Tracking down a Mosport mystery

What's happening in this photo taken during one of local racing's historic days? You helped us find out

Jan 22, 2010

Motorsport Writer

Last June, near the anniversary of the first Player's 200 sports car race at Mosport – June 24, 1961 – I published a column about the picture you see here.

It was taken by Michael Burns Sr., a professional photographer best known for pictures of horse races but also no stranger to shooting NHL games and car races.

(That was one of the questions posed in that first column, by the way: Did anyone know the photographer? Well, it was Michael Burns.)

I promised a follow-up column to answer some of the other questions I asked and my timing couldn't be better because Sunday at the Canadian Motorsports Expo at the International Centre (it started last night and runs till tomorrow), celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of racing at Mosport will officially get under way.

Fifty years of racing! Who would have thought it possible?

Now, there are older, purpose-built road racing circuits in Europe (Monza, near Milan, Italy, for instance) and in the United States (Road America near Elkhart Lake, Wis., and at Watkins Glen, N.Y.).

But not many.

Here in Canada, Mosport is, of course, the oldest and longest continuously operating such facility. Westwood, near Vancouver, opened before Mosport but is just a memory and Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant in the Quebec Laurentians, although still in operation, has opened and closed several times.

In its 50 years, Mosport (a contraction of the words "Motor" and "Sport"; not Moss-port, as you still frequently hear) has featured the best racing cars and drivers of the day. Who can ever forget the original Can-Am Series in the 1960s starring Bruce McLaren, Denis Hulme and Dan Gurney?

There's been Formula One with Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Peter Revson and a buck-toothed Niki Lauda, Indy cars with Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser and A.J. Foyt, stock cars with Eddie Sachs, Billy Foster, Richard Petty and Scott Steckly and great Canadian road-racing stars like Paul Tracy, Scott Goodyear, Ron Fellows, Richard Spenard, Scott Maxwell, David Empringham, Kenny Wilden and Patrick Carpentier in everything else, from Porsche Turbo Cup cars to the Trans-Am to the American Le Mans Series.

Glory days! And we'll be looking back at some of them over the course of this year.

But first things first: this picture and that famous race.

Let me say that of all the stories and columns I've written for Wheels since I started in 2002, this one generated the most response. I got dozens of letters. In fact, I received an email just last week from a guy who reminisced about going to that race as a child with his father.

And I got most of my questions answered – I think. Memories fade and I received conflicting information. But I filtered through all of it and I think what follows is accurate.

First, a recap.

The photo was given to me by my good friend Ralph Luciw, who's famous for inventing the Honda-Michelin Challenge Series. This is what we determined:

The driver of the No. 86 Porsche (right front) is Formula One driver Olivier Gendebien of Belgium.

Next to him (in the No. 132 Lotus Climax) is Canadian Harry Entwhistle. To Entwhistle's right is Swedish F1 driver Jo Bonnier (No. 23 Porsche) and beside him on the inside of the front row, in the No. 39 Porsche, is legendary Canadian champion Ludwig Heimrath.

Stirling Moss, the famous British driver who went on to win this race is in a white Lotus 19  (light green, actually) on the inside of Row 2 (partially screened by spectators).

In the middle of Row 2, driving the No. 51 Comstock Racing Team Sadler Mk. V Chevrolet, is Canadian Grant Clark. On the outside of Row 2, in the Miss Whiz Lola No. 25, is the late Canadian great Francis Bradley.

Toward the back, in the second Comstock team car No. 50, is Canadian Bill Sadler, who designed and built the Sadler-Chevrolets.

Other Canadian drivers in the photo include Jim Muzzin (in a Porsche, behind Bradley), Nat Adams in a Jaguar (behind Muzzin), Fred Hayes in an Austin-Healey (right smack-dab in the middle of the field) and Dennis Coad in a Lotus (almost at the back, but directly behind Hayes).

The Player's 200 was run in two heats of 40 laps each. When the times of the two heats were combined and the results tabulated, Moss was the winner in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 54.6 seconds, with Bonnier second and Gendebien third.

Top Canadian was Heimrath in fourth with Grant Clark a close fifth.

Now, I said the photo was of the first pro race at Mosport. Technically, that is correct. But, in fact, the photo is of the beginning of the second of the two heats.

Moss had won the first heat and that qualified him to start on pole in the second heat. But Moss wanted to put on a show for the huge crowd that had turned out – estimated to be around 40,000 – so opted to start from the second row. (Even then, he made short work of his competition and won easily.)

Finally, this may not even be the actual start of the second heat. As was pointed out by several correspondents, but particularly Robi Roncarelli, it was likely the start of the warmup lap for the second heat, which explains why people are on the track.

Also, no starter can be seen and Mosport's famous flagman of that era, Wallie Branston, liked to be right beside the cars and in line with the front row when he dropped the flag for the drivers to start racing.

