Remembering the fallen

[erwin greven]

Bottom post of the previous page:

[MonteCristo]

Oh, no.

That one really hurts.

Enjoy the media centre up in heaven, Robin.

[erwin greven]

Ton van Genugten died on Thursday at the age of 38 after a fatal industrial accident. He fell into a manure silo and emergency services could not free him quickly enough from his situation.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Ton van Genugten died on Thursday at the age of 38 after a fatal industrial accident. He fell into a manure silo and emergency services could not free him quickly enough from his situation.

Sounds awful

RIP Ton van Genugten

[hollie3sa]

Gordon Spice has passed away.

BTCC LEGEND GORDON SPICE PASSES AWAY

Everyone involved with the British Touring Car Championship is sad to hear the news that Gordon Spice has passed away at the age of 81.

Spice is rightly regarded as a BTCC legend, and his name is synonymous with the Ford Capri in particular. He took top class honours in the series between 1976 and 1980, taking 25 wins, but such was the scoring system at that time that the overall crown often went to those in lower performing classes.

Gordon also took podiums at the world famous Le Mans 24 Hours and went on to create Spice Engineering, which became a well-known entrant in the World Sportscar Championship. He won the C2 Class of the World Championship in 1988.

We would all like to send our heartfelt condolences to Gordon’s family, friends and colleagues within the wider motorsport family.

https://www.btcc.net/2021/09/10/btcc-le ... GgrE4NUzVo

[Everso Biggyballies]

Very sad news and indeed a legend
RIP

[erwin greven]

RIP. I know him from Spice Engineering. Build very good C2 cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Engineering

[Everso Biggyballies]

RIP. I know him from Spice Engineering. Build very good C2 cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Engineering

There was a bit more to Gordon than just the C2 days..... He was quite an allrounder in from tin tops to F5000 (and obviously the Sports Car days

My memories of him go back to the mid 70's when I was involved in BTCC and ETC. Happy days.
A bit more about him


Gordon Spice


He was sacked from a £10-per-week job – by his own father – and never saw the point of gyms, but that didn’t prevent him standing on the podium at Le Mans....


This is an article with Gordon Spice from Motorsport Magazines "Lunch with..." series

For a driver who claims motor racing was only ever second to his commercial activities, Gordon Spice’s track record is striking. He never won Le Mans, but twice finished third and notched up a few class victories. He never won the British Saloon Car Championship outright, but took several class titles. He was thrice crowned in the Group C2 division of the World Sports Car Championship, cars bearing his name conquered many an endurance race on both sides of the Atlantic and he won the last major event on the original Spa road circuit, complete with Masta Kink. He also thought it a good idea to graduate directly from Minis to Formula 5000: it wasn’t, though he did eventually score a race win.

To explain his rationale, he invites us to meet him at La Cloche, a French restaurant within The Carpenters Arms, a traditional country pub in Sunninghill, Berkshire. Now a trim 76, Spice starts with Serrano ham and melon before moving on to steak frites, washing them down with a single Virgin Mary and a few glasses of still water.

By his own admission, Spice had a privileged upbringing. On their respective 21st birthdays, he and older brother Derek were given cars. “It had to be black,” he said, “and I could choose between an Austin A40 and a Mini. Derek already had an A40 and had started souping it up while on national service in Holland. When he returned he fitted a Downton F3 engine and began racing it at Goodwood. One day he asked if I’d like to have a go during a test session and I thought it was terrific fun, so I decided to try racing.”

Gordon’s A40 was soon written off, when rear-ended on the Chiswick flyover, and he used the insurance settlement to buy an MG TF. “That was an absolute disaster,” he says. “I entered four races in 1962, qualified for only two and didn’t finish either, so I got no signatures on my licence.

“I was working for my father at the time as a chocolate salesman. My feeling was that I shouldn’t have to use my birthday present as a company car and that he should buy me something better for business use, which he did. That year he paid me £10 a week and sixpence a mile, so the fuel allowance was more profitable than the salary. I used to jack the car up and wind the odometer forwards to claim more miles, and thus more money for racing, but Dad caught me at it one morning, so quite rightly fired me. That forced me to find another way to make a living and I ended up selling encyclopaedias. In the space of three months I’d accumulated about £5000 – a huge amount at the time, especially for somebody who had been on a tenner a week. I sold quite a few, they weren’t cheap and the commission was good.

Driving a 1-litre Mini for the Arden team, Spice was a class-winning seventh in the 1968 British Saloon Car Championship

“That gave me enough to buy a Morgan Plus Four and go racing, but I soon realised I knew bugger all about it so went to work for Morgan specialist Chris Lawrence on a voluntary basis. I was allowed to prepare my car there and benefit from his expertise, because in those days you had to change a Morgan’s stub axle pretty much every time you went out. That was how I got into proper racing. For 1964 I put an SLR body on it, but wrote the car off first time out at Goodwood – I crashed at the chicane when the wall was still made of bricks. That was pretty much the end of my Morgan career, but I’d learned a lot.”

Lawrence was also involved in the Deep Sanderson Le Mans project, in which Spice got to make his Le Mans debut in 1964. “Hugh Braithwaite was the nominated lead driver and I was only a reserve,” he says, “but Hugh was fairly well established by then and after one practice lap he decided he wasn’t driving it, so I was in. Chris ran out of water during the first hour, and in those days you weren’t allowed to top up until you’d done a certain distance, so the car was disqualified.”

