Thanks for the comments two Davids.
I didn’t know that Paulo had posted the same pics some time ago.
There’s no doubt that there’s been enormous technological advances in race car construction since the 1960s, borne out by the fact that the last driver to be killed in an F1 race was Ayrton Senna in 1994, despite many horrendous accidents since then. Carbon fibre and various sandwich and honeycomb constructions prove the point.
It’s said that one shouldn’t compare apples with onions but one wonders what the outcome would have been had a Roaring Forties tube frame or Jimmy Price monocoque GT40 had identical accidents on the same stretch of road in Italy.
During the seven years I spent in Europe 27 drivers were killed in mainly in F1 and sports car races. Even though Colin Chapman was an early pioneer of monocoques most of the accidents were in tube frame cars clad in flimsy fibreglass body shells with little or no impact resistance.
The year 1968 was a terrible one with the deaths of Jim Clark (April 7), Mike Spence (May 7), Ludovico Scarfiotti (June 8) and Jo Schlesser (July 7), four virtually one per month to the day. It was my last year in Europe and I recall ending the year on a depressed note wondering what motor racing was all about particularly when I looked back and remembered rubbing shoulders and joking with the dead drivers. However one recovers and life goes on.
Former South African national F1 champion was recently reunited with his Lotus 72D with which he won national championships in the early 1970s. Even though it had a monocoque (aluminium) he was aghast that he drove ‘that frail thing at the speeds he did.’ Interesting how sanity prevails as one gets older, but I doubt that applies to Robert Logan or me!
When Walt Hangsen was killed in a GT40 at Le Mans in 1966 during the April practice session, according the former Shelby crew chief, Ron Butler, who was one of the first on the scene, he was killed when the right front wheel snapped back under the impact and hit him in the face. The rest of the monocoque remained largely intact.
A further testimony to the immense strength of carbon fibre was a 300 km/h or so accident involving a prototype Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR. During high speed tests in Italy the car crashed, if I remember correctly when a tyre blew. The SLR went into a never ending series of rolls and somersaults and the only injury to the test driver was a small cut on the nose from the broken windscreen. When I visited Mclaren in mid-2002 and saw the cars in the making Gordon Murray told me of the accident.
One wonders how much thought Mr and Mrs Average Commuter throughout the world give to the contribution to their passengers cars by lessons learnt from the racing and rally circuits of the world. A prime example was the disc brake that first appeared on the works C-Type Jaguars at Le Mans. The Jag tail lights would come on at the end of the Mulsanne straight at the 500 m board as would the drum-braked works Ferraris, As the race wore on the Jag lights flashed on consistently at the 500 m mark whilst the Ferrari lights started to flash at the 800 m board. The rest, as they say, is history. Any drum braked cars in the world? Possibly the-beyond-its-sell-by date the 1950s Morris Oxford I believe still being built in India by Hindustan Motors Ltd as the Ambassador Nova. Or has production stopped now that India is going places.
Take it easy and brake before it’s too late!
André 40
Take it easy,
André 40