Klasika

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Carlo Alberto Pozzi was born in Paris in 1909 and was still a youngster when his father was killed at Verdun, during World War I. After the war Pozzi was taken by an uncle to the new Montlhéry speedway near Paris and so his first automobile races. He was instantly hooked but racing cars were then wildly expensive and he did not have the money to take part. When he was 21 he found a job at the Garage du Parc in the chic Neuilly-sur-Seine and began to sell automobiles to wealthy clients. Two years later he opened his own garage in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. He became a Ford dealer but also began selling secondhand luxury cars from companies such as Talbot, Delage, Delahaye and Hotchkiss. In 1936 he became a Delahaye dealer but then decamped to Mountauban, near Toulouse, where he started a charcoal business, later converting some cars to run on charcoal, as other fuel was scarce.

 

During that period he created a very successful side business buying luxury and sporting cars, which had been left in the provinces. He drove them to Paris and sold them from premises in the 17th arrondissement. He acquired several racing cars during the war and in1946 he agreed to buy a pre-war Delahaye 135, but only after the owner had competed in the Nice GP. The owner then crashed the car in practice and offered the damaged vehicle to Pozzi before the race. He had the car repaired, drove it in the race and finished eighth, albeit many laps behind the winning Maserati of Gigi Villoresi. He then worked closely with Eugene Chaboud with an operation they called SFACS Ecurie France and helped him become French Champion in 1947. Pozzi preferred endurance events and in 1949 won the Grand Prix de l'ACF, which was held for sports cars that year. He also acquired a Talbot dealership in Paris and so when the World Championship began in 1950 he entered a Talbot-Lago T26C entered by Ecurie Charles Pozzi in the French GP at Reims. He finished sixth, having shared the car with Louis Rosier, after his works car broke down. He did not race again until 1953 when he took part in the Le Mans 24 Hours in a factory Talbot Lago T26GS, sharing with Pierre Levegh, finishing eighth. In 1953 he began trading in Ferraris and quickly gained the confidence of Enzo Ferrari. He used the same tactics as he had in the war and would travel to Maranello about once a month and drive the new cars back to Paris, where they were sold. He did not become an official importer until 1969 when he took over the business, while also having concessions with Rolls Royce and with Chrysler. In the 1970s he became a regular Ferrari entrant at Le Mans, while expanding the business from the main premises in Levallois-Perret to add agencies in Bayonne, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes and Strasborg. His business empire grew to become one of the most significant in France, until his death in 2001. The firm was later sold to Neubauer, a vast empire that sells 17 marques in France.

 

 

[Radoye]

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Hajime Tanaka has always been someone with grand ambitions. It has not always been easy, but he has achieved a great deal – and continues to work to do more.

 

Born in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, at the southern end of Japan’s biggest island Honshu, in 1946, he grew up in shadow of Hiroshima, a city only 60 miles to the east. Several of his family were killed there the year before he was born when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on the city.

 

His family owned and ran the Tanaka Metal Company, which recycled scrap metal. It was one of the few Japanese companies that was in demand during and after the war, initially because of the need for steel during the war and then, when Japan was under US occupation, by the Americans, who wanted to dismantle Japan’s many military bases. This led to the company working closely with the Americans and Tanaka grew up living in a world where there were strong American links. His father drove American cars and the family were used to American goods and culture. Although schooled entirely in Yamaguchi, he won a place to study economics at Japan’s oldest academic institution, Keio University in Tokyo. He was a keen golfer and developed the ambition to build his own golf course. At the time golf was a sport that indicated wealth and success and the cost of joining a golf club was very high. He believed that he could soon turn a new facility into a very profitable business. After graduating, he drove around the Yamaguchi Prefecture looking for a suitable site and then went to the Yamaguchi Bank and asked for a considerable loan. The bank, knowing that the family was to be relied upon, agreed and he spent $2.1 million in 1970 to buy the land at Nagato and then build a country club and golf course. By the time the work was done – and he did much of it by himself with bulldozers and excavators – he had revenues of $4.2 million as membership fees poured in.

 

In 1972 he started work on another facility near his home town. That was finished in 1974 with a similar result. He opened a third course – which could be used day and night – at Shimonoseki. They were the three most popular and profitable golf courses in Japan, averaging 18,000 players per month. 

 

He was rather at a loss for what to do after that. Money was pouring in as demand for golf grew and grew but he was not very interested in doing the same thing over and over again. The Yamaguchi Bank recommended that he take a break and travel the world to see if he could find inspiration for a new project

He spent several months studying in the US and then went to Europe. As part of his trip he went to see the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1986 and returned to Japan enthralled by motor racing and keen to become a racing driver. He was then 41 but had plenty of money. He bought himself a Honda Civic to race in a local championship and won the series at his first attempt in 1987. So he bought himself an F1 Tyrrell (it would end up being three) and he would take his cars out on different tracks around Japan. He also rode racing motorbikes and managed to have a number of serious accidents, breaking his collarbone badly twice while riding bikes and then smashing up one of his Tyrrells.

 

He concluded that opening an automobile country club was a great idea and decided that he would build his own circuit for Japan’s super rich to use and for manufacturers to use for testing. He found a suitable piece of land in the neighbouring Okayama Prefecture and, having designed the track himself, began construction of Tanaka International. The plan included a plush clubhouse and a hotel on-site, in addition for plenty of garages in which the members could store their cars. He was able to sell 350 memberships at $100,000 each. He was printing money once again and quickly acquired an impressive car collection and the kind of contacts that come with such success.

 

So he set out to organise a Grand Prix at Tanaka International. The Okayama governor Shiro Nagano  liked the idea as he was keen to promote the region as a tourist destination and high-technology centre, with its many pagodas, shrines and castles. The region also boasts the spectacular Seto Ohashi bridges - which span the islands of the Inland Sea - and links the island of Shikoku to the mainland.

 

The problem was that the track was in a remote, densely-wooded and mountainous area, 12 miles for the nearest small town, along narrow roads. Ironically, the nearest town of any import was called Yunogo, which summed it up. Hotel accommodation was so scarce that F1 people had to travel 30 or 40 miles to get to the track and there was nothing for race fans. Tanaka was resourceful as ever arranging for fleets of buses to run up and down the access roads, ferrying people backwards and forwards.

 

Bernie Ecclestone liked Mr Tanaka’s money and enthusiasm and it was agreed that the race would be called the Pacific Grand Prix. The first was in April 1994 and was won by Michael Schumacher, after Ayrton Senna's Williams was punted off at the first corner by Mika Hakkinen's McLaren.

 

The second race was scheduled for April 1995, but in January that year the Great Hanshin Earthquake destroyed much of the nearby city of Kobe, making it even more difficult for spectators to reach the track. The local authorities called off the race and rescheduled it for October, going back to back with the Japanese GP. Having achieved his ambition and having lost the support of the local government who felt that the experiment was not worth repeating, the race was stopped.

 

The company would go bankrupt in 2003 and was restructured and the circuit renamed Okayama International Circuit, with the local government taking over control.

 

Tanaka had a new ambition, to own the commercial rights of an entire sport and founded the the Japanese Billiard Council. This was followed by the International Billiard Council and in late 2001 he organised the biggest ever billiard competition, attracting 729 contestants, battling for a prize fund of £1 million. The Tokyo 9 Ball International was a success for the players, but the media paid little attention. Billiards was not quite Formula 1.

 

He then hit on the idea of creating a floating sporting venue which could travel the world and host big events in different locations, thus generating revenues from the cities, in addition to the TV and sponsors. He began planning to build a ship with suitable sporting facilities.

