Unusual facts of yesteryear

There are certain peculiar scenes in old time racing that were never properly recorded or documented. Some were funny, others tragic and sad.  Others happened so long ago that you wonder whether they were the product of a hyperactive creative mind

It is said that Jules Goux, winner of the 1913 Indy 500 stopped in the pits to gobble up some champagne in the middle of that very race. In Brazil there was a very slow driver who used to refuel his Simca in long distance races at a gas station outside Interlagos. There are many other funny stories in Brazil, one of the Opalas that raced in the first Stockcar event in Cascavel was so standard it actually had A/C, while a DKW driver from Brasilia used to smoke a cigarette while racing. 

Everything is so professional and organized today...however, not so long ago Taki Inoue was run over more than once during his short Formula 1 career. And rabbits, dogs and other animals visit tracks even during GPs. Even the Singaporegate of a few years back appears somewhat comic and unbelievable.

Nowadays everything is very fast. When the difference between P1 and P2 in quali is 0.5 sec we believe it is a huge gap, but back in the old days several seconds could separate drivers on a first row. And I am not even talking about long tracks such as Nurburgring, Spa and Pescara, but rather, shorter tracks.

When only twenty cars were left to race in F1, it seemed the world would end for some fans.  

In the early years of the sport even the top racing had a great air of improvisation, and things were taken much slower, even in racing.

Campari in 1925

The first world racing championship took place in 1925. It had a few races, and the champion was Alfa Romeo. There was no driver championship, the winner scored 1 point, second place, 2. In other words, the reverse of what we have today. 

In the first edition of the Belgian GP, besides Alfa, cars from Delage, Sunbeam and Bugatti were entered. However, come race day, only seven cars started, four Delage and three Alfas.

The race was long. GPs at the time were not "Made for TV", which did not even exist at the time. In this specific case, the race was a whopping 800 km long and it took more than six hours!

Eventually, all four Delage retired, and so did  Brilli Peri's Alfa. So only two cars remained in the track, the  Alfas of Antonio Ascari and Giuseppe Campari.

The public did not like this development, and the two surviving heroes were nastily booed.   Alfa 's crew reaction was funny. They prepared a sumptuous lunch, and the two drivers stopped in the pits at the same time, stuffed their face (apparently very slowly), until the public began missing the two cars on track.  They eventually came back, and Ascari finished first Campari, second.

Talk about romantic.

INTERNATIONAL RACING CHAMPIONSHIPS OF THE 70S

Many international championships were added to the International calendar during the 70s, which spike interest on the sport globally.

These, plus the existing championships were:

Formula 1 – World Championship, South Africa (also included F5000 and F2), Aurora Championship + British Group 8 (which also included Formula 5000, Formula 2, even Atlantic early on)

Formula 2 – European and Japanese Championships

Formula 3 – British, European, German, French, Italian, Swedish championships

Formula 5000 – American, European, Australian, New Zealand

Sports cars: World Championship of Makes, World Sports Car Championship, DRM (also ran Touring Cars), European GT Championship, European 2 Liter Championship, IMSA, Trans-Am, Can Am, Interserie, PROCAR, Le Mans

Touring cars: NASCAR, European Touring Car championship, Avenir Cup, USAC Stockcars

Formula Atlantic: Canada, South Africa, Britain

Formula Indy: USAC Championship Trail  + CART

Formula Super Vee: European, plus local championships in several countries

Hill climbing: European Hill-climb championship

Tasman Cup

SCCA and British club racing 

If you are interested on details concerning these individual 1970s championships, plus dozens of other championship and categories, 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

Carlos de Paula is one of the top Brazilian Portuguese translators in the USA since 1982. And now a top Portuguese AI Translation editor as well. 

Quickly fading away

It was almost like a pilgrimage. One of the first things I would do in my trips to Paris was go to Champs Elysees and visit the Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Mercedes and Toyota showrooms. There I would buy miniatures, books, t-shirts, key holders, trinkets of all types (I love trinkets), articles of clothing and take pictures of concept cars as well as racing cars.

I saw very up close a number of Red Bull, Renault and Mercedes Formula 1 cars, Peugeot and Toyota prototypes, Citroen rally and touring cars. Took a number of pictures. Happy days.