Spice had invested personally in the Deep Sanderson project, but promised money from elsewhere never materialised, Lawrence was badly injured in a road accident after the race and Spice returned to the UK to discover he needed to sort out various creditors. “That was all going very nicely until Chris reappeared one weekend and took away all the stock and equipment – he wasn’t my favourite person at that point and I called in the receiver.

“One of the creditors had been Downton Engineering, so I called [co-owner] Bunty Richmond, told her what had happened and explained that no more payments would be forthcoming as the company had been wound up. She asked whether I’d like a job – they offered me a role as sales manager, which is how I got into driving Minis. I was on a wage plus commission, but I really wanted to race so asked if they would lend me engines to use in my Mini at the weekend if I took a slightly lower salary. I hadn’t actually bought a Mini at that point, but knew Downton encouraged their employees to race, as a sort of test-bed – and that’s what happened. Throughout my Mini days I was very much aided by Daniel and Bunty Richmond because I had free engines – even after I left at the end of 1965 to start my own accessory business.


1972-Kitchmac-Silverstone
Steps up to F5000 in 1972. He raced the Kitchmac – a modified McLaren M10B

“I raced Minis for three seasons as a privateer in the British Saloon Car Championship. At Brands Hatch once, I think in ’66, I knew Jim Clark would lap me at some point in his Cortina. I’d never been in the same race as him before and he was a real hero of mine, so when I saw him coming up behind I left lots of room as I was turning in to Paddock. I was so busy watching his wheel-waving antics, so in awe, that I got on the marbles and whacked into the sleepers. That was the end of my season, all because I was watching Jim Clark.

“When I started to get better results, Daniel Richmond said to me, ‘Look, we can go on lending engines but you mustn’t beat the works cars’ – they were using Downton motors, too. I was very aware of that in the first race of 1967, supporting the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, and the factory drivers had been having all sorts of trouble so I found myself in the lead. I waited for John Rhodes – made it quite obvious, actually – and let him through, but John Handley was nowhere to be seen so I finished second. I’d done my best, but you never know the repercussions so I went to see the main trade suppliers – we relied on people like Dunlop and Champion, who were the main supporters of saloon car racing back then. I pointed out that I had a car that could beat the works Minis, though I wasn’t supposed to, so asked if I could be paid the same bonus for finishing third as I would if I won. To my surprise they agreed – and as they had a healthy bonus scheme that was very profitable. That was how I could afford it – and it justified what I was doing because I’d always felt a bit guilty about racing as I was primarily a businessman, which remained the case throughout my career.

“When I launched my accessories company the timing was very lucky. In the 1960s, remember, cars were very sparsely equipped – they didn’t always have things like wing mirrors, aerials, interior mirrors or heaters… They were incredibly basic and my shop in Ashford exploited this. And because of my weekend activities I also got involved in selling racewear – the RAC MSA had brought in all sorts of rules after Peter Procter’s fiery accident at Goodwood in 1966. It became mandatory to wear properly protective clothing, so we began selling overalls, fire extinguishers, helmets and all that sort of stuff. We operated as a retailer for about a year, and then we went wholesale. It was a one-stop cash-and-carry – and for all the glamorous stuff such as crash helmets we also had anti-freeze and all the other crap that went with car accessory shops.

“It was also quite good to have someone with a bit of racing experience – me, basically – floating around the shop to chat to customers. They loved it. I could tell them that such and such was the best helmet with some credibility. Go and look for a car accessory shop today and all you can find is Halfords, which I consider to be rather expensive. Every town used to have an accessory shop or two, because people used to do DIY maintenance as they couldn’t afford garage prices. That’s all gone by the board with modern cars.”

1975-F5000-Snetterton
Spice’s Lola T332 ahead of Richard Scott’s newer T400 at Snetterton, a couple of weeks before the test accident that ended his season

For 1968 he joined Jim Whitehouse’s Arden team to race a 1.0-litre Mini in the BSCC and ended the season as class champion, which earned him a chance to race a Britax-backed Downton-run works Cooper S the following season. “I suggested that Arden hire Alec Poole to replace me,” he says, “which they duly did… and he went on the take the title outright. I often remind him that he owes me for that.

“I had another decent year in ’69 – and a spin-off from that was that I got to meet José Juncadella, who had taken on the Cooper concession for Spain. I did quite a lot of the initial testing for them and he asked whether I’d like to share his ex-Paul Hawkins Ford GT40 in a few races.

“Driving it should have been a culture shock after a Mini, but I found it much easier – and far less physical. It just went where you pointed it, a wonderful feeling. There was quite a healthy sports car championship in Spain at the time and many of the locals had stars driving with them. I was very much a non-star, but Alex Soler-Roig had Jochen Rindt sharing with him and there was a lot of competition. I got plenty of seat time, too, because Juncadella was only really interested in doing the start and the finish – he thought the bits in between were boring, which was terrific for me because I was getting the practice I needed. He’d phone up out of the blue and say, ‘Are you free this weekend? Come over.’ He’d always send me a first-class ticket – I’m not sure he knew any other class existed.”