 

While he was doing this he stumbled upon new successwhen he asked the French fashion house Hermes to create a briefcase that he had designed. Jean-Louis Dumas, the boss of Hermes, though it was such a great design that the company agreed to put it into production as the so-called Mallette Tanaka. Soon after that he had a similar experience with the Finnish loudspeaker company Genelec, which created a very successful Tanaka line of speakers.

 

The ship project continued with his Ocean Silk Road Inc planning to build a liner called the Princess Kayuga, the largest ever cruise ship in the world. The 2009 recession stopped that programme and Tanaka spent the next four years working to redesign the Choshi City hospital, not far from Tokyo’s Narita Airport.

 

In 2013 he relaunched the Princess Kayuga project with a new firm called Contents Network Inc. The ship design has grown to 500 metres in length, which is around 150 metres longer than the biggest existing liners. The ship will weigh 450,000 tons, which would be far and away the largest passenger ship ever built. The goal would be to create a ship with 3,610 suites, accommodating 8,400 passengers, with a crew of 4,000. This would include condominiumswhere wealthy people could live tax-free, cruising around the world. There would be three 1,200 room hotels offering suites and offices, around 50 different restaurants, a tax-free shopping mall, a sports stadium, a convention centre and a 2,000-seat concert hall with its own resident orchestra and conductor, allowing the ship to host world class events. There would naturally be a full-scale hospital, an art gallery and even an amusement park.

 

A floating city, in effect, taking world-class events, sports fixtures, conventions and exhibitions to different cities.

 

A very big money-making machine…

 

Mr Tanaka is already considering building a fleet of tax-free floating cities.

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

MILLER: Not your average racing movie - or driver

 

Image courtesy Chassy Media

 

By: Robin Miller | 2 hours ago

 

 

The first time I met Willy T. Ribbs in 1978, he was wearing a shirt that said, “I know what satisfaction is!” So I figured right away this wasn’t your average race driver. And, over the next couple of decades, Willy T. showed us a unique character with unwavering confidence, blunt honesty, bravery in an unfriendly atmosphere, raw talent and a mouth that got him noticed as well as hated.

 

And all of those emotions and his roller-coaster career are on display in “Uppity,” the documentary of his life that debuted on Netflix this week (also available on Chassy.com).

 

 

Image courtesy Chassy Media

 

Produced and directed by Adam Carolla, Nate Adams and Mike August, it’s an honest look at how a black race driver took on an all-white establishment and went from sure thing to unemployed to trendsetter to the side of the road and finally into the Indianapolis 500.

 

It opens with Willy waxing the best that young, up-and-coming Formula Ford drivers had to offer in England, one of the most competitive arenas in the world, by winning six of 11 Dunlop Star of Tomorrow races and the 1977 championship at the age of 21.

 

That should have propelled him up the Formula 1 ladder, but he couldn’t get a Formula 3 ride so he headed back to America where, over the next few years, he would meet five people who greatly influenced his life: Humpy Wheeler, Jim Trueman, Paul Newman, Don King and Muhammad Ali.

 

One of the great motorsports promoters, Wheeler figured Ribbs was exactly what NASCAR needed to create some headlines, so he got him a ride at Talladega. Unfortunately, there were so many death threats that they withdrew him from the race.

 

Ribbs’ real breakthrough in terms of proving himself came in 1982 at Long Beach. Trueman got him a Formula Atlantic ride and he proceeded to out-qualify both Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr. and led the race until the engine expired a few laps before the finish.

 

That led to a phone call from Newman, who got him in a Trans-Am car with Budweiser sponsorship and things took off. He won in his fourth start and battled teammate David Hobbs before moving on to Jack Roush’s Ford team where he and Wally Dallenbach Jr. duked it out for a couple of seasons.

 

Hobbs and Dallenbach, who both became good TV analysts, provide the best sound of the film as they laid out the good, bad and ugly of being on the same team as Ribbs. “Very abrasive,” was how Hobbs termed their relationship. “David knew it was personal,” countered Ribbs.

 

He got a call from King in 1985 who said he had Miller Beer as a sponsor for Indy. But it all went bad in his first and only day of practice and he walked away. The car didn’t have a proper windshield so his head was buffeted around to the point he could barely see the corners. What the documentary didn’t show was the fact he was running a turbocharger for Milwaukee instead of Indy so the torque was hard to control. Willy claimed he was sabotaged by a racist crew chief and he had a good case, but his critics called the exercise “Chicken and Ribbs,” claiming he just wasn’t brave enough for Indy’s high speeds.

 

The next adventure came when Bernie Ecclestone asked if he wanted to test an F1 car in Portugal. The test went quite well but the sponsor wanted an Italian driver so Willy T. came back home and continued his Trans Am success – winning eight times but incurring four DNFs.

 

“Sabotaged by Roush,” is how he explains it.

 

 

Ribbs’ Brabham F1 test in 1985 went well, but Olivetti wanted an Italian driver. Image by LAT

 

It was back for another go at NASCAR in 1986, where he made four starts for DiGard Racing but suffered several engine failures. “NASCAR knew I was going to win Watkins Glen and they couldn’t have that,” he reckoned.

 

After Trueman died of cancer in June of 1986, Ribbs got a lifeline from Dan Gurney, who put him in his GTO Toyota Celica for the IMSA series in 1987.

 

The last and most dramatic act came in 1991 when Derrick Walker’s under-financed IndyCar team got $350,000 from Bill Cosby to run Ribbs at Indianapolis. He qualified in the closing minutes in his third and final attempt to break Indy’s color barrier and win the respect of Gasoline Alley.

 

Now, Ribbs has always been one of those guys people either love or despise, and he welcomed confrontation and challenge. Sometimes he was his own worst enemy but you always got a straight shot.

 

One wonders what might have happened if he’d been snatched up by a rich owner over in England or if Trueman lived longer or if Walker had hit the lottery.

 

But he carved out a pretty damn good career and has a cool story to tell in this film entitled with this lifelong mantra: “They called me an uppity n***** … and I loved it.”

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

It is rather an odd thing that the last two American Formula 1 teams that have raced (rather than just talking about going racing) were both owned by people called Haas – and they are completed unrelated to one another. Carl Haas was from Chicago, Illinois, Gene Haas from Youngstown, Ohio, a city between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

 

Well, if truth be told Carl Haas wasn’t really from Chicago. That is what he used to tell people and what appeared in his official biographies, but in truth Carl Haas was born in Germany in 1929. If you look at stories about his life, it says that he was born in Chicago in 1930, but also that his father fled Germany to escape from Nazi persecution. Given that the Nazis did not come to power in Germany until 1933 the facts as presented just didn’t add up…

 

Immigration records reveal that Carl moved to the United States with his family in March 1938, when he was just nine years old. They were Jewish and lived in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, where his father traded leather goods. It was a place where there was little discrimination. A Jewish resident was elected to the town council as early as 1860 and there were numerous Jewish-owned businesses and factories. But once the Nazis arrived, things changed. The Haas family got out just in time. In late 1938 the Ludwigshafen synagogue was burned and in the years that followed many of the Jewish population was sent to camps from which few returned.

 

Carl went to Hyde Park High School, Woodrow Wilson Junior and finally to the Illinois Institute of Technology. He then signed up to join a Ford Motor Company management training programme. It was at this point that he went with a friend to the resort town of Elkhart Lake, 150 miles north of Chicago, to watch a street race that ran around the lake with the start-finish line on the waterfront opposite the celebrated Osthoff Resort. He was hooked and was soon racing an MG in local SCCA races. He was quite successful and so moved on to a Porsche Spyder and more exotic Ferraris and Jaguars. He began trading gearbox parts to help pay for his expensive new habit. As time went on, he began to import cars and components from Britain and by the early 1960s had given up being a driver and turned to being a team owner and businessman. In 1967 he became the exclusive US importer for Lola Cars, a role he would hold for 36 years. He ran Lola teams in CanAm and Formula 5000 winning races and titles, notably in Formula 5000 with Brian Redman. This was followed by CanAm titles for Patrick Tambay in 1977, Alan Jones in 1978, Jacky Ickx in 1979 and Tambay again in 1980. He ran some sports cars but then decided to go into business with his old CanAm rival team owner Paul Newman (better known as a movie star) and the Newman Haas team won a string of titles with Mario and Michael Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Cristiano da Matta and, in the dying years of CART, four consecutive championships with Sebastien Bourdais.

