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#721 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 21 December 2017 - 13:25

Fascinating F1 Fact: 24
December 21, 2017 by Joe Saward


They say that running a racing team requires military discipline in order for everything to be “just so” and thus having a military man as a team boss makes a fair amount of sense, even if they may not possess the ducking and weaving skills of some of the car trader types who litter the modern history of the sport.

David Yorke was just such a man. He was born in rural Ireland, not far from Carlow, in 1913, when the country was still under British rule. His father was a military man and his grandfather before that. His father Major Henry Yorke served in the Boer War and was then awarded a Military Cross during World War I. Young David was sent to Belmont preparatory school in Hassocks, in Sussex and then went on to the Nautical College in Pangbourne, where boys were trained to become officers in the Merchant Navy. He decided against that career path and at the age of 21 joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. By 1939 he was a Flight Lieutenant. In that period he had become enthusiastic about motor racing but the war intervened and Yorke soon found himself in the Battle of France, flying 16 Squadron Gloster Gladiators out of an aerodrome at Bertangles, near Amiens. The squadron was only in France for a few weeks but Yorke saw plenty of action, twice winning the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery. The first DSO was for carrying out low-level reconnaissance flights on German positions, despite heavy anti-aircraft fire and for a similar adventure dropping supplies to the beleaguered troops in the port of Calais. The second (a very rare award) was for similar actions at Dunkirk. He was described in one of the medal recommendations as “a commander and organizer of exceptional merit”.

He then flew a Hurricane in the Battle of Britain before being sent out to India as a Squadron Leader, early in 1941. By the end of the war he moved on to the Far East and had been promoted to the rank of Group Captain. He would remain with the RAF after the war, but in 1949 accompanied another former RAF officer, Peter Whitehead, to the Czech Grand Prix in Brno. Whitehead won the race with his private Ferrari, and asked Yorke if he would like to become his team manager in 1950.

Yorke resigned from the RAF and took on his new role, helping to organize things when Whitehead was driving his own cars and when he was was racing Jaguar factory sports cars. Whitehead and Peter Walker won Le Mans in 1951 in a Jaguar and later that summer Whitehead was offered a drive in one of Tony Vandervell’s Thinwall Special F1 cars for the British GP. Yorke went with him.

When Vandervell decided to build his own Grand Prix cars in 1954, he hired Yorke to be his team manager, working from a base in Action, in the west of London. The team ran Tony Brooks, Stirling Moss and Stuart Lewis-Evans and all proved to be promising. In 1958 the team won six of the nine rounds of the World Championship and the Constructors’ title, although they were beaten to the Drivers’ crown by Ferrari’s Mike Hawthorn. The success was overshadowed by the death of Lewis-Evans at the end of the year, after his car caught fire in Morocco.

At the end of that year Vandervell withdrew the team from competition, although there were still a few Vanwall prototypes produced until 1962.

Yorke moved on after that but was back in action in 1966 as the team manager of JW Automotive Engineering Ltd, which was running Ford GT40s from a factory in Slough, with funding from Gulf. The team beat Porsche to the International Championship for Makes in 1968, winning Le Mans twice in 1968 and 1969, and then switched to Porsche in 1970 with the new 917 and won the title again. There was a third championship in 1971 when JWA ran a third car, with Martini sponsorship, which won Le Mans in the hands of Helmut Marko and Gijs Van Lennep.

The team then quit the championship and Yorke was asked to become a consultant for Martini, recommending that the drinks firm sponsor the Brabham team, which had just been taken over by Bernie Ecclestone, who had known Yorke from the days when Ecclestone was Stuart Lewis-Evans’s manager in the late 1950s. This advice was ignored and Martini sponsored the Tecno F1 team instead in 1972, without any real success. Things became complicated in 1973 when Yorke ran a British-based Tecno operation with Martini money, but this too was not a success and Martini finally took Yorke’s advice and sponsored Brabham in 1975, 1976 and 1977. After taking a year out of F1 in 1978 the company returned with Team Lotus in 1979, but the team had lost the advantage it had enjoyed in 1978 and so after 1980 Martini concentrated on sports cars. York was then 67 and decided to retire, but being pals with Ecclestone, continued to attend occasional races and died at the age of 71, while attending the 1984 Austrian Grand Prix.


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#722 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 22 December 2017 - 03:06


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#723 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 22 December 2017 - 16:31

Fascinating F1 Fact: 25
December 22, 2017 by Joe Saward


Ross Brawn is the man in charge of the racing department of the Formula One group. In order to formulate ideas for the future, he has brought together a group of F1 experts, many of whom he has worked with in the past.

Back in 1994, Brawn was technical director of the Benetton F1 team. His head of research and development and Michael Schumacher’s race engineer, was Pat Symonds. Today, Symonds is working on chassis regulations at Formula One. Back in 1994 the man who looked after the team’s Ford engines was a Cosworth engineer called Nick Hayes. Today Hayes is working away quietly, coming up with the ideas for the new F1 engine regulations in 2021.

