Klasika

[zoran59]

Zanimljiva reportaza, jos jedan Fangiov masterpiece voznje.

Sama trka pocinje na oko pola filmica:

 

 

[Radoye]

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The Dutch Grand Prix of 1961 was not really a gripper. The season, which had begun a week earlier in Monaco, marked the start of a new Formula 1, with the engines having been downsized from 2.5-litres to 1.5-litres.

 

The British teams had been opposed to the new regulations but Enzo Ferrari was in favour because his team had struggled to beat the British with the old machinery and there was basically nothing to lose with a complete rethink. Of course, he had the added knowledge that Ferrari had developed a successful engine for the 1.5-litre Formula 2 in the late 1950s. For the 1960 Formula 2 season, Carlo Chiti, Ferrari's chief designer, laid out a completely new rear-engined car, powered by the F2 Ferrari Dino V6. This had its first run at Solitude in July 1960 and beat all the factory Porsches on their home ground.

 

This chassis would become the basis of the 1961 F1 car, while Chiti had some new ideas for the engine as well, increasing the V-angle from 65-degrees to 120-degrees. This not only increased the power by around 10hp, but also made the engine lighter and with a lower centre of gravity. While the British manufacturers were working on V8 engines – and running behind schedule – Chiti’s F1 version of the F2 car with the new engine configuration proved to be much more powerful than its rivals. The cars were heavier and their handling was not as good, but they were much faster in a straight line.

 

The first race of the new formula had been in Monaco where Stirling Moss was able to beat Ferrari on a track where the handling was more important than the power. A week later in Holland it was a rather different story as Ferrari dominated practice, taking the whole front row with Phil Hill on pole from his team-mates Wolfgang Von Trips and Ritchie Ginther. Stirling Moss's Rob Walker Lotus and Graham Hill's BRM shared the second row.

 

Von Trips led from the start while Graham Hill made a good start to head Phil Hill for a while before being overtaken by the American and by Jim Clark. Hill fell back to fight with Moss and Ginther with the Ferrari driver getting ahead, although he went wide on the last lap, which allowed Moss to grab fourth. But it has been a Ferrari walkover, with Von Trips followed home by Phil Hill and then a gap of 12 secs to Clark and further nine seconds back to Moss, who finished a tenth ahead of Ginther.

 

It had not been a great event, except for the Ferrari fans in the dunes that day. However, as they all headed home few of them had realised that the race had a unique place in Formula 1 history, at least up to that point. After 75 laps of racing – 195 miles – all 15 starters had finished the race – and no-one had even been into the pits. No-one had ever seen such reliability in F1 before. That achievement would not be matched again for44 years and that was a bit of a cheat because the United States GP at Indianapolis in June 2005 featured only six starters – and all made it to the finish. Three months later F1 did it properly and all 20 starters at the Italian GP at Monza made it to the finish, headed by the McLaren of Juan-Pablo Montoya, ahead of the Renaults of Fernando Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella.

 

 

[Radoye]

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Formula 1 is a world that boasts a lot of fixers and consultants, and more than a few wannabes as well, hoping to swim in the money that sloshes around the sport, in order to grab a taste of the big bucks for themselves. They duck and they weave and they have even been known to speak with forked tongues.

But beneath the surface of this world, there are a number of real power-brokers, who make things happen - but are happy to stay out of the limelight. Not being in the news is a badge of honour.

 

Japan’s Masaru Unno, who died early in 2019, was one of them.

 

Unno was well-connected, smart and very successful – and he was someone who even Bernie Ecclestone listened to when it came to matters in Asia – and specifically in Japan.

 

Born in Toba, not far from Suzuka, in 1941, Unno grew up in post-war Japan as the country was rebuilding after the devastation of the war. The initial rebuilding came in Japan where factories had to be rebuilt and companies given new direction. That was effectively completed by 1955 and then Japan turned to rapid expansion of its export business, which led to an economic boom that saw the country’s GDP rise from $91 billion to $1 trillion in 15 years. It was a way to show the world that Japan was a global player.

 

Unno studied at Hitotsubashi University, one of the most prestigious universities in Japan, best-known for its economics and business faculties. After graduating he joined the exciting Honda company, an upstart motorcycle firm with unusual ideas and ambitions to enter the world’s car markets. Honda’s move into cars began in 1963 with launch of the T360 mini pick-up truck, which was quickly followed by the S500 sports car. From these humble beginning Honda Motor grew. Unno was employed in Honda’s export department, setting up subsidiaries in different countries as the company grew and, in doing so, became a close collaborator with the company boss Soichiro Honda, who would remain a major player in the company until his death in 1991, although he officially retired from the business in the early 1970s.

 

Unno was sent off to France to become Vice-President of Honda France and then in 1974 he was then told to establish a Honda subsidiary in Switzerland and became its first President. It was in this capacity that he went to Monaco in 1977 and watched Grand Prix in the company of former Honda F1 boss Yoshio Nakamura and 1964 Formula 1 World Champion John Surtees and was enthralled by what he saw. His passion gradually became a business and ultimately he left Honda to set up his own business in Europe representing firms, importing, exporting and distributing new technology, sporting goods, television rights for sporting events and promotional products. In this role he played a key role in negotiations to establish a Japanese GP in the 1980s at the Honda-owned Suzuka circuit. He was also soon negotiating TV rights deals for F1 in Asia, employing a number of people to help him, including a youngster called Craig Pollock, who would later set up British American Racing. In his role as promoter of the Japanese GP he was given a seat on the F1 Commission for many years, although he spent much of his time at homes he owned in Europe, notably his own vineyard in the Cote de Nuits in Burgundy, in the appellation of Gevry-Chambertin. He was also an accomplished pilot and hang-glider flyer.

 

 

[Radoye]

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So, Charles Leclerc has signed a five-year deal to stay at Ferrari – and people still don’t know how to say his name properly. This was not helped by the fact that his management decided that it was too difficult to stop Anglophones saying Lecl-ERK and so began telling people that this was how one should pronounce it. This is not correct.