At this stage, aged 29, Spice’s career took an unforeseen diversion. “I’d decided that I really fancied making a go of racing – so in 1970 I tried to tackle the European F5000 Championship on my way to F1, although that plan didn’t quite work out. I drove the Kitchiner K3A and managed about half a season before running out of money. Our budget – which included buying both chassis and engine – was £1500. It was a clever little car, but very unreliable: with its short wheelbase it was a bit like driving a Mini, in that you could throw it sideways to slow it down. We got some results though, including a fourth at Monza. I was also racing an Arden Mini in the BSCC, on the understanding that F5000 took precedence, but by then I’d rather lost interest in Minis if I’m honest. I did it because I said I would.”

For 1971 he acquired a McLaren M10B that Howden Ganley had raced successfully the previous season. “They were offering good start money for the Argentine GP,” he says, “a non-championship race that admitted F5000 cars. I just had to finish both heats, because the prize money was so good, and I took Tony Kitchiner with me as my mechanic. Halfway through the second heat my neck went – I was never all that fit. The challenge was just to keep the car on the track, so it was a matter of survival. I came back loaded, which kept me going for that season.

1975-MM-Capri-Spa-24-hrs
Spice teamed up with Peter Clark to take class victory and fifth overall in 1975 Spa 24 Hours

“I knew nothing about the mechanical side of racing, but Tony reckoned he could do a better car and for 1972 the modified M10B ended up as the Kitchmac. He was a lovely man and a total enthusiast, but I think he was working very much on gut feeling rather than science.” The car obtained some decent results – including a fourth at Mallory and a sixth at Silverstone – before he ran out of funds.

“I’d more or less given up on racing after my failed attempts at F5000,” Spice says, “but a chap working for me at the time – Ernie Ungar – had come from Ford in a bid to bring some discipline to our company. He introduced me to a friend of his, Stan Robinson, who owned Wisharts Garage in County Durham and wanted to go racing. He asked if I’d like to drive a Capri for him in production saloon racing and that was the start of my long Capri association.

“We did reasonably well that year and I suppose one of the highlights was finishing second to James Hunt’s Camaro on the Tour of Britain. I knew James well and thought he was a bit unsporting on that occasion, because we were quite close and the final stage was a hillclimb, which he ran on foot beforehand. I thought that was completely outside the spirit of the thing, because I couldn’t have walked it let alone run it. He consequently knew which way the corners went, and won.

“I enjoyed the Tour of Britain while it lasted – and it really highlighted the difference between racing and rally drivers. One year I was on a foggy forest stage and knew Ari Vatanen was starting behind me, so I thought I’d wait for him to come by and then track him – but he came flying past and within 10sec had vanished. That illustrated how much better the rally drivers were. I thought I might at least have been able to follow, but there was no way. I couldn’t see a bloody thing…”

Inspired by results, Robinson decided to step up to the BSCC for 1974… with a Plymouth Hemicuda. The car never worked properly, though, and Spice rarely appeared. And then he took a holiday in Portugal.

“While I was there I met a chap called Chris Reed, who would pop down to the local post office to wire some money to Hexagon Racing whenever they needed it. They were short of £10,000 to run John Watson in the Canadian Grand Prix. I asked how often he’d been doing this and he said he was able to afford it, at which point my ears pricked up. When I told him I was a failed F5000 driver, he asked whether I’d like to try my hand at F1. I didn’t think I was quite at that level, but I did say I’d like a proper crack at F5000. He was up for it, so we bought a second-hand Lola T332 – quite a good car, but I was still basically a businessman competing against serious drivers who were doing this on a full-time basis.”


Spice shared the Dome RL with Chris Craft, but a lack of tyre temperature meant it was a handful at Le Mans

There was a risk that round two at Oulton Park might be cancelled, following a heavy snowfall, but marshals and volunteers cleared the circuit and the race began in bright conditions on a track surrounded by banks of snow that had been melting awhile. “The organisers suggested we should try wets, but I went out on slicks because I didn’t think I had time to change tyres. There was absolutely no grip, though, so I came in to switch to wets while most of the others – who hadn’t felt comfortable on wets – did the opposite. Wets were the right call – I think Teddy Pilette was on them, too, and led initially. When he dropped out I found myself in the lead – that was my first major international victory.”

During the summer, however, his season – which he was dovetailing with a Capri drive in the BSCC – ended brutally.

“I was testing the Lola at Mallory and didn’t realise a front tyre was deflating. I went straight into the Esses sleepers at some speed. I think my knees ended up somewhere behind my neck, I lost my front teeth, needed skin grafts and was off work for three months.

“The first time I was allowed out of hospital on day release, I was in a wheelchair and, after visiting the office, a few colleagues took to me to a nearby pub. At the time the only thing I drank was Carlsberg Special Brew, but I was a bit out of practice as I hadn’t been able to drink for a few weeks. I had three or four, so was fairly pissed, but that gave me the courage to call the ward matron and tell her I was going to discharge myself the following day. I did just that and went to the Caribbean to recuperate. I’ve not touched another drop of Special Brew, but learned to drink rum while I was away and that has been my only tipple ever since – a direct consequence of my F5000 shunt.

“I also promised that I wouldn’t ever race an open car again. A few years later, when Dome asked me to share its Zero RL with Chris Craft, the cockpit originally had a small aperture at the top, but I agreed to drive so long as they put a flap over it so that I wouldn’t break my word.”

For 1976 he was back in the BSCC, driving a Wisharts Capri – the first of five straight seasons in which he would be class champion without ever taking the title outright. From the following year he would run under the Gordon Spice Racing banner, with his cars prepared by Peter Clark and Dave Cook at CC Racing Developments in Kirkbymoorside.

