Family

Maybe its time for me to stop “racing.” I put that in quotes for a reason. I'm 76 now, and that is an age where one should really stop kidding oneself about what they were...or were not.

I have driven “at speed” on race tracks in at least six different performance oriented cars...the Siata, Quantum, Ferrari, and MG I own or owned, and Gary's Siata and Ernie's AC Bristol. While I believe I have driven well and exercised these cars in the way they were meant to be used, I never was or would be a serious contender to “win” anything in competition events, despite various awards for my performance gratefully and (I hope) modestly accepted over the decades. 

As I consider these, they really are treasured honors. I still have the sheets showing my 7^th position finish at one Wine Country and my 10^th at a Monterey Historic pinned to the shop wall. These were in an era where the cars were the stars and the awards by Steve Earle were mainly NOT for winning, though of course he politically had to acknowledge that accomplishment as well. 

“Best in Presentation and Performance” at a Wine Country, presented by Steve, and a “Group Award” at Monterey means a lot to me, as the American vintage racing world changed and does not, today, value these kinds of acknowledgments for “mere” effort as much, if at all.

I also won my class at the Ferrari Owners Club Virginia City Hillclimb as well...which in retrospect I came to realize was what I considered the scariest and most dangerous event I ever ran. In fact, at the same running where I won that award, I spun the car off into a scenic overlook, which could have ended in total disaster.

I've won other awards which recognized my commitment to the sport and continuing participation...awards for that hard to nail down term..”spirit.” One was the first recognition in honor of Martin Swig...a man who embodied what we all loved about vintage racing and hoped, rather naively, to maintain...as embodied in the cryptic title for this piece. 

For Vintage Racing (note the caps) was indeed a “family...” a largely male “brotherhood” (though shared in spirit by many women wives and lovers). So though it was a shock, receiving a “Spirit of HMSA” trophy probably cemented my growing recognition that much of what I loved about the capitalized version has faded into history. It is the award which is, to me, the highest honor.

It was always the people in the sport which attracted me in the first place. The old FOC and the migration to playing with old race cars with those fast friends created a“gathering of the tribes...” a small “city” which came together for a weekend and then was gone, until the next time.

Nowhere was that more evident than the third week in August at Laguna Seca. While the paddock always had people camping over the weekend, the accommodations were much more modest than 40 foot motorhomes and 53 foot tractor-trailers. My Lance camper was a comparatively luxurious and relatively rare standout when I bought in in 2000. 

Certain memories of those weekends are indelibly etched in my brain. Here are a few memories.

I met Phil Hill, always one of my heroes, through the Ferrari Owners Club (FOC). The first time I chatted with him was at the annual Bay Area Region picnic, hosted by Marshall Mathews at his home outside La Honda. Phil wasone of the most approachable famous figures I kenw. Bobby Rahal, Dan Gurney, Juan Manual Fangio, Carroll Shelby, Jackie Stewart, Sir Stirling Moss, and Jay Leno were all friendly enough to varying degrees, but my convesations with Brian Redman and Phil were on a much more personal and extended basis, much more than a “hello” and perhaps an autograph. It's a different thing to be chatting over a couple of burgers or sitting with Brian in Cris's motorhome. (BTW...he is one of the funniest people I ever met).

Phil was an accomplished photographer of the racing world, and had a traveling slide show for times when he was a speaker at various events.And when he came for that purpose to a FOC dinner and meeting, I met his wife Alma and his son Derek for the first, but not the last time. 

I was then the Historian for the Bay Area FOC chapter, and kept articles, event flyers, photos, and other material in the official scrapbook and club archive. I also happened to be walking into the meeting with the Hill, and Alma I chatted about a variety of things as I helped Phil carry in the screen and slides for his presentation.

I then met the Hills again at a FOC track day following one Monterey Historic. This was before I was racing the Siata so sometime around 1979. The club not only supported the MHAR, but arguably the enterprise would have failed if not for that support in the early days. 

