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Big Four of Grand Prix Lead the Charge at Palm Springs

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Times Staff Writer

They are four horsemen of the epochal years of grand prix motor racing in Europe.

Stirling Moss--virtuoso. Innes Ireland--rascal. Phil Hill--deceptive introvert. Dan Gurney--the dangerous grin.

They hold a synonymity with other name quartets of autosport in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Ferrari, Lotus, Jaguar and Mercedes. Le Mans, Monaco, Silverstone and the Nurburg ring. At all of these grande epreuve circuits, in any of those cars, Moss and Ireland of Great Britain and Hill and Gurney of the United States paced or chased each other for almost a dozen seasons.

They broke machines and their bones and marriages. They were called gods and matadors and gladiators addicted to adrenaline. They certainly drank their weight in Moet, shared a fraternalism that commonly rejected other drivers, mourned heavily and angrily for Hawthorne, Clark, Rindt, Collins, Trips and a dozen other young friends--while the public shook its head and whispered what was considered foregone: “If they live long enough . . . .” But they did live. Real legends will.

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And they came here last week as grand past masters of the relatively new ceremony of vintage car racing; visiting lairds at a thundering two-day reappearance of their Brigadoon.

They raced through city streets. Just the way it used to be. They slipped in and out of cars that they had campaigned in 20 or more years ago. Formula One Ferraris and Lotuses in Italian red and British Racing Green because in yesteryears, wearing national colors, not John Player logos, was the dignified, nationalistic norm. Moss stroked a C-Type Jaguar--all streamlines and faired cockpit and a little Union Jack in case anybody forgot--that once was the fastest sports car on four patches of rubber down the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.

They were slower than their primes, of course. A little creakier perhaps. So were the cars.

But no matter. Nor that this event (a first timer sponsored by the City of Palm Springs and its Chamber of Commerce and organized by the Vintage Auto Racing Assn.) was heavily cultivated and wisely constricted as a concession to community comfort and safety, ergo the future of the sport.

The course (a rectangular, six-block zip from Andreas Road to El Segundo, right to Amado and past the Deauville Fountain condos, etc.) really wasn’t long enough to tire a beginning jogger towing his dog. Concrete berms and hay bales and monster plastic drums (the pear juice concentrate replaced by 55 gallons of water) created chicanes and a hairpin (more of a bent paper clip, actually) that kept entertainment to a maximum and aggression to a minimum.

“A Mickey Mouse circuit,” Moss said. Ever the forthright English gentleman, never the fawning diplomat. “But fun . . . ideal for a high-speed semi-race.”

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No race ran longer than 15 laps. That was 10 miles. No shunt of less than a dozen bumps among more than 100 elderly cars produced much worse than a bent nose. Of car or driver.

All of which fell well within the structure and strictions of vintage car racing. Its majority preference is to run quickly and well, not brute fast and hairy. Speed is not the essential. Yesterday is. The sounds and sights and smells. The camaraderie. The characters:

Forced Retirement

Stirling Moss. There have been only two descriptions of this Englishman. He either was the greatest driver of all time, or was destined to become the greatest driver of all time. A barely survivable accident (his own pat description: “I was unconscious for one month, paralyzed for six.”) in 1962 forced retirement before the world knew for sure about his greatness. But before the end, Moss had won the GP races of Britain, Italy, New Zealand, Monaco, Australia, Sweden, Holland, Argentina, South Africa, Austria. . . . Well, there were 494 entries and 222 victories, enough for immortality.

Now a successful London businessman and author, Moss, 56, continues to run cars and events he considers fun. Such as a Porsche in the recent Playboy Series of U.S. endurance races.

Innes Ireland. Despite the surname, he’s a Scot who takes life much less seriously than his ladies and Glenfiddich malt whiskey. Ireland approaches driving the way most people run from a bull. Flat out, wherever there’s a space, arms flailing, and escaping over the wall in the nick of time. And with yet another wonderful, hilarious anecdote in place.

Crash in the Tunnel

He drove for the Lotus works team, won the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in 1961, had beaten Moss twice the previous year, placed fourth in the World Drivers Championship. His favorite yarn is of crashing a Lotus in the tunnel at Monte Carlo.

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“I hit the wrong gear, everything froze as the car disintegrated and I went forward still strapped in the seat,” he relates. With total relish. “I was the only driver ever to come out of the tunnel ahead of his car.” Then the rasping laugh. “Your round, old boy.”

