Much more than meets the eyes

Most car of the world's motor racing literature is written in English. I would not dare pegging a percentage, but an educated guess is much more than 80%. Back in the 70's the percentage was  even higher, as publishing technology and markets were very restricted.

As a result, much of what you read about racing in the period covers the USA (plus Canada), Western Europe, South Africa and Australia/New  Zealand. That was pretty much what the British and American specialized media was covering these days in magazines, newspapers, books and annuals.

This gives a very wrong impression that racing was not taking place elsewhere in the world, especially in places where English was not spoken.

When I got the idea for my book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized, I would be doing what 99% of motoring writers had done when covering the period: focusing entirely on the major racing taking place in the SA (plus Canada), Western Europe, South Africa and Australia/New  Zealand.

Then I had an epiphany of sorts. Why write another book that concentrated on major racing, leaving out the all other wonderfully "romantic" racing taking place in South and Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe? It seemed unfair, given that the book was supposed to be a celebration of  the romantic racing being practiced in the area and comprehensive. I simply could not leave out the wonderful racing taking place in Argentina, the dozens upon dozens of venues around the world, races held in unlikely locations...Just writing about Formula 1, like hundreds of other books seemed to be a waste of time and money. Repeating the same old anecdotes you can read about in hundreds of Internet forums seemed unnecessary

Talking about world racing and leaving out the wonderful competitions and cars from Argentina - and dozens of other countries - seemed an unfair corruption of  history.
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I did not leave Formula 1 out. Instead, I picked out interesting bits and pieces, plus some specific statistics from the period. And did cover all the major championships.

The difference is in the details, the thousands of rare pieces of information concerning constructors, racing venues across the world (including hill climbs), the most significant drivers from seventy-two countries, some of which you had not idea held races way back then. Even from widely covered countries such as Britain, France, Italy, you will learn about categories long gone, certain makes you never imagined were involved in racing and find out about the local racing scenes of dozen of countries.   

There are also sections on money in the period's racing, sponsors, female drivers and short bios of the most striking personalities from the period, as well as an essay that discusses the pivoting that is the core idea of the book.

There is also a bonus section that covers in detail the development of Brazil as a force to be reckoned with, which left the status of footnote in 1969 to relevance in three seasons.

This is the ultimate reference on 70s racing, a must-have for any true enthusiast.

The book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized can be bought here

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732674426


 

 

Money in 70s Car Racing, Formula 1, NASCAR, Indy, Sports Cars, etc

Nowadays information about driver’s retainers, race earnings, the huge amounts some Formula 1 teams are paid, sponsorship deals seems public domain; $$$ are often featured in racing news stories. There are multiple reasons for that: public disclosure is required of public companies, a great part of the allure of motor racing these days seems pegged to the possibility of making large mounds of dollars, euros and pounds. Additionally, let us face it, we live in a very narcissistic world. Celebrities love to flaunt dough, and the sport has always been aligned with the idea of vast amounts of cash flying about. Buying a Ferrari to go racing in the 50s definitely cost more than buying soccer balls or swimming in lakes or buying cricket gear, after all.

I have conducted extensive research on car racing in the 70s, and to be honest, locating trustworthy and plentiful data has been challenging at best. People simply did not talk much about it, for reasons you may found out later. And some that do talk about it 40 years down the line perhaps embellish their stories a bit, and forget or add zeroes…

In my recently launched book Motor Racing in the 70s – Pivoting from Romantic to Organized, I discuss this very issue (and many others as well, such as sponsors), whenever possible contextualizing other economic data that will help readers assess what was really going on. You must also consider that a lot of published information does look awfully inconsistent, and some of the recollections from those active in the area often seem to have too many or lack some zeroes.

It does make for interesting reading and reflection.

If the subject interests you, make sure you get a copy of the book on Amazon.com today. Much more information about racing in the 70's can be found in my book MOTOR RACING IN THE 70'S - PIVOTING FROM ROMANTIC TO ORGANIZED. It is a 472-page book about racing in the period,  with 242 photos, covering Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3, Formula 5000, other lower formulae, Formula Indy, NASCAR, Touring Cars, Sports Cars, Can Am, Trans Am, IMSA, DRM, local racing scenes, main driver profiles, plus long lists of makes that raced in the period, main drivers and racing venues from 85 countries, year highlights, performance and financial analysis of the sport. It can be bought at Amazon shops in the USA, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia, Japan, 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732674426

Motor Racing in the 70s finally out

My book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized is finally out. At present time, it can be bought through Amazon.com, but I am looking into ways to get wider distribution. Not that there are that many physical bookstores around, at least not in the USA.

I am pleased with the result. It ended up with 384 pages, and a much different product than what I first envisaged.

