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A evo i revijalne trke iz Majamija:

 

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Schumacher's final Monaco winner sells for over $7.5 million



By: Andrew van Leeuwen, News Editor
11 hours ago


Michael Schumacher's final Monaco Grand Prix-winning Ferrari has collected $7,504,000 at an auction in New York, making it the most valuable modern era F1 car ever sold at auction.

Chassis #211, the same F2001 that took the German to the fourth of his seven World Championships, was auctioned off at the Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Sale in Manhattan for the eye-watering price tag, a record for modern F1 machinery.

A portion of proceeds from the sale will be donated by the former owner to Michael Schumacher’s Keep Fighting Foundation.

The car is not only famous for being Schumacher's final Monaco winner, but also the car in which he won the 2001 Hungarian GP, the race that clinched him that fourth title.

He won nine races in total during the 2001 season, securing a second consecutive title for Ferrari with nearly twice as many points as McLaren driver David Coulthard, who finished the season in second.

Chassis #211 was sold as part of a $310.2m worth of auctions at the Sotheby's sale, with 96 per cent of lots finding a buyer.

Its $7m price tag is well over the $4m that it was expected to fetch.

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Robin Miller's Tough Guys: Roger McCluskey
Monday, 27 November 2017
By Robin Miller




Robin Miller's video series celebrating the tough guys of Indy resumes. Enjoy previous installments of the series at The RACER Channel on YouTube.

Roger McCluskey was a tough guy who came barreling out of the sprint car ranks in the early '60s with Parnelli Jones, Bobby Marshman and Jim Hurtubise and went to become one of USAC's most accomplished racers.

A two-time USAC sprint car champion and two-time USAC stock car king, McCluskey captured the 1973 national championship in the highlight of his IndyCar career that included five victories.

But his bad luck at Indianapolis (in 18 starts he never completed 200 laps) prevented him from becoming a household name like A.J. or Mario or Parnelli and a third place in '73 (pictured) was his best showing.

After retiring in 1979, McCluskey became USAC's competition director and was universally applauded as the perfect man for the job because he cared and knew so much about USAC.

After his death at age 63, he was inducted into the IMS, Motorsport and sprint car Halls of Fame.
 

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 1
November 28, 2017 by Joe Saward

The off-season is upon us again and so to keep F1 fans happy, here comes a second season of Fascinating Formula 1 Facts, to get you through the dark months ahead (if you’re in the northern hemisphere anyway). If all goes to plan, I will also have a book of last year’s Fascinating Facts to enjoy or to give to a loved one. Too late for Christmas now, but coming soon to an Amazon near you…

To kick it off let’s take a look at one of the unsung heroes of Formula 1 world. In the world of motor racing drivers take most of the glory and what little is left goes to the engineers or team managers. Giovanni Battista Guidotti was the first successful F1 team principal and yet today no-one knows the name.

Born in 1902, in the charming village of Bellagio, where Lakes Como and Lecco meet in the mountains to the north of Milan, Giovanni Battista was the son of a garage owner. Growing up surrounded by automobiles, still wild and exotic in that era, he wanted to get into the business and arrived at Alfa Romeo when he was 21, becoming an engineering trainee. It was only two years after the first Alfa Romeo appeared and that year the company had built the P1 for Grands Prix. This was a difficult car and test driver Ugo Sivocci crashed one and was killed at Monza. Vittorio Jano then arrived at Portello (the Alfa Romeo factory) and the P2 was built, providing Antonio Ascari, Giuseppe Campari and Count Gastone Brilli-Peri with a Grand Prix winning machine. Like many of the other young Alfa Romeo recruits Guidotti was soon involved in racing as riding mechanic, his first event being in 1927 when he rode with Emilio Gola in a 1500cc Alfa Romeo 6C on the 50 mile Cuneo – Colle della Maddalena race. The following year he rode with Attilio Marinoni on the Mille Miglia and a year later partnered Francesco Pirola to a class win in the event.

Early in 1930 he found himself being named as the riding mechanic on the Mille Miglia for Alfa Romeo’s new signing, a former motorcycle racing star called Tazio Nuvolari. It was stunning debut and the paid beat the established names and set a record average speed of over 100 kph. Guidotti’s role went largely unnoticed and he was soon off to Sicily, where he rode with Costantino Magistri to finish third on the Giro di Sicilia.