Ireland (“I’m nine months younger than old Stirling”) lives in rural England, co-drove with Moss in the Playboy Series and is a writer for Road & Track magazine.

Phil Hill. Shy, introspective, a loner, according to an encyclopedia of auto racing greats. But a winner. As a team driver for Ferrari, he won everything from Le Mans to Venezuela and in 1961 became the first American to take the World Drivers Championship.

Hill, whose expertise also has translated to a career in automotive writing, lives in Santa Monica. He is 58 and the proprietor of a successful antique and classic car restoration business.

Blond as a Surfer

Dan Gurney. Built like a long board, blond as a surfer, pure Southern California beacher by easy lope and manner and dress and grin, Gurney still sees every other driver as a rogue wave: The only safe thing is to keep them back of you. An intense combination of blind faith and absolute aggression earned Gurney his place as one of the greatest American drivers of all time with worldwide victories in Grand Prix, sports car, endurance, stock car, Indy car, Can-Am and sedan racing.

In 1967, in a V-12 Eagle of his own design and construction, Gurney won the Belgian Grand Prix. His was the first American car to win a GP in 46 years.

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He is 54, still lives in Santa Ana, builds Indianapolis race cars and in celebrity and vintage racing events continues to follow his creed: “I’m comin’ through.”

Their names topped the weekend. A public festival for 25,000 became their personal reunion. And for the first time since 1961 and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Hill won that one in a Ferrari. Gurney, his teammate, was second. Ireland had the stronger Lotus but Moss was closer to challenging Hill for the world driving championship. So Ireland gave Moss his car. It didn’t matter. Both Lotuses broke. In those years, such gallantry was routine.

Dinner Jacket and Tails

“But what we knew then no longer exists today,” Ireland said. “There’s none of the wonderful, post-race receptions, the celebrations at Reims. . . . Good Lord, in the old days (driver) Rene Dreyfus wouldn’t dream of going away to a motor race without taking a dinner jacket and tails.

“Today it’s jeans and a sweat shirt and minutes later (following a race) the drivers are off to their islands in their Lear jets.”

Ireland misses his past. He decries the invasion of motor racing by big business. He says it removes opportunities for the little guy and leaves no place for the sport’s gentlemanly flair.

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“I think the truth of the matter can be seen when the man in the street is so fond of genuine racing that he comes to things like this and he wants to read stories about the 1961 races and he wants to see people like me drive.

“That’s bloody warming.”

For Moss, the past is just that. It’s over. No more the critiques of his 1962 accident. No regrets. Well, almost none.

Mind Hadn’t Healed

If he could do it over, he said, he would have waited another six months before driving a race car again. He waited a year after the accident as it was. When he did go out, it was on an empty track in a private session with only himself to face. But, he believes, his mind hadn’t healed in time.

“My concentration was gone,” he recalled. “Oh, I was still going very quickly. But it was too much of an effort. I had to think too hard about it. I couldn’t work the car automatically.”

So he retired from racing. “The frustration was in the next five years, watching guys win and knowing that I could have beaten them.” Now? “Now I can watch people like (Niki) Lauda and know I couldn’t do it anymore.”

And now there are his businesses and wife Susan and their son and a full calendar of light racing. Dubai. Birmingham. Macau. Palm Springs. Modern and vintage. It supplies, he says, quite enough of yesterday.

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Hill said he was a little confused by the weekend. It had something to do with the mix of cars and contestants. Some seemed terribly serious. Others would obviously be running on sheer nostalgia. What kind of competition could there be, he asked, without total involvement?

“I don’t really understand it,” he said.

The Test of Self

Gurney knew exactly what he was getting from an event where elderly cars and even older drivers revived the way they were. Stirred memories. Solid fun. Plus, he explained, a realization that there remains an element within today’s society that still responds to dictates of the healthy human spirit. Competition. A little risk. A small test of self.

Then there were the cars. Like the one Gurney would drive in Sunday’s loose re-creation of a Formula One race for all the former Formula One racers. It hadn’t moved since 1968. It was the old V-12 Eagle that carried him to victory at Spa.

“And I just walked in here this morning and saw a Ferrari that raced against this one at Nurburgring. Wow. Did you see that other Eagle? Omigosh. And will you look at all these other cars.

“I remember the time Stirling--who was regarded by his peers as number one--and I shared a Birdcage Maserati at Sebring. It broke on us. It had been broken down 20 minutes and we were still leading. That’s how far ahead we’d been.”

