On this day in Motor Racing's past

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#1066

Post by erwin greven »

Bottom post of the previous page:

Everso Biggyballies wrote: 3 years ago Along with Petty, Earnhardt is probably the only other NASCAR driver name I knew before the internet came along. A sad loss to motorsport.
I picked up a bunch of names by then, because of Eurosport showing several NASCAR races in the 90's.
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#1067

Post by Michael Ferner »

Harry Gant is the one I recall. Oh, and Mark Martin for some reason (and Dick trickle for another :haha:)
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#1068

Post by acerogers58 »

One of the great NASCAR upsets occurred on this day 10 years ago, when Trevor Bayne, who turned 20 years old one day before the race, won the Daytona 500 in just his second Cup series start. It turned out to be his only win in NASCAR’s top division, running part time with the Wood Brothers from 2011-2014, before four lacklustre seasons in the Roush #6 car between 2015-2018. Bayne didn’t race in 2019, focusing on his newly founded business, Mahalo Coffee Roasters, but appeared in 8 truck series races last year, finishing 2nd at Talladega.

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#1069

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#1070

Post by PTRACER »

acerogers58 wrote: 3 years ago
That's huge.
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#1071

Post by DoubleFart »

Amazing that you see an accident like that, and they both survive, whilst Dale Snr dies despite all of the track and car upgrades. I guess the shitty barrier actually absorbed some of the impact and disappeared it rather than containing it in one major impact.
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#1072

Post by PTRACER »

DoubleFart wrote: 3 years ago Amazing that you see an accident like that, and they both survive, whilst Dale Snr dies despite all of the track and car upgrades. I guess the shitty barrier actually absorbed some of the impact and disappeared it rather than containing it in one major impact.
Dale's left seatbelt snapped. His chin hit the wheel and it broke the bones in his neck. I don't know whether he would have otherwise been okay because he refused to wear a HANS device and his helmet was open faced.
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#1073

Post by DoubleFart »

I didn't realise it snapped, I thought he'd simply been wearing them really loose.
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#1074

Post by PTRACER »

DoubleFart wrote: 3 years ago I didn't realise it snapped, I thought he'd simply been wearing them really loose.
One of those dodgy websites released his autopsy report and I read it a few weeks ago. All his injuries were on the left side of his body.

Broken left ribs, fractured left ankle, etc. Most of this occurred with his body being unrestrained in the cockpit.
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#1075

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

4th March 2021 ... It would have been Jim Clark's 85th Birthday today....

Maybe time to tell of his first ever motor race. Many will know it was driving a DKW saloon car on a small Scottish track against much faster cars . He didnt win.

The DKW was neither a sports car nor a very competitive saloon. It was a small two-stroke with a linage going back to the 1930s and although it revived the old Auto Union name and four-ringed symbol, it was based on a design dating back to the 1930s. It had a transverse two-stroke twin-cylinder engine, and a body intended for 1940.

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This account from Motorsport Mag tells of Clarks start in motor racing....

Jim Clark's racing debut: Birth of a Legend
It is 40 summers since Jim Clark was coaxed into making his racing debut at Crimond. David Finlay revisited the site with Ian Scott Watson, the man who did the coaxing...

Standing on a piece of dull Aberdeenshire countryside, shivering against the wind as it blasts off the North Sea, you might not at first realise that there was anything of particular motorsport significance going on, or that the ghost of one of the most remarkable careers in racing history was ‘whispering around you.

More fool you, then. This is Crimond airfield, just beside the village of Crimond and about halfway between Fraserburgh and Peterhead. It’s on what used to be known as the ice cream road, in the days when you bought an ice cream in one town and bet your friends that it wouldn’t have started melting by the time you drove into the other. A feat requiring a very high average speed, this, which is why the Fraserburgh-Peterhead road is now the most Gatso-intensive in Scotland.

Hard driving at Crimond is confined nowadays to the stock car track which takes up about five square feet of airfield ground. 40 years ago an enthusiastic driver or rider had more room to play with, since the perimeter roads were used as the basis of a two-mile circuit on which Aberdeen and District Motor Club regularly held combined race meetings for cars and bikes.

These events are largely forgotten now, but one of them occupies an important place in the sport’s history, because it was at Crimond, on June 16 1956, that future World Champion Jim Clark competed in his first ever circuit race.

Although only 20, he was already making a name for himself in club-level rallies, autotests and sprints at home in the Borders. One of his closest friends on the competition scene was a fellow farmer, Ian Scott Watson, whose unusual DKW Sonderklasse he shared in speed events. This 800cc, three-cylinder, two-stroke saloon had originally appealed to Scott Watson because it featured what at the time was the very rare facility of front-wheel drive, and the version Ian owned in 1956 was his second in what was to become a series of five.

As well as sprinting the car, and navigating for Scott Watson on a number of rallies (not very successfully, because he was no expert on the maps and could be reduced to a quaking mass of nerves whenever Ian had to make up time after a wrong slot), Clark also prepared the DKW at race meetings. Admittedly this amounted to little more than removing the spare wheel and applying numbers to the doors, but Scott Watson was sufficiently grateful to suggest that he take part in the event at Crimond.

This suggestion came about through a combination of chance and subterfuge. Ian would never have considered it for a meeting at Charterhall, since that was too close to home: Clark’s parents, who hated the idea of their son taking up circuit racing, would have heard about it immediately and made their feelings very clear. And in normal circumstances Crimond was too far away about four hours’ drive to the north to think about visiting.

The abnormal circumstance regarding Grimand, though, was that the secretary of the meetings held there was one Noreen Garvie, a cousin of Clark’s, who was keen to see her relative and his friend at one of her events. Ian agreed to enter the handicap race, and since there was no chance – how could there be ? – of Clark’s parents finding out, he quietly persuaded Jim to go out in the sports car event.

As far as results were concerned it wasn’t an auspicious day for either of them. Clark, up against Lotus Elevens and the like in a heavy, underpowered saloon car, finished well down. Scott Watson, who was rather shaken to see that in practice Clark was nearly three seconds quicker than him within five laps of leaving the pits, found that the organisers had also taken this fact on board and promptly handicapped him to smithereens.

June 16 didn’t get much better after that, either. It turned out that Clark wasn’t the only relation Noreen Garvie had attracted to Crimond. A number of other cousins were there, too, and of course they were very excited about seeing one of their clan out on the circuit. News of Clark’s exploits got back to the family home faster than the DKW did, and a reception committee was waiting for the travellers on their return. “In perfect fairness it really was a very good-natured grilling,” Ian said years later, “but I do remember taking the blame and apologising profusely.”