Hayes has never been a man who is comfortable in the spotlight. He’s a boffin but has been a passionate fan of motor racing since he was a schoolboy and went to see his first race in 1972, at the age of 11. Born in Coventry, the automobile-making capital of England in the early days of the industry and home of Jaguar, Standard, Alvis, Hillman, Humber, Triumph, Riley, Rover and many others. He went to schools in Leicester and Nottingham and won a place to study engineering at the University of Salford in Manchester, from where he graduated with a BSc, winning the prestigious Institute of Mechanical Engineers’ design prize in his final year. He had been sponsored by Rolls-Royce Aero Engines and so went to work with the company. Although the firm shared its famous name with the luxury car company, the two were no longer linked and so Hayes was unable to get into the automotive world until he had served three years of aero engine design at Rolls-Royce. During that time he worked at weekends with Mick Hill Cars & Racing in Derby, helped the tem develop saloon cars and some very exotic GTs. He then began to look for jobs in racing and applied for a position with Cosworth Engineering in Northampton, an obvious choice for an engine man. He received a call from Keith Duckworth and in 1984 joined the staff of the celebrated engine firm. The company was then looking for ways forward as the famous DFV had finally reached the end of its F1 career and Ford had agreed to finance a Cosworth-designed V6 turbo. This was slow arriving and the rules changed before it could be properly developed and so a new plan drawn up to create a new normally-aspirated V8 for the 1987-1990.

Hayes worked as the liaison engineer between Cosworth and the teams but gradually found himself involved more and more in engine design, working under the guidance of Cosworth’s chief designer Geoff Goddard. They worked on a series of different V8s, culminating in the HB, which Michael Schumacher used to win the World Championship in 1994. This was followed by a V12 study, the V8 Zetec-R, the V10 Zetec-R and in 1999 the Cosworth CR01, the last of which won a race in the hands of Johnny Herbert. While this was happening he rose through the ranks, becoming F1 programme director in 1997, managing director of engineering in 2001 and technical director in 2003. The problem was that Ford was showing less and less interest in the sport and so in 2004 he resigned and headed off to the United States to work as engine research and development director of the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR team. It was a time of change with Childress’s operation combining its racing engine efforts with Dale Earnhardt Inc in 2007 becoming Earnhardt Childress Racing Technologies but the team enjoyed success, winning the Daytona 500 with Kevin Harvick in 2007. He then decided that he wanted to move his family back to the UK and began his own engine consulting business, called nhanse Ltd, which led eventually to a call from Ross Brawn…


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#724 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 23 December 2017 - 14:12

Renowned NASCAR crew chief Barry Dodson dies at 64
Thursday, 21 December 2017
By Kelly Crandall / Image by Robert LeSieur/LAT

dodson.JPG
 

Championship-winning crew chief Barry Dodson passed away Wednesday at the age of 64.

Dodson was the man behind Rusty Wallace's 1989 premier series championship and was considered one of the brightest minds in the NASCAR garage. The list of drivers he worked with throughout his career include Hall of Famers Wallace (pictured above, with Dodson), Darrell Waltrip and the late Tim Richmond.

Richmond was the first driver Dodson worked with upon moving into a crew chief role, but it only lasted a one year. It was with Wallace that Dodson earned much of his success, the two being paired together in 1986 under car owner Raymond Beadle. Together, Dodson and Wallace won 18 races.

In 329 starts as a crew chief at NASCAR's top level, Dodson earned 19 victories. In 1995 at Dover International Speedway, Dodson picked up his final Cup Series victory with driver Kyle Petty.

John Dodson confirmed his brother's passing in a statement from the family.

"Barry's passing leaves us all with heavy hearts. He left his mark in the NASCAR history books and he served the sport with a passion that few will ever match. We love him and we miss him."

NASCAR also issued a statement:

"Barry Dodson's talent as a crew chief was evident, winning a championship in 1989 and a number of races throughout a career that lasted parts of three decades at the top levels of the sport. His extraordinary skills around a racecar were rivaled only by his passion for the sport, and his perseverance in the face of adversity. NASCAR extends its condolences to the family and friends of Barry Dodson. He will be missed."


Edited by Rad-oh-yeah?, 23 December 2017 - 14:12.

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#725 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 23 December 2017 - 14:13

Fascinating F1 Fact: 26
December 23, 2017 by Joe Saward


If you are a new fan to Formula 1, you may not have heard of Murray Walker, a popular commentator for Britain’s BBC in Formula 1. It’s been more than 15 years since he was regularly at races, but he still pops up on broadcasts from time to time, despite being 94 years old.

Murray is famed for his mistakes, caused largely by his rampant enthusiasm for the sport. He always used to do endless research for his commentary – but then was so excited during the races that he forgot most of it.

People call him a British national treasure.

