Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / 50 years of the Canadian Grand Prix (Part 1)

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50 years of the Canadian Grand Prix (Part 1) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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My name is Tom Wiedemann, and I'm Executive Director at the
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Motor Racing Research Center.
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Today we're going to learn about the exciting 50 years of Formula One racing at
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the Canadian Grand Prix, and we have three speakers with years of stories to tell.
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In order of appearance, we're honored to be hearing from George Webster,
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Lionel Birnbaum, and Tim Meadow.
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So let me start with George.
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George was a Canadian Automobile Sports Club appointee to the Stewards Committee
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for the Grand Prix races during the most part years of the early Montreal years.
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He was Chief Steward, chairing the Committee of Race Stewards
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from 1977 through 1980.
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He has attended 71 Formula One Grand Prix.
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George is a retired high school teacher from Oakville, Ontario.
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He's been working part time as motor sports writer and
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photographer since the mid 1970s.
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And he has covered road racing.
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NASCAR, kart, and Formula One racing for the publications, including Autosports
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Canada, PRN Ignition, National Speed Sport News, and the website goracing.
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com.
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So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming our speakers,
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and we'll start with George.
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So this year, we're marking the 50th anniversary of the
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first Grand Prix of Canada.
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That was held at Mosport in 1967.
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There'd been a race every year, this would have been the 51st running.
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But it's actually only the 48th running because it was canceled
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three times in 19 75, 19 87 and 2009.
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Cancellation has been threatened two other times that I know of 2004 when the
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federal law prohibited tobacco sponsorship in the cars completely prohibited it.
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And in 2017, this year, the organizers at Montreal had promised to do about
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$18 million worth of upgrades and had apparently done none of them.
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And so that the race was under question.
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Now they.
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have been given a postponement for two years.
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2019, they're supposed to do those, that 18 million improvements.
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So this year, the Canadian Post Office recognized the 50th anniversary of
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the commemorative set of stamps, honoring five GP winners, Jackie
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Stewart, Gilles Villeneuve, Erickson, Michael Schumacher, and Lewis Hamilton.
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All with the exception of Gilles, they were multiple winners of the Grand Prix.
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I think there would have been more appropriate subjects for them to recognize
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the Canadian Grand Prix, but I guess this is what they thought would sell.
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So, I attended the first Grand Prix at Mosport in 67, and I was at the
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48th running, uh, two weeks ago.
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I attended all eight GPs at Mosport, the next six in Montreal,
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and a few more since then.
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In all, I have attended over 70 Grand Prix, here and in Europe.
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Despite its European origins and identity, the Formula One Grand Prix of Canada
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has always been, without question, the premier auto racing event in Canada.
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And there's no other annual sporting event of any kind in Canada that
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has such an international reach.
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What might it be?
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The Grey Cup?
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The Stanley Cup?
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The Brier?
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Only Canadians would know what that is, that's curling.
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As for other race events in Canada, nearly all the other major...
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Auto racing events are visiting rounds of American based series.
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By contrast, here in the United States, there are many annual race events
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which tend to overshadow the USGP, such as the Indy 500, the Daytona
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500, 24 Hours of Daytona, and so on.
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1967, 50 years ago.
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What do we remember?
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Well, here's some things that come to my mind.
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It was Canada's centennial year.
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We all remember Expo 67, which was staged in Montreal and on two islands.
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Île Notre Dame, where the Grand Prix is held, was built as an
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artificial island completely.
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The other one was Île Saint Helens, was partly built.
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I'm from Toronto.
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The Maple Leafs won Stanley Cup that year.
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Ronald Reagan inaugurated as governor of California.
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That's a long time ago.
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Probably remember that there were race rides that year
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in Detroit and many other U.
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S.
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cities.
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The Beatles released their album, Sgt.
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Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band.
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In the movies we had Dustin Hoffman and The Graduate, Clint Eastman,
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and the movie A Festival of Dollars.
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On television it was The Smothers Brothers.
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On Broadway it was Cabaret, and Hair was still off Broadway.
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But in our context, perhaps more significantly, was the movie Grand
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Prix was released late in 1966.
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It was in Cinerama, which is like IMAX.
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Today, and it featured amazing in car racing footage, unlike
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anything we'd ever seen before.
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And it introduced the general public to Grand Prix racing, the
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circuits, the cars, the drivers.
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Some fictional and some real.
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So when the Grand Prix came to Motorsport in 1967, there was already a ready
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built, well informed fan base in place.
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Pretty sports cars and their more humble economy sedans were very popular,
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and we lusted for the more expensive makes like Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes.
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This was the foundation of the so called sports car movement
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in Canada as well as here.
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The number of sports car clubs in the 50s was exploding.
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The Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs, or CAC, was a federation formed of
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member clubs across the country, especially in Ontario and Quebec.
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So CAC affiliated clubs had organized sports car races on the runways of
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former World War II air training bases beginning in the early 1950s.
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There were at least five different airfield circuits that operated in
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Ontario in the pre most sport era.
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We got our news from magazines like Canada Track and Traffic and Road and Track.
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Even though their long lead times meant that the racing news was pretty
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stale by the time we read about it.
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There were weekly papers like Competition Press and Motoring News, but few
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Canadians read either one of those.
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Companies like Castrol, Shell, and BP produced racing films, which the clubs
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borrowed to show at their meetings, and there was very limited television
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coverage of car racing at that time.