Not much of a day, then, but look what it led to. ‘Who was the world’s greatest racing driver?’ is a pretty fatuous question, but any attempt to answer it invariably involves mention of Clark’s name. It was the Crimond meeting that started the ball rolling – Clark’s parents could hardly object to his starting racing when he had already done so, which removed the principal obstacle to his early career.

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Clark will forever be associated with Lotuses but his debut was in a humbler machine

He still needed an opportunity, though, and that was provided by Ian. Clark’s performance in practice was enough to convince him that he needn’t take competition driving too seriously in future, and although he was an enthusiastic racer for several years afterwards his main efforts were concentrated on helping Clark, first by continuing to lend him cars and later by acting as team manager for Jock McBain’s Border Reivers team, which was re-formed in 1958 largely as a way of pushing Clark on to greater things.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... a-legend-2

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As this Goodwood moment shows, Clark drove everything with the same commitment

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#1076

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

85 years ago today, the the first stock car race took place on Daytona Beach.

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The first stock car race was held at Daytona Beach on March 8, 1936, .....drivers brought their own street-legal open tops, coupes and saloons to the race. The gruelling 3.2-mile course didn’t discriminate against aerodynamic tricks or windshield angle; it simply demanded that a car survive its gruelling, pit-filled sandy turns. Marred with scoring controversy, stalled cars and mid-corner mash-ups, the race was stopped after 72 of the 78 laps, and the $1,700 prize went to driver Milt Marion.

Of course NASCAR has gone on to bigger and better things. Even a non NASCAR follower as me knows the name Bill France......
In 1934, auto mechanic Bill France picked up his family, left Washington, D.C., and headed for Florida. His motive was simple: In Florida, he could work on cars out of the cold and the snow.

Call it luck or call it fate, but France set up roots in Daytona Beach, Fla. In 1936, 85 years ago today, he took fifth place in the town's first stock car race. Unfortunately, the city lost $22,000 on the event and chalked it up as a failure. The race was handed over to the local Elks Racing Club for the following year, but again suffered financial losses and seemed like an ill-conceived idea.

Fortunately for the sport of stock car racing, Bill France stepped in. Along with Charlie Reese, a local restaurant owner, he organized a race and charged a 50-cent admission. They sold 5,000 tickets and split $200 in profits when it was over. A month later they did it again. This time they charged a dollar, and the same number of people showed up. They split $2,200 in profits this time around

I guess the rest is history. Anyway, back to Daytona....

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Just over 20 years later, the beach closed for racing, to be replaced by the asphalt of the Daytona Speedway.
Samarth Kanal tracked down one of the few surviving beach racers in this article published in Motorsport Magazine. Knowing we have a number of NASCAR fans here, @Microsprinter18@acerogers58 who over on the other side of the pond may not get the chance to read Motorsport Mag articles thought I would share it here.
Hershel McGriff can recall how much his ’53 Oldsmobile cost when he picked it up from the factory in Lansing, Michigan: $1800. He can remember how much he was paid for finishing third at Darlington in 1951 ($1500) and how much he should have been paid because he actually finished fourth ($1210).

But McGriff, at 91 years old, is possibly the only living driver who can recall racing on Daytona Beach as well as the fast and vast banks of Daytona International Speedway, which took over hosting the races in 1959.

Ask about the difference in speed between sand and concrete and he laughs: “That’s like me racing you across the state; with you on a bicycle and me in a Lamborghini.” No prizes for guessing which one is faster.

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Daytona Beach racing has worked its way into folklore, and its legacy laid the foundations for the formation of NASCAR, now one of the world’s biggest sporting enterprises. Originally used as a site for land-speed record attempts, Daytona Beach first hosted a circuit race in 1936, when local motorcycle race promoter, Norwegian-born Sig Haugdahl was tasked with designing a 3.2-mile oval course taking in a drag along the sand and the adjacent A1A two-lane coastal road. That first event was largely a disaster. Despite thousands of spectators and a $5,000 prize purse put up by the city, the sandy turns rutted so badly the race had to be stopped after 75 of the 78 laps. The event was a financial drain, not helped by many of those spectators arriving at the beach early to avoid the ticket charge.

It was only when future NASCAR founder and regular stock car racer William (Bill) France Sr stepped in to help Haugdahl for 1937 that the event finally made some progress. After further financial losses, Haugdahl stepped back, leaving France in sole charge for 1938, when he organised two much more successful open-invite events, which finally turned a substantial profit.

It marked the first organisational success for France, who revolutionised American racing during a time of swindling, banditry and smuggling. Moonshine running was still rife, and many early race promoters carved unscrupulous reputations for themselves by promising to pay drivers, only to disappear from their own events early, taking all of the cash with them.

One reason that France was so popular, especially compared to other racing promoters around the country, was that he guaranteed a prize purse; other promoters would sometimes find excuses not to pay the drivers. France guaranteed the purses, and even in the early days he had a $4000 purse – he paid $1000 for a win, $750 for second and $500 for third.

With entries flooding in, Daytona Beach often played host to large packs of powerful cars, all going door to door in front of big crowds. One report from Sports Illustrated captured the atmosphere during a race in 1955. It read: “A giant cloud of sand mushroomed into the blue Florida sky like dust from an exploding bomb. Perched on sand dunes, on grandstands, on the tops of thousands of parked cars, 28,000 spectators strained eyes and ears as the low rumble of 10,000 horsepower pushing 48 of America’s newest and fastest production automobiles swelled to a roar on the backstretch. In double rows, their brightwork masked in heavy tape, windows closed to the brine-filled ocean breeze, the massed cars swept across the starting line”

McGriff’s story really begins in May 1950, when he caught the eye of France when he won the inaugural Carrera Panamerica alongside Ray Elliott. That’s Mexico’s equivalent to the Targa Florio, and McGriff beat the likes of Formula 1 drivers Piero Taruffi and Felice Bonetto to win it.

As a result of meeting France, McGriff began his NASCAR career that same year, when he was invited to compete at Darlington. It was a one-race cameo, but in 1954 he managed to find the funds to compete in the full season – all 24 races. His first race of the season? Daytona Beach.

“Thousands of spectators flocked to this small town to enjoy sun, sea and sand… but holiday could quickly turn to horror,” says McGriff.

