ATLAS F1 - THE JOURNAL OF FORMULA ONE MOTORSPORT
Rear View Mirror
Rear View Mirror
Backward glances at racing history

By Don Capps, U.S.A.
Atlas F1 Columnist



It is a long time from early February to late March, not to mention the seemingly vast distance from Daytona Beach to Sebring. That the CSI had given Daytona the opening round in the new Grand Touring championship did not rest well with the parties responsible for the "11th Annual Florida International 12-Hour Grand Prix of Endurance for the Alitalia Cup." Held over a 5.2-mile circuit laid out using the runways, base cantonment streets, and access roads of the former central Florida Air Force base at Sebring, the 12-hour race had carved out a unique niche for itself in not only American racing, but on the international scene. It would be an understatement to say that the Automobile Racing Club of Florida and promoter Alec Ulmann were not pleased with another major international sports car race in Florida barely weeks before their own.

Those with vested interests in the Sebring event wasted little effort in letting all concerned know that only "true" endurance race in America was not held on the Atlantic coast of Florida, but to the south and rather a bit further inland. Also, whereas the field at "that other race in Florida" really didn't have the panache of a truly international event, well, Sebring did. This line of thought did send a few eyes rolling as they pondered the luxurious accommodations and dining opportunities available in that part of Florida.

In line with the new direction of international sports car competition, there would be two races counting towards the international championships. The first would be held on Friday for those cars in Division 1, under 1,000cc. The race was to be run for three hours over the course and attracted a starting field of 29 cars. Per usual at Sebring, the cars were lined up by displacement putting the gaggle of Austin-Healey Sprites at the head of the lineup.

Of the 10 Sprites in the field, four were the very special Sprite Sebring model, all entered by BMC (British Motor Corporation). And aboard these four were some very well-known names: Stirling Moss, Steve McQueen, Innes Ireland, and Pedro Rodriguez. Matching the Sprite count were the Fiat-Abarth 1000 entries. Briggs Cunningham had three entered for Walt Hansgen, Bruce McLaren, and Roger Penske. Carlo Abarth enter four works cars and Jacques Swaters two, one of which was for Olivier Gendebien. Also in the Fiat-Abarth ranks was an 850 and two 600s. Rounding things out were three D.B. Panhard entries, a Saab GT750, and a Berkeley-Excelsior 500.

As for the race, after the flag was dropped, Stirling Moss got his usual jackrabbit sprint to the car and was the first heading into Turn One with Steve McQueen and Pedro Rodriguez following the BMC team leader. The track was still wet from both rain the previous day and some on and off drizzle Friday morning. On the first lap Moss had a seven second lead and stretched it to 12 seconds at the end of the second lap. However, as conditions improved, the Briggs Cunningham Abarths of Walt Hansgen and Bruce McLaren began to move past everyone else and into the second and third positions, with the other Cunningham Abarth of Roger Penske moving through the pack after a poor start. Also slicing through the field was Olivier Gendebien whose Abarth was very sluggish off the line and was at the tail of the field in early going before its engine cleared up and 'Jellybean' got down to some serious motoring.

One consideration that running the early stages of the race in the wet was that it allowed the Sprites to stretch their fuel mileage. Making it all the way to the end of three hours on what was in the fuel tanks of the Sprite Sebrings was going to be pushing the edge of the envelope very hard. The Abarths could make to the end, but laps in the wet conditions were a godsend to the BMC entries and it appeared that it would be a straight fight between the Sprites and Abarths.

At the end of the first hour, Moss was well and truly in the lead, but during the second hour conditions began to improve. With a lead of nearly 40 seconds, Moss had the race well in hand. Attention turned instead to the happenings further back in the field. One of the most significant of these was that the Penske Abarth, having come from way behind to run near the front, dropped out when the driveshaft broke. Lining up behind the Cunningham Abarths were the factory entries of Carlo Abate and Alfonso Thiele followed by Pedro Rodriguez and Innes Ireland having their own battle with McQueen running with two of the Abarths following Ireland.

