26 replies to this topic

[Duc-Man]

Being german and born in 1970...I just have some dim memories.

I remember when I was a child we had a TV that could recieve AFN and I remember me and my brother watching the Can-Am races on there.

And that's all I do remember about the single seat Can-Am.

 

When ever the theme single seat Can-Am comes up at facebook or elsewhere on social media/networks there are always very negative comments about it.

Comments like "they killed two great race series for that rubbish" for example. And that would be a nice one.

We all know the Can-Am died during the '74 season.

The F-5000 was AFAIK already going downhill and on the best way to become a spec series with half of the entries being Lola T330/332 by 1976.

 

Now I'm wondering about 2 things:

Was the single seat Can-Am really that bad?

Where does that hate against it come from?

 

It would be great to get some input and responses from people that were there at the time.

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited by Duc-Man, 16 January 2020 - 17:10.

[E1pix]

The "hate" came from what you've pretty much said:
-- Huge agony in the Series dying in '74, and I witnessed the last race
-- Near-equal agony, for me anyway, in trashing F5000 in a failed attempt of resurrection
-- Witnessing 1977 as pouring gas into wounds by its very existence

While the T330 and by far more the T332 were dominant, in my view by no means was F5000 waning. 1976 was very, very special; though Mario had gone, Alan Jones came along with a lot of other new faces. I saw three races that year and barely missed the Can-Am at all... until it was "back."

That said, I found the hate a bit misplaced and still enjoyed Can-Am II. But not like either predecessor.

[Allen Brown]

1. No

2. Don’t get me started.

[Mallory Dan]

After a poor start, in 1977, IMHO, Single Seat CanAm got better and better til about 1982. Excellent drivers, some good races, wide variety of cars, and at the front at least, decent teams with reasonable budgets. 

[arttidesco]

Looking back I can see that thinking mixing open wheel F5000 with closed Can Am body work might look like a win win for sponsors and the spectator, but I am afraid it just did not work out like that.

 

The T332s that became T333s IMHO looked plain ridiculous even though they obviously worked, the word carbuncle came to mind when I first saw one and still does.

 

That is not to say there were no cool cars about in Can Am II, the Dallara modified Talon that became the Wolf for my money was as good as it got.

 

As others above I do not remember F5000 waining in terms of entries in '76 but maybe gate reciepts told a different story.

 

By it's death March and Lola had turned out in my opinion some clossal monstrosities but I guess some will look back at them with affection.

[10kDA]

I loved the "real" Can-Am. I enjoyed the later single-seat Can-Am as well. Where does the hate come from? I think it's due to the fact that it wasn't what it had been in the past, and there was no continuity between the two. I wonder if the rules had been changed to 5 liters from Group 7's unlimited displacement, such as the displacement limit for FIA Sports Prototype rules, would have made a difference. As it was, one series vanished and another one showed up a couple of years later with a familiar name that fooled no one who had been paying attention.

As far as F5000, as it neared the end some statements were made that SCCA had managed to screw up every pro series they ever sanctioned/administrered, and F5000 was the current example. I don't remember who that was attributed to , maybe someone here can refresh my memory. David Hobbs once said something to the effect that US F5000 had a way of keeping people stuck, and getting lost, in it. So maybe the Powers That Were had the idea to start fresh - without starting fresh.

The single seat Can-Am lacked what made Can-Am attractive to entrants in the first place. 1. BIG purses for road racing events 2. a series that started after the other major series - GP, USAC, USRRC - were concluded, so, no conflicting dates. That lasted a few years until more venues/promoters wanted to host the show, due to proven ticket sales.

But the single seat series itself became a stepping-stone of sorts for drivers. Alan Jones, Keke Rosberg, Danny Sullivan, Bobby Rahal come to mind. So it became clear that most of the drivers at the front of the field one year would not return the next. Not good for cultivating fan loyalty. It seemed to me the fans that turned out for the 5 liter Can-Am races did so out of a basic hunger for big bore, high speed road racing. CART understood that and exploited it, making single seat Can-Am pointless, mostly.