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So the recent invasion of the Indy 500 by F1 stars, like Jack Graven, Clark, Gurney,
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Graham Hill, and Jackie Stewart, had given these drivers much more visibility.
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As we knew a lot about the recent history of sports car racing in Formula One, but
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we may not have been too up to date on the recent events of the current season.
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With the large immigrant population, especially in Toronto, Montreal,
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we had a built in fan base of post war arrivals from Britain,
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Germany, and especially Italy.
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Watkins Dunn have been putting on the USGP here.
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Since 1961, and most sport, there have been professional races
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since its beginning in 1961.
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The Players 200 and the Sports Car Canadian Grand Prix, and at San
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Jovita's, we called it then, they also ran professional sports car races.
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In 1966, both those circuits hosted rounds of the first year of the Can Am Series.
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Gerald Donaldson, who has become Canada's premier Formula One rider, wrote a
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definitive history of the early years of the Canadian Grand Prix, and I found
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this book to be a valuable resource.
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The photos I'm using today have been scanned from contemporary publications.
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Many of those photos are credited to Lionel, who you're
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going to hear from next.
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And I know he's going to be using some of the same photos
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I'm using in his presentation.
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And thanks to Bill Green for the use of his program collection,
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which I've made good use of.
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By 1967, we were ready to welcome a proper Formula One Grand Prix to Canada.
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Early in the decade, there had been a couple unsuccessful attempts to
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get a Formula One race in Canada.
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One to be a championship event, and one to be a championship round.
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But those attempts failed.
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The 1967 event was approved as a one off event in recognition
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of our centennial year.
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Both Georgette wanted the event, but it went to Mosport.
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So here's the starting lineup for the 67 race.
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There were 18 entries.
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There were two Canadians and two Americans in addition to Dan Gurney.
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That is, only 14 Formula One regulars, and few of those had proper three liter
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engines, as allowed by 1966 rules.
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The new Dulles 49, with the new Cosworth Ford DFB engine, had won the poll
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and the race in its inaugural race.
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The Dutch GP a few weeks earlier.
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This engine was to revolutionize and dominate Formula One racing
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for the next several years.
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But I doubt many people at Motorsport had any concept of how significant this
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engine was, even though these Lotus cars proved to be the fastest to qualify.
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That's the point I was making about the fact we got our news from Road and Track,
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which is much so years old sometimes.
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The other potential winner was the Brabham Repco, the champion
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car from the previous year.
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It's a light car with a reliable stock block V8 engine.
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Others like Ferrari, Maserati, and BRM had gone down the wrong track building
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big, heavy, and often unreliable engines.
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The rest of the car, the entries in the main were using bored
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out engine from the previous 1.
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5 litre rules, trying to run in a 3 litre class, or from the even older 2.
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5 litre rules that ended in 1960.
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So here's the starting grid.
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The two lotuses who are on the front row to the left there are out of frame.
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That's Denny Holmes, Brabham, Repco in the front there.
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It was a rainy day, started in the rain, note the spray.
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Also note that Clark is already three, four car lengths out
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ahead of everybody else.
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With Hill behind him and Holm off to the side there.
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Later in the race, here's some more spray.
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That's Gurney leading the eventual winner, Jack Brabham.
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Gurney ended up lapped down, so this is probably taken at the
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point when he was being lapped.
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The two Lotus cars were the fastest, but they had troubles in this race.
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Notably, the ignition shorted out when the rain came down.
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And the Brabhams, who were on good gears, had a better
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pace when the surface was wet.
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Second half of the race, the rain came down quite heavily.
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And Lois's were done for.
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Most of the drivers made pit stops to try to get dry goggles.
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Only Jack Brabham had a relatively uneventful day.
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He cruised home to win by a margin of more than a full minute
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over his teammate Danny Holm.
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The only other driver to finish all 90 laps.
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Journey was third, a lap down.
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There were 12 finishers, 5 DNFs.
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The two Brablins ended up winning, even though we consider them
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to be kind of underclass cars.
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They had won the championship the previous year.
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They were to go on to win the championship in 67 as well.
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Best result for a Canadian driver went to Alpeze, who only completed 47 laps.
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Alpeze gets a lot of bad press.
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I remember Alpeze from when I got started in the late, latter part of the 50s.
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And in Ontario, he was a really well respected driver.
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He drove MGA, MGA Twin Cam, MGB, Lotus 23, and was a successful driver.
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People tend to think he was over his head with his car.
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It was a car that had an old four cylinder Climax engine.
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I don't think it was well prepared, and I think he just had a lot of bad luck.
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But it's unfortunate because LPs, his name is mud when it comes to Formula One.
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So it may not have been a classic race by any measure, but it was our Grand Prix.
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And it was our first F1 Grand Prix, and that makes it iconic in the
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history of Canadian motorsport.
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Bob Hanna was one of the key figures, among many, in
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making this event a success.
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And he continued to play a key role as CESC's Executive Director until
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its unfortunate demise in 1987.
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He's sort of Candace Cameron Argensinger.
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Cameron, of course, had many different important roles in the development
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of sports car racing in the U.
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S.
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here in Formula 1.
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And Bob was there right through 287.
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When CSE was booted, and he lost that role.
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Fortunately, he landed on his feet with another role.
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I'm gonna skip from there to Mont Tremblant and do the two years together.
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Vinyl's more familiar with these years than I am.
