In the late 80's the youth of Ireland had a narrow escape when Stephen Davison gave up his plans to become a school teacher. "I would have been a crap school teacher- I was only interested in the steady money and the long holidays." he says. Instead, he bought a camera.
His photography was coupled with a lifelong passion for road racing that has allowed Davison to travel the world (albeit in the steerage quarters)capturing some of the most spectacular bike racing action images.
His work is reproduced in all of the best known motorcycle magazines including MCN where he has been described as 'the world's Number One
road racing lensman.'
Davison's images have been reproduced in six best selling books:Joey Dunlop, King of the Roads, Beautiful Danger,
Ragged Edge, Hard Roads, Robert Dunlop; The Life and Times of a Legend and Flying Finn.
When he is not lying in a hedge somewhere he can be found covering events in Northern Ireland for his agency Pacemaker
Press International-
The Canadian-American challenge was a spectacular formula. Running from 1966 until the oil crisis of '74 scuppered the fun, there were no limits on engine size, aerodynamics or aspiration.
Along with Group B rally, which came along a decade after its demise, Can-Am was in other words as close as motor sports ever came to Extreme Fighting.
Think of it and images are conjured of brightly coloured spiders, huge power-to weight ratios and the brutal grapplings of man and machine. Can Am also saw the first wave of wind tunnel tested tech that started to turn beautiful racing cars into mutant brutes.
But amongst the no-nonsense, torsional engineering of Can Am came the gorgeous Ferrari 350 – which was basically a 330 P4 upgraded at Maranello to compete in the series.
Though the low front end of the smoothly-flowing spider body recalls the Lolas and Mclarens that dominated the series, it retained the spectacularly pretty bone structure of the original p4.
Chris Amon, according to sources, scored the car's best result of 1967 at the Laguna Seca debut when he finished fifth. But despite the lack of podium glory, would not have felt honoured to pilot one of these?
The eye candy above came via those fine folks at RM Auctions May it carry you through the weekend.
Every manufacturer of performance cars is obsessed with power-weight ratio. You don't have to be a physics professor to realize why. If you take away the adornments of luxury and concentrate all efforts on optimizing performance you’ll give yourself every chance of producing a truly dynamic vehicle that stays ahead of the pack.
Just look at the popularity of relatively affordable pocket rockets like the Ariel Atom and the KTM Xbow – which produce power-weight ratios that are staggering and match the performance of hyper-cars that retail at six figures. The thing is, however, about these high-revving flyers that while they are extremely quick – they don’t exactly tick all the aesthetic boxes.
But whilst planning a trip to Porsche's Museum at Stuttgart, we came across an early superstar in lightweight sports car engineering that manages to retain it’s svelte beauty in the face of all the imperatives of desired speed. When form follows function closely, you often get a beautiful product. The 909 Bergspyder is certainly beautiful to behold.
The car was conceived in 1968 by Porsche to become the dominant force in hill climbing. The roots-and-culture time trial form retains a simple and classic appeal – and cars like the 909, with its low kerb weight, high power output and low centre of gravity, have a natural advantage.
Tipping the scales at a measly 380 kilograms, the 909 packed an 8-cylinder boxer engine that produced close to 300 horsepower. The engine was almost exactly centred and the cockpit hovered over the front axle and the frame was made from lightweight aluminium. The shell meanwhile was formed from a plastic composite and the brakes and fuel tank also featured experimental lightweight design and materials.
According to experts the 909 wasn't easy to drive and in June 1968 Ludovico Scarfiotti was killed when the 909 he was driving went out of control, flew off the road, and slammed into some trees - a stuck throttle blamed as the culprit.
Plastic shells, high speeds and safety rarely mix. No matter. We love the 909 because of its sheer prettiness.
There's many that are claimed to be the greatest British driver who ever lived. It's a tough competition.
Jackie Stewart might have been the most pugnacious whilst Sir Sterling Moss might have been the most preternaturally talented. Nigel Mansell could well have been the most tenacious and workmanlike. James Hunt, on the other hand might have been the most playboy-like and fragrant. Lewis Hamilton, however, might turn out to be the most successful.
We know who was the most stylish. Jim Clark.
Superb vintage onboard footage below with the great Raymond Baxter commentating, and a fine representation of his sculpted features above.
We stumbled upon an interesting book this week that shored up a couple of intriguing stories of women making their mark in the early days of motorsport. Here's just a couple of vignettes.
The formidable Violette Morris (above) was the niece of a French General and was apparently a naturally gifted and strong athlete who excelled at sports. She was an accomplished field athlete, a boxer who regularly competed against and beat men as well as a champion cyclist. She went on to riding motorcyles and racing cars in the thirties.
In a procedure that would have any female sports star of today simultaneously wincing and admiring her unbelievable commitment, she had an elective double mastectomy so she’d be more comfortable behind the wheel. Yes. She had her breasts removed.
Another, less admirable side to Morris emerged in the 1940s, when in Nazi occupied france she apparently joined the joined the Parisian Gestapo and worked with a notorious interrogation squad. It is also documented that prior to the invasion she provided the Nazis with information of French defences.
Tasked later in the wall with defeating the British infiltrations of the Nazi regime, she was killed by the French Resistance in Normandy in 1944.
A much more palatable biography is encapsulated in the story of Hellé Nice (below) was Born Mariette Helene Delangle, moved to Paris, posing for naughty postcards and was a risqué music hall performer alongside the likes of Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker.
