Category Archives: The Blink of An Eye

I have no good answer to that question……………

1998 Rolex 24

The first trip to the Rolex was back in ’98. I was invited by the charming Laurence Pearce of Lister Cars fame. Back then the WSC rules allowed for some pretty strange contraptions, certainly The Cannibal was right right up there in the Wacky Racers stakes.

1998 Rolex 24

Then there was this Sci-Fi effort from Mosler, the Raptor…………they missed Captain Nemo’s name off the roof.

Rather than plagiarise anyone else’s work I suggest that if you want to know more about these unusual racers you could do worse than read this excellent piece on the Daytona International Speedway website;

HERE

I somehow doubt that we witness anything quite like this pair on the banking in the next week, but you never know…………

John Brooks, January 2014

 

The Stig Prowls the Infield

1998 Rolex 24

1998 Rolex 24 saw the original Stig, Perry McCarthy, as part of the line up for Dyson Racing. As usual the Daytona International Speedway was not kind to guys from Poughkeepsie with both of their Riley & Scott MK111 prototypes going out late in the race. For #20 it was especially cruel, they were cruising towards Victory Lane, with a handy lead over the Momo 333SP, then the Racing Gods decided otherwise…………..

John Brooks, January 2014

Lawn Feed

2002 British GT Castle Combe

Keeping up the New Year’s Resolution to get DDC back up into seventh gear and keep it there, even with the pressures of the Real World intruding……….on a picture search this morning I came across this forgotten moment from 2002. Yes it is the Castle Combe British GT round, lap one approaching Quarry, the second placed Geoff Lister slightly overcooked his braking and ended up spinning to the back of the pack. I imagine the moan of photographers standing with me all took evasive action as the sequence ends at this point……..I certainly would have ducked.

Geoff got the Saleen back on track but probably wished he had not. Storming through the field a few laps later he was unsighted in traffic and, at high speed, ran straight into the stationary Porsche of Tony Littlejohn, who had just been knocked into a spin. Both cars were severely damaged and Geoff was hospitalised, though thankfully without serious injury, he never raced in GTs at International level again.

John Brooks, January 2014

The Way We Were

1983 Silverstone 1000kms

May 1982, 31 years ago we did things a bit differently.

Social media is full of images from the pit lane fire in Shanghai that took place yesterday. Thankfully no one was injured, I doubt that the same happy result would have happened if something had gone wrong at the above refuelling stop, we have come a long way since then. The car was the Janspeed Lotus Elan driven by Max Payne and Chris Ashmore and entered by ARK Racing. The race was the Silverstone 6 Hours, the second event run to Group C rules.

The Lotus was disqualified after 173 laps for a push start…………..well you have to draw the line somewhere, Old Boy.

John Brooks, November 2013

Corkscrewed

1998 Petit Le Mans

Bill Auberlen leads JJ Lehto down Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew in their BMW V12 LMRs. It is October 1999 on the Monterey Peninsula, a very agreeable time and place as I recall. Their main opposition came from the Panoz Roadsters, those rumbling beasts who have passed into legend.

1998 Petit Le Mans

The Williams-built V12 LMR prototypes raced during 1999 and 2000, racking up a Le Mans triumph in the first year but they failed in their quest to win the drivers’ or teams’ or manufacturers’ titles in the American Le Mans Series. A paperwork snafu at Sebring and the team’s withdrawal from Mosport on safety grounds let others slip in front the first season. Audi’s arrival with their new R8 accounted for the following one. Then Munich set sights on Formula One, their endurance prototype campaign was dropped and we all know how that cunning plan panned out in the long run.

John Brooks, November 2013

The Last Lap

1999 SRWC Donington

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

1998 Rolex 24

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