 

In late 1984 Haas landed a big new sponsorship deal with Beatrice Companies Inc which agreed to finance not only the CART team but also a Formula 1 programme. Haas did a three-year deal to use Ford V6 turbos and signed up Jones. Formula One Race Car Engineering (FORCE) was set up in Britain and recruited some of the best known names in the business including Teddy Mayer, Tyler Alexander, Neil Oatley, a young Ross Brawn and later an even younger Adrian Newey. The cars were called Lolas – it was good advertising for Haas - but were actually designed and built in the FORCE factory in Colnbrook. The engines were not ready for 1985 and so Haas ran Hart turbos, without much success. In July that year, James Dutt, the Beatrice CEO, was replaced by a new boss who was not into racing. The first car - designated a Beatrice Lola was launched that summer and Jones did a handful of races at the end the season. Jones was joined in 1986 by Patrick Tambay and the Ford engine arrived but Beatrice had withdrawn and although Haas tried to find the money to keep the team going he failed and he sold the team to Bernie Ecclestone. 

 

Haas went back to US racing and turned to race promotion at the Milwaukee Mile, Road America and in Houston. In 1994 he started a NASCAR Cup team with former Ford executive Michael Kranefuss and after selling out to CART rival Roger Penske went into partnership with Travis Carter to form another team which ran until the end of 2002.

 

In 1997 he split with Lola and for three years was the distributor of Swift cars but he then returned to Lola after the organisation was taken over by Martin Birrane.

 

Violently opposed to the rival Indy Racing League, Newman and Haas stayed until the end in CART in 2008. They finally switched to the IRL and won races with Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson but then Newman died at the end of the year. The team had a new partner by then in Mike Lanigan but won nothing in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Haas finally announced that he was stopping the team. Lanigan moved to join Rahal Letterman.

 

By then Haas had begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, from which he died in 2016.

 

 

[Radoye]

Poslednji TV intervju Dzima Klarka. Sutradan je nastradao.

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Stefano Domenicali comes from the city of Imola, a fairly average little place, on the plains to the east of the Apennine mountains - the backbone of Italy. In the hills behind Imola the Mille Miglia raced through the hills and in the 1950s the local council decided to try to boost the local economy by building a new road linking existing public highways which could be turned into a racing circuit. Construction began in March 1950 but it was not until 1954 that the first race took place. Keen to develop the idea, the track offered a large prize fund for a non-championship Formula 1 race in 1963. It was won by Jim Clark but Ferrari did not attend. A grandstand was built in 1965 and the Motorcycle World Championship paid its first visit in 1969. Money was found to build roads around the track and in the early Seventies it became a permanent closed circuit.

 

The son of a prominent local banker, Domenicali grew up as the circuit was becoming known internationally. This was largely thanks largely to another non-championship F1 race, known as the Gran Premio Dino Ferrari, which took place in September 1979 (being won by Niki Lauda in a Brabham-Alfa Romeo). This laid the groundwork for the one-off Italian GP in 1980, as Monza was closed for renovation work. After that Imola joined the World Championship fulltime with the San Marino Grand Prix, which began in 1981.

 

At the time Stefano was still studying at the Liceo Scientifico di Imola, before moving on to study economics and business administration at the University of Bologna, the oldest university in the world. During his college years the Ferrari-mad Domenicali often helped out at the circuit, doing whatever people wanted him to do, working as a pitlane marshal and in the media centre.  He had decided by that point that he was not going to follow his father into finance and set his sights on getting a job at Ferrari. He sent in his CV to the company and the company was sufficiently impressed to hire him to work in the taxation department. It was a start.

 

Stefano's arrival at Maranello coincided with the firm finishing its upgrading work of the Mugello circuit, near Florence, which had been acquired as a test track in 1988. Ferrari needed someone to run events at the track and Domenicali earned himself a clerk of the course licence and between 1992 and 1994 he became the race director of Mugello, organising events including MotoGP and DTM.

 

In 1995, impressed at his skills, Ferrari put him in charge of human resources for Gestione Sportiva, Ferrari's competition department, and a year later was transferred into sponsorship liaison. Then, having a good grounding in the F1 business, he was named as the the F1 team manager, a job he would hold for five years. After a season as the logistics manager he was promoted to be the sporting director of the team in 2001, his role being to do all the necessary liaison with the FIA and the other teams and to know the rules inside out.

 

He did the job without drama and without rocking the boat and by November 2007 he was named to replace Jean Todt as the head of Gestione Sportiva, with Todt remaining the chief executive of the whole Ferrari company.

 

Stefano was then 42. The team won the Constructors’ World Championship in his first year in charge, but it missed out on the Drivers’ title in the exciting end-of-season showdown in Brazil. During his tenure the team won 20 victories with Felipe Massa, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso but there were no more championships and when the 2014 car arrived and was clearly not very competitive, Domenicali resigned, feeling that he had not achieved as much as he had hoped. Other, he hoped, could do better.

 

Later that year, thanks to his connections with Volkswagen's Luca de Meo, who had been a key FIat executive before moving to the German firm, he was taken on by Audi as Vice President of New Business Initiatives, his job being to evaluate whether Audi should enter Formula 1 and if so, by which route be that taking over a team, working with an existing racing organisation or whether it would be best to start its own dedicated operation in Ingolstadt. The process took 16 months and then, early in 2016, he was named as the new chairman and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini.

 

The VW-owned supercar company, based in Bologna, was then selling 3,500 cars a year.  Under Stefano's leadership production has ramped up to 3,800 in 2017, 5,750 in 2018 and 8,205 in 2019, thanks largely to the launch of the Urus SUV with revenues rising from $1.25 billion in 2017 to $1.6 billion in 2018 and around $2 billion in 2019.

 

It is ironic that he has found success with Ferrari's rival, but his career still has a way to run yet...

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Only one Canadian-built car has ever competed in the Formula 1 World Championship – and you can forget Walter Wolf Racing, which may have been entered on a Canadian licence but which designed and built its cars in Britain. The answer is the Stebro, driven by its designer (and builder) Peter Broeker.

 

By all accounts, Broeker is a bit of a mystery. However, we have reliable source of information, a short biography which appeared on the back of a self-published book called “Olympic Coins” in 1973. Broeker, you see, was a coin specialist in addition to his other skills, serving as president of the Montreal Numismatic Society and as chairman of the Canadian Numismatic Association.

 

He says that he was born in Hamilton, Ontario, a short distance from Niagara Falls, in 1926. Some sources suggest he was born in San Francisco, others say Germany and others say Pennsylvania.

 

As there is no reason to suggest otherwise, his own story is probably the most reliable. He certainly travelled a great deal when he was young – hence his interest in coins - his father having businesses in different countries, including Argentina, Germany and the United States and Peter seems to have lived in several of these countries. He reportedly served with the US Army at the end of World War II, when he would have been 19, but then went on to study history and politics at college in Nashville, Tennessee, where he did his first races in stock cars.

 

He did not move back to Canada until 1952, opening a car repair business in Hamilton, not far from Niagara Falls, before relocating to Montreal in the late 1950s, opening the Strebro Garage with a colleague called John Stephens in 1959. This was basically a repair shop but they soon began to act as an agent for Judson superchargers, imported from Pennsylvania, before developing a business in stainless steel exhausts for mainly Italian cars.

