Upgrades… replacements… restoration. Are racing cars ever really original?

There are many obstacles to preserving truly historic racing cars. The somewhat depressing list of these surely begins with a simple question: define what really constitutes ‘a car’, especially in the unusual case of a pure-bred racing car? And why do the realists amongst us ask such a question?

It’s due to the fleetingly transient life of the fully assembled racing car we see hurtling around the circuits. That ‘car’ whose performance we might admire and enjoy comprises an engine, these days a power pack, a transmission system, chassis, suspension, bodywork, wings, flips, foils and floor – plus a bewildering cargo of sensors, cabling, microchips, processors, telemetry transmitters and receivers… and more.

The point is that as an overall assembly that ‘car’ in the form we see it might only really exist for an hour or two – just as ephemeral as a mayfly. Come a break between practice and qualifying sessions, or in final race preparation mindful of parc fermé conditions, various components of that ‘car’ will change.

Now this has been the way of top-line motor sport for decades. But the pace of development, and the rate of component-swapping, almost literally ran riot in recent years. Now the top teams, at least in Formula 1, labour under the FIA’s (albeit agreed) imposition of a sliding-scale cost cap, each organisation’s authorised expenditure diminishing year by year to enhance the competitive chances of the downfield teams – in theory levelling the playing field.

But in one particular respect this levelling process also threatens the long-term preservation and survival of some quite significant historic racing cars. For 2021 the new cost cap level in F1 was fixed at $145m. That figure remains quite eye-watering when compared to the £10,000 which sustained the three-car Cooper Car Co team during its F1 World Championship-winning season of 1959, but hey – times change. Get real. For 2022 the cap was cut to $140m, and for ’23-’25 to $135m, albeit from c.$430m for the cream.

Top teams building as many as six or seven F1 cars per season were constrained to building just three or four. Any seriously car-damaging incident risks a team’s capabilities to race. The cost cap is now mind-concentrating at every level.

“Clark’s Lotus 38 became bright, glossy, runnable… but it was no longer ‘real’”

So why express concern at how such a cap could influence preservation of truly significant historic cars from this present era? It is because these economies will see some 2024 ‘cars’ being recycled in modified form for 2025. Cut-and-shut surgery is a crude caricature of the actual process of removing, say, a monocoque chassis moulding’s front half and replacing it with a redesigned new one, but this is what threatens some of last year’s landmark racing cars.

So if such a fate should befall, say, the ‘actual’ US GP-winning Red Bull, or the ‘actual’ McLaren breakthrough Miami GP winner, or Lewis Hamilton’s dramatic British GP-winning Mercedes – it would demand extensive restorative surgery to return that machine to anything approaching its historic form.

Perhaps the most significant surviving ‘as-original’ individual racing car that I recall is Jimmy Clark’s 1965 Indy 500-winning Lotus-Ford 38. There was a one-race car of enormous historic significance which, initially at least, was taken straight into ‘promotion’ after its 500 win. Initially, it just radiated untouched glory. But the familiarity bred by years of display progressively ate into that historic artefact’s fabric. Its original, Jim Clark-touched, Team Lotus mechanics-polished paintwork dulled, shrank, cracked, and peeled. Its tinted windscreen perspex aged, and clouded. It became embrittled.

Almost inevitably it was broken by inattentive handling. I remember at one point receiving photographs of the car from a shocked enthusiast, showing its suspension radius arms having been bent by some careless impact. Both time and its curators did the poor thing few favours.

Ultimately, the Henry Ford Museum reacted, having the car most handsomely restored, while preserving just about as much of the original finish – most notably if I recall correctly on the inner cockpit skins – as they dare. The rest became bright, shiny, glossy, runnable… but it was no longer ‘real’. Preservation of the ’65 Indy winner had virtually run its course, so conservation of a restored representation of it took its place. At least the fabric of that monocoque chassis survives, under that bright fresh paint. The Mona Lisa is looking a bit shabby, oh just give it a quick respray and a fresh frame – from the early 1500s to the 2020s is a long time to survive…

But the Lotus 38’s survival was made possible by its instant removal from racing – without any compulsion for it to be recycled, updated nor modified. One or two principal personalities within F1 today are at their core lifelong enthusiasts who understand the rarity and intrinsic value of truly significant historic Grand Prix cars.

However, when a substantial saving can achieve a tenth of a second advantage around a 2025 race circuit, that’s a near overwhelming reason to chop up and recycle an obsolescent racing car… no matter the collateral loss to posterity. As Graham Hill once told us after his Lotus 49’s engine had disintegrated while leading the 1967 British GP, “Yeah – it’s a bugger innit?” It is – and sad too.