Category Archives: Nostalgia

The Final Run in the Majors

The Le Mans 24 Hours had been a happy hunting ground for the Porsche 956/962 dynasty, seven outright victories at La Sarthe, but even the greatest monarch’s reign must end. In 1998 three Kremer K8 cars were entered but only one made it through the Pre-Qualification weekend, the Rocky Agusta/Almo Coppelli/Xavier Pompidou, example.

Come race week the young Frenchman qualified the K8 in 3:57.814, 29th on the grid and 14th in class, some 22 seconds off pole sitter Bernd Schneider’s AMG Mercedes. However the race would be a different matter.

There was no point in trying to set lap records, the car was too slow for that, so the old virtues of reliability and slick pit work were the weapons that would be best employed by the Kremer squad. Incredibly the factory teams started to implode, AMG Mercedes and BMW gone before sunset on Saturday. When the factory Porsche LM P1 pair also retired by dawn on Sunday a good finish seemed a possibility.

The other privateers prototypes joined in the lemming-like self destruct impulse, all of which propelled the Kremer up the leader board. The race went to plan, just tyres and two brake pad changes, it would another year before HITCO and BMW would go the race distance on one set of carbon pads. OK there were a couple of spins, particularly early morning Sunday morning, but I recall the conditions being especially foul and slippery, catching out the leading Porsche 911 GT1-98 for example.

The upshot for Kremer was second place in LMP1 class and 12th overall, covering 314 laps or 4264.196 kilometres, a fitting way for the Porsche 956/962 family to bid farewell to Les Vingt-Quatre Heures du Mans

John Brooks, November 2013

The Last Lap

1 Reply

The Porsche 956/962 is one of the truly great cars in motorsport history. Even when Group C and IMSA were assassinated by the forces of darkness it continued as the platform for such evolutions as the Kremer K8. However eventually all things must pass and so on July 18th 1999, the last international race for the K8 took place at Donington, the fifth round of the Sports Racing World Cup. A double Dutch pairing of Bert Ploeg and Remco Papenberg in the former’s car finished 15th, some 14 laps down on the winning DAMS Lola. The final curtain……………..17 years after Jürgen Barth rolled out 956/001 at Weissach, amazing.

John Brooks, November 2013

Rocket Ron

Leave a Reply

The first time I got to shoot the Rolex 24 was back in 1998, one of the better Floridian 24’s around the turn of the century. Ron Fellows is pushing into the First Horseshoe in Andy Evans’ 333 SP, the pair sharing driving duties with Max Papis, Yannick Dalmas and Bob Wollek. This heavyweight line up led the race for several spells but the transmission blew up in a spectacular manner after 610 laps with just a few hours left to run. Dalmas had recorded a 1:39.195 to grab pole position, Papis followed that up with the race’s fastest lap of 1:40.545, a small consolation for the end of the line for Andy Evans’ dream of victory on the banking at Daytona. His departure that season was not mourned by the enthusiasts, though it must be said that he was one of the saviours of endurance racing in the mid-90’s after the implosion of both IMSA and Group C in 1992. Credit where credit is due.

John Brooks, November 2013

View From The Top

Leave a Reply

October 1st 2000 at Magny Cours, pit stop for the JMB Giesse Ferrari 333 SP, David Terrien out and Christian Pescatori in, on their way to the fifth victory of the season. They took podiums whenever they competed and were Champions by some clear margin.

John Brooks, November 2013

Eye of the Storm

Leave a Reply

Another image of the 333 SP, this time shot during the 2001 Rolex 24. I wrote a while back about this race and had this to say about this fabulous car.

Perhaps the Ferrari 333 SP of Risi Competizione was the most popular choice for the top step of the podium at the race’s end. A hotshot team running the car, a driver line up that consisted of Ralf Kelleners, David Brabham, Eric van de Poele and Allan McNish plus the beautiful, sonorous Ferrari seemed to be the obvious selection. McNish has had his eye on a Rolex since winning his class in 1998 at Daytona, the year before the watches were awarded to all class winners not just the overall victors. Of course we are all too gentlemanly to ever mention this small omission in his career, maybe this would be his best chance to get hold of one the fabled timepieces. Fastest lap in practice of 1:41.118, if not in Qualifying, seemed to support the argument.

The race was run in conditions more often found at the Nürburgring than Daytona Beach, cold and grey to start then a deluge, most unlike Florida as we Brits imagine it to be sunny all the time.

More thoughts from the past…………

Most of the photographers showed good sense and stayed either in the warm, dry Benny Khan Media Centre or hid under awnings in the pits. Me? Well, Regis Lefebure and I headed out to the back straight, where we spent several hours trying make some sort of acceptable images in the murk. I reckon he got better results than I.