I wanted to write a much simpler year-by-year account, a shorter book. It developed into something larger, more analytical, although there are tons of statistics and interesting facts pertaining only to the 70s. In other words, you are not going to find the final results of Formula 1 races or even points tables. These can be found in lots of other places, including wikipedia The only Formula 1 statistics I have placed in the book relate specifically to the 70s, such as laps in the lead (cars and drivers), total starts during the decade, and things of the sort. There is plentiful other Formula 1 information in the highlights section.

I was very happy with how the list of champions turned out. Here you will find much more than lists of champions in better known series, such as Formula 1, Formula, 2, Can Am. I have compiled information on champions in several areas of the world, including Greece, Portugal, Central America, etc. The lists are not complete, but they are the most complete I have seen anywhere.

The list of venues is also rather extensive, including dozens of hill climb venues in Europe. I do not expect it to be complete at this stage, but it does list some rather obscure places in Africa, Central America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

The list of constructors is also extremely long including research done in over 10 languages. Again, I do not expect it to be complete, so future editions will definitely have improvements.

The list of significant drivers is obviously rather subjective. I would need more than a 384 page book to list drivers in U.S. races alone, if I were to include everybody that raced in the country during the decade - a rather Herculean, impossible and fruitless endeavor. Thus I decided to pick and choose the drivers I felt are more relevant from several dozen countries. Not everybody will agree with my picks, I reckon.

There are sections on money, sponsors, and a long essay on what I call the "Pivoting". I also saw it fit to publish a case study I wrote years ago, that shows how Brazil went from being a footnote in global racing circles to being respected and relevant, in the short span of 3 seasons. I know many people might not enjoy this section, for it is too specific and mentions names and situations that are totally foreign to most readers. To others, it will be interesting, a unique work on the subject in the English language. Cannot please everybody.

Given the amount of information, and the fact I wanted to provide this book at less than US$ 30.00, this is not a pictorial book. Future editions or offshots may have tons of pictures, not this time.

This will be the first of a series of books on the subject, almost an outline. I hope you enjoy it.

It can be bought at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732674426

Auto racing history and my problem with wikipedia

Wikipedia and I have a very tense relationship.

Let me explain.

As a racing history researcher, I find wikipedia to be wanting. For those that do not know the English expression, it means lacking, insufficient.

I began writing about racing history back in 2003, when even blogs were not yet the rage. I used to include texts on a site I had, called brazilyellowpages.com, which no longer exists as a standalone site (long story). There was no such a thing as wikipedia. And google was still a young company, looking for "partners" in the way of content builders.

So, when I began building my blogs in earnest, I had the ambition of building the largest depository of race results in the internet, or at least winners. I soon found several sites that had very good information, but I found copying all laboriously compiled information a bit sneaky simply. So I understood that I could present winners and let others do what they do well.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia has other thoughts. And search engines have other thoughts about anyone who is not wikipedia.

From a "content partner" who made US$ 350 a month from google ads, back in 2005, now, with an exponentially larger number of posts, google pays a pittance of US$ 100 every year and a half. I feel more like a slave than partner, to tell you the truth. That is when I decided to "migrate" away from the internet.

Enough about money. I was not doing this for the money, this is just to show how the presentation of information  has changed in the last 10, 12 years.

Search engines rank sites by popularity. Never mind the fact they might be wrong (and wikipedia has tons of mistakes), or that information is being stolen from bona fide authors without authorization. Yes, several of my early posts ended up in wikipedia as posts! At first, I would attempt to remove, then I gave up. I simply changed the way I write posts, so that they would be rendered useless as a wikipedia entry.

The fact is that search engines no longer "love" my site, the one I indicate below, or consider it relevant. Back on the day, google would include any new post within half an hour. Now, it may take a few days, and normally it appears in position 1267th.

So, here is the "Winner" section of my old blog. It helps you contextualize careers of former and current Formula 1 drivers, and find out a bit of detail about their early exploits It is free!.

Unfortunately, a lot of sites that had good, detailed information back in the early 2000s, have disappeared from the internet a long time ago. So much for relevance.

The link is as follows. Enjoy.

http://brazilexporters.com/blog//index.php?blog=8

If you are seriously interested on Motor Racing, specially the racing that took place in the 70's, my book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized is for you. Its 384 pages are full of rare pieces of information, much of it surprising for even very knowledgeable racing buffs, collected over 40 years. It lists very obscure racing venues in surprising countries, interesting highlights, a very thorough list of champions, articles and statistics from the main championships of the era, the main drivers from over 78 countries, in addition to the most comprehensive and diversified list of 70's marques ever published. The difference is that the research for this book was conducted in over 10 languages, which gave the author access to information rarely consulted and included. For US$ 29.99 (even less, with discounts granted by Amazon, currently US$ 26.76) , you will be getting a lot of reference, and hours and hours of interesting reading. THIS INFORMATION IS AND WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED ON
TO BUY MY BOOK Click here https://www.amazon.com/Motor-Racing-70s-Pivoting-Organized/dp/1732674426 

Incidentally, Wikipedia contributed very little in terms of information.

