Remembering the fallen

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Everso Biggyballies
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#46

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Bottom post of the previous page:

Very sad news, and not at all old. RIP Adrian Campos.

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#47

Post by Warren »

How Dale Earnhardt Could Have Survived Daytona 500 Crash
20 years later, HANS inventor changes his tune about the Intimidator's chances had he worn the device.

BY AL PEARCE
FEB 3, 2021

https://www.autoweek.com/racing/nascar/ ... 500-crash/
What if?
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#48

Post by erwin greven »

Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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Everso Biggyballies
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#49

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

I remember Chris Craft from the days when he drove a Broadspeed Escort and later in I think it was a 3 litre Capri in the BTCC in the mid 70s, plus of course his numerous Sports Car races in a wide range of cars, both 2 litre and the big bangers. He did a bit of UK F5000 too.

RIP Chris Craft. :rip:

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#50

Post by jimclark »

erwin greven wrote: 3 years ago
He DNF'd at the Glen, starting 30th and finishing 24th. :(
Six weeks earlier, he also ran in a non championship race, the 18th International Gold Cup, Oulton Park. Starting 12th, he finished 5th in the same BT33, besting the likes of Peter Gethin and Jumpin' Jarier..... :smiley:

RIP Mssr. Craft.
Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end.....

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Everso Biggyballies
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#51

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

jimclark wrote: 3 years ago
erwin greven wrote: 3 years ago
He DNF'd at the Glen, starting 30th and finishing 24th. :(
Six weeks earlier, he also ran in a non championship race, the 18th International Gold Cup, Oulton Park. Starting 12th, he finished 5th in the same BT33, besting the likes of Peter Gethin and Jumpin' Jarier..... :smiley:

RIP Mssr. Craft.
He also was entered for the Canadian GP, the race prior to Watkins Glen, in the same car. Technically he non qualified, but as it happens others dropped out (Ganley and Pescarolo crashed in the warm up) and he would have been able to start had he not had an engine problem denying him the opportunity to start, leading to him being a DNS..
Pete Lovely who he had outqualified and was also a DNQ actually started the race in Craft's place.

Here is CC's BTTCC record
https://btcc.fandom.com/wiki/Chris_Craft

Pic of some of the many (not including BTCC, just his Sports and endurance touring cars) he drove over his career, from Chevron to Porsche of all types from 911 to 917, Dome, Lola, McLaren, De Cadenet, etc
https://www.racingsportscars.com/driver ... ft-GB.html

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#52

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Re Chris Craft

An obituary for Chris was published in Autosport today. It confirms my memory of CC being a prolific and successful Sports car and Touring Car racer, across many years as well as a spell in UK F5000 .

A few photos:

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Le Mans, France. 1976. Alain De Cadenet/Chris Craft, De Cadenet Lola T380, 3rd position overall,

Image
Craft at the Guards Trophy Race, Brands Hatch in a Ford Escort in 1970

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In practice driving the Ecurie Evergreen Brabham BT33 Mosport 1971

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Chris Craft in the Dome at the Silverstone 6 hour 1979

One-time Formula 1 starter Chris Craft, one of Britain's leading racers of the 1970s, has died aged 81 after a long illness.

Best known as a sportscar driver, Craft claimed an overall podium in the 1976 Le Mans 24 Hours and won the 1973 European Sports Car Championship. His single F1 start came in the 1971 US Grand Prix.

Originally from Cornwall, Croft started racing in 1961 in a Ford Anglia. He progressed through Formula 3, before racing Ford Escorts for the renowned Broadspeed team in the British Saloon Car Championship in the late 1960s. In 1969, he finished second in both the British Sports Car and British Saloon Car Championships.

He raced an incredible range of cars through the 1970s and in 1971 got his F1 chance in the Ecurie Evergreen Brabham BT33, owned by sportscar entrant Alain de Cadenet.

Craft was already racing sportscars with de Cadenet and they took the Brabham to the Canadian and US races. He failed to qualify at Mosport, but made the grid in 27th at Watkins Glen only to retire on lap 30 with suspension failure.

