Toly Arutunoff is in our car club, the British Iron Touring Club of Northwest Arkansas. He's fairly famous in racing circles. I guess more "historical" racing circles these days. He's probably raced anything with wheels on any track you could name and bought the land, designed and had built the track known today as "Hallett" so he could have a place to play on. He has a book out now, done in his style, which he calls "stream of consciousness." Anyway, this was in our newsletter this month and I thought I'd share. "Rev Wing" is his reference to our club newsletter editor and wrench, Wil Wing, who did quite a bit of SCCA racing in the day also.
Tolly said: Rev. Wing is right again, no surprise. What's gone wrong? First, car competition used to be an immediate attention grabber, since the cars that were racing might be the very cars you were considering as a purchase; they were freakin STOCK cars. Manufacturers made cars they thought would sell. Big companies made lotsa cars, specialist companies made a much smaller number. In the main they were made for particular sorts of customers. Some buyers said to one another "I betcha my car is faster than your car!" And some primitive organizations said "Betcha people will pay to watch 'their' car racing against their neighbor's car." But cars were built in different engine sizes, so sporting folks devised classes; the fairest and simplest were by engine size. Then some manufcturers decided that for more $ they could sell a customer a faster car that'd run in the same class. And people became more safety conscious: you could reinforce your wheels so they wouldn't break or come off. And maybe it'd be better to stay in your car if you had an accident, instead of being "thrown clear." (How long has it been since you heard that phrase)? But then the first Awful Thing happened: People found out that a bigger tire would hold the road better and go around corners a lot faster: any of you old enuf to remember when the ultimate speed through a quartermile was gonna be around 9 seconds because that was the 1g time for something to accelerate for that distance? Folks hadn't acknowledged that a tire actually digs into the pavement and has no easily predictable limit of adhesion. So tires got big, and those cars fitting those tires got less and less adaptable to being street-driven. And big tires required sophisticated suspension systems to keep them perpendicular to the road, and thereby limited car builder's freedom to do this or that to the suspension--continuing an older design, or designing for comfort. Then the U.S. racing powers-that-be noticed that a car with twin cams and roller crank was somehow faster than a pushrod car of similar displacement and said "Gosh, we'd better put that advanced engine design in a higher class." The Yurrupeans, still being more nearly purely sporting and aware of a different sort of class structure, figured if you could afford a more expensive car you should therefore be allowed to beat up on your sporting but impecunious fellow sportsmen. Meanwhile tires got wider and now you pretty much had no chance racing your streetable car or of driving your fun racecar on the street. The ‘hoi polloi’ now had much less interest in watching races because they couldn't relate to the actual cars as much as they could relate to spins and crashes (which training they'd already received by watching openwheel cars run around in little or really big circles). These developments continued apace until somebody saw that it was more exciting to see a big clot of cars racing around (in circles or on a road) because it added more suspense, and less sport; and there just might be a bigger chance of something really exciting happening in that heavy traffic. This continued to the falling-off-point of the German Touring Car championship putting weight on the winning car after a heat race to penalize it in the next race taking place that same day. Manufacturers by now well knew that they weren't ever going to build a roadgoing car that'd show up on a race track, further separating the possible future fans’ recognition of their cars being like the cars they might watch in competition. So now you have the silliness of watching a Cadillac duke it out with a Viper on a track, when the potential fans automatically know in their hearts that they're watching some kind of fantasy. And a very expensive fantasy at that. Oh yes, the race administrators use that also as a selling tool; they can even misadjust their own minds such that when Satch Carlson was making fun, many years ago, of the SCCA's minitruck racing (which to me at least was fun), some official told him, "Of course it's important--look at how much money we're spending on it!" So I think the only direct and simple hope we can have is for the new generation to be made aware of "lapping days" and "high speed touring" events at road courses. The zeitgeist is such that it's unlikely the world will return to days of sport (Remember Bobby Jones said, three quarters of a century ago, "Money will ruin sport") where cars are concerned. We'll have to get the kids interested in the fun and simplicity of our old cars. Basic fun in basic cars. Rulewise, isn't it ridiculous that years ago the million-buck McLaren F1 road car had to dismantle its ground effects machinery to race at Le Mans? And now the fascinating Nissan GT, to be allowed to race, has to build their race cars minus the awd that EVERY production Nissan GT carries as standard! The lunatics are truly running the asylum. Cars are more complicated than ever and the idiots require more mods to superior vehicles while permitting totally nonstreet mods to all cars. The system is disgusting. Personally, the unnoticed highpoint of the sport was back in the early sixties with the 1 1/2 liter F1 rules. Bill Brack, or another Canadian, realized if he took the twincam engine out of his Lotus Cortina and put it in his Lotus Formula Junior (which pushrod engine had the same block as the t/c) he would have an F1 car. So he did, and sent in his few bucks for his FIA license, and entered the F1 race at Watkins Glen. In the race he was running back in the pack, by no means dead last, when the typical problem of a sheared distributor drive or suchlike made him a DNF. Don't you just love it? “Whaddya wanna do next weekend? Why don't we enter the F1 race at the Glen?” “OK.” And going way back, some southern hotrodders found an old Indy chassis, figured out that on narrow tires maybe two drive axles would be a good idea, built the six-wheel setup, rented a used Offy from somebody, qualified, and finished tenth! They paid the rent on the engine, split up the remaining prize money, and went home. Oh! and in the early sixties a couple’a South American guys bought a 904 Porsche to tour Europe. "Why don't you enter the Reims 12-hour race?" the factory asked. So they bought their racing licenses and entered. When they showed up at the race, their spares were the spare tire and a fanbelt. "Porsche told us the car was reliable," they said. The factory cars broke their throttle linkages (or something like that) and Our Heroes won the under two liter GT class. They picked up their huge silver trophy after touring around Europe and went back to South America. And the French know how to put on a twelve-hour race: Start it at midnight, finish at noon! There's a big dinner and party. Lotsa fireworks. Race starts, people watch awhile, go get a good night's sleep, come back for breakfast at the track (croissants, beignets, cognac crepes) and watch the finish. Wonderful days, those. Toly