He was back with Nuvolari for the Mille Miglia in 1931, although they finished ninth because of tyre trouble. In 1932 they were partnered a third time, but this time Nuvolari crashed, Guidotti was thrown from the and spent some time in hospital, but within a few weeks was back in action and finished second at Le Mans, this time as a driver, sharing an Alfa Romeo 8C with Franco Cortese. Guidotti took over as the chief Alfa Romeo test driver in 1935. This meant that there was less time for motorsport and he did not race again until 1937 when he rode with Ercole Boratto to fourth place in the Mille Miglia. He co-drove with Raymond Sommer at Le Mans that year, but they did not finish, but at the end of the year he became a bona fide Grand Prix driver, when he raced the Alfa Romeo 12C in the Italian GP at Livorno. The war then intervened but the desire to compete remained strong at Alfa Romeo and as soon as possible after peace returned Guidotti led Alfa Romeo back to racing, by then in charge of the whole racing department. It was a period of complete Alfa Romeo domination with the Alfetta 158 and 159 models and drivers Giuseppe Farina, Achille Varzi, Count Carlo Felice Trossi and Jean-Pierre Wimille, but Guidotti still had an occasional run himself, notably at Spa in 1947 when Trossi was hit in the face by a stone and injured. Guidotti climbed aboard the car drove it until Trossi was fit to take over again. They finished third.

It was a tough time for Alfa Romeo with the death of Varzi at Bremgarten in July 1948, Wimille, driving a Simca-Gordini in Buenos Aires in January 1949 and then Trossi with a brain tumour four months later. Guidotti decided to regroup and prepare for the new World Championship which would be launched in 1950. Fielding Farina, the rising Argentine star Juan-Manuel Fangio and Luigi Fagioli, the Alfa Romeo team dominated the first season of F1, with six victories in seven races, the seventh being the Indy 500, where Alfa Romeo did not field any cars. In 1951 Fangio won four of the seven races (the Indy 500 being an eighth) and gave Alfa Romeo a second title. The decision was then taken to abandon F1 although Alfa Corse continued to enjoy great success in sports car racing in the 1950s and Guidoti continued his work with the company until 1962 when the management decided to delegate Alfa Romeo’s sporting activities to the independent Autodelta company. Guidotti continued to work as a consultant for his beloved Alfa Romeo until his retirement in 1975 and then went home to Bellagio, where he lived in peaceful retirement and relative obscurity until the summer of 1994.

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Bud Moore 1925-2017
Tuesday, 28 November 2017
By Kelly Crandall / Images by NASCAR, Getty Images for NASCAR




NASCAR Hall of Famer and World War II hero Walter "Bud" Moore has passed away at the age of 92.

A passion for cars led the South Carolina native to NASCAR in the 1950s, where he first won a championship as Buck Baker's crew chief in 1957. By 1961 Moore was overseeing his own teams and in 1962-63, Moore was again a champion but this time as the car owner for Joe Weatherly.
 
Fielding cars for drivers such as Fireball Roberts, Cale Yarbrough, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison and many other recognizable names, Moore won 63 races at the premier series level.

Moore's success in auto racing came after he served in the military upon graduating from high school. A machine gunner, Moore was assigned to the 90th Infantry Division, which landed on Utah Beach (France) on D-Day in June 1944. Serving alongside General George Patton, the units helped liberate Europe.

Awarded two Bronze Stars and five Purple Hearts, Moore sustained shrapnel wounds and was shot while in combat.

"Many choose the word 'hero' when describing athletes who accomplish otherworldly sporting feats, NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France in a statement. "Oftentimes, it's an exaggeration. But when detailing the life of the great Bud Moore, it's a description that fits perfectly. Moore, a decorated veteran of World War II, served our country before dominating our sport as both a crew chief and, later, an owner.


Bud Moore talks with soon-to-be President Jimmy Carter at Atlanta Motor Speedway circa 1976.

"On behalf of all of NASCAR, I offer my condolences to Bud's family, friends and fans. We will miss Bud, a giant in our sport, and a true American hero."

Moore was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2011. He had been the oldest living member.

Moore said that night, "It's an honor to be one of the first 10 inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It means a lot to see my contribution as a car owner recognized like this. My daughter-in-law once asked me how I wanted to be remembered. The answer is simple: One who made many contributions to building the sport, whose handshake was good as any contract, who always gave a straight answer. Most of all to be remembered as a man who loved his family, his country and the sport of racing."

