You were there

Monaco, Targa Florio, Crystal Palace and Thruxton and that’s from one bloke! Plus Riverside F5000 and the ’50s

It wasn’t as easy as it is today to get to the further-flung corners of Europe in the 1960s, so this eclectic selection from Terence Brind of Folkestone (we’ll presume he travelled by ferry, then) was a very pleasant surprise. Our favourite is the shot below of Helmut Marko’s Alfa Romeo T33TT/3 during the 1972 Targa Florio as much for the pair of Fiat 500s and Lancia Fulvia on the grass verge as anything else. Marko, sharing with Nanni Galli, finished second, just 17sec behind the winning Ferrari 312PB of Merzario/Munari. Mr Brind doesn’t give us stories behind the pics, but we love the Gurney shot from Monaco ’68 — complete with tasteful pink wall. He obviously liked F2: James Hunt, who was driving a Hesketh-run Surtees at Thruxton in ’73, looks at the works cars of Mike Hailwood (30), Jochen Mass (32) and Carlos Pace (29).

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One of the joys of You were there is in getting the more unusual stuff, so for a bunch of people sitting in an office in Middlesex it was great to receive this selection of American Formula 5000 shots taken at Riverside from Daniel Brown in California (though he credits the Eagle shot below, middle to his pal Ronald C Miller). “I was there, Formula 5000 at Riverside, Turn 6, many times.” says Daniel. “I also raced production-class 350cc motorcycles myself at Riverside.” Clearly a brave man! In 1973 ( when three of the four pics were taken) Jody Scheckter was racing anything, anytime, anywhere. Riverside was the opening round, so the South African had yet to gain the notoriety he earned in Formula One from his spectacular accident in that year’s British Grand Prix. The main shot shows Scheckter’s Trojan T101 hanging on ahead of Brian Redman’s Lola T330. Redman would get ahead to win, but Scheckter would go on to claim the title.

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Silverstone seems to have been a regular haunt for John Groocock who sent in some offbeat 1950s pics from the self-styled ‘Home of British Motor Racing’. We particularly liked this shot of Argentinian Silverstone specialist Froilán González, squeezed in behind the wheel of a Vanwall just before the 1956 British Grand Prix. On his only World Championship outing for the British team González qualified on the second row, but his race ended on the startline when a driveshaft joint broke, causing some nifty avoidances from the runners further down the field. The ever-versatile Stirling Moss hopped into a Maserati to win the end-of-the-day sportscar race, and two years later he was at it again: after retiring his Vanwall from the GP he took a Lister-Jaguar to the sportscar win.