Chris Pook details GP of Long Beach history in new book

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emailBy Marshall Pruett | 9 hours ago

Found within his new book ‘Chris Pook & The History Of The Toyota GP Of Long Beach,’ the founder of the great American street racing event shares an amazing number of stories within its 320 pages.

Written by Gordon Kirby — who covered the inaugural race in 1975 — for Racemaker Press, Pook’s life is captured in the heavyweight hardcover book starting with his upbringing in England before sharing tales of how the famed Southern California race came into existence.

The book’s formal launch was meant to take place this weekend during the 46th running of the Long Beach Grand Prix, but with its unfortunate cancellation due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pook (pictured, top, ahead of 2019’s IMSA race in Long Beach) spoke with RACER on Thursday to bring a few of its stories to life during an extended conversation.

“Basically, when I launched the idea of copying Monte Carlo really, that’s all we did,” he said. “The city folks looked at me and said, ‘What sort of qualifications do you have to do something like that?’ Obviously, I had not thought that one through thoroughly and I said, ‘Well, you know what, I’ll try and get Dan Gurney involved here and see if he’ll help with this project!’

“It was strictly just right off the seat of my pants I blurted out that comment to them; that was a magic name to them and they said, ‘Well, OK, let’s get him in here and see what he has to say.’ I was really at that point, if you will, [where] the bluff was almost called.”

Gurney, among the most influential men in motor racing, whose nearby All American Racers shop in Santa Ana was a massive contributor to Southern California racing culture, was the perfect name for Pook to present to the city’s council members. The only problem for the Briton was Gurney had no idea who he was, or that his clout had been used to stoke the Long Beach Grand Prix conversation.

Pook’s next move was a nervous phone call to pitch his crazy idea to the Big Eagle.

“(The receptionist) said, ‘Can I tell Mr. Gurney what this is about?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s about turning the streets of Long Beach into a Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit.’ And she said, ‘Could you just repeat that one more time for me?’ So, I repeated it and she just said, ‘Well, one moment,’” he recalled.

“I sort of sat there thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen now?’ And then all of a sudden the phone just lit up with, ‘This is Dan Gurney, what can I do for you?’ From there on, he was on board. He listened for a few minutes and he says, ‘Well, that sounds exciting. Why don’t you come talk to me some more about it.’”
Once Pook got him onboard, Dan Gurney became an enthusiastic advocate for the Long Beach GP and helped pave the way for the next stage of its evolution. Motorsport Images archive.

The event’s debut in 1975 featured Formula 5000 cars, and the following year, Pook struck a deal with Bernie Ecclestone to bring Formula 1 to the streets of Long Beach. In time, the savvy former head of F1 would push the price of hosting the series beyond Pook’s breaking point.

“Bernard was building Formula 1,” he said. “He had his vision for Formula 1 and he was building it and they were transitioning from the days when the race circuits used to pay starting money to the race drivers and the car owners, to where Bernie was able to package all the drivers up and the teams up and then go to the organizers or the venues and get fees, demand for money and transportation.

“In 1976, I think the first Grand Prix cost us $575,000 or something in that area. And all of a sudden, we got up to 1983 and we’re paying $1.75 million. And these are the days before major corporate sponsorship, before you had all this corporate hospitality and things, and ticket prices were very, very reasonable — you could go to a baseball game for five bucks.”
F1 was a huge hit in Long Beach, but by 1983 the costs no longer made financial sense. Motorsport Images archive

Despite F1’s popularity at Long Beach, the costs become untenable. By 1984, the CART IndyCar Series — which sprang to life after Gurney called for team owners to break from USAC and form their own championship — was ready to take over the show where its modern successor, the NTT IndyCar Series, remains today.

“In the LA market, which is one of the toughest entertainment markets in the world, you’ve got to be competitive with your pricing,” Pook continued. “So pricing, we tried to edge it up to pay for it, but sooner or later the costs of improving the circuit…. Bear in mind that as Formula 1 was growing, the cars were getting more expensive, [and] the demands on the circuits was getting more and more expensive, the safety demands were getting increased and the technology was coming in, and you had to spend all this money every year on upgrades.

