Ok, I promise this is my last Monterey Historics post for a while—probably. Besides, with Goodwood right around the corner, I’ll have plenty of the best vintage racecars to overdose on.
That being said, Sports Car Digest’s compiled photo gallery is really worth a look. It may be a little photoshoppy for some, but most of the processing looks intended to evoke the period of the car being photographed. Nice stuff.
More Sebring ’59 photos at Racing Sports Cars.
Racing photographer Tom Moran has uploaded some scans of photos of Minnesota’s racing past. There are dozens of painfully fantastic shots of the action and cars (and a few bikini-clad spectators) from the heydays of Donnybrooke Raceway (now Brainerd International Speedway). There are a handful of photos from a 1957 SCCA Land O’ Lakes region event that looks to have been an airstrip race. The set also includes a lush green (maybe that’s the Kodachrome) racing afternoon in the mid-60’s.
Of course, no Minnesota racing gallery is complete without some ice racing action. The sun sets mighty early up here in the north woods, so these racers aren’t just hitting the ice and trying to keep it from spinning, they’re doing it after dark. Impressive.
The entire gallery is definitely worth checking out. Thanks for sharing these shots, Tom.
I’ve heard it said that Formula 1 is what Europe has instead of a space program. That’s only partially true of course, but it does pretty accurately communicate the level of engineering prowess on the world’s Grand Prix circuits. On today’s 40th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo program, I can think of no better visual tribute on The Chicane than this Lotus trying to achieve escape velocity at (probably) the Nurburgring.
And this Brabham.
And a Ferrari doing an endo for good measure.
The sleuths on the Autosport Nostalgia Forum have bitten into another mystery. Some early 60’s color photos from a handful of race meetings at Goodwood have surfaced from the collection of a former mechanic. Any other group of appreciators might be happy to just enjoy these excellent shots of an excellent track. But the Nostalgia Forum contributors are no mere appreciators, they are scholars and archivists of the highest order.
From this smattering of photos found by the granddaughter of Brit Pierce, the mechanic in question, the forum has sussed out that there are at least two and possibly three race meetings photographed here. Now they want to determine which race weekends they were. Every detail, from the obvious car makes and racing numbers, to the subtle magnified nameplates on transporters, offers a clue. They have already identified many of the cars and drivers, and even recognized bystanders in the pits, and another piece snaps into place. And just what does that transporter peeking out from behind the Ecurie Ecosse team transporter say along the top? It’s a wonderful puzzle. One that I’m happy to watch unfold.
Know your Goodwood? Check out all the photos and lend a hand. But hurry if you want to be involved. If I know The Nostalgia Forum, it won’t be long before the race weekends are known, the winning drivers identified, and an amusing story about post-race pints at the bar will be shared.
Here’s what the Washington Post had to say in advance of this July 1925 race at the Laurel Speedway in Laurel, Maryland.
Washington Post, Jul 11, 1925
14 Auto Entrants Qualify for Race Today at Laurel De Paolo Leads With and Average of 131.5 Miles for One LapA wide board track, wrapping 80 acres of ground as a ribbon might encircle an ostrich egg, with a huge grandstand overlooking it all, is ready today to vibrate under the great motor gruel, the inaugural race at the Washington-Baltimore automobile speedway.
Never level and in places almost up and down, it is to the arena of sixteen speed-crazed drivers, out on a Roman holiday to entertain the populace and in so doing to lower the world’s speed records.
Peter de Paolo, plucky aspirant for this year’s motor racing fame, made himself and machine a fitting apparition on it yesterday and establishing a strategic place in today’s get-away. De Paolo drove his racing Dusenberg around the course at a speed of 131.5 miles an hour, the greatest speed attained in the qualifying rounds. As a result he will have the preferred position at the start with Earl Cooper, who qualified Thursday with a speed of 129.8 miles an hour.
…An inspection of the approach to the track yesterday emphasized the traffic problem. While there is plenty of space to park machines both outside and inside the oval there is only a narrow road leading to it from the highway, a distance of about half a mile. Every effort, however, is to be made to keep traffic moving briskly. Those planning to go to the track in machines, should bear this in mind in arranging their running time.
Special trains will be operated over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. They run directly to the track.
…Arrangements have been completed for handling the vast crowd expected to attend the race. Two hundred District national guardsmen, under the command of Capt. P.G. Nevitt, are to cooperate with the Maryland guardsmen, State police and regular soldiers in regulating traffic both inside and outside the bowl.