“They had been my mechanics in 1973,” Spice says, “and when I set up my own team I helped them start their new business. It was far cheaper basing the cars in North Yorkshire, with local labour rates, and transporting them a fair distance to race meetings, than it was having them located nearer the circuits.

Leading Vince Woodman, and Rouse and Win Percy at Mallory Park in the BSCC 1980

“I enjoyed the Capri era. Although I won the class championship several times, I didn’t mind not winning the title outright because I understood the logistics of the multi-tier class structure. We weren’t an official Ford works team, but probably the next best thing. We got a lot of publicity – not on a level the BTCC gets today, but enough to generate good custom for my business. It was never on TV back then, but the kind of people who bought car accessories, rally jackets and so on tended to be fans of saloon racing.”

There were also other diversions, such as racing a Charles Ivey Porsche 911 at Le Mans in 1978 (“My first proper drive there, I suppose. The works team could change a gearbox in 40 minutes with an army of mechanics – but Charles could do it single-handedly in 45. If he hadn’t had to do that we’d have won our class”) and the aforementioned Dome.

“Over the Le Mans weekend that was possibly the most dangerous car I’ve ever driven. It had been fine at Silverstone, but in France we just couldn’t generate any tyre temperature. For political reasons we had to run it on Japanese Dunlops that were like concrete. It was impossible to get any heat in them. It was very fast – I think we were second-quickest down the Mulsanne Straight – but very difficult to drive. Before the start, I said to [co-driver] Chris Craft, ‘There’s no way this thing is going to last 24 hours, so I think the first man in should park it.’ I won a coin toss, put him in to bat and wasn’t expecting to see the car after an hour or so – but he kept coming past. I started getting ready for a stint, thinking he might have ratted on the deal, but then one of the fuel pumps packed up and it stopped out on the track. I was so relieved. It was obviously a disaster for the team – I kept my helmet on for a bit so that they couldn’t see I was smiling…”

Spice heads for third place in the Rondeau M379 he shared with Francois Migault at Le Mans in 1981

He finished third overall at Le Mans with Rondeau in 1980 and ’81, the first of those also yielding a GTP class victory, but says the pick of his victories during this period came in the 1978 Spa 24 Hours – the final major race on the full, 14-kilometre track.

“That was particularly sweet,” he says, “because I’d been trying to win it for a few years. It was also quite lucky, because we’d been suffering punctures during practice – Goodyear flew in a more durable compound for the race, but I had a blowout near Blanchimont, which put me in the barriers and did a bit of damage, so we had to come from behind. Chris Craft had a blowout at Burnenville, too, and damaged his wrist, but for which I’d have kicked Teddy Pilette out of my car and put Chris in.

“Teddy was a really good single-seater driver, but perhaps not quite so quick in a Capri. It was politically good to have a Belgian in the car at Spa, but we were running in the colours of Belga cigarettes and I hadn’t realised he was contracted to Gitanes. I qualified on the front row and before the race Teddy said, ‘Gordon, I want to be paid for this.’ I pointed out that he’d agreed to do it because it was a bloody good car to be in. I didn’t want to fall out with him – and certainly didn’t want to have to find another driver at that point – so asked him if we could sort out a deal afterwards. During the race, however, he didn’t behave very well, wearing his Gitanes jacket while giving press interviews and so on. I was furious and when it came to the final stint – he was supposed to drive for the last hour – I wouldn’t let him in the car. I liked Teddy, but wasn’t sure I could trust him on this occasion. The pit marshals came across and tried to tell me I would exceed my permitted time in the car, which wasn’t true, but that was quickly sorted and off I went.”

The Capri era formally ended at the end of 1982, the final year that the BSCC ran to Group 1 regulations. “By the end of 1981 it was clear that Rover’s SD1 was now a better racing car,” Spice says, “so I went to see Ford, told them the Capri had had its day and that I felt my team could do a good job for them with its Group C sports car programme – the C100 project hadn’t been without its problems. We agreed a deal, but then Stuart Turner came in as motor sport boss and axed both Group C and the Ford RS1700T rally programme. I think we would have had a bloody good car – it was a Tony Southgate design, effectively a prototype of the Jaguar XJR-6 that he later produced for Tom Walkinshaw.


Spice has the distinction of winning a race on the full Spa circuit, sharing with Teddy Pilette in 1978

“Ford was very generous after pulling the plug, though. They paid my driver salary – more than I’d ever previously earned from racing – and all the equipment became ours. I asked whether I could buy their existing cars, but one went in the crusher and the other was converted into Transit Supervan 2, so that was the end of that.”

It would also be a trigger for the launch of Spice Engineering.

“I had all the kit you needed to run a team, courtesy of Ford, but no cars. Then Ray Bellm turned up, agreed to buy half the assets and we agreed to go 50/50 on a new company.

“In 1983 I shared a Tiga with Neil Crang in a couple of endurance races. It was very obvious to me that the car would never be competitive with a Chevy engine, which it had at first, so I suggested switching to a DFV and making a decent Group C2 car. That was the basis of the first Spice Tiga – we basically copied the front end of a Porsche 956, lightened the car and made it a bit shorter. We raced that in 1984 and 1985 (taking a class win at Le Mans) – and then the first true Spice appeared the following season.”