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Prva trka ujedinjenog Indikara 2008:

 

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 2
November 29, 2017 by Joe Saward

In the summer of 1959, the future Formula 1 driver Patrick Tambay was 10 years old. He was fishing one day from a bridge over the Verdon river, near the beautiful gorges in the rocky interior, behind the Cote d’Azur. He was shocked to suddenly see a group of aliens emerging from the woods – and ran off in a panic.

In fact, the quartet were divers, dressed in wetsuits, returning to their cars after a day spent exploring and filming the water-filled caves in the area. One was the celebrated underwater film-maker Alain Boisnard, another a relatively unknown 31-year-old called François Guiter. They were friends of Patrick’s brother-in-law.

Following on from yesterday’s theme of unsung heroes, this is the story of Guiter, a quiet man, who had a huge effect on the history of Formula 1 – with very people ever noticing the incredible role he played. His was a remarkable story, but not one that he wanted to tell…

Guiter was born in May 1928 and was 11 when the World War II broke out. He was 17 when it ended, but legend has it that he lost two fingers attaching a limpet mine to the hull of a German ship. There was no question that he had missing fingers and he was an accomplished diver, but was that the real story? In the early 1950s he was involved with a French commando unit called the 11eme Choc, which operated under the control of the SDECE, France’s secret service, at a naval base in Collioure, near Perpignan.

He left the military and worked to develop underwater photography and filming techniques, often working with Jacques Cousteau and his team, but never being a part of it, although he was invited to join by the celebrated French diver on numerous occasions. Guiter made more than 20 films in this period but in 1955 he lost his brother Jean-Claude in an accident while diving in the celebrated freshwater cave complex at Font d’Estramar, near Perpignan. Jean-Claude went missing in the murky waters and could not be found, despite Guiter’s desperate efforts.

Guiter was taken on by Jean Prada, managing director of the Union Générale de Distribution de Produits Pétroliers to promote the business, which would sson be merged into a new company, looking for a new identity. This would become Elf and would be headed by Pierre Guillaumat, who had served with Charles de Gaulle’s Bureau Central de Renseignements et d’Action (BCRA) during the war. It was a company filled with colourful characters, som of whom reputedly worked for the French government with intelligence from oil-producing countries in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Guiter oversaw the marketing campaign to launch the Elf name, which began with hundreds of garages across France having a large red circle painted on them. An advertising campaign was then used to create intrigue about what the big red circles meant. Then, on the night of 26 April 1967, 1,250 of garages had the new Elf logo painted on them overnight. In the course of the next three years another 4,500 would follow suit.

Elf was to be new and different and Guiter suggested using motor sport to achieve this goal and Prada met Jean-Luc Lagardère of Matra and agreed to try to get the French government to loan money for a Formula 1 engine to be built. President Georges Pompidou agreed to the programme and as a result Elf funded Matra’s F1 programmes in the late 1960s, culminating in the three World Championship won by Jackie Stewart in 1969, 1971 and 1973, all of them with Elf funding. Elf also funded a series of F1 films, produced by none other than Boisnard.

Things changed a little when Matra decided to do a deal with Esso and so Elf turned to rival Renault and helped to build up its racing programmes and with funding from Elf, won in Formula 3, then Formula 2, then at Le Mans and finally helped to the Renault F1 programme.

At the same time Guiter provided money for the Winfield School at Magny-Cours, with the Volant Elf prize, which attracted the best young drivers in France. A second Volant Elf soon followed at Paul Ricard. As winner of the Volant Elf a youngster was given a budget for Formula Renault and as long as he kept on winning, Elf would stick with him. Dozens of French drivers benefited from the programme including Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Henri Pescarolo, François Cevert, Johnny Servoz-Gavin, Patrick Depailler, Jean-Pierre Jarier Jacques Laffite, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Rene Arnoux, Didier Pironi, Patrick Tambay and ultimately the man who would give France its first World Championship, Alain Prost. Elf money would continue to fund this flow until the mid 1990s.

Guiter would sit for many years on the Formula 1 Commission and was an important figure in the growth of the television coverage of Formula 1, including work on in-car cameras and also helping Bernie Ecclestone to spread the coverage of F1 across the world, through his network of contacts.

