Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Motor Racing as a Mediated Experience: From Le Petit Journal to YouTube

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Motor Racing as a Mediated Experience: From Le Petit Journal to YouTube · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix'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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Motor Racing as a Mediated Experience by Jonathan Summers John Summers
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is a teaching assistant and guest lecturer at Stanford University.
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He is an independent automotive historian, podcaster, blogger,
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and Pebble Beach docent.
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A lifelong car and motorcycle enthusiast, Mr.
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Summers recent work has focused on historiography in motor racing, delving
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into not just what happened, but how these stories were preserved, by whom and why.
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From text and still photography through television and now to YouTube.
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Goodwood in Gran Turismo, his presentation examines the evolution of the methods in
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which the stories of motor racing have been told and the history preserved.
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All right, John Summers with motor racing as a mediated experience.
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All right, thank you very much, Bob.
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Thanks for coming, everybody, and for listening to me.
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My name's John Summers.
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I'm a teaching assistant at Stanford University, and my
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presentation's about motor racing as a, as a mediated experience.
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A few years ago at this conference, delegates were amused by the way in which
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the same image cropped up at the beginning of, each presenter was seeking to go
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back to the beginning of motor racing.
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And to illustrate this, we used an image of Le Petit Journal, a French
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newspaper which organized what's now considered the first motor race.
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That each historian should use the same image from the same media outlet
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illustrates how racing has been a mediated experience from its very inception.
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That is to say, there has always been the race, the driver,
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the car, and the reporter.
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We historians tend to talk about the form of three.
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Instead, this paper examines how the stories have been told.
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It's worth talking about because of the current revolutionary
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changes in automotive media.
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At first motor racing was mediated by journalism and illustration.
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The car came of age in an era before radio, tv, the internet
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and smartphones maturing alongside these transformative technologies.
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However, while illustrations or photographs were common to almost every
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20th century publication about motor racing, there were perhaps only one
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or two images to illustrate an entire motor race or a completely new car.
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Minor stories typically had no illustration.
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The fullest impression of the event or vehicle in the story
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came from the written word.
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The denseness of the text is illustrated in these images.
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So my point here is we've magazines from about 75 years of history from
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two sides of the Atlantic, and you've got the same whole bunch of text,
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few black and white photographs.
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To properly discuss the written sources of motor racing, newspapers,
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magazines, and books, and to survey the thousands of automotive writers
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and publishers thoroughly would require a paper similar in length
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to this one that I'm giving today.
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Thank So today my focus is on the present and the future.
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But what can be said is that throughout the 20th century, innovations in print
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and distribution steadily increased the reach and scope of racing themed
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written word and still photography media.
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While many of the first images of the cars and racing were painted or
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drawn, the first photograph was taken in 1825, and cameras were available to
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well to do 11 year old boys by 1912.
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Hence this very famous Lartigue image.
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He was 12 when he took the picture there.
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Or 11, I think.
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Until the 1970s, these images were typically grainy and black and white.
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And I've got a contrast there, 20 years apart of motorsport there.
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The technologies of photography and the car evolved in tandem, developing slowly
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in the 19th century, before becoming the defining technologies of the 20th.
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Cars, racing, and the people around racing have always been considered
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glamorous and associated with good living.
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As a zeitgeist technological object, racing cars are marvellous to
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photograph and even better to film.
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Can you see, that's Phil Hill taking a photograph of the
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Monaco Grand Prix there as a fan.
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And this photograph book that Road and Track put together here
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were the photographs that he took as a racing fan in the 1950s.
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Because fundamentally, what we're talking about here is the human adventure.
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And I want you to look closely into Bruce Anstey's eye there, because I
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feel like this photograph captures the human adventure almost better than any
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other single thing I could think of.
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I did have sections on the moving image, evolution of cinema, and I wrote a really
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interesting section on the people that tell us the stories of motor racing,
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people like Murray Walker and Chris Ikonomaki and Darrell Waltrip, and those
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were the three examples that I was going to use, but I don't have the time to
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cover those, and I really want to talk about the contemporary and the future.
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I'm going to talk about the state of the nation here, and I'm going to
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focus on Mark Martin, who's already got a mention, and I know he's very
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well loved around Watkins Glen, that's why I picked on him particularly.
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And fundamentally, what I'm talking about here is, I have a worry that motor
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racing's place in posterity, you know, I worry about what's going to happen
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after our generation is gone, basically.