The third hour saw the race conditions generally dry, with the exception of the pools off to the edges of the track, and the BMC entries keeping a close eye on their fuel gauges. With perhaps only 30 minutes to go, Hansgen gave everyone a thrill by running over the curb at the Esses and having a huge spin. Teammate McLaren managed to miss him and was now in second. About 10 minutes later, Moss - of all people! - had a spin and his 20-plus second lead was now merely a few seconds as McLaren rushed after the Sprite. As McLaren was pursuing Moss, the whole BMC effort unraveled as first Rodriguez and then McQueen dashed into the pits desperately crying for fuel since their fuel tanks were nearly bone dry.

Then Moss came screaming into the pits for a splash of fuel. This put McLaren in the lead with Hansgen neatly tucked in behind his teammate. By the time Moss emerged back on the track he was over 90 seconds in arrears of the Cunningham cars. When the flag finally fell at the end of three hours, McLaren managed to keep Hansgen behind him and take the checked flag for the victory. Moss wound up third followed by the Abarths of Thiele and Mauro Bianchi, then the Sprites of Rodriguez and Ireland, with the other BMC entry - McQueen - in ninth place.

Perhaps the most interesting affair of the whole three hour race took place prior to the event. An Austin-Healey Speedwell Sprite had been entered by Frank Mabry, Junior. Unfortunately, Mabry was bog slow. Mabry was also black. At a time when there was an increasing awareness of the Civil Rights movement and the issue of race in America, the organizers decided to sin on the side of the angels and not disqualify Mabry.

However, Mabry gave the promoters an unexpected out. Driving to his hotel after the last practice session, Mabry lost control of the car when it hit a stretch of road which had humps in the road surface caused by the drainage pipes running under the road. The Sprite got airborne, left the road, and wound up in an adjoining orange grove with, as Wimpffen put it, "…the world's largest orange juice squeezer." This let the organizers off the hook, even if it was not exactly the way they had in mind. It must be noted that at the time there was little concerning the Mabry incident which made the pages of the American motoring press.

As to the main event itself, the 12 Hours was to be the leadoff event for the Challenge Mondial de Vitesse et Endurance, a four round series open to the Prototype cars. Along with Sebring, the organizers of the Targa Florio, the Nurburgring 1000-kilometers, and the Le Mans 24-Hours events essentially forged their own little championship within the framework of what the CSI (Commission Sportive Internationale) had laid on for 1962.

The race was now an American institution and something of an icon of the sports car crowd similar to the Indianapolis 500, a status it was to have to share with the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen for two decades. By happenstance, the race often coincided with the Spring Break of many American colleges. The attendance for the Saturday event was estimated to be about 60,000 for this year, a large crowd for any sporting event at the time. The weather cooperated for Saturday and the monsoon of Friday was not to mar the event.

The event was to have 65 starters line up in front of the pits, with four reserve entries eagerly hoping that someone would withdraw and let them into The Show. As to who might win the 12 Hours, it was more a matter of which - which Ferrari that is. The line up - which was by displacement and not qualifying times - was to be pretty impressive this time around with the Ferrari effort being led by the American arm of Scuderia Ferrari, the North American Racing Team (NART) of Luigi Chinetti. Having been foiled at The Other Race in Florida, NART was eager to put the Alitalia Cup in the trophy case back in New York. To aid its cause, NART had Stirling Moss and Innes Ireland in the same Testa Rossa TR61 (chassis 0794) which Ricardo Rodriguez and Peter Ryan had brought home 15th at Daytona. Chinetti had the services of Moss and Ireland through an arrangement that had been brokered with the United Dominion Trust-Laystall team - otherwise known as the British Racing Partnership.

NART also had what described by John Christy as the "latest type of Ferrari Berlinetta that was little more than a Testa Rossa with a roof." Up until this point, the standard by which the opposition measured itself in the big GT class was the 250 GT Berlinetta SWB (Short Wheelbase). The 250GT Berlinetta SWB could be ordered for the road and delivered with steel bodywork, or for the track with aluminum bodywork which saved somewhere in the vicinity of 45 to 50 kilograms compared to the true road-going version. The three-litre V-12 was the tipo 168 and a development from the "Tour de France" version of the 250GT. The "Competizione/61" version of the engine delivered about 280 bhp, and to stop all those horses the braking was by Dunlop disc brakes, an innovation at the time for Ferrari. A superb car, the Rob Walker Berlinetta SWB won the Tourist Trophy back-to-back in 1960 and 1961 with Stirling Moss at the wheel. Moss was quite liberal with his praise of the car.