It must be noted that while the current racing scene has been blighted with "the halo" and the only slightly less-offensive "aero screen" (That's what IndyCar is calling it, isn't it?), single-seat Can-Am yielded the best solution to the issue. Behold - the Schkee:

 

 

 

http://www.automodel..._CAN-AM_003.jpg

 

But, apparently because it was Not Invented Here, Here being F1 and IndyCar, we get what we got.

 

My $.02, Results Not Typical - Your Mileage May Vary.

Edited by 10kDA, 16 January 2020 - 23:09.

[Sisyphus]

I second E1pix comments--F5000 was a great series and I question the statement that it was dying.  Certainly the last race at Riverside had a big field of about 30 cars including Al Unser, Brian Redman, Alan Jones, Jackie Oliver...

 

Sorry I only had a chance to see of them in person.

 

I saw all the single seater Can Am races at Riverside and thought the racing was good and the cars interesting.  Some excellent drivers as 10kDA mentioned--and also Al Unser, Jr, Jackie Ickx, Patrick Tambay...so it doesn't deserve the criticism it sometimes gets, IMHO.  The racing was arguably closer and more competitive than the original CanAm that Bruce and Denny steamrollered before Mark came in and did the same.

[PCC]

I suspect there would be less hate if they hadn't called it "Can-Am". Because it wasn't the Can-Am, and calling it "Can-Am" seemed like a cynical marketing ploy designed to fool the gullible into thinking the Big Bangers were back. They weren't. I've no doubt the series produced some good racing. But to me even the name of this thread jars: it's like "two-legged tripod" or "single-wheeled bicycle".

[JacnGille]

The Nov/Dec issue of Vintage Motorsports has an article about the beginnings of the single seat Can Am. In it they tell of the joint SCCA/USAC sanctioning of F5000. It says that USAC had a change of heart over a 5 Liter Stock Block formula. When they pulled out many track promoters also expressed concern over the future of F5000 and that's when the SCCA made the change.

[E1pix]

I never understood what SCCA gained from the alliance with USAC. Even to me as a 14 year-old, it appeared like USAC wanted to destroy the Series by enticing its stars toward road racing, and possibly switch to a V8 format in the end times of the Offy and before the Cosworths.

To my memory, USAC only produced four cars at Road America in 1974: rookie Tom Sneva in the Kingfish, Dick Simon in an Eagle-Foyt, John Martin in a McLaren-Offy (RIP Buddy), and one more I fail to recall. They were mostly in the way, though a curiosity, too.

Mosley and Johncock raced in T332s sporadically in 1975, but for all intents and purposes the co-sanctioning was a one-year deal that did absolutely nothing for F5000. Perhaps their sole intent was to build a behind-the-scenes rapport with teams and track owners with underhanded goals.

What better way for USAC to forge ahead with an open-wheel monopoly than to convince everyone involved that no room existed for both... but there was a void to fill by adding fenders?

[D28]

I suspect there would be less hate if they hadn't called it "Can-Am". Because it wasn't the Can-Am, and calling it "Can-Am" seemed like a cynical marketing ploy designed to fool the gullible into thinking the Big Bangers were back. They weren't. I've no doubt the series produced some good racing. But to me even the name of this thread jars: it's like "two-legged tripod" or "single-wheeled bicycle".

Correct, the name greatly alienated followers of the original Can-Am. I saw the cars as a preliminary race in a World Champion round in 1977, Mosport.  I didn't know what to expect but the first sighting left me thinking   They have to be kidding!  The series never recovered for me, although it no doubt offered close racing and some good drivers. These cars were racing at the same tracks as a few years previously had featured the Porsche 917/30; that alone demanded a new name for the series.

[E1pix]

Sports 5000 just had no sex appeal. :-)

[Dave Ware]

I was around at the time...well, I was a fan, so I read Autoweek, Road and Track and whatever books I could find.  Also went to the races at Mid-Ohio, Watkins Glen, and Mosport.  I loved the original Can Am and was disappointed to see it end.  Although we knew it was coming, and pretty much understood why

.

