PAGE 18

AUTOWEEK

APRil 3, 1976

Regga Runs Away

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'New Shine To A Scene That Was Tarnishing'

He was a gentleman somewhat beyond retirement age, and dressed for an afternoon promenade. His stroll had taken him into the crowd about the racing cars in Pine Street, so that now he found himself standing next to a well set up young man in a dark blue quilted coverall of some sort. The atmosphere of the gathering seemed friendly, and he had no hesitation about opening a conversation. "Say, ahh, that's number five, ain't she? Ain't that Mario Andretti's car? I remember that from before, number five." The young man turned to him with a smile and explained No, that must have been in the Formula 5000 race but this was Formula One and thi,s was Bob Evans' car. The young man spoke in an English perfectly fluent but lightly accented with the Swedish lilt. White threads traced out his name on his suit, Gunnar Nilsson. "Formula, ahh, eh, I see. They racin' here now, eh? Say, I ought to get your autograph. I have something right, ah, here, a piece of, ahh, would you ... " Gunnar signed with a kindly flourish and then the old man said, "Say, is one of the drivers here right now, that I could, ahh, meet?" Gunnar admitted that he himself was a driver, whereupon the old man put out his right hand for a shake, and clasped his left hand over the bond and said with warmth, "Well now, good luck to you. The very best of luck to you. " Then he was gone. The young Grand Prix driver from Europe looked around and caught one of his friends smiling broadly. "No, really, it's all right," said Gunnar with conviction. "He 's realJ' such a nice old man. Everyone is so nice. It's quite fantastic. " The Concourse d'Elegance in Pine Street that Thursday afternoon was in some ways the most memorable part of the entire First GP West. It was a mild, blue, Southern California day. There had been a couple of prizes put up totalling a thousand dollars for the mechanics of the team presenting the best turnout, and that is real money for a bunch of toiling lads from Aukland or Arras or Aylesbury. Their fingernails were clean and their team shirts pressed and their racing cars were polished until they reflected images clearly from every facet. Some of the cars had actually been driven under power up from the Sports Arena-the F-l garage-and the sight of a Ferrari GP car rasping along Ocean Boulevard with a quartet of police motorcycles in attendance had drawn thousands of people to the judging area. There in Pine Street they had a couple of hours to bend over the cockpits and squat down behind the wings and talk to the mechanics and the drivers about F - 1. "Most of 'em want to know what she'll do in the quarter mile! " reported one of the mechanics with a grin, butit was a grin of pleasure. He seemed to be enjoying the interface of different cultures as much as the local populace. This mingling of the crowd with the contestants was only one of the unique ideas about the Long Beach race that made the whole weekend one of the most pleasantly memorable in years. Long Beach was a fund of good ideas, good ideas that seemed to work and which could stand as guidelines for other places that have been holding GP races for years. Using the Arena for the garage was a wonderful idea. Spacious, clean, bright, warm, blessed with excellent clean restrooms right ihside, it was the center of activities. The ring of seats overlooking the floor was filled with people who sat bemused for hours at a time, while a squad of knowlegable pressmen and broadcasters roved about the place doing loudspeaker interviews with drivers and managers and designers. The barrier system which made the street circuit acceptable for modern racing was another excellent Long Beach feature. The stout lengths of concrete, all so easy to place and remove, the steel guardrail mounted not on posts sunk into sockets in the street (the Monaco system) but on sand-weighted oil drums, the nests of interlaced old tires protecting exposed objects-all good ideas that worked well and could easily be adopted anywhere in the world. What with the static displays of airplanes and cars and things to buy, what with the mobile exhibitions of parachuting and motorcycling and Histqric racing cars-it was worth the price of five tickets to see Gurney and Fangio and Hill and Brabham and Shelby in action again with real bellowing, sliding historic machines-and what with the supporting races for Toyotas and bicycles and things, it was hard to believe that there would be room left to absorb the sights and sensations as well of the standard everyday old Grand Prix! Lapses and hitches in the organization there may have been. They weren't very apparent, they didn't spoil it, and they were outweighed by all the good things accomplished by Mssrs. Pook and associates. The Long Beach GrandPrix, quite apart from any good or bad quality of the race itself, was a success. It brought new shine into a scene that now can be seen to have been tarnishing. The GP West was an experiment that turned out well, that deserves to become a regular fixture, and that could even point the way to a new generation of street-racing in any enthusiastic city or town anywhere. Bravo.-Pete Lyons

Phil Hill, America s only World Champion, took a few laps in the Ferrari trainer.

