Reflections in the Rear View Mirror,
or Variations on a Theme

I don't remember the absolute first race I "saw", being all of about 18 months old at the time. However, the first race I "saw" and remember was at the Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, Georgia, deep in the heart of Dixie, in the US of A. It was a stock car, but not a NASCAR "Strictly Stock" Grand National event, since Lakewood didn't have its first event for that series until 1951.

It was in the Summer of 1949, I was all of about two-and-a-half years old. The details are a bit vague now, but I remember being so taken with the racing and the excitement. Until my Dad went to Korea about a year later, we were pretty steady customers at Lakewood and a few other tracks in the Atlanta area as well as "Back home" in South Carolina.

The Lakewood Speedway was a one-mile dirt oval and located on the site of the Southeastern Fairgrounds. In some form or other Lakewood had been around since 1915. I didn't know that at the time, of course. It was just a fun place to go with my Dad. The track had a "lake" in the middle of the track - more like a big pond - mostly in the turn one and backstretch area.

We went to Europe in the early 1950's after Dad came back from Korea and made a few frantic moves from post to post before another uprooting was to leave us in Pirmasens and various other places in West Germany - as it was known "back then." The Second World War had scarcely been over a matter of years when we arrived. Naturally, this was a return to Europe for Dad - he had come ashore in the fading light of the day at Utah Beach in Normandy on 6 June 1944. He had seen a lot of Europe while serving as an artilleryman in the First Army.

In 1954, Europe was just getting back on its feet. The autobahns were still being repaired, many bridges still in the process of being replaced, towns being rebuilt - I can still see the very neat stacks of salvaged brick and building blocks in virtually every town you visited. Plus, many were coming across the border from the East and joining the still sizeable ranks of refugees - known to the US Army as "displaced persons" - in the West. I remember going to these camps regularly to take food, toys, clothing, and other "relief" items as part of the work my Lutheran youth group did.

Plus, there were still all sorts of neat bunkers and other cool places for kids to play scattered all over the countryside. It was not unusual for many of these to be occupied by squatters, much to the consternation of us kids who were largely oblivious to the true nature of war at that point in our lives, although we all had perhaps a better idea than we realized. Our passions were football (soccer to us Americans), airplanes and - TADA! - automobile racing.

In the Summer of 1954, Daimler-Benz reentered Grand Prix racing, winning out of the box at Reims with Juan Fangio and Karl Kling finishing 0ne-two in the race. They were to race at the Nurburgring and I was all excited about going. Then I got sick and had to miss the race. I remember being devastated. I had a toy W196 streamliner which was my favorite toy - next to my red Maserati, since even then I wasn't much of a Ferrari fan. Various conflicts prevented me from seeing my first race in Europe until the March of 1955.

Up to this point, I had seen a goodly many races in America. And in many places - we moved a lot and I mean a lot as in often as three times a year. I had seen stock cars of various types - I really like the Modifieds and have had a weakness for Flathead V-8 Fords ever since, midgets, even a few odd event on the Championship Trail, and a few sports car races. I loved them all.

When we pulled into Torino in March 1955 for the Gran Premio del Valentino, run on the course through and around the Valentino Park which nestled right up against the Po River, I was ready. No, let me make it clearer: I was Ready. I had even gone to the trouble of getting one of neighbors, Mrs. della Barbara, to teach some Italian so - should the opportunity arise - I might converse with one of the drivers. Or, at worse, help interpret when we got to Italy.

We went with an extraordinary group of men. They were Germans who worked for my Dad and they had all been racing fans prior to The War. They had formed what can only be called a "spectator cooperative" to pool their resources and go to races all over Europe. Working for the Americans, they were doing comparatively well and could indulge in such a luxury. After finding out that Dad was interested in racing, he was included in the group, with me tagging along on his coattails.

In Torino (somehow I can quite bring myself to call it "Turin" - I have similar problems with other place names) we stayed in a hotel near the park, and managed to catch some of the practice session on Saturday afternoon.

We managed to wander a bit in the paddock and at some point through some form of persuasion, I got to sit - with strong admonitions to touch nothing - in a Maserati 250F. I don't remember which one - we have long since lost the photograph which was taken to record the feat, but that doesn't matter. I had performed the ultimate act of one-ups-manship on my classmates and had the proof! Who cared about the race, I had sat in a Grand Prix car, and a it had been Maserati to boot which made it all the more sweeter. Too bad it wasn't a Lancia, but that was okay.

As we were about to leave, we were in the Lancia section of the paddock. There, speaking with members of his team was one of The Greatest of the gods of the pantheon - Alberto Ascari. While Fangio was popular and we all liked him a great deal, the race of choice among my classmates and myself was Ascari. Stirling Moss was just coming along and had yet to seize the grip on us that was to come later. When we thought of a British Grand Prix driver, we automatically thought of Mike Hawthorn. After all, he had the sense to drive an Italian car instead on one of those British "things." Okay, it was a Ferrari, but no one is perfect.

One of our group, Hans-Peter I think, walked over and spoke with Ascari for a moment. Hans-Peter had fought in Italy with the paratroopers (as in the "Fallschrimjager" and had been captured and spent time in Texas picking cotton as POW) and had a good command of Italian. He had also helped me with my Italian lessons. He waved at us to come over.