 

Broeker began building his Stebro racing cars in 1960, using a BMC engine for the new Formula Junior in 1960. The front-engined Mark I Formula Junior was not very competitive and he built a Mark II, which was a rear-engined version of the car. The Mark III was a open-wheeler version of a Sadler sports car. None brought any real success. The Mark IV, built over the winter of 1962-63 was a space frame design, clothed in aluminium bodywork, fitted with a larger than normal fuel tank so that it would be able to be raced in longer events.

 

Broeker had the ambition to enter Formula 1 and did a deal with the Martin engine company in Britain to use an engine it was developing for the 1.5-litre rules. His goal was to build two cars and enter them for John Cannon and Ernie DeVos in the United States GP that autumn. He was granted an entry for Watkins Glen, presumably because the track thought a Canadian car might attract fans, but only one Mark IV was ready and the engines had not appeared. In desperation Broeker built up his own engine using a Ford 105E, as used in the Anglia, bored out to 1.5 litres, with as many tweaks as he had time to add. Cannon had gone off to race elsewhere and DeVos realised that the car was not going to be competitive and so Broeker decided to race himself. The car lasted only a few laps in qualifying before blowing an oil seal and spreading oil all over the track. He qualified last, 15 seconds off the pace and after a few laps in the race the car jammed in fourth gear, but Broeker refused to give up and ended the day seventh, just one place short of a point, although he finished 22 laps behind Graham Hill’s BRM.

 

The Stebro thus became the first and only Canadian-built F1 car.

 

Broeker took a new Stebro Mark V to Europe to compete in F2 races th following summer, fitting the car with a more competitive Cosworth-tuned SCA engine, but the results were still not very good and he returned to Canada developed the car more and fitted a better engine and went on to win a string of races in the years that followed, before rolling the car at Ste Jovite in 1968, fortunately without injury. Rather than rebuild the car, he bought a Chevron, although this would be lost in a workshop fire.

 

He moved Stebro to a bigger facility in Pointe Claire, near Montreal’s Dorval Airport, but then decided to leave Quebec after the first separatist government was elected in 1976. He settled in Hawkesbury, Ontario, about 60 miles to the west of Montreal, just across the border. He still raced but fell victim to cancer, dying in Ottawa at the end of 1980, at the age of just 54.

 

Strebro died with him although the anme would be revived 20 years later by a Swiss mechanic who started building exotic exhausts until the firm went out of business in 2013.

 

 

[alberto.ascari]

[emoji2510][emoji634]

Odesláno z mého BBF100-1 pomocí Tapatalk

[Radoye]

[Radoye]

Quote

 

In 1989 Formula 1 found itself in a period of change. Many of the F1 drivers had been around for a few years. Things seemed rather stable. The big guns were Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet. Gerhard Berger scored the occasional victory. Things seemed rather stable. 

 

And then the F1 circus headed off to Brazil for the first race of 1989. Ferrari was in trouble, as the new 640 was so advanced that it was completely unreliable. The team could only run a few laps at a time before something went wrong. Qualifying in Rio produced a few surprises. Senna was on pole for McLaren-Honda but it was a surprise to see Riccardo Patrese second in his Williams-Renault. Berger was third for Ferrari with Thierry Boutsen fourth in the second Williams-Renault, Prost was fifth in his McLaren-Honda and Mansell was sixth in his Ferrari. It was all a little odd.

 

The race started with a bang, Berger made a great start and tried to go Senna and Patrese into the first turn. Senna refused to give room. There was a collision and Patrese found himself in the lead. Mansell had expected to be out early but as the afternoon went on he found himself leading the race with the 640 running faultlessly. Everyone remembers Johnny Herbert’s performance that day. He could barely walk, yet this pale, pained, figure not only out-qualified his more experienced Benetton team mate Alessandro Nannini but went on to finish fourth in the race. It was a great day for Mansell – although he cut his hands on the trophy – but it was Herbert who grabbed much of the attention. Fourth on his F1 debut, barely able to walk. It was astonishing.

 

It was sad because no-on ever remembers who finished second and third that day. Prost was second but perhaps poor Mauricio Gugelmin deserved a little more recognition for his third place for Leyton House. He had a decent debut season in 1988 but no-one paid much attention to his first podium. There were just too many good storylines. There were a number of similar stories that year. In Monaco Stefano Modena took his Brabham to third place. Alex Caffi finished fourth in a Dallara. In Montreal Nicola Larini took the hopeless Osella to third place in the wet.

 

But the French GP was the race that revealed the new generation more than anywhere. Five drivers made their F1 debuts that day: Jean Alesi was called up by Tyrrell as Michele Alboreto could not stay on after the team did a deal with Camel. Eric Bernard replaced Yannick Dalmas at Larrousse, Martin Donnelly stepped in to replace Derek Warwick at Lotus after the latter crashed a kart (rather unwisely), while politics at Benetton saw Herbert dropped and Emanuele Pirro given the job. Finally, Bertrand Gachot made it through pre-qualifying for the first time with his Onyx.  Bernard, Alesi and Gachot had already met at the track, six years earlier when all three were finalists in the Paul Ricard Elf Winfield racing school competition. Bernard had won that day. Two seasons later Bernard had won the French Formule Renault title with Alesi fifth. Two years after that the rivals fought over the French F3 title - Alesi had won. On the day of their F1 debuts, Alesi ran second and finished fourth. The others all impressed. In Germany a few weeks later, Pirro ran in third and so it went on. It was a year for the youngsters…

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

There was a time when the Agip name was everywhere in Formula 1. It the fuel sponsor of Ferrari and the name was often to be seen on yellow trackside hoardings, with its six-legged fire-breathing black dog logo. It was as emblematic of Italy as Ferrari’s prancing horse, Maserati’s trident, the Lamborghini bull or the celebrated Martini stripes. Between 1974 and 1995 it was an integral part of the Ferrari story, before Shell took over. There were dalliances with other teams, notably Benetton, but then Agip faded from F1.

 

It is a story that began back to 1925 when Benito Mussolini seized power, changing his title from President of the Council of Ministers to Head of the Government on Christmas Eve 1925. He immediately began to enact nationalist and protectionist reforms in his role as “Il Duce”, creating the machinery of a modern dictatorship, based on the promise of future national renewal. Rival political parties were banned, the press was manipulated to promote Fascist truth over anyone who criticised the regime and power was concentrated in the hands of the party. As part of this approach, Mussolini launched a national petroleum company. The Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli (AGIP) was the result. The company did well early on but the war left many of its facilities damaged or destroyed. The first post-war Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi, leader of the Democrazia Cristiana party, asked Enrico Mattei to oversee the closing down of the business.

 

Mattei was the son of a carabiniere. He worked in the tannery business before the war, setting up a chemical company producing oil-based emulsifiers for the tanning and textile industries. When the war came he joined a partisan group in the mountains around Perugia before moving to Milan to escape arrest. He was then put in charge of the Christian Democrat partisan forces but was then caught in October 1944 and was lucky to escape two months later. When the fighting ended in 1945 he was appointed a member of the National Liberation Committee.

 

Rather than close down Agip, Mattei concluded it was better to rebuild and expand. De Gasperi agreed to support his efforts and this led to the establishment of Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi SpA (ENI) to combine all state-owned petroleum, gas and petrochemical companies into a single corporation, with Agip as one of the divisions. Mattei was put in charge and remained so, expanding the business from oil and gas to machinery manufacturing, textiles, finance and even acquired the newspaper Il Giorno. But then in October 1962 he was killed when his Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris private plane came down in a storm, close to the village of Bascape, on approach to Milan’s Linate Airport. The pilot Irnerio Bertuzzi, a celebrated war hero, and a Time-Life photographer called William McHale were also killed. A government inquiry concluded that the plane had crashed because of the storm, but there were suspicions that this was not the truth. There have been a number of investgations since which have proved conclusively that the plane was blown up, but no-one knows who was responsible. A French former secret agent Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli claimed that the explosion was an operation conducted by the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), France’s secret service, while Tommaso Buscetta, an informer on the Italian mafia, said that it had been responsible.