Murray has had a remarkable life, but he rarely talks of his adventures which began in 1923 in Hall Green, Birmingham. His father Graham was a celebrated motorcycle racer, after serving as a despatch rider in the First World War. Graham Walker was the European 500cc Champion in 1927 and won the 250cc class on the Isle of Man TT in 1931. By then he had become the Competition Director of the Rudge motorcycle firm in Coventry and travelled to races all over Europe. From 1938 onwards he became the editor of Motor Cycling magazine, a job which he held until 1954. Murray was given a motorcycle when he was 14 and was soon competing in trials, although such activities were restricted by attending Highgate School, in north London. Despite this in the holidays he sometimes travelled with his father and as a result attended the Donington Grand Prix in 1938, watched the famous Silver Arrows in action and was even introduced to Tazio Nuvolari. In the summer of 1939 the family was touring Germany and Austria when it became clear that war was coming and they made a hurried return to the UK before the war began. Highgate School was soon evacuated to Westward Ho! in North Devon and Walker spent the next two years in a very peaceful environment while the war waged elsewhere. In the autumn of 1941 when he reached 18 he volunteered for the Royal Armoured Corps, but he would not be called up for nearly a year, which he spent in Birmingham, working for Dunlop. Finally he was ordered to Bovington Camp in Dorset, where he underwent basic training before being sent on to the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst for the next 18 months. He finally graduated in April 1944 but then underwent further training before being sent to Europe to join the Royal Scots Greys, a cavalry regiment that was equipped with Sherman tanks. He joined the regiment in Holland in the autumn of 1944, just after Operation Market Garden, the airborne assault up to Arnhem. It was then a quiet sector but in the spring of 1945 Walker was in the think of it, as the Scots Greys fought across northern Germany, liberating Bremen and Lubeck and ending the war in Wismar, on the Baltic coast, where they linked up with the Russian Armies coming from the east. Later he would be sent to the Belsen canp, near Hannover, although by the time he arrived the concentration camp had been demolished and it had been turned into a training facilty for the Royal Armoured Corps. In 1947 he was sent home and immediately began to involve himself in motorcycle racing. His father was by then a BBC commentator and Murray got his first break at a hillclimb which his father was unable to attend. He would then become the stand-in commentator for motorcycle and motor racing events, replacing his father and Raymond Baxter when necessary. But that was his weekend job because during the week he worked in advertising. He started out at Dunlop but then in 1955 went to work in Asia with Aspro, a kind of aspirin. He then joined McCann Erickson to work on the Esso account. In 1959 he joined a smaller agency called Masius Ferguson, where he would remain until 1982. This would become the second largest advertising firm in Britain, after J Walter Thompson, largely as a result of a successful relationship with Forrest Mars, for whom the agency launched pet food products Kit-E-Kat and Pal. Walker admits that he was responsible for the hugely successful slogan for Trill bird food: “An only budgie is a lonely budgie” which increased sales considerably as many budgie owners bought a second bird and thus sales increased. The success with Mars led to the firm being used to promote Mars Bars, Maltesers and other confectionary. It is a myth that Murray invented the famous “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play” but he was the director of that account and he was responsible for another celebrated slogan: “Opal Fruits: Made to make your mouth water”.

After his retirement from advertising, Murray became a fulltime commentator, although the BBC did not send him to all the races until the early 1990s, usually missing the non-European events. He would remain with the BBC until 1996 and then moved to ITV from 1997 to 2001 before finally stepping back at the age of 78.


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#726 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 24 December 2017 - 15:34

Fascinating F1 Fact: 27
December 24, 2017 by Joe Saward


George White was a bit of a whizz in business. He started out as a lowly clerk, found his way into a tramway company and then set off to make a fortune as a stock broker. He reinvested is profits in transportation and quietly built an empire in trams. He built and ran railways, he was the first to launch an electric tram service, he made an unsuccessful bid to run the London underground, while also seeing the future of motor buses and taxis, in addition to hiring trucks. He was a great benefactor to the city of Bristol and by 1905 he had been knighted for his work.

His French agent Emile Stern provided cars and taxis, while also representing the Leon Bollée car company. It was Bollée who invited Wilbur Wright to France in 1908 to demonstrate his flying machine and offered him use of Bollée’s workshops in Le Mans. The first flight took place at the Hunaudieres racecourse in August that year. If the name sounds familiar it is because the hippodrome is in the middle of what is now the Le Mans racing circuit… As a result of this, in February 1909, White and Stern travelled to the south west of France, to the city of Pau where Wright had set up operations for the winter, seeking better weather than at Le Mans. White saw one of Wright’s demonstration flights and was convinced that there was money to be made from these flying machines. He went home and announced to his shareholders that he was going to start an aviation business, to be called the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company. His first move was to buy the British manufacturing rights to a Zodiac biplane, designed by Gabriel Voisin. At the time, Voisin was looking for new customers as Henri Farman has decided to set up on his own. A Zodiac was delivered in crates to Bristol and assembled in some old tramway sheds at Filton, at the end of the tramway line and was then put on display at the Aero Show at Olympia early in 1910. The original plan was for the plane to be flown by Arthur Duray, a well known racing driver, but he was injured elsewhere before the plane was built and so it was handed over to Maurice Edmond. The plane was under-powered and could not get off the ground and so it was abandoned, the licence was cancelled and the company, which was already known as Bristol, got its hands on drawings of the Farman III and copied it. The result was the Bristol Biplane, known as the Boxkite. Farman threatened to sue, but White’s lawyers pointed out that it was not a copy because it had been improved considerably by the Bristol engineers. By the time war broke out in 1914, Bristol had made considerable advances and was in a position to provide aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps. Sir George died in 1916, and his son, also Sir George, became CEO. The Bristol factories expanded to more than 3,000 employees, building the F.2A, the F.2B and the Bristol Scout. More than 5,300 of these aircraft would be built, but after the war demand for planes reduced and so the company focussed on aero-engines in the interwar years, while continuing to develop warplanes, with the Bulldog in 1930, the Blenheim in 1935 and the Beaufort and Beaufighter in 1939. In Wolrd War II Bristol made a huge contribution to the war effort, manufacturing 14,000 aircraft and more than 100,000 engines.

Once again Bristol faced the problem of a drop in demand after the war and the second baronet thought that his son – another George – might be on to a good idea with a plan to manufacture cars.

Before the war Bristol had worked on some projects with the Frazer Nash car company, which had a deal to manufacture BMW products under licence in the UK. Bristol saw the opportunity to get its hands on Rudolf Schleicher’s famous 1971cc straight-6 BMW 328 engine, and bought control of Frazer Nash and began manufacturing Bristol cars based on pre-war BMW models. There followed a series of developments but the basic engine remained the same until 1960 when a new supply deal was struck with Chrysler.