In this sort of dull stuff it is almost impossible to turn Chicken Shit into Chicken Salad. The 2001 Rolex 24 was a personal landmark for me, it was the last race that I shot entirely on film. By the time I crossed the Atlantic again to shoot the ALMS season opener at Texas I had acquired a Canon D30. Digital had arrived, that genie had escaped and things would be very different. Photographers would go on to be software operators, mind you the crap ones would still be crap.

On track things took their usual course, hard racing and hard luck.

Out at the head of the race #12 and #16 continued to swap the lead. Then Risi Competizione took their turn on the wheel of hard fortune. Out on the back straight McNish lost a front wheel due to lug nut seizing. Fixing this problem cost five laps and probably the race. This diagnosis was confirmed a few hours later, just before dawn. During a routine pit stop it was noticed the oil temperature was rising rapidly, it was suspected that head gasket had failed in the V12. The Ferrari was reluctantly retired, another leader down and no Rolex for McNish.

The race was a cold miserable affair, only the performance of the Corvette team gave any kind of pleasure, they were, and still are, a class act.

One pleasing aspect is that the top picture ran as a double page spread in European Car, I have to say it was a satisfying way to say farewell to exclusively shooting film.

John Brooks, November 2013

Spin the Wheel

Leave a Reply

Continuing my look back at the fabulous Ferrari 333 SP, here back in 1999 Max Angelelli blasts around the wide open spaces of Las Vegas Motor Speedway in one of a pair of Doyle-Risi Racing cars. It was the team’s last appearance in the ALMS with the open topped Ferrari, which was struggling to keep pace with the Panoz and BMW prototypes. Seventh and eighth places for the team was about all they could expect.

John Brooks, November 2013

The French Connection

Leave a Reply

1999 and the last appearance of the Ferrari 333 SP at La Sarthe………..by now this customer programme dating back to 1993 was overwhelmed by the big budget factory efforts from Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Toyota.

The JB Racing 333 SP was a brand new chassis and was modified aerodynamically for Le Mans with both the engine cover and rear wing getting a make over. A new endurance gearbox was fitted with modifications to the pinions, strengthened shafts and selector forks. The engine also received attention to make it more durable. The increase in fuel tank size to 90 litres helped, but the wonderful sounding V12 was too thirsty in comparison with the competition; the extra refuelling stops meant that the Ferrari had scant chance of achieving anything significant in the race itself.

It was driven by former Le Mans winner, Mauro Baldi, teamed up with Christian Pescatori and Jerôme Policand. Young Jerôme qualified the car in a 3:38:468, which was roughly the same time that the 1998 winner, Allan McNish had qualified his Porsche 911 GT1-98 some 12 months before. It was a gain of around six seconds on the previous Ferrari best and proved the worth of the modifications. However it was still nearly ten seconds off Martin Brundle’s pole time in his Toyota GT-ONE.

The least said about the race the better. The endurance gearbox was anything but, lasting barely 40 minutes before Baldi had to pit for a replacement. Engine failure just after dark brought the curtain down on the story of the Ferrari 333 SP at Le Mans.

John Brooks, November 2013

The Power of Three

Leave a Reply

Lap one of the Sports Racing World Cup in 1999 has just been completed and a sea of metaphorical red heads towards Elf (the French Petroleum company not the Nordic pixies). That season the Ferrari 333 SP was the weapon of choice in the SRWC until DAMS got their Lola fired up.

Long ago and far away.

John Brooks, October 2013

Buy the ticket, take the ride……………………

4 Replies

A few hours will pass and the American Le Mans Series will be just a memory. The final flag will drop appropriately enough at Road Atlanta, motorsport’s Georgia Peach. Although the first ALMS race was Sebring in 1999 as seen above, the spiritual home is, and always will be, Braselton.

Fifteen years ago the world of endurance racing was turned on its head with the alliance of Don Panoz and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the first Petit Le Mans. For the most part this has been a successful partnership, though not without its issues. New management has arrived, let’s hope that they can build on the heritage of the past.

I sit here on a grey, soggy afternoon in Surrey I recall the races and places and faces…………….however I don’t think I can add much to my thoughts written 12 months ago on the way to Georgia HERE

God Speed American Le Mans Series, and thanks…………….without you I would have missed out on seeing some fantastic racing and, much more importantly, missed out on meeting some amazing people. Too many to list but you know who you are……………let’s hope for a safe race today on both sides of the world, there have been too many reminders of our shared mortality this year.

Ciao…………….

John Brooks, October 2013

From Blackpool to Brooklands

Leave a Reply

Motoring events pile up thick and fast during the spring, summer and autumn months and if they are not dealt with immediately they slip down the pecking order. A TVR day at Brooklands in May fell victim to the demands of the Nürburgring 24 Hours and then the big race in France.

Nevertheless it was a pretty good turnout of cars with the sun doing its best to give us all a lift after a pretty grotty couple of months. There was even a fly past by a Lancaster, rather appropriate considering the history of the venue.