Why I'm a Nikon Fan...

I love my Nikon D90 - and my love is reaffirmed through Sir Jackie Stewart's own appreciation of the brand - as exhibited here.

via Tumblr of Coolamundo

The Best F1 Documentary You've Seen.

I happened to find this on Vimeo after watching the Lotus Goes Turbo video on Axis of Oversteer.

It's an excellent, well-shot and well-narrated movie about Formula One in the mid-1970's - a time many consider to be the pinnacle of F1. A time when racing was simply man and machine, a tenuous grasp on advanced technologies and sponsorship dollars and the grip of Bernie Eccelstone had yet to ruin the sport.

This particular movie seems to stretch from roughly 1970 to the 1973 season from what I can tell. It centers around Formula One and Jackie Stewart but most of the time is spent with Francois Cevert and the up and coming world championship. Sadly, we all know how the ultimate race of the '73 ended for Cevert.

Beyond just Francois, they have interviews with a handful of other important racers of the time such as Mike Hailwood and Peter Revson and show a very dark side of racing - one that seems to be a race car driver against the world, all alone. What's most shocking is that many of the drivers that were interviewed throughout the documentary are no longer alive - many killed on track.

Aside from the insight into the drivers, it has an amazing amount of period footage at Watkins Glen, Montjuic, Monaco, and Monza and many other tracks. If you're an F1 fan - especially one who likes the heyday of racing - check out this video, you'll not be disappointed and this is an excellent way to burn time on a Sunday morning.

Champions Forever from gt4zone on Vimeo.

Legends.

I just stumbled onto this from Wippermann's great collection of YouTube videos. Brunswick Films, the producer of this new series, looks to have quite a few interesting clips and unseen footage so I'm greatly looking forward to what this film will hold.

It looks to be a retrospective of a handful of incredible Grand Prix drivers, many of whom were World Champions. A number of comments on YouTube bring up the great point that there are drivers left off of the list - some of which still living that could have been included. So far a quick but incomplete list looks to be Sheckter, Stewart, Peterson, Hunt, Fittipaldi, Andretti, Lauda and Hakkinen.

Watch the clip below up until the end - the retort from James Hunt is worth waiting the entire 2:41 to see it. Check out the clip below - as I see more on this series I will definitely be posting it!

History Lesson: The German Grand Prix(s)

Tomorrow kicks off the 2010 German Grand Prix at the Hockenheimring located near, you guessed it, Hockenheim, Germany. The Grand Prix of Deutschland has, for better or worse, been held at the Hockenheimring since 1977 after the shocking 1976 German Grand Prix held at the Nurburgring where Niki Lauda had a suspension failure that pitched his Ferrari 312T into the Armco at Berkwerk resulting in a horrible fire that nearly killed him. The accident reaffirmed what many had thought (ironically the drivers nearly striked that weekend because of safety concerns - led by Lauda - but ultimately didn't) that the Nurburgring wasn't safe and as a result it was never used again for the German Grand Prix - with one small, exception in 1985 at the then-new GP circuit that excluded much of the original track. Many of the problems were to blame on the poor response of the track marshals and crews as fellow drivers had to pull Niki from his burning Ferrari and only a safety marshal with in Porsche 911 and single fire extinguisher was on the scene a first few minutes after the accident.

The Nurburgring has reappeared on the roster of venues for Grand Prix racing but only in the constantly changing European Grand Prix and only on the GP portion of the fabled circuit.

That's a shame too - some pretty important races were held on the old Nurburgring. In 1968, Jackie Stewart had what he would call his "best" Grand Prix of his career when he stormed - literally - to victory when rain struck the race and the Nurburgring was described as "having rivers across the track" in some places. Scary stuff but the scary part was the attrition rate and how much slower everyone was behind Stewart. A handful of cars spun off in the rain while everyone else slowed down so much so that Sir Jackie crossed the finish line a full 4 minutes before second placed Graham Hill caught up. Much of the field being minutes behind that or a full lap down. Stewart pulled off this feat with a broken wrist - which is unheard of in modern racing. You can read his account of it here.



The Nurburgring would go on to scare the hell out of Grand Prix drivers for a few more years until the fateful 1976 race in which Lauda's Ferrari wrecked, caught fire and nearly took Niki to the grave. He managed to fight back from the edge and get into a car at Monza 6 weeks later to come 4th in the Italian Grand Prix - with a head covered in bandages, blood seeping through where the top of his ear used to be. Everyone's probably seen the video of Lauda's crash and the ensuing mayhem so instead of focusing on that, I've listed the video below of the incredible 1975 German Grand Prix where Herr Lauda launched a great start and led much of race until a tire puncture set the Ferrari 312T back in pace and sent him into the pits, allowing the other front-runners to slip past with Reutemann taking the win in his Brabham. Incredible footage of nearly the entire race! It's in 5 pieces so you can catch all of the clips as they're linked into each on YouTube. It's worth watching the entire first clip just to see the outright speed of the cars on track with the green, rolling hills of Germany as a very picturesque backdrop. Out of 26 cars to attempt to run the 1975 German GP - only 10 managed to finish!




I've also included this video of the 1969 German Grand Prix where you can see the advent of aerodynamics beginning to sneak onto the front and rear of grand prix cars. This is nothing but 10 minutes of footage and engine notes!



The 2010 German Grand Prix has Vettel at the front of the pack with Mark Webber just below and the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa and the McLaren twins bearing down on him. Should be interesting to see if Vettel can hold it together and keep the lead or will Webber step out of Sebastian's shadow again for the win.

I only hope that somehow the full Green Hell returns to the list of venues for Formula One.

Awkward F1: Cervert Edition

Francois Cervert was an accomplished pianist, up and coming racing prodigy of Jackie Stewart. He was known for his sense of humor in the pits - however, Cervert is the least comical person in this photo.



(Source: Formula1.net)

Sir Jackie

I've hit upon BMW M3's (probably way too much) lately so its time for something a little different.

After watching the Spanish Grand Prix today, I decided to pick up reading my copy of Winning Isn't Enough - Jackie Stewart's autobiography. It is fairly interesting read if not a bit long for all that he goes into about his career. He spends quite a lot of time focused on the early 1970's when Tyrrell was at its peak with the 005/006 chassis and Francois Cervert as his protege. I found this video I'd never come across before about those times(plus his win at the Nurburgring in '68 with a 4 minute lead and speedy tour of Monaco). There are also some cool voice overlays by Sean Connery and Murray Walker.




This clip is very short but, interestingly, Jackie mentioned this interview in his autobiography. According to the book, Senna was so mad after the interview that he told Jackie to not bother asking for another interview again because Ayrton wasn't going to speak him again. Ironically, a few years later Senna reached out to Jackie as he felt that safety needed to be improved in Grand Prix racing. Shortly after that - 16 years ago this month - Senna would become the last casualty of Formula One. It's great to see two men who changed the face of the sport in their respective times in an interview together.