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With cars becoming as ubiquitous and functional as microwave ovens,
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I worry that people born today will not see our sport as worthwhile.
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I believe the way to show its value is to tie the great engineering and
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racing stories of the past to living artifacts, the cars that have survived.
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Thinking about effective methods and platforms of storytelling means that
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I noticed how automotive and motor racing storytelling has evolved in an
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age of YouTube and of streaming media.
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We can even see that within Our conference, that our conference has
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evolved in the last couple of years to deliver, well on this occasion,
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to deliver some streaming media.
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I first want to talk about the continuous feed.
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One very obvious recent development is the idea of the continuous feed.
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By this I mean that there are so many cameras in cars, at tracks, and
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covering the race itself, that no missed gear shift, fender rub, or expletive
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over the team radio goes unrecorded.
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It sits there, ready to be dissected, played a thousand times over
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in frame by frame slow motion.
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This is an almost perfect data set, and it must be almost
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unprecedented in human history.
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And it's available in perpetuity for future historians.
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One YouTuber, a Mark Martin fan, traces his driver's many close failures to
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win the NASCAR championship in precise, point by point, agonizing detail.
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In case that's not enough information, Mark himself...
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Tells us the story as he travels the country in his RV.
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And this is his podcast, I knew nothing about that.
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He does it season by season, you can see there.
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More, we have the telemetry results from cars.
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Were the Ferrari Formula One team to provide access to the data set to a
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biographer of Fernando Alonso, questions about how or why or where he was better
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than his teammates could be answered in terms of raw cornering speed,
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braking point, and shift point data.
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Not only would we know how much better Alonzo was, we could probably measure
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it in terms of seconds per lap.
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We also have live, real time commentary on social media.
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The impassioned reactions of a moment, I can't believe
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Verstappen turned in on Hamilton.
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are there in digital immortality on Twitter or Facebook, documenting the
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feelings of spectators and participants during the race, not just afterwards.
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This is Niki Lauda at the Nürburgring, and I want you to look closely there.
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It's the Flugplatz, and the car's like, well, half a foot off the ground there,
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which is, kind of puts a sweat on my palms just thinking about it, having...
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Got some air on a bike there not so long ago.
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Look, one of the revelations of Lauda's 1976 Nürburgring crash was that a
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piece of film of the incident exists.
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It was shot by a spectator on his personal cine camera.
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In the mid seventies, this kind of unofficial filming was uncommon.
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Now it's ubiquitous.
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Unless creators diligently upload to social media platforms, accessing
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this massive repository is impossible.
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Even when shared, searching this material is much like combing through microfiche
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of newspapers, which was the principal research tool of my teens and twenties.
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And it was dull and time consuming.
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The massive archive of personal smartphone videos are akin to the
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family photo album of the 20th century.
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It's in your mum's attic, it's covered in dust, it's an undiscovered archive.
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The result of this information overload in Formula One has led to a
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development which far predates both cars and any communications technology
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and speaks to the way that we humans truly communicate with each other and
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find meaning in the world around us.
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Formula One Drive to Survive takes its storylines from Formula
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One but packages them in an accessible way for a new audience.
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This novel form is a story, and indeed, the show plays like a soap opera.
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A fable over facts, with stylized villains and heroes.
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We may feel this is banal, but it's proved a huge hit, and has increased
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the viewership of Formula One.
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Events that were previously impossible to cover properly can now be covered.
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The Isle of Man TT, with its 37 mile lap, or Le Mans, taking place in rain and at
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night, were difficult, indeed impossible, to cover properly in the 20th century.
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Now it can be done.
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One off events like the Indy 500 have a fresh appeal due to the
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limited time commitment favoured by our ever busier society.
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This is in contrast to NASCAR or Formula 1 with their nine month plus seasons
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demanding a high level of commitment to sitting on the couch and watching TV.
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YouTube is a truly revolutionary technology in the study
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of motor racing history.
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This is because it's become probably the largest repository of racing content
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in the world, where anyone can watch the live feed of races and judge for
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themselves how good each driver was.
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Understanding Fangio's career is about assessing secondary
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sources and race results.
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Assessing Senna's career can be done by watching each of his Grand Prix drives.
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It cannot be understated how compelling the shift from secondary
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to primary source is for a historian.
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This can be expressed a different way.
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Apart from a few of his cars and his mechanics advice on the back pages of
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magazines, almost all of the genius that was Smokey Eunuch is gone.