The Bristol engine began to appear in Formula 2 in 1951 in Frazer Nash chassis, but then a deal was struck with Cooper and the front-engined Cooper-Bristol T20 appeared in 1952. As the World Championship was run that year to Formula 2 regulations, Bristol arrived rather suddenly in F1. Prior to that the only British-built machinery in F1 had been revamped ERAs, Altas and the BRM V16, which appeared occasionally (and smokily). The post-war generation of 500cc racers wre looking to move up the racing ladder and the Cooper-Bristol provided that possibility and the cars were raced by the likes of Ken Wharton and the Ecurie Richmond duo Alan Brown and Eric Brandon, while Mike Hawthorn ran with his own car and Stirling Moss used a Bristol engine in an ERA. Hawthorn’s efforts were rewarded with a podium finish at the British GP – and a Ferrari contract for 1953.

The Cooper-Bristols would continue to appear in F1 until as late as 1957, but the company’s involvement in racing ended after the Le Mans disaster in 1955, by which time its factory sports car team had won the two-litre class at Le Mans for two years running.


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#727 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 25 December 2017 - 14:53

Fascinating F1 Fact: 28
December 25, 2017 by Joe Saward


This being Christmas Day, I think that you might appreciate a story involving toys and a Santa Claus… in case there is anyone out there who does not believe that the great man exists.

It is a story that begins in the science of thermoplastics, with polymers that become pliable when they are heated above a specific temperature and then solidify when they are cooled. These were commercialised in the 1950s, but it not take long for some smart engineers to realise that if one had such materials one could create interesting things using injection-moulding. A lot of money could then be made selling the new products. Ambitious engineering entrepreneurs rushed to apply the new technology to the toy industry.

Italians Eugenio Agrati and Ennio Sala were working with the Borletti firm in Milan in 1956, producing automotive instrumentation for Fiat automobiles. It wasn’t exactly thrilling, but it paid the bills. They heard about the new injection-moulding techniques and reckoned they could go into business. They found financial support from the Perfetti family, who ran a very successful confectionery firm in nearby Lainate, and together they set up APS (Agrati, Perfetti, Sala). This began manufacturing injection-moulded products for other companies in the Milan suburb of Quinto Romano. When the business had grown sufficiently it moved to a bigger facility in the same town, changed its name to Polistil and launched a range of Politoys products. In order to meet the booming demand it soon opened a manufacturing centre in Chiari, near Brescia. The company made toy trucks, tanks, planes, dolls and robots of all sizes, but toy cars were the big business, and racing cars models were very popular. By 1965 they had expanded into diecast metal models as well.

The competition was tough and Sala and Agrati wanted to promote their Politoys brand as much as possible and decided that it would be great to have a real racing car of their own. They already had a close relationship with motorcycle racing legend Giacomo Agostini, who had ambitions to switch from bikes to cars, and plans were laid for him to drive the Politoys cars. It was an ambitious but interesting plan. What they then needed was a racing team to build them a car.

At the same time, Frank Williams was looking for someone to fund the construction of his own F1 car. He had started as a customer team in 1969 but it had become important to be a constructor because only constructors received financial support to go to the long-haul F1 races. Frank was well-known in Italy as a result of his F1 programme with de Tomaso and he spoke Italian well. He looked like the perfect answer. When Sala and Agrati approached him early in 1971, Frank must have thought it was Christmas…

He was running F1 and F2 cars at the time, all on a shoestring, but he scraped together the money to run a secret two-day test at Goodwood with an F2 March for Agostini to drive. Things went well and Politoys agreed to provide him with £40,000 to build an F1 car for the 1972 season (that was a decent budget at the time). Williams commissioned the celebrated GT40 designer Len Bailey to draw him a car. The problem was that Bailey was a busy man. The change of rules in the World Championship for Makes sports car series meant that he was committed to design new Cosworth-engined Mirage M6 cars for Gulf Research Racing and that had to be done first. The cars were not ready in time for the 1972 races in Buenos Aires and Daytona and only appeared at Sebring, in late March.

Bailey had a design office at Gomm Metal Developments in Woking. He designed the Williams FX3 and Gomm built the monocoque downstairs. Williams had to buy a new March 721 in the interim for Henri Pescarolo (using up some of the money) and also ran a 711 for F1 debutant Carlos Pace. Money was soon short and so the Politoys project was delayed. The Marches carried Politoys badging and that was all Williams could afford to do. Frank then had Ron Tauranac take a look at the car (he had just sold Brabham) and he suggested some modifications. This all meant that the prototype FX3 was not ready until the British GP at Brands Hatch in July 1973. It had had only one shakedown test and was a handful. It qualified last and then, after seven laps in the race, the steering broke and Pescarolo crashed heavily. The car was badly damaged and was not seen again at a Grand Prix, although Chris Amon drove it in the non-championship World Championship Victory Race at the end of the season. By then a disenchanted Politoys had thrown in the towel and Frank had somehow found backing from Marlboro and the Italian car company Iso. He set off into 1973 with two Isa-Marlboro F1 cars: a new FX3B for Howden Ganley and an updated FX3 for Nanni Galli.

In Italy Politoys decided to change the brand name to Polistil, apparently to avoid confusion with the British firm Palitoy. It would manufacture over 500 different models of toy cars in the years that followed before going into partnership with Tonka in the 1980s. This was followed by a full takeover and in 1993 the Polistil brand was axed.

Agostini would race Williams F1 cars in the British Formula 1 series in 1979 and 1980, but one wonders what would have happened if the PX3 had been on time, and a better car…

Still, Santa doesn’t always bring you something you want.