First to go was the Mercedes showroom. Granted that everything was so bloody expensive there that it seemed they really did not want to sell anything. There was never a thought of displaying the DTM cars, but at least I saw the Mercedes F1 up close. A show car, I know, fake as fake news.

Then, Toyota pulled the plug, curiously, just before finally winning Le Mans after so many decades trying. In its place, a toy store.

2017 claimed the Citroen multi floor show room, exceptionally designed outside and inside. 2018 was the year of demise of the Peugeot store. Alone carrying the torch now is Renault, the only one that was properly commercially explored from the get go, equipped with a properly run cafe. How long it will last, I don’t know.

Car makers are run by boards, who make purely financial decisions. They are interested on profits, and marketing expenses have to be justified. Trinket buyers can go to hell. While it is true that four of these manufacturers run Formula E programs, a category still in dire need of public relations. which has a Paris round with promotional issues no less, just one of the bunch sees the benefit of continuing with a Champs Elysees presence. None have ever displayed the electric racer. No Formula E participant will admit this, but most racing buffs are not all that keen on the category. It does need promotion, big time, and Champs Elysees was the ideal place.

Mind you, there was not a single race car on display this November at the sole lasting prestige showroom: a somewhat uncharacteristic 30s Renault limousine graced the front of the store, a pretty 50s oldie van was placed on the inside, plus a cutaway and concept car. No race cars, fake or true, were on sight. Racing themes were still abundant in the shop, though.

Racing as a promotional tool or merchandising outlet is losing power with every passing second, I hate to admit. Racing magazines are disappearing, and only Auto Hebdo is doing a proper print job at this time. Websites fail to excite. Stores selling racing miniatures and books are few and far between, resisting against severe odds, and a lot have closed in the last 5 or 6 years.

Peugeot claims that a new prestige showroom will be built somewhere else. Given the FIAT and PSA merger under discussion, I find that implausible, for mergers always mean severe cost cutting. I would not be surprised if the announced Peugeot WEC challenger were cancelled, just like Citroen just cancelled its WRC presence. 

I do hope in my next trip to Paris the Renault store will still be there. Where else would I buy trinkets?

The now empty former Citroen showroom at Champs Elysees

The beginning of the end

As my book Motor Racing in the 70`s indicates, 1979 was a very important year for the Williams team. In Silverstone, Clay Regazzoni managed to win a race for the British team for the first time. This was followed by 4 other wins by Alan Jones in the second half of the year. After trying to make the big leagues since 1969, Williams had finally arrived, with a bang.

The beginning was auspicious. Fielding a Brabham-Ford for Piers Courage in 1969, Williams actually got two second places in its debut season. Then came the De Tomaso chassis of 1970, Piers` death, and a number of years fielded Marches and proprietary chassis. Williams was often the laughing stock of the field, although a number of talented drivers drove for it during the period, including Pescarolo, Redman, Schenken, Merzario, Pace, Ickx, Laffite. The team was often underfunded, failing to collect from sponsors, then failing to pay drivers, and leased many a seat to Formula 1 hopefuls. The trough came in 1976, when a tie-up with Walter Wolf turned disastrous for Frank on and off the track. The more business-savvy Wolf ended up with the team, and actually made the new Wolf team a winner from the start in 1977. Williams regrouped late in the season, at first fielding a March for relative unknown Patrick Neve. The novelty was some Arab sponsors on the car and a young engineer called Patrick Head in the pits.  

The 1979 Williams team epitomized the successful F-1 team of the year and onwards. Well-funded, organized, motivated, with great staff and a talented engineer, plus winning drivers. The first title came in 1980, the last in 1997, a total of six, all won by a different driver. This is a Williams peculiarity among teams that won titles with more than one driver – no Williams driver ever repeated the feat.  The last race win was Pastor Maldonado’s inherited victory in the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix.  For a while Williams seemed on the rebound later in the decade and Valteri Bottas looked a certain winner a few times in the team’s cars.

The 2019 Williams team, on the other hand, looks more like the Iso-Marlboro of 1973 than a large and traditional team. Only Ferrari and McLaren can boost longer continuous career in the current F-1 field. However, 3 other teams, Mercedes, Renault and Alfa Romeo were Grand Prix pioneers from the early days of the sport. Tradition aside, Williams lost its major sponsor, Martini, a sugar-daddy (Lance Stroll’s father) and seems anything but a Mercedes B-team. The fact it is powered by the most successful engine of the age has no apparent effect on its performance.