“Having almost gone broke after the 1976 race, we were working our rear ends off with the place being packed. We’d have like 97,000 people in the joint on Sunday, and 85 or 86 [thousand] on Saturday, and 65, 70 [thousand] on Friday. We were finding ourselves only making about $100,000-$200,000 profit.

“One bad day, one bad weekend, and we would’ve been toast. We would’ve been completely upside down. So we basically agreed with Bernard to disagree. And Dan, if you recall, was one of the founders of CART….”

Click here to purchase ‘Chris Pook & The History Of The Toyota GP Of Long Beach’ at the RACER Store.

Enjoy the rest of the conversation on ‘Chris Pook & The History Of The Toyota GP Of Long Beach’ below:
Long Beach, Chris Pook, Formula 1, Industry, IndyCar

 

VM Back Issue Spotlight: Long Beach Grand Prix History

by VM Staff The start in 1977, considered by many to be the best LBGP ever, as Jody Scheckter’s Wolf-Ford WR1 grabs the lead. Photo: David HutsonAs we continue our 50% off back issue sale, we are showcasing a few prime examples of the issues available. Today’s choice is the combination of the May/June and July/Aug 2014 issues. These issues feature a wonderful two-part history of the Long Beach Grand Prix from award-winning historian Janos Wimpffen.



This weekend would have been the 46th iteration of “USA’s Monaco Grand Prix” and we found it a fitting time to look back, reflect, and then look forward to next year when the streets are filled with race cars again.

 

The story begins in 1973 with travel agency owner and Long Beach resident Chris Pook, and carries us through over 40 years of history on the streets of Long Beach. *Note* Look for our upcoming preview of Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach Grand Prix (the new book from Racemaker Press) soon.







If these issues are not already in your collection head on over to our online store to order them and enjoy. Thank you all for your continued support of Vintage Motorsport!

 

Home › Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach GP

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Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach GP

Regular price $86.00 PRICE INCLUDES SHIPPING TO US ADDRESSES.

By Gordon Kirby

Foreword by Mario Andretti

Hard cover, 320 pages

This book tells the story of Chris Pook's life as well as the history of the race. Pook was born and raised in England and inherited his drive and entrepreneurial spirit from his father who ran a variety of small businesses. Chris’s parents made sure he was properly educated at a series of private schools before attending the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Chris emigrated to the United States in 1963 when he was 22 and soon started a successful travel agency in Long Beach. He eventually sold the business prior to starting yet another even more successful agency. In his younger years Chris had competed in some rallies in the UK and Europe and had always been a race fan. The idea of running a Grand Prix race in the streets of Long Beach occurred to him one day in the early seventies while watching the Monaco GP on TV.

When Chris declared his intention of running a Grand Prix in downtown Long Beach many people thought he was crazy. But with the powerful support of racing legend Dan Gurney and other racing greats Pook proved his doubters wrong going on to build the most successful street race in American motor racing history. After a huge amount of work the first race took place in September of 1975 for Formula 5000 cars won by Brian Redman in Carl Haas and Jim Hall’s Lola-Chevy. Formula 1 arrived in Long Beach the following year and F1 cars raced there for nine years before rising costs compelled Pook to switch to CART and Indy cars in 1984.

Dan Gurney emerges at various stages of the book as the race’s most ardent supporter. Dan stepped forward whenever necessary to help Chris put Long Beach on the map as the race spawned extensive redevelopment of the city’s coastal downtown area. Pook’s “crazy idea” turned into a model for bringing racing to the people and using the event to rebuild flagging urban communities.

Long Beach has established itself as America’s most enduring and successful street race, sparking many other downtown racing events around the country. Very few of these races have survived but Long Beach stands today as IndyCar’s second biggest event outside of the Indianapolis 500.

Chris tells many stories in the book about the trials and tribulations he faced on the road to making the race succeed. The book also covers his efforts through the nineties to help promote the Indy Lights and Toyota/Atlantic series as well as the Laguna Seca racetrack. Also detailed are Formula 1’s FISA/FOCA war in 1979-‘80 and the CART/IRL war twenty years later including the two hellacious years Pook spent trying to save the failing CART organization in 2002 and 2003. Chris tells his story very frankly in considerable detail, providing a rare look inside the business and politics of big-time automobile racing.

