My Life and Times

Checkered Flag at United States Grand Prix, 2005

Think motor racing in the USA and you invariably think of ovals.

You think of NASCAR - stock car silhouettes of production models turning left a few hundred times at 200mph.

Or Indy-cars; F1 lookalikes lapping the 'Brickyard' at astonishing speeds in close company, slipstreaming in packs or slamming into concrete walls in spectacular fashion.

But you don't tend to think of Formula One.

In fact the category has a long and illustrious history in the US.

From the start of the World Championship in 1950, until 1960, the fabled Indianapolis '500' counted towards the world title. Few European teams entered, however.

To compete against the Indy 'specials' of the time was too costly, and perhaps the environment itself too alien, for the likes of Ferrari, Maserati and the other great teams of the 'fifties.

So our tale begins in the year 1959, with the first United States Grand Prix, held at Sebring, one of America's fine road courses.

That race was won by Bruce McLaren driving the revolutionary Cooper-Climax, the little machine that was then in the process of revolutionising Grand Prix car design for ever.

To emphasise the importance of the Cooper it is worth noting that veteran Maurice Trintignant finished second in a sister car, and Jack Brabham fourth in another.

The revolution had truly begun, for it had the engine behind the driver!

1960 saw the US GP at Riverside, another fine road course, with victory for Stirling Moss, before the race moved in 1961 to the circuit that was to become home to the race for the next twenty years, the legendary Watkins Glen.

'The Glen', as the circuit is commonly termed, became one of the best loved venues on the calendar.

Situated a few hours north-west of New York, the undulating course with swooping curves provided a challenge for the drivers and a delight for the spectators.

Interestingly, in 1971 the circuit was re-profiled, and became one of the first in the world to be designed using computer technology.

The parameters of contemporary Grand Prix machinery were fed into the computer to ascertain suitable curvature and situation of bends! (Incidentally, the computer calculated that cars would reach 178mph at the end of the the straight; Jackie Stewarts Tyrrell did exactly that.)

Following Innes Ireland's victory in a Lotus in 1961, the roll-call of winners at The Glen reads like a biography of World Champions; Jim Clark won in '62, then again in '66 and '67; Graham Hill scored a hat-trick in '63, '64 and '65; Jackie Stewart took '68 and '72, Jochen Rindt '69 and Emmerson Fittipaldi 1970.

The talented Frenchman Francois Cevert, a protege of Stewart at Tyrrell, took the spoils in 1971, and it was his death at The Glen in practice for the '73 race (won by Ronnie Peterson) that prompted Stewart to hang up his helmet.

1974 saw victory for wily Argentine Carlos Reutemann, and '75 for World Champion elect Niki Lauda, but 1976 saw a turning point in the history of Formula One in the United States.

With the popularity of the sport growing dramatically, due in part at least to the presence on the grid of the great Mario Andretti, America gained a second Grand Prix; The Long Beach Grand prix was born.

Long Beach lent itself perfectly to the glamour of the sport, the backdrop provided by the permanently berthed ocean liner Queen Mary, a glamourous reminder of glamourous times, standing tall and proud on the skyline, dramatic and picturesque.

And the circuit itself was tremendous, fast straights tempered with typical street circuit tight hairpins providing exciting racing.

The opening race ('76) was won by the genial Swiss Clay Regazzoni in a Ferrari (and it would be at this circuit, sadly and ironically, that he suffered the injuries that have confined him to a wheelchair ever since, just a few years later).

At The Glen, later in the season, James Hunt would take another victory in his successful quest for the title. '77 saw 'local' hero Andretti sweep all before him in his Lotus at Long Beach, with Hunt again triumphant at The Glen, while '78 witnessed Reutemann, now at Ferrari, take a US clean sweep with wins at both races.

1979 was another clean sweep year, this time the property of the mercurial Gilles Villeneuve, Canada's favourite son concluding the year with victory at The Glen, having won in California earlier in the season, while 1980, where Nelson Piquet took Long Beach, saw Alan Jones victorious at the final Watkins Glen Grand Prix.

The circuit owners could not afford to update the facilities as required, and one of the best loved tracks in the history of Grand Prix racing fell by the wayside.

To help form a picture, this is from a guidebook current in the early 1970's:

"To find out how important a race here is..... take a stroll through the spectator accomodation on the evening before the race. The Glen resembles a huge pop festival, thronged with young people, students and hippies, enjoying the last warm days of the year...."

And so to the 1980's, the decade where Formula One came into its own as a commercial sport. Money became the byword, hence F1 in the US went from the sublime of Long Beach, the season opener in '81 where Jones carried on as he left off, to the frankly ridiculous - the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

This 'circuit', actually a series of tight corners marked out by barriers and white lines in the car park (yes, honestly) of the Caesers Palace casino, ranks as arguably the most ridiculous venue to have hosted a World Championship event.