“The cars could easily run over those people on the backstretch. They’d go on over the sand dune banks [where people were watching]. I don’t know how they controlled that many people – they charged a couple of bucks to get in, but people would still sneak in from here and there.

“The front stretch was a narrow two-lane asphalt road, where the start/finish line was. The hard part was that, when you came off the sand onto the blacktop, it would dig up the sand so badly – around two-three feet deep. You’d really have to be careful not to get stuck or roll over.”

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The danger was clear from the early days. Korean war veteran-turned-racer Dick Kaufman was the first NASCAR fatality on the Beach, succumbing to head injuries sustained after crashing in 1954. His car was reported to have rolled multiple times having hit one of those three-foot-deep ruts.

Tragedy also struck in 1955 when three spectators were injured in an accident during a Modified Series race for powerful, reworked pre-war coupés. Regular driver Al Briggs was killed in the fiery crash. There were many grave dangers to be found on the beach.

“One of the keys was to know where the sand was hardest – where the waterline was – because you couldn’t go where the sand was too soft as it would slow you down,” McGriff explains. “That was kind of an art, to learn how to do that.

“The beach was a historic drive. Going through the corners in the sand, hitting blacktop, and then getting off the blacktop onto soft sand and then back onto the hard beach. There was no other way to describe it – it was a learning experience every lap but everybody caught on quickly, and we had some really good races.”

The final problem for McGriff during that ’54 debut was the mess that the seagulls made on his windscreen… of course there weren’t wipers or tear-offs on his Oldsmobile. He finished his first race in 12th place, while Lee Petty went on to win.

In fact, only the top three were on the lead lap at the flag.

He remembers a party atmosphere on race weekend. The roads of Daytona would be rammed by traffic jams on the way back, but nothing like the “fender-rubbing” that took place on the beach. Road rage? Sure, but nothing like the post-race pugilism seen at Daytona in later years – such as Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison’s famous fisticuffs at the end of the 1979 event. McGriff maintains that he never got into fistfights. It wasn’t an apt place to make enemies.

He and Petty would go on to score a few 1-2 finishes in ’54 as Petty secured the drivers’ championship and McGriff finished sixth.

“He knew how to drive pretty good because of his experience hauling booze, so drivers like Petty did pretty good on a Sunday at the dirt tracks,” explains McGriff. “There was probably more moonshine running going on than you’ve heard about.”

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But the days of beach racing were numbered. The businessman France had outgrown the sands of Daytona, and something much, much bigger was on the horizon. McGriff was doing promotional work for France’s new series, and his position gave him a unique insight into France’s expanding empire.

“I remember him [Bill France Sr] picking me up and he’d spread blueprints all over the plane. He was studying them intently: they were the blueprints for Daytona Speedway. We flew right over the area where the track was going to be, but he’d not yet accumulated all the land.

“Bill France Sr was looking way ahead. He was one of the greatest guys I ever met, and I learned a lot from him. He never said anything to you that wasn’t important; he didn’t beat around the bush – he just said it like it was and I appreciated all the time that I was able to spend with him, which, in those days, was more time than I spent with anybody else because of our connection that year when I helped him promote his races.”

With a young family, McGriff took a break from the world of NASCAR racing for over a decade, hanging up his helmet in 1954 and not returning until 1967. Racing was a financial burden for him.

In the meanwhile, France had built NASCAR’s third speedway after Darlington and Raleigh (now closed) for the sum of $2.9 million. The first race was run at the new Daytona Speedway on February 20, 1959, for open-roof cars.

More than 40,000 paying spectators attended the Daytona 500 two days later, which came down to Petty and Johnny Beauchamp and ended in a photo finish that required analysis of newsreel footage and stills over three days after the event had finished. Petty was the eventual winner.

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McGriff returned to racing in 1967 at Riverside, and he first got a taste of NASCAR’s concrete jungle in 1973.

“When I first ran Daytona, it was so smooth. I qualified sixth at 185mph, which was really good in those days. That’s the biggest track I’ve ever driven, and it was full of spectators. But you’re definitely glued into the preparation, the rules and I had to focus so hard on the racing – you didn’t notice all of that,” he says.

“Petty knew how to drive good because of his booze hauling”
Yes, the beach was dangerous, but the speeds at Daytona broke fresh ground for many American racing drivers. That became clear even before the first race at the Speedway, when France invited drivers to break the world speed record on a closed racing circuit. The first driver to reach 180mph on Daytona would win $10,000, and bragging rights.

But when double NASCAR national champion Marshall Teague, nicknamed “King of the Beach” for his two wins at Daytona in 1951 and ‘52, attempted the record, he was not prepared for this new challenge at all.

The high banks of the oval got the best of his Sumar Special Indycar, which flipped over at 140mph. Teague was ejected – still in his seat – from the car nearly 500 metres from the spot where he had his accident as Daytona claimed its first casualty before a race had even started.

“There’s no comparison between the beach and the speedway,” reiterates McGriff.

Keen not to travel the length of the country to compete, Daytona veteran McGriff raced in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West – a regional division that was formed in 1954 – until finally retiring in 2012.

But NASCAR had one final surprise for him: last year for his 90th birthday present Bill McAnally Racing gave him the chance to return, to complete a 100-lap K&N Pro race at Tucson.

“I didn’t do very good – I tagged along at the tail end – but it was a great weekend for me, a fantastic weekend and a big celebration with lots of friends from all over the country coming over to watch,” he says.

With that, he became the oldest driver ever to start a NASCAR-sanctioned race. McGriff finished 16th, but it was one hell of a party nonetheless.

Just like the old days, indeed, flat out on Daytona Beach.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... beach-boys


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#1077

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day, March 15th 1981

We (emotionally) lost Colin Chapman when the (twin chassis) Lotus 88 was banned

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In 1981, the year before his death, Colin Chapman’s Lotus colleagues witnessed something incredible...... the most creative racing car designer of the time fell out of love with motorsport.

it was the first and only twin-chassis Formula 1 car. The key feature of the car was the primary chassis which carried out the bodywork and aerodynamics elements, while the secondary chassis, in fact, was inside the primary chassis which, when the car leaves the pit, was basically sucked by the downforce and sealed with the track.

On the Saturday of Long Beach, yet another legal issue arose over the new twin-chassis Lotus 88, designed by Colin Chapman and Martin Ogilvie. A protest was lodged by a majority of the teams, although they did not specify what rules it was breaking. The car was initially approved by the FISA technical staff and passed by the scrutineers, allowing it to take part in Friday practice. Ultimately, however, the teams' appeal was allowed, the car was banned from the rest of the weekend and Lotus had to qualify and race the more conventional Lotus 81.

