senor honda

Chris Pook details GP of Long Beach history in new book

Michael Levitt/Motorsports Images
201 shares
share
tweet
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

senor honda

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

152 shares
share
tweet
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!”