With talk of a possible return of Formula 1 to Long Beach here’s a view of the original city circuit where the F1 cars ran from 1976 to 1983 in what was known as the United States Grand Prix West.
This video shows the Tyrrell of Patrick Depailler who would finish third in the 1978 race and win at Monaco a month later, in a time when on-board cameras were still a realm of science fiction.
This footage was filmed with a cine camera bolted onto the roll bar of the Tyrell 008 when the team was still a front runner in F1.
At the time the Ground Effects Era was in full swing. The cars were very fast and also a hand full to drive well. On this true street circuit, you went from concrete to asphalt and back, across bumps, with the cars getting airborne once a lap at the end of the Ocean straight on the turn down the hill which takes us through a series of fast sweeping turns which brought you back up to Ocean again and then a sharp right hander onto what was then a very long back straight.
The grand prix weekend in Long Beach turned a sleepy, somewhat seedy Navy town south of Los Angeles into an exciting city to live and work in and all because of the race. Unfortunately, ‘progress’ robbed the race of the challenging and exciting elements of elevation change and speed.
The pits were located on Ocean Ave. which at that time was best known for porno movie houses and bars. When real estate development forced the race down off of sea front, it became more and more of a contrived course.
Depailler was a well respected and popular driver of the era, but never really got the best cars during his career at the top. Formula 1 was a very dangerous sport back then and the Frenchman died during a private test at Hockenheim driving for for Alfa Romeo in 1980.
Read the full story at GRAND PRIX 247
No comments:
Post a Comment