I got about perhaps 10 minutes to use my (not very good, but enthusiastic) Italian with Alberto Ascari. I mean, I was speaking with Alberto Ascari. He even shook my hand. While I didn't get to sit in his car - one cannot push one's luck, a concept even I knew at this tender age - I did get to peer into it and touch it, especially the steering wheel. Sorry, Maserati, but Lancia had just made a convert and Ferrari was now a very distant third on my list of Italian teams and lagging far, far behind Mercedes.

I have absolutely no clue what Ascari and I spoke about. I am certain that had I been asked then, I doubt that I could have told you. Just the act of being in his presence and his actually devoting attention to me was enough. I am certain that I just accepted this as any eight-year old does - as his due course. I think that the cars held more of an attraction for me.

Sunday, was anti-climatic in many ways. Although Maserati tried to block Ascari at the start, he managed to get clear of them within a few laps and took the lead. His only problem that day was a Maserati - driven by Roberto Mieres - that just stayed close all race long, never quite being far enough behind to allow Ascari to ease off. All this I found out later on, since what I remember of the race is Ascari in the Lancia going lap after lap around the course and looking as if he were focused only on driving the car to victory.

That was my first Grand Prix race. I was hooked. I wanted more and more and more of it. However, I also still loved those dirt tracks and the modified Fords that raced on them. And I was to find out how much loved sports car racing, although that Summer nearly saw my Mom ban me from the tracks forever.

In June, with Mercedes trying to duplicate its 1952 victory at Le Mans. In May we had made the trek back to Italy for the Mille Miglia. We saw the Moss 300SLR - with Denis Jenkinson sitting beside him - on its way south and then again, after a lunatic but fun dash across the peninsula, we saw the car hours later on its way north. After that, we just had to go to Le Mans.

We muscled into the very end of the grandstand on the finishing straight for the start. We looked down the road and watched the sprint across the track and the cars tear off into the distance. After perhaps an hour or less, we began to walk "up" the track - counterclockwise - to other vantage points that some of the others had watched from in the past. Martin - who really had fought on the Eastern Front until he came west for the Ardennes Offensive - stayed behind.

We were somewhere in the area past Maison Blanche on our way to Arnage and Indianapolis, when someone pointed to a huge cloud of black smoke in the area of the pits. I think our first impression was that there had been a fire in the pits and probably during refueling. We hastened back to where we had been, thinking that Martin would fill us in on what had happened.

As we got closer, we started to hear that there had been an accident, a car had jumped the track and into the grandstands, a Mercedes. We went on and as we got closer it was obvious even to me, an eight (and a half) year old that this was a huge accident. Where we had been had escaped the accident, the impact being literally meters up the track. By a miracle we found Martin, who filled us in on what had happened. All he knew was that a Mercedes had struck a English car - and Austin Healey - and was launched into the crowd. It wasn't Moss or Fangio, but probably the American, John Fitch.

With Fitch being one of the few Americans competing in Europe at the time, I remember being very upset. However, I still remember the devastation. I am always amazed that the crashed killed "only" about 80 people. It looked as if hundreds and hundreds should have died. They were still tending to the injured and the dead were littered all over the area, most covered with whatever was handy and some with sheets. Years later, Dad said it was easily the equal of anything he ever saw in either WW2 or Korea, which was saying something. Not until perhaps Viet-Nam would I see anything remotely on this level.

On Sunday, when the race ended, it was raining, but we had already left, leaving early on the train to head back to Germany. Amazing, we were in the Netherlands the next weekend, our (my) third straight race weekend, being at Spa-Francorchamps the week before Le Mans. At Spa, I had Nino Farina growl at me when I accidentally got in his way - and in the process picked up a few new words for my Italian vocabulary. At Zandvoort, we watched Fangio and Moss circuit pretty much the same way they had done at Spa. Boring as hell, but I was only eight and had already figured out how neat race tracks were as places to play and to meet people.

The last Grand Prix (I do have problems with the term "Formula One" when it is applied to the years prior to about, well, 1984) race I attended was on a scorching hot and utterly miserable day in July 1984 in Dallas, Texas. I was there in part due to happenstance, being assigned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, at the time. I somehow managed to get tickets - including a paddock pass - for the race that weekend, even pulling duty for another captain on Independence Day to ensure that I would have that weekend free.

Although the last USGP at Watkins Glen was a shadow of itself in many ways compared to the first one I saw there in 1961, I was game for this race in Dallas. I was still amazed that they had decided to run one there, but those were Interesting Times in Grand Prix racing.

My first look at the track was enough to make me reconsider my enthusiasm. I had not been to many - if any at that point - races on makeshift circuits in America - I had avoided the USGP at Detroit like the plague. This one looked, well, very makeshift. It was laid out around the Cotton Bowl stadium and the Texas Fair Park using the access roads and whatever else they found to form a race track. The whole thing was lined with whacking big concrete blocks topped with real tall sections of chain link fence.