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Key thing was, up until then...
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CAC was not an ASN in its own right, only had the right as a
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affiliate of the RAC in Britain.
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And that's why the racing colors were green, like Britain's.
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There was a problem for Britain to get a second Grand Prix, even
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if it was in another continent.
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So after the 1967 event, the FIA granted CAC full ASN status and the
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right to stage an annual Grand Prix.
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And incidentally, at the same time, CAC changed its racing colors from green with
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white stripes to red with a white stripe.
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Racing colors kind of went out of style in those days.
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A lot of people aren't even aware of that.
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In this era of rapprochement between English and French communities in Canada,
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a decision was made to alternate the Grand Prix between Quebec and Ontario.
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That was happening in Britain between Brandon Satch and
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Silverstone, for example.
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So here's the first race at Saint Jovit.
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Hosted the first Can Am race of all Can Am races in 1966.
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Notice that they recycled the artwork from the year before.
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And the official name down at the bottom there is Surpix
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Mont Tremblant Saint Jovit.
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It had limited space in the paddock and the pits and limited
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vantage spots for the spectators.
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More importantly, it had a two lane road coming up from Montreal.
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Jackie Eakes was driving for Ferrari that year.
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He crashed in practice and broke his leg.
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Our Prime Minister, Pierre Tudor, was a very popular Prime
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Minister, flew in by helicopter.
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I think that was exciting in itself.
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He waved the flag to start the race and he stayed engaged.
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to the end of the race.
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He presented as a real fan.
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Rint started from the pole in a Brabham Repco, but Chris Amon led
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the first 72 laps in his Ferrari.
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This is the only time when the cars had the high wings in Canada.
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And the 1967 champion, Denny Holm, starting from the third row,
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was the winner in McLaren Ford.
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I'm going to skip a year of Ford 1970, after a year back in most Ford.
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where they put the picture of the new Tyrrell Ford double aught one.
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It was much anticipated, although nobody had ever seen one on
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a racetrack, on the cover.
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George Eaton, who is a sign of the Eaton department store family, the
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most important department store chain in Canada by far, bought a
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ride with BRM for a season and a bit, but he had limited success.
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He finished 10th tier at St.
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Gervais, and that was his best ever result.
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By the way, Lance Stroll's ninth place in this year's Canadian GP
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was the best result ever for a Canadian driver, other than the two
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Villeneuves, Gilles and Jacques.
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Stewart in the Tyrrell showed up at the race, he qualified the pole he led for
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the first 31 laps, and he was motoring off into the distance, says Donaldson.
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On lap 32, he retired with a broken front stub axle.
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Remember, this was the great new car.
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The next two races here at the Glen and at the Mexican
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Grand Prix, he retired as well.
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There's Ekes, 1980.
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He inherited the lead after Stewart retired, he'd run the
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race by 15 second margin over a Regazzoni and the other Ferrari.
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Chris Amon in a March was the only other driver to finish in the lead lap.
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A year in between, 69, and then we jumped to 71 through 77 at Mosport.
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So this is the 69 interstitial race at Mosport.
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Jackie Eakes won the pole in his Bram Ford, while Jackie
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Stewart was fourth fastest in his Macra car with a Ford engine.
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Eakes led from the start, but Stewart had caught him by the
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fifth lap, and he took the lead.
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After that, Eakes hounded Stewart, and on lap 33 of the 90 lap race,
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Eakes made an impossible move to duck inside Stewart, coming over
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the crest into the second turn.
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If you know most sport at all, that's it.
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It's the trickiest possible corner, and nobody should try to make this
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maneuver, coming over the crest into two.
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They collided, Stewart spun off and out of the race, but Ekes kept on going.
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Not a very popular guy.
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He won the race by a margin of 36 seconds over Jack Brabham
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in the other Brabham car.
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Rint in a Lotus was the only other driver to finish in the lead lap.
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So after this, the GP returned to St.
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Gervais in 70, and then it came back to Movesport.
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in 71.
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Notice that the players still like recycling the artwork.
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And also notice the name, Players Grand Prix Canada.
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To me that's significant because that's not English, it's not French.
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In French it would be Grand Prix du Canada Players.
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But it should be Grand Prix du Canada.
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And in English they call it Grand Prix of Canada to try to have the parallelism.
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So I think this was an attempt to just fudge over that.
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71, my biggest memory, was something I never saw.
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I was down at corner 5.
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There was a driver named Wayne Kelly who was, I guess, from the
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Ottawa area, who was a very popular driver and was, looked destined for
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stardom, and at least was in Canada.
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He was killed in an on track accident during the Formula Ford race when he
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came over the crest between corners 1 and 2, ran into an ambulance, parked
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on the track, and was killed instantly.
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When I questioned, do we really need these full course yellows on a road course,
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this instant would be one of the major...
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arguments early on to say, we've got to do something.
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Something is full course yellow.
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I hate those full course yellows on a road course, but I think this
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Wayne Kelly incident was one of the ones that is in the history of that.
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So there was a long delay under Ontario law.
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The coroner had to be dispatched and he had to do whatever he does.
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By the time we were ready to start the Grand Prix, it started raining.
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So then they had a delay over that, but over two hours
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before the race got started.
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Wasn't such a big problem in the pre television days.
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By lap 60 of the 80 laps, the rain had turned to fog and darkness.
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So the race was flagged off after just 64 laps.
