But with hotel names on every corner and street names?
It is just a name...
Just a few of the ones I still remember
Brands Hatch (in Kent, nearby London)
Paddock Bend, Druids Bend... Clearways, Hawthorn straight... (this last one -a straightaway-, I believe it was renamed and do not remember)
This was the circuit I made my debut in national competiton (Britain), after a few months in club events, in my first race I started from the second row (third best time) leading the race, but the damned judges gave me a 10 second penalty, after the penalty, I was frustrated and allowed a Peruvian friend of mine to take the lead, I finished second. The marshals claimed that I had "jumped" the flag... rubbish, of course I did not, but still... they gave the penalty and put me way down into tenth place... miserable fate.
Clearways bend (the last one in Brands Hatch), I remember because of Pedro Rodriguez... who in 1970 drove what it would be probably the race of his life...
(Pedro, btw, was one of the best drivers in the wet)
here is the story of that day....
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If there is one race that sticks out in my mind, it is - inevitably, I suppose - the BOAC 1000kms at Brands Hatch in 1970, when it poured down, and Pedro Rodriguez made every other driver look flat-footed.
In those days, a World Championship sports car race was a Grand Prix by any other name, so let me take a line or two to give you the flavour of the entry. In the JW Automotive Gulf 917s were Rodriguez/Leo Kinnunen and Siffert/Redman, and in the Porsche Salzburg cars were Denny Hulme/Vic Elford and Hans Herrmann/Richard Attwood. The works Ferraris were crewed by Jacky Ickx/Jackie Oliver and Chris Amon/Arturo Merzario, with Mike Parkes/Herbert Muller in the Scuderia Filipinetti car.
There was a factory Alfa Romeo for Piers Courage/Andrea de Adamich, and the Matras were crewed by Jack Brabham/Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo/Johnny Servoz-Gavin. There were several Lola T70s for such as Jo Bonnier/Reine Wisell, and a bunch of Porsche 908s, one of which was driven by Gijs van Lennep and a brilliant newcomer, Hans Laine, who would sadly die in the car at the Nurburgring a few weeks later.
Porsche was immensely serious about sports car racing in those days, to the extent that John Wyer's team - which operated the Gulf-sponsored factory cars at the time - had available the 917 for fast circuits and the nimbler 908/3 for tight ones. The latter would have been the thing to have for Brands Hatch, but in April was not ready. Pedro, Seppi & Co had therefore to run the big cars.
By 1970, the 917 was relatively civilised, if not the natural vehicle for Brands Hatch on a wet day. Amon must have groaned on race morning for he had little relish for racing in the rain. In the dry he had put the Ferrari on pole position, a couple of tenths faster than Ickx's sister car and the Elford Porsche, with Brabham, Siffert and Servoz-Gavin also faster than Rodriguez. But Pedro will have rubbed his hands. Never a man much to concern himself with qualifying, anyway, he loved the wet.
In absolute terms, the crowd - around 20,000 - was middling for a World Championship sports car race in those days, but in light of the weather it was astonishing. Cars were towed into the parks that morning, among them my Lotus Elan. Had it not been for Rodriguez, I might well have spent much of the afternoon worrying about getting out again. Had it not been for Rodriguez, come to think of it, I'd have left long before the end.
As it was, Pedro made that impossible. It is easy, quite commonplace, to add layers of folklore to a day, to let hindsight amplify; but only rarely do you appreciate something of legend as it happens before you. That day, sodden and cold, the crowd stayed.
This owed nothing to a close race, for it was hardly that. I can speak only for myself, but that afternoon I waited simply for the pleasure of enjoying Pedro's victory.
Elford led at the end of the first lap, tailed by Ickx, Siffert, Amon, Brabham, Pescarolo and Rodriguez. In their stead, back in the pack, a T70 spun coining out of Clearways, finishing up near the start/finish line, bits of bodywork all over the road. Nowadays, they would stop the race in these circumstances, and you couldn't argue with them. Back then, they waved yellow flags, and hoped everyone would see them through the murk.
