04/06/2016
FEATURE BY GUEST AUTHORS
Every once and awhile, there is a perfect alignment of people and places and the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix - 50 years ago this week - was one of those times and places that witnessed an exquisite confluence of events for our sport.
To begin with the "formula" that gives its name to Formula One racing, the 1966 Season marked the transition from the nimble but anemic 1.5-litre formula to the more robust 3-litre formula. Since Monaco was in those days the first race on the calendar, on May 22, 1966, we began to see the magnificent variety of engines we would be thrilled to have on the grid these days that would be produced as the Season wore on, from V-8s and V-12s developed by traditional marques like Ferrari and Maserati, to novel stock block configurations such as the Repco V8 built up from an Oldsmobile block by Brabham, to the fantastically complex BRM H16, to the elegant-looking Gurney-Westlake V12 which appeared mid-Season at Monza (replacing the 4-cylinder Climax engine Dan Gurney's Eagle started off with at Monaco), as did Honda's V12. The best name for an engine was the Serenissima, a 4-cam, 16 valve engine V8 that appeared here and there in a soon-to-be-famous marque along with the uprated Climax engine that was the workhorse during the 1.5-litre era now passing into history.
The 1966 Monaco Grand Prix was also McLaren's very first race as a constructor named "Bruce McLaren Motor Racing," with Bruce himself at the wheel of the McLaren M2B built up around a Mallite composite material of aluminum/wood/aluminum, and a changing set of engines bolted onto the monocoque behind Bruce: sometimes it was an Indy 500-derived 3.0-lite Ford V8 that had won the 1965 Indy 500 in Jim Clark's Lotus Ford as a 4.2-litre engine, and sometimes the very interesting and mellifluous-sounding Serenissima V8, supplied to Bruce by Count Volpi. At Monaco, Bruce had the powerful Ford engine with sufficient grunt for the twisty streets of Monte Carlo, but the heavy Detroit iron did not suit Monaco and Bruce qualified 10th, nearly 3 seconds off pole.
The McLaren M2B was not only one of the 16 cars on the grid for the race; as an additional earner, the resourceful Bruce had also signed his McLaren up as a movie star, as the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix was the site of the most spectacular bit of filming of our sport ever: the shooting of the 1966 movie "Grand Prix", with Director John Frankenheimer using the same streets and race weekend as did the real racers - and in Bruce Mclaren's case, the same car - to film his masterpiece.
In the film, the McLaren M2B was used to represent the fictional Japanese-based "Yamura" team, with a mocked-up McLaren being driven by American actor James Garner.
Because Bruce kept switching engines throughout the season as between the Ford and Serenissima, it played havoc with the film-making since the two engines had completely different configurations as to exhausts and different engine cowlings were required that were noticeably different. Of course the real Formula One had a Japanese team amongst its constructors - Honda had begun its first year in F1 in the 1964 Season - but its 1966 car would not be ready until Monza so the Yamura it was that was at Monaco and appeared throughout the film.
About the only thing that went seriously wrong that day in Monaco was that the reigning 1965 World Champion Jim Clark - who had notoriously bad luck at Monaco and never won the race - had qualified on pole in his Lotus Climax V8, but had troubles engaging first gear at the start and in the film you can see Clark unusually trailing the grid in 16th place as lap 1 unfolded, eventually retiring with a broken left rear suspension on lap 60.
In "Grand Prix" the movie, the script cannily called for Ferrari to win the race - in real life, Jackie Stewart in his BRM 261 2.0-litre V8 won the race ahead of Lorenzo Bandini's Ferrari - and the script was set up that way for good reason. The red Ferrari 312 of John Surtees leading Stewart's dark green BRM down the waterfront not only made for colorful footage of the movie's opening scenes; the Director had other motives.
John Frankenheimer needed the cooperation of Enzo Ferrari in order to make the film but the old codger was typically being elusive and noncommittal as of the Monaco race weekend. Once the filming of the Monaco sequences were in the 'can', Frankenheimer and his film crew sped off to Maranello with the rushes of the raw footage from Monaco, bringing a film projector with them, to show the skeptical Commendatore what Frankenheimer had in mind for the film.
Enzo, then 68 years old, relented when he saw the luscious Monaco footage, and threw open the doors of the Inner Sanctum - the Ferrari Factory - to Frankenheimer, who capitalized upon the access granted him. One of the most fascinating scenes in the movie is in the Ferrari works amidst the actual 1966 Ferrari sports cars and various Ferrari open-wheel chassis of that era, with James Garner touring the factory and negotiating his driver's contract next to the chassis of an F1 Ferrari with a thinly-disguised Enzo Ferrari, played so well by Adolfo Celi, the same actor who played the villain in the James Bond film "Thunderball" a year before the making of "Grand Prix".
At the end of the day of the actual 1966 Monaco Grand Prix, it turned out to be somewhat less spectacular than the "Grand Prix" footage of the fictional race, with only four cars running at the end and not one of them a 3-litre engine!
But oh what a historic day was May 22, 1966 nonetheless, with a brand new McLaren on the track beginning its own now-storied history and Frankenheimer's Panavision cameras whirring from Helicopters and strapped onto camera cars in the place that Riviera habitue Somerset Maugham called "a sunny place for shady people." May the sun and shade continue for another 50 years.
Tom O'Keefe, a long-time contributor to Autosport.com, appeared as a historian on the re-mastered 2-disc DVD of "Grand Prix" and is writing a sequel to the film to be called "Team Orders".
Picture credit: Many thanks to Brian Watson, whose superb pictures from the 1966 race, and many others, can be found - and bought - here.