Formula 1 Drivers at Le Mans, a New Trend?

It is an indisputable fact that winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall is one of the most highly sought after prizes in all of racing. Notwithstanding, it is very easy to concentrate on Fernando Alonso’s and Toyota’s maiden victories at the Sarthe, and Alonso’s trek to the Triple Crown of racing, and fail to see some interesting patterns.

Every since the driver trio became the norm at Le Mans, in 1985, a few winning crews were formed exclusively of drivers that had at one point raced (or were active in F1) such as Alonso, Nakajima and Buemi. In fact, this happened only four other times. In 2009, David Brabham, Marc Gene and Alexander Wurz had some F1 experience behind them, none of them wildly successful. Wurz had a couple of podiums and a fastest lap to his credit, and Gene scored points. Ten years before, victors Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas and Joachim Winkelhock also had F1 experience. Martini had led a GP, started one race from the first row, but Joachim Winkelhock never even qualified for a GP, while Dalmas was simply not successful. The 1992 winners, Derek Warwick, Dalmas and Mark Blundell had all raced in F1 – Warwick had a long career, got a couple of fastest laps, a few podiums and in fact, led 16 laps. Most of his F1 racing had taken place by then, but he still raced one more season, 1993. Lastly, the 1991 winners, Volker Weidler, Johnny Herbert and Bertrand Gachot had been in F1 by then, but Herbert’s wins were in the future.

The fact that Alonso is a current F1 driver, a multiple Champion and winner of over 30 GPs, and widely reckoned as one of the  top 5 by those in the know make this year’s line up rather special. Sebastien Buemi has also led a single GP lap, and is one of the most successful international drivers of the last few seasons, winning in both endurance and short Formula E events. But there is more to the story.

The fact is that no less than 22 drivers out of the 180 in this year’s Le Mans had driven in F1, including another former world champion (Jenson Button) and three other race winners (Fisichella, Montoya and Maldonado). This is a pattern of sorts, if we consider the line up in 1973.

That was a peculiar 24 Hours, the last time Ferrari raced works prototypes in the race it had dominated in the early 60’s. On that race there were also 22 drivers who had F1 experience, but not a single World Champion, and one three GP winners (Ickx, Cevert and Beltoise). All six Ferrari drivers had F1 experience (Ickx, Redman, Pace, Merzario, Reutemann and Schenken), and four Matra-Simca drivers had some GP history (Beltoise, Cevert, Depailler and Pescarolo). Additionally, other drivers with past GP experience were Van Lennep, Elford, Migault, Posey, Wisell, Bell, Ganley, Amon, Hailwood, Craft, Ligier and Quester. So, in a very clear sense, this year’s 22 former drivers with F1 experience at Le Mans had more of a pedigree, even though only Alonso is a current driver. The other 19 besides the winning crew were Kobayashi, Vergne, Button, Lotterer, Lammers, Magnussen, Fisichella, Montoya, Bourdais, Nasr, Senna, Stevens, Maldonado, Van der Garde, Petrox, Giovinazzai, Beretta, Di Resta and Lamy. One might argue that more weight should be given to the 22 that raced in 1973, for most cars were crewed by two drivers. While that is true, it should be noted that nowadays a very small number of drivers ever makes it to F1, considering the small number of available rides, stable driver lineups during the course of a season or sometimes several seasons. So this year’s 22 is very significant. 

Alonso is obviously not the only former world champion to seek glory in Le Mans. However, the last former F1 world champion to win at Le Mans was a certain Graham Hill, who also won at Indy. Since then a considerable number of former GP champions tried their luck in the famous French race, including Keke Rosberg, Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Jacques Villeneuve and Mario Andretti. The latter came closest to winning in 1995, when his mount, a Cougar-Porsche shared with Bob Wollek and former winner Eric Helary, was miles ahead of the competition, and Andretti had an off course excursion that caused some damage to the car. Andretti also attempted to win the race with son Michael, once sharing a works Porsche (finished 3^rd), and another time his Mirage booted out of the race by scrutineering. He was still trying in a Panoz as late as the year 2000, to no avail.

It remains to be seen whether Alonso would return to Le Mans next year in a car other than  a works Toyota. The fact that both Jenson Button and Juan Pablo Montoya took part in the race in cars with almost no realistic chance of winning, raises our hope that Fernando would return, even if Toyota calls it a day. Let us see.