It was the dawn of a purple patch, Spice’s Group C2 cars proving popular – and successful – with customers in the World Sports Car Championship and IMSA’s North American equivalent. There were multiple class victories – and titles – in both series, with Spice himself sharing further Le Mans success in 1987 and ’88.

“I think sixth overall at Le Mans in 1987 stands out,” he says, “because that was pretty much unknown for a C2 car. We won the class a few times in that period, then in 1989 we went C1 – which theoretically should have suited the team, but didn’t because the Cosworth DFR engine proved unreliable. The C1 project – and the decision to can Group C2, which wiped out what had been a very nice niche market for us – effectively bust the company, because promised funds never materialised and sponsorship proved elusive. We should have stopped racing before we did. We probably had the technical ability to compete in C1, but we simply didn’t have the money to take on the likes of Toyota and Peugeot.”


Spice chassis raced on successfully into the 1990s, but the man himself retired after Le Mans 1989. “My accessory business was in deep trouble at that stage, I’d had no seat time in the car, I wasn’t driving well and it wasn’t particularly fun,” he says. “Tim Harvey was in the sister car and was consistently a second or so quicker than me, not a lot around Le Mans – but I didn’t enjoy that, either! At about five in the morning I felt the engine tighten. I mentioned this to Ray Bellm when I handed over, because we didn’t want a 30 grand rebuild on our hands. Ray did a couple of laps, then came in, concurred with my analysis and agreed that we should park it. At that point I had a flash of inspiration and decided to retire.

“I have been extremely fortunate, given that I wasn’t ever properly committed to the sport. I never went near a gym, I never stopped drinking on the eve before a race, I never stopped smoking like a chimney – and have only stopped now because doctors told me I had to. I wouldn’t want to be a racing driver today, given the monastic lives so many of them seem to lead. If someone had said to me, ‘You have to make a decision: you can either go on drinking and smoking, or else be a racing driver,’ I know which I’d have chosen.

“It wouldn’t have been motor racing.”

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... rdon-spice



Career in brief
Born 18/4/40, Enfield, England

1961 Tests brother’s Austin A40 1962 Starts competing in MG TF 1963 Switches to Morgan Plus Four 1964 Le Mans debut, Deep Sanderson 1965-69 Raced Minis in the BSCC; class champion in ’68 1970-72 European F5000 1973 Production saloons, Ford Capri 1974 BSCC, Plymouth Hemicuda 1975 F5000, one win; BSCC, Ford Capri 1976-80BSCC class champion, Ford Capri 1980 Class winner and 3rd overall at Le Mans, Rondeau 1981 3rd at Le Mans, Rondeau 1984-85 WSCC, Tiga 1986-88 WSCC, Spice 1985 & 1987-88 Le Mans class winner & Group C2 champion

[erwin greven]

thx @Everso Biggyballies
I never followed BTCC. But the ETC and endurance stuff i did.

[erwin greven]

Farewell Flying Headmaster!

“A temperamental driver. Calm and staid on the outside, you could feel that within him burned the fire and passion of his native land. The route of the Madonie highlighted his skills as a road racer and it took something special for him not to win or at least be among the leaders. He had some great victories.” That’s how Enzo Ferrari, writing in his book “Piloti, che gente…” recalled the Italian Nino Vaccarella, a sports car racing specialist, who died today in his native Palermo at the age of 88.

Vaccarella was born in the Sicilian city on 4 March 1933 and graduated in law, while being passionate about motor racing from an early age, racing all over Sicily in any type of car. He started out with his father’s Fiat Abarth 1100 and he made a name for himself with it in 1956. As a local man, he had a perfect knowledge of the route of the Targa Florio, one of the first events he entered. In 1959, he won the Pergusa Grand Prix with a Maserati and that brought him national acclaim. However, Nino was unable to dedicate his whole life to racing, because on the death of his father at an early age, he and his sister took over the running of the family-owned private school, the Alfredo Oriani Technical Commercial Institute. He was the deputy principal and taught English.

At the start of the Sixties, the Sicilian met Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata, who hired him for his Scuderia Serenissima Republica di Venezia team, which allowed him to drive various Ferraris. In 1961, at the wheel of a 250 GT, he came third in the Paris 1000 Km alongside Frenchman Maurice Trintignant, while the following year, in a 250 Testa Rossa, he won his class in the Trophée d’Auvergne. This performance attracted the attention of Enzo Ferrari, who invited Vaccarella to Maranello and after just a brief chat, decided to put him under contract for the 1963 season.

His debut was exceptional: at Sebring, a difficult track he had never seen before, Nino was immediately a front runner, helping the Scuderia to a one-two finish in the 12 Hours, the opening round of the Championship for Makes. He shared a 250 P with Lorenzo Bandini and the Belgian Willy Mairesse, finishing behind the sister car of Ludovico Scarfiotti and John Surtees. The following year another one-two finish, Nino again second along with Scarfiotti behind Mike Parkes and Umberto Maglioli. With Scarfiotti he would also win the Nurburgring 1000 Km on the fearsome Nordschleife and less than a month later, Vaccarella took victory in the Le Mans 24 Hours along with Frenchman Jean Guichet. Nino’s name was writ large across the front pages of “L’Equipe” and “La Gazzetta dello Sport,” who used the nickname he had been given back in Palermo, the “Flying Headmaster.” There was no time to celebrate, as he tackled a three hour drive to Orly airport to fly home immediately, so that he would be on hand for his students’ English lessons the following morning.