On his first of 14 appearances at Le Mans in 1971, he drove David Piper's Ferrari 512M to fourth, and in 1973 claimed the European Sports Car Championship in a Lola T292, with notable wins at Misano and Imola. He also raced in Formula 5000 for the VDS team.

One of his best results came in 1976 when he co-drove de Cadenet's Lola T380 to third place at Le Mans. They finished fifth the following year.

He was busy right through the 1970s and made a winning return to the British Saloon Car Championship in Ford Capris.

His final race was at Le Mans in 1984 when he shared a Porsche 956 with de Cadenet and Australian touring car ace Allan Grice. The car retired from the race with engine trouble and, aged 44, Craft called time on his professional racing career.

After his racing career, Craft and F1 designer Gordon Murray formed the Light Car Company to build the Rocket.

In more recent years, Craft was a regular visitor to historic race meetings through his friendship with Grahame White, then CEO of the Historic Sports Car Club.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/15514 ... es-aged-81

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#53

Post by erwin greven »

Cool to see more people know Chris Craft.
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#54

Post by MonteCristo »

I very vaguely know the name, but can't say I knew anything about him. However, I am continually in awe of the variety of cars the drivers of the 60s-80s drove. How they could be competitive in one-off entries is beyond me and my pedestrian driving skills.
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#55

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

erwin greven wrote: 3 years ago Cool to see more people know Chris Craft.
Funnily enough it was thanks to my late father that I first became aware of Chris Craft's name in the early seventies.... as well as motor sport my Father had a huge interest in boats, so a guy having the same name as a 'loved by my Father range of luxury boats' (yes Chris Craft was an unconnected manufacturer of boats!) meant whenever I saw the name Chris Craft in Motor Racing I took interest. Plus he was regularly racing at meetings I attended in some class or another increased my awareness. That and he was quite noticeable around the paddock due to his longer than most James Hunt like hair.

Image
Chris at the Watkins Glen GP he started.
Image

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#56

Post by jimclark »

Everso Biggyballies wrote: 3 years ago
erwin greven wrote: 3 years ago Cool to see more people know Chris Craft.
I first became aware of Chris Craft's name in the early seventies.... as well as motor sport my Father had a huge interest in boats, so a guy having the same name as a 'loved by my Father range of luxury boats' (yes Chris Craft was an unconnected manufacturer of boats!) meant whenever I saw the name Chris Craft in Motor Racing I took interest. Plus he was regularly racing at meetings I attended in some class or another increased my awareness. https://www.historicracing.com/otd/ChrisCraft.gif
And, coincidentally (only in reverse, sort of)in the early '70s, whilst cycling I passed a boat dealer (I wasn't particularly into boating) and upon seeing a Chris Craft boat on display, I thought to myself "I know that name from somewhere..." but couldn't place it until some time later reading of some race or another. I then realized that I had seen his name in results before that but thought nothing of him. From then on, I did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris-Craft_Boats
Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end.....

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#57

Post by erwin greven »

Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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#58

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Very sad news... RIP Hannu Mikkola

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#59

Post by Jacob »

Jacob wrote: 3 years ago Also Manfred Kremer has passed away. Co-Founder of Porsche Kremer Racing

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMhBPH0lBF1 ... hare_sheet
https://www.facebook.com/automobilsport ... 0585225531

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#60

Post by hollie3sa »

Legendary Canadian racer Ludwig Heimrath dies

https://www.thestar.com/autos/2021/03/1 ... -dies.html

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Ludwig Heimrath, Canada’s first national driving champion and the first Canadian to race in Formula One, has died at age 86 of pancreatic cancer. Known as a fierce competitor, he frightened friends and foes alike with his my-way-or-the-highway determination to win at almost any cost.

Heimrath, who spent his final days with son Ludwig Jr., a successful IndyCar driver in his own right, daughter Karen and a caregiver, Karen Gillett, did everything his own way, including dying. Diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, he entered palliative care at hospital in Peterborough but signed himself out, determined to “go to heaven” from his cottage on the shore of nearby Stoney Lake that housed more than 400 racing trophies.

