lotus (18) green…
…BRP (BRM) lime green…
…Scarab metallic blue…
…and BRM Flame Orange against Polychromatic green
Good to see Bob Dance (80) hard at work rebuilding the gearbox of a Lotus 25
…while Chris Rea ponders the broken gearbox on his lovely Lotus 6. Even Michael Buble recently turned down a cover of “Driving Home for Christmas”, admitting he couldn’t add to CR’s original
No, this isn’t a telephone exchange. It’s DeLonghi’s way of shortening the queue for lattes at their ’60s cafe bar
So THAT’S what it was like back then…
Sir Douglas Bader was in his element…
…because it’s fifty years since the mini-skirt! Jean Shrimpton! Mary Quant! David Bailey! Jim Clark!
Lt Jardine in the War Room (nee Media Centre)
A desert livery looked right at home on the green soil of England…
…while, regardless of age, nice red sports cars always look as delicious as ice cream
As the official photographer to Team Lotus in the 1960s, Peter Darley, like the photo-journalist, David Phipps, was close to both Colin Chapman and the Team Lotus personnel. He was at Monza in 1968 when Mario Andretti (and Bobby Unser) were scheduled to make their F1 debuts for Gold Leaf Team Lotus and BRM. He recently sent us his recollections:
Colin asked me to collect Mario Andretti and Bobby Unser from the airport. No-one knew which one – Linate or Malpensa? Anyway, I researched which was used for transatlantic flights and rolled up. Bobby was driving for BRM, Mario for Lotus. I found them both and we piled into my Fiat 124 hire car. After a few kms, Mario decided he wanted to drive, although Bobby wasn’t so sure, muttering things about crazy Italians. It was thereafter a drive of a lifetime: Mario had the pedal to the metal for the entire journey. When we reached Monza, Mario and Bobby found they had no passes but a few words from Mario to the local police resulted in the gates opening and the crowds parting as if we were going through the Red Sea. We were there.
Unfortunately all this was in vain: since they had competed in the US the previous day, Monza’s Race Director, Snr Baccagalupi, refused to allow them to race in Italy under the 24 hr rule. We knew better, of course: with Mario a definite contender for the pole and a possible win – even though this would have been his first F1 race – it was in Ferrari’s interest to keep him away. He made up for it by taking the pole for what was his first race – the 1968 US GP at Watkins Glen.
I took these photos of Mario at Monza that year – (above) with his team-mate for practice (Graham Hill); and in the high-wing Lotus 49B with Colin Chapman. (Photos copyright Peter Darley)
The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is upon us. Enjoy it, for there may not be a million more, given the state of the F1 economy right now. As AJ Foyt memorably said to Nigel Roebuck recently, “Is that Monza place still going?”
I hope it survives; I love circuits that touch the past. We need them – just as we need the past in order to create the future.
That subject, though, is for another day. It’s time to celebrate Monza, 2015, and to start us on the path, courtesy of Movietone News, we’ve put together a collection of Monza Moments – well, almost Monza moments, because I couldn’t resist a bit of Tazio Nuvolari in Tunis or that amazing Ferrari dead-heat at Syracuse in 1967. Finally, the spirit of Monza is I think encapsulated by the enthusiasm of the starter in the last video (1968 1000km). By the time the back of the grid reaches him they’re travelling at well over 100mph… Avanti!
Nurburgring, August 1, 1965.German GP Very quickly, the F1 calendar brought an end to the Ingliston Interlude and the Scots R&R that came with it: the German GP was scheduled to take place at the Nurburgring the following weekend. The press billed it as a “Championship decider” but in truth it was Jim Clark’s first opportunity to clinch his second World Title. A win at the ‘Ring would secure it. Should he fail to do so, then there was always Monza, or Watkins Glen…
For Jim, this was a big race for another reason: he had never won at the ‘Ring. He’d always been quick, both in sports cars and F1, but always there had been problems. Now he had the almost-perfect car (the Lotus 33B, fitted with a larger-capacity oil tank in the wake of the Silverstone near-miss) and the almost-perfect engine (the 32-valve Climax V8, now running tapered valves to curb excessive oil consumption). All he needed was a trouble-free weekend.
This he had. It wasn’t easy, because he backed-off a fraction late when the car was airborne in the early laps, buzzing the Climax up to 11,200 rpm; and, late in the race, when light rain began to fall, the engine lost its sharpness due to a broken exhaust. Jackie Stewart, though, had problems with the BRM, leaving Graham Hill as Jim’s only real threat, while Dan Gurney’s 16-valve Brabham-Climax was very slow in a straight line.
So Jim secured the 1965 Championship on the world’s most demanding circuit. He started from the pole; he was never headed for two hours, 10min; and he set fastest lap. It was a fitting result, you might say. Afterwards, with the garland, he was joined for the long celebratory lap in an open sports car by a beaming Graham and Dan (in neat, light blue Goodyear jacket). Win No 28
Images: LAT Photographic
Courtesy of AP, here are the Movietone News race highlights that hit the cinemas within a few days of Jim’s momentous win:
As if it’s not enough to live without a French GP we’ve also had to survive this year minus a race in Germany. I suppose you could argue that France isn’t exactly a strong force in F1 at the moment – but no-one can deny the global allure of Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel and the Nicos Rosberg and Hulkenberg.True, Hockenheim is back on the calendar for 2016, but, in this of all (Mercedes) years, it does seem odd (to say the least) that we haven’t had the chance to see F1’s German stars performing in front of their home crowds…doing something, in the context of the history of our sport, that they’ve been doing since the 1920s.
In the absence of a 2015 German GP, therefore, and courtesy of AP, here are some brief reminders of what it used to like when F1 came to Germany…
Jim Clark and Graham Hill were both Ford-contracted drivers from 1967 onwards – and Ford of Australia duly put their testing talents to use during the 1968 Tasman Series. In this short Movietone News clip, courtesy of AP, we see Jim and Graham at Ford’s You Yangs test track in Victoria, examining the new Ford Falcon and driving demonstration laps for the camera. Interesting to see that Graham wears his Buco helmet while Jim chills in the Aussie breeze. There’s no mention of the reigning World Champion, Denny Hulme, in the period voiceover, but that is Denny with Jim and Graham at the start of the clip. Being a Ford Galaxie man in Europe, Jim, I imagine, would have been quite impressed with the Falcon – and would particularly have liked its future high-performance derivative, the GTHO. Sadly he died only few weeks after this video was filmed.
peterwindsor.com 