Well, this lockdown is apparently going to go on for at least another three weeks. And a return of real live motorsport action doesn’t seem possible in the foreseeable future. But don’t worry, there’s an almost inexhaustible catalogue of cool videos online, and we’re here to be your guide. So here is this weekend’s selection.
Five fabulous motorsport videos to get you through the weekend
Toyota GT-One at Le Mans onboard
You might at some point, if you’ve followed anything I have written on GRR over the last five years, have noticed that I like sportscar racing. I like it to such a degree that I get actively annoyed by people making a pretty small mistake about the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR – as you can see here. So it seems almost inevitable that I start this week’s list with a car from the same glorious era of the aforementioned Merc. This is the Toyota GT-One, a car that bent the ‘GT1’ rules to, and probably beyond, breaking point. And one which because of that is absolutely awesome. It is one in a line of heroic failures for Toyota at Le Mans, coming so close to victory, and yet so far. This GT-One though returned to the Circuit de la Sarthe last year for the Le Mans Classic for another few more laps of the iconic track. And, thanks to our friends at Peter Auto, who run the event, we can enjoy that experience from onboard. So you can enjoy not only the visual experience, but the sound of the GT-One’s 3.6-litre V8.
Trailer: Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile
Last year, when international travel was still a thing you could do, we spent ten days in Italy. First in Monza watching some awesome racing at the Monza Historic, then in Turin, a beguiling city I had never been to before, filming at the Italian national motor museum, the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile. There we found an incredible collection of cars stretching back through almost the whole history of Italian motoring, and a team absolutely dedicated to preserving that history. When you’ve watched the trailer, you can watch the full GRRC Original right here.
Awesome Sebring 1957 footage
While the track has changed quite a lot in in terms of its actual layout since then, the ethos of Sebring remains to this day, so this footage, even though it is now 53 years old, still feels very familiar. The 1957 race was won by the Maserati 450S of Juan Manuel Fangio and Jean Behra, closely followed by a Maser 300S being driven by the much missed Stirling Moss and Harry Schell. But it’s not the racing that’s important, more the footage, which has been beautifully preserved by the Petersen Museum in California. It shows motorsport as it used to be, with no real separation between track, pitlane, or even crowds, and an awesome close up of an old-fashioned pitstop, complete with lump hammer to tighten the wheels. It’s awesome stuff. Oh, another little treat, at one point there’s a U2 spyplane in the background.
Ironman and Ken Block
If we fast forward 52 years you’ll find an almost unbelievable comparison in technology. From people sitting under palm leaves to watch D-Types race Maserati 300Ss, to a specially tuned Ford F150 truck playing around with a man in, for want of a better term, a jetpack. This is footage from the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard last year, in the then brand new Arena. Richard Browning, the head of future tech company Gravity, was allowed into the Arena to show off his amazing Iron Man-style suit, accompanied by that man Ken Block himself. Fun? Yeah you bet.
Ground effect doc
Back in the day of proper Formula 1 innovation, certain technological advances would come to dominate the grid. In the 1970s the cars would start effectively sucking themselves to the ground using a strange effect of physics called, simply ground effect. Eventually the whole grid would be exploiting this trick, even to the point of one team, spurred on by the genius of Gordon Murray, installing a fan in their car to literally suck the car to the ground. Back then the BBC’s Horizon series, which is still running today, made two separate documentaries about this technology. The first, more famous, was called Gentlemen, lift your skirts, and was around the banning of skirts on the side of the cars, which helped create a sort-of closed vacuum underneath. This is the second of those documentaries, and follows what happened after that, and how Williams overcame the difficulties of constant rule changes seemingly only designed to disadvantage them.
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