27 replies to this topic

[jeze]

Hi guys!

I'm going to start a project bringing Can-Am up to schratch on the Swedish Wikipedia, and I know next to nothing about four-time champion car Frissbee GR3, who was behind the project, and where they came from. I know that it was in Can-Am's latter years, and that the popularity of the series was going downhill, but it'd still be interesting to find out something about Frissbee. Basic Googling unfortunately didn't help, so I have to turn to you.

//Jesper

Edited by jeze, 09 January 2010 - 17:30.

[alansart]

I think it was based on a Lola 330 F5000 car.

[jeze]

I think it was based on a Lola 330 F5000 car.

OK, I guess that could be true, especially considering Lola's dominance in the 1977-1981 seasons with those rebodied F5000 cars. But whose idea was it, and who developed it?

[alansart]

As is often the case OldRacingCars.com is a good place to start....

http://www.facebook...._id=42047076061 (A Facebook link to ORC)

.....as is Racing Sports Cars

http://www.racingspo...e/Frissbee.html

[JB Miltonian]

"Turning heads wherever it races is the Frissbee, a former Lola F5000 car with an interesting history. What's left (the bellhousing, transmission and brakes) was once Al Unser's Vels-Parnelli Jones F5000 Championship T-400. But it was converted to a T-332 and except for detail changes, it's still your basic Lola. But not the body which was designed by Trevor Harris and crafted by Joey Cavaglieri, Wayne Hartman and John Morton (who's also the driver). The Frissbee (its name is a play on words concocted by the car's owner, IMSA racer Brad Frisselle) is neither a wing car nor a sucker car per se. It has no skirts and is not a sealed box....it does require airflow beneath the chassis to achieve maximum downforce."

From an article in R&T, November 1980.

There is a four-page article on the Frissbee GR3 in R&T, July 1983.

[jeze]

Thanks to all of you, the article is done now

[TooTall]

A couple shots of John Morton in the Frissbee.





Cheers,
Kurt O.

[taylov]

Thanks to all of you, the article is done now

At least one of the Frissbee GR3 cars had an extended racing life here in the UK after the end of Can-Am 2 in the USA.

Plumtree-Wykehams Racing ran a GR3 in Thundersports during 1987, The car was driven by Colin Pool and Bill Wykeham. It was stated in race programmes at the time that the car was ex-Keke Rosberg and Stephen South.

Tony

Edited by taylov, 10 January 2010 - 12:24.

[RA Historian]

From 1980 on a fairly large number of Lola F-5000/Can Am II cars were converted to Frissbee bodywork. I take it that the Frissbee body was a bit better aerodynamically than the T-333 bodywork. As the Can Am II series dwindled to nothing in the mid 1980s, the Frissbee was the numerically dominant car.

The "GR-3" designation, by the way, was used by Galles Racing for its Frissbee and was not a designation given to Frissbees in general. It must be said, however, that the Galles Frissbees were the most successful of all the Frissbees. Al Unser Jr won the series championship in 1982 in said Frissbee. Then the cars were sold to Canadian Tire and Jacques Villeneuve I (the uncle) won the 1983 title. The cars then went to Rick Miaskiewicz, who snagged the crown in 1985. Hence, the majority of Frissbee wins were the GR-3 Galles variant.

Also, Rosberg and South did not drive Frissbees. (Don't believe everything you read in race programs!) Rosberg drove a different Lola F-5000 variation, a Spyder NF-11, for Paul Newman in 1979. South also drove for Newman, in 1970, but in a Lola T-530. South had his career ended that year when he crashed a Spyder NF-11 that he was using since his normal T-530 was damaged in practice.

Tom

Edited by RA Historian, 10 January 2010 - 17:59.

[Thundersports]

At least one of the Frissbee GR3 cars had an extended racing life here in the UK after the end of Can-Am 2 in the USA.

Plumtree-Wykehams Racing ran a GR3 in Thundersports during 1987, The car was driven by Colin Pool and Bill Wykeham. It was stated in race programmes at the time that the car was ex-Keke Rosberg and Stephen South.

Tony

Thats not quite the whole story though; Plumtree didn't get what they thought they were getting.........

[raceannouncer2003]

Miles Jackson currently races the ex-Galles/Unser, Jr Frissbee. They call it a GR2. Here is the link:

http://www.jdcracing...63/Default.aspx

Vince H.

[Allen Brown]

There were only two "real" Frissbees, GR2 and GR3. GR2 evolved from a Lola T332, eventually getting a purpose-built tub and got the name "GR2" when bought by Galles. GR3 was then built from scratch, also with a purpose-built tub. Both tubs were effectively copies of the T332 tub. These real Frissbees also had highly modified suspension but the real trick to the Frissbee was the underside of the front bodywork and the team went to some trouble to keep that a secret. Trevor Harris told me that other teams tried to copy aspects of the Frissbee without ever realising they were copying the bits that didn't make the difference.

Two other Frissbees were built for customers using purpose-built T332 tubs plus bodywork from the Frissbee team but I don't believe these two had Frissbee suspension. Then a whole bunch of conversion kits sold off to owners of T330s and T332s. Those bodywork kits were also attached to T300s and even a T400.

Miles Jackson has the genuine GR2. Colin Pool unfortunately got one of the conversion kit cars. As Tom says, the Spyder was another T332 conversion so the Frissbee bodywork would fit it once the Spyder bracketry had been removed.

[URY914]

Pics I took at the St Pete Grand Prix in 1985. This is GR2

Edited by URY914, 13 January 2010 - 02:12.

[URY914]

Edited by URY914, 13 January 2010 - 02:10.