When Guiter retired in 1989 he was retained as a consultant by Elf but also returned to film making creating a film business with his son Jean-Claude, producing films about motor racing. Those who followed him at Elf were not in the same league and gradually the Elf sponsorship declined and French drivers found it harder and harder to climb the racing ladder. Guiter died in 2014, at the age of 86.

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 3
November 30, 2017 by Joe Saward

The town of Kerpen is about 20 miles to the south of Cologne, in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. It was originally called Kerpina and can trace its history back to 871. Europe being a complicated place it has been ruled over by numerous dukes and archbishops and in 1794 it became French, following the Battle of Fleurus. It was returned to Prussia in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon and was later assimilated into Germany.

In 1975 Kerpen grew significantly when a number of municipalities agreed to merge to create a bigger unit. The town has had a number of interesting residents in its history, notably composers Ludwig van Beethoven and (the very different) Karlheinz Stockhausen. There was also Christman Genipperteinga, who is believed to have murdered no fewer than 964 people between 1568 and 1581 (which is an impressive kill rate!). It was also the birthplace of a man called Pedro Schumacher, a Catholic bishop who played an important role in the revolution in Ecuador.

As catholic priests are not supposed to leave children behind, one assumes that he was no direct relation to construction worker Rolf Schumacher, father of two youngsters who would make great names for themselves in the world of Formula 1, and become Kerpen’s most famous modern residents.

It didn’t happen by chance. In order to be successful youngsters need to spend a lot of time learning and developing their talents. The Schumacher brothers did this famously at a local kart track, which was located in the Kerpen district of Horrem. This village features the moated castle of Hemmersbach, which dates back to the Fifteenth Century. It was inherited in 1751 by Franz Adolph Berghe of Trips, who could trace his family’s noble history back more than 600 years. In 1928 Wolfgang Berghe Von Trips was born, the next generation of the dynasty. He was rather a sickly child, who suffered from diabetes and was not deemed suitable for military service at the very end of World War II. When American forces were quartered in the castle, he learned to speak English, but was well into his twenties before he began racing in 1953 at the wheel of a VW Beetle, using the pseudonym Axel Linther. He graduated to Porsches and in 1954 was German racing champion and was hired by the Mercedes Benz sports car team for 1955. It seemed that Mercedes would take him to Formula 1, but that summer the Le Mans disaster led the company to quit all motorsport. Von Trips was picked up by Ferrari in 1956 and five years later became the first German since Hermann Lang in 1939 to win a Grand Prix. Sadly he was killed while battling for the 1961 World Championship at Monza.

An organization called “Rennsportfreunde Graf Berghe von Trips” decided to build a kart track in his honour, on a piece of land in Horrem that belonged to the Von Trips family. The track was opened in 1965 and in the late 1960s the membership grew significantly. By 1971 the circuit was able to host the first CIK Juniors’ Cup. The problem was that there was no way to expand the facility because it sat next to a railway line and so the club began to look for a new venue. It was not until 1979 that a new site was found in the forest in the Manheim district of Kerpen, where the club as given permission to build its new circuit in an old gravel pit. This opened as Germany’s largest kart facility in 1980 and the following year it hosted the European Championship and in 1983 the Junior World Championship.

By then Michael Schumacher had become a star of the German karting scene. He had begun racing on the old Horrem track when he was very young and would become the German Junior Champion in 1984 and three years later would win the German and European senior titles as well. He would become the first German driver since Von Trips to win more than one Grand Prix, the only other winner being Jochen Mass, who took victory (and half points) in the tragic Spanish GP in 1975.

Michael decided in 1997 that he wanted to start his own facility and the Michael Schumacher Kart & Event-Center was opened. Initially it was an indoor kart circuit but in 2002 a 710 metre outdoor track was added. It is a bit more commercial than the Manheim Kerpen track, but it will probably survive longer. The astonishing Hambach open-pit mine (which is 33 square miles in size) has been developing since 1978, resulting in the destruction of four villages to date. Kerpen-Manheim and the neighbouring Morschenich are now in the path of this vast pit, where incidentally one can find the deepest man-made part of the Earth’s surface, 981ft below sea level. The houses in Kerpen-Manheim are gradually being bought and demolished, but it remains to be seen whether the track can survive…

Incidentally, Kerpen also has the odd distinction of being twinned with Oświęcim in Poland, better known by its German name of Auschwitz, while Wolfgang Von Trips taught Spain’s King Juan Carlos to drive.

…but that’s another story.