Another question I asked concerned what appears to be a radio tower and the TV cameraman atop the scaffold at the far right (cropped out to make the photo a bit bigger). Although several people suggested CFTO had broadcast the race live, that didn't happen until later. It was a CBC camera as the network was there to film the event.

But the radio tower? Now, that brought a great response from Greg McKnight, son of Wes McKnight of CFRB who was also host of the Hot Stove League on Hockey Night in Canada. Wrote Greg McKnight:

"If you look at the outside of Turn 10 (below the pole with the hydro transformer) you'll see part of what looks like a motorhome that was set up for a CFRB radio remote to provide live updates of the race – a Canadian first.

"As an aside, my dad was station manager/sports director/announcer with 'RB, and I had convinced him that the race was going to be a major event worth covering. After attending a media introduction to the track which included a tour of the course, he somewhat reluctantly agreed to send his backup, Bill Stephenson, to do the broadcast."

McKnight continued: "The two unidentified cars lined up behind Moss and (American) Bob Clift's Corvette are Canadian Oliver Clubine in his Torus-Triumph (11th both heats), and a Corvette-engined AC Ace (predating Shelby's Ford-engined AC, it seems) driven by one Eric Schwendau."

As luck would have it, I also heard from Schwendau:

"I was in that event and knew, or at least met, in the case of Bonnier and Gendebien, everybody mentioned in the article. I was driving the unique Chevrolet V8-powered aluminum AC Ace (no such thing as a Cobra quite yet) built by Gorries Chev.-Olds in downtown Toronto.

"Amazingly, it's very hard to remember my position exactly and also hard to tell in the newspaper photo but I was on the inside and, judging by the rollbar, was probably fourth in line after Moss. I was a DNF by vitue of torque shearing off a half-shaft.

"Stirling asked to drive my car during one of the practice periods and thought it was the hottest thing in a straight line he'd ever driven, although he could just as well mean its effect on your right foot, getting truly roasted pressed up against the transmission housing.

"Like lots of others, I drove it to the track. Fabulous chick magnet."

Some of the other letters I received were very emotional. Take this one from Keri Coad:

"My father was one of those amazing racers in that photograph. Dennis Coad, my hero, my dad. Sadly, he passed away in December of 2001 and his racing was before I was born but I used to ask him about it all the time. I wanted to know everything.

"One thing he said to me when I asked him if there was anything he regretted, he said he wished he'd gotten autographs. He just never thought of it. They were all just a bunch of guys doing what they loved to do.

"How I wish to know more or to have been there and be a part of it – racing when it was done for the love of it, not for the money. When it took courage and a love of the sport to get behind the wheel of one of those amazing cars, put your foot to the metal and fly."

Some folks let the cat out of the bag.

Wrote George Kater: "As an ex-Torontonian and a member of BARC, which organized many events at Mosport, I was in attendance at the race. In fact, I still have a slide photograph that predates this event – the very first sports car race at Mosport (staged by the Oakville-Trafalgar Light Car Club) with Grant Clark's Healey on the pole. This car was powered by a totally illegal GMC truck engine, but that's another story."

It sure is, George.

Another engine story came from Ian Douglas:

"My father, Keith Douglas, built the engine in the Austin-Healey of Fred Hayes, so the whole family was there to cheer him on. I was 8 years old at the time. How exciting it was to see Stirling Moss.

"Dad went on the build engines for Comstock, most notably the Mustangs that Eppie Wietzes and Paul Cooke drove. Our entire family went to every race at Mosport up until Ford pulled their sponsorship. It was great to meet drivers such as John Cannon, Ken Miles, Eppie, Craig Fisher, George Eaton and, of course, Ludwig Heimrath who drove to the Canadian championship."

Ken Chevis added some detail about the tower whose base can be seen at the right of the photo:

"In 1961, I was employed by the Radio and Television Marketing Group of the Bell Telephone Co.

"A Toronto radio station – CFRB – contracted Bell to establish a microwave link between Mosport and the Bell office at 76 Adelaide St. (and onward to CFRB on a land line).

"Thus the tower for Bell's microwave equipment. No television, although the CBC was there with cameras and truck Kinescoping for future use."

Chevis went on to say that this exposure at Mosport "diverted my attention from stock cars to road racing and I went on to race many times on that track in my Formula Vee."

Talking about the lack of safety, Mark Bowden wrote:

"My father, Charles (Chuck) Bowden was Canadian general manager for United Dominions Corp., the British firm that owned and sponsored the Stirling Moss car that won the first Player's.

"I was an excited 17-year-old who was very lucky to have been standing in a group to the rear of the parked car on the far left. After meeting Moss and swooning over his car, I distinctly remember two things: how amazingly (and stupidly) close to the action we were allowed to be; and the deafening noise level as the cars screamed away from the start line.

"Ouch! But unforgettable."

Thanks, Mark – and to everyone who wrote. Because that's what Mosport's been about for the last 50 years ...

Unforgettable.

Toronto Star