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Motorsport memories and tales?
#1

I have been watching motorsport for more years than I care to admit and have many memories from races I have attended, not just the actual racing but the things that went on around it.

I can share a few of them here but what are yours?

First off - my one and only visit to the Monaco GP in 1987. It was an expensive trip even then, which we were unlikely to repeat, so we were determined to do the job properly and booked the full works; posh apartment in Nice and race seats in the garden of the Hotel Mirabeau, situated just before the tunnel, with a five course lunch thrown in before qualifying and the race.

On the Sunday, having drunk the first free bottle of a very good red wine we chatted up the waiter and worked our way through a second, followed by a third to consume during the race. There was also a pay bar and a visit to that produced the following exchange with a man in the queue who had just paid £8 for a small gin and tonic: " I bet that is the most expensive G&T you have ever bought."
"No, I was in the TipTop bar last night and it was £10!" This was 1987 remember and the price in an English pub was about £1.

About 3/4 of the way through the race my good lady needed to visit the facilities and descended the steep steps from our seats, never to return. After the race I went looking for her and found her in the bar, apparently she had been unable to reascend the steps because she was more than a teensy bit inebriated and had watched the rest of the race on the TV!

So there you have it - a trip to the Monaco GP costing more than £1000 and she watched it on the telly! Great weekend though and a tale to embarrass her with for many years after.

Anybody else like to chip in with their memories? Not the racing, but the stories related to it.
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#2

Back in 1987 or 88 we were spectating on the RAC Rally, supporting the Lancias.
As we were heading home and driving through the small town of Walkerburn we spotted a Delta being worked on at the side of the road. Naturally we stopped to see what was going on and found Markku Alen pacing about as the team worked to open up the flattened exhaust pipe. After a few minutes, my wife asked our hero Markku for an autograph. Markku scowled "No" and walked away. We were a bit shocked by his grumpiness. A chap came over and told us he was part of the press crew and that Markku had had a significant excursion off a forest road and it had been a struggle to get the car back on the track. In fact the service point was an emergency one and they had not expected any cars to arrive.
Back home, watching the TV coverage it became apparent that Markku had lost some serious time in slipping into a ditch and had only been able to get going again thanks to spectators who had man-handled the Delta up a steep slope back to the track.  At that point my wife forgave Markku's grumpiness.

Forum Precepts:  Don't hijack or divert topics - create a new one.   Don't feed the Troll.    http://www.scuderiaturini.com
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#3

In 1983 we moved to Southeastern Michigan, about a 40 minute drive from Michigan International Speedway.

My father had always been a NASCAR fan and also enjoyed Indy Car.

Up to that point he had been commuting Monday to Friday to Michigan from our home in Ohio, meaning i didn't see him much during the week (he left before I got up on Monday and got home after I was in bed on Friday).

Now even back then the cost of the race was too high for us. I think it was 50 USD$ which is almost 130 USD$ today.

However the regional restaurant chain "Big Boy" was the caterer of the track so the gave away tickets to practice and qualifying on Friday and Saturday.

Michigan, despite its many lakes is a continental climate so when we headed out at 8 AM it was often in the low 50s F° (10° C) but it would get up to the 80s °F (30s C°) by noon.

I remember walking from the parking lot, nearly frozen teeth chattering and walking up literally hundreds of steps to get a good view of the whole track... sitting on cold aluminum bleachers only to come home after 7 PM with a sun burn!

In any case, you couldn't walk around the paddock but you could get close and with so little going one the drivers were accessible. I have many autographs.


The IROC series were the only races I got to see but I enjoyed them as it was easy to follow and I liked the Z-28 and later Dodge cars.

Most importantly thought I spent all that time with my Dad. Alone.

He put up with my non-stop questions and made often an important statement about this or that driver or how things were going.

In time I leaned more towards Indy car. At the time they raced on alcohol the the Chaparral was king, often doing 200 MPH out of turn 4.

If you saw the car coming it was often too late as they were so fast you didn't have time to cover your ears before they zoomed by only a few yards (meters) away...

Michigan International Speedway is not very close to any major city. If it goes so does the whole region.

My Dad is gone but I remember those times, sitting talking, getting sun burnt.

For me, motorsport is much as a family event as it is entertainment.

I have been lucky enough to drive race cars on tracks in anger and I have so much respect for those guys and gals.

I say every person who wants a driver's license should be taken to some track and ideal get up to 160 or 180 MPH.

I think motorsport would become relevant again...
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#4

An embarrassing lunch with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.......................

One day in 1996 I received a phone call at work from a friend asking if I would like to go to a midweek F1 test at Silverstone as guests of the Williams team. I did wonder how he had managed to blag this but didn't pursue the question as I was too busy pleading with my boss for a day off at very short notice!