However, Nino was not yet a prophet in his own land: for the 1965 Targa Florio, he and Lorenzo Bandini were among the strong favourites and of course the crowd favourite, with his name written on the walls that marked out the rout of the 72 kilometres of the Madonie Circuit, that competitors had to tackle ten times. The number 198 Ferrari 275 P2 dominated the race at an incredible pace and took the win in just over seven hours, over four minutes ahead of the first of a quartet of works Porsches from the Stuttgart marque. It was his crowning glory: this time the “Flying Headmaster” could enjoy the adulation on home soil. Enzo Ferrari rewarded him with a drive in the Italian Formula 1 Grand Prix at the wheel of a factory Ferrari 158 F1. The Sicilian did not disgrace himself, running as high as sixth before he had to retire with a technical problem, when there were 18 laps remaining.

The partnership with Ferrari took a temporary halt in 1967, but resumed in 1970 when Nino won the Sebring 12 Hours along with Ignazio Giunti and Mario Andretti at the wheel of a 512 S, in which he also came second at Monza and third in the Targa Florio. Vaccarella would be the home-grown hero on two more occasions, winning the Targa Florio in 1971 and 1975 with Alfa Romeo, but as he recalled once he had retired, “the first time was special and the win is engraved on my heart, more than any other.”

After the 1975 win, “Ninni” as he was known to his fellow countrymen, decided to retire from racing, now that he was over forty years old. Shortly after that he was awarded the recognition of Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.” In later life, he continued to dedicate himself to the family school and supported his son Giovanni’s racing activities until an accident put an end to his career. In 2007, he took part in celebrations at Fiorano, at the wheel of the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, the first car built by Enzo Ferrari, after he had ended his relationship with Alfa Romeo. In 2016, Vaccarella revisited Le Mans where he was reunited with his former team-mate Jean Guichet, for one last time, 52 years on from their win.

We will miss you “Flying Headmaster”

https://www.ferrari.com/en-EN/formula1/ ... headmaster

[Everso Biggyballies]

Sad..... I used to love looking at photos of Nino Vaccarella at the Targa.... here are a few faves.,




































RIP Nino Vaccarella,


Into the sunset.

[erwin greven]

thanks for the great pics!! @Everso Biggyballies

[Everso Biggyballies]

thanks for the great pics!! @Everso Biggyballies

You are welcome.... I knew others.would enjoy them too ,hence the post.

I found this article about him I had saved..... it was written about 8 years ago. (It mentions he was 80 years old when this article was written)Sorry I have no idea of the source but thought some might enjoy the read

“ When he was at the wheel of a Ferrari in the World Championship, he was also keeping busy as the owner of a school (for accountants) in Palermo. Nino Vaccarella reveals just how different it was to be a driver over 30 years ago.

For many people it was the endurance races, contested by two-seater cars, sports cars or prototypes (all depending on the period in question and the regulations), which gave Ferrari its global fame; cars that, seen from up close, were reminiscent of the celebrated road models created for customers of the Prancing Horse. The 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Targa Florio, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 1,000km races of the Nürburgring, Spa and Monza, to mention just a few, have stayed in the memory of those lucky enough to experience that period of challenge between constructors. “Constructors” because those races were contested between marques, in the sense that drivers, who had to alternate the driving because of the long duration of the races, were not the main protagonists, as they are in Formula One.

‘To understand how close the public was to this kind of race, I’d like to recall an episode that may seem almost irreverent,’ remembers Nino Vaccarella (or Nini to his friends), one of the best drivers of the period, alluding to the Targa Florio, in which he played a leading role on many occasions. ‘After my victory in 1965 in the Ferrari 275 P2, the mayor of Collesano, one of the towns the race passed through, granted me honorary citizenship. On the Sunday of the ceremony there was also a procession of the Madonna, an event of great devotion in which everyone in town took part. The procession that followed the statue of the Madonna, which was carried on people’s shoulders, was passing by at the very moment that I arrived. I couldn’t believe my eyes: people began to shout “Vaccarella! Vaccarella!” They surrounded me and even the people carrying the statue put it down so that they could cheer me. I was embarrassed, it was an amazing thing!’

It’s an episode that illustrates perfectly just what Vaccarella meant to his fellow Sicilians and of how a race like the Targa Florio could attract hundreds of thousands of spectators. Think of Le Mans, also won by Vaccarella, in tandem with Jean Guichet, a French driver: ‘He was excellent, he handed over the car to me in perfect order after his driving spells and I had another advantage: I didn’t need to follow the race from the pits because it was enough to listen to the roar of the French crowd on every lap when he, a French driver, crossed the line.’ Even today, Le Mans brings together a crowd that is the envy of F1; a crowd that has always participated in the event by intoxicating itself with noise, excitement and fatigue.

And how can one forget those real encampments, in the Black Forest, around the endless Eifel circuit, at the famous Nürburgring, where drivers ran the risk of distraction at the wheel thanks to the smells of grilled wurst and sausages drifting across the track from makeshift barbecues? Ferrari won 13 sports prototype world titles from 1953 to 1972 with cars whose names and abbreviations have left an indelible mark, among them giants from the Ferrari back catalogue like the Testa Rossa, 330 P, P4, 312 PB, Dino 246 sport and 512 M. Cars that are almost mythological. Why, then, is this legend now over? The simple answer is television. It is impossible to broadcast a race of 1,000km or 24 hours and win sufficient audience share to bring in advertising revenue. The public at the track, even if they are still plentiful, have been made largely irrelevant by the introduction of rule changes and the arrival of sponsors and television broadcasting. The F1 format was more naturally suited to these demands and has steadily pulled the rug from under the feet of endurance races. The fact is, we have moved from a season in which F1 car races and sports car races alternated from Sunday to Sunday, with around 20 events spread throughout the year, using the same drivers and thus offering the public the same idols in a different version from the F1 calendar, which takes up practically the entire season, leaving no room for alternative drivers and championships.