 

In French the c at the end of Leclerc is not pronounced and so if you are going to get the name correct, you need to call him Charles Lecl-AIR. Or, you can do what some in the F1 media do and call him Chuck Lecluck.

 

And, no, he’s not related to General Philippe Leclerc, the man who led the troops liberating Paris in 1944. Nor is he related Edouard Leclerc who opened his first supermarket in Brittany in 1949, since when the E.Leclerc has grown into one of France’s major retailers.

 

In fact, it is a fairly common name in France, derived from the profession of being a clerk, or a scribe. It has a number of variations, including Leclerc, Le Clerc and LeClerc and even Leclercq. In translation it would be similar to Schrieber, or Schriever from German, Clark or Clarke in English and Klerk in Dutch.

 

When you use the correct pronunciation, one finds that Charles is not the first Lecl-AIR in Formula 1 as Michel Leclère was also a driver back in the 1970s, although he arrived in the sport at a time when there were so many talented Frenchmen that not all could make it at the top.

 

Leclère came from the town of Mantes-la-Jolie, the first major town you come to when you leave Paris, going to the east, down the Seine Valley towards Rouen. Like many of his generation, he started relatively late, as he was attending a business school. He was 22, and still a student, when he embarked on a season in the Renault Gordini Coupe de France in 1968, at the wheel of a Renault 8 Gordini. The following year he was runner-up and then switched to the single-seater Formula France (later to become Formula Renault) in 1970, driving a privately-run Alpine-Renault, tuned by his brother Jean-Louis. He won the first Formula Renault title in 1971 and moved up to Formula 3 in 1972, which he won at his first attempt in a factory Alpine and so moved up into Formula 2 in 1973, teamed with Patrick Tambay and Jean-Pierre Jabouille, racing the Elf 2 chassis. He finished sixth in 1974 and was runner-up to Jacques Laffite in 1975, winning three races and added two further victories in 1976. By then, however, he had made his F1 debut with a third Elf-supported Tyrrell in the United States in 1975, alongside Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler. He then signed to drive for the Wolf Williams team, driving a Hesketh, but lost his drive to Arturo Merzario, because he had backing from Marlboro Italy. He switched to sports car racing with a GItanes-sponsored Mirage and would also later race sports cars in America.

 

In 1979 he was mentioned as a possible replacement for Patrick Depailler at Ligier after the latter had broken his legs in a hang-glider crash, but the drive went to Jacky Ickx instead. Leclere then decided to retire from racing and settled down to become a driver coach, with his ML Pilotage Concept company. He has since studied naturopathy and is now an expert practitioner.

 

 

Edited December 25, 2019 by Radoye

[zoran59]

U dva dela...

 

 

 

 

[Radoye]

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They call “black gold” and petroleum’s unique position as a portable, energy-dense power source has made it one of the world’s most important commodities in the last 150 years, particularly since the invention of the internal combustion energy, but even before that when oil was used for lighting and power-generation.

 

To put that into some kind of perspective, the US oil magnate John D Rockefeller was the country’s first billionaire, with a fortune that amounted to more than two percent of the US economy in 1913, when it was estimated to be worth as much as $900 million, which translates, so they say, into $21 billion today. Others put the figure at over $300 billion, based on the two percent of the country’s GDP today. At the turn of the century, Rockefeller controlled around 90 percent of the oil business in the US. Yes, that really does say 90 percent.

 

However, in 1911 the US Supreme Court decided that Rockefeller was too powerful and must break up his company. The result was that his empire was broken up into 33 different companies, largely geographical. This did not stop them acquiring one another as time went by. Thus Standard Oil of New Jersey became the world’s largest oil company in 1954 and began marketing its products under the Esso name (the name coming from the initials of Standard Oil). This led to disputes with other Standard Oil offshoots and so it changed its name to Exxon in 1972.

 

One of its rivals was the Standard Oil Company of New York – which became known as Socony. The firm adopted the name to Socony Mobil Oil in 1955 and 11 years later transformed itself into Mobil Oil. Seven year after that it dropped Oil from the name and became Mobil. Then in 1988 it was taken over and by its sibling and rival Exxon, to create the modern ExxonMobil.

 

Perhaps one should add a little more detail to understand just how powerful Rockefeller was in his day. Standard Oil of California, another of the 33 offshoots, became known as Socal, but this was not really snappy enough and so it began marketing its products under the Chevron name. Along the way Chevron gobbled up Standard Oil of Kentucky, Gulf, Texaco and Unocal.

 

And then there was Standard Oil of Indiana, which chose the Amoco brand in 1925 before being bought by BP in 1998, where it was merged with Sohio, which grew out of Standard Oil Ohio, giving BP a solid presence in the US markets.

 

And, finally, there was the Ohio Oil Company, another Standard Oil orphan, which changed its name to Marathon and relocated to Houston, Texas, in 1990…

Today, the US firms have slipped down the ladder of the biggest oil companies in the world as other firms have developed, notably in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, but they continue to turn over hundreds of billions per year... with profits each year in tens of billions.

 

In December 2016 Red Bull Racing established a partnership with ExxonMobil, to use Esso fuel and Mobil oils in Formula 1.

 

A Formula 1 sponsorship is peanuts when you look at such numbers…

 

F1 is also playing a major role in creating ever more efficient engines, aiming to help reduce global emissions and to extend the world's oil resources until someone can work out how to power everything by other means...

 

 

[Radoye]

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Tyres can create negative publicity for rubber companies involved in Formula 1. In the day where there was competition, races could be won or lost by one tyre company or the other, but with a single supplier, tyres are only really mentioned when things go wrong. No-one says “my tyres were fantastic today”, they say “I managed to make my tyres do what I wanted”. However, the F1 association makes a tyre company seem a little more glamorous, and allows them to sell more expensive premium tyres, because consumers think the tyres are a little sexier. Well, that's the theory...

