Forty Years On

John Sprinzel reflects on 40 years of motor sport.

While we are celebrating the Sprite's anniversary, I thought it might be interesting for the younger enthusiasts, to compare Motor Sport when the BugEye was a baby, with today's activities. This is in no way suggesting that then was better than now! All I am showing is that it is all very different.

Going to a Grand Prix in the Fifties was far less commercial, and, if you arrived at the circuit early enough, you could drive your car into the grounds, and park right at the trackside. At Silverstone, sitting on the front of the car, you could be on the outside of Woodcote corner just a few feet from the track, and with only an earth bank between spectators and racers. We watched in awe as Fangio gently battered the front wing of his "streamliner' Mercedes on the 50 gallon oil drums which marked the inside of the track no posh angled kerbing or Armco barriers in sight. As he couldn't see his front wheels, he was misjudging the exact line by half an inch or so every lap. You could see most of the upper body of all the drivers, arms working away - usually in short sleeved shirts- and the clear facial expressions of concentration unhidden from the confines of modern "bone domes". Drivers powered around the fast open corners in full bodied four-wheel drifts, correcting slides in a constant flurry of arm movement - quite a contrast to the slot racing appearance of today's events. You could walk around the pit area and see every Grand Prix car out in the open, with just a rope barrier to keep the public from touching. To watch Ascari and Gonzales, then Hawthorn, Moss and Collins, and later Clark, Brabham, Hill, Mclaren, Andretti, Gurney and Hulme and all the other stars, just a few feet away, was a thrill that can hardly be experienced today. While Pit Stops were not as routine as they are today, there was a strict limit on the number of people who could work on a car. I seem to recall that two mechanics, plus a tyre technician who measured the tread temperatures, was all that were permitted in front of the pit counter. I am certainly not against progress and development, but if you compare a shot of Jim Clark's Lotus, or Brabham's Cooper against Schumaker or Coulthard today, you will have to admit that the modern aerodynamic shapes and appendages have done very little for the beauty of the race car.

The Tin-Top racers in the supporting events were a little different too. During the 1958 season, I was in a year long battle for the Championship with Tommy Sopwith's Jaguar and Jack Sears' Austin A 105.. I drove my Austin A 35 (from which most of the Sprite's bits originated) to and from every meeting, all season long. Sharing the traffic jams with the spectators as I hurried home from Friday practice in order to tweak up a few more horses. Trailers were unheard of as were advertising stickers. In those far off days NO ADVERTISING whatsoever was allowed on the cars, and only a five by one-inch trade name was allowed to be sewn on the breast pocket of the overalls. Competitors generally drove cars painted in the colours of the country they represented, and one of the first to depart from this rule was Stirling Moss in Rob Walkers Cooper, which appeared in dark blue. As a matter of record, the first time we were allowed unrestricted advertising on our cars was for the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon. It became obvious that there would be very few competitors if sponsors could not be approached who could have their Iogos displayed in a prominent manner.

Rallying in general covered the same Championship events that appear on the World Tour today. With Monte Carlo, Safari, Acropolis, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Britain counting for points. The format however, is now vastly different. We were used to driving stages of at least twenty four hours before a break, with thirty six not being unusual. The famous Liege-Rome-Liege took over 90 hours of non-stop motoring to cover over 3000 miles of challenging roads. As the world's road became more and more crowded it became quite impractical to race over such vast distances, so that closed road "special stages" became the rule. Even the fabulous Tour of Corsica, which was a sensational twenty-four hour "race" over the tiny island's ten thousand corners, had just one straight coastal road where you could make up enough time to maybe change a wheel. Today, it is run in three days, all in daylight, with just half a dozen timed sections of twenty kilometers or so each day to decide the results. In more than 100 International events I changed maybe five tyres, and those were due to punctures or damage. Nowadays it would be unusual to see tyres used for more than two or three sections before teams of mechanics appeared to change not only the type of tyre, but probably half the suspension as well. Our tyres were just plain old over-the-counter Dunlop, Pirelli or Michelins, and while they felt safe enough and certainly wore well, they didn't have any of the grip that today's "sticky" tread's produce. We had enough stub axle problems with Sprite and A 35 that I shudder to think how many more retirements we would have had with all this extra adhesion.

We saw our mechanics maybe once or twice a day, and then rarely anywhere near the "serious" bits, so most of the emergency repairs were down to the crew. I cannot recall ever changing a shock absorber, let alone a gear box or strut during an event. My Sprite was driven to and from the rallies, and only shipped back after an accident, which was too serious to allow a temporary repair. The cars were my own, prepared in my garage and used as personal transport. between events, but even so they were competitive enough to win not only the British Rally Championship but also to take second and third overall in Internationals against competitors from over fifteen different manufacturer's teams. Even stranger by today's standards, was the use of the same Sprite in circuit races, club rallies, hillclimbs sprints and gymkanas.

I am certainly not claiming that those days were better or harder or even more fun that today's events. Change is inevitable and you compete with the equipment and technology at hand, against your peers over the same set course. Anyone who even mentioned giving up cigarettes, booze or sex in the interests of competing would have been considered very odd indeed, and the very idea of a personal trainer never crossed one's mind. Yet Formula One drivers handled difficult cars in races that lasted nearer three hours than today's ninety-minute efforts, and while G forces are certainly higher now, the effort to stay on the road was no less physical then. To rally four days and nights over the atrocious tracks of Yugoslavia, the Italian Dolomites and the French Alps called for quite a bit of stamina, yet most drivers chain-smoked, and not many neglected their intake of alcohol.

As a Sprite driver, I naturally preferred the old long-distance type of event. The lack of power was a challenge - not to beat, but to outlast the Porsches, Alfas and the rest. The rougher the road, the thicker the fog, the slipperier the ice, snow and gravel, the better one's chances. In the modern format they have almost had to abandon the concept of classes as most competitors now opt for the same formula of car as the little'uns have very little chance of victory.

John Sprinzel

Reprinted from Sprite Torque - July 1998