John Bondar, owner of eastern Ontario’s Shannonville Motorsport Park, raced against Heimrath years ago. “I’d be going up the backstretch at Mosport (now Canadian Tire Motorsport Park),” Bondar said, “and I would see this Porsche coming up behind me and there was no doubt Ludwig was driving. You could see the fire in his eyes right through the opening of his helmet.”

An expert in the building and tuning of Porsche engines (he owned and operated a small Scarborough dealership called Heimrath Porsche for 35 years), Ludwig emigrated to Canada in 1956, where he went to work for Volkswagen Canada.

With other members of the newly formed Deutscher Automobil Club – Rudy Bartling, Horst Petermann, Fritz Hochreuter, Horst Kroll and Klaus Bartels – he started racing in 1958 at abandoned airport circuits around Ontario, Green Acres (Goderich) and Harewood Acres (Jarvis) among them.

Once bitten by the racing bug, there was no stopping him. His passion for the sport knew no bounds. During his career, he took green flags in club racing, the minor leagues and the bigs. It didn’t matter: if there was a race anywhere, he’d strap in, fire up and run it.

For instance, he entered the very first race held at Mosport when the track opened in June of 1961. It was an amateur event organized by the Oakville-Trafalgar Light Car Club to prove the track could handle an upcoming professional event, the first Player’s 200, that was scheduled for later that month.

Driving a Porsche 356 Super 90, Heimrath was dominating his race until he lost control and rolled the car at Corner 5 (Moss Corner). Asked what he’d been thinking as he flew through the air, Heimrath replied: “I was downshifting for maximum power when I landed.”

Several weeks later, in front of more than 40,000 spectators, he finished fourth in that first Player’s 200 behind Formula One drivers Stirling Moss, OIivier Gendebien and Jo Bonnier. His performance that day made him a crowd favourite from then on.

Heimrath won the Canadian championship (known at the time as the Canadian Sports Car Championship) in 1961 and 1964 (when he drove a King Cobra for the famed Canadian Comstock Racing team) and was second in ’62, ’63 and ’65. That first championship, and his prowess in a Porsche, led to the German manufacturer offering him a Formula One seat for a non-championship points race at Pau, France, in 1962.

He qualified tenth fastest out of 18 starters and was moving up in the field when he crashed. There are those who say that had Porsche opted to run three F1 cars in 1963 (manufacturers did that in those days) that Heimrath would have been the third driver. But it was not to be.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Heimrath suffered through a dry period. He seemed to have lost his touch. He tried Indy cars for two years and entered the Canadian and Continental Formula A Championship Series but mechanical difficulties or impatience with slower opponents, causing him to crash, did him in.

He finally saw the light and went back to racing Porsches (he rejuvenated his career by purchasing a Porsche 911S and bringing its mechanic, Auguste Lecourt, to Canada with it), where he was most comfortable.

In 1977, during the first glory period of the SCCA Trans-Am Championship (the second came during the 1990s, when Canadian Ron Fellows and Americans Scott Pruett and Tommy Kendall went after each other, hammer and tong, race after race), Heimrath and U.S. racer Peter Gregg took turns winning. They raced hard. They also hated each other.

In the end, Gregg won the championship on paper but Heimrath was convinced his opponent was a cheat. As the Mosport round had approached, he’d gone to CRDA secretary Brian Stewart (the Canadian Racing Drivers Association ran professional racing in Canada), who was also the track’s chief scrutineer, and pointed out that the Trans-Am Series was run under FIA rules and Peter Gregg was breaking them.

Stewart asked Heimrath to elucidate and was shown two rules – one disallowing ballast and a second forbidding cutting the body of the car to make room for what were illegal parts.

It so happened that Stewart also ran a team in the SCCA Super Vee Championship and a week before Mosport there had been a Super Vee-Trans-Am double-header at the Nelson Ledges circuit in Ohio. Stewart, as just another racer, wandered over to the Gregg garage and saw, close-up, what Heimrath had been complaining about. When Gregg produced the car at Mosport for scrutineering a week later, Stewart disallowed it.