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#728 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 26 December 2017 - 15:34

Fascinating F1 Fact: 29
December 26, 2017 by Joe Saward

 

It is a well known fact that the first post-war motor race took place on September 9 in 1945, in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

Or is it? What about the so-called Cockfosters Grand Prix on July 25th that summer? OK, it wasn’t a race per se, but it was a motoring competition of sorts, designed to remind the population of the joys of motorsport, after nearly six years of war. Cockfosters was a new beginning for British motorsport and many of those who took part went on to greater things.

But, it is fair to say that Cockfosters is not quite Monte Carlo. It is a northern suburb of London, nine miles north of the centre, but today inside the M25 ring road. It still borders the countryside, thanks to the city’s stringent Green Belt rules. But it is a suburb from which thousands catch the train to the city every week day.

It was little more than a village with a couple of sizeable mansions, owned by wealthy folk, until 1933 when the Underground arrived, making Cockfosters the last station on the northern end of the Piccadilly Line. After that developers moved in and large estates were sold, new streets laid out and a shopping parade built. The war stopped the construction and left a road network on an unbuilt housing estate. This was spotted by the racing enthusiast Rivers Fletcher, who lived in nearby New Barnet, and as soon as the war ended he began planning to create a 0.6-mile circuit.

Fletcher was a well-connected fellow, who had worked at Bentley in his youth and knew many of the pre-war racing fraternity. He headed a group called The Enthusiasts who organised race meetings and had everything in place by Saturday, July 14, kicking off at two thirty.

Tickets were 10 shillings, with tea available at 2/6 per head. Earl Howe, the Le Mans winner, Grand Prix driver and President of the British Racing Drivers’ Club was driven around the course by Fletcher in the 4.5-litre Bentley owned by Raymond Mays (who could not make the event) and then Howe lapped the course in his own Type 57 Bugatti coupé, although this did not run very well because of the poor quality fuel available. Mrs Bob Gerard then drove a Riley Sprite rather quickly, without disturbing her hairdo, which was described by observers as “a tonsorial tour de force”. Aston Martin’s Gordon Sutherland had a lap in the Aston Martin Atom concept car, followed by Lord Brabazon of Tara, a former Grand Prix winner and at one point Winston Churchill’s Minister of Aircraft Production, at the wheel of his 1100cc streamline Fiat coupé. He was followed by JG Tice in a Lagonda and Flight Lieutenant Anthony Crook (a future F1 driver and owner of Bristol Cars) in a Frazer-Nash-BMW. The timings were all unofficial but this did not stop the drivers giving it as much stick as they could. Once the sports cars were done, attention turned to proper racing machinery with a MG Midget R-Type and then Bob Gerard in an ex-Fairchild ERA and Charles Mortimer in an Alfa Romeo Monza.

It was then time for tea before more cars appeared, led by Anthony Heal’s 5-litre straight eight Ballot Indianapolis car and St John Horsfall’s ERA. This car was also driven by Tony Rolt, another future F1 driver, Le Mans winner and the man who created the Ferguson 4WD F1 car. He had only recently returned from five years as a prisoner of war in Colditz. Laurence Pomeroy ran the ex-Pilette 1914 GP Mercedes, despite the car being fitted with a Bedford lorry silencer because it had to be driven to the event on public roads. The fastest time of the day went to John Bolster’s twin-JAP-engined “Bloody Mary” hillclimb special. Alec Issigonis appeared in his own pre-war Lightweight Special, test pilot Squadron Leader James Boothby lapped in a Railton and many more.

“The weather was for the most part sunny and very warm,” a reporter noted. “Torrential rain obligingly waiting until the demonstration runs were over before letting go.”

All proceeds went to the Victoria Hospital in Barnet and everyone went home happy.

Fletcher would go on to become the Assistant Clerk of the Course at the British Grand Prix throughout the 1950s and would ultimately become a very rare “double member” of the British Racing Drivers’ Club, firstly for his work as a race organiser, which saw him appointed an associate member and patron, and then as a racing members for his successes at the wheel of his GP Bugatti.

Not quite Formula 1, but all jolly fun…


Edited by Rad-oh-yeah?, 26 December 2017 - 15:35.

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#729 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 27 December 2017 - 13:21

Fascinating F1 Fact: 30
December 27, 2017 by Joe Saward

Imagine it’s the 1930s. You are young, rich and madly keen on motor racing. You have a schoolfriend with similar ambitions who is also very wealthy. What do you do?

Well, it seems entirely logical to go out and buy an Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 racing car and enter it for the Mille Miglia. You could do that sort of thing in those days. And if your parents don’t need to know what you are doing you can pick a pseudonym such as “Maremmano”, which is either a kind of a horse or a breed of sheep dog. Thus it was that Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried, known as Toulo to his friends, started his racing career, in league with his old school chum John du Puy, the heir to a steel empire. The retired early from the event but were encouraged by the experience and so acquired two Maserati voiturettes – a 6CM for du Puy and an older 4CM for de Graffenried – and set up their own racing team and began travelling around Europe, taking part in races wherever they could. Two rich young men, staying in the best hotels, with racing cars. What could possibly go wrong?

De Graffenried came from a celebrated aristocratic Swiss family, with a number of different branches. His grandfather was another Emanuel de Graffenried, a Swiss Ambassador to Austria, who had married the Spanish Baroness Gabriela de Barco, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Elisabeth of Austria. His father had been a cavalry officer in the Swiss Army before he married the American heiress Irma Stern in New York in 1907. The couple had two daughters and then Emmanuel, born in Paris in May 1914. They moved to Switzerland soon afterwards and Toulo grew up in more than comfortable circumstances in Fribourg. At 15 he was sent off to school at the Institut Le Rosey, which had a winter campus in Gstaad and a summer one at Rolle, on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was a very exclusive place with their schoolmates including Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the future Shah of Iran.

