Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Jim Hall (below) is happy to hear that there’s so much interest in his Chaparral Can-Am and long-distance sport cars, as well as in the rapid rate of evolution motor racing went through in the 1960s and ’70s as documented in the February edition of Motor Sport. “It was a really interesting time, and I think it’s just one of those things that happens during life or history,” says Hall. “As I look back on it, the way those cars developed during that 10 years or so was really an amazing thing. I’m really proud to have been part of it.”

But when the ground-effect era finally arrived with full force it settled on a Lotus 79-like concept that has remained unchanged over the 30 following years. “What happened was everybody ended up with the same configuration and that’s where the innovation stops a little bit because once everybody’s focused around what works the best it’s hard to jump to something new,” observes Hall. “Once you zero in on what works best it’s damn difficult for anybody to say that there’s a better way to do it.”

Hall’s Chaparral 2K (below, sponsored by Pennzoil) – designed by John Barnard and driven in 1979 by Al Unser and in 1980-81 by Johnny Rutherford – achieved the same effect in Indycar racing. “We kind of copied the Lotus 79 and put together an Indycar with the radiators in the sidepods. The position of the tunnels and everything in that car was similar to the Lotus 79, and after that every Indycar practically up to this time remains the same in essential layout and concept. They’re certainly much more sophisticated in their manufacture and have a lot more performance in a lot of ways, but the configuration is basically the same.”

Does Hall see any possibility for change? “Well, I’m not close enough to the sport these days to be able to say. But it seems like with all types of racing today the rules are written so tightly that there’s no room for what we did with the Chaparrals and what [Colin] Chapman and other guys did in Formula 1. Like I say, it was a certain time in history that came along and now it’s gone. I guess that’s the way life and history works.”

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I had the pleasure of talking to Jim Hall of Chaparral fame recently. The tall Texan built and raced some of the sport’s most appealing and ground-breaking cars, and went on to run successful teams in America’s Formula 5000 championship and in CART, winning titles in both categories and the Indy 500 in 1978 and ‘80 with Al Unser and Johnny Rutherford respectively.

Hall is one of those rare people who have been successful as a driver, car builder and team owner. He also created a legend with his white Chaparrals, and at 75 he is sharp as a whip and able to recall many details from days long ago. I’m writing a story for the magazine to appear later this year about Hall’s many achievements and didn’t have room for the following stories about his first laps around the Nürburgring, so I thought I’d share them with you.

In 1963 Hall lived in the UK for most of the year and raced a Formula 1 Lotus-BRM for the BRP team. At the end of the year he returned home to Texas to launch the revolutionary Chaparral 2 Can-Am car and focused on racing in America until his driving career came to an end, following a leg-breaking accident at the end of the ’68 Can-Am season.

Hall’s best result from his year in F1 was fifth place in the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, and he’s proud of making it through his first and only race on the legendary Nordschleife without a single mistake. Big Jim spent most of the week prior to the race flogging his Mini-Cooper around the track, trying to learn it as best he could. He also enjoyed contrasting lessons from some of the F1 aces of the time – Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, Richie Ginther and Lorenzo Bandini.

“At the Nürburgring I ran into Richie, Phil and Dan,” Hall recalled. “They were in a big black Mercedes and they said they were going to go around the Nürburgring and asked me to join them. I said, ‘Wow, that would be great.’ So I went with them and got to see each one of them drive a lap. That was a real lesson. They all had a lot of ability, they were all different and I got to see all three of them do it. That was pretty exciting.

“When I first showed up at the ‘Ring I stopped at the Sport Hotel and walked in and Bandini was there with his girlfriend. I was a new guy and he looked at me and said, ‘You want to go round?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ He was in a little Alfa Guiletta that had about a halfway back seat. I had to sit sideways in it. So his girlfriend got in the passenger seat and he got in the driver’s seat and off we went, and I can’t tell you how frightened I was! Maybe that was his intent.

“I was all cooped up in the back of this little car and we’re going around there so damn fast, and I had no idea which way the turns went or whether he was on the right or wrong side of the road. It was quite an experience for my first lap around there.”

Hall went on to finish the race in the points, and three years later his Chaparral 2D long-distance sports/racer won the Nürburgring 1000Kms with Phil Hill and Jo Bonnier driving. It’s one of Hall’s proudest achievements.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

One of motor racing’s truly great guys passed away in Indianapolis this week. John Anderson, known to all as ‘Ando’, suffered a heart attack while playing racquetball on Thursday. An Australian who came to the United States more than 30 years ago, Ando was an old-school master mechanic and fabricator who could build anything and everything. He was also a very funny man, a hilarious storyteller and a kindly soul.