[URY914]

[oldtransamdriver]

Canadian Horst Kroll was the last Can Am II championin 86 - have seen his Frisbee described as a KR-3 or KR-5. These cars were very fast despite way less HP than the early big block Can Am cars.

The pole speeds recorded at Mosport in the early eighties were in the 1:10's - faster than any early Can-Am cars, according to ultimateracinghistory.

Robert Barg

[Jerry Entin]

Horst Kroll and his friend Doug MacCorkindale working on his Frissbee KR3
This is at Mosport and Horst was getting the car ready for a Victory lap for the fans to see the 1986 Champion and his car.



http://forums.autosp...ll wheel shadow
Jesper: This site will fill you in on Trevor Harris, the inventor of the Frissbee

Edited by Jerry Entin, 13 January 2010 - 12:33.

[Marc Sproule]

Here are links to the Frissbee pics I've uploaded to flickr. I have quite a few more but haven't scanned them yet but will upload when I do.....

http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4434224330
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4434224482
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4440131158
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4439353753
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4440131342
http://www.flickr.co...@N03/4440131396

this is the link to my new era Can Am set....
http://www.flickr.co...57623311345506/

and if you're truly a glutton for punishment, here's the link to all my current flickr uploads....many more to follow on a regular basis......

http://www.flickr.co...s/46681980@N03/

[simonlewisbooks]

Good looking cars - I wonder if the later era Can-Am might be due something of a historical re-evaluation? For a number of years it did have big grids with seriously big names (Rosberg, Ickx, Tambay, Fabi, Sullivan, Unser, Villeneuve, Brabham etc) before it took that terminal nose-dive in the early 80s.

Many of the cars now seem very appealing even if they were rather derided at the time. Yes they were F5000s with mudguards, but if anything they seemed to provide more competitive racing than their illustrious fore-bares, and, as has been pointed out, it wasn't slower either, despite the engine restrictions ! Even Can-Am guru Pete Lyons admits in his books that the Bruce-and-Denny-show or the four-figure horsepower 'wow factor' of the Porsche 917s didn't actually front much great wheel to wheel racing over the years.

The Can-Am name seems to have been an insurmountable burden for the later era to withstand, yet viewed from the British side of the pond, as a mad keen 12 year old, devouring AUTOSPORT every week, it seemed pretty darned exciting to me ! I wished we had something similar in Britain and when a few of the cars did appear in Thundersports a few seasons later they didn't disappoint (...if only there had been a few more on track at the same time!).

[Allen Brown]

Fabulous pictures Marc! I'm particularly enjoying your latest Formula Atlantic additions.

[Marc Sproule]

Thanks Allan, I'm having a bit too much fun. Unfortunately real life keeps getting in the way and I have to do things like eat, sleep and go to work.

Otherwise there would be a lot more images going up

Unfortunately, as we speak I gotta get ready to go to work.

If I have the time and energy later today I'll be adding more images.

[werks prototype]

Horst Kroll and his friend Doug MacCorkindale working on his Frissbee KR3
This is at Mosport and Horst was getting the car ready for a Victory lap for the fans to see the 1986 Champion and his car.



http://forums.autosp...ll wheel shadow
Jesper: This site will fill you in on Trevor Harris, the inventor of the Frissbee

What a great page.

Somewhat ironic that Trevor Harris's early career consisted of a stint as test technician for a 'Guided Missile'.

[RA Historian]

...than their illustrious fore-bares, ...

Sorry Simon, but I guess the devil is making me do this:

Papa, Mama, Baby, and a fourth after their house invasion by Goldilocks?

or

guests at a naturist club?

(I'm sorry )

Edited by RA Historian, 06 April 2010 - 20:34.

[URY914]

Marc,

Was one of those shots used for the poster sold by Paul Oxman publishing in the '80's. I have the poster still.

Paul (fellow flickr friend)

[Marc Sproule]

URY:

Unfortunately none of my pics ever made into Oxman's poster output.

A fair number ended up in calendars but none ever made the big time, as it were.

[Manfred Cubenoggin]

Hey, Marc! Thanks for all those fabulous image postings. As mentioned elsewhere, I'm having great difficulty keeping up!

I so clearly remember a buddy of mine, Jimmy, ordering a Paul Oxman calendar in the late 60's and when it arrived, he was despondant to see that all the images were just a series of black and white dots of approximately 1/2" diameter with bits of a racing car barely discernable in those dots. Between the dots, lots of blank whitespace. I particularly recall the image of John Surtees in his Lola T70 CanAm car broken apart into a patchwork of dots. I agreed that he'd been hosed. That is until I had Jim hold the calendar up and I stepped back about 10 to 15 feet to view it. Magically, I was then looking at what appeared to be a perfectly normal photograph. All the dots had merged into one single image and the whitespace had vanished. Big John's Lola looked perfectly normal in every respect. I then held the calendar so that Jimmy could see the affect from a distance. He, as I, was mightily impressed. Not only had he now a simple calendar for the coming year but also a work of art as well. Smiles all 'round!

I'd be very interested to learn more as to how this affect is achieved.

[Marc Sproule]

Manfred:

Since you are referring to something you did in the '60s I can only assume that your perception was being influenced by disappropriate misabuse of some kind of hallucinogen.

Correctomundo?

As for the technical explanation.....printing photos on a printing press necessitates the usage of "halftones". That's what you were seeing. You're not supposed to being looking at the some kind of Alice in Wonderland looking glass!!

As resolution in the printing process increases the size of the "dots" decreases.

I still feel the first answer makes a better story, and since I was once a journalist I try never to let the facts get in the way of a good story!!

[simonlewisbooks]

Sorry Simon, but I guess the devil is making me do this:

Papa, Mama, Baby, and a fourth after their house invasion by Goldilocks?

or

guests at a naturist club?

(I'm sorry )