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Who was the first to wear a cap...?


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#1 Shiftin

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 17:02

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The cap...!!

As much as a racing/sponsor thing I can think of. But of course, I only know the beginning of the nineties and as far as I know, they all had caps back then. But I reckon this has not always been the case...

I was discussing this with my GP-watch-friend during the Monza GP, and we wondered when they were introduced? I said I knew the place for an answer... :D

Where did the cap in racing come from? Was it only sponsor-place? And who was the first to start wearing them?

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#2 jorism

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 17:32

I think Graham Hill was one of the first who had a cap with the distinctive rowing stripes from his helmet on it. I think I saw photos of this starting from 1972?

#3 Shiftin

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 17:40

Originally posted by jorism
I think Graham Hill was one of the first who had a cap with the distinctive rowing stripes from his helmet on it. I think I saw photos of this starting from 1972?


Interesting. By your post I conclude that there was no sponsor on it? Maybe I am ahead of things.... But could it be that caps started as caps, i.a.w. self-promotion, before the big sponsors saw the benifits of it?

#4 LB

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:02

http://www.baseballh..._nines/caps.htm

;)

#5 Vitesse2

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:14

Graham certainly wore that cap to races well before 1972. There's a sequence of pictures taken in the pits at the German GP in 1960 (the F2 one where the rain was of Biblical proportions), showing Hill, Gurney and Bonnier - the Porsche team drivers - all in wet-weather gear. Graham is wearing his London Rowing Club cap in those. As a successful rower and club member, he was perfectly entitled to wear it of course. But that would have been more self-publicity than anything else. Pre-1968, I think only trade logos for tyres, oil etc could be displayed on drivers' clothing - even after that, personal sponsors were unusual for a few years. And only baseball players wore baseball caps .....

In the absence of any other definite candidate for a sponsored hat: Niki Lauda's been wearing that Parmalat one since about 1974 I think.

I think the first serious personal sponsors were Marlboro: there were drivers in non-Marlboro-sponsored teams who wore their logos - Andrea de Adamich sported a Marlboro stetson, but I'm not sure when that arrived.

Marlboro caps at BRM and/or McLaren perhaps? 1970-72 ish?

#6 Pils1989

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:26

In french, we have the same word "cap" for the caps used pre-war and post-war.
You know, the kind of cap the driver would wear backward and wear goggles with it.
Do you have a specific name for those nostalgia/old school caps in english?
I don't know what you call in french the deerstalker cap/hat :confused:
Pedro917, you must know?

#7 Vitesse2

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:36

Then of course, you had drivers' trademark headgear. Pedro Rodriguez and his deerstalker or Mike Hawthorn's cheesecutter for example.

Thinking about it, the Renault team at the 1907 GP de l'ACF wore matching flat caps, which had a small badge (possibly a Renault logo?) at the front. :)

#8 Twin Window

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:39

Originally posted by Vitesse2

In the absence of any other definite candidate for a sponsored hat: Niki Lauda's been wearing that Parmalat one since about 1974 I think.

I think the first serious personal sponsors were Marlboro: there were drivers in non-Marlboro-sponsored teams who wore their logos - Andrea de Adamich sported a Marlboro stetson, but I'm not sure when that arrived.

Lauda's Parmalat cap deal was brokered after his 1976 accident, I think you'll find, and the deal at the time was USD 1m for 'life'. Regarding the Marlboro stetson-wearer, do you mean Arturo Merzario? I remember my former colleague Ian Phillips (who was always close to Marlboro, plus did a lot of work for them) telling me in the early 1980s that he thought it was hilarious that Merzario still wore the hat and carried the Marlboro logos on his cars, because they'd stopped paying him in 1977! And he still wears one...

My gut feeling is that the first logo-bearing cap (as we now know them-ish) would have had something to do with JYS. So possibly Goodyear, circa 1972/3, and only used on the podium.