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Jim Nabors 1930 – 2017
Thursday, 30 November 2017
Mark Glendenning / Image by IndyCar



 
Jim Nabors, whose renditions of 'Back Home Again in Indiana' anchored the build-up to the Indianapolis 500 for four decades, died on Thursday at the age of 87.

The Alabama-born singer and actor was best known in showbusiness for his role as Gomer Pyle in the Andy Griffith Show and spin-off series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. in the 1960s, although he was regularly cast in on-screen and voice acting film and TV roles through to the mid-1990s, and continued to make stage appearances into the 2000s.

But in the motorsport world, Nabors will forever be associated with singing Indiana's unofficial anthem during the pre-race ceremony at the 500; a tradition that began when he was asked on race morning in 1972 whether he could perform the song that day – a feat he was reportedly able to achieve with the help of lyrics written on his hand – and continued, with a handful of interruptions due to clashing commitments or ill health, until he retired in 2014.



"You know, there's a time in life when you have to move on," he told USA Today ahead of his final performance at the Brickyard. "I'll be 84 this year. I just figured it was time. This is really the highlight of my year to come here. It's very sad for me, but nevertheless there's something inside of me that tells me when it's time to go."

The Hulman-George family, which owns IMS, paid tribute to Nabors in a statement:

"Jim Nabors was such a kind, caring man, and we will miss him greatly. Jim was born in Alabama, but he became a Hoosier to all of us almost immediately after he began his superb performances of 'Back Home Again in Indiana' starting in 1972. He loved coming back home to the Speedway almost every May for more than 40 years and seeing his friends and race fans, who loved him dearly. Jim was not only a treasured friend, but truly a cherished member of our family. We will never forget his genuine kindness, sincerity and loyalty. He was a wonderful man who inspired millions of people across the globe every May and throughout his entire life."

 

Nabors, who lived in Hawaii for much of the second half of his life, is survived by his husband Stan Cadwallader.

This story has been updated since it was originally published to include the statement from the Hulman-George family.

Edited by Rad-oh-yeah?, 01 December 2017 - 04:05.

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 4
December 1, 2017 by Joe Saward

Peter Monteverdi was a Formula 1 driver for two laps of the Solitude circuit, in the forests to the west of Stuttgart. It was the third weekend of July in 1961 and the race was a non-championship event, so you won’t find his name in the World Championship record books, although he did have an entry for the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring two weeks later. On the weekend between the two races, he went to Hockenheim, where there was a round of the Formula Libre Swiss Championship. A suspension failure led to him crashing into the trees and he was fortunate to survive an accident similar to the one which later killed the great Jim Clark. He suffered multiple injuries, but slowly recovered and decided to give up racing and buried the remains of his unique MBM – Switzerland’s first F1 car – in the foundations of a new car showroom he built on the site of his old garage.

It is a story that began in Binningen, a southern suburb of Basel, in Switzerland in 1926, when 27-year-old Rosolino Monteverdi opened a repair shop for automobiles and trucks, on the Oberwilerstrasse. Eight years later his son Piero was born and grew up surrounded by cars. In 1950 when the youngster was just 16 he began building his own car, based on a wrecked 1930s Fiat Balilla. It took two years until the Monteverdi Special ran for the first time. By then Piero had become Peter and was working as an apprentice, firstly with the Vevey tractor company, near Montreux, and later with Saurer at Arbon, on the Bodensee.

His father died suddenly in 1954 and Peter took over the business, although he was still only 20. He soon developed an interest in racing and in 1956 began to compete in hillclimbs, road races and later sports car events, such as the Nürburgring 1000 in which he raced with Karl Foitek (father of future F1 driver Gregor Foitek) in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Veloce. He then tried his hand at single-seaters with a Lotus F2 car.

In 1957, as a result of his racing with Ferrari products, he was awarded the Ferrari concession for Switzerland, becoming the youngest Ferrari dealer in the world, at the age of 23. His next project was to build his own Formula Junior cars, under the MBM (Monteverdi Binningen Motors) banner. The car had sufficient space for a larger engine than the 500cc units used and he fitted a 1.5-litre Porsche engine into the car and after several hillclimbs embarked on his Formula 1 adventure.

As an entrepreneur Monteverdi was more successful and in 1963 he became the Jensen importer for Switzerland and a year later landed concessions from Rolls Royce and Bentley. Then, in 1965, he became a BMW dealer as well. Replete with cash and still ambitious he decided to build his own luxury cars, launching the Monteverdi High Speed 375S coupé at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1967. He would build his own sports cars, or modify other designs until 1994, when the business closed down. He then opened the Monteverdi Museum.