 

In the years that followed under Eugenio Cefis, who was also accused of having been involved in the crash, ENI was used by the government as a holding company for different businesses, including more chemical companies and mineral firms. The decision to sponsor Ferrari in 1974 gave the firm enormous exposure and it expanded further, but it became increasingly unprofitable and had to reorganised in 1983 by Franco Reviglio. It was floated in 1992, although the government remained the primary shareholder. A year later Agip was engulfed in the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, with the chairman Gabriele Cagliari admitting that he had bribed government officials. He was later found in his prison cell with a plastic bag wrapped around his head. This was ruled to be suicide, although there were a number of incongruous elements, including facial bruising, that did not quite fit the story.

 

After the scandal Agip was put under the control of Franco Bernabei, who sold off more than 60 subsidiary companies, preparing it for full privatisation. This resulted in the loss of the Ferrari sponsorship contract as Shell was willing to pay prive twice as much. The IPO went ahead but by 2003 Agip had been reacquired by ENI, which although privatised as well, remains under the control of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance by virtue of shares it holds through the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA investment vehicle.

 

 

[Radoye]

Rodjen na danasnji dan 1934. godine, jedini svetski sampion na dva i na cetiri tocka:

 

[zoran59]

1 hour ago, Radoye said:

Rodjen na danasnji dan 1934. godine, jedini svetski sampion na dva i na cetiri tocka:

 

Ne samo to, nego (Englez) osvajao sampionate u obe kategorije na talijanskim masinama - na 2 tocka, MV Agusta, na 4, Ferrari.

[Radoye]

Quote

 

In 1892 Tokujiro Ishibashi opened a tailor shop called Shimaya in the Honcho district of Kurume City, close to the port of Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu, in south-western Japan. His children Jutaro and Shojiro were six and three at the time but as they grew up they joined the family business and in 1906 the took over the business at the ages of 20 and 17. They decided to reduce the tailoring and increase production of tabi, traditional Japanese footwear made from cloth. They invested in cutting and sewing machinery and by 1916 had grown sufficiently to open a factory in the Arai-machi district. They then began to create rubber-soled tabi, called jikatabi, and expanded the sales across the whole of Japan with a company called Nihon Tabi. This was followed by diversification into athletic shoes in 1923 and in 1928 they opened a new factory in Fukuoka to manufacture shoes for sales all over the world. They had money to burn. They helped to establish the Kyushu Medical School, donating land and buildings and began collecting art, which would later form the celebrated Ishibashi Collection.

 

Shojiro also wanted to look at the tyre business and bought a tyre-making machine in 1929. Although the brothers had plenty of money behind them, it was a risky idea as the Japanese tyre industry was dominated by Dunlop (which had started in 1913) and Yokohama, which had begun in 1921.

 

Jutaro, who had by then changed his name to Tokujiro (their father’s name), opposed the idea but Shojiro was sure it would work. This led to a split in 1931 with Tokujiro taking all the shares in the shoe business and Shojiro taking over the entire tyre business. The former would change the company name to Japan Rubber, while Shojiro played around with the English translation of the Ishibashi name - "ishi" meaning stone and "bashi" meaning bridge - and came up with Bridgestone. The Bridgestone company suffered after the war, initially having to manufacture bicycles to stay in business and in 1949 Shojiro provided the finance for the Tokyo Electric Car Company, which was set up from elements of the Tachikawa Aircraft Company Ltd. This soon became the Tama Electric Car Company but began to use gasoline engines created by Fuji Precision Industries. Shojiro acquired this firm and in 1952 transformed the business into the Prince Motor Company, which would later be merged into Nissan in 1966. Bridgestone went back into the tyre business in the early 1950s. As car sales boomed the company flourished.

 

The rivalry between the two brothers continued until 1958 when Tohijiro died. By then Japan Rubber has changed its name again and had become the Asahi Shoe Company. Three years after that – Shojiro decided to float the company and two years later he stood down and allowed his son Kanichiro to take over. He remained as chairman until 1973.

 

He died in 1976 at the age of 87

 

In 1983 Bridgestone bought a Firestone factory in Tennessee and five years later acquired the whole Firestone company for $2.6 billion.

 

Bridgestone did not get involved in motor racing until 1963, battling with its rivals Dunlop and Yokohama, but the company long had the ambition to enter Grand Prix racing. The cost of the Firestone takeover meant that was impossible but in 1989 the firm began testing F1-spec tyres. Bridgestone finally entered F1 with Arrows in 1996 and after some impressive showings attracted McLaren and Benetton in 1998. It won its first World Championship with Mika Hakkinen.

 

The family remains both wealthy and powerful. Shojiro’s daughter Yasuko Hatoyama married Iichirō Hatoyama, the son of Ichirō Hatoyama, who would became Prime Minister in the mid-1950s. Iichiro himself would become Foreign Minister in the 1970s.

 

Yasuko and Iichiro’s son Yukio became Prime Minister in 2009, while his brother Kunio was a government minister several times, notably as Justice Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications.

 

Not bad for a family of shoemakers…

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Life in Formula 1 was different back in 1969. Drivers did more than just Formula 1 races and their schedules were busy. On Saturday, September 20, for example, the F1 crowd raced at Mosport Park, where 24-year-old Jacky Ickx scored his second win in three races, beating his team boss Jack Brabham (43) with Jochen Rindt (27) third for Team Lotus. The circus then went off in different directions. Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme, Jack Brabham and Jo Siffert headed for Michigan International Speedway, 370 miles to the west, by way of Toronto and Detroit. They were there to compete in the eighth round of the CanAm Challenge Cup, with Siffert driving a factory Porsche 917, McLaren and Hulme the McLaren M8, while Brabham had a Ford G7, entered by Agapiou Brothers Racing. McLaren won from Hulme, with Gurney in a third M8. Siffert was fourth a lap behind.

 

Others took off from Mosport going in the opposite direction, flying to Paris in order to take part in the Paris 1000 sports car race at Montlhéry. Matra had two factory cars on hand: a 650 for Jean-Pierre Beltoise (who had flown in from Canada) and a 630/650 for Pedro Rodriguez, who had raced one of Luigi Chinetti’s North American Racing Team (NART) Ferraris at Mosport. They were paired with Henri Pescarolo and Brian Redman respectively.They were up against a field of Lola T70s, Ford GT40s and Porsche 908s but they finished 1-2 and then Beltoise and Rodriguez flew back across to New York and set off for Watkins Glen for the United States GP on October 5.

 

John Miles, Jochen Rindt, Piers Courage and Johnny Servoz-Gavin went even further, flying from Canada to Rome to take part in the XXI Gran Premio di Roma at the Autodromo Vallelunga, the seventh and final round of the European Trophy for F2 Drivers. Servoz-Gavin was there to wrap up the championship for Ken Tyrrell’s Matra International. He had 31 points, while BMW’s Hubert Hahne had 28 but things were complicated because only five scores counted and the Frenchman has scored five times to Hahne’s four. It meant that Servoz-Gavin was out for a victory. The Lotus team, run by Roy Winkelmann Racing had Rindt and Miles while Courage was at the wheel of a factory de Tomaso.

 

Servoz-Gavin won by a lap from Peter Westbury, driving a Brabham BT30, while Miles was third. Rindt and Courage retired. They were all soon on their way to Leonardo da Vinci International airport at Fiumicino to fly off to the United States.