#9 Vitesse2

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:48

Originally posted by Twin Window
Lauda's Parmalat cap deal was brokered after his 1976 accident, I think you'll find, and the deal at the time was USD 1m for 'life'. Regarding the Marlboro stetson-wearer, do you mean Arturo Merzario? I remember my former colleague Ian Phillips (who was always close to Marlboro, plus did a lot of work for them) telling me in the early 1980s that he thought it was hilarious that Merzario still wore the hat and carried the Marlboro logos on his cars, because they'd stopped paying him in 1977! And he still wears one...

My gut feeling is that the first logo-bearing cap (as we now know them-ish) would have had something to do with JYS. So possibly Goodyear, circa 1972/3, and only used on the podium.

Yes, I did mean Merzario. :blush: Brain fade ....

Nah, not Jackie. He used to wear that rather strange corduroy item which looked like he'd nicked it off a barge captain - see page 12 of the 1972 JPS Yearbook for example. A pal of mine used to call it his Dutch cap ....

#10 Pils1989

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 18:56

Ok, so the one I was talking about is called a cheese-cutter cap as I see on some Mike Hawthorn's portraits?

#11 Twin Window

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:04

Originally posted by Vitesse2

Nah, not Jackie. He used to wear that rather strange corduroy item which looked like he'd nicked it off a barge captain...

Yep, I know the one you mean; he wore it for the last five-odd seasons of his career as his 'trade mark' headwear. I had one! :eek:

But, on the podia, he donned a Goodyear cap - definitely in 1973, and possibly in 1972 also.

#12 Vitesse2

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:07

Okay, setting down a marker: the 1974 JPS Yearbook has a picture of the podium at the 1973 Swedish GP. Winner Denny Hulme is wearing a Goodyear cap.

Any advance on June 17th 1973?

In the same book there's a picture of Emerson Fittipaldi, Peter Revson and Jack Oliver waiting to find out who'd won the Canadian GP. Emerson's bareheaded but Jack's wearing a UOP hat and Peter has one with an undistinguishable logo (probably Goodyear again).

#13 Twin Window

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:16

Originally posted by Vitesse2

Any advance on June 17th 1973?

Yeah; Stewart & Cevert - both wearing Goodyear caps - on the podium at Watkins Glen, October 8th 1972 (p63, Motor Racing Year 1973 Edition).

#14 Stefan Ornerdal

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:19

Sometimes it looks crazy...
Polish speedway rider Tomasz Gollob has two big sponsor's, when interviewed on TV, one of his mechanics stands just out of picture, ready to help him change his cap at half time of the TV exposure.

No doubt, in the future we will see F1-drivers with 8-10 caps in front of them on the desk, at the press conference after a race.

Stefan

#15 Twin Window

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:23

Actually, Stefan, that's something that's already happened in F1 back in the 1970s! And in CART too, especially at the Indy 500. Not quite that many caps, mind...

Isn't there a scene on a 1970s video - maybe 'If you're not winning, you're not trying' - where Chapman has a go at a bloke for trying to swap his driver's cap for another 'brand'?



#16 jorism

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:29

Peterson wore a JPS hat in the 1974 cricket match before the British GP, in that match Hill had his cap too.

#17 David M. Kane

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 19:54

:p

I have a black JPS baseball cap that I bought at the Glen in the early-mid-70s. I would say the trend easily started in the early '70s.

#18 Hugo Boecker

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 20:16

I think it was this guy !
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and he did it even in his Bugatti back in 1927

You're in the Nostalgie Forum ;)

#19 Twin Window

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 20:20

Yes, Hugo, but it's not quite the type of sponsors cap Shiftin was asking about... :D

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#20 Hugo Boecker

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 20:25

Originally posted by Twin Window
Yes, Hugo, but it's not quite the type of sponsors cap Shiftin was asking about... :D

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No it's reverse and you cann't read the sponsor

#21 Doug Nye

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 20:26

Spool back further - Ken Wharton wore a yachting cap in the Goodwood paddock as early as 1955. Briggs Cunningham and his chums in US racing wore them earlier still. I'm pretty sure we would find pix of pre-war ARCA drivers wearing them as well - v. much a preppy East Coast yachting-set type thing, and in those days it was both practical and stylish. In stark contrast a friend of mine at Williams was relieved when Damon Hill joined and donned a sponsor's cap..."At last I've seen somebody wearing one of those things who looks a bigger dick in one than I do".