Monteverdi was rather eccentric and didn’t care what people thought of him. He was Switzerland’s first overt homosexual, sharing his life with Paul Berger, who worked him in the company.

In 1990 he decided to return to Formula 1 and bought the assets of the Onyx team and rebranded it Monteverdi. His plan was to launch a new road car in league with the F1. Journalists were left opne-mouthed when he told them that he didn’t need a designer as he would do the work himself. He then turned up with an old London double decker bus as the motorhome. Most of the surviving Onyx staff left and standards of preparation fell and drivers reported that Monteverdi was replacing old parts on the cars from the machines in his museum. After a high-speed accident in Hungary Gregor Foitek decided to quit the team. This meant that bills were not paid and the team disappeared after Goodyear refused to supply tyres for the Belgian Grand Prix. One of the F1 chassis was later used as the basis for the Monteverdi Hai 650 F1 supercar, which was unveiled in 1992. Several prototypes were built but no cars were sold.

Monteverdi then became sick with cancer, from which he died in July 1998, at the age of 64. Berger took over the business and the museum remained open until the end of 2016, after which some of the cars were transferred to the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 5
December 2, 2017 by Joe Saward

Signing bonuses are usually lump sums of money that are paid immediately after a person has signed a contract, a kind of incentive to get a deal done quickly. They have been used a great deal in Formula 1 circles by Bernie Ecclestone to put pressure on teams to do what he wants them to do. Usually take-it-or-leave-it in nature, these bonuses would act as both carrot and stick in negotiations – and Ecclestone was the master of such things.

But in F1 there have been other signing bonuses worthy of note, at least apocryphally because such things are relatively hard to check unless the people concerned wish to tell the story.

Nigel Mansell was reputedly a tough man with whom to agree contract terms and rumour has it that the details involved even went as far as to the number of Mars bars that would be in his hotel rooms at races. When he signed to drive for Ferrari in 1988, Ferrari executives were invited to his house at Port Erin, on the Isle of Man, in the middle of the Irish Sea, to sign the contract. The Ferrari folk were slightly perturbed that Mansell seemed to be wasting time and looking distractedly at his watch until finally he took up his pen and signed on the dotted line. At which point the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, the Red Arrows flew into view over the sea with their Hawk jets and performed an air display. The Ferrari folk were impressed and went home slightly in awe of their new driver.

The same time the following day, the Red Arrows were back, as they were every day, at the same time… weather permitting.

Down in Grove, Frank Williams is reputed to have pulled off a similar stunt when he was signing his contract with BMW in June 1997. Frank has the corner office on the top floor at Grove, with plenty of sky and it was here that Frank signed the contract with the heavy-hitters from Munich. As soon as the deed was done, one of Frank’s mates, Robs Lamplough, a decent racing driver in the late 1960s and early 1970s, who raced non-championship F1 events before retiring to life as a farmer, and an aeroplane collector. Robs’s pride and joy was a World War II Spitfire, which he had bought in Australia and had lovingly restored over many years. At the appointed hour Lamplough took off from his own grass strip on his farm near Hungerford and arrived at full tilt, heading straight for Frank’s office, allowing the team boss to utter the memorable words: ” Achtung Spitfeurer!” to his German guests, as they looked on in horror as the plane passed just over the roof above them.

As a follow-up to that story, the plane was eventually sold to the Meier Brothers, celebrated collectors in southern Germany, and became the first ever German-registered Spitfire.

[Rad-oh-yeah?]

Retro: 1986 IMSA Charlotte GTP race
Saturday, 02 December 2017




If I had to guess, I've watched the 1986 Charlotte IMSA GTP race at least 20 times. The sight of the world's most diverse and cutting-edge prototypes, deep in NASCAR country, navigating Charlotte's awkward layout still holds its fascination for me. And in another nod to the different times when GTP thrived, the early domination by Klaus Ludwig in his four-cylinder turbo Ford Probe was thrilling to behold.

No Balance of Performance. No cries of unfair advantages. And no surprise when GTP engines, wound beyond their limits, exploded in spectacular fashion.