Convinced that F1 should be a hotbed of technical innovation, Chapman could not accept that the twin-chassis 88 had been declared illegal, and found his passion for racing draining away.

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British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Colin Chapman with Lotus 88
The 88 was born out of the problems with the 80. Peter Wright, technical manager of Team Lotus in 1981/2, recalls a 1980 test of the 80 which brought the issues into focus: “Stephen South was driving and we put steadily stiffer springs on.

We’d got up to something like 2500lb/in when Stephen came in and said that the car would be fantastic if he could only keep his feet on the pedals.”
The stiff springs gave the pitch control necessary to curb the 80’s waywardness, but the deterioration in ride quality was just too much for the driver.

Lotus actually conceived two means of overcoming this. Plan B was active suspension, introduced on the 92 in 1983. Plan A was the 88, which acknowledged the conflicting suspension requirements by incorporating two separate chassis and suspension systems. At its heart was a conventional tub carrying suspension tuned to the needs of the driver. Surrounding this like a gift-wrap box was another chassis that carried the rear wing and the undertray, through which the bulk of the aerodynamic forces would act. This was carried on the wishbones via soft springs that, once the car began to develop significant downforce, would compress on to hard end-stops, lowering the undertray to the optimum height above the track and conveying the aerodynamic forces to where they were needed — the tyres.

As he explains here, Wright remains adamant that the 88 was strictly legal. “The rules banned cars with no suspension, but they hadn’t thought of two suspensions,” he says. “To be honest I think the soft springs were a bit flaky. The rules tried to ban aero forces being fed directly into the unsprung masses, and we were undoubtedly doing that. But if you look at the cars which were allowed for the rest of the year, which dropped down to a lower ride height as they came out of the pits, I don’t think the 88 was any more illegal than those.” But the other teams, scared that Chapman had moved the goalposts once again, connived in its downfall. A complex but practicable design solution was lost, and so too was F1 ‘s foremost original thinker.

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Lotus 88: The road to inspiration
By Peter Wright
“The 88 came about when I was thinking of how to apply ground-effect to road cars, where there aren’t any rules. I came up with an undertray hinged on either side of a central keel and fixed at the outer ends to the bottom wishbones. This way you could keep a consistent gap to the road. Chapman sent Martin Ogilvie and I upstairs to design a racing car based on this approach. We came up with the 86, which used the aluminium tub from the 81. We built a carbon-fibre and Nomex honeycomb body around this, with skirts, and in testing it showed a lot of promise. When FISA banned skirts, we realised that we had the solution to the new rules. Chapman being Chapman got terribly excited, and off we went.”

ImageX-Ray spec Lotus 88

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“Martin Ogilvie and I were testing how stiff the honeycomb was when it broke the inner skin failed and it folded up.” says Wright. “Martin suggested we build the monocoque like that — cut the inner skin, fold it, put a bandage inside and we had a wonderful corner joint. The carbon monocoque was built out of a large, flat sheet. Chapman said the only truly flat thing you can buy is plate glass, and ordered some, but we didn’t have a good release agent and we had to chip the early mouldings off. We got through a few sheets of glass before we found a suitable release agent. We found that crash strength was similar to an aluminium structure, but were worried about the carbon turning to powder, which is why we came up with the woven-in Kevlar although I don’t think it contributed much.”

2
“The first monocoque wasn’t really stiff enough around the cockpit area, so a structural engineer who worked with Chapman on the boats was hauled in to fix it. He put a heavy cuff around the cockpit aperture. and we also put diagonal wraps around it. These made a big difference. McLaren’s solution was more elegant but of course they didn’t make it — Hercules did it in the US — and it took much longer. Ours took four months from concept to first monocoque. And with it being a hand layup, it was cheap and you could easily modify it. Those monocoques are still going strong, being raced by Classic Team Lotus. They were very robust.”

3
“We realised that the first chassis’s suspension needed something with a large offset and a very low rate, so we used gas struts. Once you overcame the preload only a little more speed was needed to use up all the travel. Most of the initial tests involved standing out by hairpins to see if the outer chassis would come up on slow corners. To prevent this we put in very high rebound damping so that it would come down quite easily but take a long time to rise up again. The idea was that it would stay up to the end of the pit road but remain down through the slowest hairpins. Whether we achieved that or not I wouldn’t like to say because we didn’t test it at enough places.”

4
“Cosworth did us a special engine for the 88, relocating some of the pumps down the side. We needed the space because we had a body that was floating around the engine. It was probably the first time an engine had been designed for aerodynamic requirements, so it was the beginning of a trend. When we tested it originally at Jarama in the 86 we had such copious oil leaks that the mechanics called the car the Torrey Canyon, but that was fixed. Chapman would have had to persuade Keith Duckworth to make the changes, so I expect Keith knew all about the car’s design.”

5
“The only aerodynamic element attached to the second, inner, chassis was the front wings. There was an awful lot of front downforce from the body so the front wings were more trim devices than anything. The forces they generated were quite small and they didn’t interact particularly strongly with the ground, so it was acceptable to put them there.”
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... c-lotus-88


Image



Another great article about the car written back in the day by Denis Jenkinson and published in Motor Sport in 1981.

The Lotus 88 - Ingenuity quashed

by Denis Jenkinson
One thing about Colin Chapman and his staff at Ketteringham Hall, the Research and Development centre of Team Lotus, is that they do have a go and do not sit around waiting to see what others are doing before they design a Formula One car. Since they got on to the subject of aerodynamics, with particular reference to the flow of air under the car, at a time when most designers were trying to prevent any air from going under their cars, they have discovered a lot of interesting things about car and air behaviour at high speed. If you are going to look at the passage of a racing car through the air like you do an aircraft, then there are many things which spoil accepted theories. One of these is the exposed and rotating wheels, but rules have forbidden total enclosure on Formula One cars since 1960, so wheel disturbances are something you have to live with in Formula One.