Being Swiss, de Graffenried did not have to fight in the war and then when peace returned he and du Puy formed a new team called Team Autosport, with fellow Swiss driver Christian Kautz, although they soon switched to cars prepared by Enrico Platé. Kautz won the 1947 Grand Prix de la Marne, at Reims and Nello Pagani won at Pau the following year in one of Platé’s cars. Later that summer Kautz was killed in an accident at Bremgarten. De Graffenried had a new Maserati 4CLT in 1949 and he used this to win the British Grand Prix that summer. When the World Championship began in 1950 he continued with Maseratis but in 1951 had three races in Alfa Romeo 158s. But his best result in the World Championship would come in 1953 when he finished fourth at Spa, still driving for Platé. He would go on racing until 1956 but was then asked to do the driving as Kirk Douglas’s double in the film “The Racers”. He retired after that and settled in Lausanne, where he ran a garage, selling Alfa Romeos, Ferraris and Rolls Royces. In the 1970s he became an ambassador in F1 for Marlboro, which was based in Lausanne. In his later years he was very active in organizing historic races and with the Grand Prix Drivers’ Club. He lived until 2007, by which time he was 92.


Edited by Rad-oh-yeah?, 27 December 2017 - 19:53.

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#730 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 27 December 2017 - 16:51

Ferrari's landmark F1 cars: The record-breaking 500

f1-ferrari-special-feature-2017-ferrari-

Yesterday at 2:53pm


The Ferrari 500 carried Alberto Ascari to the marque's first Formula 1 drivers' title in 1952, although it was actually a Formula 2 car.

This makes it a key car in Ferrari's journey to becoming the most successful constructor in F1 world championship history, taking the first of the team's combined total of 31 drivers' and constructors' titles.

Enzo Ferrari was conflicted when F1 stuttered and almost died in 1952, because he felt a lingering tug of affection for the departed Alfa Romeo and its potent supercharged F1 cars, whose design he had championed while working for Alfa in the 1930s.

But he got over it well enough, for motor racing's loss would be his gain: in the absence of enough decent F1 cars to populate grids, world championship races were open solely to F2 machines for 1952-53. And Ferrari already had a basic F2 car ready to go.

There was nothing particularly big or clever about the Ferrari 500. It was simply a reworked version of the Scuderia's previous F2 car: a ladder chassis with transverse leaf springs up front and a De Dion axle at the rear, now located by trailing arms, but with a simpler and much more effective engine.

Gioacchino Colombo's V12 architecture would remain a mainstay of the Ferrari range for years to come, but in dainty two-litre form it had been well beaten in F2.

Consequently, Ferrari directed his new chief engineer, Aurelio Lampredi, to design a four-cylinder twin-cam engine as an alternative. It was competitive from the off.

f1-british-gp-1953-alberto-ascari-ferrar
Alberto Ascari, Ferrari 500
Photo by: LAT Images


Piero Taruffi won the first of the world championship rounds for Ferrari, but thereafter it was Alberto Ascari all the way - apart from at the Indianapolis 500, which Ascari nevertheless had a crack at in a V12 car based on the 1951 F1 chassis.

The anomalous Indianapolis rounds apart, a Ferrari 500 won every world championship grand prix from May 1952, until Maserati racer Juan Manuel Fangio broke its run at Monza on September 13 1953.

Ascari's nine consecutive wins, equaled but never exceeded, underline Ferrari's absolute dominance of the F2 era.


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#731 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 27 December 2017 - 17:40

 

Amaterski snimak, 31. 05. 1971, F2 trka za Hilton Transport trofej na stazi Kristal Palas u Londonu (zatvorenoj samo par godina nakon ovoga).

 

Na snimku vidimo:

 

- Fransoa Severa u fabrickom bolidu Tekno #46

- Vilsona Fitipaldija u bolidu Marc #58 tim Bardal

- Grema Hila u bolidu Brabam #2 ekipe Rondel Rona Denisa

- Pitera Vestberija u bolidu Brabam #8 ekipe FIRST

- Zanpjer Zarijea u bolidu Marc #40 ekipe Sel Arnold

- Rejne Visela u bolidu Lotus #56 ekipe LIRA

- Emersona Fitipaldija u bolidu Lotus #59 tim Bardal

- Dzonija Blejdsa u privatnom Lotusu #63

- Patrika Depajea u fabrickom bolidu Tekno #47

- Dzerija Birela u Lotusu #61 ekipe J&J Stanton

- Ronija Petersona u fabrickom Marcu #31

- Dzo Siferta pored svog privatnog Sevrona #68

- Tetsu Ikuzava u privatnom Lotusu #62

- Silvia Mozera u Brabamu #20 ekipe Dzoli Klub (na gridu sa Zarijeom i V. Fitipaldijem)

- Karlosa Pacea u Lotusu #45 Frenka Vilijamsa

- Karlosa Rojtemana u Brabamu #7 argentinskog automobilistickog saveza

- Tima Senkena u Brabamu #3 tim Rondel

 

(barem sam ove uspeo da identifikujem)

 

Vise detalja o trci: http://www.oldracing...p?RaceID=F27109


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#732 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 28 December 2017 - 13:23

Fascinating F1 Fact: 31
December 28, 2017 by Joe Saward


Having wealthy parents has always been a useful way to get going for a career in motor racing. In the very early days one simply bought the fastest available car, but as the sport developed one bought a seat instead. More recently some indulgent parents have been buying entire racing teams… However it is fairly unusual for someone to buy a racing car manufacturer for the sake of his kid.