I believe I have elsewhere charted my role as pace car driver for the club that day...an indication of trust by the event management. I had been asked to step aside for one session to allow Phil to drive Jon Masterson's 512BB/LM. I was happy to do that as long as Adin could ride along. And I sat on the pit wall with Alma and young Derek as Phil whipped the car around the tight Laguna turns at speeds up to 140 as reported by Adin, but with driving skill as smooth as silk. Alma patted my arm and said

“Don't worry about your son, Marty, Phil is a very good driver.”

“I'm not worried,” I exclaimed. “I'm envious. Why did I put him Adin in the car instead of me?”

When they came in the kid could barely stand up he was so weak in the knees, with my oversized (for him) helmet all but sideways on his head.

“Dad,” he managed...”he was hitting 140 on half the track!” Hmmm...

Brian Redman? The guy can keep you laughing so hard you have to ask him to stop for fear of not being able to breathe. I was sitting with him in Cris's motorhome when he asked if I had heard his story about the early Porsche 917 he drove (for Vasek Polac, someone whose accent and mannerisms Brian could imitate in a way which was both loving and brutal at the same time). 

A driver in the session before his had a serious incident in which he was killed...the car was truly early pending a lot of later development. Vasek came up to speak with Brian, who was crying openly. 

Polak expressed sympathy and said he was unaware that Brian was friends with the driver.

“No,” said Redman, “I didn't know him at all.”

“Then why are you crying?” asked Polak.

“Because,” cried Brian, “I have to drive one of those things next!”

I think I have also mentioned elsewhere an evening before a FOC event where a group of us were sharing some snacks, when we heard a swishing sound from the dark track. Looking around, both John Lewis Jr. and Jason were gone. Things were so casual in those days that we actually had the keys and combination to the gates to the track, but those were kept locked until the next morning.

Somehow the kids has squeezed past the locks on one of the gates and rode skateboards down the famous “Corkscrew...” the steepest drop in the shortest distance of any race track in the world. When they came in they were white as ghosts and very grateful they had sat on the boards rather than trying the stunt standing up!

The importance of and relationship to the MHAR by the FOC was clear from the fact that the featured marque for that very first Laguna Event in 1974 was...Ferrari. And as long as Steve Earle was in charge, every year ending in the numeral “4” was automatically a “Ferrari” year. 

Thus in 1984 I was sitting in our 2+2 in a line of traffic trying to get up the hill to enter the club “corral.” It was the only time the engine overheated. I had the Siata by then and had started in to the rebuild. As we sat there, Sherri asked me, with the temperature gauge crawling towards the peg, what we were bringing the next year. “A Siata on a trailer.” I replied.

There was an announcement that this was the largest gathering of Ferraris in history. We did get to do some “parade” laps during a lunch brake. It was a 600 car traffic jam...the slowest laps I have ever done at Laguna, including bringing meals to corner workers at an FOC track day!

Once I started participating in Vintage Racing my “family” expanded from but still coalesced around the FOC folks. But most of the racers had the same, relaxed outlook. Al Moss, for example, the founder of Moss Motors, still one of the largest suppliers of British sports car parts, became part of the “little car” race grid...the 1947-55 Sports Racers under 1500cc, with the famous ex-von Nueman MG TD special. Al, like the rest of us, was interested in “playing with old race cars” rather than winning. Long before the car was sold and “upgraded” to a speed capability it likely never had when racing for real, I actually passed Al going uphill between turns 6 and 7 in my first MHAR event in 1986!

Monterey was not a low tension club weekend. With 50 or 60,000 spectators there was a lot of pressure to do well for both driver and car. I did, of course, enjoy the “15 minutes of fame” and, as the event grew over the years, the perks and displays. But I often said that it was a “great event” rather than “great racing.” 

