Welsh painter, Rob Ijbema, maintains an remarkably prolific blog of his automotive paintings at his Car-A-Day site. His work is quite varied, from watercolors to pen sketches and everything in between. Rob’s subject matter is pretty evenly split between historic racers and modern Formula 1, with a bit of road cars and rally thrown in for good measure. I particularly like his watercolors of early racers of the likes of Fangio and Moss. There’s so much abstraction in some areas of the work that it’s almost an optical illusion when you take in the wider piece and see the level of detail hinted at by seemingly random dashes of color and line—Virtually impressionistic in execution. The best thing about Rob’s blog is that you can wade through two years of near daily work and revel in the shear breadth of work. Many of the works are marked “sold”, but I don’t readily see a link to his representing gallery, but perhaps you can buy one for yourself if you drop him an email. This is definitely a site to keep tabs on.
Be sure to check out his “Demo’s” section for a bit of insight into his process as he works through a painting. Excellent stuff.
If you think the Nurburgring is scary on 4 wheels, wait until you see it on 2 (or with a sidecar!) in this remarkable clip from “Rendezvous at the Ring”, distributed by the folks at Duke Video.
Symbolic Motors in La Jolla, CA is offering this extremely photogenic Lotus 51A. Originally a Formula Ford, this monoposto racer has been uprated to dual overhead cam Cosworth powered Formula 2. There are dozens of wonderful photos of this slippery Lotus in various stages of undress.
Sitting in its bare form, you start to see how deceptively simple these cars really looked. When you see a sixties formula car without the body panels, you get a flash of what it must have been like to set out to join in the fray of Formula racing. What would be the absolute folly today to start building a formula car was once an attainable goal for a small group of dedicated gearheads.
Naturally, this is all radically understating the sophistication that lies within these steel and aluminum chassis members. But that’s the appeal, isn’t it? You can look at these chassis and think to yourself, “I could build that.” I say this not to belittle the tremendous effort that these small racecar manufacturers put into their cars, but to celebrate the spark of creativity, hope, and courage that makes us as laymen think it’s within our reach. This might be the single biggest heartbreak of modern racing, that it’s become so technical that you may as well try to build a space shuttle at home.
So drink in the pure joy of this humble tubular frame. And maybe pick up a welder.
I’m a bit late in telling you about the 10,000-strong group of spectators that lined the streets of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, UK on October 12th for a parade celebrating 50 years of Lola Racing Cars. Lola found her roots in a 1957 Special built and raced by cousins Eric and Graham Broadley. The 1172cc Ford powered open wheeler raced in England’s “Ford Ten Special” class, where it was a quick success. They immediately started on a second sports car to compete with a Climax engine. Before long, the Lola Cars organization was started in earnest in a small workshop down the road from Cooper and Brabham.
Lola followed a few steady years of MK1 sports car production with their first foray in to single-seaters, starting with a front engined formula junior and quickly transitioning into rear-engined formula 3s. All these years later, Lola participates in nearly every branch of motorsport: From sports racing cars to the US’s CART championship, to endurance racing. Through all of these developments, Lola has a remarkable tradition of maintaining their lineage, with strong support for vintage Lola cars. You can order a brand new continuation of the iconic T70 prototype racer. Congratulations of 50 years, Lola.
Thanks to Flickr users Jason and Ian (Madie) for letting us experience this event alongside them. I think that’s a T61 Formula 2 car up top from Jason’s photo stream.
Let’s take another long-overdue listen to the fantastic Exciting Racing Sounds of Grand Prix album. This time our host, Phil Hill, takes us on an audio tour of the Spa circuit. You’ll remember that this album was created as part of the research process for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film Grand Prix. Ah—magic.
This cut from the LP takes off where Monaco left off and demonstrates the contrasts between the tight, narrow street circuit of Monte Carlo and the open expanses of the high-speed Spa circuit. Phil points out that the drivers spend an awful lot of their time in Belgium in top gear. The engine screams in this cut seem to indicate the truth in that. We’ll hear massive whines from BRM, Cooper-Maserati, Ferrari, Brabham, and McLaren-Ford; and none of them sound like they’re just poking through the frequently-wet countryside.
We also take the Burnenville Corner with Jochen Rindt in his Cooper-Maserati. You’ll hear that there’s not a whole lot of shifting happening here as the corner is a sweeping high-speed expanse. Rindt finished 11th at Spa that year, but 4th in the Drivers’ Championship for the year. 1965 was also the year he won Le Mans as part of the N.A.R.T. team in a Ferrari 250LM.
Hear the complete archive of cuts from this tremendous album.
I just stumbled across some footage on YouTube of Porsche 910-25 (which we’ve featured here on The Chicane last week) at the Zippo Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen from September 2005. Enjoy.
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.
Sadly, I won’t be attending this year’s Goodwood Revival this weekend. But I’m resolved that I absolutely must drag myself across the pond eventually. Part of me is trepidatious about actually going to the event, because I’ve built it up in my head so much. On paper, I love everything about this event; every bit of footage I’ve seen of it shows spectators getting very close to the action, at an intimate venue, in period attire, amidst an almost Disney-esque recreation of postwar buildings. Could anything be more marvelous? See how much fun these things can be when we all decide to put some effort into it. Not just the cars—which are immaculately prepared. Not just the drivers—which are often pulled from the rosters of the greatest drivers in history. Not just the venue—Lord March is a consummate host. Not even just the spectators—who take cosplay to the best possible conclusion. But the entire package seems absolutely magical. I hope this attention to detail spreads to the States.
Quickly.
To whet your appetite, here’s a lovely video from last year’s event.
Speaking of video, there’s a lovely introduction video on the official Goodwood site. If you make it out to the event, drop tips@thechicane.com a line with any photos or links to video you might shoot.