 

Today, Pirelli seems happy enough to use F1 to show that it is capable of making very specific tyres, which do what F1 wants them to do. Having said that, Pirelli has only won 223 victories, even with its unique supplier status since 2011. This still a long way behind Goodyear, which was in F1 nonstop between 1964 and 1998, winning 368 races.

 

As of 2019, only nine companies have competed in F1: Avon, Bridgestone, Continental, Dunlop, Englebert, Firestone, Goodyear, Michelin and Pirelli. They have come and gone at various times, with only Goodyear making one appearance, albeit from 1964 right up until 1998… The American firm had tyres in 494 races and won 368 of them, although for 113 races it was the single supplier. Pirelli has competed in just 378 Grands Prix and has won 223 times (as of the end of 2019) but 179 of those victories have come as the single supplier. All of the companies except Avon have managed to win races, but Michelin always had opposition, although the French firm won 102 of its 215 races. Dunlop was the same, with 83 wins from its 175 starts. Bridgestone, on the other hand, won 175 times, but 116 of these victories were as the sole supplier.

 

Today, Bridgestone and Michelin are competing to be the biggest tyre firm in the world, with Goodyear and Continental a long way behind, competing for the third spot. A way behind them are Pirelli, Sumitomo (Dunlop) and Hankook are quibbling over fifth place.

 

The irony of all this is that Goodyear is a little like the modern firm Tesla, as it has absolutely nothing to do with the man after whom it is named. 

 

Charles Goodyear was a chemist who in 1844 discovered how to manufacture stable, hardened yet pliable rubber by treating it with sulphur at high temperatures. He patented his invention, but never made a fortune, largely because the patents were challenged as there were others who claimed to have done the same thing before him. A lot of years were spent fighting legal actions and Goodyear died, penniless, in 1860 at the age of only 59, shortly after he heard of the death of his daughter.

 

It was nearly 40 years before the company bearing his name was started in 1898 by Frank and Charles Seiberling of Akron, Ohio. They decided that the rubber business was a good idea. They looked for a name and concluded that Goodyear deserved better and so started a company with his name and began to sell stock. The new automobile enabled the firm to become the world’s largest tyre company by 1916 although the Seiberlings would be kicked out of their own business in 1921 during a financial crisis with bankers handing over the management of the business to others.

 

One can only wonder what Charles Goodyear would have made of the company's record in F1.

 

 

[alberto.ascari]

[emoji106]

Odesláno z mého BBF100-1 pomocí Tapatalk

[Radoye]

Sad ce za koji dan godisnjica nesrece, vec je 6 godina proslo... 😞

[alberto.ascari]

Sad ce za koji dan godisnjica nesrece, vec je 6 godina proslo... [emoji20]

Ehh da, uvek se setim, bio sam u Italiji na skijanju kad se povredio...

Odesláno z mého BBF100-1 pomocí Tapatalk

[zoran59]

Lepa reportaza (sama trka pocinje opet na oko pola videa).

 

Skrenuo bih paznju na nesto, za one koji su citali moje postove drugde a nisu ih razumeli. Pogledajte kakva je guzva u boksovima (pa cak i tokom same trke!). To su sve ljudi koji su po nekom osnovu dobili propusnice da se "motaju" unaokolo (tj. blizu). Imao sam srecu da to iskusim kao dete. Danas, niko ne sme da pridje na manje od 300 m, a i onda sa uniformisanom pratnjom...

 

 

 

[Radoye]

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What’s the most famous thing one can think of that comes from Peru? Those of a certain age will say “Paddington Bear”, who arrived at Paddington Station after stowing away on a ship from “Darkest Peru”, and has now become an icon of marketing types, making lots of people very rich, including the Clarkson family, as in Jeremy Clarkson, who made a fortune manufacturing Paddington teddy bears. While Clarkson is famous in the automotive world, he doesn’t really make it in Formula 1, as his occasional interventions are rarely anything positive for the sport. For F1 fans, the answer to this question should be Jorge Koechlin von Stein. Now, I am sure that some are currently saying: “What?” or “There’s never been a Peruvian Formula 1 driver” and things like that, but in fact the Koechlin family has a lengthy history in Grand Prix racing, which dates back to the very early days of the automobile.

 

The family can trace its roots back to the 15th Century to the town of Stein am Rhein in Switzerland, although the name spread from there to Zurich, where one branch of the family developed; and also to Mulhouse in France, where the Koechlin’s became textile manufacturers and later local politicians. The family would later produce Paul Koechlin, the winner of the 1895 Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race although, to be fair to Emile Levassor, he finished 11 hours ahead of Koechlin but his automobile had only two seats and the race was supposed to for four-seaters.

 

In any case, Jorge’s great-great grandfather left Mulhouse to work for a textile business that had been set up in Jung-Bunzlau in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and he settled there. When his family grew up, one of his cons decided to emigrate to Peru in 1852. Today, there are more than 300 Peruvian Koechlins

 

Jorge was born in the coastal town of Huacho in 1950, where his branch of the family owned a fishery. He was one of eight children. Later they move to a large farm near the Peruvian capital of Lima.

 

For reasons that are not entirely obvious, Jorge’s dream was to become a racing driver. He started competing at 21 and two years later, without much in the way of money, he headed to Britain to race Formula Fords, as many South Americans did in that era. He started out with a Merlyn chassis but then found work as a factory driver with Elden, a small car manufacturer which was based at Wrotham Hill, near Brands Hatch. This led to him making his Formula 3 debut with Elden in the autumn of 1974

 

He switched to Formula Renault Europe in 1975, racing a works Lola run by Mader Racing. It was not a great success and he struggled for money in 1976, competing in a few sports car races, but then reappeared in 1982 having found funding to take part in the Aurora Formula One Championship in Britain, driving a Team Peru Williams FW07. His best result was second behind Jim Crawford. He tried to race in CART after that but there was not enough funding.