Saved by Bourbon

So many stories. Indianapolis 500 veteran Rodger Ward told how he had once taken his old dirt-track car to a road race and managed to blow the doors off all the European drivers. Jay Chamberlain of Tucson, a former Lotus factory driver, remembered a crash at Le Mans and the drunk who lifted him off the track. “I’ll never forget that man’s name,” Chamberlain said. “Martin Bourbon.”

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And Phil Hill remembered how nobody else seemed to remember things quite the same the way Innes Ireland remembered them.

One man and one idea brought it all about.

“It was Thanksgiving a year ago,” said Art Evans of Palm Springs and Los Angeles. He’s 51, an owner of vintage race cars, member of its association and an early retiree from a vice presidency at Paramount. “I was sitting around with John Von Neuman and Vasek Polak talking about the ‘50s when we all raced sports cars at Palm Springs Airport.

“We wondered what it would be like if we could stage a reunion of all the cars and most of the drivers who had driven at Palm Springs in those days. Obviously I’d had too much wine because I staggered home and called the mayor. . . . “

Getting It Rolling

Evans contacted longtime friend Moss in London. Moss committed Ireland. British Airways agreed to fly both to Los Angeles. The event was on. And not just for former European greats but for any California driver old enough to be part of that era. Or young enough to be sorry they’d missed it.

They brought every class of car. Production. Modified. Sports racing. Formula. Bugeye Sprites to lusty old Corvettes. Elvas and Lotus 7s through 23. A Talbot-Lago of the ‘40s once driven by Juan Fangio. Slowpokes of the ‘20s and ‘30s. Frighteningly fast McClaren and Porsche Can-Am cars of the ‘70s.

Yet so much of the moment belonged again to Moss, Hill, Gurney and Ireland. And what a glimpse. Moss wore the same Dunlop racing suit and billed helmet (from a gentleman’s outfitter on Old Bond Street) that he’s used since 1954. Gurney drove in his black Bell helmet, the one he favors in acknowledged deference to a childhood fantasy of mortal combat among black knights.

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Ireland’s headgear was precisely of old. A black-and-white checkered band around his helmet. A checkered cloth cap for the pits and press conferences he manipulated into delightful group reminiscences.

Sunday’s Formula One race, of course, was not a race.

No driver wanted to ding another man’s museum piece.

‘A Lot of Promises’

“This is an exhibition,” Evans warned a final drivers’ meeting. “We’ve made a lot of promises to a lot of car owners.”

Moss endorsed the caution: “We make it look like a reasonable race by passing and repassing. Phil and I will be out in front. We’ll point and use slight nods. We don’t want anyone charging out front.”

They didn’t. But then nobody seemed to obey the pass-and-repass-but-don’t-anyone-tell-the-crowd edict either.

A little red Cooper that obviously could broke through the pack. Ronnie Bucknam, now of Grover City, a versatile veteran of Indianapolis and European racing, had decided to have a discreet go. His 1959 Cooper passed Moss.

George Follmer, another old soldier of sports car and oval racing, brought his late-model Tyrell-Ford to the fore. Gurney and his Eagle wriggled from the rear and once more served notice that they were comin’ through.

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Bondurant Has a Go

And Bob Bondurant, ex-Formula One Ferrari driver, now operator of a performance driving school at Monterey, charged past everyone to nail the lead and the victory on the last lap.

“I just couldn’t let an old Cooper beat an old Ferrari so I had a go,” smiled Bondurant. “After all, this car hasn’t ever won a race. It was about due.”

Ireland and his Lotus were among the losing legends.

“I don’t know about this not racing,” he growled. “I was busting my butt just to stay in last place.” Moss was buried among the also rans.

“I let everybody go, seven or eight cars, just as we’d agreed, thinking we’d go back and forth,” he said. “Then nobody would let me pass ‘em again.”

Gurney, despite fuel problems, finished fourth.

“I was about ready to pass Follmer but I just couldn’t light it,” he reported. “But I could feel a little bit of the car. I got the tail out a couple of times and it felt real good.” Good enough to remember when? “Doggone right.” Then the big laugh.

Hill said he did what he could with the suds left in his old car.

“I kept waiting for someone to wave and say: ‘After you, Alphonse.’ Nobody did. I enjoyed it immensely. But I really did not understand what the heck it was all about.”

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