I also loved Formula 5000.  Certainly felt that it was unjustified to drop it.  That was a big disappointment, and yes, I was not happy with the powers-to-be that caused that.

 

F5000 cars with fenders were pretty bad, for the first few years, until they started in with specially-made second gen Can Am cars.  Really annoyed me that they called it Can Am, since it was not...it was F5000 cars with fenders.  Even with second gen cars it was not Can Am.  Nothing unlimited about it.  Who were they trying to kid?  The causal race fan who wouldn't know the difference.  As a seasoned race fan, how dumb did they think I was? If they had given it a different name, I would have been a little less annoyed. 

 

The single seat Can Am with the second gen cars became quite a vibrant series.  Really good drivers and some great racing.  Although with the exception of Ickx for one year, they lacked the established Grand Prix stars the original series had.

 

It might have been Don Capps who said in a long-ago thread that he appreciated the technical and design stuff that was going on with the second gen cars.

 

("Second gen" is my term for the cars designed for the series, as opposed to modified F5000 cars.  Just needed some way to describe them for this post.)

 

Despite the success single seat Can Am eventually achieved, I always wonder if they could have achieved the same thing with F5000 cars. 

 

Read an article recently, probably on Racer dot com, that I don't have time to hunt down.  The writer said that in F5000 the SCCA had a good product, and in Can Am they had a great brand, so they combined the two.  An article worth reading.  If I find it I'll post a link. 

 

An excellent book is Leon Mandel's "Fast Lane Summer."  Mandel follows Danny Sullivan and Garvin Brown's team during the 1980 Can Am season.  The book is mostly about the trials and tribulations of Garvin Brown Racing, but it is also about the Can Am in that year.

 

An excellent video tape is "Circuit," which follows the last 4 or 5 races of the '81 season.  Both the book and the tape are well worth getting.  Even if you don't have much interest in single seat Can Am and just like racing in general.

 

Also, really good posts, 10kDA and E1pix.. 

Edited by Dave Ware, 18 January 2020 - 05:00.

[DCapps]

The Nov/Dec issue of Vintage Motorsports has an article about the beginnings of the single seat Can Am. In it they tell of the joint SCCA/USAC sanctioning of F5000. It says that USAC had a change of heart over a 5 Liter Stock Block formula. When they pulled out many track promoters also expressed concern over the future of F5000 and that's when the SCCA made the change.

I spoke with Cameron Argetsinger several times in depth regarding the situation that led to the end of the F5000 series and the introduction of Cam-Am II. What the article suggests regarding the "change of heart" by USAC regarding the introduction of a five-liter stock block-based formula to replace the one that literally could be traced to the pre-WW2 days should be seen as being an accurate view of the USAC board. Even in the 1975/76 years there was rumbling and grumbling within the USAC ranks as the nature of the National Championship was beginning to change. As a result of the USAC ending its involvement, the SCCA folks and the track promoters met regarding the future of F5000. The track promoters decided they wanted to revive the Can-Am series, but the teams balked. The inevitable compromise was putting full bodies on the existing F5000 cars. It should be noted that Cam left the SCCA early in the 1977 season to return to his law office in Montour Falls, this time for keeps. This was not a coincidence, of course.

 

Keep in mind the context of this decision. USAC was beginning to experience the shifts that the new teams and technologies were bringing to the Championship series. The SCCA board was beginning one of its periodic fits of stupidity and the Pro series were the scapegoats for all sins real or imagined of the organization. Not to mention that IMSA was really beginning to clean the SCCA's clock. John Bishop had a better handle on things than the SCCA, which often ignored Cam's advice and counsel. Although the Cam-AM II series actually began to become quite interesting and good after the first few seasons, it was doomed by the SCCA board's regression to being literally a boy's club. By the mid-1980s, the SCCA was essentially no longer relevant and has remained so to this day. Cam said that his time in Denver was probably an even worse experience than being stabbed in the back at Watkins Glen regarding the management of the track.