‘They were astonishing cars,’ Vaccarella remembers. ‘Ford had to build a 7.0-litre model to try to beat us, and we had a 4.0-litre engine. They were cars with wonderful technology that quickly appeared in production models. I’m thinking of advances in headlights, for night races, of windscreen wipers. And the manual gear change, the clutch. In the Florio I ended up with my hands covered in sores because of the crazy gear changing. I nearly always had only one hand on the steering wheel! And the progress of disc brakes? Fantastic! Those endurance racing cars were, and have remained, the most beautiful cars in the world. And for us drivers, racing was a great adventure. At that time there was danger, real danger: people died. But this placed you in a special state, a more human state: you were friends with your colleagues, you were happy to go into the crowd, you remained a normal person. Happy, but normal. ‘There was a certain warmth, a different way of being all together. And then, in races, you had to invent things at certain times. At Le Mans, when you reached 300km/h and you came up on two slower cars that were overtaking and blocking your road, or in the Florio, when you were racing against the clock and you had to catch your opponent. In 1967, when I was racing in the P4, Phil Hill, the World Champion, had started before me, in the Chaparral with its adjustable rear wing. At a certain point I began to smell its odour. I didn’t see it – I smelt the odour of the car in front of me that I was catching up. Then I saw I was getting closer. I had to decide where to pass, and on those tracks it wasn’t easy. I decided on a big fast curve after Cerda, because I knew there would be room there. And there was. I passed and drew away quickly and Hill didn’t even try to follow me.’

Among the many merits of this kind of race was its truly international nature, understood as territorial coverage of the industrial and sporting world between the ’50s and the ’70s. There was racing from Argentina to Mexico in the incredible Carrera Panamericana, which exceeded, for courage and danger, even the Mille Miglia (which, up until 1957, the year of the tragic accidents involving Alfonso De Portago and Edmund Nelson, was a race in the World Championship), and the Targa Florio.

Then moving to North America, with the great classics of the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24Hours of Daytona, to end up in Europe with the most difficult and most famous tracks. Without a shadow of a doubt, success at the two American classics of Sebring and Daytona made a major contribution to Ferrari’s presence in the US market. At Sebring, a track carved out of an airport, with a terrible surface as a result of the joins between cement and asphalt sections, Ferrari won 12 times. Daytona, with its deadly elevated section that has decimated bearings and suspensions for years, was the theatre for the astounding success of 1967, with three Ferraris in procession in Ford’s backyard who, with their 7.0-litre engines, had to hoist the white flag in front of their home crowd. ‘In those races you had to have enormous respect for your car, and your partner was a decisive factor,’ says Vaccarella. ‘You needed to have a good mutual understanding and respect for each other. It was a real problem if you had disagreements, one that could cost you the race. I got on well with everyone. With [Lorenzo] Bandini we enjoyed a fantastic victory in the Florio, with [Ludovico] Scarfiotti we won at the Nürburgring, so much so that I felt uneasy when they told me that at Le Mans I would be racing with Jean Guichet, whom I didn’t know. Instead I found the ideal partner: fast, steady, and perfect in the car. We drove 24 ours without a single problem.’It seems strange to hear Vaccarella talk of races where pure speed wins out over flair on the narrow roads of his native Sicily. ‘I was a driver of fast tracks and of cars with a lot of horsepower. But my association with the Florio has ended up with people believing that I’m only a road specialist. But that wasn’t at all true, even if the races were almost all on roads.’

One has to ask: why didn’t such a fast and consistent driver go into F1? ‘I’ve asked myself that, too. And I think I have the answer. When, in 1963, I succeeded in signing the contract with Ferrari – they had already made me an offer in ’62 but I was tied into a contract with Count Volpi di Misurata’s Scuderia Serenissima – it was a dreadful day at Maranello. It was cold and foggy, something we Sicilians can’t even imagine. Ingegner Ferrari asked me to go and live there and to be available to drive some tests. Perhaps, at that point, I made a mistake. I said that the responsibility of looking after my school in Palermo [Vaccarella was the owner of a large private school he had inherited from his father, after the latter’s premature death], made it difficult for me to accept. Ferrari simply said to me: “It doesn’t matter, we’ll call you when you need to drive in a race.” And so it was, but I’ve always harboured the doubt that this decision closed off the route to F1, and to a broader career. ‘The only time I had the chance to drive an F1 car was in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in 1965 with the previous year’s car, the eight-cylinder. But Surtees and Bandini had 12-cylinder cars and, even though in testing I was two tenths of a second faster than [John] Surtees, who the year before had been driving my car, it wasn’t enough to get me on the team. I also have to say that those F1 cars of scarcely 1500cc were not my style. I liked big horsepower cars and difficult, fast tracks like Spa and Le Mans, for example.’