The new Berlinetta was to be known officially as the "250 GT Competizione/62 Berlinetta," and not the "250 GTO" - Gran Turismo 'Omologato' or Grand Touring Homologated - as it has been popularly known down through the decades. The new series retained the same wheelbase as the very successful 250 GT SWB - 2,000 mm - and at first glance was generally very similar. The 'GTO' chassis was a derivative of the SWB tipo 539 - tipo 539/62 - and unique not only to the series, but from car to car. The engine, tipo 128E/62, was a 60O V-12 (naturally…) rated at 300 bhp at 7,500 rpm and using six twin-choke Weber 38 DCN carburetors. Luigi Chinetti Motors took delivery of chassis '3387 GT' on 16 March 1962 from Automobili Ferrari. In the cockpit Chinetti placed two drivers who just might be able to put the new car through its paces: Olivier Gendebien and Phil Hill.

Also in the NART stable were a new model straight from the factory floor - the 248SP originally intended for Moss and Ireland, but handed over to Peter Ryan and Buck Fulp when the Britons expressed their displeasure with not only its handling, but also with what their considered its general lack of performance. A 246SP was also fielded by NART fuelled by the generous cash donation by Don Rodriguez so that Chinetti would provide a mount for his sons Pedro and Ricardo.

Perhaps the biggest threat to NART was the Ferrari Testa Rossa TR61 ('0792') entered by Scuderia Serenissima (SSS Republica Venezia) for Joakim Bonnier and Lucien Bianchi. The team manager for this effort was the man who had held that position during the heyday of the Officine Alfieri Maserati, Nello Ugolini. As things were to prove, Ugolini was to prove invaluable.

The others considered serious contenders for the overall honors were the Maserati Tipo 64 - dubbed the "Super Birdcage" - also entered by Scuderia Serenissima for Nino Vacarella and Carlo Abate. Briggs Cunningham also entered a "Super Birdcage" for Walt Hansgen and Dick Thompson. Cunningham also crammed a Maserati engine into the rear bay of a Cooper Monaco and assigned the driving chores to Bruce McLaren and Roger Penske. Jim Hall brought two of the Chaparral cars - with the necessary modifications to meet the CSI regulations for the "prototype" class including reducing the Chevrolet engines to four litres.

At the drop of the flag, the drivers made their mad - if not suicidal - dash across the track and into their cars. The first machine to get fired up and moving was the Porsche RSK of Bob Donner, but he was soon overwhelmed by the roaring mass of cars trying to defy the lows of physics and all occupy the same piece of the road at the same time. Amazingly, no one was run over nor did much mechanical mayhem result from this organized chaos - something few today seem able to comprehend.

Leading the snarling horde past the line on the first lap was the NART Testa Rossa with Pedro Rodriguez and Walt Hansgen in hot pursuit. Watching all this was Stirling Moss. For whatever reason, Innes Ireland took the first stint at the wheel leaving Moss free to observe the happenings on the track.

Moss wandered down to the Turn One area and managed to run afoul of one of the weekend security officers. Moss was asked for his pass and being both shirtless and without the necessary pass, was unable to explain to the Legionnaire just exactly who he was. After much arm waving and shouting and pleas for assistance, Moss was finally able to return to the NART pit for his stint at the wheel.

Ireland came screaming into the pits and easily exceeded the 40 mph speed limit. Chief Steward John Baus was not amused and went sprinting towards the NART pit to both chastise and penalize the offender. Moss had now gotten into the Testa Rossa and roared off while Baus shouted at him. While Baus had perhaps initially been considering only issuing a warning to not speed in the pits once again, after both Ireland and Chinetti verbally assaulted him, Baus then imposed a time penalty. In the meantime the Rodriguez brothers had taken the lead.

Moss and Ireland were content to run in second behind the 246SP and keep the brothers in sight. Then the fun began. At the end of his second turn at the wheel, Ireland brought the Ferrari in to replace the brake pads. When the car stopped, the official assigned to the team snipped the seal on the fuel filler. A NART mechanic then put fuel in the car. Unfortunately, there had only been 18 laps covered since the last refueling stop. The problem was that the race regulations called for a minimum of 20 laps to be covered between fuel stops.