 

During the first few seasons of Can-Am II, I was very much preoccupied by my Day Job (trying to balance being a newly-commissioned Army officer and back to squeezing in another round of grad school) and outside keeping up with Mario and IMSA and a bit of NASCAR, my time for keeping up with motor sport to the level I had been was difficult to almost impossible for the most part. The series was actually pretty good once it began to mature and develop its own identity. Then it drifted into the usual SCCA Oblivion. Contrary to popular belief, there were actually rules for the original Can-Am series, as loose as they might have seemed or were often interpreted. Of course, nostalgia is often far more powerful than mere reality.

[RA Historian]

To my memory, USAC only produced four cars at Road America in 1974: rookie Tom Sneva in the Kingfish, Dick Simon in an Eagle-Foyt, John Martin in a McLaren-Offy (RIP Buddy), and one more I fail to recall. They were mostly in the way, though a curiosity, too.

Mosley and Johncock raced in T332s sporadically in 1975, but for all intents and purposes the co-sanctioning was a one-year deal that did absolutely nothing for F5000. Perhaps their sole intent was to build a behind-the-scenes rapport with teams and track owners with underhanded goals.

Yes, the 1974 Road America round had a handful of USAC Indy cars present. Sneva and Martin did race, and under the circumstances acquitted themselves fairly well. Dick Simon, on the other hand, was a DNS. Dick, as he has been known to do, had run his mouth all week about how Indy cars were superior to the F-5000 cars and how his Eagle with four cam Indy Ford V-8 would simply run away from the 5000s. In Friday practice he was noticeably slower than most of the 5000s and on Saturday he left, citing "mechanical woes". But he left with his tail between his legs.

 

Leader Card Racers, three time Indy 500 winners, always had an interest in road racing, so it was no surprise that they bought a new Lola T-332 for the 1974 season. Mike Mosley, a fine oval track driver, was the pilot but it quickly became apparent that his road racing skills were lacking, After the season Leader Card traded the Lola to Patrick Racing for an Eagle Indy car. In 1975 Gordon Johncock drove the T-332 for Patrick. While not a winner, he did not embarrass himself. That T-332 eventually found its way to the 1977 Son of Can Am series as the first McKee Mk XX, more commonly known as a Schkee.

 

The original idea of the USAC-SCCA co-sanction was an interchange of cars and perhaps a common formula down the road. That of course did not happen, but over the three years of the agreement Indy cars did show up at F-5000 races. Their best result was at Riverside when Bobby Unser won a heat in an AAR Eagle Indy car. A number of F-5000 cars ran in the November, 1974, USAC Indy car race on the Phoenix oval, but they proved themselves unsuited for such an undertaking.

 

But back to the central theme of this thread. The 1977-1986 iteration of the Can Am did have many big names in it and frankly, better competition than the one team shows that the original series had been. Further, after the initial rush of rebodied T-332s ran its course some interesting new cars appeared. The Lola T-530, Holbert CAC cars, March 817s, VDS cars and more added variety and interest. However the birth of CART and subsequent demise of USAC sanction of Indy car saw a pronounced outflow of teams and drivers from the Can Am II to CART, the greener pasture of the day. Once the top teams all moved to CART, Can Am II was doomed. It struggled on for its last few years with paltry fields and a series of rushed band aid fixes from the SCCA which never worked. The SCCA even admitted Group C cars to try to fill the fields. The last Can Am II race at Road America, in 1983, was won by John Fitzpatrick in a Porsche 956. By this time though, outside of the top two or three cars, the rest of the field was made up of tired several year old cars and a collection of two liter cars ostensibly running in a separate class. The series then continued to decline to the inevitable painful death.

 

I share the view of several on here that the name was more of a drawback than a plus. Those in the know were well aware that this series was not the "Can Am" that we loved, even with all its warts. An even bigger insult was foisted on us by the SCCA when they named the 1992-96 spec car series of those awful Shelby Dodge junkers "Can Am". That was enough to turn anyone's stomach. I covered that series for On Track magazine, and believe me, it was a struggle to be impartial and not let my feelings bleed through to print. 