As just about everybody in racing knows, the chief scrutineer reports to the clerk of the course who, in this case, was the SCCA chief scrutineer, who overruled Stewart. Heimrath protested, but the protest was thrown out. He then appealed to the FIA in Paris, which ruled in his favour. The points taken away from Gregg, and awarded to Heimrath, gave the championship to the Canadian but it took the SCCA, which had awarded money and silverware to the American, nearly five months to make the change.

Ludwig continued to race for the next 20 years in club racing events and pro series like the Rothmans-Porsche Turbo Cup Series (as of 2000 it would have been his sixth decade of competition), forcing the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame to change its rules for induction.

Like most Halls of Fame, a potential inductee had to be retired from competition for three years to become eligible. When it became clear that Heimrath had no intention of ever stopping – in fact, he was planning to race this summer in the Monterey Historics, a vintage event at Laguna Seca Raceway in California and had his Porsche race car primed to continue club racing at CTMP this season – the Hall changed its eligibility to a minimum non-stop involvement for 25 years.

Retired motorsport reporter and columnist Dan Proudfoot knew Ludwig well. In fact, he drove up to Stoney Lake a few weeks ago to have lunch with the old campaigner. He told me that although there’s no way to prove it, “I am confident to say that Ludwig is King of Mosport. Nobody has driven more laps of the place, because he raced in the track’s first races - the club race that preceded the first big show, the Player’s 200 – and never stopped.

“When his friend Billy Smilovsky held lapping weekends for his Engineered Automotive clients, they and their wives and children would line up to ride with Ludwig and he thrilled them in his highly-modified Porsche, lapping effortlessly at the same rate as he raced the Eglinton-Caledonia RS60 back in the day, mid-1:30 laps.”

(On a personal note, every time I saw Ludwig at CTMP, he would point at me and say, “One of these days I am going to take you around this place and give you the ride of your life.” I never went, because I was afraid he would try so hard to scare the living daylights out of me that he would wind up killing us both.)

Myles Brandt, president and general manager of Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, praised his old friend when told of his death..

“I’ve known Ludwig since the time I started working at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (then Mosport) in the 1970s and have long considered him a friend,” Brandt said.

“He’s one of the greatest Canadians to have ever raced at the track and I think it’s fitting that he won his first Canadian Driving Championship in 1961 – the same year that Mosport opened. He’s been an important part of CTMP’s history ever since.

“Ludwig was an intense and sometimes intimating person, both on and off the track. But he cared deeply about CTMP. He loved racing here and was always willing to help the track however he could. I’m going to miss him.”

CTMP co-owners Ron Fellows added this:

“Ludwig Heimrath Sr. was always a larger-than-life character on the Canadian racing scene. As a kid who began following the sport religiously beginning in 1969, Ludwig was synonymous with the Porsche brand. In the 1970s and ’80s, I watched him race a variety of Porsches at CTMP in both IMSA and the Trans-Am Series. Our paths crossed in the late 1970s when his talented son, Ludwig Jr., began racing Formula 1600, where I was cutting my teeth as well. Despite his gruff exterior, Ludwig Sr. was always friendly and helpful with advice and I felt privileged to get to know the Heimrath family during my first couple of years in F1600.

“For the decades that followed, Ludwig continued to be a fixture at CTMP, driving his Porsches at various track days and attending the occasional race where our paths would continue to cross. A legend and a very worthy member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, Ludwig was always a gentleman and I will miss his charismatic smile, and his passion and enthusiasm for Canadian motorsport.”

Heimrath always gave credit to his wife, Brigitte, for his racing success. He said that unless a race driver has full and complete support from his spouse, “then you’ve got trouble. She (Brigitte) always came to the track and never complained.”

Ludwig Heimrath leaves Brigitte, son Ludwig Jr. and daughter Karen. We are never going to see his kind again.

The photo of Ludwig at Mont Tremblant — he won the first race there when the track opened in 1964 — was taken by Lionel Birnbom of Ottawa.
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#61

Post by jimclark »

Sad news. Mostly remember his IMSA and T/A efforts.

RIP Ludwig.

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Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end.....

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