Self-made men do not often worry about what people think of how they spend their money. They know the power of cash and know how it make things happen – and so it is logical to aim straight for the target intended and just sign a few cheques on the way.

Liverpudlian Thomas Keegan was born in 1925. He left school at 16, when Britain was in the middle of World War II. He wanted to help the war effort and so became an apprentice at the Vickers Armstrong factory at Hawarden, four miles from Chester, but just across the border in Wales. He spent two years assembling Wellington bombers, and then at 18 joined the Royal Air Force and flew in them, working as a flight engineer on missions in Europe and later in the Middle East.

During his time in the air force he became known as Mike, a name he much preferred to Thomas. Demobilised as a Sergeant, he joined a newly-formed airline called Skyways, operating out of the former RAF Dunsfold, flying Avro Yorks and Lancasters from England to the Persian Gulf, each round trip taking four days, with stops in Malta, Cairo and RAF Lydda in Palestine. It also flew early package tours, known as “aerial cruises”, to Zurich and to Gran Canaria.

During this period, Mile learned to fly and with a couple of colleagues he then set up a firm called BKS (Barnby, Keegan and Stevens), converting old DC3 transport aircraft for civilian use, chartering them and flying a few scheduled services. One of BKS’s first routes was London-Johannesburg, a 45-hour flight. The firm was also involved in the Berlin Airlift, flying supplies into the city which was then under blockade by the Russians. Keegan would later sell the business to his two partners and then ran a variety of businesses, including a spares firm, a company manufacturing agricultural machinery, another producing vending machines, a finance company, an aircraft leasing operation and the Flarepath Café at Southend airport. There were times when money was short in the late 1950s, so he disappeared off to the United States, working his passage as a stoker on a merchant ship, then acquiring a Piper Apache plane and flying it back to the UK. After two such trips his finances were back in order. Keegan’s big break came in 1968 when he bought Transmeridian Air Cargo and began building it into the biggest cargo-only airline in Europe, using a fleet of swing-tail Canadair CL44s. This was a huge success and in 1971 he bought British Air Ferries, which was then running cross-Channel flights for cars to airports in France, using modified Douglas DC4s, known as Carvairs. The business was slow because of rapid development of ferry services and so Keegan upgraded the fleet and began flying passengers only to France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and the Channel Islands. This grew to a fleet of 25 aircraft. He also developed a thriving charter business and spares and engineering firms. Eventually BAF was employing more than 1000 people.

By then his son Rupert had reached the age of 18. He was already a bit of a playboy, but was passionate about motor racing after winning his first race in a Ford Escort Mexico in 1973. He then went into Formula Ford and by the end of 1974 was winning races. He moved into British Formula 3 in 1975 with the British Air Ferries Racing Team, running a year-old March 743. He crashed a lot and scored only point.

Mike was ambitious for his son and at the end of 1975 purchased the Hawke racing car company from its founder David Lazenby and hired a young engineer called Adrian Reynard, who was studying at Cranfield University at the time, to design a BAF-Cosworth Formula 1 car. That year Mike sold Transmeridional for £3.3 million, so money was not a problem. Reynard started drawing the F1 car, while Rupert began his 1976 season strongly with his old March. It soon became clear that he needed an upgrade and so Reynard was told to stop work on the F1 car and design a Hawke Formula 3 car instead. This was a rushed job and the car was as quick as the March – but not quicker. Reynard was fired, but left the company having struck up a relationship with one of the British Air Ferries hostesses, who later became Mrs Reynard…

Mike Keegan bought a Chevron and Rupert won the British title, ahead of Bruno Giacomelli and Geoff Lees. He then took his BAF sponsorship to Hesketh, which then had backing from Penthouse and Rizla, found the previous year by Guy Edwards. With his dashing good looks, Keegan suited the image of the team, being seen as a junior version of James Hunt, a devil-may-care party animal. By all accounts he lived up the image, but on the track he was less successful than hoped, his best result being seventh in Austria. He moved on to Surtees in 1978, taking his BAF sponsorship with him, to race for the Durex-sponsored outside (another good fit for his image). He finished only one race in 11th place.

F1 was growing rapidly at the time and so it was decided to switch Rupert to the Aurora AFX British Formula 1 Championship, driving a Charles Clowes Racing Arrows A1, back with Penthouse, Rizla and the inevitable BAF. He won five times and beat David Kennedy to the 1979 title. Keegan then tried to make an F1 comeback with an old Williams FW07, sponsored by Penthouse and Rizla and run for seven races in 1980 by John Macdonald’s RAM Racing. His best result was his last race, at Watkins Glen, where he finished in ninth place. By then Mike Keegan had sold BAF and retired to Spain. Rupert was not seen again in F1 until 1982 when he was run by the Rothmans March team, where Guy Edwards was the commercial director. Adrian Reynard was again involved but there were no major results, so in 1983 Rupert tried his hand at sports cars with a John Fitzpatrick Skoal Bandit Porsche, which he shared with Fitzpatrick and Edwards to finish fifth at Le Mans. He did more sports cars in 1984 and then went to the States and tried CART at the end of 1985 and at Indy in 1986. Then he faded from the racing scene.

As for Mike, he went on dabbling in the aviation business, just for fun, until his death in 2003.

