Look to the past for speed stats guidance

Press, 10 February 1989, Page 30

Look to the past for speed stats guidance

BEHIND THE WHEEL

Peter Greenslade

Motor-racing promoters, in the main, seem to be rather naive these days. They don’t appear to realise that the paying spectators are interested in the speeds at which the competitors dice with death. In my motor-race reporting days, woe betide the scribe who did not record the average speed of the race winner, as well as of the individual who made fastest lap in the race. Nowadays, the race results might include the race time, but that is not significant if the race length is not published, too. Just imagine the uproar that a win by John Walker would create if the organisers of the foot race failed to advise the news media of the race distance. Was it a mile, 1500 metres or maybe only 800 metres? Organisers of an athletics meeting invariably publish the length of each race in the programme. The situation at the Lady Wigram Trophy Race meeting held recently was another story. Neither the expensive ($5) programme put out by Global Sports and Promotions, nor the supplementary insert which listed races and competitors, provided any information regarding the length of the circuit. Certainly, the Wigram lap-record holders for each class of car now racing were published with their respective lap times, but they really didn’t mean much because the vital information on the circuit length was nowhere to be found. That meant that even a

mathematical do-it-your-selfer could not work out the speeds, even if the course commentators had supplied information about lap speeds. As far as I know, they didn’t. Comparisons of the speeds at which racing drivers lap the track are important because they give the casual racegoer some idea of the talent or ability of individual drivers. The Wigram circuit length is 2.31 miles, or 3.71 kilometeres. On that basis, this year’s Lady Wigram Trophy was of 111.5 kilometres and, on my calculations (which shouldn’t be taken as gospel), Hiro Matsushita averaged 175.439km/h to win in his American designed and built Swift Formula Pacific racer. Matsushita also made fastest race lap in 79.34 s for an average speed of 190.265km/h. In the 19605, when the Lady Wigram Trophy attracted the elite of the Formula One Grand Prix motor-racing circus, one.

of the drawcards for the event was a jackpotting side prize for the first competitor to record in the race a 100 m.p.h. (160km/h) lap. It was in 1968 that the first “ton” race lap was recorded by Jim Clark, driving a Lotus-Ford 49T, a Formula One car of that time but with a CosworthFord V 8 engine of 2.5 litres in capacity to conform with the Tasman Championship formula rather than the three-litre Formula One. Clark led out from the start of the 163.57-kilo-metre race and proceeded to put in his second lap at an average speed of 162.897km/h. Chris Amon, at the time a Formula One Ferrari driver, was Clark’s main opposition. He drove a 2.4- Ferrari 246 V 6 into second place just 7.7 s behind Clark, but shared with Clark a 167.403km/h lap record. That race was notable in more ways than one, for it was the first occasion in the history of European-style motor racing on which commercialism reared its head. Clark’s Lotus appeared in the colours of Gold Leaf, a well-known (in those days) tobacco company brand name and the car became known as a Gold Leaf Team Lotus entry. The meeting was also, notable because Ken Smith, who finished fourth in this year’s Trophy race in his outdated Ralt RT4, competed in the national 1.5- Formula Championship race and finished fifth. Smith appears to be . driving just as well as he did all those years ago, in

spite of having had triple bypass coronary surgery not long before the start of the 1987-88 motor-rac-ing season. He was back behind the wheel very quickly and this year he got in among the Swifts and was only fractionally slower than last year’s Wigram winner, the young American, Dean Hall, who also raced a Swift this time. Hall’s fastest lap this year was at 190.238km/h. Smith’s fastest was at 189.537km/h in a car said by the pundits to be uncompetitive in a field in which there were Swifts. All this confirms my belief that the young men (and a woman) who contested this year’s Lady Wigram Trophy will need to put a lot more motor racing behind them before they have any,hope of really beating that wiry little middle-aged Aucklander. No-one knows better than I that there are no “its” in motor racing but Smith in a Swift at Wigram would have left the others wondering why they had bothered coming to Christchurch. This year’s Wigram meeting held out some promise for the future, but the Motor Racing Club, Global Sports and Promotions and the news media, all of whom put their hearts into promoting the meeting, need to pay attention to detail. An informed spectator is one who might return. » ♦ * Toyota New Zealand, Ltd, is almost boasting about the $6 billion that has been spent by its Japanese parent company on research for and de-

velopment of its new Corona and, I have a hunch, of a number of other projects the Japanese have in mind. That is a lot of money and I'm wondering why some of it wasn’t spent on the provision of a reflec-tion-free windscreen for the impressive Corona. I noticed the strong reflections in the windscreen of the Corona GLXi iiftback when driving into my carport in the mornings when the sun, shining in a cloudless blue sky, was in the north-east quarter. Actually, the reflections of the instrument panel in the windscreen almost totally obscured my view. It was only in these particular circumstances that I experienced any “aggro” from the sun, but I guess other Corona drivers will have similar trouble sooner or later. Maybe Toyota has sufficient small change left from the $6 billion r. and d. programme to do something about it. In any case, even if eradication cost another $1 million or so, it would be money well spent, for it would turn the Corona into a more perfect car than it is. Of course, such blinding or even distracting reflections have been a problem for many years. Maybe, in the interests of road safety, governments should legislate to counter reflections or, better still, spend some taxpayers’ money if the carmakers are unprepared to shake the moths out of their pockets for things that, outwardly at least, appear not to be in the high-tech category.