Maybe I took A.B.C. Chapman's advice a little too literally; at the height of my not-very-illustrious racing career, I used to farll apart at the finish line!
To your list of Jim Clark and Alan Stacey I'd add... Clay Regazzoni, whose took an escape road and hit a parked car when the titanium brake pedal of his Williams F1 collapsed at the Long Beach GP. He was crippled for life, of course.
There's a message here about superlight components, whether on cars or bikes. Since a bike has less structural redundancy than an F1 car, when something critical fails, it's bad news! I've stopped using my Pino skewers and for the most part Campy cranks for just this reason.
===================================================== Mark Petry 206.618.9642 Beautiful Bainbridge Island, WA mpetry@bainbridgeisland.net ===================================================== Congratulations. You have made it this far. You must have been found worthy. At least somewhat worthy.
J. R. "Bob" Dobbs =====================================================
In a message dated 1/26/02 3:40:20 AM, brucerobbins@supanet.com writes:
<< As for Colin Chapman not being able to produce reliable cars, I think Lotus'
success in Formula 1 shows that he could indeed build cars capable of
standing up to the most demanding circumstances.
>> Elans themselves are quite reliable-especially these days-but Lotus racing cars up to the 49 had a well deserved reputation for fragility. Chapman once said that the perfect racing car would fall apart at the checkered flag and he designed the cars to that end. Sadly, some of them didn't make it to the finish line. The 1 1/2 liter GP cars of the early 60s were particularly fragile and in some cases deadly. The names that come to mind are Alan Stacey and Jim Clark but there were others. Phil Brown