The Iso-Marlboro of 1973 - at this point no one could guess Williams would be a top F1 team. 

The question is, how long can this continue? As an engineering company Williams makes a lot of money conducting projects for a number of clients. F-1 has become an after-thought since the heady days of the 1980s and 1990s, which might explain the big slip in overall performance since then. A tie-up with a number of engine manufacturers has not helped. In my view, Williams had a good opportunity to remain relevant should the Toyota partnership evolved. Truth is, Williams has lost its winning mentality as a team years ago, going into survival mode. And F-1 has become an embarrassment for the engineering company.

So, although I titled this article “The beginning of the end”, it may actually be the epilogue of a long process that began after losing the BMW partnership. Williams has looked quite lost in the off-season testing, and poor Robert Kubica is back in F-1 in the worst possible circumstances.

It would be sad to see Williams go, but that seems to be just a matter of time.

If you are interested in my book Motor Racing in the 70`s, you may buy it at foreigndocumenttranslations.com/motorracingbooks.php. The book is a comprehensive review of racing in the entire world during the decade and it covers all major championships and disciplines.

The 70s, a Porsche decade

One can argue that the 70’s were the Porsche decade. The company’s cars won Le Mans for the first time (and then four additional times), won hundreds (if you consider class wins, thousands) of races in all corners of the world, by that meaning every continent, dozens of championships, including world championships. A number of types represented the company in such wins: several versions of the 917, 908, 911, Carrera, 934, 914, 935, 936 won major races, even the old 910 and 907 could be called upon to win an occasional minor race. Porsches dominated at times not only the World Makes Championship, but also Can Am, Interserie, European GT Championship, DRM, IMSA, Trans Am. Porsches won domestic championships in the USA, Germany, Netherlands, Benelux, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Sweden and other countries. A Porsche Carrera was also the first turbo car to win a World Championship race, which also happened to be the last Targa Florio valid for the world championship. Porsches also won in hillclimbs, rally, autocross. This level of success was sustained throughout the decade – as the 917 was the dominating force in the 1970 Makes Championship and Le Mans, the 935 was doing the winning in 1979. Porsche cars comprised most Le Mans starters during the decade, sometimes, well over half of the field. Porsche quite simply ruled endurance racing all over the world, from Japan to Senegal and the USA.   

Curiously, there was no Porsche representation in Formula 1 during the 70`s, in any shape or form. While Porsche Formula 2 cars ran sporadically in the 50’s, a bona fide Porsche Formula 1 ran and won in the 1.5 formula of the 60’s, the TAG Porsche engine ran and conquered Formula 1 in the 80’s and there was even an ill-fated Porsche-Footwork tie up in the 90’s, Porsche was absent from the Formula 1 scene, even though the 908 Porsche was equipped with a 3-liter power plant, excellent for endurance but insufficiently powerful for Formula 1.

To find out a bit more about Porsche’s achievements in the 70’s, you may consider acquiring my book Motor Racing in the 70’s – Pivoting from Romantic to Organized.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

On the matter of racing sponsors in Formula 1 and elsewhere

Cigarette manufacturers spent billions of dollars in automobile racing, starting in 1968. Back in the 1800’s, cigarettes were sold as healthy items – believe it or not, good for the lungs! By the way, that was the approach used to introduce cigarettes to the Chinese market in the latter part of the century. Soon the medical profession caught on with tobacco’s twisted rationale, but as the multi-billion dollar industry has always involved money and power all over the world, cigarettes are still sold freely all over, but advertising it has become impossible. It was not entirely so back in 1968, although there were some prohibitions in certain medias and certain countries. That was the very reason why cigarette manufacturers embraced racing with gusto, specially because direct tobacco advertising was prohibited in TV almost universally. As racing became more of a TV product, it became a very useful advertising medium for cigarette advertisers, almost the only way their brands could appear on an ever more relevant and influential platform. With time we got used to seeing Marlboro and Gitanes sponsored Formula 1 cars without signage in races such as the British and German Grand Prix. Eventually, cigarette sponsorship has become universally outlawed.

