The four images above are taken from the June edition of Motor Sport magazine (acknowledgements to the publication and the original photographers). They are an indication of how things have changed in the fifty years that have passed since they first appeared.
Firstly, they show how lucky we are today in terms of news and sports coverage - normally at least, when there IS sport to cover! I'm writing this on the morning of 17th June 2020, so surely, if I'm following the 'fifty years ago' theme, I should be covering events of this week. Fifty years ago we would have been in the lead-up to the Dutch GP, held on the 21st of the month. Instead the photos cover events that were held in late April (the International Trophy held on Sunday 26th and the 1000km of Monza on Saturday 25th) and the Targa Florio on 3rd May.
That was really as good as it got in 1970; unless you subscribed to a weekly publication like Autosport, motor sport fans often had to wait more than a month to find out what was going on in their sport when the long-awaited familiar green cover dropped through the letterbox or appeared on the newsagent's shelf.
Secondly, the recent coverage of Fernando Alonso's attempts to complete the 'triple crown' of victory in the Monaco GP, Le Mans 24 hours and Indy 500 (though I always took the triple crown to be World GP champion plus the others but that's by-the-by) and the fuss when Nico Hulkenburg took on the Le Mans 24 Hours in between Grand Prixs, shows how unusual it is for contemporary drivers to do something different from their chosen disciplines. In 1970 it was incredibly common, indeed Chris Amon, who won the International Trophy for his first F1 victory, and Piers Courage who was third in the same race, also competed in the Monza 1000km the day before, practicing at Silverstone on Friday, flying to Italy to compete in a long-distance sports car race on the Saturday then coming back to England for the F1/F5000 race on the Sunday!
And this was in the big beast sports car era of Ferrari 512m and Porsche 917s.
Chris Amon was particularly busy because he didn't only win the F1 race but came second and fourth in the 1000km...
Finally in the 'how things have changed list' I give you the phenomenally-quick-but-with-fifty-year-old-tyre-technology cars of 1970 racing on public roads image that was the Targa Florio. What. A. Race. And what heroes were those drivers?
A 72km long lap. A lap that went through Italian villages full of crazy fans trying to get as close as they could. Cars like the Porsche 908 which were virtually sports car clad F1 machines plus at least one 5 litre Ferrari 512. It just doesn't bear thinking about.
Nor the fact that Motor Sport reported that the early progress of the fast cars was limited because overnight rain had put mud on the road...
One of the reasons I write novels about aviation in WW1 and WW2 is because the people who went through these times share many of the characteristics of the drivers of the 1960s and 1970s, the era I grew up fascinated about, when rapid technological advances were made but where safety was a secondary consideration. My aviation novels can try to put the reader in these times. I'd never try to write a motor racing book set in the 1960s or 1970s because this experience is clearly and starkly reflected in the contemporary reports of those times.
Literally, you couldn't make it up. At least not better than the reality that already exists.
To underline this I'll quote one last bit of information from this issue of Motor Sport. There is another sports car race reported in it, the 1000km of Spa.
The old Spa. On public roads.
Pedro Rodriguez, who this month fifty years ago won the Belgium GP on the same circuit, set the lap record in the 1000km in the fearsome Gulf Porsche 917.
He lapped in 3 minutes 16.5 seconds.
That's a 258.32 kph or 160.3 mph average speed.
On largely public roads.
On 1970 tyre technology.
This is why I will stick to writing stories about Fokker DVIIs and Sopwith Camels...
Comments
Post a Comment