 

The field was much the same as it had been in Canada with one or two changes among the privateers. BRM had run its third car for Bill Brack in Mosport but handed it over to George Eaton for Mosport. Miles had not gone back to the States as the four-wheel-drive Lotus 63 was going to be driven by Mario Andretti. He had been unable to race in Mosport because he was busy racing (and winning ) with an STP Granatelli Hawk at Trenton in New Jersey. He had then flown out to California to race the same car on the dirt at the California State Fairgrounds in Sacramento, before flying back to join Team Lotus. Rodriguez was back in the NART Ferrari. The race was won by Rindt, chased home by Courage, with Surtees third for BRM.

 

And then they all went their separate ways again, the CanAm contingent heading to Laguna Seca for the Monterey Castrol GP at Laguna Seca where McLaren and Hulme scored another 1-2, Chuck Parsons for third in a Lola and Mario Andretti was fourth in an older Holman & Moody McLaren… And then it was on to Mexico City. Miles was back in action for Lotus as Andretti was away racing Indycars at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington…

 

It was another world.

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Of all the names that Formula 1 cars have had, Klenk is perhaps the most onomatopoeic. It was the work of a German engineer-driver called Hans Klenk, who at 32 had led an adventurous life before turning to racing cars in 1951, including having spent the war as a fighter pilot, flying Messerschmitt 109Es…

 

Born in the village of Künzelsau, to the north-east of Stuttgart, a  few miles from Schwäbisch-Hall, in the autumn of 1919, Klenk grew up with a strong desire to become a surgeon, at least until he discovered gliding at the nearby Hermuthausen grass strip. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not allowed to build powered aircraft and so in the 1920s young pilots and engineers turned to gliding in order to enjoy the skies. This led Klenk, who also knew Willi Messerschmitt through his flying, to begin training as a aviation technician.

 

When he was 19 war broke out and he was soon in the Luftwaffe, flying his friend Messerschmitt's designs. Most of the time he was based in the north of Germany, close to the Danish border, but later saw action on the Italian front. When the war ended the completed his studies and decided to open his own engineering business and began souping-up cars for those with money to spend. Among his early products was a Porsche which he rebodied for Heinrich Sauter.

 

He decided to go racing himself and, like many others at the time, found that the potent pre-war BMW 328 offered the best available starting point for a racing car. So he stripped down a 328 and built his own racing special, similar to many other "eigenbaus" at the time. His own car was not really competitive and so he purchased a Veritas-Meteor (basically another eigenbau) from Karl Kling. The car was unusual in that it had streamlined bodywork, but his results were fairly impressive for a newcomer and he ended the year seventh in the West German Formula 2 Championship.

 

This drew him to the attention of Mercedes-Benz's celebrated racing manager Alfred Neubauer and he was invited to join the factory team for the Mille Miglia, as co-driver for Karl Kling in the Mercedes 300SL. Their team-mates were Rudi Caracciola, the pre-war Grand Prix ace, and Ernst Kurrle. Klenk decided that the best way to get the best performance was to get to know the route as much as possible in advance and put considerable effort into creating  his so-called “gebetbuch” (prayer book) listing all the features on the 1,000-mile course. This proved to be very efficient and they were leading comfrotably when they were slowed by a puncture, with a wheel that refused to budge and so they lost the victory to a Ferrari, but recovered to finish second. The due were then entered for the Le Mans 24 Hours alongside another of the pre-war Grand Prix stars Herrmann Lang, who shared his 300SL with Fritz Reiss and the Theo Helfrich/Helmut Niedermayr duo.

 

The Kling/Klenk car retired in the ninth hour with electrical problems, but the other two Mercedes finished 1-2.

 

The decision, early in 1952, to switch the World Championship to Formula 2 rules, meant that large numbers of BMW eigenbau racers could compete in Grands Prix and Klenk decided that summer to enter the German GP at the Nürburgring. He qualified eighth and finished 11th, which was a commendable effort. 

 

In November he was back with Kling for the Carrera Panamericana, alongside Lang/Edwin Grupp and John Fitch/Eugen Geiger.  On the opening day of the 1,900 mile race through Mexico, their 300SL collided with a low-flying vulture, which came through the windscreen and knocked out Klenk, who was not wearing a helmet. After fixing up the mess and making sure that Klenk was compos mentis they went on to win the event.

 

In the months that followed, Klenk re-engineered his Veritas-Meteor and renamed it the Klenk-Meteor. The plan was to enter the car in the German GP that summer. He and Kling started 1953 on the Mille Miglia with an Alfa Romeo, as Mercedes decided not to take part. In July he was second in the Avusrennen in the Klenk-Meteor but soon afterwards crashed while testing a Mercedes 300SL at the Nürburgring. He broke his thigh and knee. He offered the Klenk-Meteor to the 25-year-old Hans Herrmann for the German GP, allowing the youngster to make his F1 debut. Herrmann qualified 14th, easily the best of the locals, and finished ninth.

 

Sadly, Klenk’s injuries were sufficiently bad to end his career, leaving him with a severe limp for the rest of his life.He would go to become the competition manager of the Continental tyre company and later worked for the firm’s public relations department.  He continued to run his own car preparation business in Stuttgart before retiring to live at Vellberg, not far from his home village, where he died in 2009, at the age of 89. 

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

If you go to your local supermarket, in search of something Italian, the chances are that you will go home with pasta and a sauce in a jar. It is more than likely that these will carry the name Barilla, as the Italian firm is the world’s largest pasta company - and the market leader in Europe in pasta sauces. These days Barilla is a conglomerate of dazzling proportions. It has 16 different brands, producing 1.9 million tonnes of food every year from 29 different factories. It employs 8,400 people and turns over an impressive $3.7 billion a year. In 2015 the company built its own railway into its biggest factory at Pedrignano, in order for its “Grain Train” to reduce the number of trucks required every day - cutting its emissions by 94 percent.

 

Barilla is a company that dates back to 1877 when Pietro Barilla opened a bakery and pasta shop in the city of Parma. This was passed on to his sons Riccardo and Gualtiero 33 years later. They built the first factory, producing eight tons of pasta and two tons of bread each day. In 1947 Riccardo’s sons Gianni and Pietro took over the business and focussed on the pasta, closing  and down the breadmaking business, although they later moved into packaged bakery products. By 1969 they had built the largest pasta factory in the world, producing 1,000 tons of pasta in all shapes and sizes every day. There was a brief period from 1971 when the firm was sold to an American company, although the family still ran the business, but in 1979 Pietro Barilla bought it back. Pietro died in 1993, leaving the business to his three sons: the chairman Guido and his brothers, the vice chairmen, Luca and Paolo.

 

Paolo Barilla is a familiar name for racing fans as his name appears on the list of Le Mans 24 Hours winning teams. That was back in 1985 when he was sharing a New Man-sponsored Joest Racing Porsche 956 with Klaus Ludwig and “John Winter”, a pseudonymous German timber merchant called Louis Krages. It was a good result, but Barilla wanted to be an F1 driver.