Knowing Enzo Ferrari, it is very likely that that choice sealed Vaccarella’s destiny as a driver. Going back over his story, you can see how much the world has changed. Today, drivers are taught from early childhood, always on open wheels, first in karts and then in the lower Formulas. In those days, you grabbed the opportunities you made for yourself, above all, if you came from a distant land, such as Sicily. ‘I started off with my father’s Fiat 1100, in a hill climb. Then I bought a Lancia Aurelia B20, 2500cc, prepared by Gioachino Vari, and I began to get some fine results. In Sicily I was beginning to make a name for myself, and a nobleman from Palermo, Baron Cammarata, suggested I buy a Ferrari Testa Rossa 2.0-litre from him, the 500 TRC, which he had bought. It was very expensive. I was tempted, but first I decided to go to Modena. I was received by Commendatore Orsi, at that time the owner of Maserati, who told me of a fine bargain that was available: it was a 200S sports car that belonged to a racing customer, Adolfo Tedeschi, who had won the Italian Championship the year before. They took the Aurelia as a deposit and the price was much better than the one for the Ferrari. So I loaded it on the train and took it back to Sicily. I won absolutely everything in that car, in hill climbs and on the track. I did two seasons, 1959 and 1960, winning practically everywhere, first in the south of Italy and then, after the provocation of the press saying that I didn’t have the nerve to test myself against the drivers of the north, in the north as well!’ And the school? ‘I looked after it, helped by my sister. My father had died and it was up to us. But I used to “talk” to him, from the podium, at every victory. I would say to my father, who used to say that I didn’t know how to drive because I’d caused so much damage to the family car, “Look, daddy, Nino knows how to drive, and win!”

At this point I got my big break: Guerrino Bertocchi, the real jack of all trades at Maserati, offered me the drive in the Florio in the new Bird Cage, with the American team Camoradi, partnered with a famous driver, Umberto Maglioli who, among other things, was a winner of the Carrera Panamericana. ‘I knew every curve of the Florio, I’d started to go to see it as a boy, on the train, and then I would drive continually to learn those amazing 72km. Maglioli set off and then handed over the car to me, after two laps, 2.4 minutes behind the Porsche of [Jo] Bonnier, who was in the lead. I caught up with Bonnier and got an additional 4.40 minutes’ lead. It was a dream. Then, suddenly, the car stopped. I’d heard noises behind at certain points, as if something was dragging on the ground. I’d broken the tank and had run out of petrol. The spectators managed to give me a little, but I didn’t get far. Withdrawal!’

There may not have been an actual victory, but a phone call from the Venetian nobleman Count Volpi di Misurata saw Vaccarella transformed from amateur to professional. Misurata’s Scuderia Serenissma took part in F1 and sports-car races and was helping Maserati, then seemingly on its last legs, to stay in racing. Vaccarella drove a variety of cars for the Scuderia, though all were only averagely competitive and, as racing machines, often fragile. But he proved his talent, so much so that he eventually received the fateful phone call from Maranello.

‘If I think of today’s drivers, it makes me smile,’ he says. ‘They come and go in helicopters, they always speak under the eyes of the press officers and usually they say nothing that isn’t entirely predictable. And then there is too much technology, with cars rebuilt for every different track, no overtaking, no risks. ‘Motor racing has become a dehumanised sport. When I think that on Sunday mornings before the race Count Volpi would say to me, “Vaccarella, I’m going to Mass, are you coming with me?” “But of course, Count…” How could I have said no? Can you imagine Alonso or Massa nowadays going to Mass with Domenicali before the Grand Prix!’

Vaccarella laughs; he laughs thinking back to his great years, the ones of regrets for a missed F1 career, but also of the great Ferrari triumphs in the sports prototype World Championship. An adventure that Ferrari began in 1949, with the first of its nine outright victories at Le Mans, and ended in 1973, in the years of the 312 PB’s dominance, with drivers such as Mario Andretti, Clay Regazzoni, Jacky Ickx, Ronnie Peterson, Arturo Merzario, Ignazio Giunti, Brian Redman and Tim Schenken, and finishing its cycle of success with victory in the Nürburgring 1,000 km in 1973. Since then, Ferrari has not officially taken part in endurance races although, in the hands of private teams, the Prancing Horse does have a presence as a competitor. Of note, in recent years, are outright victories at both Sebring and Daytona for the 333SP, and class wins at Le Mans with the 550 Maranello and with the F430 in the international GT2 Championships. It’s a flame that, despite the changing times, has not gone out, and never will."

Many of his team mates died racing, including Bandini, Giunti, Scarfiottti, Stommelen, Peterson and Bianchi, but fate somehow spared Vaccarella. Earlier this month Nino turned 80.

[erwin greven]

[acerogers58]

He allegedly broke into his ex wife’s house armed with an axe and was shot in self defence by her partner.

[erwin greven]

Former Williams aerodynamicist Terzi dies in car crash

Former Williams and Ferrari Formula 1 aerodynamicist Antonia Terzi has died following a car crash in the United Kingdom. She was 50.

Terzi, who was born in Italy, was best known in F1 circles for having been the inspiration for the famous 'walrus nose' that appeared on the Williams FW26 in 2004.

Having studied aerodynamics in Italy and the UK, Terzi's F1 career began at Ferrari, where she worked under Rory Byrne until 2001.

After making a good impression, she moved to Williams to become the team's chief aerodynamicist, and played a key role in the team's race-winning push during its engine partnership with German manufacturer BMW.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/will ... s/6734194/