Please contact us at racer@racer.com for rates on shipping orders outside the US.

 

EXCERPT: Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach GP, Part 1

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emailBy RACER Staff | 5 hours ago

The wait for racing cars to return to the streets of Long Beach is a little longer than usual this time around. But in the decades since the inaugural event, enough stories have sprung up around the race to fill a book – which is exactly what Gordon Kirby has done with Chris Pook & the History of the Long Beach GP. Starting today, RACER.com will be running a series of excerpts to help you pass the time while we wait for racing to resume. Given that’s still some weeks away though, you might want to order the entire thing…



On the Wednesday evening in the week prior to the first F1 race in Long Beach in 1976, renowned photographer Bernard Cahier organized a private party for the Formula 1 drivers through his friend Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills.

“Bernie had told the drivers to be in town for that press lunch and Bernard Cahier seized upon the timing for Hugh Hefner to organize one of his infamous parties at the Playboy Mansion,” Pook relates.

“Through Hefner’s staff, Cahier organized limousines for the drivers, most of whom were staying on the Queen Mary, to take them to and from The Mansion. Of course, everyone had a great time, but the following morning we got a call from the Beverly Hills police complaining about the theft of a limousine. They said they believed one of our drivers was responsible and they wanted to talk to me.

“It wasn’t long before a Beverly Hills cop and a Long Beach police sergeant arrived with another guy, who apparently owned the missing limousine. They told me that the fleet of limousines had been parked outside the Playboy Mansion and one of the drivers, who had a receding hairline and a mustache and was either French or Italian, decided he wanted to leave the party with another driver and two girls. They said the race driver apparently couldn’t find the driver for his limousine, but saw the keys laying inside the driver’s cap on the front seat. So he put the keys in the ignition and off they went.

“While the cops were in our office discussing this situation, Jean-Pierre Jarier was also in the office looking for some passes. So I asked Jean-Pierre if he knew anything about this story the cops were telling me. He said, ‘Yeah, it was Regazzoni. Clay wanted to leave and we had these two girls with us. We were going down the freeway at 100mph with the roof open and the girls took their tops off and were showing their breasts to everyone. It was one big joke!’

“I turned to the cops and said I wanted to talk to Clay before they did. I said I wanted to be delicate with this. I told them I didn’t want them putting him in handcuffs and taking him off to the station. The Long Beach cop agreed, but the Beverly Hills cop said he wanted to arrest Clay.

“I said, ‘If that’s your attitude, you’re on your own. Go find him and arrest him and create a mess. I’m trying to find a solution, get the limousine back into the owner’s hands and provide some compensation if needed.’ The cop looked at the limousine owner, who said he just wanted his car and keys back and to cover the costs if there was any damage to car. The limo owner said, ‘Give me $500 and 25 tickets to your race, and I’ll be OK.’

“Meanwhile, we reached Regazzoni on the phone. He was still in his room on the Queen Mary and the Long Beach cop asked us to bring him over to our offices. Clay objected strenuously, but finally came over. It was about noon by then, and I said he had apparently borrowed one of the limousines to drive back to Long Beach last night. Clay said, yes, he had and told me the car was parked in the Queen Mary’s parking lot.

“I asked him if it was locked. He said no, and I asked him where the keys where. You have to understand that he was telling me all this in French, so neither the police officers nor the limo owner understood a word. Clay looked me, grinning, and said, ‘Oh, the keys are a bit of a problem. As I was walking up the gangway onto the Queen Mary the keys fell out of my pocket into the water!’ All the time, he was grinning and laughing.

“I asked the limo owner if he had a spare set of keys and he said, ‘Yeah.’ So I told the cop and the limo owner I would take care of the $500 and the tickets he wanted, and asked the cop to take Clay over to the Queen Mary to show them where the limo was parked. After that the limo owner came back with his car and said he needed 50 tickets, not 25. Then he complained that we were giving him only general admission tickets and he needed grandstand seats. So we did.