An aircraft in level flight does exactly that, it keeps level, so that the airflow all around it can be considered stable. A racing car does anything but remain level. Under acceleration it takes a nose-up attitude (or tail-down), on corners it rolls and under braking it nose-dives, with the front down and the tail up. All these movements might not be obvious to the casual observer, but experiments with instruments coupled to the various parts of the car show clearly how the space between the underside of the car and the ground varies. When this happens the aerodynamic centre-of-pressure moves and this is bad for aerodynamic stability. For a long time Chapman and his design staff have been worrying about this problem and have been looking for a solution whereby the aerodynamics of a Formula One car could be kept stable, while the mechanical components did what the ground undulations or the dynamics required of them. In other words they wanted to divorce the two parts of the car, the aerodynamic functions and the mechanical functions.

This was the solution they arrived at with the Lotus 88, long before there was any ban on sliding side-skirts. The bodywork and the side-pods were designed to form a single complete unit, consisting of two rigid side-plates running the whole length of the car, joined by three titanium cross-members; these side-plates carried the radiators, with the air exiting at the sides. Attached to the lower edges were the undersides of the side-pods and on the top the upper body surface and this whole structure was mounted on small coil spring/damper units to short links attached to the wheel uprights. Literally inside this structure sat a conventional cockpit monocoque carrying the driver and the fuel tank, the engine and gearbox and the main suspension units, with rocker-arms and wishbones running out to the wheel uprights, this monocoque being made of a new compound of Carbon Fibre and Kevlar. In the original design the side-plates ol the aerodynamic chassis, which Chapman mistakenly called the primary, or first chassis, carried the then legal sliding side-skirts which hung down and rubbed on the ground, thus sealing the channel of air under the car.

With the banning of sliding side-skirts the side-plates of the aerodynamic chassis were set to give the regulation 6 centimetres ground clearance when stationary. This is when the trouble started. It was pretty obvious that at speed the downforce created by the air-flow over and under the aerodynamic chassis was going to press the whole of the bodywork downwards compressing the four mounting springs sufficiently to make them become coil-bound, and thus become solid, then all the down-force was going to be transmitted directly, unsprung, to the wheel uprights, and thus to the tyres, which is the basic object of using down-force. Meanwhile, the mechanical chassis, carrying the driver, engine, gearbox etc., could remain static within the bodywork, until dynamic or road conditions caused the main suspension to work. Since 1970 all aerodynamic effects have had to transmit their down-force to the tyres through the entirely sprung parts of the car, which is to say that aerofoils and fins are not allowed to be attached directly to the wheel uprights. Entirely sprung parts of the car was interpreted as meaning the chassis, though in a Formula One car these days it is not easy to say what the chassis is, with the engine being a major structural part ot the whole car. Chapman said the Lotus 88 had two chassis, the aerodynamic one, which he called the first chassis and the mechanical one which he called the second chassis, but the opposition would not accept that and insisted that it was illegal to transmit the aerodynamic down-force directly to the wheel uprights. There was a lot of confusion over the interpretation of the rules when it came to defining the word chassis, for no-one was quite sure whether the word was meant to be singular or plural, it being the same word in both cases. Most people thought it meant singular, but there was no valid reason to suppose this.

Then the Lotus 88 was attacked on Article 274/3 “Coachwork and Dimensions”, Rule 7 which specifies that any part of the car influencing its aerodynamic performance must be rigidly secured to the entire sprung part of the car and must remain immobile in relation to the vehicle. No-one had defined what the entirely sprung part of the car was, nor had they defined what the vehicle was in the second part. Confusion reigned at Long Beach, again in Brazil and also in Argentina and a lot of people were protesting, some on the principles involved, some on word details, some against the mis-managernent by officials and scrutineers, some on Rule 7 Art. 3, others on aerodynamics acting directly on the wheel uprights. It is important to realise that none of this was involved with dodging the skirt-ban ruling, even though many journalists did not seem to realise this. Meanwhile Gordon Murray of Brabham was deliberately dodging the skirt-ban rule with his hydro-pneumatic suspension, but there was so much flak over the Lotus 88 that many people missed this fact.

A tribunal was held to make an official ruling on the Lotus 88, comprising a group of FIA members not involved with Formula One, and they decided that it was breaking the rules and was illegal. They applied the general rules under Definitions, Article 252, where it says Mechanical components include all parts for the propulsion, suspension, steering and braking and all accessories whether moving or not which are necessary for their normal functioning. It then goes on to say Chassis: Structure of the car which holds mechanical components and coachwork together, coachwork having been defined as, All entirely sprung parts of the car linked by the external air stream, except the safety roll-over structures and the parts definitely associated with the mechanical functioning of the engine, transmission and running gear. It does not say that you cannot have the coachwork on one chassis and the mechanical components on another chassis. The “beefing” by other designers is principally against the aerodynamic down-force being transmitted directly to the wheel uprights, when the small springs become coil-bound (i.e. solid), and not through the car’s main suspension system.

For the moment the Lotus 88 twin-chassis, twin-suspension, first and second chassis car, call it what you will, has been deemed illegal and consequently banned. But we have not heard the last from the men at Ketteringham Hall. Meanwhile everyone is happily cheating on the footnote to Article 274/3 which says, Under no circumstances shall any suspended part of the car be less than 6 cms. from the ground, with the car in its normal racing trim, the driver on board. . . If corrections of suspension height can be made with the car in motion, the conditions defined above must be respected with the adjustment at the lowest static position usable in racing.

At Imola the official observers on the fast parts of the circuit said that “everyone, but everyone, had the sides of the coachwork touching the ground”. If everyone cheats then it is all right. I really do not see what all the fuss was about over the Lotus 88. The really pathetic part of the whole affair was to hear Chapman’s “friends” in FOCA say “if it’s accepted, we’ll have to copy it”. Had they said “if it’s accepted we’ll have to find a way of beating it” I would have gone along with them.

As it is the Formula One Constructors’ Association (FOCA) has split itself apart and can be considered dead and buried, apart from running a useful Travel Agency, providing they like your face and you have cash in your hand. — D.S. J.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... ty-quashed

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#1078

Post by Michael Ferner »

Ahh, the Lotus 88. And again, the nonsense about the "twin chassis" or "double chassis" gets repeated. But, of course, the "aerodynamic chassis" is not a chassis at all, but bodywork attached directly to the unsprung masses, which was expressly forbidden ever since the spectacular wing failures on the Lotus 49Bs at Barcelona in 1969 because it is a very dangerous thing to do. And everybody forgets that the idea didn't work, the Lotus 88 never recorded even remotely competitive lap times, not in testing and not during the very few practice sessions where it was allowed to run. De Angelis was once quoted as saying that he was very happen when the 88 was banned, because only then did Lotus start trying to be competitive again.
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#1079

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day 16th March 2001

Sportscar racing lost one of it's greatest talents 20 years ago today when "Brilliant" Bob Wollek was knocked from his bicycle after practice and prior to the Sebring 12 Hours.

