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).
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.
The BARC Boys have a wonderful gallery of their members and others in action at the 1959 Nationals from July 4th weekend, 1959. Briggs Cunningham in particular seems to have been a busy man that weekend, gridding his Lister Jaguar and the OSCA in which he took 2nd place for the G & H Modified class.
There’s a lot to love about this series of photos. Many Maseratis, Porsche 550s, an Aston Martin DBR-2, OSCAs were popular that year. But the handful of photos of the motorcycle-powered 500cc Cooper single seaters really do it for me. Just look at this photo of Lex DuPont leaning hard into a turn in his. Sadly they’re terribly uncompetitive in today’s vintage racing monoposto classes, but these little Coopers are pure racing delight to my eyes. I love the backyard ingenuity, wonderful lines, and repurposing of motorcycle engines in these little beauties. I’m definitely going to have to write more about these little cycle-powered racers in the future.
In our ‘Lost Tracks’ series, we’ve already examined the demise of ‘The Bridge’, the purpose built track designed to replace the increasingly dangerous road course at Bridgehampton. But let us look back to the simpler, county road course in Bridgehampton.
We were first inspired to start looking into America’s forgotten racetracks by the Last Open Road series of books, which follow the exploits of auto mechanic Buddy Palumbo as he enters the early years of America’s road-racing scene. The first race we get to experience alongside Buddy, is the 1952 race on the streets of Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York.
There Buddy glimpses some of the finest racing machinery in the world, and is immediately hooked. Pulled into road racing by the adventure embodied in the Briggs Cunningham cars, the Ferraris, the little Porsches, and Siatas. But also sees the dangers of racing amongst crowds of poorly protected spectators, varying road conditions, curbs and bridge abutments. Ultimately these are the factors that killed road racing on city streets and drove racers to closed circuits—killing a good chunk of the romance of racing along with it.
1952 Bridgehampton Road Races Program Cover
The real Bridgehampton of 1952 was indeed a popular, community led affair. Sponsored by the local Lions club and the SCCA, there were 5 featured races: The Sagaponack Trophy Race for production cars under 1500cc, the Mecox Trophy race (modified 1500cc), the Hamptons Cup (production over 1500cc), the Bridgehampton (modified over 1500cc), and the Hayground Cup race (anything goes).
There was quite a turnout of machinery for the race in ’52. Porsche 356s dominated the sub-1500cc categories, with the exception of Frank Bott’s OSCA, which took the modified class averaging 74mph. Today’s speed limit on Bridge Ln. (the longest straight) is 40mph.
The Briggs Cunningham team was there, debuting the C4R, sadly it dropped a wheel in the 12th lap. Leaving the Ferraris, Allards, and Jags to battle it out in the high displacement laps around town.
Which brings us to the course itself. From the start finish line on Ocean Rd, the course wraps around the 4 miles created by Ocean Rd., Sagaponack Rd., Main St., and Bridge Ln. Here is a map of the current location. I wouldn’t go blasting around the course too fast in your 4 Liter Ferrari (the winning car of the ’52 Bridgehampton Cup) too fast. But if you do, send me some photos. or a video!
It’s easy to see why B.S. Levy chose to set the stage for Buddy Palumbo to fall in love with sportscars and road racing at this particular race. The race reports show it to have been a fantastic grouping of cars very early in American road racing. You’d very likely go your whole life without seeing a ferrari on the road, but if you were on Long Island that weekend, you saw 5 of them.
Additional Reading:
There is a surprisingly large amount of information on the web about the 1952 race at Bridgehampton.
Lewis Shadoff has an absolutely brilliant series of color photos shot at the race here. This is where I found the photo at the top of this post.
The mighty Etceterini has some scans from Road & Track on the race.
Arte Auto is selling this copy of the official program.
Thanks to the photos that have popped up of the complete RAI team and transporter at this years’ Pebble Beach, there’s been quite a lot of interest in transporters lately. The Scarab transporter is exceedingly lovely, and re-sparked my interest in the cars that carry our racing cars to the track. Here’s a handful of the better that I’ve seen lately..
First, the Fiat-made Scarab team transporter.
Next, the iconic Porsche Team transporter, a converted Mercedes city bus used by the team from 1968-1969.
I don’t know the team, but this photo is just magic.
And I absolutely LOVE the idea of these brave souls and their VW Transporter Transporters. It’s a brave heart that trusts their Lotus 49 to the homemade brackets welded onto the back of the bed of this one; Peter Lovely, my hat is off to you, sir.
Here’s another in the VW vein. excellent canvas hoop-topper for the bed here.
for more Transporters on the web:
the mighty Bring a Trailer caught a few shots of the Scarab transporter pulling into the Monterey Historics.