Arriving at Silverstone the next day I was given the magic 'access all areas' badge and spent a wonderful morning in the pits watching the team at close quarters as they went about their testing. Lunch was served in an adjacent pit garage and we sat down at a large table with the entire crew. Damon was wonderfully chatty and happily signed autographs, Jacques was significantly less accommodating and spent the time conversing with his race engineer.

As the coffee was served we were approached by a lady who started to give us the lowdown on sponsorship deals they could offer to large organisations like ours. The sums mentioned were eye-watering and I didn't have a clue why we were getting this hard sell but my friend seemed to take it in his stride and made appropriate non-committal noises although I knew he had no influence on this sort of thing.

He explained afterwards that his firm supplied British Airways with their disposable items such as toilet rolls, plates, cutlery etc. Williams were pitching for sponsorship from BA at the time and had sent the tickets to them. Somehow they had bypassed the relevant people and found their way into my friend's possession so he had to pretend we were actually from the BA advertising department.

Soon after lunch we 'made our excuses' and left for home. Happy days and I still have Damon's autograph on some Williams publicity material. British Airways never did sponsor the team but it wasn't our fault - honest guv.
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#5

Jacques raced in the EuroNASCAR series and I stood next to him doing crowd control at Hockenheim.
He was talking with his manager about where to go to dinner because the previous night's meal had been, as you say in French "meh..."
So yeah I could totally get that he was stand offish...
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#6

BTCC hospitality sort of...................

In 1993 Auto Trader magazine were sponsoring the BTCC and ran a competition to win a pair of hospitality tickets. You had to answer an easy question and complete the phrase "Auto Trader and touring cars go together because................"

I entered and forgot about it but a few weeks later I received this letter:
   

All good stuff so off we went to Snetterton on the due date. Now the circuit was a bit run down at this time and the only hospitality box was a virtually bare room situated at the end of the pits with a very limited view - the start finish line basically. You could see down to Riches if you went outside and stood on the metal staircase though. The promised buffet lunch consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches plus a can of coke and every other guest was a used car dealer!


Being confined in a room full of dodgy car dealers is not really my idea of fun so we watched the beginning of the race which involved a huge start line crash and then departed to our usual spot at Russell for the rest of the day.

Not exactly the VIP experience we were expecting but we did get in for free and parked our Citroen 2CV next to a Roller in the posh car park.

And finally.........
my winning slogan was "Auto Trader and touring cars go together because they are both in the business of moving cars - fast!" For the next several years the "moving cars fast" slogan was incorporated in  the masthead of the magazine and I never did get any extra payment for thinking it up! Rofl
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#7

My friend won a Vodafone corporate contract competition where the prize was for him and 2 friends to take part in a karting team endurance race with special guest Lewis Hamilton. 

I was in a naming all my pets after F1 drivers phase and so our cats Lewis and Button had joined goldfish Alonso, Schumacher, Senna and Prost. Who were red and white.

Anyways I had taken along a large photo of Lewis the cat to get signed but it soon became apparent that this would be difficult to even get close to Lewis. 

Fortunately though we won the race and on the podium I asked him if he would mind signing the photo of my cat named after him. He interrupted the MC to query this and said it was the weirdest thing anyone had asked him. But he did it. And I still have the photo. 

The video is on YouTube somewhere I think unless my friend took it down.
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#8

The day I met "The King"...............

Richard Petty, 7 times NASCAR champion, 200 race wins including 7 Daytona 500s - the nearest thing to a motor racing god you will ever come across.

October 2017, we had been to the Darlington race, and were now running away from the approaching hurricane Irma. Stopped off at the (bankrupt and closed) Rockingham Speedway before arriving at the Richard Petty museum early afternoon.

It was a very varied collection, not just his cars but watches, guns and other stuff. Being late autumn we virtually had the place to ourselves and spent several hours there. It was nearly closing time when we left and ours was the only car remaining in the extensive car park. As I sat with the car door open setting up the GPS for our next stop I heard the glorious rumble of a big V8 engine and glanced across to the exit where a black Dodge Challenger was just leaving. It stopped at the exit, turned round and drove over to us, the window lowered revealing a familiar stetson hat and dark glasses....the King himself!

He shook hands, thanked us for visiting his museum and stayed for about ten minutes chatting. He seemed genuinely pleased to meet English NASCAR fans and told us that he actually started the museum, which is housed in his original race shop, because he had collected so much stuff over the years he had to find somewhere to put it all.

We were really quite awestruck, can you imagine a famous F1 driver taking a detour to talk to you in a car park? Mind you, this is a man who has never refused to sign an autograph so perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised. A memory to treasure for sure.
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#9

In 1982 I started working for Lambert Ley Street Models which, at that time, was one of the leading model car specialists in the world for 1/43 whitemetal kits, handbuilt models, diecasts and plastic kits. 
 