 

It was a story that goes back to the mid-1970s when the then 14-year-old Paolo decided that he wanted to become a racing driver. He did well in karts and in 1980 switched into Formula Fiat Abarth, racing against the likes of Emanuele Pirro, Roberto Ravaglia and Alessandro Nannini. He moved up to Italian Formula 3 in 1981 with a new Martini-Alfa Romeo MK34 run by Ravarotto Racing and won his third and fourth races (at Varano and Enna) but ended the year only third in the standings. He then moved to Formula 2 in 1982, joining the Minardi team, alongside his old Formula Fiat Abarth rival Nannini. He had some top 10 finishes but was overshadowed by Nannini. In 1983 he did just one Formula 2 race while racing Lancia sports cars in selected World Endurance Championship races. He stayed with Lancia in 1984 but then in 1985 joined Joest Racing and had a strong season, including winning Le Mans. That led to the opportunity to test for the Toleman F1 team at the end of the year at Estoril. He would go on to test for Benetton in 1986 and 1987 while also scoring more wins in sports cars, winning the Miami IMSA race with Bob Wollek in Bruce Leven’s Bayside Disposal Porsche 962 and the Fuji 1000 for Joest in 1986. In 1987 he returned to Formula 3000 with Pavesi, while also being a member of the Alfa Corse World Touring Car Championship team but then had to go to Japan in 1988, competing for Toyota Team TOM’S in the Japanese Sports Car Championship. While he there he played a vital role in rescuing Denmark's Kris Nissen from a burning car at Fuji,  diving into the flames in his everyday clothing, having been spectating nearby when the crash occurred. At the end of that year he agreed a deal to be Minardi’s test driver in 1989, while also continuing with TOM’S in Japan (winning the Fuji 1000 again) and competing in Japanese Formula 3000 with Nakajima Racing.

 

That autumn Pierluigi Martini damaged his ribs (some say by falling down the steps of the team motor truck) in Estoril and Barilla was asked to race in Japan. He was then signed to race for the Faenza team in 1990, alongside Martini before being replaced for the last couple of races by Gianni Morbidelli.

 

Although that was the end of his active F1 career, he did do a considerable amount of development work for Bridgestone in Japan with a secret Reynard F1 prototype in the years that followed.

 

In the end, however, after the death of his father, he turned to the pasta business and, as part of Barilla’s expansion into the US in the 1990s, Barilla became a personal sponsor of CART champion Alex Zanardi.

 

The Barilla family owns one of the most extraordinary modern art collections, having invested heavily in such pictures when prices were at a reasonable level, although the word is that they have in the past invested as much as $100 million to buy a Picasso... 

 

 

[Radoye]

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Credit is not always given where credit is deserved, particularly when it comes to engineers in motor racing. Everyone is keen to be associated with a successful car, but a poor car is something that no-one wants to be linked to. It is often hard to say who designed what, particularly today when there are hundreds of engineers involved in the design of each car. But even in the old days the difference between technical director and chief designer caused problems.

 

One man who did not get very much recognition was France’s Paul Carillo, who played a significant role in the sport, although most of the credit for his work went to the ebullient (and very clever) Gérard Ducarouge. The two worked together a lot but people only seem to remember “The Duke”

Carillo was 17 years older than Ducarouge and 10 years older than Bernard Boyer, the other Matra engineer who was often mentioned in relation to the success. In truth, they were all working together.

 

Born on January 1924, Carillo was trained in aviation. He learned the business with Charles Gourdou, who had been an aircraft manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s with Jean Leseurre. The Gourdou-Leseurre firm went out of business in 1936 but Gourdou went on working in the aviation business, manufacturing parts, particularly propellers. In 1942 the factory began making parts for Messerschmitts, which got him into trouble after the war when he was arrested as a collaborator. Very rapidly some of Charles de Gaulle’s intelligence people appeared on the scene and explained to the accusers that Monsieur Goudou was actually one of the good guys and had been using his business as a way to monitor the V1 rocket  development programme, which he saw on his visits to Stuttgart, reporting it all back to London.

 

In 1947, to further his researches, Gourdou built a small windtunnel at his workshops at Saint-Maur, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. He tested experimental designs, notably the Makhonine Mak-123, before deciding to sell the factory and retire.

 

Carillo moved on to a job with the Societe Industrielle pour l’Aéronautique (SIPA), an aircraft manufacturer which had been established by Emile Dewoitine. That did not last very long and he moved on to the Société Nationale de Constructions Aéronautiques du Centre (SNCAC), another aviation business, which had been formed by the nationalisation and merger of the Farman and Hanriot firms in the mid-1930s. This designed military aircraft but it survived only until 1949, at which point the 25-year-old Carillo moved on to  Avions Hurel-Dubois  in Meudon. That business proved to be a little more stable and he would stay with the firm for the next 13 years, designing civil aircraft.

 

While he was working there French motorsport was developing with Alpine and Gordini leading the way. There was also Deutsch et Bonnet (DB) building some road-going sports cars and building racing specials for Le Mans. In 1961 Charles Deutsch and René Bonnet agreed to split up. Deutsch wanted to stay with Panhard and Bonnet felt it was better to partner with Renault. So Deutsch formed CD (his initials) and Bonnet established Automobiles René Bonnet. In the years that followed Panhard CDs and René Bonnet Djets raced one another at Le Mans, although neither troubled the dominant Ferraris.

 

In February 1963 Carillo joined René Bonnet to work on the development of the Djet. Eighteen months later René Bonnet was taken over by the aerospace company Matrain order to create a car division,Matra Automobiles.

 

Matra wanted to use racing to promote its new business and Carillo was set to work to design the MS1, a single-seater based on a Formule 2 René-Bonnet, powered by a one-litre Renault engine, which had been raced in F2 that season by Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Gerard Laureau

 

The resulting car was a Formula 3 featuring a Ford 105E engine, tuned by Holbay, which first appeared at Monaco in 1965 in the hands of Jean-Pierre Jaussaud and Eric Offenstadt. There was soon a second model called the MS2 and at Reims the MS1 scored its first victory in the Coupe Internationale de Vitesse de Formule 3, with Jean-Pierre Beltoise driving.  Beltoise and Jaussaud finished 1-2 in the French F3 championship that year. In addition to the F3 project Matra Sports ran a sportscar programme with the Djet, driven by Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo, while also building a prototype called the MS3.

 

The engineering team at Matra grew with Gerard Ducarouge playing a bigger role and Bernard Boyer but Carillo remained a key player.

 

In 1966 Matra entered F2 witha BRM-engined MS5 chassis for Beltoise and Jo Schlesser, while Ken Tyrrell did a deal to run cars under the Matra International banner for Jackie Stewart and Jacky Ickx. Suddenly, Matras were appearing everywhere and in January 1967 Matra boss Jean-Luc Lagardere met Elf boss Jean Prada at Monaco and it was agreed that Elf would finance the construction of a Matra 3-litre V12 F1 engines. That year Matra Sport ran Beltoise and Servoz-Gavin in Carillo-designed MS5s, powered with Cosworths, while Tyrrell enjoyed more success with Ickx winning the F2 title.  Things were less successful in sports cars with the new MS8 (MS630) crashing at Le Mans and killing the young Roby Weber, but Pescarolo won various races with the car.

 

In 1968 the company entered F1 with the Matra-powered MS10 for Tyrrell’s Stewart and Servoz-Gavin, while the Matra-powered MS11 was raced by Beltoise. Stewart won three races and finished second in the World Championship.

 

Beltoise won the European F2 Championship that year as well.

 

The big year was 1969, however, as Stewart won six races and the World Championship with the MS80 while Beltoise was fifth, both using Cosworth engines. In F2 Servoz-Gavin won the title and the sports cars began to show more pace.

 

It was at this point that Matra sold its car division to Chrysler France. Matra became Matra-Simca. Matra's insistence on using the V12 meant that Tyrrell decided to become a March customer and then went on to build its own cars. Matra ran V12-engined MS12s. The focus began to switch to winning Le Mans. The F1 programme stopped after poor seasons in 1971 and 1972 with Beltoise and Chris Amon. But in the sports car world the company achieved huge success, winning Le Mans in 1972, 1973 and 1974  and the World Championship of Makes in the latter two years. Boyer and Ducarouge got all the glory.

 

And then the axe fell, Matra announced it was closing down its competition department. The whole thing was sold to Guy Ligier and the staff started work on a JS5 Formula 1 car, which would be powered by the Matra V12s.

