The Persistence of Memory

I don't know why I bother.

It was a bit of a jolt to realize that it was about a decade or so ago that I really began to end my irrevocable drift from contemporary race fan to racing historian. Although my interest in motor racing history was almost as old as my interest in racing itself, by the mid-1990s this was my primary interest in motor racing. While I have often wondered exactly why the contemporary scene - especially in Formula One - began to lose its appeal, there is little doubt that it was the result of numerous small things and nothing that could be laid at the foot of a single person or event. Actually, my interest in the contemporary motor racing scene dwindled from a wide-ranging interest in many series to just a handful of series.

Long before the salt of Formula One lost its favor, that series was becoming more and more secondary in my universe. Part of that was due to age (mine) and part of that was due to the series just lacking that appeal it once had. The more technology that got poured into Formula One, the less and less I seemed to enjoy it. The more and more organized that Formula One became the less and less I enjoyed it.

From about the mid-1970s until the early-1990s, one series I thoroughly enjoyed was the GT series that IMSA (International Motor Sport Association) sanctioned and was sponsored by R.J. Reynolds through its Camels brand of cigarettes. The Camel GT series was great stuff and I really, really enjoyed it. The venerable Trans-Am series nearly died in the late-1970s because the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) miscalculated by just that tiny bit and IMSA almost handed them their head. But, after John Bishop sold IMSA it soon began to feel the effects of not having his vision and leadership at the helm and soon IMSA began to slip from its perch. A decade after the departure of John Bishop, the American sports car racing world was in disarray, a state of affairs which continues until today.

After about a half-dozen seasons in which the National Championship Trail exploded from being something that USAC (United States Auto Club) tacked onto the International Sweepstakes (AKA the Indianapolis 500) each year to being a series which now actually had a following, for the 1971 season things changed a tad. A separate national championship was created for the dirt track events and road courses were dropped from the National Championship Trail itself. There were teams lining up to play and the ante got raised considerably to take the field. Unfortunately, most of the events on the National Championship Trail - which USAC had convinced first Marlboro and then Citicorp to sponsor - still paid about they same as they way back when, which is say very little.

By 1978, there was obvious dissension in the USAC ranks which finally led to an open revolt and the formation of CART - Championship Auto Racing Teams. In 1979, there was the often bewildering situation of USAC and CART hosting "championship" events on the same weekends. This did little for either organization and the two attempted to patch things up for the 1980 season by forming something called the "Championship Racing League," where each group alternated handling the rounds for a re-united championship. That is, until USAC terminated its participation in the CRL after the fifth round at Mid-Ohio in July.

For the 1981 season, USAC created a new version of the National Championship Trail, the Gold Crown Championship. In addition, it changed the name of the former USAC national dirt track to the Silver Crown Championship. Due to problems attracting sufficient entries for the Gold Crown Championship, which would begin with the 1981 International Sweepstakes and end with the following year's event, both Silver Crown car and events were pressed into service. George "Ziggy" Snider managed to win the first Gold Crown Championship, but in the coming years it was basically reduced to simply being awarded to the highest-placed USAC driver (in good standing with the club) in the International Sweepstakes. No one ever said this was easy.

CART and its IndyCar World Series managed to go from strength to strength during the years following the 1980 season, only USAC managing to continue to sanction the Indianapolis event each year marring its control over American major league open-wheeled racing. Road courses were an important element of the schedule and reflected the fact that many of the CART teams entered the series from the world of road racing. In 1984, CART replaced Formula One at Long Beach and the crowds didn't blink. The same thing happened in Detroit. Along with IMSA, CART was riding high as the 1980s ended and the 1990s began.

In 1966, the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) and with its Canadian counterpart - the Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs or CASC - created a series of a half-dozen events for what was rapidly becoming a most popular form of road racing - the two-seater sports racing cars formerly known as the "modified" sports cars in the SCCA way of thinking. In 1958, USAC had created a professional road racing division and in doing so let the hypocrisy of the SCCA system of "amateur" racing face some competition by herding up some of the best drivers and cars in some of the best events and creating what was to become known as the Fall Pro Season within a few years - events at Riverside and Laguna Seca alone catering to thousands more than most road races could dream about in a year.

In 1963, the SCCA finally created a professional racing series, the United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) and the USAC series died despite USAC continuing to sanction many of the Fall races for the next several seasons. The USRRC came along just as it was becoming apparent that an American engine with lots of cubic inches jammed into the rear of a racing sports car was the ticket for some righteous racing. The appearance of the Chaparral team in the USRRC in 1964 and 1965 was the stuff from which legends emerge....

The Canadian-American Challenge Cup - as the Can-Am was grandly and formally known - opened with a season that saw the title not decided until the final round in Las Vegas. There is now a strip mall and residences sitting where the Stardust Raceway once sat. Then the Can-Am died in 1974 from a combination of some sort of apathetic collapse. It was revived in 1977 for single-seater, full-bodied cars and after a few encouraging seasons passed away largely unnoticed at the end of 1986.

In 1964, a SCCA committee looked at single-seater racing and suggested creating a "Formula SCCA" which in 1967 spun up a series grandiosely called the SCCA Grand Prix Championship. The first series champion promptly quit when the SCCA changed its rules to allow cars with American push-rod, stock-block engines with displacements of up to five-litres join the fray beginning in 1968. The 1967 champion, Gus Hutchison, returned in 1970 with a pukka Grand Prix car - a Brabham BT26 with a Ford Cosworth DFV engine - but soon switched to a Chevrolet-powered car.

The series became the Continental Championship, picked up sponsorship from the L&M cigarette folks and became quite a nice little series. It became known as Formula 5000 in an effort to show some sense of unity with its European counterpart. Then it croaked in 1976, but not before running for three seasons in a cooperative effort with USAC - of all people. I missed it and never quite had the same fondness for the converted F5000 cars that now became the basis for the "new" Can-Am.

Once upon the Grand National Division of NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) ran a championship could have as many as fifty-something events and began in November of times. It was quite a feat to survive a full season on the GN circuit - it was a brutal pace with events at the small half-mile tracks under the lights during the week and then the larger tracks - the "superspeedways" - on the weekends, more and more of the latter appearing throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. Ironically, the so-called "stock cars" were really much more stock than one would imagine today. One of the great joys of this period, the 1950s and 1960s, was that the GN circus usually came to town twice a year.

The R.J. Reynolds sponsored a championship within a championship in 1971 and then sponsored the whole series, the name Winston Cup replacing the old GN name in time. The factories came and went and then television discovered the sport - it was the same sort of luck that the debut of Howdy Doody had in December 1947 in that the 1979 Daytona 500 was run when a snowstorm had many on the East Coast looking at their television sets for ANY form of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon in February. Throw in a last lap fracas on the track, a fistfight off the track and suddenly people who had probably never really watched an automobile race featuring stock cars were saying to themselves, 'Gee, that was pretty neat and exciting!'

Ah, but Indianapolis was still supreme, the epicenter of American racing. Then a serious of poor management decisions, unnecessarily cruel remarks, inflated egos, and an appetite for geese that laid golden eggs landed American open-wheeled racing in the malaise from which it has yet to recover - the Indy Racing League and - I hope this is correct - Champ Car World Series both playing to generally less than full houses. Ironically, only the other Americans - the neighbors to the north and south in Canada and Mexico - seem to appreciate the series formerly known as CART and the IRL is now struggling to even pack 'em into the Speedway. As David Phillips of Racer put it so well, it is like "two bald guys arguing over a comb."

So, what was all this rambling about?

Nothing. I am just wondering why I bother, that's all....

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