Auto Racing Commentary

Until the 70’s, non-championship Formula 1 races were an important part of the racing calendar. In the 50’s, in fact, sometimes there were more non-championship races than those valid for the championship. These were different times, of course. In the 50’s the official calendar comprised about 8 races, rather than the 20+ of our days. While in the 50’s most non-championship races were still held in Italy and France, by the 70’s, the vast majority was held in England, at Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Oulton Park. Such non-championship races were also held as trial for future official events, such as the Argentine Grand Prix of 1971 and the Brazilian Grand Prix of 1972.   After 1983, Non-Championship F1 races, including the traditional Race of Champions were gone. Not only was the calendar full, but TV money and sponsorship ensured teams and drivers did not need to boost their coffers with prize and start money paid in such races, which was not much, at any rate. Such r...

  9/26/1943, Sydney, Australia Starts: 34 Points: 7 Wins:0 Poles:0 Fastest Laps:0 Judging from the press Schenken got in 1968, one would expect him to be world champion by the early 70’s. In fact, Tim had swept every one before him in F-Ford and Formula 3, winning in one year more races than most people win in a career. Things started to get tougher in F-2 though. Needless to say, F-1 was no piece of cake either. Tim got his first break driving the De Tomaso for Frank Williams, replacing Brian Redman. To his credit he managed to qualify the car all four times he appeared, a better performance than Redman’s. This was sufficiently good to attract the Brabham team, which signed Tim to replace Jack Brabham. The early part of the year was a bit tough, but in Britain Schenken qualified 7th. This was followed by three other top ten starts, plus a good helping of points from 6th in Germany and a swell 3rd place and podium in Austria. By the end of the y...

1972-1976 By Carlos De Paula Today GT racing is in a healthy state the world over. We do live in more affluent times, with quite a few dream cars eligible to run in the category and a lot of sponsorship money, which was not the case in the early 70’s. However, the world of sports car racing has always been a struggle between bona fide, purebred racers, mostly called prototypes, and GTs, which are basically racy, production based cars. Plus, there have been categories in between, such as the Group 5 of the mid 70’s/early 80’s, and the 5 liter sports cars of the late 60’s, which required a minimum production run of 25 units. Rad more about it here  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732674426