Now, we see logos of the likes of Martini and Chandon omitted from Formula 1 cars in the Abu Dhabi and Bahrain Grand Prix. I have not quite understood why the Singha logo is allowed to appear on Ferrari, for Singha is Thailand’s main beer brand. Maybe beer is allowed, champagne and vermouth not allowed?

Be that as it may, I was just meditating about the condition of the Brazilian Stock Car championship. Although a local championship, a number of well known drivers of Formula 1 pedigree race in this championship, including Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa, Ricardo Zonta, Antonio Pizzonia, Lucas di Grassi and Nelson Piquet Jr. A large percentage of the grid is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, mostly generic drug makers. This pattern began years ago, with the success of Medley.

This works in Brazil, it would not work in the US, for instance. Brazilians are prone to self-medication and buying medicines in pharmacy without prescription is a national pass time. In the US, you never even see the medicine’s packages for most prescriptions, generic or not: medicines are removed from boxes and placed in pharmacy containers. So generic drug makers have no reason to even thing about advertise. Of course, this does not apply to brand names such as Viagra, which most famously sponsored NASCAR cars. In fact, a lot of TV and magazine advertising these days is done by pharma companies, specially as TV audiences become older and older. The young set is leaving TV aside, after all.

Returning to the Brazilian Stock car championship, if the government does decide to curb or prohibit generic pharmaceutical companies advertising, the championship would be in a dire situation. Both this year’s champion and runner up (Daniel Serra and Felipe Fraga) are sponsored by pharma, in fact, Fraga’s team, Cimed, had no less than five cars in the Interlagos season closing event.

I have discussed the matter of sponsorship and money at length in my book Motor Racing in the 70`s – Pivoting from Romantic to Organized which can be bought here or in several amazon.com stores worldwide. I discuss the astounding wide variety of industries that sponsored racing endeavors back in that pioneering decade, and funny enough, pharmaceutical companies were not common at all. Things change. For the sake of Brazilian Stock Car, let us hope there is no advertising ban on generic drug makers. And let us hope not many thousand Brazilians die from improper self-medicating…   

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    

What if Senna had never made it to Europe?

They say timing is everything. Sometimes timing is totally out of our control, so opportunities are lost, sublime talents wasted forever. When timing is perfect, “stars align”, things work out, talents reach fruition. The meritocracy idea that talented people always reach the top is bogus. 

History is a sum of intercalated past events, in different times and places that conspire to change the present and the future. So what we see and experience today had multiple roots in the past.

Thus, the fact that Ayrton Senna, a Brazilian driver, eventually made it to Europe and conquered Formula 1, inspiring future generations of drivers all over the world, took root in the timing of certain events in Brazil (and the world), back in the 70’s. The timing of such events was perfect, preceding the 1973 oil crisis and matching the height of the Brazilian “economic miracle”. The fact is, had the Brazilian racing scene remained sleepy, disorganized and stagnant until 1974, and attempts were made to go international in the midst of a crisis that greatly affected racing between 1974 and 1976, it is quite possible that Senna’s talents would have been wasted in the process.

These events, that happened between 1969 and 1972, opened the door for the likes of Senna to pursue racing abroad seriously, enabling drivers to secure sponsorship even in the midst of a very serious and long local economic crisis whose onset was 1974 and lasted through the 90’s. It should be remembered that by late 1974 Brazil already had a 2-time Formula 1 world champion, and ten years later, when Senna debuted in Formula 1, another driver had reached that same status. This series of events Brazilian opened to doors to other South Americans as well, for South American drivers (including Argentines) were a very rare sight in European race tracks during the 60’s, but as events unfolded, Uruguayans, Peruvians, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Chileans and Venezuelans also took a crack. In short, Emerson Fittipaldi’s success and quick rise to fame is the root of all this.

That prompted me to write a case study, Brazil from Footnote to Relevance in the course of three seasons, which discusses in detail what happened during these years, and sets the tone for internationalization. It required the right elements at the right time. The 80-page text is provided as a bonus to my book Motor Racing in the 70’s – Pivoting from Romantic to Organized, which can be bought at Amazon stores in USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Spain, Italy and Australia, or in the site motorracingbooks.com. The rest of the 382-page book deals with racing all over the world, with rare lists, statistics and information about all types of racing in the Americas, the Caribbean, Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia/New Zealand. Required reading for anybody who is really interested in racing history and Ayrton Senna.