In 1929 she swapped the tights and tutus for driving gloves and canvas overalls. She soon won the Grand Prix Féminin and earned a sought-after Bugatti drive and the and the nickname ”The Queen of Speed".
Man has always been fascinated by speed. The desire to be the fastest has inspired tales of great heroism as well as great tragedy.
Perhaps the latter’s most poignant example was the fate that befell poor Bernd Rosemeyer as he faced off for Auto Union against Rudolf Caracciola and Mercedes Benz for the honour of being the fastest ever on a public road.
Rosemeyer was the son of a garage and repair shop owner and relatively inexperienced when he started racing for Auto Union. The seeds of rivalry with Caracciola were sown early on when, in just his second Grand Prix, Rosemeyer took the lead from Caracciola on the formidable 14-mile Nurburgring Nordschleife. He was within touching distance of the win when he missed a gear but, along with Tazio Nuvolari, became renowned as one of few who could tame the difficult Auto Unions.
He later made amends by scoring a hat-trick of Nurburgring wins. His celebrity rose when, after a win at Brno in 1935, he was introduced to the young flying ace Elly Beinhorn, who he married. She taught him how to fly and the Nazi party made full capital out of the publicity potential when Heirich Himmler made him a member of the SS – although it was doubtful whether Rosemeyer ever wore a uniform.
Rosemeyer's chiselled features were perfect for the Nazi propaganda machine
In 1937 Mercedes had enjoyed most of the glory on the track but Auto Union at least managed to salvage some pride with a number of international speed records set by Rosemeyer. Shortly though, came news that Mercedes would try to beat them on the Frankfurt-Darmstadt motorway before the Berlin Motor Show scheduled for February 17, 1938.
Auto Union felt compelled to take up the challenge, not least because the German Nazi Motorsport Guild gave permission to close the road for both companies free of charge. On that fateful morning of January 28, 1937, Caracciola went first and set a new record speed of 432kph (268mph).
To put that into perspective, Malcolm Campbell had been first to take the land speed record over 300mph with his Bluebird on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, on September 3, 1935. Just over two years later George Eyston’s Thunderbird did 312mph in Utah. That though, was on the unconfined expanse of the salt flats. There was still kudos to be had by going close to that on a public road, which was much more demanding.
The usurper of the Rosemeyer crown
Rosemeyer did not match Caracciola on his first two runs and when he began his final, fateful, attempt slightly before midday, the wind had picked up, a factor many felt was vital to what followed.
There was a fairly rudimentary understanding of aerodynamics in the thirties and whether it was a sidewind that hit Rosemeyer as he reached a clearing or unstable aerodynamics is open to debate, but the end result is that the car skidded left, then went back right, plunged off the autobahn and threw Rosemeyer out on its second somersault. He died at the roadside.
Since his 1937 records Auto Union had found another 35bhp through enlarged capacity and had fitted larger tyres on 24 inch wheels. That meant that the wheel fairings needed modifying and the car had altered ground clearance and stiffer suspension. When Rosemeyer climbed aboard that morning, the combination of engine, transmission, suspension, wheels, tyres and aerodynamic configuration was effectively untried and there were those who accused Auto Union of chasing records without proper preparation in a desperate attempt to counter the Mercedes challenge.
Rosemeyer’s death focused attention on the safety requirements of future speed attempts although he was afforded a hero’s funeral to celebrate a life given up chasing excellence for the glory of Auto Union, Germany and the SS. A moving tribute was published in German newspapers bylined "Your friend, Rudolf Caracciola."
Rosemeyer was barely in his grave, however, when attention turned to more businesslike matters. Insurance cover amounted to 67,500 marks, to go to Rosemeyer’s widow Elly and the two month old Bernd Jr. Then there was another 2,756 DM to cover the cost of the funeral. Seeing as how Rosemeyer was an officer, Auto Union wanted to know, could the SS see their way to footing half the bill? Some viewed it a shameful request on the part of those who’d sent Rosemeyer out.
Today, a memorial is located at the Rosemeyer rest stop on kilometer marker 508 of the southbound Frankfurt-Heidelberg autobahn, just past the Langen/Mörfelden off-ramp.
The Christmas and New Year period means a lot of different things to many different people. But for a bunch of offroading lunatics in every automotive genre, it means a couple of weeks of hard toil, sickening adrenalin rushes and questionable ethical conundrems.
Yes, the Dakar Rally may be one of the global televisual highlights of the international motorsport calender around this time of the year, but there is an undeniable aesthetic and moral difficulty in thrashing one's fuel guzzler through pristine natural environments populated by excruciatingly poor people.
It may be, as in all things Motorsport, that there are a myriad of ways to justify the event. Each year the rally brings much needed focus and revenue to local economies; car and bike companies use the race as a testbed for endurance, fuel consumption and other technologies that will eventually trickle down to production models and thereby increase the possibility of a sustainable motoring future.
It's undeniable that these easily spinn-able justifications don't detract from the fact that untrammeled off-road, point-to-point freedom is an increasingly rare privilege of the super wealthy and the companies they run.
But each year, stone me if we don't want to go in one of those massive wheeled, über-powered trucks.
So, wether or not you believe this sort of global traveling circus is cricket or not, you can follow the action and battle with your demons via the Dakar Website.