DCN

#22 Vitesse2

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 20:54

Another team cap which I just remembered: at Brooklands in 1921 Louis Zborowski and his team all wore "caps of an incredible check", their whole get-up being described as "costume of the American underworld" by one rather incredulous commentator. David Wilson's book even shows Lou himself wearing one back-to-front as he cranks Chitty-Bang-Bang using a half-axle off a plane!

#23 Pedro 917

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Posted 05 September 2005 - 21:31

Originally posted by Pils:

I don't know what you call in french the deerstalker cap/hat Pedro917, you must know?

I'm sorry Antoine, I really don't know. I always refered to it as my "casquette Sherlock Holmes"
The Harrap's dictionnary says "chapeau de chasse (à la Sherlock Holmes)"

#24 David Hyland

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Posted 06 September 2005 - 00:49

Originally posted by Twin Window
Actually, Stefan, that's something that's already happened in F1 back in the 1970s! And in CART too, especially at the Indy 500. Not quite that many caps, mind...

Isn't there a scene on a 1970s video - maybe 'If you're not winning, you're not trying' - where Chapman has a go at a bloke for trying to swap his driver's cap for another 'brand'?

ISTR seeing a video describing team/sponsor-employed "cap guys" who deliberately position themselves just behind the winner as (s)he's being interviewed after the race, and face downwards, to ensure maximum exposure for the sponsor's logo on their cap. [Obviously, this occurs during an on-the-ground, just-stepped-out-of-the-car type interview, not the sitting0-behind-a-desk "press conference" type interviews we see in F1 today]

#25 David Birchall

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Posted 06 September 2005 - 01:45

Originally posted by Pedro 917
Originally posted by Pils:

I don't know what you call in french the deerstalker cap/hat Pedro917, you must know?

I'm sorry Antoine, I really don't know. I always refered to it as my "casquette Sherlock Holmes"
The Harrap's dictionnary says "chapeau de chasse (à la Sherlock Holmes)"


I think you gentlemen are referring to a "flat 'at" also known in some circles as a cheese cutter. :rolleyes:

And yes, I know what a bloody deerstalker is but I think this is what they really mean

#26 dbw

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Posted 06 September 2005 - 07:17

i think it was bugatti driver/owner philippe etancelin that wore his cap on backwards as his signature...

#27 bill moffat

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Posted 06 September 2005 - 07:47

I have a photo of Timo Makinen taken in 1969 with him sporting a natty baseball cap with the logo "Avenger Racing England". Had me baffled until I realised that this was from his powerboating days when he won the Round Britain Race in "Avenger Too" .

So I guess this doesn't count !

#28 Bonde

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Posted 06 September 2005 - 07:51

...from experience, I would say that the original reason amongst early aviators and drivers for turning the hat backwards was simply to keep it from being blown off!

#29 Pils1989

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Posted 07 September 2005 - 19:18

Originally posted by Pedro 917
Originally posted by Pils:

I don't know what you call in french the deerstalker cap/hat Pedro917, you must know?

I'm sorry Antoine, I really don't know. I always refered to it as my "casquette Sherlock Holmes"
The Harrap's dictionnary says "chapeau de chasse (à la Sherlock Holmes)"


Yeap, same here with mine... Just wondering if there was a specific name for it in french:)

#30 Pils1989

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Posted 07 September 2005 - 19:20

Originally posted by David Birchall


I think you gentlemen are referring to a "flat 'at" also known in some circles as a cheese cutter. :rolleyes:

And yes, I know what a bloody deerstalker is but I think this is what they really mean


Ok, thanks everyone for the cheese cutter cap question:)