 

Back in Peru he would purchase the Spanish-language Automundo magazine in 1990 and set about building up a business, expanding it into TV and producing a weekly show in Spanish for ESPN, while also doing F1 commentary work for various channels in Latin America. He continued to race in local races from time to time, winning the Gran Premio Nacional de Carreteras los Camino del Inca in 1985.

 

While he continued with his career in the media, his brothers had embarked on interesting careers as well. Jose created a eco-friendly hotel chain called Inkaterra, while also working in films promoting the Amazon basin, notably Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. His brother Pedro started his own airline called Wayraperú before standing for President of Peru, on an environmentalist ticket.

 

Jorge has also now turned to politics and will be a candidate for the Partido Popular Cristiano in the upcoming Congressional elections in January 2020.

 

 

[Radoye]

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Hugo Ferdinand Boss was born in Metzingen, a small town to the south of Stuttgart in what was then the kingdom of Württemberg. It was July 1885 and Hugo was the last of five children born to the couple.

 

Sadly. Hugo was the only male survivor and thus became the heir to the family shop in Metzingen, where Heinrich Boss and his wife Luise Münzenmayer sold lingerie and linens. Hugo went through the local schools and then at 14 began an apprenticeship as a merchant in the nearby town of Bad Urach. After three years, and another two when he was away doing his compulsory military service, he returned home in 1905 and soon took over managing the business. Nothing much changed until 1914 when he was called up and served in the German Army as a corporal throughout the war.

 

In the chaos of post-war Germany Boss went home to Metzingen but it was still not until 1924, when he was 39 years of age, that he took the decision set up his own factory, with the backing from two local entrepreneurs. The business began with just 20 seamstresses. One of the firm’s first big commissions came in 1925 from Rudolf Born, a Munich-based textile distributor. The order included a significant number of brown shirts for the Nazi Party, which was regrouping after the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch at the end of 1923. Its leader Adolf Hitler was then in prison but was released just before Christmas in 1925 and soon convinced the Bavarian authorities to lift a ban on his party and it was reformed and began to grow. Hugo Boss provided the uniforms.

 

The economic situation was very difficult at the time and by 1931 Boss was effectively bankrupt. That year Boss became a member of the Nazi Party and as a consequence of this decision received more orders from the party, which helped to rebuild the business. As the 1930s went on and the Nazis became more powerful, Boss got more and more orders, including uniforms for the Wehrmacht (German army), the Waffen-SS, the Hitler Youth, the Post Office and the national railway employees.

 

When World War II broke out he expanded the business to meet the demand for more uniforms and took on 140 forced labourers, almost all of them women. The firm treated them much better than many other companies but when the Allies arrived in Metzingen in April 1945 Boss was classified as "incriminated", fined 100,000 Reichsmarks and stripped of his right to vote.

 

He appealed against the sentence and was later reclassified as a "follower," who had worked with the Nazi regime but had not been actively engaged in the politics.

 

The Hugo Boss company continued to manufacture uniforms, working with the French occupation forces and then with the Red Cross.

 

Hugo died in 1948, at the age of 63 and the business passed into the hands of his daughter’s husband Eugen Holy. It remained a relatively small business but in the 1950s it diversified and began to manufacture business suits. These became increasingly popular in the 1960s, but it was not until Holy’s sons Jochen and Uwe took over the business in 1969 that things really began to move as they decided to switch the company’s focus to producing ready-to-wear suits for men, following the lead set by Yves Saint Laurent with his launch of Rive Gauche at the end of 1966.

 

To promote this business they decided to focus on male sports and began sponsoring activities in motor sport and later expanded into golf, tennis and sailing. Growth was rapid and Boss entered the US market in 1976.

 

Five years after that Boss entered F1 as a sponsor of McLaren. It would remain a backer of the team for the next 33 years until the decision was taken in 2014 to switch to Mercedes F1. That deal lasted for just two seasons and Hugo Boss took the decision to begin an association as an official partner of Formula E.

The Holy brothers decided to float the company at the end of 1985 and went off to start another fashion business. By 1990 Hugo Boss had come under the control of the Japanese company Leyton House, ran by Akira Akagi, who was running his own Formula 1 team at that time. However, this lasted just a year before Akagi ran into legal trouble at home and 77.5 percent of the company was sold to the Italian textile group Marzotto.

 

This also had strong links with motorsport as brothers Vittorio and Giannino Marzotto both had raced Ferraris in the 1950s. The business was effectively run by the Marzotto family until 2007 when 82 percent of the business was acquired by the British private equity firm Permira, which grew the business considerably in the course of the next eight years before it began divesting itself of the shares in 2015, when Marzotto began upping its shareholding once again. The majority of the company’s shares, however, are publicly-traded. 

 

 

[Radoye]

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Sébastien Loeb is something of a force of nature. He has won nine World Championship titles and, to date, 79 WRC victories, the most recent the Rallye de Catalunya in 2018. What is most remarkable about driver from Alsace is that he didn’t win his first World Championship until he was 30.

 

Loeb’s climb to success was by no means meteoric, beginning when he got his driving licence at 18, when he bought a Renault Super 5 GT Turbo, with money from his grandmother, and rapidly lost interest in gymnastics, in which he had previously competed. He was soon racing his Renault in illegal street races, while studying to be an electrician. He was talented but somehow did not impress the judges in the Rallye Jeunes FFSA competition in 1995 and 1996, which he failed to win on both occasions. Rally raid competitor Dominique Heintz, who owned a garage in the region and read that Loeb had set the fastest times in the competition but had not been selected, decided that he would set up a team for Loeb, with a friend called Rémi Mammosser. The team was called Ambition Sport Auto and it bought a Peugeot 106 Rallye for Loeb to drive. They won their class first time out on a regional rally. The first season ended up with a lowly ninth place in the Volant Peugeot series but the team partners mortgaged their houses to get Loeb a Citroën Saxo Kit Car for the Trophée Citroën in 1998. Sebastian won three times but still finished only sixth in the championship. He won the series the following year and then moved through the French national gravel rally championship in 2000, winning the 2WD class. He had finally done enough to be hired by Citroën in 2001, to compete in the inaugural FIA Super 1600 Drivers Cup and the French Rally Championship. He won both and finished second when given the chance to drive a factory Citroën Xsara WRC on the San Remo Rally. That got him into the factory team in 2002 and his first victory followed in Germany that year. He was runner up in the World Championship in 2003 before finally winning his first title in 2004.

