There have just been so many submissions to The Garage’s Flickr pool over the past week that I don’t know where to begin. There are photos from all sorts of genre, from motorsports to rust & from old to new.
I’ve chosen this shot of the Porsche 917 that Pedro Rodriguez and Jackie Oliver drove to victory at Daytona, taken by Nigel Smuckatelli. The cool thing about Nigel’s work is that he worked as a safety official at Daytona and Sebring in the late 60’s and early 70’s and took his camera along for the ride. Some of the pit and track images in Nigel’s photo stream are just incredible. Revson, Mcqueen, Andretti, Gregg are just a few of the drivers he has candid footage of.
Of special note to us here in The Garage are some shots of a Corvette that I believe a young Gary Faules may have crewed for.
There will be bonus points for the reader who can tell me which car in Nigel’s photos was piloted by a bunch of Ontarians, one of whom was the inventor of the serpentine belt!
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Now those are some awesome photos and if they could talk……….. I watched many of those very same cars and drivers race at tracks like Laguna Seca and Sears Point so for me it was like taking a trip back in a time machine. But what made that possible is the quality of them. Not many photos from that era are as good as these.
Mr Smuckatelli’s photos are outstanding!
Heck, there’s a great shot of the famous 1970 Sebring duel between the Andretti Ferrari and the McQueen Porsche.
I’ll be visiting the site often …
Thanks Gary and Paul for your comments. I was just a college student and amateur photog that had a little luck.
There is an interesting story that goes with the Steve McQueen black & white photo of him in the pits. Out of respect for him I pointed to my camera and asked if I could take his photo. He said, “Ok, but don’t ask me to pose”. In reality what came out of my mouth was not a request to take his photo but gobbledygook. I became so star struck and tongue tied that nothing intelligible came out of my mouth. I was mortified but took the picture anyway.
That made it a photo with a lot more passion than one taken in a studio. Love those kind of stories. What’s that old saying…. One photo is worth a thousand words? Or was it gobbledygooks? LOL.
I always ask permission before shooting if I’m close enough that the person can see me. Especially if it’s a driver waiting in pit lane to head on the track. Some guys are happy you are there, while others don’t want to break concentration. Even Newman gave me a smile and a wave when I asked.
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