EXCITING RACE AT MOSPORT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 9

EXCITING RACE AT MOSPORT

'T’HE Players 200 at Mosport Park, Canada, was great fun all round. I hadn’t been to an American sports car race for more than a year, and I hadn’t been to Canada at all, so it was a nice change from the same old circuits, the same old faces, and the formula one cars. More than half the cars had big American V 8 engines. Dan Gurney’s immaculate Lotus 198 had a Ford, as did Carroll Shelby’s King Cobra. The Chaparrals of Jim Hall and Roger Penske, and Indy winner A. J. Foyt’s Scarab had Chevrolet VBs with equally large amounts of horsepower. Jimmy Clark was down on the entry list to drive a Lotus 30, but it never appeared—it had been kept in England pending further developments. Jimmy tried an Americanowned Lotus 19 fitted with a Ford VB, but it was in poor mechanical condition and after a few trial laps Clark’s discretion advocated a pit seat for the race. The remainder of the colourful 30-car field was made up of Lotus 19Bs, King Cobras

(Cooper Monarcos with Ford VBs), Lotus 235, Porsches, Ferraris, Elvas, and Cobras (or “snakes” as they call them over there).

S.M.A.R.T., Stirling Moss’s Auto Racing Team, had one of the latest Porsche 904 s in the race—in the race, but not in the hunt really. In fact few cars, even the present formula one machines, could compete with a proper sports car now.

I saw one of the Shelby King Cobras lift its front wheels off the deck when the driver rushed a gearchange! If this is a taste of the next formula one, I say “roll on 1966.”

The Mosport circuit, pride and joy of Canadian motor racing, is about 60 miles from ’Toronto, a bustling, prosperous looking city that turned on quite a performance for the race. A mayoral reception

watched by a large and enthusiastic lunch-time crowd on the steps of the City Hall followed a parade of pipers, marching girls, and race drivers up the main street. I went A.W.O.L. from the pre-race banquet. With the Cooper-Oldsmobile still new I wanted to get out to the

By

BRUCE McLaren

track for some unofficial practice. We found Dan Gurney there too. It’s a serious business, this motor racing, and I think both Dan and I were happier tinkering with our cars than we would have been refusing as politely as possible another glass of something—even if we did feel a bit guilty about it. Qualifying for grid positions was somewhat different to the European practice of taking lap times throughout a training session. Instead, at the end of the practice day the cars were dispatched five at a time to do one standing lap, one flying lap, and a “cooler-offer” back to the pits. The time taken on your flying lap was your qualifying time.

From a driver’s point, of view this js a bit sudden. You ■have to get “turned on” all at once, whereas normally you

warm up to it over a few laps when you want to do a really fast time.

Dan Gurney was fastest qualifier, half a second quicker than my Cooper-Oldsmobile and Jim Hall was third fastest with his Chaparral. The Chaparrals, built at Jim’s factory in'Texas, are in my opinion the most advanced sports cars on the tracks

today. . The chassis is basically one piece of reinforced fibreglass moulding, boxed, bulkhead, and double-skinned in places with a hard plastic foam between the skins as in modern aircraft construction. The suspension is copied from Lotus, but is made slightly stronger, as are the wheels. Jim’s engines are the rare aluminium Chevrolet VBs, and the transmission is by Colotti. But he had one of the cars well covered up all the time, hiding an automatic transmission set-up. On race day we were lucky. My can ran without a serious hitch and won both the 100mile heats. In the first heat Gurney failed to get off the line, and Hall snatched the lead with Foyt and myself on his tail.

I haven’t seen anyone drive like Foyt for some time, in fact I’m damned if I’ve EVER seen anyone drive like Foyt!

Perhaps a combination of the styles of Archie Scott-Brown and Jack Brabham in the early “hang-it-out” days would be as close as you could get to it. He was terrific. He had the Scarab in slides and twitches that the average spectator hasn’t dreamt of. He is going to be worth watching in the Brands Hatch Guards Trophy race.

He also throws rocks. I virtually had neither windscreen, nor paint on the car and nearly no skin on my forehead after 10 laps, by which time he’d scared me so much that I couldn’t stay behind to watch any longer. Fortunately the Cooper-Olds had good brakes so I managed to nip by the Scarab before a corner, and a couple of laps later I did the same to Jim’s Chaparral.

The second heat was even more furious than the first. This time Foyt led for the opening laps while Hall and Penske in the big white Chaparrals, and Gurney and I charged around on his tail. Or pointed. at him. Or alongside him when he happened to be sideways! I’ll bet those 50,000 people will all be back to watch the next race at Mosport. A mere 200bhp is going to seem tame at Spa!