Anderson worked in Formula 5000, Can-Am, Indycars and the American Le Mans Series and became one of the finest team managers in the business. In recent decades he was a key man at PacWest, Team Green and Andretti-Green, running Dario Franchitti’s car at Andretti-Green in 2007 when he won his first Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar title. In 2008 and ‘09 Anderson ran Gil de Ferran’s ALMS team and spent three months last winter trying to salvage Peter Windsor’s USF1 outfit.

Ando was also an enthusiastic amateur aviator who loved to fly his own light plane. But most of all he was a tireless worker who could motivate people like few others with his superb skills, sharp eye and bottomless pit of humour. Our thoughts this week are with John’s wife Lesley, his extended family and many friends around the world.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Evolution, not revolution. It’s something of a mantra in motor racing circles, as teams refine and improve the breed. In the Motor Sport office this month, I caught myself quietly muttering it too, as the September issue began to take shape (I don’t think anyone heard me, which is probably just as well).

You see, we’ve made another tweak to the magazine as we strive to add greater depth and diversity. Nothing too dramatic, you understand, and certainly not a departure from tradition. In fact, you could describe it as an echo of times past.

Road cars always featured prominently in the ‘Green ’un’, thanks to the road tests and commentaries provided by the, er, independently-minded missives from editor Bill Boddy. He didn’t pull his punches when delivering a verdict. Today, we’ve continued to dip a toe into the industry waters thanks to the columns and tests of another forthright ex-editor, Andrew Frankel. But now we’ve dived back in head-first, with full commitment!

No more token efforts. Now the road car industry has its own section within the magazine, as Andrew guides us through the latest happenings, events and – most importantly – significant cars on the market. Each month, he’ll be cutting through the PR-speak to explain what is going on in the world of road cars: who is doing what, who is saying what – and what you should consider driving.

This month, Andrew kicks off by delivering his verdict on Goodwood’s first Moving Motor Show, finds out whether the new Mercedes-Benz SLS lives up to its classic ‘Gullwing’ forefather and bombards Bentley’s head man Dr Ulrich Eichorn for our new feature ‘20 Questions’.

And that’s not all. He’s been a busy boy. We also sent Andrew to McLaren to uncover exactly how Formula 1 thinking has influenced and shaped the stunning new MP4-12C road car. Want to know how motor racing brilliance can feed into the real world in the 21st century? Look no further than our cover story.

If you’re reading this and wondering what’s happened to the usual mix of racing stories past and present, never fear! Where else can you read about life in a Le Mans team, Ferrari P4 Can-Am cars, what Mika Häkkinen talks about over lunch, how F1 teams hit the track in Abu Dhabi – five days after racing at Interlagos, what Stuart Turner remembers about a colourful career in rallying… and why Nigel Roebuck found a kindred spirit in smokin’ daredevil Patrick Depailler?

You know the answer. So lock the door, turn off the phone and lose yourself in Motor Sport – a world with a proper sense of perspective.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The weather was fabulous at Watkins Glen for last weekend’s Indycar race. The sun shone brightly all weekend and Will Power scored an excellent win from pole for Team Penske. But the weekend unfolded amid a poignant atmosphere as rumours persisted that this was the last time Indycars would race at the Glen. The track is owned by the International Speedway Corporation and new Indycar boss Randy Bernard is weighing up whether he should continue to do business with ISC because of the disappointing turnout for most Indycar races at its tracks, Watkins Glen included.

“This is a beautiful track,” Bernard said at the Glen. “The weather’s perfect and there’s quite a lot of fans out there – a lot of campers. I’d like to find a way to continue to race here. But I’m held accountable for my bottom line and I want to make sure each facility is held accountable with plenty of butts in the seats. I don’t want to go anywhere where we don’t have the full support to make the event successful.”

Bernard said he’s still talking to Watkins Glen about next year. “We have to have an answer within six weeks and it might happen sooner than that,” he said. “We need to make sure we give our team owners and sponsors plenty of opportunity to be able to plan for next year. The key is to get 18 promoters behind us who really want to make the series grow to reignite open-wheel racing. That’s one of my primary goals.”