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Stewart and Peterson had shared the lead, but Stewart led the
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final 33 laps to take the checker.
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Peterson was second in a march, while Mark Donohue was third.
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Here's my friend George Eaton again.
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Finished 15th, and it was his last race with BRM.
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And kind of his last race ever.
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By this time, he'd pretty well run through his inheritance, I believe.
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The department store, by the way, is long since defunct.
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It's not just George Eaton that's lost out, but he'd used
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his inheritance in racing.
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Maybe it was a good idea, because I guess the rest of the family just lost
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it through bankruptcy of the company.
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472.
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Back at MoSport, CAC made the decision not to return to San
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Gervino as originally planned.
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It had been proved to be an unviable business proposition.
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Not enough spectators could get up that two lane road on race day.
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From my perspective, which was as a member of the National Executive, I see
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that that decision was essentially a CAC decision, even though most people
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try to place the blame elsewhere.
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Ultimately, CAC just pulled the plug and said.
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We have lost a pile of money, whether players bailed them out or whether
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they had to bail themselves out.
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But CASC was on the hook for a huge amount of money and never went back to San Jovi.
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So CASC found a permanent home at Mosport and came back in 72.
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Publication was produced, I guess after the event.
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This is a driver's meeting and I find it interesting partly 'cause
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I recognize most of the people, not just the drivers, but friends of
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mine are in that picture as well.
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This is at the foot of the tower as you go into the control towers.
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Anybody who wandered along could kind of cozy up at the back and
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listen in to the driver's meeting.
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So this race was also delayed by Fog Peterson led Stewart had start.
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Stewart had started from the second row, but after just three laps, he
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got passed for the lead and drove off in the distance that he won the race.
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Peterson continued to drive in his dramatic style, but he
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collided with Graham Hill, who he was laughing, and ended his day.
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Peter Revson, who was a rookie that year in Formula One, finished
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second in the Yardley McLaren.
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In those days, you know, you didn't have these half a second or three second gaps.
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Forty eight seconds back to second place.
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Aholm was third, also in McLaren.
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1973.
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Interesting year.
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It was wet at the start, and I was sitting in the grandstand across
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from the pits as a spectator.
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And the thing that struck me most of all was this guy who started on the
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fourth row, dropped the flag and he's gone, right into the first corner.
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I think he led into the first corner, Nicky Lauda, in his, I think his second
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year in Formula 1, first year with BRM.
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He did a lot better with DRM than George Eaton did.
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Part of it had to do with the fact that they were on Firestone
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tires and a lot of the others were on Goodyears, and the Firestone
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rain tires seemed to be superior.
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In the wake of some serious accidents which had been inadequate rescue
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procedures, for example, the Roger Williamson fatality at Zandvoort
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earlier that year, the responsible officials had been talking about using
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a full course yellow in a Grand Prix for some time, and they had actually
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made a test run at an earlier event.
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But this time it actually came to pass.
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Schecter and Saveir tried to run side by side down into turn two.
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Remember that with Eeks and Stewart?
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And Savert was crashed out of the race, check to continue.
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This was Savert's final race.
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Watkins Glen people know this.
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1973, Savert here was killed in practice.
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So he never started the race here.
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But this accident with the service vehicles that were out partially
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blocked the track, so they called out Effie Weitz's in the pace car.
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Unfortunately, in that era of handmade lap charts, no one was quite sure who
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the leader was after most of the cars had pitted to change off their rain tires.
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So they told Eppie to pick up Houghton Ganley, a little while ago they thought he
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was the leader, I think he was a lap down.
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So he came out in the middle of the lap.
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If the pace car comes out in the middle of the pack, the guys who were in front
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come around and make up a lap, and the people who were behind are trapped.
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So Fittipaldi was trapped behind Ganley, and these other guys go
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brrrrrrrr, and they come around.
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But the key people, who were the race control people, weren't sure
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or didn't know how to fix it.
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After the pace car was called in, the racing resumed, confusion continued.
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So, here's the scoreboard at lap 80, at the race.
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That's Fittipaldi, number one.
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Number two is Ganley.
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Number three is Revson.
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Number four is Beltwaz.
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Understandably, Colin Chapman thought his guy had won the race.
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He runs out in the track, throws his hat up in the air, but there was no checker.
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Stardew Way, standing there, standing there.
20:05
Finally, this group of Ganley, Halewood, Revson, and Hunt come
20:09
around, and out comes the checker.
20:11
And so they ushered these three guys, Fittipaldi, Rebson, and Oliver, to the
20:17
podium, and they stood there with bemused expressions on their face, and the trophy
20:21
was handed to Rebson, and they finally got a new Maple Leaf trophy there.
20:25
So, in the hours that followed, the lab scorers were able to recheck their work
20:29
using the tapes that had been marked with the car numbers as they passed.
20:31
It takes a few moments before the information written on the tapes is
20:34
transferred to the actual lab chart.
20:36
But it is an accurate, if a little bit slow, method.
20:38
So in the end, after they went through some hours of double checking, triple
20:42
checking, they verified that Reveson was the race winner, Fittipaldi
20:46
was second, and Oliver third.
20:48
So it appears that when they took them to the podium, they already had
20:52
a pretty good, rough version of this hand lap chart based on the tapes.
20:57
I think there's about a maximum delay in that process of about a lap.
21:01
So they knew, but nobody was going to believe them until they went.