In fact, in many ways the most enjoyable part of the weekend, at least when things had gone well for me and the car, was the “Awards Ceremony” up in the old amphitheater above turn 1. 

It was truly a “family celebration,” with champagne labeled specially for the event and, often, “Crazy” Kenny Epsman circulating with margaritas mixed in a blender powered by a two stroke motor from some lobotomized weed whacker and poured into tit from a five gallon fuel jug labeled with a Union 76 logo (“Don't worry,” Ken promised, “I cleaned it out first.” Yeah, right? Sure didn't look it!). 

Though Steve later got the story incorrect, it was the aforementioned Al Moss and Ernie who spontaneously cooked up what became known as “The Great Monterey Hat Swap.” And that too dated from 1984. It came about like this...

It was, as noted, a “Ferrari” year. Ernie owned many over his life, including some quite famous cars such as the first 3 liter V12 car, which won The Millie Miglia in 1952, and the 250SWB which won its class at LeMans in 1961. But Ernie did not worship “The Prancing Pony,” though he loved the cars. They were toys and tools, and certainly not status symbols for him. To put it mildly, he was not an open-shirt-hair-chested-gold chain kind of guy.

Soo...one of Steve Earle's guests at the Monterey event was the head of Ferrari at the time...perhaps it was Piero Ferrari? Don't recall, but at any event a very well dressed suit. Ernie decided to poke some gentle fun at the “gold chain crowd” and bought enough galvanized links at a hardware store to make a necklace, which he painted a golden color. Maybe I had one as well? 

At any rate, he was sitting at a bench in the amphitheater at the awards ceremony in his typical outfit of blue jean overalls, suspenders, blue chambray colored shirt, and brown bush hat...ornamented by that outrageous oversized hunk of galvanized metal. 

And then...Al Moss won an award. As Al threaded his way down the amphitheater steps and passed Ernie he grabbed the fedora off Ernie's head and, when he accepted the award from Steve he swiped the cap off Mr. Earle's balding pate, plopped it on his, and plunked Ernie's bush hat on Steve.

And then the game began. Every award after that was accompanied by a shout of “Hat!” from the crowd. By the end of the awards no one who got one had the hat they started with.

In subsequent years of course it got more outrageous and sillier...there were women's Easter bonnets of course! Everyone took it with good humor (and no one returned the hats to the original owners), until one Carroll Shelby was the honored guest. And a good friend of mine (can't admit to any names on this one) got an award...as well as Shel's chapeaux complete with BRDC patch (British Racing Driver's Club)...a high honor award.

Seems Ol” Shel thought he would get the hat back at the end of the day. And my friend was ready to return it...until the rest of us stepped in and said “Uh, uh...absolutely not! You play here you play by our rules.” To this day I am sure I know where that hat is, and The BRDC gave Shel a new patch so in the end we really didn't rob him of the award.

If family centered on the MHAR, then to me the MHAR centered on the celebration in the amphitheater. It was torn down to make way for a new “Media Center” a couple of years before Steve was replaced in what certainly appeared to be an insensitive manner. The rewards celebration was moved to the top deck of the new center...and it was a cold and formal place. Though I don't recall if there were side aisles I do recall a center aisle with rows of folding chairs on each side. In front was some sort of presentation area.

There was no raised stage. An amphitheater, as the Ancient Greeks knew, made for ideal viewing as each succeeding row was elevated above the one in front of it (a design used to this day in every movie house and auditorium). All the chairs on the center roof were, of course, on the same level. As you went further back you were more and more divorced from the people and the activities at the front, and increasingly felt like an audience rather than a participant.

At any rate, the end of the MHAR and the “Reunion” which replaced it marked the beginning of, though certainly did not cause, the gradual demise of much of my feeling of a vintage “racing“ family.”And while there certainly still can be found pockets of closeness between various smaller “centers” of friendship and camaraderie in the sport, as with much else in the world; 

“things change....” and not always for the best.