Ludwig buried his foot in the throttle and crushed the Porsche 962s, Buicks, Corvettes, Jaguars, and all manner of prototypes...while asking those four little cylinders to stay below their melting point. Surviving a three-hour race like the 500km Charlotte Grand Prix was anything but a guarantee, and if you're a fan of drama, mystery waited around each corner for the leader and those in pursuit of the rapid German. Although Ludwig was the early star of the event, he wasn't necessarily the one spraying champagne at the end...



The event made use of the North Carolinian track's sweeping oval and rudimentary road course which, despite its shortcomings, also made for great television. Check out the grandstands, as well. Fans flocked to see these caged animals unleashed in an unnatural environment.

And on the very real grounds of safety, a chicane comprised of tire bales was installed halfway down the back straight, and while it certainly looks strange, slowing GTP cars that weighed half of the average stock car and made power in the 900-1000hp range was a necessity.

With the recent repaving and modernization of Charlotte's infield road course in mind, NASCAR fans will get a look at its original state, free of safety measures and other conveniences we've come to expect today.

Spend some time with Ken Squier, Bill Adam, and Dave Despain – checking in from the old TNN broadcast hut – and turn up the volume for the wicked-fast meeting between IMSA GTP cars and Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 18, 1986.

 

 

[Hertzog]

Ne znam je li neko kacio, slabo pratim forum poslednjih dana, al nije na odmet da se ponovi, danas izasao dokumentarac i Ferrariju

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6622186/

Ima vec i torent da se skine, pa ko zeli nek se javi da ne kacim ovde

Edited by Hertzog, 03 December 2017 - 18:50.

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Fascinating F1 Fact: 6
December 3, 2017 by Joe Saward

South Africa’s Jody Scheckter won the Formula 1 World Championship in 1979, driving for Ferrari. It was a very consistent season for the once-wild Scheckter and he won the title despite the fact that he took victory in only Belgium, Monaco and Italy. At Monza he was shadowed all the way by his team-mate Gilles Villeneuve, who stuck to team orders and did not try to pass him. Jody eventually won the title in the middle of the race when Jacques Laffite retired his Ligier with engine trouble, as Jacques was the only man who could beat him on points in the remaining races.

Over the winter the 312 T4s were dismantled and rebuilt as 312 T5s, with a slightly reworked chassis and changes to the suspension mounting points. There was new bodywork and development was done to the venerable 3-litre flat-12 engines. The new cars were faster than the T4s, but the problem was that Ferrari’s rivals made bigger leaps forward, thanks to magic of ground-effect aerodynamics. Ferrari fell behind Ligier, Williams, Brabham and Renault. Scheckter scored just one fifth place in 1980 and was 19th in the championship, while Villeneuve did better but still only scored on four occasions. At the end of the year Scheckter retired – and never looked back. The magic of F1 had gone. It was finished business.

Scheckter was still only 29, but was a wealthy man with nothing much to do. For a while he tried to put together an international racing series, based on the BMW M1 Procar series, which had run as support races for Grands Prix in 1979 and 1980. His idea was to put a Cosworth engine into a Ford Capri, but the deals didn’t come together and he was looking for other things to do when he saw an advert in a magazine which showed a firearms training simulator. He was intrigued. After a little research Scheckter decided he could do a much better job – with laser technology and movie screens. He devised a simulator that was attractive compared to live-fire facilities, both in terms of cost and safety.

In 1984 he headed for the United States, where he settled in Hilton Head, Georgia, and began trying to sell his system. The company would become Firearms Training Systems Inc, or FATS, and with the same kind of energy Scheckter had shown in his racing career, and working with new technologies as he had in F1, he began to build the business. It was not an overnight success. The company moved to the sleepy town of Suwanee, to the north of Atlanta, and Jody gradually expanded the company and refined the products. There were deals with the FBI and the LAPD and then other government agencies, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Post Office followed. And then the military got interested, including the US Army, the Air Force and the Marine Corps. The business also expanded internationally. The company made training films in California’s Mojave Desert, which the US military put to good use in 1990 preparing personnel for Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Growth in the mid-1990s was dramatic with more and more government contracts and new simulators for hunters as well. By 1996 FATS was turning over $65 million a year and Scheckter decided it was a good time to sell to a New York-based private equity called firm Centre Partners. The company was floated later that year as Firearms Training Systems Inc.