Texas in the Summer is hot. Dallas in July is hot and miserable. Hanging around the paddock, it was obvious that there was much unhappiness in the air on the part of the drivers and the teams. The race was scheduled for 11 o'clock in the morning to boot, which for this church-attending Lutheran was another mark being put in the book against the race.

On Saturday, I even deigned to watch the "Can-Am" race - I really detested the series at the time for a vast multitude of reasons - which as interesting since you could see that the track was coming apart in many places and by the end of the race you could see that potholes had formed in several corners. Whoa!

By the way, I had to look up the winner of the "Can-Am" event since I didn't have the foggiest idea. I paid relatively little attention to it at the time and haven't given it much thought since then. The race lasted an hour and almost 47 minutes - funny, but it seemed so much longer at the time. Oh, it was Michael Roe in a VDS - Chevrolet, ahead of Jim Crawford in a March.

When I took my place at the vantage point I had staked out, it was obvious that there were a lot of - as in a great many - people at the race. I have heard varying estimates over the years, but the claims of 90,000 or so cannot be dismissed as out of hand. One reason is that traffic flow was a complete disaster, as least the part of it I was in.

There was no shade of any consequence around the track that I can recall. I was also over 100 degrees Fahrenheit that day, before the race even got started, which is saying something, even for Dallas. The track had already put Martin Brundle on the injured list during practice when his Tyrrell crashed into one of the walls, hard. I was not far away when he crashed and it was ugly. It was Friday, the first day the track was ready it seems, and that sort of set the tone. He suffered fractures in his feet and would have most of the season anyway even had the FIASCO Club not screwed Uncle Ken and given his team a most questionable - in my opinion - red card and sent his team off for the season not long afterwards.

It was more of a survival test than a race. Nigel Mansell sat on the pole in a Lotus along side teammate Elio de Angelis in one of those "who wudda ever thunk it?" sorts of things. There was a young Brazilian in a Toleman, there was considerable discussion in my little portion of this concrete hell as to whether it was "Ayrton Senna" or "Ayrton Senna da Silva" - most of us opting for the latter.

On the first lap, car number 19 - Senna da Silva - came by in fourth place, having started on the outside of the third role and generally making the Toleman look like a real race car versus the shambles it had been just a season or so earlier. Then he wasn't there. He was way back, just ahead of teammate Johnny Cecotto. Meanwhile, Mansell droned on and on around the track. It was apparent after about 20 laps that they would have to invoke that two hour rule.

I was situated not that far from the pit area and could see the cars in a final corners as they approached the finish area. At just the wrong angle, the chain link fence would restrict your vision looking up the track. On the other hand, there wasn't much to see as the race progressed. By about lap 25, about eight cars had hit the wall somewhere and retired from the race.

After about 35 laps, Keke Rosberg - for whom I had rooted for in Formula Atlantic years before - went by in the lead, having closed on the black Lotus for a number of laps and then spent more trying to get by - Keke shaking his fist and making no end of gestures at Mansell to get out of the way. Then he was in the lead. Mansell did something elsewhere on the track and allowed the Williams dragster - the Honda that year was either at full blat or broke - to scoot by. Mansell pitted and was soon back in the race.

After awhile, we were getting tired of baking in the sun, and also wondering if anyone would be around for the finish: by lap 60, there were only eight cars left, almost all the others having smote the wall a blow (mighty or otherwise) or suffering from ailments resulting from the severe heat. Most did not seem healthy. We had been tracking Alain Prost as he came closer and closer to Rosberg, passing him in his McLaren, but then he was gone and so was teammate Niki Lauda! So, by lap 60 we were spending more time than we normally would checking the clock, counting down to the two hour mark.

The Williams droned on as if it were at a testing session, only the Ferrari of Arnoux only remotely in the hunt simply by being on the same lap. Oh, one point that had my little abuzz was number 24 car - Piercarlo Ghinzani in an Osella - Alfa Romeo. It looked as if he just might score a point. An Osella scoring a point was quite a feat in those day.

At about the time they decided to have mercy on and put us out of our misery by waving the checkered flag at "Our Keke," came a moment that perhaps made me decide then and there that there was one driver that I had had feelings about, but wouldn't after what we could unfold before us. Mansell had been lapped perhaps 20 laps earlier. About the time that Rosberg was crossing the finish line, Mansell hit the wall. Since he had been rather ragged for many laps not a surprise. Rather than just accept that he had screwed up and paid the price, to our amazement, out pops Mansell who then starts pushing the car towards the finish line!

The consensus was that Mansell was a moron and probably going to get disqualified for pushing the car. A few wiser observers said he was showboating. When he collapsed and was carried off, almost as a man we began to do James Brown imitations. If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand….

Thirty seasons covered the time between the time that I saw my first Grand Prix race and my final one. In between were perhaps dozens of Grand Prix races, especially when you lump in all those non-championship events as well as those which counted towards the World Championship. Call them what you will, but to me they were Grands Prix.

You know, I am curious what a modern Formula One race is like. Perhaps I should take a look at going to one this season. Even old dogs are interested in looking at a few new tricks now and again. You never know. Who knows, I just might pop at Indianapolis this season to take a look. It certainly has to be better than Dallas - sorry about that, guys….