 

Tom

[10kDA]

It was obvious during the 1983 season the series was fading and probably in trouble. Come RA race weekend, my endurance racing teammate and I had scheduled time off work and rode our (road) bikes up to Elkhart Lake on Thursday for the usual and expected 4-day event. Well, Thursday was not on the schedule. That's when it became obvious the series was well on its way out, since the track promoters were not willing to take a chance on potential ticket sales vs costs of operation for that fourth day. It didn't take much imagination to figure out RA was not the only track where this was happening.

 

Re: John Fitzpatrick winning in a Porsche 956 - perfectly in keeping with Elkhart Lake's status as a "spoiler" track, and across many different series.

 

Tom's mention of the Shelby Dodge "Can-Am" - I feel for you, buddy! I imagine your fingers hurt after typing up those race reports. Though any antipathy I had toward SCCA about naming the 5 liter series "Can Am" completely dissolved when I heard they were attaching the name to a totally lame spec car series. That became their greatest offense in terms of using the term. I once had a sub-2-minute party conversation with a guy who said he used to drive "Can Am cars". When I found out he was talking about the Shelby sh@tboxes I had to hold back from either busting out laughing or slapping him, I couldn't decide.

[mariner]

I quite liked the look of the "single seater" CanAm cars actually!

 

One thing worth mentioning is that they were the perfect downforce generators - very wide bodies with lots of plan area for low pressure and a centre seat to allow nice, long, wide tunnels. 

 

And unlike most venturi cars big wings allowed as well.

 

 

Its probably as welt eh budgets were tight or by 1983 anybody with the funds to really apply venturi know how would have probably exceed 10,000 lb of total downforce 

[larryejames]

These perspectives on the end of F5000 and creation of CanAm II are interesting. My perspective is a little different. I was the fabricator (and a little wrenching) for Dave Briggs. So I converted 2 cars from T332 to T333 and I hated the things. The conversion bodywork from Lola (Carl Haas) was really Mickey Mouse. I rushed the first conversion so we could squeeze a test day in at Sears Point. We learned that the front was lifting at speed so decided to skip the first race at Three Rivers while I came up with a solution. Turned out that was a good decision as a couple cars went airborne that first race.

 

What I did was chop off the splitter; blunt the nose; and add a full width wing; and as added measure put an internal "splitter" more like a scraper just aft of the nose with an outlet just forward of the tub. We first ran the car at the second race at Laguna Seca and after first practice I added louvers on the top of the front fenders just aft of the front wheels. All of this worked to keep the nose planted and we ended the weekend with 1st and 3rd.

 

Into the season we kept learning about the car. The front brakes were wanting and I ended up putting a second caliper on each of the front corners. Ring and pinions and CV joints didn't last long either. The whole thing was one Mickey Mouse BandAid on top of another. All in all they were just more cumbersome to work on. And we had truly enjoyed the F5000 cars; they were fun to work on; fun to race; and as far as I could tell way more fun in every way. When I started with the team Dave had a T300; we went to a T330; then T332; then T332C; then the T332CS (CanAm).

[Ray Bell]

The DG was marginal all the way through, though, wasn't it?

 

Would the bodywork have really added much strain to it?

[E1pix]

That was a real pleasure to read, Larry.

I well remember Briggs in all those cars, and in the March Atlantic car(s) alongside Don (Breidenbach).

Welcome and Thanks.

[arttidesco]

The whole thing was one Mickey Mouse BandAid on top of another. 

 

Kind of confirms my non technical suspicion from the peanut gallery, amazing the series lasted at all ;-)

 

Thanks for adding your 2 cents from the front line Larry (y)

[Valiant273]

I liked the Can Am II. Of course it wasn’t the same as the original series but they both died. I also thought F5000 in the seventies was great but it just didn’t have a big enough following and didn’t bring enough people to the tracks.