“We love this event, ” said Watkins Glen president Michael Printup. “These guys and girls race the hell out of this track, so I’m personally pushing very hard. We have a fantastic camping crowd this weekend and I’m pretty excited about that, especially in this economy. We did take a bit of a risk and put a lot of advertising dollars up in Toronto and Niagara Falls. I’m not sure that paid off. I really thought we could bring a lot of those people down here, but I don’t know if that’s working.”

As delightful a place to visit as Watkins Glen is, the crowds for the six Indycar races run at the track since 2005 have been disappointingly poor. Back in the Glen’s heyday it used to draw huge crowds not only for the United States Grand Prix in the fall, but also for July’s Can-Am, Formula 5000 and Six-Hour World Championship sports car races. The village of Watkins Glen was full of crowds all weekend and traffic jams filled the road up to the track.

But the only race that pulls a serious crowd to the Glen these days is August’s NASCAR Sprint Cup event, first run in 1986. As NASCAR took over as the dominant force in American racing the Glen has struggled to find a healthy sports car or open-wheel alternative. Everyone hoped the Indycar race would be successful but it looks like last weekend’s event was the end of the road, and possibly the end of any major form of racing at the track save NASCAR.

“It’s like Spa, ” said Power after his victory. “It’s the nicest track we race on. You can pass here – it’s a flowing track with fast, banked corners. It’s a real dream to drive, especially when the car is working. I’d be really disappointed if we don’t come back here.”

Road racing in America started in 1948 on an open road circuit through and around the village of Watkins Glen. But 60 years later the great tradition of mid-summer road races at the Glen appear to have come to an unhappy end, leaving NASCAR in command of the track that was once known as the ‘home of American road racing’.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The opening weekend of qualifying for this year’s 92nd Indianapolis 500 takes place this weekend. Favourites for the pole must be Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon who have been the men to beat on oval tracks so far this year in Chip Ganassi’s pair of Dallara-Hondas. Other pole contenders include 2001 and ‘02 race winner Helio Castroneves and new team-mate Ryan Briscoe with Team Penske, and Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti (above) and Danica Patrick (below) at Andretti-Green Racing.

Thanks to the unification of IndyCar racing thirty-four drivers are entered at Indianapolis this year and the field is a little stronger than in recent years. On the other hand, the previous two winners Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish are missing from the field as they have moved their careers, for better or worse, to NASCAR. The only previous winners entered this year are Wheldon, Castroneves and Buddies Rice and Lazier.

Five Brits are entered – 2005 winner Wheldon, Darren Manning, Justin Wilson, Jay Howard and Alex Lloyd. Wilson, Howard and Lloyd are rookies, although Wilson has some oval experience from his four years in Champ Car and is the number one driver of course, at Newman/Haas/Lanigan, replacing Sebastien Bourdais in the team’s McDonald’s car.

This has been a tough week for Newman/Haas/Lanigan because the team’s most experienced and respected man Davey Evans was brutally murdered in an Indianapolis bar last Saturday night. Evans, 63, had worked for Carl Haas’s race team for forty years, going back to the original Can-Am and Formula 5000 series. Born in Sudbury-on-Thames, Evans started his working life in 1959 as a teen-aged engineering apprentice with HWM Motors. He moved on to Maranello Concessionaires before finding work at Lola Cars and then becoming a key man in America in Haas’s Can-Am and Formula 5000 teams before the creation in 1983 of the Newman/Haas CART team.

For many years Davey worked at Lola during the winters building Haas’s cars. Evans was an old-school artisan who could construct almost anything. He was not only Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing’s most experienced crewman, but also probably the longest-serving man in the contemporary IndyCar garage area.

“I have a tough time accepting it and I’m sure everyone else feels the same way,” Mario Andretti commented. “It’s such a waste of a wonderful life. For some meaningless human being to take another life that meant so much is a total travesty. There are very few people that I’ve known in my life who you could say, ‘I don’t think this guy had an enemy in the world.’ All the years that I’ve known and worked with him, whether it was with Carl’s Can-Am team or through Formula 5000 to all the years with Newman/Haas, Davey was always there with a smile, always kind. What can you say? He was a friend for life.”