Wollek had continued a tradition of cycling between the circuit and his accommodation. While he had been riding close to the edge of the pavement, he was struck from behind by a van driven by an elderly driver from Okeechobee, Florida at approximately 4:30 p.m. He was transported to Highlands Regional Medical Center in Sebring and was pronounced dead on arrival.

Wollek was due to start in the Petersen Motorsports Porsche 996 GT3-RS with Johnny Mowlem and Michael Petersen, however out of respect the car was withdrawn from the race. On race day, the organizers held a one-minute silence in memory of Wollek.

Prior to his death, he announced he would retire from racing to serve as an ambassador for Porsche, and was due to sign this agreement upon returning home after Sebring.

How 'Brilliant' Bob Wollek lived up to his nickname


The Frenchman was a couple of months short of his 58th birthday, and yet he was still competing at the sharp end of international sportscar racing.

The quirky demeanour of the guy and the longevity of a career that only ended with his senseless death, when he was knocked off his bicycle ahead of the Sebring 12 Hours 20 years ago today, are essential building blocks of the legend of Bob Wollek. So too, of course, are the four victories at the Daytona 24 Hours, but probably not quite as important as the failure to win the Le Mans 24 Hours outright over the course of 30 attempts spanning five decades.

Wollek never quite managed to crack it at sportscar racing’s big one, but he came close on multiple occasions. He was on the overall podium no fewer than six times, had a pole position, and also notched up four class wins, though two of them were more or less meaningless, coming as they did in the days in the second half of the 1990s when GT1 and LMP machinery battled for outright honours. Another class win, on his final participation in the 24 Hours in 2000, was lost in the scrutineering bay.

In addition to the four Daytona victories, he won once at Sebring, and claimed 11 wins in world championship endurance racing and a total of nine in IMSA’s Camel GT Championship. Then there were two titles and 24 race victories in the German DRM sportscar series. The only things missing from his CV were a world title and that elusive Le Mans triumph.


To describe Wollek as being one of the best sportscar drivers of his generation isn’t quite right, because his career spanned multiple generations. That much is clear when you scroll down the list of team-mates with whom he drove at Le Mans: Patrick Depailler, Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, Jacky Ickx, Stefan Johansson, Jorg Muller and Lucas Luhr were among his co-drivers at the 24 Hours. But what is correct is the bit about him being one of the best.

Image 1978 Le Mans 24hrs.
And probably one of the strangest. Wollek could come across as cold, arrogant and aloof. That explains why, although loved by many, he wasn’t universally popular in the paddock. He was a Marmite person: you either liked him or you didn’t.

He wasn’t one to glad-hand sponsors, nor even give them the time of day if the mood didn’t take him. Achim Stroth, longtime team manager at the Kremer squad with which Wollek built his reputation in sportscars in the 1970s, remembers the team winning the Suzuka 1000Km with its star driver and Henri Pescarolo in 1981.

“Bob shook hands with everybody on the podium and left, leaving Henri to read out a speech that went on for 10 minutes, thanking the track, the sponsors, the crowd and, it seemed, everyone who was there,” recalls Stroth. “That was the difference between their characters. Bob didn’t care about all that stuff.”

Wollek was outspoken, for the most part in a dry, laconic way, his words usually delivered with that crinkle of a smile for which he was known. He said it how it was, or at least how he thought it was
It was probably to the detriment of Wollek’s career. He first raced for the Porsche factory at Le Mans in 1978, sharing a 936 with Ickx and Jurgen Barth (pictured above). He was back again with the Group 6 machine the following year but, when the German manufacturer brought the 936 out of mothballs for 1981 as it prepared for its Group C entry with what became the 956 the following year, he wasn’t part of the set-up. Wollek would race again for the factory as early as 1986, but he missed out on the glory years for its Rothmans-sponsored Group C machines with the likes of Ickx, Derek Bell and Jochen Mass driving.


Manfred Jantke, Porsche motorsport boss at the time, can’t specifically recall why he overlooked Wollek when he was putting together his squad for 1981 and beyond. But he does remember the kind of driver he wanted on the programme.

“I was looking for drivers with personality, who were good with the public, the press and sponsors,” Jantke recalls. “That wasn’t Bob, although he was a driver I absolutely trusted.”

Image 1988 Le Mans 24hrs.
Wollek didn’t endear himself to everyone. Kevin Jeannette, crew chief on Preston Henn’s Swap Shop Porsche when Wollek notched up the first of his Daytona wins in 1983, doesn’t pull his punches when talking about the Frenchman.

"He could be an arsehole, but the way I looked at it, he was my arsehole, because he was driving my car," says Jeannette. "He would rub people up the wrong way, but then you have to have a certain amount of attitude to be a great race car driver.”

Wollek was outspoken, for the most part in a dry, laconic way, his words usually delivered with that crinkle of a smile for which he was known. He said it how it was, or at least how he thought it was. That explains his use of the f-word on network TV in the US at Daytona 1983. Some believe that he made history as the first person do so.

He’d just handed over his Porsche 935L, the Andial-built ‘Moby Dick’ copy developed for the previous season, that he’d been slowly hauling up the order in difficult conditions after early delays. He came into the pits on Sunday morning, strapped the next man in, and turned around to see Preston Henn and Claude Ballot-Lena, his two team-mates at the start of the race, standing on the pit counter.

It fell to Jeannette to tell him that Henn had added AJ Foyt to the line-up after the Indycar superstar’s Nimrod-Aston Martin had dropped out of the race: “I said it was AJ Foyt, and you could tell Bob was livid.”

A split second later Wollek had a TV camera in his face and a microphone under his nose, and was being asked what he felt about having a real life living legend in Foyt alongside him in the car. “Who the f*** is AJ Foyt?” was his famous reply.

Jeannette can’t praise Wollek the driver highly enough. “He was definitely one of the best I ever worked with,” he says. “I won’t say who I think the very best was, but Bob was definitely on the same page.”

Wollek was an all-round package as a sportscar driver. He had a deep understanding of the discipline: he didn’t make mistakes; he knew how to get through the traffic; he was technically strong; and he could eke out a tankful of fuel beyond most of his rivals and team-mates. Nor should there be any doubting his outright pace – witness his Le Mans pole position at the wheel of a Lancia LC2 in 1984.