Pedro didn't - at least, he always claimed so, and John Wyer, for one, believed him: "He would never have gone through the accident scene flat out if he'd been able to see the flag. There was so much spray from the cars in front that he simply missed it. I never doubted him."
Whatever, next time around Rodriguez was shown a black flag, and this one he did see. A lap later the Porsche was into the pits, and while the Clerk of the Course bawled him out, Pedro impassively sat there, steely eyes straight ahead. When the lecture was over, he let in the clutch with some vim, and hurtled away down pit lane. By now he was going on a lap down on the leaders - yet by lap 20 he was on Amon's tail, past the Ferrari and into the lead.
Rodriguez's driving that afternoon beggars description. In the course of catching Amon, he had first to deal with such as Siffert, his own team mate, whom he outbraked into Paddock in a move which left everyone stupefied and shaking their heads.
I can still see those two pale blue 917s blasting through the spray down the main straight, still recall the amazement that Pedro was up with Seppi already, and next time around would be by him.
Into Paddock Siffert braked where a very brave man would brake, but Rodriguez still kept coming, and on an impossibly tight line aimed inside the other Porsche. In the dip there was the merest shimmy from the back of the car, and then it was gone, seeking out Elford and Amon. They, like Siffert, were sacrificial lambs this day, nothing more.
"That old joke," Chris said, "about why doesn't someone tell Pedro it's raining...it wasn't a bloody joke that day! I remember the way he came past us all, the things he was doing with that car. It was like sleight of hand..."
After that, it was really a matter of waiting out time. There was no race, as such, yet there was something hypnotic about the afternoon, the watching of one man, one car. We were soaked and frozen, yet curiously unaware of it. Until mid-race, anyway. At that point Pedro came in to hand over to Kinnunen, his new team mate. It seemed a good moment to seek out a cup of tea and a sandwich. Even at Brands Hatch.
An odd fellow, Kinnunen. He had made his name in Finnish rallying, and would prove shatteringly fast at the Targa Florio, where presumably he felt in his element. But at a slippery Brands Hatch he was clearly not so, and in the pits Rodriguez began to fret. He had built up a lead so substantial there was little chance of their car being caught, but he worried that Kinnunen might stick it in the fence. After an hour he could stand no more, and asked Wyer if he could take over again.
It was done. In dry overalls, now, Pedro resumed his rhythm, continued on his flawless way. Behind him, Redman crashed the other Gulf Porsche out of second place, and Amon was in and out of the pits with a recalcitrant fuel pump. Ickx, the one man who might have kept Rodriguez alert on a day like this, had stopped countless times for attention to his windscreen wipers... Ferrari electrics had struck again.
The Hulme/Elford 917, though, continued without major problem save that of having covered five fewer laps than the Rodriguez car. At 6.45 Pedro emerged from the gloom of Clearways for the last time, and took the flag. On South Bank spectators plodded through the mud to their cars, sounded their horns in the time-honoured salute of the day.
On the rostrum Rodriguez looked untouched by his work. The black hair was immaculately swept back, as ever, and there was the faintest of smiles. What was there about this Mexican - this Latin born to dust and heat - that put him at such ease on so English an April day? Siffert, sometimes a match for him on sheer pace, had been dominated, along with everyone else.
"Finesse," said David Yorke, Wyer's team manager for so many years. "In terms of speed, there wasn't usually much between them, but you always had the impression that Seppi did the job with arm muscles flexed, while Pedro sat there resting his thumbs on the wheel. His precision and sensitivity were fantastic. A day like that was made for him."
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Mallory Park:
Shaws hairpin, Devils elbow, Gerrards bend
Oulton Park: (This was a particularly fun up and down circuit along the lines of Brands Hatch)
Deer lodge, Druids, Shell Oil hairpin, Cascades... and more.... don't remember them all...
Truxton:
Brooklands, Club, Goodwood...