Another interesting thing about the 1973 race was the start of Japanese participation at Le Mans, that culminated with this weekend’s Toyota win. It came in the form of a Sigma-Mazda driven by Hiroshi Fushida, Tetsu Ikusawa and Patrick Dal Bo.  The car retired, but since then, the Japanese have grown very fond of the 24 Hours. In fact, in several editions since then there were a seemingly endless number of Japanese drivers in the 24 Hours, sometimes driving Toyotas, Mazdas, Nissans, and Domes, but also driving a variety of cars such as McLaren, Panoz, Ferraris, Porsches. 27 long years have elapsed since the Mazda victory of 1991, and although Toyota finally got its pay day this year, Japanese enthusiasm for Le Mans seems to have vanished somewhat, for besides Nakajima and Kobayashi, who drove for Toyota, only two other drivers from the country, Motoaki Ishikawa and Keita Sawa, drove in the famous race this year. On the other hand, Russian and Brazilian interest on the race remain great.              

1970-1979 Formula 2 Point Scorers who did not make it to Formula 1

Formula 2 was conceived in the 40s as a steppingstone category to Grand Prix, replacing the 30’s voiturettes. In the 60’s, after some seasons in which only Formula 1 and Formula Junior existed as single seaters category in European racing, F2 came back in 1966 and an European Championship was created in 1967. This championship ran non-stop until 1984, when it was replaced by Formula 3000. Current Formula 2 only shares the name with the old 2.0 liter cars (the engine size from 1972 to 1984, before that, 1.6 liter), and have much larger engine capacities and power. Additionally, while a large number of Formula 2 participants, championship winners and point scorers, and even some non-point scorers, made it to Formula 1 in the above mentioned period, the same cannot be said of GP2 (which was recently renamed Formula 2) drivers. Making to Formula 2 at present is not really a guarantee you will ever drive a F-1 car in the world championship. In fact, generally two, tops three Formula 2 graduates find rides in Formula 1 every year, while many Formula 2 drivers got the chance to drive at least once in F1 (such as Jose Dolhem, Gerard Larrousse, Francois Mazet, etc).

READ MORE HERE https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732674426

Jean-Pierre Jaussaud in 1971

T

GAY FORMULA 1 DRIVERS

They say that the two things that interest people the most is sex and money, in general, but as well as on the internet. I can attest to that. I have literally thousands of posts published in dozens of websites, in several languages, and the one racing post that got the most attention was one about the wealthiest formula 1 driver in the world!  

As for sex, I ran an experiment in a blog. I published a post saying “Nude pictures of [a certain young Hollywood actress girl-next-door looking who shall remain unnamed]”. There was no picture of the young actress on the blog, undressed or dressed, just a black box. The reader was instructed to Pass the mouse on top of the picture, and right hand click three times, because the pictures were so ”hot”. You cannot imagine how many people clicked on the thing! In fact, in less than a month, there were over 100,000 hits on the post, over 10,000 in one day! Eventually people caught on that it was a joke, and the number of visitors dropped considerably. I got no bombs in the mail.

As for sex and formula 1 drivers, well, there were a few that liked to brag about their success with the ladies, such as James Hunt and Nelson Piquet father. Personally I find that in poor taste. At least Formula 1 drivers did not go as far as American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed to have had over 20,000 partners in his sporting career, and a Brazilian soccer player, now coach, the humbler Renato Gaucho, claimed to have bedded 5,000 women. That was in pre-Viagra days. Where exactly these folks found the time to have sex with these many women, during short career spans, I do not know…

As for the subject of homosexuality and Formula 1, I am reminded of a famous driver (who shall remain nameless as well) who was asked in an interview if there were any gay formula 1 drivers, responding that if there were, he would “do him”. I suppose that is a confession of sorts, or sheer ignorance that both the active and passive partner in a homosexual relation are considered homosexual! I suppose the joke turned against him…  

Sports car great Hurley Haywood recently “came out” declaring himself to be homosexual. Hurley provided that information in his autobiography and even his Wikipedia entry contains that information. To my knowledge, no other major race driver has found it necessary to expose that area of his(her) life, and certainly no formula 1 driver.

In forums and private conversations, one hears all types of stories, claiming that “x” or “y” is or was gay. One such driver apparently was not at all uncomfortable with his sexuality, but was a fearsome fighter and would still beat the crap of anybody who insinuated anything…As evidence people refer to weird and early deaths, including from AIDS, living in San Francisco, and the fact that so and so driver was rarely seen with women in public. This, to me, is an invasion of privacy. As far as race drivers go, what really interests me is how they do on the track, their results, their careers; and their sex lives do not really interest me.

So, I am sorry if I disappoint you. This post will not elucidate any curiosity you might have about gay Formula 1 drivers. Are (were) there any? Sure. Do I care? No. Just remember that one of the first men to undergo a sex change operation was a British race car driver and former RAF pilot, Robert Cowell, back in the 40s. So anything is possible. Do not worry, I will not post any black box and instruct you to pass over and right-hand click three times to reveal any names…Don't click on the white helmeted guy either...