21:04
Spent hours doing it.
21:05
Deltas was fourth, and Ganley was sixth.
21:08
So it's no surprise that in F1 they got cold feet about the pace car.
21:12
This is 73, and it wasn't until 93 that they finally came back
21:18
and established what we now know as the safety car procedure.
21:21
And of course, computerized lap scoring had been established
21:23
for a long time by then.
21:25
So you have, we all know now that the lap score, as soon as the car
21:28
crosses the line, sometimes, I find it confusing, sometimes they are
21:31
updating halfway around the lap.
21:33
So, 1974, this is significant in that we have Andretti in a Parnelli,
21:39
American made car, and Donahue in a Penske, another American car.
21:43
There's the podium with Fittipaldi, the winner, Peterson and, uh, Reconzoni.
21:48
He left here tied in championship points with Reconzoni, who
21:51
had finished in second place.
21:52
Fittipaldi finished fourth here two weeks later, but that was
21:55
good enough to give him the title.
21:56
1975 is, nothing happened, but everything happened.
22:00
And the iconic points in the history of the Canadian Grand
22:03
Prix, this is one of the big ones.
22:05
So there was no Grand Prix.
22:06
Bernie Ecclestone, who had come in as the owner of the Brabham team,
22:10
had talked to all the garages, that's everybody, basically everybody but
22:13
Ferrari, into having him negotiate a collective agreement on their behalf.
22:17
He was starting to turn the screw.
22:19
He was involved in negotiations with both Moorsport and Watkins Glen.
22:22
In August of 75.
22:24
He set a deadline.
22:25
This is Bernie's stuff.
22:26
There's a deadline.
22:27
That's it.
22:28
No compromises.
22:30
I don't know what was going on, but the most board people dithered a little bit
22:33
and didn't meet the midnight deadline.
22:36
Malcurry saw what was going to happen and decided he would accept Bernie's terms.
22:40
So he accepted Bernie's terms.
22:41
Most board people got up the next morning and Bernie said, Well,
22:44
there's going to be a Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and there's not going
22:46
to be a Grand Prix at most boards.
22:48
Tough.
22:48
I think that's exactly what Bernie wanted.
22:50
Because he only lost one date off the calendar, but he had an object lesson
22:55
that stood for every other Grand Prix organizer he was negotiating with.
23:00
Do what I say, or you're screwed.
23:02
I'm not going to compromise.
23:03
Anybody else would have said, they'd come in the next morning and
23:05
said, Sorry, we, we were confused.
23:07
We'll sign now.
23:08
Where do I sign?
23:09
If you're buying a car, you come in the next day, and you said,
23:11
Yeah, I decided that was the price you're, where do I sign?
23:14
He would have said, Yeah, fine, you got a car.
23:16
Bernie said, Screw you.
23:17
Because Mosport was committed to run the date, and they advertised it, and they
23:21
had all the sport races organized, they still ran the race, whether it's the Grand
23:24
Prix, and they call it the Grand Prix.
23:26
Terrible weather.
23:27
One of the worst days of weather I've seen for a race event.
23:31
So, we get to 76.
23:33
At the start, Peterson is leading Hunt, but notice that they've got the
23:37
low air box, and not the high air box.
23:39
Hunt took the lead on the 9th lap, and basically drove home.
23:43
General Donaldson wrote, Hunt won in convincing style.
23:46
But there was a great interest in Nicky Lauda, the leader
23:48
of the World Championship.
23:49
in only his second race after his near fatal Nürburgring crash.
23:53
He finished 8th between Carlos Pace, who had a wild entanglement with
23:57
Clay Ragazzoni in front of the pits, three laps from the end of the race.
24:00
So I was one of the stewards for that event, and Bernie decided he
24:05
was going to protest that Ragazzoni had caused that crash, and hurt
24:09
his driver's chances, and so on.
24:11
Ragazzoni only spoke Italian in the meeting.
24:13
So we had to translate everything, but he sometimes would forget and answer
24:16
before the question was translated.
24:18
So, anyway, we ruled that this was a racing incident, but...
24:22
It's a pretty common occurrence that he came in the corner
24:24
10 and you over cook it.
24:26
It gets loose and you go wham, straight into the pit wall or almost into it.
24:29
Bobby Rahall had a really big crash there in the Can Am Cup.
24:33
Anyway, we said, no, we're not going to play your game, Bernie.
24:36
You deal with that.
24:37
It had something to do also, I think, with who was contracted
24:39
who the following years.
24:40
So, 77 was the final year at MoSport.
24:44
Labatt's had already made the decision to go to another venue the following year.
24:47
Aside from that, I don't think there would have ever been another Grand
24:50
Prix at Mostport after 77, even if they hadn't already made the decision.
24:54
Because on Friday, Ian Ashley took off the back straight, and I think he got about
24:58
as high as the ceiling before he landed.
25:00
He landed, hit the top of the television tower.
25:02
Turned out that the rescue procedures...
25:06
were solely lacking.
25:08
Big point they made was that they had promised they would have a helicopter
25:11
ambulance on site and they didn't.
25:13
You know, you got a couple marshals.
25:15
Marshals are not trained to deal with an incident like that.
25:17
You know, they're not expected to deal with that.
25:19
But basically they went in there with hacksaws and their
25:22
team, their crew rescued them.
25:24
Terrible, terrible.
25:25
People were really, really upset that.
