Rory's Rambling
An Occasional Column from the Antipodes	by Rory Gordon, Australia

How long has racing been around? Well, ask many F1 fans today and they would say since 1950, because that's when the modern era of F1 started. But NASCAR started before the modern F1 series did, with their first series in 1949 (Shock! Horror!). The beginning of CART, IndyCar, Indy Car, ChampCar, or whatever it's called today, is somewhat nebulous, but can be pretty well traced back to 1955, which means that I am almost older than that series! The picture that starts to come out from those dates is that there was no racing before World War II ... and most of us would know that that just isn't so. There was F1 before then and, besides which, there were many other forms of racing around. So maybe racing goes back a little further than that. I'm not talking about street racing where two cars line up at the traffic lights, sit there gunning their engines, and then try and out-drag each other as the lights turn green. No, I'm talking about organised racing, with safety crews, grandstands, officials, drivers and the whole thing. I don't know about your part of the world but, broadly speaking, I tend to spend Easter in an English-speaking part of the world. If you were with me at that time of the year (any year) and we cranked up the TV, I think it would be a pretty safe bet that we'd get to watch pretty well the same movies, wherever we were. Mostly, they're Hollywood blockbusting biblical epics on a grand scale like "King of Kings", "The Ten Commandments", "Barabbas" and my favourite, "Ben Hur". The thing about "Ben Hur" that seems to remembered is the - epic in its own right - chariot race. It's got it all: there's drama, excitement, romance, thrills and spills, blood and guts, murder and mayhem. Yes, that chariot race is a blockbusting movie in its own right. [Actually, it's a strange thing. Whenever I see "Ben Hur" in the TV guide, my mind always seems to register sub-consciously that the whole thing goes for something like 4 hours, which seems fair enough, as there is so much that happens. But what always amazes me every time is that the chariot race seems to be right at the end of the movie, when it is actually somewhere around the middle, I believe. But I'm a racing fan, so I wait for the podium presentation and then move on to other things.] But take a look at the race, and the movie up to then, from a slightly different perspective and a different timezone, and you may well find that it suddenly has a very familiar ring to it ... apart from being very familiar with the story of "Ben Hur" (because you've seen it so many times!). "Ben Hur" is the story of a man born into a rich family, who grows up with a silver spoon in his mouth. Due to an unfortunate accident, he is sent off to hard labour for the rest of his life. His luck changes and he is befriended by one of the big bosses. Ben Hur then saves the life of this big boss, who adopts Ben Hur, sponsors him and introduces him to all the right people in society. Returning to his home country, Ben Hur meets someone who is about to enter a race. Ben Hur eventually agrees to race for him, and there he is racing against the very person who sent him off to the hard labour all those years ago. The baddie uses nefarious tactics in the race, gets his just rewards, Ben Hur wins the race, and they all live happily ever after. Okay, I'll admit, that's just a tad on the simplistic side! But you get the idea. Now jump the whole forward about 2000 years. Young guy, rich family. Has a few scrapes with the law, but then - perhaps through his family, perhaps personally - gets a few sponsors who enable him to go racing, and climb all the way to the top. Sound like any F1 drivers you can think of? The fact that he just happens to be a good driver as well just adds to it all. Then have a look back at the great chariot race itself. Actually, go back to well before the race to when Ben Hur sees the team for the first time. What are they doing? Testing. Then they make some changes to the set-up and test some more. And they have a test driver who soon gets promoted to the race team. Once they actually get to the circuit, what do we find there? There's garages with the crews working on the racers, doing last minute alterations and checks. The racers then go out of the garages, onto the pit road before going onto the circuit for a parade lap. Once the race actually starts, there's a lap counter so that we all know how many laps have gone. And then there are the marshalls and flaggies and first aid crews and recovery people and safety crews and officials and the "beautiful people" in the corporate boxes ... the whole thing. The whole chariot race in "Ben Hur" sounds almost like the GP we all saw the other day. (Except that I think there may have been just a little more passing in the few laps of the chariot race than there were in the GP, but that would spoil a good argument to mention that....) So, how long has racing been around? Basically, as long as man - if we are to believe Hollywood's version of history. What do you think? Has organised racing been around longer than Ben Hur? I think so. But that's just me.

Rory Gordon	© 1998 Atlas Formula One Journal.
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