The original question about Can Am II is a good one. To me it’s similar to Grand Prix racing in the 50s, 60s and 70s with Mickey Mouse cars which seems rather crummy when compared heroic and powerful masterpieces of the 30s.

[racinggeek]

I'd add this point to support the contention (which I hold) that Can-Am II was at the time and remains very underrated and underappreciated.

 

I became a motorsports fan right around 1973, i.e. about the time the Penske Porsche 917-30/SCCA rules makers (take your pick) were killing the original Can-Am. Unable to get to the races on my own as a pre-adolescent, I never was able to see the series as it happened. Thus, I had only words and photos to inform me of how great these cars were, no personal experiences.

 

Fast-forwarding to 1977, when as a teenager I had more access to racing magazines and could get to an occasional race if desired, here comes this "new" professional series featuring big, brawny, high-powered sports cars the likes of which hadn't raced in the U.S. since I became a fan.

 

Plus, you had established stars and stars in the making from North America and overseas (Tambay, Villeneuve, Alan Jones, Ickx, Keke, Rahal, Danny Sullivan, Little Al, Geoff Brabham) duking it out with highly regarded, home-grown road racing veterans like Follmer, Al Holbert, EFR and John Morton. Not to mention guest shots by drivers like Big Al, Depallier, etc.

 

And while the first year was dominated by the straightforward Lola 332 conversion, the diversity of car designs really started taking hold soon after, whether 332s with non-Haas bodywork (the Schkee, the Bud Spyders, Follmer's and Rahal's Prophet, the Frissbee and its VDS development) or completely fresh ideas like Holbert's CAC chassis or Tony Cicale's 2-liter Ralt-based ground effects entry. (In fact, didn't Can-Am II have the first full-on ground effects sports racers anywhere, starting with the Holbert/Carl Hogan/Lee Dykstra car of 1979? Don't recall any of the European sports prototypes going that route at the time.)

 

And while some of them were behemoths relative to other sports racers, they were plenty fast.

 

Yeah, I knew where they came from, but they were the baddest things to be found on road courses in North America at the time, and that's the point for a fan of my time. USAC champ cars were still almost all oval; IMSA had the cool GT cars but they were still GTs, not prototype-ish racing cars, with the GTP rules still several years in the future; there was no access to the Porsche/Renault/Alfa prototypes of the FIA championships (not anywhere around me, anyway). 

 

For loud, fast, big sports racers with top-shelf talent and a variety of interesting engineering solutions, it was all I (and North America) had for five or six years. And in those five or six years, it was pretty damned good.

Edited by racinggeek, 07 February 2020 - 21:42.

[MCS]

That's an interesting perspective, racinggeek.  Some food for thought there.  Thanks.

 

Whilst I personally wouldn't include Geoff Brabham with any of those listed before him, I was curious about your subsequent mention of Depailler.  I am very far from being an expert on Single Seat Can-Am but was just curious.

[2F-001]

I believe Depailler had a run in Can Am (MkII) in one of the variously-named Lola T332-based devices at Riverside ('79 or '80 -ish??). 

It may have been for team owned by or associated with Paul Newman - but this is all purely from memory, so could be wide of the mark.

I think he was pretty quick, considering it must have all been a bit new to him, but I don't know if he posted a good result; would have to do some ferreting... 

[Tim Murray]

I’ve checked the results listings on ORC and Racing Sports Cars, and Tony got everything right except the year. Patrick only did the one race, at Riverside on 15th October 1978 in a Paul Newman-entered Spyder NF-10 (Lola-based, as Tony said). He qualified 6th and was classified 17th, having retired after 13 laps (out of 50) with engine problems.

https://www.oldracin...1978/riverside/

https://www.racingsp...1978-10-15.html

[racinggeek]

Correct, and Depallier was entered by the Newman-Freeman team because it was the last race of the year and EFR was in with a chance at the championship, idea being that Patrick might be able to serve as a buffer and steal some points from Alan Jones in the Haas-Hall Lola. Didn't work with Jones dominating the race, as it turned out.