 

What is often forgotten about Loeb is that he is an all-rounder and raced for Pescarolo Sport at Le Mans, finishing second in 2006. He won the Race of Champions three times, in 2003, 2005 and 2008 and in December 2007 was given the chance to drive a Renault F1 car at Paul Ricard. He would do a second F1 test in 2008, this time with Red Bull Racing and there were serious discussions about a possible driver with Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2009, alongside Sebastian Buemi, although in the end it was concluded that he had not done sufficient circuit racing to warrant a superlicence.

 

In addition to his other exploits, he won the X Games in 2012 and won the Pikes Peak hillclimb in a Peugeot 208 T16 prototype. He then moved on to racing for Citroën in the new FIA World Touring Car Championship in 2014 and won two races and finished third in the standings. He later tried the World Rallycross Championship, racing for Team Peugeot-Hansen and most recently has been competing in the Dakar.

 

One can only speculate how he would have done in F1…

 

 

[Radoye]

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Horst Kwech, former Trans Am U2.5L star, dies at 82

Images by Michael Keyser

 

By: RACER Staff | 7 hours ago

 

 

Horst Kwech, an especially versatile driver/engineer active in the 1960s and ’70s, probably best known for his pair of Under 2.5 Liter Trans Am championships driving an Alfa Romeo, has died at age 82.

 

 

Proud of his Australian heritage (moved there at a young age from his Austria birthplace), Kwech emigrated to the U.S. in 1961 at age 24. A mechanic’s job at Knauz Continental Motors in Lake Forest, Ill., soon led to racing opportunities, first driving a tube frame sports racer of his own design, later in an Alfa Romeo Giulia with which he won the ’65 SCCA Central Division B Sedan championship.

 

The next year, Knauz Motors acquired a factory-prepared Alfa Romeo GTA with which Kwech and teammate Gaston Andrey claimed the Trans-Am Under 2.5 Liter manufacturers championship and Kwech used to win the SCCA Runoffs BS race at Riverside.

 

Over the next decade, Kwech would become one of America’s most celebrated GT drivers, forming (with Ron Neal and Bill Knauz) and racing for the Alfa Romeo performance parts company Ausca; testing and racing for Carroll Shelby (and winning the ’68 Riverside Trans-Am in a Shelby-prepared Mustang); winning the ’70 U2.5L Trans-Am Championship (driving Herb Wetanson’s Alfa GTA); racing a Lola T-300 in the ’72 L&M Continental Formula 5000 Championship; and, in ’74, co-founding DeKon Engineering with Lee Dykstra (which built the highly regarded Chevy Monza, successful in both IMSA Camel GT and Australian Supercar racing over the next several years).

 

 

In its detailed biography, Wikipedia notes that Kwech holds the distinction of being the only driver to win a Trans-Am race in both the Over and Under 2 liter divisions; and that he was granted 17 patents over the years as a design engineer.

 

Our sincere condolences to Kwech’s Lake Forest, Illinois, family, many friends and fans.

 

 

[Radoye]

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Yannick Dalmas was one of those drivers who seemed to be on their way to stardom in Formula 1, but circumstances worked against him.

 

When he was a child, he lived in the village of Le Beausset. His father renovated old cars and played football with motorcycles – a sport known as motoball.  When Yannick was nine the drinks magnate Paul Ricard began to construct a racing circuit on the scrubby plateau above the village. Naturally, he attended all the big events after it opened and even took part in classic car display when he was 11, as a passenger in a Model T Ford. The duo bumped into François Cevert in the paddock and Dalmas remembers that this was the moment when he decided he wanted to be a Formula 1 driver.

 

He started out in motocross but suffered so many injuries that he decided to try cars nd entered the 1980 Marlboro Cherche un Pilote competition. He failed to win that year and again in 1981 but in 1982 he was finally victorious (there were around 1,000 contestants each year) and he won a fully-funded Formula Renault drive in 1983 with the celebrated ORECA team. He finished third in his rookie year and won in 1984 and in his first year in Formula 3 in 1985 was runner-up to his team-mate Pierre-Henri Raphanel. He won the title in 1986 with six wins and moved into Formula 3000 with ORECA in 1987 and won races in Pau and Jarama and finished fifth in the title. By then everyone had heard of Yannick Dalmas and he made his debut in F1 with Larrousse at the Mexican Grand Prix that year – and was signed to drive for the team in 1988. The car was not very competitive but he did a better job than his experienced team-mate Philippe Alliot and come close to scoring points on two occasions, but then, at the end of the year, he was struck down by an attack of the rare Legionnaires Disease.

Dalmas returned to F1 at the start of the 1989 season but was not fully recovered and by the mid-season he was dropped by Larrousse. He found a seat with AGS but this was the era of pre-qualifying in F1 and there was really nothing he could do. In 1990 he managed to qualify a few times, his best result being ninth place.