25:26
So, that was enough.
25:28
So the next day, Yoke and Moss, coming out of 1 up here, overcooks it, hits
25:33
guardrail, guardrail falls over.
25:35
They look at the posts and they're rotten.
25:37
I think that probably the driver's back of the garage was in.
25:40
Are we gonna run?
25:41
Are we gonna pack it in now?
25:43
So there was a lot, a lot of talk.
25:45
I've read a couple different reports of how this transpired.
25:49
What I do know, cause I was in the tower, from my vantage point in the
25:52
tower, I do know that the clerk of the course, Paul Cook, agreed to a
25:57
request to drive James Hunt around the track and he interviewed Marshalls.
26:02
What are your qualifications?
26:04
What is your experience?
26:05
As if that had something to do with James Hunt.
26:08
I was livid.
26:09
I was livid.
26:09
As far as I'm concerned, Paul Cook should have said to him, The FIA has
26:13
inspected this course and approved it.
26:15
If you have a beef, talk to the FIA.
26:18
You can't wait to talk to the FIA, talk to the stewards.
26:20
But...
26:21
The fallout would have been that the track would never have been
26:24
approved again for an F1 course.
26:26
Little known fact, and I was in the tower, and I was in the tower during lunch hour
26:30
when there was hardly anybody there.
26:31
The telephone communication system was, I say, unreliable in my notes.
26:35
It was out.
26:36
There was no communication system.
26:38
But the whole of lunch hour, from the time we stopped, whatever we were doing,
26:41
before lunch, to about 15 minutes before the green for the Formula One race,
26:46
we had no telephone communications.
26:48
I was the chief steward, and so I was rehearsing my lines
26:51
to say, there will be no race.
26:53
You will not drop the green flag.
26:55
Fortunately, I think it's fortunate, I didn't have to do that.
26:58
I think everybody dropped the ball, not including the FIA.
27:00
I don't think they should have approved it.
27:01
If the course was that bad, they shouldn't have approved it.
27:03
And they should have an inspector there for the race.
27:05
On the bright side, Gilles Villeneuve had been signed with McLaren.
27:09
And he went to Silverstone in 77 in the end of June, July.
27:14
And he had a really good run.
27:15
Really excellent run.
27:17
He finished 11th, but had he not pitted because he thought
27:20
his car was overheating, he probably would have finished 7th.
27:22
Really excellent run.
27:24
Better than Jokerman, his teammate at that time.
27:26
He had a contract.
27:27
McLaren had also tested Patrick Tambay, who was a good driver.
27:31
They went with Tambay for whatever reason.
27:34
So here's Villeneuve, just out of luck, just beach.
27:36
So Chris Amon, who had been responsible for the Dallara Wolf Formula One car in 77
27:42
the same year, he called up Enzo Ferrari, who he worked with, who he'd driven for.
27:46
And said, hire Villeneuve.
27:48
And they did.
27:49
They hired him.
27:50
With a full time contract as of 78.
27:52
So when they got to Canada in 77, they had a third car for him.
27:56
This was his debut with Ferrari.
27:58
Right there, that 21 car.
28:00
Lauda had clinched the championship the week before here, and he
28:04
was going to go to another team.
28:05
He was going to go to Brabham.
28:06
As I understand it, they unceremoniously fired his mechanic here.
28:10
Because he was going with him to Brabham, So Ferrari, before they left the track
28:13
here, said Forget it, you're done.
28:16
So Lauda was totally pissed, and he said, I'm not, I'm done.
28:20
That's it.
28:20
And he says, and on top of that, I'm not gonna run, you're running three cars,
28:23
you're not gonna provide proper support.
28:24
I think that was just bullshit.
28:26
But anyway, he said that.
28:27
You're running three cars, I'm not gonna run them if you're running three cars.
28:29
So he didn't show up.
28:31
Ferrari tried to protest Lauda because he had been entered in the event and then
28:36
withdrawn without giving enough notice.
28:39
Well, the team owner can't protest his own driver.
28:43
I don't think that's possible.
28:44
Anyway, that's what we thought.
28:45
We couldn't see any way that Ferrari could protest Lauda because
28:49
Ferrari was the entrant, not Lauda.
28:50
They were really protesting themselves.
28:52
So we just said, forget that.
28:54
Villeneuve was running about ninth.
28:55
He spun off an oil and turned ninth, and he retired.
28:59
He had finished 11th in the McLaren at Silverstone.
29:01
This is 77.
29:03
Okay, that marshal on the ground, his name is Ernie Strong.
29:06
So I was in the tower, Hunt was coming around, trying to
29:09
catch Andretti, who was leading.
29:11
He came up past Moss, I still can't quite figure out, I think Moss was a
29:15
lap down, but he finished in the lead lap, so I don't know how that happened.
29:18
Anyway, he came by to go by Moss, and there was a miscommunication about which
29:22
side he should have gone on, and he got knocked off, he hit the guardrail pretty
29:26
heavily, and was kind of trapped in.
29:28
He had to leave a shoe behind to get out.
29:30
Ernie went, pull him out.
29:31
Hunt is out.
29:32
He's presumably a bit dazed if he's been, that had much impact.
29:36
And he starts to walk towards the truck.
29:39
Eddie Marshall's trained to know that driver might be confused
29:42
when he gets out of the car.
29:44
You've got to really kind of watch that they don't do something stupid.