That it actually ran for two years is beyond belief. The drivers hated it, the spectators failed to show, and the 'racing' was non existent. For the record, Jones won in '81, Michele Alboreto in '82.

Long Beach '82 saw Niki Lauda, returning with McLaren after a two year absence, take the chequered flag, while the 1983 race saw one of the most unexpected performances of all time when the McLarens of John Watson and Niki Lauda, having qualified on the back two rows of the grid, came through the field to finish first and second.

Sadly, this was to be the final GP for Long Beach. (The circuit, in a modified form, was resurrected some years later for the Indy-car series.)

Joining the calendar in 1983 was the city of Detroit; Motor City. This street circuit, typically tight and slow, was a vast improvement on the Las Vegas effort, and would become the sole US GP from 1985. Alboreto, something of a US street circuit specialist, won in '83, providing Ken Tyrrell with the last victory his esteemed marque would ever attain.

The '84 Detroit race was won by Piquet, and joining it in a back-to-back US GP double came the Dallas GP. Mercifully short lived (this would be the only running), the race was won by Keke Rosberg, the canny Finn helped by an ice-cooled skull cap he had acquired in order to combat the searing heat.

Needless to say, Keke appeared somewhat bemused to be presented with the winners trophy by the actress who played the part of 'Sue-Ellen' in the popular TV series named after the host city. (And to think, now we have the King of Spain..)

Rosberg triumphed in 'Motor City' in 1985, before the US race became something of an Ayrton Senna benefit. The great Brazillian won the next three Detroit Grands Prix, before the circus abandoned the city in favour of a difficult round-the-streets affair in Phoenix, Arizona.

Here, Alain Prost spoiled Ayrton's party in 1989, with Senna claiming the 1990 and '91 events. Then, without fanfare, the United States Grand Prix was dropped from the calendar.

Falling interest was officially to blame (in fact, the latter running of the Phoenix event drew a smaller crowd than an Ostrich race run locally the same day), along with a lack of home drivers and an upsurge in profile for the 'domestic' Indy-car series.

In hindsight, perhaps a failure to settle in a permanent home, such as The Glen had provided for those earlier glorious twenty years, added to the public indifference to the fixture.

The remedy, in fact, was obvious, but it was to be the best part of a decade before a United Stated Grand Prix would once again be a part of the show.

And so the wheel turned full circle, and we found ourselves, in the year 2000, back at the hallowed ground that is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

This arena can easily justify the claim to be the most famous racing circuit in the world. For almost a whole century men have raced cars of some kind around the magnificent 'oval', testing skills untested anywhere else, facing challenges like the steep banking and the stupendously high average speeds, pushing the limits as far as one can go.

But here was something different; Formula One, in all its colourful and commercial glory, was finally coming to rest at what has to be its spiritual United States home.

The circuit itself is impressive, with a new 'infield' built inside the great circuit itself, utilising one of the wonderful banked corners to provide the longest full-throttle experience in a modern F1 car in the world today.

And the fans come too, the sport having undergone something of a resurrection in recent years, perhaps thanks to the split in the ranks that tore Indy-car racing into two separate factions a few years ago.

The first year of running produced an apt result; Michael Schumacher, current king of F1, winning in style.

2001 saw a great race, the soon to be retired Mika Hakkinen taking a deserved and popular victory, a far cry from the acrimony of the following year, where Ferrari attempts to 'stage manage' a dead heat resulted in a narrow victory for Rubens Barrichello, the whole affair leaving an unpleasant taste so soon after the farce in Austria earlier in the season.

2003 was another Schumacher benefit, as was 2004, and so to the present.

It is heartening that Formula One appears, finally, to have settled at Indianapolis, for this is where it belongs and, in fact, where it has always belonged.

The great Bill Vukovich, one of the finest 'Indy' drivers of US lore, twice winner of the '500' during the 1950's (and, therefore, two times Grand Prix winner) would surely approve of the arrival of the World Championship at his beloved stalking ground.

It was, after all, the arrival here of the Lotus and Cooper rear-engined marvels during the 1960's that proved to the Indianapolis specialists that rear-engined was the way to go, moving the trend away from the magnificent Offenhauser front-engined beasts that had henceforth dominated America's Great Race.

The final word goes to Jim Clark, Scottish sheep-farmer extraordinaire, who ventured 'across the pond' with a Lotus to take on the 'Indy' boys in 1962, and finished an impressive, some say unlucky, second. Here, he is talking with the '500' in mind, but the sentiment is the same:

"....the golden reward offered at Indianapolis, and to me Indianapolis is almost indescribable. It is one big holiday fair and motor race rolled into one, a national institution with the circuit almost a shrine. I was totally unprepared for it and, as it happened, Indianapolis was totally unprepared for me."

Woe betide those who may be unprepared now