There’s still 54 sleeps till the start of the F1 season but already the trackside confession booth has been busier than the High Court deciding who the Manchurian candidates are in our very own parliament.
First out was Lou Hamilton who had a go at his nephew for wearing a pink dress and holding a wand. I have to say there’s plenty of mornings where I’ve done the same but I think alcohol and bad company had a lot to do with it.
Anyway, Lou apologised. No one apologised to me.
A minute later Mercedes race boss Toto Wolff told the world he wanted Lou’s team mate Val Bottas to win more races than Lou. Two minutes later Toto said he wanted to supply engines to McLaren who had a really crook year with Honda engines but McLaren took too long to decide so they had to go with Renault.
Cue Renault jokes: What do you call a Renault at the top of a hill? A miracle. What goes on pages 4-5 of the Renault user’s manual? The train and bus schedule. A Renault owner goes to Supercheap Auto: “Can I have a windscreen wiper for a Renault please?” Supercheap person: “Yeah, that seems like a fair swap.”
Then Fred Alonso said he felt humiliated by the start to his 2017 season. He felt so bad he punched a hole in the wall of his Singapore hotel room. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Then Ferrari announced its 2018 Formula 1 car successfully passed the FIA frontal crash tests. Now all it has to do is pass Mercedes.
If you can’t wait till the Australian Grand Prix starts upsetting the citizens of Albert Park and environs on March 13, then head to what purports to be our global HQ on Thursday for the Street Machine Summernats City Cruise, the once-a-year spectacle that “stops the nation’s capital”.
Forget Opera Australia’s production of Aida complete with elephants, camels, lions, tigers, boa constrictors, a full-sized Sphinx and Joan Sutherland (sounds like Michael McMichael’s Stepney Street workshop), Freeze at the Adelaide Festival where Dutch visual/performance artist Nick Steur places stones on top of each other, or Dark Mofo’s nude solstice swim where you see a lot more of your friends — the Summernats have the National Burnout Masters, the awarding of the most coveted street machine award in Australia, the Summernats Grand Champion, plus a massive music line-up including superstars Wolfmother, Thundamentals, 28 Days and Joan Sutherland.
After the Summernats it’s off to Scottsdale, Arizona, for the annual orgy of classic car auctions.
As usual Dave Gooding will be at the Fashion Mall with a couple of cars worth buying. Bernie Ecclestone sold one of two red 1956 Jaguar D-Types ever made to racer Peter Blond who campaigned it successfully. Then its owners included Aston Martin racer Jean Bloxham and Led Zeppelin band manager Peter Grant. You’ll pay $15 million.
Proving that Alfa owners like Pete Matthews are wrong when they accuse me of anti-Alfa bias, here is a pic of one.
No, it’s not a new one (hard to tell) but a 1921 Alfa Romeo G1 with a strong Australian connection and a concerning history. RM Sotheby’s will be expecting around $2m when it goes on the blocks at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa (mention WART for the special price, $400, on a pore refining body scrub which polishes and prepares the body for a face full of volcanic clay, followed by the full body massage and foot revive).
To support its racing, Alfa Romeo sold conventional cars to the public. The first was the G1. They were as big as Rolls Royces. Only 52 (including two prototypes) were built, with all 50 production models going to Australia. The 6.3 litre six-cylinder engine powered the G1 to 138km/h. The chassis was imported to Melbourne and fitted with a sedan body, then bought by a Winton grazier. In the manner of many prominent identities from the sunshine state he knew he was going belly up when he took delivery so he hid the Alfa on a farm where it stayed for 25 years bashing paddocks and pumping water.
In 1964 veteran car restorer and RAAF instrument maker Ross Flewell-Smith bought the car and spent 10 years rebuilding it. It went so well that he was black-flagged in a historic race at Lakeside for going too fast.
In 1995, Melbourne art, stamp and classic car dealer Julian Sterling took the car for a complete restoration including $6000 worth of tyres, then sold it to Alfa importer Neville ‘Croakey’ Crichton, who sold it to a California collector. At some stage in these sales and restorations the car was “rebodied” from a sedan to a race car.
Now here’s the thing. Even Ross Flewell-Smith’s heroic restoration was done with some original parts, some parts from another G1 and some newly made parts. So, the Alfa couldn’t be billed as original and certainly couldn’t be billed as having matching numbers. While there has been a great deal of promotion to give the G1 a racing history, the G1 never raced. Very hard to put a realistic price on what is ultimately an imitation of a car that never was.