29:46
When they start to walk towards the track, you're going to restrain them.
29:49
And if that doesn't work, you're going to restrain them a bit stronger.
29:51
Ernie goes to stop them from walking towards the track.
29:54
I now know, from reading the biographies, that Hunt is tremendously volatile.
29:59
So he just swings.
30:00
Tremendous haymen here.
30:02
Knocks Ernie strong to the ground.
30:04
Flattened to the ground.
30:05
As stewards, after the race we dealt with it, Hunt was long gone, but we unanimously
30:10
agreed to give him the maximum fine.
30:11
It wasn't much, it was a thousand Swiss francs, which was kind of a joke now.
30:15
That's the worst we could do to him.
30:17
We were really upset about it.
30:19
So anyways, it turned out Andretti was leading 78 of the laps, but he
30:23
stopped for lack of oil pressure.
30:25
Jody Schechter, who was driving this Wolf car, which was running in Canadian livery.
30:29
Walter Wolf's, uh, Austrian who made a lot of money hauling materials at Expo 67.
30:34
So we were pretty happy that a Canadian car had won that race.
30:37
Schechter had won twice before in that car.
30:39
Even though he had seven retirements that year, he finished second behind
30:42
Lauda in the championship standings.
30:44
So, if I'd bought a program that year, which I didn't, I would have
30:47
discovered this graphic in the program, which said, next year's race
30:50
is at Toronto's Exhibition Place.
30:52
That's where the Indy, now called Honda Indy, is held.
30:54
And it's more or less the layout.
30:56
So that was Labatt's plan, was they were going to go to Toronto, and
30:59
they were going to have it there.
31:00
There'd been an earlier plan to do that by a different promoter, and the people from
31:04
Most Board had raised so much hell that they got the locals all riled up, and they
31:09
convinced the councillors to vote it down.
31:10
So they come back here about five years later, and they want to run
31:13
their own race, the Grand Prix.
31:15
Well, most people remembered all those horror stories that had
31:17
been told, and they convinced their councillors to turn it down.
31:21
The story goes, the next day, Jean Drapeau, Montreal's mayor,
31:25
got on the phone to LeMats and said, Well, let's go to Montreal.
31:28
Now, there's a lot of legend in that.
31:29
But, no question, it went to Montreal.
31:32
It's the same circuit, two different names, obviously it became Gilles
31:36
Villeneuve after his death, and it's still there this year.
31:38
And it looks like it's going to be there for quite a while,
31:40
despite the little glitches.
31:42
The contract with, now called F1 Group, Formula One Group, has been
31:46
extended to 2029, and between the three levels of government, a promise of 100
31:51
million, which sounds like a lot, but in the way over that many years, 15
31:54
years, it's actually not that much.
31:56
Here's the site.
31:57
of Expo 67.
31:59
And that's where they built the track.
32:02
Most of the buildings, if not all of them, are still there.
32:04
The track portion that...
32:06
This is the rowing basin back here.
32:08
This is where the pits are now.
32:10
This is kind of a lake that's still there.
32:12
This building is now the casino.
32:14
That was the French Pavilion.
32:15
This was the Quebec Pavilion.
32:16
It's now been seemingly converted to be an extension of the casino.
32:21
Pretty well everything else you see, with the exception of the U.
32:25
S.
32:25
Pavilion, this dome, and the bridge itself, is gone.
32:28
Anyway, the track came along here, it went back up around this
32:31
lake, and it came back along here.
32:33
under this bridge, deked like that, came up around, these buildings
32:36
were pretty well gone, and then came around, back like that.
32:39
So Roger Perk, he was a CASC officer and he was commissioned to find a location
32:43
of the new circuit, and the obvious choice was Ile Notre Dame, and that's
32:46
an artificial island built for Expo 67.
32:49
This whole island here was artificial.
32:51
So it was used also for Expo 67 and the 76 Olympics for the rowing.
32:56
This location has proven to be an ideal one for the Canadian Grand Prix.
33:00
And even though I'm not a big admirer of Roger Peart, I think this is a
33:03
major achievement on his part, and I think that we can all be proud of his
33:07
achievement and congratulate him for it.
33:10
78.
33:11
Andretti had won the championship that year with the Revolutionary
33:14
Ground Effects Lotus 79.
33:16
I meant to say this earlier, but the Cosworth engine made the 70s the
33:20
greatest period in Formula 1 because everybody had the same engine, it
33:24
was competitive, and even though there were a couple other engines.
33:27
The Cosworth engine was a winning engine, so many teams were very closely matched
33:31
and there were lots of different winners.
33:32
Ground effects was the next revolution.
33:34
Lotus came up with it first, Andretti won in 79, and he'd already
33:38
won the championship by then.
33:40
However, you may also remember that when Andretti won the championship, he won it
33:44
after Ronnie Peterson died as a result of an accident at Mons in the preceding race.
33:49
Andretti became immediately the champion, because Peterson
33:52
was no longer a competitor.
33:53
They got Jean Pierre Gerrier to drive the Peterson car, and he put it right in
33:58
the front row with Jody Schechter there.
33:59
But here's Gilles.
34:00
This is his first year, full year with Ferrari.
34:03
He's in the second row, the third fastest car.
34:05
And Andretti, his car never ran properly.
34:07
He's way back.
34:08
Gerrier and Schechter come firing off the front row, number 12 in the middle,
34:12
the next row back, there's Villeneuve.