Ugolini, who had been a source of calm and a pillar of strength for the Comte Volpi team, immediately noticed the violation. After a quick but careful check of the lap chart, Ugolini sought out Baus and lodged an official protest against the NART Testa Rossa. As this drama was being played out, the Rodriguez Ferrari blew its engine just short of half distance and this put the Moss/Ireland Ferrari in the lead with a comfortable four lap cushion. Ugolini signaled his drivers to hold station and preserve the car.

After no end of bickering and much heated discussion, the Ireland/Moss Ferrari was black-flagged and disqualified. This left Bonnier and Bianchi in the lead with a six lap (!) lead over the second place car of McLaren and Penske. Yes, the Cunningham Cooper-Maserati was stroking along in second place despite a variety of niggling problems. However, these problems soon became major and with over four hours to go, the Cooper had to pit to deal with brake problems which turned out to be more serious than realized.

So the race ran out and Ferrari finished one-two when the Gendebien/Hill "250GTO" eased into second a little over two hours prior to the end. The Porsche Imports-entered Porsche RS60 of Frank Rand, Bill Wuesthoff, and Bruce Jennings wound up third. Limping home fifth was the Cunningham Cooper of McLaren and Penske while the Hap Sharp and Ronnie Hissom Chaparral came home sixth.

Once the teams and the crowds left Sebring, it was back to the reality of American sports car racing. To some it was a relief…


References

  • Robert C. Ackerman, Chevrolet High Performance, Iola, Wisconsin: Krause Publications, 1994.
  • Dean Batchlor, "Road Racing Specials: Part IX 1961-1962," Vintage Motorsport, July/August 1993.
  • Keith Bluemel with Jess G. Pourret, Ferrari 250 GTO, Bideford, Devon, United Kingdom: Bay View Books, 1998.
  • Ken Breslauer, Sebring: the Official History of America's Great Sports Car Race, Cambridge, Massachusetts: David Bull Publishing, 1995.
  • John Christy and Sherrie Zuckert, "Sebring '62," Sports Car Graphic, June 1962.
  • James T. Crow, "Constructors Championship Round 2: Sebring," Road & Track, June 1962.
  • Nicola Cutrera, Ferrari 250 Grand Touring Cars, London: Hyde Park Books, 1990.
  • Richard Falconer with Doug Nye, Chaparral: Complete History of Jim Hall's Chaparral Race Cars 1961-1970, Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International, 1992.
  • Joel E. Finn, Ferrari Testa Rossa V-12, London: Osprey Publishing, 1980.
  • Allan Girdler, American Road Race Specials 1934-70, Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International, 1990.
  • John Godfrey, Ferrari Dino SP's: Maranello's First Rear-engined Sports Prototypes, Wellingborough, Northhamptonshire, England: Patrick Stephens, 1990.
  • Phil Hall, Fearsome Fords 1959-73, Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International, 1982.
  • Preston Lerner, Scarab: Race Log of the All-American Specials 1957-1965, Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International, 1991.
  • Karl Ludvigsen, Corvette: America's Star-Spangled Sports Car The Complete Story (Second Edition), Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Publishing, 1978.
  • Karl Ludvigsen, Porsche: Excellence Was Expected, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Publishing, 1977.
  • Stirling Moss with Doug Nye, My Cars, My Career, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom: Patrick Stevens, 1987.
  • Doug Nye, Cooper Cars (Third Edition), London: Osprey Publishing, 1991.
  • Flip Schulke, "Sebring," Car and Driver, June 1962.
  • János L. Wimpffen, Time and Two Seats: Five Decades of Long Distance Racing (Book 1), Redmond, Washington: Motorsport Research Group, 1999.

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Volume 8, Issue 47
November 20th 2002

Atlas F1 Exclusive

Interview with Bobby Rahal
by Mark Glendenning

Articles

The Arrows Saga Continues
by Forrest Bond

Technical Focus
by Gary Emmerson

Columns

Rear View Mirror
by Don Capps

Elsewhere in Racing
by David Wright & Mark Alan Jones

The Grapevine
by Tom Keeble



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