Capt. Nevitt’s men are to assemble at the armory. He stated last night that any motorist who will come by, fill his car with as many guardsmen as he can take will be given free parking space at the track.
Half the fun of this early newspaper account is the colorful language of a sporting press that hasn’t quite decided on it’s racing jargon.
This race was a full 5 years after the famous crash at the Los Angeles Speedway that killed Gaston Chevrolet (the brother of Chevrolet founder Louis Chevrolet) along with “Mechanician” Lyall Jolls. The danger of board track racing was intense. Just look at that Laurel photograph; the barrier between the track and the stands is hardly what I would call sturdy, and there seems to be no barrier of any substance between the track and infield, not to mention the prospect of skinny tires on wooden planks. Just hope no oil gets on the boards. And even the slightest sprinkle of rain would prove disastrous.
The Los Angeles race, of course, inspired a favorite painting of mine by Robert Williams, Death on the Boards: The Mystery of Indy Winner Gaston Chevrolet and His Death Premonition Which Came True with the Deaths of Two Others at the Plush Beverly Hills Board Track in View of 60,000 Witness of Who No Two Gave the Same Account on Thanksgiving Day, Nov 25,1920. Which, though a mouthful, might also be the best title of a painting ever.
Thanks Shorpy for the photo. This was from a series of three photos Shorpy featured of the July 11, 1925 Laurel Speedway race.
You can buy yourself a print of the Robert Williams painting here, which is also featured in the excellent book of American car culture, Kustom Kulture. You deserve it.
CarsAndRacingStuff.com has more on the Gaston Chevrolet crash, including the New York Times article that covered the event.
Sorry for all the Porsche 917 posts late—you know what? Scratch that. There’s no sense in apologizing for it. I’d probably make damn-near every post about this majestic ride if I could.
Now the videos we saw earlier this week of a 917 (reproduction) in traffic do a bit to give you the true stature of the machine. It’s giant reputation and it’s long low proportions have, like the 910, always made it seem to me like a larger machine. Low- yes; but big. The long swept tail in some iterations make it seem even more so. Even though I’ve seen a 917 in person on the track, and through the window at Symbolic Motors, I’ve never been close enough to actually take in the true scale of the beast.
But this photo from Sports Car Digest of a Gulf liveried 917 parked next to a Porsche 914 on the track at Spa-Francorchamp, 1970, really hits me with the true scale of the thing. I’ve seen hundreds of photos of the Porsche 917: On the track, in the pits, on the big screen. None of them have, for whatever reason, given me a true sense of how small this incredible machine is. I’ve driven a 914, a car so small that I could barely shift into 2nd gear without uncomfortably pushing against my leg. The 917 is TINY.
Maybe it’s like how people are surprised when a famous actor is short when they see them in person, but the 917 seems like too much of a giant to be this small.
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?
Here’s a photo from the Library of the Congress that looks ready for The Impossible Cool.
Bob Burman and his Benz rocketed down the beach at Daytona and held the world landspeed record for 8 years at 141.732 mph.
More on Burman and his landspeed record here.
Diving back into the wonderful bounty of Life Magazine images hosted by Google, we find this puzzling shot. The Life caption says this is the winner of the Carrera crossing the finish line—which isn’t true. That’s Jean Behra, crossing the finish line, but he didn’t win. His #7 Gordini T24 was ultimately disqualified from the official standings because he exceeded the maximum allowable time. Even after finishing so far behind the overall winner that his time is irrelevant, I’m impressed that there’s still quite a crowd gathered at the finish line to welcome him home.
I don’t point out this captioning error to diminish Behra’s achievement. Simply finishing the Carrera was an incredible accomplishment. We often hear of the difficulty in learning the 45 mile Targa Florio circuit. We’ve long been regaled with tales of the twisting motorways of the Mille Miglia. The Carrera Panamericana, however, looks like it was something else entirely. It dwarfed all of these epic races with a run distance of 2,176 miles. Two Thousand Miles. So you can see, despite the disqualificiation, Jean Behra should be immensely proud of crossing that finish line at all. Google has more of the Life photos from the Carrera that year, oddly they largely focus on portraits of a competitor’s wife – maybe the photographer had a crush.
1953, of course, was Lancia’s year at the Carrera. Fangio and Bronzoni piloted the winning D24 Pinin Farina to a winning time of 18 hours: 11 minutes. That’s an absolutely astounding 120 mph average for 18 hours!