Image Lancia LC2 Le Mans 1984

“Bob understood that if he wanted to win races, the other drivers in the car had to be quick as well as him,” says Stroth. “He would set up the car so they could drive it quickly, too. That was a big part of his success.”

Stefan Johansson backs up Stroth’s comments. The Swede had one international sportscar race to his name when he started driving with the Joest Porsche team in 1983 for a campaign with one of the first customer 956s that yielded victory for Wollek in the European Endurance Championship. He found his team-mate to be an able and willing teacher.

“He taught me all the little tricks that would have taken years’ worth of mistakes to learn for myself,” says Johansson. “One of the things I remember most is how he explained how to pace myself over a 24-hour race when we got to Le Mans. He showed me the importance of distributing your energy over the whole race.

“He could see the big picture. He’d been around long enough to not let his ego get in the way of trying to achieve a good result. He was the team leader, but he wasn’t always demanding the fresh tyres and wanting to do the qualifying.”

The serenity with which Wollek carried himself transferred onto the race track.

“He made very limited errors,” explains Stroth. “I think the reason for that was that you couldn’t upset him out on the track. He was very calm. That helped a lot in traffic.”

Famed Porsche engineer Norbert Singer, the architect of the 935 and 956/962, still marvels at Wollek’s technical nous.

“Sometimes we’d be doing set-up work at the test track at Weissach, and we’d make a change and he’d come straight back in and tell us we needed to do this or do that,” recalls Singer, who became firm friends with Wollek. “I’d reply that the tyres hadn’t even got up to temperature, so how could he tell what the car was doing? He’d say ‘trust me’; I don’t actually remember one time when he was wrong. Bob once told me he could feel what the car was doing before he got to the end of the pitlane.”

Image Wolleck with Norbert Singer

Wollek wasn’t a trained engineer, but he had an intuitive feel for what the car was doing underneath him. Maybe it was because he started out as a skier, and a successful one at that: he bagged a trio of gold medals at the 1966 Winter Universiade in Italy. He’d already done the Mont Blanc Rally a couple of times when he failed to make the French national squad ahead of the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble and swapped sports, entered the Volant Shell Scholarship organised at Le Mans, and then progressed into Formule France single-seaters.

Singer isn’t sure that Wollek’s previous sporting experience played a part in his technical understanding. “I think it’s something you’re born with,” he says. “You either have it or you don’t.”

Nor did he truly ever understand Wollek’s ability to stretch a tankful of fuel. “I can only say that it was all in little details,” says Singer. “He never explained how he did it, but he would sometimes look at what another driver was doing and tell me that it was completely wrong for the consumption.”

Wollek’s undoubted talents resulted in the ‘Brilliant Bob’ nickname that gained traction through the 1980s. The origins of the moniker are generally reckoned to lie with Autosport, and its former editor and sportscar correspondent Quentin Spurring.

Spurring recalls somehow describing Wollek’s brilliance at the wheel of a Kremer Porsche 935 in his report of the 1978 Silverstone 6 Hours, and then a sub-editor seizing on his words and coming up with ‘Brilliant Bob’ for a photo caption. A flick through the relevant magazine reveals the phrase “the brilliant Bob Wollek” – note the lower case first ‘b’ – in his copy but not the caption he remembers. That suggests there might have been an earlier usage in Autosport or elsewhere.

Wollek maintained his brilliance into his dotage. You’ll find a line of drivers to tell you that they could never match the pace in the slow corners of a team-mate perhaps as much as 30 years their senior.

“We were doing a test at Jerez with the GT1 car at the beginning of 1997 when Porsche was trying to figure out what to do with me,” recalls Allan McNish. “I was quick, but I couldn’t match the fastest guy on the day at the hairpin at the end of the back straight. That guy was Bob, who was older than I am now.

“He had this ability to let the car float around a hairpin and reproduce it lap after lap. He could take a tenth out of me every time. In the end I gave up trying to figure it out and had to brave it out in the fast stuff to gain back the time.”

Image

Johnny Mowlem was Wollek’s final team-mate: they were meant to contest the full American Le Mans Series in 2001 at the wheel of a Petersen/White Lightning Porsche 911 GT3-R. Their only race together before Wollek was knocked off his bike the day before round two at Sebring came at the Texas Motor Speedway series opener. Mowlem, who was starting his second full season in the ALMS, was surprised to find that his veteran team-mate could match his times around the ‘roval’.

“I was 32 and he was 57, and he was exactly the same speed as me,” recalls Mowlem. “He was one or two tenths faster in the slow-speed corners, and there were a lot of them at Texas. I mentioned this to Sascha Maassen [who’d driven with Wollek at the Dick Barbour Racing Porsche team the previous season], and he said, ‘Yeah, get used to it’.”

The length of Wollek’s career appears preposterous today, and was even by the standards of the day. Most remarkable was his record at Le Mans beyond the age of 50. He was second three times, first in 1995 with Courage Competition and then with the Porsche factory in 1996 and 1998 with the first 911 GT1 and the carbon-chassis 911 GT1-98. He could have won any of those races, and perhaps in 1997 as well, though that year his own mistake put the GT1 Evo he was driving out of the race.

A lot of hard graft was put in by Wollek to ensure he stayed at the top of his game. McNish found out about his famed fitness during a test at the Hungaroring in the summer of 1997.

Each June he would cycle from his home in Strasbourg to Le Mans, claiming that he carried nothing more than his cycling gear, a credit card and mobile phone. It was his way of clearing his head before sportscar racing’s big one
“It was stinking hot and Bob would peel himself out the seat and be able to get back in,” he recalls. “We youngsters had to be dragged out and then resuscitated. Bob had an amazing resilience.”

Wollek took up cycling seriously in the late 1980s when the legacy of a skiing injury stopped him from playing football, previously his preferred means of staying fit. His training regime is known to have taken in Tour de France stages, and each June he would cycle from his home in Strasbourg to Le Mans, claiming that he carried nothing more than his cycling gear, a credit card and mobile phone. It was his way of clearing his head before sportscar racing’s big one.

Singer recounts a story from near the end of Wollek’s life. Porsche decided to send its contingent of factory drivers to the fitness camp run by Willi Dungl, the guru behind Niki Lauda’s double-quick return to the race track after his fiery accident in the 1976 German Grand Prix. Wollek didn’t want to go, insisting he was fit enough. Porsche Motorsport boss Herbert Ampferer asked Singer to persuade his friend to attend. Wollek duly made the trip to the Austrian Alps.