 

It was, he concluded, a pointless exercise to try to race in F1 without a decent car and so he took up the offer of a factory drive with the Peugeot sportscar team in 1991. Paired with Keke Rosberg, he won the races at Magny Cours and in Mexico City and then in 1992, teamed with Derek Warwick, he won the World Endurance Championship title and with Mark Blundell, joining them, they won the Le Mans 24 Hours. He finished second at Le Mans in 1993, sharing with Thierry Boutsen and Teo Fabi, but when Peugeot quit he joined a Porsche team, funded by Jochen Dauer, and won Le Mans again, racing a street-legal version of the Porsche 962, with Hurley Haywood and Mauro Baldi. He tried to return to F1 with Larrousse for a couple of races in 1994 but the team was not competitive. Back at Le Mans, however, he won his third victory a McLaren which he shared with JJ Lehto and Masanori Sekiya. He tried DTM and raced IndyCars but it was in sports cars where he enjoyed the most success winning the Sebring 12 Hours in a Ferrari 333SP. He would move on to BMW in 1999 and won Le Mans a fourth time in a BMW V12 LMR with Pierluigi Martini and Jo Winkelhock.

 

He was then 37 years old and decided that it was time to retire as a driver but then began to work as a driver consultant and ambassador for manufacturers and sponsors.

 

In recent years, Yannick has been the FIA driver steward for the World Endurance Championship, with occasional appearances at F1 races as well.

 

One can only wonder what would have happened but for the Legionnaires Disease.

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Arthur Legat is not a name that most Formula 1 fans will have ever heard, but he holds a unique place in the sport. He was the oldest ever F1 debutant, a record that is unlikely to ever be beaten as he was 53 years old at the time – and it has been quite a while since there was an F1 driver of that age…

 

When one looks at his record in Formula 1 in 1952 and 1953, it may look like Legat was not a great talent. He was more than a minute off the pace of pole position man Alberto Ascari at Spa in 1952, although to be fair Stirling Moss was half a minute off Ascari’s pace that day, driving an ERA, Peter Collins was two seconds slower than Moss in an HWM and Prince Bira was 51 seconds off the pace in a Simca Gordini.

 

Machinery was important, even in those days.

 

A year later Legat returned with the Veritas and was slightly slower, although his appearance that day makes him the third oldest man to have started a Grand Prix…

 

What one needs to remember is not the machinery, but also Legat’s age and the fact that he raced rarely. One might call him a gentleman racer, but that creates the wrong impression as Legat was not some rich aristocrat, out having fun, but rather a garage and breakdown recovery service owner, who liked to race when he had time and money.

 

He was born in Haine-Saint-Paul, a small town between Charleroi and Mons, in 1898. It was his home town and he died there in 1960. In those days, motor racing in Belgium was really only two circuit: Spa-Francorchamps and Chimay.

 

Legat made his debut in competition in 1923, initially as a sidecar passenger in motorcycle races but then in 1926 he raced a 1100 cc Amilcar CGS (Chassis Grand Sport) cyclecar at the new high-speed road circuit at Chimay, which hosted the first Grand Prix des Frontières that year. He did little else, competing in only a few local hillclimbs apart from his annual outing at Chimay.

 

Chimay was his circuit. For the race in 1931 he acquired a Bugatti Type 37A, which was a similar chassis to the famous T35B, but was fitted with a 1.5-litre engine for voiturette races. He used this to win the Grand Prix that year and again in 1932. He would later buy a T35B from Georges Bouriano, which he raced at Chimay for the first time in 1934 and finished second in 1937.

 

After the war, by which time he was in his late forties, Legat bought a Maserati 4CM and raced it at Chimay in 1949. Two years later he acquired a German-built Veritas Meteor and raced the car at Chimay in 1952 and 1953. The decision to buy a Veritas allowed him to take part in the World Championship of 1952 when the series was run to Formula 2 regulations and so he entered his car in the Belgian Grand Prix, becoming the oldest F1 debutant ever, at the age of 53, in 1952. He finished 13th, five laps down, but had become a Formula 1 driver nonetheless.

 

He continued to race each year at Chimay until 1959… shortly before his death.

 

 

 

[zoran59]

Ne znam gde ovo spada, Klasika je valjda najblize...

 

Pisao sam drugde da sam sudelovao u AHRMA (American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association) takmicenjima.

To je zato jer u sportu naginjem motociklima, circa 60/40% motori-auti. Ali aute pratim, mada ne sudelujem. Bila bi steta da se propuste mnoga takmicenja i dogadjaji koje organizuje SVRA (Sportscar Vintage Racing Association).

Njihov sajt je ovde:  https://svra.com/

 

Iz uvoda:

As one of the oldest organizations in vintage racing, and the only one with a national presence, SVRA is committed to presenting the best possible experience for our competitors and fans. From 200 MPH Indy and Formula 1 cars to classic Jaguars and Porsches, our events provide a rolling history of motorsport where the cars are the stars at legendary tracks across the country such as Watkins Glen, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Sonoma Raceway, The Circuit of the Americas, and Portland International Raceway.

For competitors, SVRA provides a complete weekend of events and activities with lots of track time and a full slate of sprint and endurance races, as well as off-track activities.

For spectators, the paddock area is all always “open” at no cost beyond admission, offering a level of access to cars and drivers not available in most other forms of motorsport.

 

Raspored za sledecu godinu je ovde: https://svra.com/events/

 

Da vidite kako to izgleda, ovde je kratki video:

 

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

One of the least-known of all Formula 1 drivers was Nasif Estefano, who raced a privately-entered Maserati 250F in the Argentine Grand Prix of 1960. He later popped up again with the De Tomaso F1 car but failed to qualify for the Italian Grand Prix. On the face of it, he might not seem to have been much good, based on his results, but back home in Argentina, in his home town of Concepcion, in the province of Tucuman, there is a racing circuit named in his honour, there’s a school that bears his name and even one of the city’s main streets is named after him. 

 

Concepcion is 750 miles to the north-west of Buenos Aires, at the foot of the Sierras Pampeanas, a range of mountains that run parallel to the Andes, rising up from the plains in the east.

 

Nasif Moisés Estéfano was born there in the late autumn of 1932. His father Jorge and mother Elia were both of Lebanese descent, there being a large community of Lebanese in the country - now numbering around 1.5 million – having left their homeland because of persecution by the Ottoman Turks.

