Mercedes driver is off with a modest squeal of the tires. F1 driver checks watch. Adjusts rear-view mirror for some reason. Finishes sandwich. Texts girlfriend. Applies Armor All to the dashboard. Adjusts seatback.
This stirring spin around the Le Mans circuit in 1956 gives me an idea. The video was a lot of fun on its own merits, of course. Look at how far our technology has come in the intervening half a century or so. The camera on the back of the car weighs about enough to make the Jag pop a wheelie. In the spot where your GPS goes in your car, Mike Hawthorne has his wife’s makeup mirror to look at. The microphone apparatus looks like a bizarre dental experiment.
But one problem hasn’t been solved in the intervening years. I’m informed that there’s a population problem that needs fixing, or we’re all doomed, doomed I say. Every newspaper in the world explains to me that we’re running out of everything, and it’s because there are just too many people on Earth. We’re going to run out of food, water, icebergs, gasoline, single-family split-level ranches, rhinos, bumblebees, polar bears, and three-cent stamps any day now, and we have been since this video was made. Something must be done! This video gives me an idea.
That sound.
Well, it’s not just a sound. If you’re in the grandstands or the infield, close to the track, the sound is mixed with a palpable vibration and a whoosh of air being pushed aside. It’s great to see the cars from a ground level, too, like in this video.
If you don’t get a tear in your eye and a lump in your throat watching this, I don’t want to know you. Of course I don’t know you, and I’m never going to know you, and you probably wouldn’t want to know me, so the threat is sorta idle. But by gad I love this video.