Postby ggonsalves » July 19th, 2006, 5:50 pm
Something magical happened with T&T motor sport in the early seventies. A number of disparate circumstances came together which resulted in the best circuit racing Wallerfield has ever seen.
First of all, there was an influx of talented and enthusiastic participants, both on and off the track. There already were drivers like Brian Ibrahim, Silbourne Clarke, Tom Miller, Simon Kelshall, Steve and Ken Chee, Eme Kong, Tim Meyer, Ralph Thom and Sidney Manhin, to name just a few, who had proven to be very good drivers. But as we entered the seventies, a large group of new drivers started out their racing careers. These included people like Andrew Cheekes, Merryl See Tai, Chris Correia, Geoffrey Meyer, Gary Huggins, Righard Knox, Jimi Fifi, Clive Sugden, Desmond Wing Quan, Simon Gillmore, Frankie Boodram, Gregory Solis, Chris Charlett, the Ramsingh brothers, Brian Bowen, Robert Amar, Steve Castagne, Peter Easton, Keith Singh, Sylvan Singh, Davey Maraj, Riad Shakeer and many others (I can't remember them all, but there were a lot). Even girls like Erica See Tai and Old Man Pantin's daughter (her name slips my mind) got behind the wheel to take on the best T&T had to offer.
At the same time, there were basically two "motoring" organisations (besides the TAA): TASC, the Trinidad Automobile Sports Club (now TTASA) and CCC, the Courtesy Car Club. Although CCC put on at least one major rally that I can recall (I navigated for Simon Gillmore in the car that eventually became "ZMMA"), TASC was the place to be if you wanted to be involved in motor sport. It oversaw and organised all forms of motor sport - circuit racing (long and short circuit), dexterity (now called solodex), rallys, treasure hunts and drags. TASC was run by a dedicated committee with full support of all its members and just about every single person involved in motor sport was a member of TASC. Everyone had a common goal: the growth of motor sport in Trinidad (& Tobago). There were no private agendas, no separate organisations fighting with one another. Club meetings we held monthly and people couldn't wait for them to come around because there was always exciting new stuff discussed and announced. From time to time a film would be shown after the meeting and this was a big thing. Remember, in those days there was just one TV channel, TTT, and there were precious few motor sport shows aired.
Which brings me to another catalyst for racing's rise in popularity during that period: unless there was either a major political problem (like the 1970 "revolution") or very popular event (like Carnival and, sometimes, another large sporting event), there really was nothing else entertaining for people to do on a Sunday. There was no MovieTowne, no cable TV, no video games, no this and no that. When TASC advertised a race meeting (and there was an organised plan in place for doing so), crowds converged on Wallerfield. In its heyday, TASC had a full time professional administrative assistant/PR employee who worked at promoting its events, amongst other things. Yet even with the resources it had, they never planned more than two international events annually. These were true internationals with the bulk of guest competitors usually coming in from England and they took a lot of careful planning. Besides the internationals, there were a number of local events open to the public to attend (as spectators, of course), but there were also unpublicised "club days", usually taking the form of dexteritys or "short curcuit" race meetings.
Finally, because of the large numbers of active drivers, TASC was able to set up five separate groups, each split into two or more classes. There was Group 1 (unmodified), Group 1 Special (lightly-modified), Group 2 (highly-modified), Group 3 (highly-modified, lightened) and Group 4 (single-seaters). Within each group, class was determined by cubic capacity. The end result was that at a large international, with around fifteen classes and three races per class, there could theoretically be forty-five races run off in a single day. Because classes were often combined by group, however, the days' card usually had twelve to fifteen races, plus a final handicap which all but the Group 4 cars could participate in. In these circumstances you didn't aim to reach the track at midday as appears to be the case these days. As a competitor, if you were not in the pits by 7:00-7:30AM, you'd be stuck in spectator traffic somewhere on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway and would probably miss your first race. In fact, several teams used to camp overnight after Saturday's qualifying which itself was an all day affair. And don't try to rush off after the last race because the traffic was probably worse leaving the track. Races started at 10:00AM sharp because it was difficult to fit them all in before dark. This despite having a pre-grid with the next set of cars waiting to roll round to the start even while the current race was in progress.
So yes, there was a bit of magic back in the seventies that would be hard to repeat today.
(PS: Its really nice to see the younger folk so interested in our motor sport past. I also appreciate those positive comments regarding my driving... it really was my passion in life and I always did put my best effort into it. - Gordon)