ImageBob Wolleck 1988
“I asked him afterwards how it went, and Bob said, ‘You know, OK’,” recalls Singer. “Then one of the young drivers, I can’t remember who, came into my office and told me that Bob was so fit that he broke one of Dungl’s cycling machines!”

In the latter stages of his career, Wollek bought a kart and practised regularly at a track close to his home.

“Bob realised that his reactions were slowing down,” says Singer. “He wanted to work on them. He explained that everything happened very quickly in a go-kart, so driving one was a good way of staying sharp.”

Wollek claimed to have not a single trophy from his racing career at home and told your writer that he wasn’t fussed about not winning Le Mans. It wouldn’t define him, he insisted in an interview at the end of 1999. The photographs of him crying as he stood on the second step of the podium with Muller and Uwe Alzen the previous year suggested he did care, and deeply so.

And as for not defining him, that’s probably not correct either. His failure to win at the biggest race of his chosen discipline only adds to the mystique that surrounds Brilliant Bob Wollek.

Image
Bob Wolleck 1992 Le Mans 24hr.
https://www.autosport.com/wec/news/why- ... t/5754327/

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#1080

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day 7th April 1968

Jim Clark was tragically killed at Hockenheim on this day 53 years ago.


Image

Image

His legend as one the best – perhaps the best – drivers in F1 will remain undimmed. Many (myself included) consider Jim as the ultimate GOAT. Without doubt, Jim Clark is remembered just as fondly for his relationships with colleagues and friends as he is for his driving.


ImageJack Brabham (Brabham-Repco), Graham Hill and Jim Clark (both Lotus-Ford) before the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix in Spa-Francorchamps.

Image

With that in mind, David Tremayne spoke to those who knew him best as they recounted stories of 'Jimmy' from on and off the track. (Article dated April 1993
The hamlets of Chirnside and Duns nestle into the mellow countryside of Scotland’s Border region, mere miles from the northernmost boundary of England. The homesteads have names such as Mill Farm, West Fouldron, New Mains. Or Jim Clark’s Edington Mains.

This was the haven from which the reluctant racer sallied forth on his forays to the far reaches of the motorsport world – to Zandvoort, Warwick Farm, Surfers Paradise, Mexico City, Indianapolis, Milwaukee. It was the anchor which kept his feet so firmly on the ground. The region that he loved, wherein lived the people he loved most. The area from which his calling tore him as he indulged his love for the sport at which he was such a consummate master.

Early this month the townsfolk of Duns and Chirnside paid their tribute to their greatest son, in ceremonies to mark the 25th anniversary of his passing at Hockenheim on April 7 1968.

Once again the conversations turned, as they so often do here, to the brilliance of his star, and the comparisons with Jim Clark and those who went before and who have come since were as inevitable as they were enjoyable. Through it all he stands as he did in life, as a Colossus of the sport whose name will forever be remembered with fondness, not just for what he did, but for what he was. Indeed, the more the sport ‘progresses’ the more Clark’s example continues to shine.

To many he remains the greatest racing driver of all time, not just because of his strike rate of 25 Grand Prix victories in only 72 attempts, nor even his Indianapolis 500 success, but because he remained an unspoiled gentleman throughout, the true sporting hero.

Peter Windsor first met Clark in Australia during the Tasman series, as he helped out Geoff Sykes running Warwick Farm. Since then his artistry with a pen or typewriter brought acclaim as a journalist on the international Grand Prix circuit, before he moved into the management side with Williams and, currently, in CART racing. For Windsor Jim Clark was everything. Without question the greatest of all time. The ultimate hero.

“Even now,” he says, “I can’t imagine just how good Jimmy was.” And suddenly you conjure up mental images of what he might have done with a Lotus 72 in 1970. Or 1972 or ’73 . . . Of how many more races he might have won.

“When I was a kid at school,” says Peter, “Jimmy Clark was my life. I addressed envelopes, that sort of thing, for Geoff. Jimmy came out for the 1965 Tasman series and through Geoff I found out what flight he was on from South Africa and I rang Qantas and got the list of passengers – Mr J Clark, Mr P Rodriguez, Mr J Stewart! – and went to meet them at the airport.

“In 1968, after Longford, where Piers Courage won, Jimmy was due to fly back to London and I went to see him off. The ‘plane taxied off and then stopped. Everyone else left, but I hung around to see it take off, and it didn’t. I forget what was wrong but they came back in, and there I was, alone with Jim Clark! We had coffee together and talked for half an hour. About all sorts of things, although funnily enough I felt like I already knew so much about him I nearly had nothing to say.

“I asked him all sorts of minutiae, like why did he use a dark blue peak on his helmet in Mexico in 1966, instead of the usual white one, and he told me he’d broken the white one the race before and Buco only made dark blue peaks. After a while he had to go, and that was the last time I saw him. Four months later he was killed.”

Windsor looked after a bank account Clark had opened in Sydney, another indication of the trust Jimmy would place in people he liked. Later, the journalist would acquire Ian Scott-Watson’s old Lotus Elan when he finally came to England, and he became a regular visitor at Duns.

Today he will talk for hours about his hero, as convinced as ever of his place in history. “Jimmy was my whole life,” says an arch-enthusiast. “I was physically ill when he was killed. It took me a long, long time to get over it.”

But what made Jim Clark so special? Talk to any of the myriad motorsport people who were closely associated with him, and the same fact emerges. Yes, he won 25 times in his 72 GP starts, started from pole position a record 33 times and set fastest lap in 28 races. The records he set have only recently been beaten. Yes, he scored that Indianapolis 500 victory in 1965, and should have won it in 1963, ’64 and ’66 too. Yet it was not simply that he possessed an innate skill behind the wheel that elevated him to at least an equal standing with the greatest racing drivers of history.

Far beyond that he exuded charm and manners that reflected his upbringing. Many thought him shy, but reserved was a better adjective. It was only when he felt relaxed with people that he felt comfortable, when he would really open up. Fundamentally his enormous talent bemused him, and although he unquestionably liked to show off in a car, he never stooped to posturing or boastfulness. Though he won races around the globe, came to meet the glittering and the famous, his feet remained firmly on the ground, his heart in the farmland of the Border region.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... ril-7-1968

* I started life with nothing, and still have most of it left


“Good drivers have dead flies on the side windows!” (Walter Röhrl)

* I married Miss Right. Just didn't know her first name was Always
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Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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