by Steve Holmes » Wed Jul 25, 2012 12:01 am
Wow, that footage is just awesome! Especially the 1969 race. I knew Japan was big into Group 7 sports car racing, but those grids from both years exceeded 30 cars! I actually built a scale model of one of those 1968 Nissans. The rear wings on those cars were made up of two flippers, connected by a rod in the middle and attached to the rear hubs, and each flipper would act independently of the other, depending on what the rear suspension was doing. You can see them working in that footage. Really nice looking cars. I assume as the rear wings were gone in 1969 they'd been outlawed by the FIA who banned suspension mounted wings after several failures in F1.
Interestingly, Shelby and Penske sent their McLaren M6B Can-Am cars to Japan in late 1968 to race, with Peter Revson and Mark Donohue driving. They were much faster than the local machines, as you'd expect, and their teams had organised for them to put on a high speed demonstration at the front to add more interest. Revson won the race after Donohue began having fuel pick-up problems.
Wow, that footage is just awesome! Especially the 1969 race. I knew Japan was big into Group 7 sports car racing, but those grids from both years exceeded 30 cars! I actually built a scale model of one of those 1968 Nissans. The rear wings on those cars were made up of two flippers, connected by a rod in the middle and attached to the rear hubs, and each flipper would act independently of the other, depending on what the rear suspension was doing. You can see them working in that footage. Really nice looking cars. I assume as the rear wings were gone in 1969 they'd been outlawed by the FIA who banned suspension mounted wings after several failures in F1.
Interestingly, Shelby and Penske sent their McLaren M6B Can-Am cars to Japan in late 1968 to race, with Peter Revson and Mark Donohue driving. They were much faster than the local machines, as you'd expect, and their teams had organised for them to put on a high speed demonstration at the front to add more interest. Revson won the race after Donohue began having fuel pick-up problems.