34:15
Jones got ahead of Gerrier, but he had a slow puncture, which
34:18
moved Gerrier up to the lead.
34:21
Schechter was in second, Villeneuve was third.
34:23
Mid race, Villeneuve passed Schechter to take second.
34:26
That was like the second coming, when he got into second place.
34:29
Huge roar.
34:30
Jerry continued, was dominant, but he retired with an oil link and it
34:34
left Bill Newb in no opposition.
34:36
He continued to take his first career win in his home race ahead of
34:39
Schechter with Royderman running third.
34:41
Nobody cares that if Jerry hadn't dropped out that he would have won.
34:45
Bill Newb won the race, the greatest Canadian racing hero
34:48
ever, engraved in stone forever.
34:50
I just say in my notes, and the crowd went wild.
34:52
It was unbelievable.
34:54
It was unbelievable.
34:55
Before he came around the next time, on the Kulaf Lab, that fence was down.
35:00
Totally down.
35:01
And the crowd was coming straight out on the edge of the track.
35:03
They knew the car was still on the track.
35:05
They came out to the edge of the track.
35:07
So there's the results.
35:08
The only one that counts is Villeneuve won.
35:11
That's it.
35:11
We don't care about anything else.
35:13
Here's my picture, which shows Gilles, the Prime Minister, and the man in the
35:18
hat, who's sort of responsible for it all, Jean Drapeau, the Mayor of Montreal.
35:23
Very controversially, all of these.
35:24
He'd made Expo 67 happen.
35:26
The Olympics end this race.
35:28
Outsiders from outside Montreal thought, Oh, what, how much money is spent?
35:34
How much of my money has gone into this?
35:36
In Olympic Stadium, they took 30 years to pay for, and so on.
35:40
But I think in Montreal, he was always a beloved figure.
35:42
He said that Expo 67 can no more lose money than I can get pregnant.
35:47
Well, it lost money big time.
35:49
Here's the magazine I was writing for, Autosport Canada,
35:52
and it's a composite picture.
35:53
But to me, that kind of represents the iconic form of the Canadian Grand Prix.
35:59
of the 78th Grand Prix of Villeneuve, Montreal, U.
36:04
S.
36:04
Dome, the skyline in the background.
36:06
This is sort of the impression that's imprinted.
36:10
Pete Lyons wrote in the magazine he was writing for the day, the Disney esque
36:14
victory of Villeneuve must have cemented the future of the GP in the minds
36:19
of Quebecois for many years to come.
36:21
How true.
36:22
So the development of the circuit on Ile d'Octodame was the
36:25
right track in the right place.
36:27
Right up against the city.
36:29
Despite changing ideas of what F1 track should be like, this track has aged
36:33
well over the years, and Montreal has become a destination city for F1 fans.
36:37
And with Gilles popular win in 78 and his success in subsequent years, although he
36:42
never won the championship, of course, he has indeed made the Grand Prix of Montreal
36:45
a great piece of Canadian heritage.
36:47
And this...
36:48
78 Race is the iconic Canadian Grand Prix.
36:52
Jumping ahead this to 87, there was no race in 87.
36:56
This had to do with conflict over sponsorship.
37:00
Lava had been the sponsor and signed a contract with C A S C.
37:03
Somebody else had signed a contract with Molson.
37:06
Bernie wanted to go with Molson 'cause there was more money I think.
37:09
So he refused to bring the cars to Montreal when there
37:12
was Le Mans sponsorship.
37:13
There was no race.
37:14
There was a race in 88 under Molson sponsorship.
37:18
Some other good came from this.
37:20
CAC was disenfranchised, and a new ASN was created.
37:23
We have an ASN that's basically Bernie's puppet.
37:26
No other really fair way of explaining it.
37:29
ASN we have, Roger Pert is the chair, pardon my impotency towards
37:33
him, is basically Bernie's puppet.
37:35
And a man by the name of Terry Lovell, who wrote a book called Bernie's Game,
37:38
he says, the FIA arranged the setting up of what was effectively his own Bernie's.
37:44
National Sporting Authority.
37:46
And nothing has changed.
37:47
I don't think even with Bernie retiring from Formula One management,
37:50
I think he still controls the ASM.
37:53
I won't say any more for fear of being accused of libel.
37:55
I could say some more libelous things than that.
37:58
A good part of us was Bernie got what he wanted, and he wanted
38:01
to have a race in Montreal.
38:02
And he wanted to make a lot of money out of it, and so everybody's happy but me.
38:06
And the CSE loyalists.
38:07
One of the things that we did get, they moved the pits.
38:10
So, during 87, when there was no race going on, they built the new pit complex,
38:14
which was a much better location.
38:16
The only problem with that was the pit exit came out kind of
38:19
awkwardly in the middle of that straight, which was a bad idea.
38:23
I don't know quite how that happened.
38:25
Those are the years that I was most involved.
38:27
I, my involvement.
38:28
Really, after Gilles was killed, it was Formula One, for a number
38:32
of reasons, became much less.
38:33
There's been a lot of history since then.
38:35
That's my version of it.
38:37
And I'm going to introduce Lionel, who's going to come up and take over for me.
38:47
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39:33
Organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard,
39:37
as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized
39:40
wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
39:44
For more information about the SAH, visit www.
39:47
autohistory.
39:48
org.
39:54
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