Silverstone: Beckets, Club, Copse, Woodcote (this is were Jody Schekter created total havoc in the first lap in 1973 and crashed in front of the main stands and pit area, out of seventh place... he ran wide into the grass coming out of Woodcote (back then a flat out 180 mph corner, in an F-1 -it has been changed since then with a chicane comlex --and took all the fun of the one corner where you could see the difference between men and boys i.e. flat out or not... and yes, I was in the flat-out category... -gg).
Sheckter spun, hit the inside pit wall, bounced and took 8 other cars with him.... they red-flagged the race and re-started it... Amazingly, only Andrea de Adamich was the only injured driver with a broken ankle and not a single car caught fire.... in a time when F-1 cars were considered fiery bombs.. and remember, it was the first lap of the race, at a time when there were no re-fueling stops... i.e. the fuel tanks were full... I saw the wreckage... it looked like a bombed out place with pieces of cars all over the place...
Peter Revson (the Revlon heir) won the race for McLaren.
In that 1973 British Grand Prix, during qualifying I saw Ronnie Peterson in his John Player Special (Lotus 72E) take that Woodcote corner at the absolute limit of tire adhesion... the meaning of four wheel drift was clearly defined by a completely awesom sight of his black and gold Lotus come around that corner flying like no one else could but Peterson could the car barely hanging on to the pavement and drifiting away towards the very edge of the track, coming just short of the grass and then rocketing towards the pit straight on to Copse... a thing of absolute beauty indeed!
Snetterton:
Richies corner, Sear corners, Russell bend The "Esses" I particulalry remember this one because I rescued a Canadian driver out of his wrecked car, with a broken ankle... It was a cold fall day, tire practise day, mid-week... I came around the esses... and saw his car up against the embankment of the second curve; he was waving his hands... I stopped just ahead and waved some of the other drivers who were practising too... one of them went on to call for the ambulance, which it was "on site"... an Argentinean driver friend of mine stoppped and helped me get the injured driver out of the car, since practice had not stopped and so it was dangerous to leave him there...
So... Carlos held him from his shoulders and I told the Canadian guy.... this is going to hurt because I have to untangle your ankle out of the accelerator pedal... He had one of the old style tubular frames (as opposed to the "monocoque" (aluminum rivetted box) chassis...
His ankle (broken) had fallen against the acccelerator peddal and he could not be pulled out, unless you lifted his ankle and "untangle" it... I had to use both my hands to hold his leg and then "maneuver" the ankle and foot around the pedal and tubular part of the chassis...
So I said... this will hurt but it is necessary to get you out.... and so I gave him my driving glove to bite on.... I still remember his scream as we litterarily 'weaved' his ankle/foot out of the chassis... and finally got him out of the car and laid him on the grass by the side, safely away from the other cars... My reaction was somehow strange as I had a mixed feeling... I felt good for helping him, yet I felt terrible because of the pain I caused to him... I assumed, he was in such pain-shock that he would not remember anything later... I never saw him again....
Shortly thereafter, the ambulance guys arrived and took over... I was glad, got back in my car and drove off back to the pit area... and more tire practice... life goes on...
So when you it comes to Monte Carlo... it is a special place in the world of motor racing... it is almost a shrine -gg
Considering that the Principality of Monaco (i.e. the whole country) is about 1.9 km sq, our humble circuit here looks like the baby of that circuit in Germany :-)
Size wise... maybe... but Monaco is Monaco... one of the biggest and most precious prizes and races to win... in the world. I would love to have been present in the days of Tazio Nuvolari, Rudolf Caracciola, Achille Varzi, Luigi Villoresi, Alberto Ascari, and of course, Juan Manuel Fangio.
In particular, in 1933 at the GP in Monaco, Nuvolari and Varzi had a duel that lasted 97 of the 100 laps... in cars that it would defy logic how they were able to control at the speeds they did... I mean, these were monster sized cars that they drove as if they were light and swift machines....
I thought the more likely explanation
was that lack of sleep and copious amounts of alcohol consumed in the past 24 hours had done his brain in -g-
I doubt it.... -g
Appreciating race car sound effects is hardly -by far- a sign of brain damage... -lol ! (it is actually the opposite) |