Jon Thompson

Continued From Preceding Page A lap down, but moving up into sixth upon Jarier's transmission problem was Fittipaldi, who thus scored the first championship points ever for his brother's car. Amon, an exhaust pipe broken and robbing power (besides sounding horrible) finished up eighth behind Jarier, Pace was ninth, after a pit stop to find out why his back brakes had locked up and put him into a spin. The answer, as it was announced to inquiring outside minds, was that "the balance beam seized up. " True enough as far as the story went, but the reader will understand why it didn't go any farther when he learns from another source that it " seized up" because someone had left a bunch of Allen Keys in the cockpit and they got in behind the pedal. Peterson wound up 10th, after his stop, Jones in the Durex Surtees 11th after four

separate stops to put the throttle linkage back together, and Watson was 12th and last running car after a second pit stop to have a broken exhaust tailpipe fixed. So with 12 runners, albeit manyofthem s ick, out of 20 the finishing ratio was 60%, which is actually a bit better than the 56% which has been the annual GP average for three years at least. Certainly it was better than many people had anticipated, and had there not been so many crashes on the opening laps the ratio might have been better yet. But there's no way out of the fact that it was a pretty dull race by the end. It's a good thing Long Beach was such a pleasant place to watch it take place ... as for anything philosophically proven by the results, it proved that if one link in the Ferrari chain falters the other can take up the load. But we already knew that anyway.

Jacques laffite took the llgler-Matra to fourth through long Beach.

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Signs Of The Times: A Bulletproof Limo And ATV

The trend of the times is reflected in the fact that two British auto companies have recently introduced vehicles that will protect people from terrorist attacks and kidnappings. The newest of these is the BMRV Panther bullet-proof luxury limousine which was introduced at the London Auto Show . It was designed , according to its m a nufacturer, specifically for the protection and comfort of he ads of state . For $123,000, a concerned monarch or democratically-elected head of state can get a vehicle with an outer body shell made of aluminum armor alloy. This is the same metal used on the British Army's Scorpion tank. The anti-terrorist vehicle is designed to safely rush a 10-man police team to the scene of an assault. Called the AT105 antiterrorist unit, it's being produced by GKN Sankey Ltd., one of Britain's leading designers and producers of military vehicles. This air-conditioned car has a top speed of only 60 miles an hour , but it offers full protection from 7.62mm armor piercing missiles at point-blank range, as well as from 155mm bursts at 30 feet. This vehicle also has run-flat tires, a 500-horsepower engine and automatic transmission.

Mobi' Sells New Lube

NEW YORK-Mobil Oil Corporation has begun nationwide marketing of a new automotive engine lubricant "scientifically constructed molecule by molecule" rather than refined from crude oil. The company says its new Mobil 1 synthesized engine lubricant "enables the average car to go up to 10 extra miles per tankful of gasoline, and outperforms premium motor oil all season of the year." Mobile says it is the first major US petroleum company to market nationally a synthesized automotive engine lubricant. "We. have something that will help the car owner get the two things he wants most nowadays: better gasoline mileage and longer car life," says Harry A. Bade, Jr., Vice President and general manager of Mobil U.S. Marketing and Refining Division. Mobil 1 builds on a Mobil synthesized hydrocarbon lubricant marketed abroad for automobiles since 1973; the new product has additional capabilities to achieve a fuel economy benefit, he says. Statements about performance benefits of Mobil 1 are based on more than one and a half million miles of engine and vehicle fleet testing in US and foreign-make cars, and the product exceeds car manufacturers' warranty requirements. Mobil 1 has been "tested for extended drain intervals of 12,000 miles and one year with very satisfactory performance results ," the rompany says, adding that it's up to aul0 manufacturers to specify how many l.'liles their cars should go between oil changes. Suggested retail price will be $3.95 a quart, though independent dealers handling Mobil products set prices to the public.