Two memorial services were held in Indianapolis this week for Evans as many who knew him paid their respects to one of the sport’s most-liked men, fated to lose his life in deeply tragic circumstances.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Parnelli Jones is one of the living legends of American racing, up there in the pantheon with Mario Andretti, AJ Foyt and Dan Gurney. Jones dominated three of the seven Indy 500s he started and won the race in 1963, beating Jim Clark. He looked to be a clear winner again in ’67 with Andy Granatelli’s STP turbine car, but a driveshaft bearing broke with only four laps to go and after the race Parnelli retired from driving open cockpit cars.

Indianapolis, USA. 30th May 1966. Parnelli Jones (Shrike-Offenhauser).

Parnelli continued to race in Trans-Am, Can-Am and off-road cars and trucks. He won the 1970 Trans-Am championship with a Bud Moore Ford Mustang, beating Mark Donohue and Penske Racing by a single point when Trans-Am was one of the USA’s top racing series, brimming with manufacturer-backed teams.

Can-Am race. Riverside, California, United States. 29 October 1967. Parnelli Jones (Lola T70-Chevrolet), 4th position.

He also won the Baja 1,000 in 1971 and ’72, and his resume includes a second career as a team owner in partnership with Vel Miletich. Vel’s Parnelli Jones racing won the Indy 500 with Al Unser in 1970 and ’71, three consecutive USAC championships in 1970-72 with Unser and Joe Leonard and a total of 40 USAC races between 1968-77. VPJ also produced the first Cosworth-powered Indycar, developed by John Barnard and driven successfully by Unser, and a similar F1 car raced by Andretti from late 1974 to early ’76. VPJ’s cars were usually beautiful and often revolutionary.

Ontario, California, USA. 3rd-10th March 1974. Al Unser (Eagle-Offenhauser), 2nd position, with Parnelli Jones.

Jones became a very successful Firestone tyre distributor and property developer in Southern California, and today, at 74, he remains as sharp as ever, and as knowledgeable a man about racing as anyone alive. Parnelli is delighted to see a unified IndyCar series emerge from the sport’s long civil war, but he emphasizes that the real work begins now.

“We need to build respect for Indycar racing again and the only way we’re ever going to get there is to make some dramatic changes,” Jones observes. “It’s a great start that the two series have merged, but it’s not the answer. When you’ve got 50 cars like NASCAR, then you’ve got something. It’s been embarrassing to go watch qualifying at Indianapolis in recent years. There’s nobody there. We used to have 250,000 people show up for the first day of qualifying. But today, we don’t have the respect for the Indy winners that we used to.”

Like many of us, Parnelli believes the most important factor is for the sanctioning body to take control and devise a new formula that will create plenty of competition among engine and car builders.

“Before we go forward they’ve got to step back and take a long look,” he says. “You can’t let the manufacturer run the series. What made all the series in the world in the first place, even NASCAR, is having all those different types of cars for people to root for. But it’s easier said than done.

“They’ve got to get more than one manufacturer. I have nothing against Honda, but right now Honda is calling the shots. NASCAR controls not only the drivers and teams but also the manufacturers, and that’s what Indycar racing needs to get back to.

Parnelli Jones brings the 1968 Lotus Turbine Indy Car back to the pits after taking a ceremonial lap of the track prior to the start of qualifying. 84th Indianapolis 500, Indy Racing Northern Light Series, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 28 May, 2000

“We need to have competition and we need to look at it not just from a technical, Formula 1-type mentality. We need to look at it from an entertainment value because we have to compete against so many other entertainments in this country. It’s not about going out and seeing who’s the best racer and how many laps he can lead or how quick he can lap the field. Those days are gone.

“We need to be entertaining but you’re not going to get there with one manufacturer supplying the same thing to everybody because there’s no entertainment value.”
Jones believes the best way forward is to design a rocker arm engine formula, and that in the long run this would bring manufacturers back into Indycar racing in the best possible way.

“They ought to go to rocker arm engines because you can buy all the parts in the US,” he explains. “Get rid of the manufacturers. Let them go by the wayside and you would have the Childresses and Hendricks building engines for Indy. Make them 260 or 270 cubic inches and you can buy all those parts. Not everyone could build a Hendrick engine but they could grow into that.

“Don’t call them stock-blocks. Call them rocker arm engines and you could have guys building Chevies, Fords, Dodges and Toyotas. Then the manufacturers would come back and start supporting the teams that are running their product. But this time the sanctioning body controls it.”

Tony George (below) and the IRL might do well to consider Parnelli Jones’s ideas of how to secure a healthy future for Indycar racing.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine