Can-Am love

[René]

This is a GREAT documentary about the renewed Can-Am championship of the mid/late seventies. Carl, you will love this! 

[Carl]

Great extended footage of Riverside! Thanks, René!

The concept of Can-Am was so wonderful that it survived the Penske/Porsche onslaught and was resurrected with 5 litre Chevrolet V8s replacing the massive 8 litre plus monsters, providing more nimble race cars and great competition.

Riverside Raceway attracted the fastest racing cars because of its brilliant design and high speeds. Naturally, it was bulldozed and replaced by suburbs and shops to satisfy America's cravings for cul-de-sacs and doughnuts.

The original layout of Laguna Seca was great, as the footage reveals, essentially 1.9 miles of fast sweeping turns.  When MotoGp demanded changes, the track became Mickey Mouse and has been ever since.  After the two great ones were disfigured, only Portland and Sears Point (Sonoma Raceway) remain as very good circuits on the west coast.   

[Carl]

I was always in awe of Ferrari and Chris Amon, a combination that should have been explosive everywhere.  The 330 P4 was beauty in motion and awesome to see and hear, but in 1967 qualifying at Riverside was 5 seconds slower than pole, reinforcing the constant desire of drivers for more horsepower.  Two years later, the 612P was considerably faster, but some of the elegance was lost when Ferrari added mass and displacement.

Amon at Turn 8 about to enter the back straight in the 330 P4

                                                                                

 

About to dive down into Turn 7, Amon's 612P passes Lothar Motschenbacher's M12 and John Cordt's M6B with the gallant Tony Dean barely seen but working wonders with his Porsche 908

         

That year, the 917 first appeared in the Can-Am, a 917PA driven well by Jo Siffert, but not yet a threat...                                            

[René]

Ferrari's Can-Am entry never seemed very convincing. The popularity of the series in a major market like the US compelled them to participate, but their heart was never really in it it seemed. 



Too bad for Chris Amon whose Ferrari years came at the wrong time.