 

The car made its F1 debut in 1976 with Jacques Laffite driving and the following year the JS7 - a development of the original car - won the Swedish Grand Prix.

The same design team produced the JS9 in 1978 but it was the decision to switch to Cosworth engines in 1979 that really produced a breakthrough with the JS11 fighting for the World Championship with Ferrari, Brabham, Williams and Renault.

 

The car was revised as the JS11/15 in 1980 and enjoyed more success with Laffite and Didier Pironi but a new alliance with Talbot in 1981 meant a switch back to Matra V12s and although Laffite won twice the JS17s were not as competitive as they might have been.

 

The 1982 season with the JS19 was disappointing and the team began to run short of money as Talbot gave up on the idea of F1. Ligier became frustrated and fired Ducarouge, while Carillo, who was then nearing the age of 60, faded from the F1 scene. 

 

 

[Radoye]

[Radoye]

[zoran59]

Radoye, izgleda da si bio na nekoj izlozbi. Ima li negde da se skine katalog ili tako nesto?

Na trecoj slici prethodnog posta, meni ono izgleda kao M8 kakav su vozili i Bruce Mclaren himself i Dennis Hulme. Taj me narocito interesuje...

[Radoye]

Bio je salon automobila u Torontu, ovo su izlozbe "sa strame" (klasika, egzotika i tako to) - ove godine obelezavaju 50 godina od smrti Brusa Meklarena.

 

Jeste, to je M8E sa Sevroletovim motorom iz Can-Am sampionata kakvog su vozili Bruce & Denny. Slikao bih vise fotki ali mi je tu vec crkavala baterija. Ovaj plavi je isto M8 ali starija verzija M8B i sa Fordovim motorom kojeg je u istom sampionatu vozio Mario Andreti, njega su vec pokazivali prosle godine kad su slavili 50 godina Mariove pobede na Indiju. Njega imam u detalje slikanog ako te zanima.

[Radoye]

Quote

 

The village of Pigna nestles at the bottom of a steep wooded valley a few miles inland from the Italian Riviera in Liguria. It is close to the French border if you have lots of energy and good walking boots, but the roads from Pigna lead down to the coast, to Ventimiglia and San Remo.

 

It was in this quiet place that Renato Martini was born in 1934. He was five when the Second War War began and when he was 12 his father decided to move the family to Jersey, in the Channel Islands, in order to get work. For the next seven years Tico, as he was known, grew up as an islander.  His father was the had waiter of a hotel in Saint Helier.

 

At 17 Tico learned to drive his father gave him a small car. He decided to go home to Italy and worked in an Alfa Romeo garage in San Remo before returning to Jersey in 1955 to help his father.  He acquired a Cooper 500cc racing car and began taking part in races on the sands around the island. Among his rivals was a local entrepreneur called Bill Knight and in 1959 Tico began working as a mechanic for Knight. A year later Bill opened the Belle Vue Pleasure Park at Les Quennevais, just south of the airport, where he laid out a kart track. Martini worked on keeping the karts in good condition. He decided to try building his own kart and in 1962 made a big impression when he put a 650cc Triumph Tiger motorcycle engine into a tube framed chassis. The machine broke the hill record at the celebrated Bouley Bay hillclimb.

 

Over in France, the Magny Cours racing circuit was in the process of setting up a racing school and the enterprising Bill Knight bid for the deal and was granted the concession. He hired Irishman Henry Morrogh, who had a celebrated racing school in Italy and he agreed to be the director of the school and Martini was sent from Jersey to run the technical side of the business. He spent the next two years living in a caravan. Then Morrogh decided to move to the United States and Martini took over running the whole business. The school name was changed to Winfield, Knight’s business in the UK and for the next four years things developed well. In 1966, however, Knight decided to hand the business on to his two sons Mike and Richard.

 

Martini argued that in order to cut down costs, the school should build its own racing cars, rather than buying them. The brothers agreed and so Tico built a run of five Martini MW1s. 

 

The MW2 followed in 1969 with nine cars being built and several being used that year in the Formula France championship, with one in Formula 3 for Jacques Laffite, who raced under the Winfield Racing banner. The Formula France car won its first race at Albi that year thanks to Jean-Luc Salomon. This meant that there was demand for more cars in 1970 and Martini built 26 MK4s for the new Formula Renault, changing the designation of the cars from Martini Winfield (MW) to Mike Knight (MK). There was also an MK5 Formula 3 car for rising star Jean-Luc Salomon.

 

That year François Lacarrau gave Martini its first title in Formula Renault but there was a shock in Formula 3 when Salomon was killed in an accident at Rouen. By the end of the season, the MK5 was also a winner, thanks to the efforts of Jean-Pierre Jaussaud.

 

In the course of the 10 years that followed Martini cars won 200 victories in 280 races in Formula Renault. The first Formula 3 title did not come until 1973 when Laffite dominated the French Championship. Despite the fuel crisis, it was a great year for Martini with a total of 38 cars built but plans to build an F2 cars stalled and the French Formula 3 Championship was cancelled. Fortunately movey was pouring in from Formula Renault.

 

A deal was put together for an F2 car in 1975 with funding for Laffite from Elf and the Swiss additive Ambrozium H7. The team used Schnitzer BMW engines and Hugues de Chaunac’s ORECA organisation was taken on to run the team. Laffite won six races and swept to the

 

championship. A second would follow for Rene Arnoux in 1977.

 

De Chaunac and Martini decided that it was a good time to enter Formula 1 and began preparations, moving to premises that that were three times larger than the original factory. It was the era of the Cosworth kit-car and Martini designed the MK23, a simple car for a Cosworth DFV and a Hewland gearbox for the 1978 season. There was not much funding and the team had just 12 staff. Arnoux had backing from Elf and RMO, an employment agency based in his hometown of Grenoble. Not being a member of the Formula One Constructors Association made things more complicated but the car was ready for the third race of the year, in South Africa in March. There were 30 cars battling for a place on the 26-car grid and Arnoux could do no better than 27th and so the team decided to miss the next race in Long Beach, to improve the car. They failed to qualify in Monaco, where there were only 20 starters, but the bad news was that Arnoux was still only 27th, but in Belgium René set the 19th best time and made its debut, Arnoux finishing the race in ninth. Engine failures in testing meant that the team missed the next two races and so was not seen again until the French GP. The car had been heavily modified and Arnoux qualified 18th and was able to finish 14th but there was then a setback when Martini was refused an entry at the British GP. When he qualified, Arnoux looked a solid runner but getting into the races was tough. He finished ninth in Austria and then crashed in the Dutch GP and as money had run out, it was decided to end the programme there. The sport was going through the ground-effect revolution and Martini did not have the money to work out that could be done.

 

Arnoux had done enough and was hired by Renault for 1979 but Martini and de Chaunac turned their attention to a bright new French star in Formula 3 – Alain Prost. The MK27 was a good car and Prost was exceptional and completely dominated the European Formula 3 Championship and leapt straight into a McLaren F1 drive.

 

In the years that followed Martin won French Formula 3 titles with Alain Ferté (1980), Philippe Streiff (1981), Michel Ferté (1983), Olivier Grouillard (1984), Pierre-Henri Raphanel (1985) and Yannick Dalmas (1986). In the European Championship there was a title for Ivan Capelli in 1984 and there was a German title for Volker Weidler in 1985. Martini continued to dominate in French Formula Renault but as competition in F3 increased for Ralt, Reynard and Dallara and then organisers started switching to single chassis supply deals. Martini ran cars in Formula 2 and Formula 3000 but without much success and although there was plenty of business in French national racing, hillclimbs and historics, martini decided to sell the business when he reached his 70th birthday in 2004. Guy Ligier absorbed the business into his empire.

 

In retirement, Tico spends his time flying (he has a landing strip in the field next to his house) and singing…