 A fairly regular visitor was a guy called Alain Grandsard who owned a small diecast shop in France. He was a real character and I got on well with him as I spoke a little French. I visited him once around 1985 on the way to Le Mans and stayed overnight at his house. He showed me an Alpine A110 in his garage and mentioned that he had driven it in a major rally (Tour de Corse I think) but didn't elaborate. 
The following morning he insisted on driving me around Paris in his Mini Cooper to visit all his friends who had shops selling diecasts, Meccano and other collectables which was quite an experience as he seemed to drive everywhere almost flat out and just swerve around anything that got in his way. I have subsequently discovered that he was a very experienced and quite successful rally driver.  

 On some visits to Lamberts he was accompanied by a short man who rarely spoke a word. During one visit to Lamberts just before my Paris visit Alain introduced the other man " This is my friend Jean- Pierre Beltoise and we are opening a shop in Paris together".
He explained that Jean-Pierre Beltoise was interested in vintage model trains and Alain was intending to continue to sell diecasts. 
 When I was in Paris he took me to the shop called "Le Grenier de Grandmere" which was freshly decorated and he was expecting to open within a couple of weeks.  Unfortunately I don't think the shop worked out and he had to close.
 Beltoise always said hello on future visits but he was always quite happy to just stay in the background and it was difficult to get him involved in any conversation. I remember that he noticed a model of his crash helmet which had been in the display cabinet for years and his face lit up when I gave it to him as a present which didn't go down too well with my employer even though Alain always turned up with a litre bottle of Brandy as a gift and I offered to pay for the helmet anyway.  
 
 I later opened my own shop and after a couple of years in Southend I moved the shop to Brands Hatch. Alain called in regularly on his way back to Dover usually with a car full of diecasts and Heinz baked beans (apparently the ones Heinz sold in France didn't taste the same!) but unfortunately I lost contact when I lost my business.
 
 It seems strange that I knew both an F1 legend and a very accomplished rally driver but both were too modest to talk about their success in motorsport. It is a lasting regret that I didn't ask Jean-Pierre for an autograph and I was sorry to lose contact with Alain who was a pleasure to have known.
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#10

How I saved the Champ Car race at Brands Hatch..............

In 2001 the newly opened Rockingham Speedway held the first Champ Car (Indy Car) race held in this country since 1978. It had signed to run the race for three years and ran it again in 2002 but was unable to finance the next year's event, Brands Hatch took over the contract for 2003 and the race was scheduled for the Bank Holiday weekend of 4th/5th of May. I attended the first two races and was thinking of going to the third. Read on for the story of how it was nearly cancelled........

I used to work in the electrical wholesale trade and at 7:00 AM on Monday 28th April that year I got a phone call from a very good customer who specialised in electrical hook up installations for caravan sites, marinas etc. He wanted to place an urgent order for a large quantity (many £1000s worth) of equipment made by the French company Merlin Gerin plus a load of ancillary items in the way of cabling etc. It had to be delivered to Brands Hatch circuit by Thursday 1st May and cost was no object! Now this was a customer who would normally haggle me down to the last penny so I was pleasantly intrigued by the prospect of making a good profit for once and asked him to elaborate.

Apparently the entire electrical hook up system of the paddock and pits had been condemned as unsafe and the whole thing needed replacing before the Champ Car race could take place. My customer had been told to get it done at any cost and, so long as I could provide the order on time, we would both make good money on the deal. If not, then the race could well be called off at enormous cost to Brands in cancellation fees. I therefore had about 48 hours to gather in large quantities of stuff from numerous suppliers, including some which would have to be air freighted in from France so I set about placing the orders and calling in a lot of favours from trade contacts.

Things went surprisingly well, everything was sorted by close of business that day and I then spent a sleepless night convinced that something would go wrong on Tuesday! All was well though, the consignments rolled in with the final shipment arriving from France at 9:00 PM on Wednesday.

6:00AM Thursday I finished loading the van and set off for the two hour trip to Kent, got as far as Bishops Stortford and the M11 ground to a halt! I sat in the queue for a while then turned off into the services to have breakfast and phone my customer with the good news. He was not best pleased but told me to get there as fast as I was able. I eventually arrived at the paddock gate at about 10:30 and joined the queue of transporters which were arriving at the same time.  Once past security I drove down to the main paddock where my customer's entire fleet of vans was waiting and I have never seen a consignment unloaded so fast. They were installing the stuff before I had even got the delivery note signed.

As I was leaving for home my customer thanked me profusely and handed me an envelope which turned out to contain a pair of grandstand tickets for the race plus pit walkabout passes!

Every once in a while the gods do smile on you - the race went ahead, we both made a nice profit on the deal, I got a day out of the office, free race tickets and a fat sales bonus from my boss. The race itself was a fairly rubbish procession but you can't have everything can you?
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