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Today, Formula One aerodynamicists build their resumes with the insights
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they deliver in YouTube videos.
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During the pandemic, YouTube was solidified as the place
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to learn to fix your car.
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Searches like break job on 2012 Camry or radiator change on E46
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BMW yield meaningful results.
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Why pore over a manual when five minutes watching a video shows
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you exactly what needs to be done.
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This tutoring is free, make and model specific.
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can be paused and re watched infinite times, and even allows questions to
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be asked in the comments section.
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It's hard to grasp the scope of the revolution in information, narrative,
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and teaching that this represents.
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For the last ten years, I've co tutored a class called Tales to Design Cars By.
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In this time, my material, the students, and the automotive world
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have each evolved considerably.
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At first, I used to use a clip of the seminal Steve McQueen movie,
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Le Mans, to frame my approach and introduce myself, and the movie
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still forms part of the class today.
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Back in 2013, McQueen's movie making, with the Porsche and Ferrari and their 5
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litre V12 engines as central characters, remained unusual and distinctive.
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In 2021, one student commented that if he wanted an immersive aural experience...
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I just watch a 787 on board.
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Referring to the Mazda 787 rotary, of which there are many films on
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YouTube, and considered by many under the age of 30 to be, quote,
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the best sounding car, close quotes.
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In the life of my class, McQueen's work has been eclipsed by the
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breadth and depth of YouTube.
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More, YouTube has allowed Scope to do more with a given story, to
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weave race footage and contemporary content into pithy narratives.
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Explaining nuanced events and races.
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Illustrations of this, the Super 100 Mile an Hour's Bathurst Histories,
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focusing on a particular driver or car, and Aidan Millwood's Formula One site.
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This has also created absurdities, such as Hot Wheels racing as a spectator sport.
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So that is a 164th scale die cast in the bottom right.
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In a way, these people are eating our lunch, as I discussed in
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my NASCAR Pixar presentation at this conference a few years ago.
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Truthfully, however, I have to say I think it's fabulous that so many
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people are doing motorsport history, talking and thinking about cars,
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racing, and how to document it.
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Over the past decade, especially through the pandemic, a distinctive
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culture of car YouTubers has developed.
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This culture evolved as YouTube began to pay creators meaningful incomes.
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This is Hoovy, Tyler Hoover, a Kansas based 30 something and a
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talented pitchman with an un American willingness to laugh at himself and
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a deep, passionate love of modern, semi collectible cars in need of work.
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Sprouting from his success are a number of other Wichita based automotive YouTubers,
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Hoovy's Mechanic, The Car Wizard, and various other shameless wannabes
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who launched their channels by buying one of Hoovy's unrepairable hoopties.
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This phenomenon is not unique.
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There's another group based in Utah.
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Absurdly, one YouTuber, The Life of Palos, P A L O S, if you're interested,
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provides daily updates on the doings of these various automotive YouTubers.
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Many of these YouTubers became popular during the pandemic, specifically
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when they bought a Lamborghini.
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Hoovy currently has three, financed by the channel, and he's a judge at
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the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance.
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For many years, YouTube's strapline was broadcast yourself.
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And this is what Hoovy, Stradman, Tavarish, and others
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like them have accomplished.
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What happens in front of the camera is different from real life.
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When we're watched, we act differently.
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Yet, authenticity is critical with a YouTube audience.
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Hoovey's filmmaking is hammy, his jokes are scripted and unfunny, but
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the man, his passion, and his car adventures feel authentic, and that's
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what keeps viewers coming back.
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In many ways, this is just the same as car guys will tell you at shows,
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from Good Guys to Pebble Beach.
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You come for the cars, but you stay for the people.
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I've talked extensively about YouTube because this is the
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archive in which I'm immersed.
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It's important to highlight other forms of emerging motor racing narrative,
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such as podcasts and audiobooks.
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This long form, non visual content opens up a broader
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audience for in depth content.
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In many ways, this is the ultimate environment for bench racing.
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Certainly, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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never seen more in his element than on his podcast, chatting with
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NASCAR figures of his, his father's, and his grandfather's generation.
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Long, complicated stories which perhaps could not be told
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decades ago can now be revealed.
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The classical art of rhetoric, the spoken word standing alone, is valid once again.
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The challenge with audio sources is the concentration required to process
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the dense volume of information.
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In other words, it's easy to become lost and hence bored.
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This is Mario Rossi.
