Friday 9th August 2013

Racing in the park: Pic Of The Week

Inspired by our earlier Time For Tea? here's a desktop snapshot of classic racing at Crystal Palace

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It's always mesmerising in this health and safety obsessed age seeing images of historic race cars flying around a corner - usually sideways - with the crowd just feet away. The more so when it's on tarmac more used to perambulating Londoners enjoying a quiet stroll in the park.

The park in question is Crystal Palace of course and, fired up by yesterday's Time For Tea?, we delved into LAT's archives for another taste of the action from back in the day. Taken at the 1966 British Formula 2 race it shows Jochen Rindt in a Brabham BT18-Cosworth pushing possibly a little too hard in his pursuit of third placed Alan Rees in a similar car. And a fine illustration of all that was exciting about motor racing in 60s Britain.

And the Cosworth angle? Expect more on this very shortly...

[Photo: LAT Photo]

 

Traditional (4:3)
Computer widescreen (16:10)
TV widescreen (16:9)
Portrait (smartphone, etc)

[jamespink]

Rindt running out of just about everything except commitment by the looks! Wonderful!

[soad]

What a photo! Fantastic!

[tannedstamina]

Amazing. I love that no one in the crowd looks worried at all that a cartwheeling race car could soon be joining them.

[DavidY]

Think you can add Gilles to the commitment list! approx 160mph!!

Edited by DavidY on Friday 9th August 15:21

[Hasbeen]

Thanks for that, it brings back memories.

I owned one of the original Brabhams, FJ 3 62, upgraded to basically to the same spec as those, which I raced in Oz in 66 & 67.

In 68 I was lucky enough to drive a 2.5L Oz F1 Brabham Repco BT24, the very last of the wingless open wheelers.

Those cars, when setup properly, & provided you had power on before turn in could be allowed to assume some quite extreme attitudes without worry. It sounds goofy, & I suppose we must have done something slightly differently, but somehow the tail would come back under you when you thought it should. Extrasensory perception I doubt, but it did almost feel like you thought the car through the corners.

Having said that, perhaps Jochen should have started thinking about his tail just a little bit sooner in that photo.

[surreyjock]

Attended one of the last F2 meetings at the Palace on 29/5/1972 and have managed to find the programme which cost 20p! The lap record before the event (49.6 sec) was shared by six guys and you may recognise some of the names: J Rindt, J Stewart, T Schenken, R Peterson, J P Jaussaud and E Fittapaldi. The F2 race was run over 2 legs; the winner was Jody Scheckter and the list of drivers included G Hill, N Lauda, M Hailwood, D Purley, F Cevert, J P Beltoise, J Surtees, W Fittapaldi, J Watson and many others. According to my notes a new lap record of 49.2 was set during this race by Carlos Reutemann. Although the F2 race was great, the real thrills were provided by the saloon car boys. Such a short circuit always favoured agility over power and the memory of Jonathan Buncombe's Mini Cooper S fending off the Camaro of Frank Gardner is still fresh. Happy days!

[mybrainhurts]

.....from back in the day....

A little less of that confounded Americanese, if you please...

[johntennyson]

How did ANYONE survive the '60s, eh?

[SkepticSteve]

BBC2 some years back has a series call 100 Great Sporting Moments.

One of those 100 was a Crystal Palace race where that huge Camero was racing a Mk1 Escort IIRC!

In black and white 405 lines TV, but still the best TV race I have every seen!

Come on BBC lets see it again!!
But YOUTUBE to the Rescue if you have a coffe break!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY5zdnGvT0c&lis...