Even with talent, money does not buy success…


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#733 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 28 December 2017 - 15:49

Ferrari's landmark F1 cars: Villeneuve's first race winner

f1-ferrari-special-feature-2017-ferrari-

 

The Ferrari 312T3, introduced mid-season in 1978, helped Formula 1 legend Gilles Villeneuve to a maiden grand prix win - even if it was powerless to see off the revolutionary Lotus 79 over a full year.

Ferrari lost one legend after the 1977 season when Niki Lauda left for Brabham, but gained a new one for the following year in Gilles Villeneuve.

Driving the Ferrari 312T3, Villeneuve won his first grand prix on home soil in Canada and went on to become arguably the most famous driver in the marque’s history.

Ranged against an army of Cosworth V8s, and BRM and Matra V12s, Ferrari's mighty 3.5-litre flat-12 had character and power in spades.

But what it didn't have was a decent chassis to fire into the distance. All that changed, though, with the T generation of 312 cars in 1975.

This came about after a typical Ferrari clearing-of-the-decks in which Enzo appointed a young Luca di Montezemolo to run the team, who, in turn, rescued engineer Mauro Forghieri from corporate exile.

The resulting 312T took Niki Lauda to the world championship in 1975, and again in T2 form in 1977.

Forghieri's comprehensive re-engineering of the 312 concept focused primarily on weight distribution, with a redesigned aluminium monocoque chassis and a new transverse five-speed gearbox.

The flat-12 engine already carried its weight low, but its sheer length had entailed hanging the gearbox behind the rear axle - creating terminal understeer.

Packaging the transmission ahead of the axle sweetened 
the handling to title-winning effect.

By 1978, though, the game had moved on, and the arrival of Michelin had kicked off a tyre war.

Sensing an opportunity, Enzo Ferrari threw in his lot with the ambitious French tyre firm. Forghieri duly redesigned the 312T from nose to tail, creating the 312T3 with an updated chassis, a longer wheelbase, double wishbones replacing rocker arms, and new bodywork fettled in the Pininfarina windtunnel.

Ferrari had lost Lauda to Brabham, but gained the exuberantly talented Villeneuve to partner silky-smooth Carlos Reutemann.

It was a dream pairing, and when Reutemann won the second race of '78 in the old T2, then followed that up with victory at round four at Long Beach, in the new T3, it seemed he had a shot at the title.

Unfortunately for Reutemann, in Belgium Lotus introduced the 79, a car that would redefine the genre.


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#734 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 28 December 2017 - 17:39


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#735 Rad-oh-yeah?

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Posted 29 December 2017 - 13:55

Fascinating F1 Fact: 32
December 29, 2017 by Joe Saward


Racing drivers today are all professionals, but they still come from many different walks of life. As long as there is money to get them started, then it really does not matter what their families do. In the old days drivers were mainly amateurs. They were either either wealthy, or they had to work as well as race.

John Barber is often called a fishmonger by motorsport historians, but in reality he was rather more than that. His family had been fish wholesalers at Billingsgate market in London for several generations. The celebrated fish market was established on a wharf beside the Thames in 1698, but the coming of the railways revolutionised the business, allowing fish to be brought quickly to the cities. Henry Barber began trading salmon in 1841, just as the railways made it possible to bring fish to market overnight. By 1855 he had a stall at Billingsgate ad by 1880 his empire had developed into a chain of seven fish shops. The business passed through several generations until Stanley Swannell Barber took it over. He was an adventurer, serving with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I and travelling the world. He had two sons Douglas (born in 1922) and John (born in 1929). They followed him into the fish trade, diversifying into eels, which were big business in that era. Money flowed in and, at the age of 22, John started motor racing, buying a Formula 3 Cooper-Jap T12 and competing in various races in 1951, including the Castletown Trophy on the Isle of Man. He continued with the Cooper in 1952 and in May won the 500 Club F2 race at Snetterton. He then acquired a new and more powerful Cooper-Bristol T20 and finished second to Mike Hawthorn on the Turnberry airfield circuit in Scotland, although he had a heavy crash at the end of the year.

Bournemouth garage owner George Hartwell and racer Alan Fraser came to his rescue and put together a syndicate to hire a factory Cooper-Bristol T23 for Barber to race in the Temporada series in Argentina in January 1953, against the best Grand Prix drivers of the era. At the Argentine GP at the Autodromo on January 18, he qualified 16th and last, but managed to finish eighth, although he was seven laps behind the winner Alberto Ascari in a Ferrari. Two weeks later, using a different version of the same track, he finished 12th in the Buenos Aires Grand Prix. There was talk that he might race a Scuderia Ambrosiana Maserati in Europe later that year, but no deal was agreed, but he reappeared later that year in a Cooper at Crystal Palace, while also taking part in some sports car races with a sports car version of his rebuilt car. This would become known as the Golding-Cooper Mk1. Early in 1953 he took the car to the Isle of Man for the British Empire Trophy sports car race on the Douglas road circuit. On the first lap Scotsman James Nielson lost control of his Fraser-Nash in a fast left-hander at Cronk-e-Berry. He crashed into an earth bank and the car overturned, throwing the driver out. Barber arrived, managed to avoid the wreck, but could not see the unfortunate Nielson, lying in the road, and hit him. Nielsen was rushed to hospital with multiple injuries, but died soon afterwards.

Ironically, he was a fishmonger from Largs in Ayrshire.

After the accident Barber sold the car and gave up racing, although he reappeared occasionally in 1955 in a Jaguar C-Type.

He stayed in the wholesale fish business until the 1970s, but by then the business was not as profitable as once it had been. The family firm was shut down and Barber went off to live on a boat in the Mediterranean…


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