 

Nasif was the second of five brothers but he dropped out of high school to help his father run the family business. In 1951 he learned to drive at the wheel of a Ford 40, which dated from the 1930s, and he had soon made his racing debut in a race in the local 9 de Julio Park in the city. He then had to stop his racing activities when he went off to complete two years of military service with the Argentine navy at Bahia Blanca, 950 miles from home.

 

When he returned home he went straight back to racing and scored his first win in August 1955 in a race in the town of Juan Batista Alberdi. He soon began to travel outside his own province to race and scored his first national success in 1957 at the Autodromo in Buenos Aires.

 

Two years later would later make his debut in the Campeones de Fuerza Libre, Argentina’s top racing category at the time, the championship being won that year by none other than Jose Froilan Gonzalez.

 

Early in 1960 he made his F1 debut at the wheel of a privately-entered Maserati 250F, but finished 10 laps behind the winner in 14th place after a series of problems. 

 

The following year he invested in a new car but it never appeared and the money disappeared and he had to sit out the best part of three years before he could compete internationally again. He was offered a drive in the 1962 Italian GP by fellow countryman Alejandro de Tomaso but was unable to qualify the uncompetitive car. 

 

Back home in Argentina he entered the new Campeones de la Fórmula 1 Mecánica Argentina with a locally-built Loeffel-Chevrolet, constructed by Carlos Loeffel, a well-known racer and car builder in Argentina’s famous road races in the Turismo Carretera category. Estefano won the title in 1963 and 1964.

He was back in Europe in 1964 but he only had enough money to buy an old Lotus 22 for Formula Junior races in Europe, although he did several GT events that year with more success. He returned home and after competing in the local single-seater series with some success, eventually concentrated on the Turismo Carretera.

 

He was killed in an accident in the autumn of 1973 at Aimogasta in the La Rioja province, not far from his home town, during an event called the Gran Premio de la Reconstrucción Nacional. His car suffered a mechanical failure in a fast corner and rolled a number of times, he was thrown from the vehicle when the seat belts failed and died of head injuries shortly after the accident.

 

In his career he competed in 101 races and won 21 of them, but perhaps it is record of podiums that is more impressive, with 51 top three finishes. 

 

 

[alberto.ascari]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/f1ever/permalink/2577471352365792/

Odesláno z mého BBF100-1 pomocí Tapatalk

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Even today, there are certain elements of British society who like to blame the Germans for everything. Given that it is now 75 years since the end of World War II, this does seem a little archaic. Still, without the Germans, Britain would likely not have the strong motorsport industry that exists today. Why so?

Well, Britain’s post-war motor racing boom was based on the fact that the country had a huge number of airfields that has been built to defeat the Germans, which were deserted as soon as the war ended. Thus, circuits sprang up wherever the locals could sort out deals with the Air Ministry, or with the owners of the land on which the airfields had been built.

 

Thus without the Germans, there would never have been a racing circuit at Silverstone…

 

History is a fascinating thing and if one trawls back to medieval times, one can discover that Silva Tone derives from the Latin for Wood Town. This is logical because at the time the area was covered in the Forest of Whittlewood. Forests being good places to hide, there was a Benedictine priory built in the peace of the woods, named Luffield Abbey and not far from this was a chapel dedicated to St Thomas a Becket. There was also a Chapel Copse, a Wild Wood and some fairly worthless land called Maggot Moor.

 

King Henry VIII changed all that in 1542 when he seized all the land belonging to the monasteries and sold everything off after separating England from Papal authority and declaring himself the Supreme Head of the Church in England. The land of Luffield Abbey became Luffield Abbey Farm while the old abbey itself fell into ruin. Only the chapel survived but this was turned into a private residence. The forest was gradually being cut down over the centuries and by the early 19th Century not much woodland was left. 

 

It was at this point that (take a deep breath) Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, arrived on the scene. He felt the need for a grand tree-lined carriage drive from Stowe House to Silverstone village,  as befits a man with such a long name, and so acquired the necessary land, leaving Luffield Abbey Farm to continue its quiet existence.

 

Little really changed until 1940 when civil servants in camouflaged Morris Tens were spotted in the area, looking for possible sites for airfields. Wild Wood, up near Chapel Copse would have to go. They couldn’t find any trace of Luffield Abbey but reported that the St Thomas a Beckett Chapel would have to be demolished (although the stones were numbered and removed to a farm, 50 miles away. The duke's tree-lined avenue fell victim as well, although a section of it did survive, as the principal road through the airfield (minus the trees, of course). It was decided that the site would suit a Class A aerodrome design, with three converging concrete runways in a triangular pattern. The longest runway was aligned southwest to northeast to allow aircraft to take off and land into the prevailing winds.

 

The other two runways were for days when the wind blew from other directions. They were all joined by a perimeter track that curved gently, to allow bombers to manoeuvre. Once the plans were completed the construction company Mowlem moved in and work began, with the runways being laid and the buildings, which were pre-fabricated and to standard designs were hurriedly put up. The work was completed early in 1943 and Operational Training Unit 17 moved in. The base was to be used for teaching new crews to fly the Wellington bomber and 54 planes were supplied, many of them having previously been used in bombing raids over Germany. There were a lot of accidents, with 124 airmen killed in training. In that period RAF Silvesrtone housed 2,300 RAF and Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) staff. And then, very rapidly, the war ended and the base was shut down.

 

Silverstone resident Maurice Geoghegan was delighted at this development and in the summer of 1946, he took his new Frazer-Nash sports car out on the old airbase. There were, he discovered plenty of different possible layouts to try. The RAF did not have the staff to put guards on every old airfield and so it was left open to the public. Not long afterwards Geoghegan went to the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb and met with some pals in the Mitre Oak public house in Ombersley and discussed Silverstone. Consequently 11 Frazer Nashes and a Bugatti turned up at Silverstone not long afterwards. They had a completely illegal race, which involved some unusual risks: one of the party ran over a garden fork which had been left on the ground and was lucky to escape with only a grazed arm and, so legend has it, Geoghegan hit a sheep which had wandered on to one of the runways.

