The music...
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...of a Cosworth V8 in a late 70's JPS Lotus Formula 1 car as it's just left a bend and hurls itself towards the next in full throttle is something I thought I'd never hear again - but yesterday I did. The town I live in - Anderstorp, Sweden - is best described as the "corner of no and where", but it was once on the map. We have the only race track in Sweden that ever hosted F1 GP races, even though it was 30 years or so since it last happened. This weekend, there was a memorial race in honor of Ronnie Peterson, Swedish F1 driver who died after a crash at Monza in 78. Like back when I was 14 or so, I was sitting with friends in the grass overlooking one of the most spectator-friendly parts of the track. We'd been watching various warm-up acts (sportscars etc), when suddenly the tone shifted... there they were: March, Lotus, McLaren, Ferrari and the rest of them. About twenty of the most well-known formula 1 cars from the seventies. After a lap behind the pace car we could hear the roar from the start from the other side of the small hill we were on. Fifteen seconds or so later, the first car appeared behind us, gearing down for the first turn after the airstrip straight. Two turns later the pack came right at us, hitting the apex of "our" turn. Then they turned their backs on us (we could literaly see into the exhaust pipes) and throttled up. I turned to my friends (in their thirties) and screamed "NOW do you understand what I mean?". With eyes wide open and jaws dropped they didn't find words - they just nodded - they finally DID get it... :-) Two laps later, the earplugs started making sense... and they didn't kill the music, they just took the pain out of it and left the beauty behind. Back in the 70's, noise regulations weren't invented, I beleive, or at least unknown by the racing community - but a truly wonderful noise it was! What is it about the sound of an insanely tuned V8 going ballistic that makes it so completely and utterly irresistible?
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...of a Cosworth V8 in a late 70's JPS Lotus Formula 1 car as it's just left a bend and hurls itself towards the next in full throttle is something I thought I'd never hear again - but yesterday I did. The town I live in - Anderstorp, Sweden - is best described as the "corner of no and where", but it was once on the map. We have the only race track in Sweden that ever hosted F1 GP races, even though it was 30 years or so since it last happened. This weekend, there was a memorial race in honor of Ronnie Peterson, Swedish F1 driver who died after a crash at Monza in 78. Like back when I was 14 or so, I was sitting with friends in the grass overlooking one of the most spectator-friendly parts of the track. We'd been watching various warm-up acts (sportscars etc), when suddenly the tone shifted... there they were: March, Lotus, McLaren, Ferrari and the rest of them. About twenty of the most well-known formula 1 cars from the seventies. After a lap behind the pace car we could hear the roar from the start from the other side of the small hill we were on. Fifteen seconds or so later, the first car appeared behind us, gearing down for the first turn after the airstrip straight. Two turns later the pack came right at us, hitting the apex of "our" turn. Then they turned their backs on us (we could literaly see into the exhaust pipes) and throttled up. I turned to my friends (in their thirties) and screamed "NOW do you understand what I mean?". With eyes wide open and jaws dropped they didn't find words - they just nodded - they finally DID get it... :-) Two laps later, the earplugs started making sense... and they didn't kill the music, they just took the pain out of it and left the beauty behind. Back in the 70's, noise regulations weren't invented, I beleive, or at least unknown by the racing community - but a truly wonderful noise it was! What is it about the sound of an insanely tuned V8 going ballistic that makes it so completely and utterly irresistible?
PeterTheSwede wrote:
What is it about the sound of an insanely tuned V8 going ballistic that makes it so completely and utterly irresistible?
Testosterone. best, Bill
"The greater the social and cultural distances between people, the more magical the light that can spring from their contact." Milan Kundera in Testaments Trahis
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PeterTheSwede wrote:
What is it about the sound of an insanely tuned V8 going ballistic that makes it so completely and utterly irresistible?
Testosterone. best, Bill
"The greater the social and cultural distances between people, the more magical the light that can spring from their contact." Milan Kundera in Testaments Trahis
BillWoodruff wrote:
Testosterone
This is what I used to beleive... but the girl in the company (who had never set foot at a race track before) was even more enthusiastic about it than the rest of the "race virgins". She was completely awestruck by the roar and the way the cars accelerated. Go figure.