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I thoroughly recommend this podcast.
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If you have any interest in the history of NASCAR, this is...
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Absolutely ripping, awesome story of a disappeared engine builder.
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The whole Miami Vice scene of Southern Florida in the early 1980s.
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Absolutely awesome, awesome story.
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The rise and rise of the Goodwood Festival shows the enormous mass market
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appeal motorsports heritage can have.
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This will surely grow when most cars are silent and odorless.
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The horsey people with their racing and dressage and specialist haulers,
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and even their special laws.
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Did you know that in Kentucky, you can drive an 18 wheeler on your car license?
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True story, you can drive an 18 wheeler on your car license,
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but only if it's towing horses.
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Only if it's towing horses.
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So in other words, the horsey people, they need to be a prototype
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for us, as James talked about.
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While the Pebble Beach and Amelia Island events have boomed, many car
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museums are being dissolved in the struggle to remain solvent and relevant.
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Cars and coffee style events, where you arrive when you want, leave when
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you want, have become prevalent.
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That's how we do the car hobby at the moment.
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I wonder if that's not going to have an effect on what's collected and
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what's valued, since traditionally racing cars were considered the
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most valuable, collectible cars, but you can't very well drive a Can
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Am car or a Shadow Formula One car.
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to the local cars and coffee.
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And one wonders how long those cars are going to retain that level
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of collectability, given that.
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Driving video games represent a completely different way to experience motorsport.
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Each year a friend and I have a fantasy bid at the Pebble Beach auctions.
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I'm not a gamer.
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He is.
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He was bemoaning the colour of a rough CTR.
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It was powder blue.
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You may have seen it.
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Gooding had it.
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I expressed surprise that he should be interested in a hot rod Porsche
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that was considered vulgar by contemporaries and is collectible now
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simply due to the tiny numbers produced.
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He responded, But don't you remember, dude?
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Gran Turismo, they didn't license Porsches, but roof, they were licensed.
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That's why everyone wants roofs now.
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And if you Google up some prices for them, if you'd owned a roof ten years ago, my
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word, you've seen some price inflation.
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And again, today, the creator of Gran Turismo judges at Pebble
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Beach, and the collectability of modern classics is driven by
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gaming culture from 20 years ago.
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So to sum up and try and tie together what I'm saying here a little bit, old
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cars and bikes make a noise and a smell in a way that electric ones soon won't.
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Racing cars and bikes are exciting as kinetic sculpture, while the stories
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of racing are eye popping in an age where personal safety and responsibility
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trump audacity and adventure.
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This renders our history of interest to future generations.
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Today, anyone can do history.
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The archive method is in your pocket, or right now in my hand.
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However, the skill and diligence of a trained and experienced historian
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is not so readily available.
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This means that curation and evaluation skills are more important than ever.
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The opportunity for historians is greater than ever.
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Now and in future, we can document in ways undreamed of by future generations.
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The mechanism to do that is by telling a good story.
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Just want to conclude now by offering a word on Fred Simeone,
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who we lost just earlier this year.
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When I first heard the news, my thought was, now he's gone.
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who will step into the breach.
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And just, those of you who don't know who he is, probably the finest collection
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of unrestored racing cars in the world.
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If not the finest, he and Miles Collier, between the two of
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them, without doubt, the finest.
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So this is somebody who's very much I would regard as a patron
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saint of the conference, almost.
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And my thought was, since Fred's gone, who's going to step into the breach?
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Who's going to take his place?
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He thought so carefully and deeply about racing cars, amassed such a
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significant connection, influenced the thinking of the whole movement with
20:29
his passion for unrestored racing cars.
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This person can't be replaced.
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But upon further reflection, I've come to the conclusion that while
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I'm not Fred, and I never will be him, except for folk like us, in
20:42
this room, there's nobody else.
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So, I'm going to do my best to continue Fred's work, and carry on telling stories
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about racing cars and racing drivers.
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Thank you all for listening.
21:00
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
21:03
Motor Racing Research Center.
21:04
Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
21:07
of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series.
21:11
The Center's collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie
21:14
of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
21:17
The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of
21:22
race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
21:26
brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
21:30
To learn more about the Center, visit www.
21:33
racingarchives.
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org.
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This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
21:39
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
21:43
The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers.
21:47
organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard,
21:51
as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized,
21:54
wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
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For more information about the SAH, visit www.
22:02
autohistory.
22:02
org.
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