 

The rest is history.

 

 

[zoran59]

Kako lepa trka! Lepota tzv. "veteranskih" trka.

Neki takmicari su i bivsi svetski sampioni, vecina je poznata iz raznih kategorija, a zajednicko svima (ili 99% njih) je da nisu bili ni jos rodjeni kad su njihovi motori bili vrhunski.

 

Ovde:

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by zoran59

[zoran59]

I nastavak, suvo:

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

Raul de Mesquita Boesel was a lucky man. Born into a wealthy and well-connected family in Curitiba, Brazil, he was one of four brothers who grew up in a world of equestrian competition. When he was a teenager, Raul twice won the Paraná state show jumping championship but at the age of 16 he discovered motor racing, after going to a local kart track with a friend. He liked the look of it and a year later had won his first karting championship in Curitiba.

 

The family insisted that he finish his studies so he did not make his car racing debut until he was 20, when he began racing in the national stock car championship. He finished fourth in his debut year and it was clear that he talent to go a long way. So he headed off to Europe to race Formula Ford 1600s and immediately won nine of his 27 races, although he finished runner-up in both of the two British FF1600 championships. This was good enough to attract the attention of the British Formula 3 teams and in 1981 he joined Murray Taylor Racing. He finished third in his first season and earned a test with McLaren. His ambitions were helped by the fact that Brazilian President João Figueiredo was a family friend and helped to organise sponsorship from the government-owned Instituto Brasileiro do Café(IBC), advertising Cafe do Brasil. This helped him to get a drive for 1982 with the Rothmans March F1 team.

 

It was not a great car and as the season went on, Boesel struggled to qualify for races. He looked for a better option in 1983 with his coffee money being boosted by some backing from Embratur, the national tourist board. There were not many options but Ligier had been a winner in 1981 and Boesel hoped that the team could rise once again. The problem was that Ligier was short of cash after the withdrawal of Talbot and the cars that were built for 1983 were in reality revamped 1982 cars, modified to replace the Matra V12 with the Cosworth V8. Ligier was working on a Renault turbo deal for 1984 but until that happened the team had to compete against teams using turbo engines. Once again Boesel failed to scored a point, although he did manage a seventh place.

 

With no real options in Formula 1 in 1984, he went home to Brazil and joined the INI Competicion team, driving a Berta-Volkswagen in the Codasur Formula 2 series in Latin America. He won a race but decided to move to the United States in 1985, to drive for Dick Simon in CART. He scored some promising results in 1986 as he used the experience gained in his rookie year, but no top drives were available and so he took the offer of a drive with Tom Walkinshaw’s Silk Cut Jaguar sports car team. In 1987 he became the first and (to date) only South American to win the FIA World Endurance Championship, taking his Silk Cut Jaguar to five wins in 10 races. The following year, teamed with with John Nielsen and Martin Brundle he wonthe Daytona 24 Hours. Another stint in CART proved frustrating, although he finished third in the Indy 500 in 1989 and so he returned to sports cars in 1991 with the Bud Light Jaguar and finished runner-up at Le Mans. In the years that followed he finished second in CART races on five occasions but could never win a race and decided in 1998 to return home to Brazil where he raced in the national stock car championship until his retirement in 2006.

 

After he finished racing, he decided to try a new career as an international DJ, based in Miami, but performing all over the world.

 

 

[Radoye]

Quote

 

A lot of folk think that fashion magnate Lawrence Stroll has bought a Formula 1 team just because of his son Lance.

 

But if you take a wander back in history you find that Lawrence has been supporting Formula 1 teams since long before Lance was born.

 

It is a story that goes back to the 1980s when Stroll and his business partner Silas Chou sold their European licences to sell Ralph Lauren/Polo clothing and bought the rights to the Tommy Hilfiger brand. As part of their plan to expand the businesses they did a deal to use both the Pepe Jeans and Tommy Hilfiger brands to sponsor Team Lotus, which had just been taken over by Peter Collins and Peter Wright, after the Chapman family decided it was time to get out of Formula 1. Stroll would remain a sponsor until the end of 1994 when the team collapsed.

 

It was four years before Hilfiger returned to Formula 1 as a sponsor of Ferrari, the plan being to open a chain of Hilfiger stores in Italy.

 

Lance Stroll was born that same year.

 

The Hilfiger-Ferrari sponsorship led to another deal when Stroll and Chou bought the British jeweler Asprey & Garrard in 2000 when the Brunei Investment Group sold the firm after Prince Jefri Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei’s playboy brother, ran the company into trouble. Both companies had been Ferrari sponsors…

 

The upshot of this was that Stroll became close to Ferrari boss Jean Todt, which probably explains why Lance was a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy from the age of nine onwards.

 

Asprey was not a great success for Stroll and Chou. They invested a great deal but sales did not develop as much as they had expected and they decided to sell in 2006 to private equity firms. That same year the duo sold their shares in Hilfiger for an impressive $1.6 billion and turned their attention to another brand that they had acquired in 2003, Michael Kors.

 

This led to a very successful IPO in 2011, before Stroll and Chou exited the fashion business in 2014. Stroll has since concentrated on his son’s racing career, taking him to Williams and then buying the troubled Force India. Now there is talk that Stroll might want to buy into Aston Martin, in order to turn his team into a factory operation… We shall see.

 

Along the way Stroll has bought a few impressive “toys”, including the In 1999 the Mont Tremblant racing circuit in Canada, which was rebuilt under the guidance of circuit designer Alan Wilson. Ih 2013 he added a rare 1967 Ferrari to his impressive car collection, paying a rumoured $27.5 million for the car.