Open wheel roadsters add an extra element of excitement for sure, it doesn't take much when you have it "out on the edge". Nothing better.
its very evident were all the safety rules came from. no fire suits, helmets, roll cages,harnesses,fire systems etc. i wont complain next time i need to update and recertify
I have seen a few different ones over the years of the early days of ovel racing and the crashes that went on . It's really something to see some of those crashes and the driver get rolled on , thrown in the air then still gets back up and walks away ! The one that gives me the chills the worst of all the wrecks I have ever seen is the ones where the car goes up in flames and the driver dies in the fire ! That has to be the one thing that I think of when I use to drag race . That was something going wrong and the car catches on fire and I am stuck in it being burned alive ! You do have to admit those men of early racing weren't crazy at all . They just had the drive and the "damn biggest set of balls" of any man to do what they did with no safety equipment and not even a roll cage or seat belt ! Those were some of the greatest days of racing no matter if it was dirt , drag racing or whatever they wanted to race at that weekend ! Thanks to them , we can do many of those things in racing and walk away from whatever happens to us almost 99.9% of the time . If it wasn't for them we might not have all the safely equipment we have today to keep us safe to enjoy racing the next weekend ! Retro Jim
Yep! I've read a bunch about this time period in racing. These men were "Iron Men" in every sense of the phrase. The car I'm standing by in this photo was driven by my personal all time favorite racing driver Tazio Nuvolari. It won the 1935 German Grand Prize at the Nurburgring at a time when the politics in Germany were not conducive to the "other guy" winning. The Germans truly respected Nuvolari and his ability but they HATED losing. This car will do 150mph. Some of the cars in the footage you are watching will do 200mph and had over 500hp and weighed in (as did the car in my photo) at about 1700lb. Do you want to drive it? Think about this little Alfa's power to weight ratio. 1700lb and about 325hp and a top speed of 150mph much less a 1937 AutoUnion that was about 550hp and would do 180mph in Grand Prize trim. Wicked in anyones book but much less on spoke wheels, drum breaks, no safety anything, manual everything, etc... Iron Men...
If at 1:27 of this video the crash was at Pebble Beach that was a car my father and friends built. The driver was Warren Frinchaboy. He survived but had extensive leg injuries. His wife didn't like the idea of him driving cars anymore so he built something safer, a Hydro with a 427 Ford supplied by Mickey Thompson.
WOW! That's COOL! As the old TV show would say, "You were there!". Cool stuff I think. Well... I guess it was, "You are there!" but you know what I mean.
'Ja see the early ones with two men in the car? Back in the day the car had to carry a driver and a mechanic !! Go figure.
The Jalopy Journal