Jody and his family returned to the UK. He wasn’t short of money and had dabbled in farming in the US as a sideline, and he decided to try to build another empire in organic farming. He bought Laverstoke House, an 18th century Palladian mansion with extensive gardens in the Test valley, near Whitchurch in Hampshire. It was a 530-acre estate but he soon realized that this was insufficient to make a farm commercially-viable operation and so bought an adjacent property and created a 2500-acre estate. Today it is the best known organic farm in Britain and has large herds of water buffalo and sheep, and produces a range of products including beers and wines.

[Rad-oh-yeah?]

Fascinating F1 Fact: 7
December 4, 2017 by Joe Saward

Racing drivers have to be mentally tough in order to deal with what they do. They love racing, but they know it is dangerous, and that they could get hurt. They also know that it must be their focus in life. If it isn’t, there are not going to win. It’s too competitive a world for those who not motivated or lazy. And, as one gets older, priorities change…

No-one at Reims in July 1948 paid much attention to the 37-year-old Argentine driver, who appeared in a Equipe Gordini Simca Gordini in the Grand Prix de l’ACF. The fans were there to see the hero of the day Jean-Pierre Wimille win his factory Alfa Romeo, and they went home happy. Fangio retired from the main race, but was driving a hopelessly outclassed car, and he also retired in the Coupe des Petites Cylindrées voiturette race that supported the Grand Prix. After the race Wimille invited Fangio to join him for an interview with the daily sports newspaper L’Equipe and told the journalists that here was a driver who had dared to run ahead of me and who someday you will have to write about. He added that he would need to speed up to beat the newcomer.

Wimille had been impressed earlier that year when he was in Argentina, as a guest of President Juan Peron for a series of races to promote the country. Fangio had previously driven only the locally-built Volpi-Chevrolet but was entered in a Maserati by the Automobile Club of Argentina. For the third race, in Rosario, Amedee Gordini offered Fangio a Simca-Gordini, as team-mate to Wimille, and he did so well that he turned the Frenchman’s head. Out-qualifying him and fighting hard in the race.

The track in Independence Park featured a very odd feature, a roundabout where the drivers could choose whether to go left or right. They all felt that going right was faster and so no-one bothered going left until lap 14 when Fangio tried it and emerged ahead of Wimille. He took the place back but Fangio did the same trick again later but in the end retired because he had pushed the car too hard. Wimille was impressed. After the race, he told the Automobile Club that “I know a future champion, and you have one here.”

Wimille was probably responsible for the invitation that Fangio received from Gordini, after regular driver Maurice Trintignant was seriously injured in the voiturette supporting the Swiss GP. Fangio went back to Argentina and went back to his regular role as a driver in the wildly dangerous Turismo Carretera road races, which had races in each Argentine province. Fangio had won the national title twice in 1940 and 1941, his first big win being the Gran Premio Internacional del Norte, a race from Buenos Aires to Lima in Peru and back again.

In the autumn of 1948 be entered the 5,950-mile Gran Premio de América del Sur, from Buenos Aires to Caracas, by way of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. The race would be a fight between Fangio and his longtime rival Óscar Gálvez but Fangio suffered a setback when his car lost a wheel near Lima and the crew lost a night repairing the car. Fangio charged back through the field from 23rd and was in the lead after 100 miles, with Galvez giving chase. With a thick fog and then dazzling reflection on the buildings in the town of Huanchasco, Fangio left the down unable to see for a few moments and went off in a left-hand turn, the car rolling over and over. Galvez did the same thing, but in the other side of the road. Urrutia has been thrown from the car, suffering a fractured skull, which Fangio only avoided the same fate because his feet were tangled up with the pedals. Galvez came to his rescue and Fangio, with face and leg injuries, urged him to go on racing. Eusebio Marcilla eventually took Fangio and Urrutia to hospital in nearby Chicama, but Urrutia was beyond help by the time they got there. For several weeks Fangio pondered retirement but concluded that he still wanted to go racing. In January, he was fully recovered and joined the European visitors for the opening round of the 1949 Temporada on the Palermo Park circuit in Buenos Aires. His friend and rival Wimille slid off in practice and hit a tree and was killed.
With a heavy heart, Fangio set off to Europe a few weeks later with the Argentin Automobile Club team. He would win F1 races at San Remo, Pau, Perpignan, Albi and Marseilles races and a Formula 2 race at Monza. He returned to Argentine a national hero – with an Alfa Romeo contract for 1950 in his pocket…

Five World Championships would follow.