“We could ill afford to give away free tickets like that, but I didn’t want a silly, negative story to get out there. Nevertheless, we all had a good chuckle about Clay driving down the freeway with a chauffeur’s cap on his head and two half-naked women showing their breasts to the world!”

 

EXCERPT: Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach GP, Part 2

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emailBy RACER Staff | April 20, 2020 9:20 AM

 

EXCERPT: Chris Pook & The History of the Long Beach GP, Part 3

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emailBy RACER Staff | 22 hours ago

The wait for racing cars to return to the streets of Long Beach is a little longer than usual this time around. But in the decades since the inaugural event, enough stories have sprung up around the race to fill a book – which is exactly what Gordon Kirby has done with Chris Pook & the History of the Long Beach GP. RACER.com is running a series of excerpts to help you pass the time while we wait for racing to resume. Given that’s still some weeks away though, you might want to order the entire thing…



Pook tells an interesting story about Mario Andretti selling Hyatt Hotels boss A.N. Pritzker on the concept of building a hotel on Shoreline Drive in the heart of the Grand Prix’s track layout.

“Qualifying was scheduled to start at 2 pm on Saturday afternoon and about half an hour before city manager John Dever and A.N. Pritzker, head of the Hyatt Hotels family, were walking down the pitlane,” Chris says.

“Dever introduced me to Pritzker, who at that time was 70-some years old. Dever said Mr. Pritzker would like to have a ride around the racetrack to have a look at it. We were standing next to the Lotus pit and Mario was sitting there talking to Colin Chapman and Peter Warr, the Lotus team manager. I said, ‘Excuse me, but could I borrow Mario for a minute?’ They said, ‘No problem.’

“I told Mario that Pritzker was the head of Hyatt Hotels. I introduced him to Dever and Pritzker, and Dever said to Mario that Mr. Pritzker would like a ride around the racetrack. Mario turned to me and said, ‘Can you give me five or six minutes for a couple of laps in the pace car?’ I said, sure, and we walked down to the end of pit lane just after Elm Street where the two pace cars were parked. I introduced Pritzker to Phil Hill and asked if we could borrow one of the pace cars for Mario to drive Mr. Pretizker around the track, and off they went.

“The foot crossings were still open so we had to alert everyone that there was a car coming around. Mario and Pritzker went out and they went around once, then twice and kept going for a third, fourth and fifth lap. By then Chapman was starting to complain, saying he needed Mario in the pits to get him settled in the car for qualifying. So we got onto race control and told them to do whatever was required to bring Mario into the pits, which they did with a black flag at pit-in and Mr. Prtizker was deposited right alongside the Lotus pit.

“As Mario came in and he and Pritzker were talking and gesticulating to each other. Pritzker got out of the car and thanked everyone. He said he learned more over the last 10 minutes with Mario than he had in a week. They shook hands, Pritzker wished him well and as Mario started walking to his race car Pritzker turned to Dever and said, ‘If you’ve got enough guts to tear your city up and run a race like this, then I’m going to build a Hyatt Hotel at the corner of Shoreline and Pine. I want it to look out at the Queen Mary and the Pacific Ocean.’ He knew exactly where he wanted it, no ifs or buts.

“Dever explained that it would be on tidelands and we would have to deal with the Coastal Commission. Pritzker said, ‘I don’t care. I want a Hyatt Hotel located right there.’ He said he would have his lawyers meet with the city’s lawyers the next Monday afternoon. He said he wanted to get the deal done, and sure enough Hyatt broke ground on the hotel in 1980 and completed it in 1982.

“That same afternoon in a motorhome in the paddock the AMC/Renault merger was negotiated by a French merchant bank Lazard Freres. Stan Cohen, a developer from Beverly Hills, also made a commitment to build a high-rise building at Ocean and Locust, and Mike Chopin, a local developer, got the commitment for a new building at Broadway and Pine. Chopin also got the financing for another building on the east side of Long Beach. Also, the operators of the Hilton and Westin hotel chains made commitments to build a new Hilton and a Westin in downtown Long Beach. So it was a pretty good weekend!”

Grand Prix of Long Beach, Mario Andretti, Formula 1, IndyCar