One of the first pages I turn to in Motor Sport when each new issue arrives, is Doug Nye’s page. Like most of us on this Forum, and probably a sizeable number of Motor Sport’s readers, I enjoy Doug’s erudite and occasionally curmudgeonly observations , though these are always expressed in his habitual gentlemanly manner. In the latest issue, Doug rails against what many of us regard as F1’s version of “Newspeak”, the examples he gives in his article’s headline are ‘running P3’, ‘in quali’, and ‘turn 5’, but there are so, so many more.
Peak blood pressure occurs when he mentions the replacement of the three letter single syllable word ‘pit’ by the now almost universally used and equally short and plosive word ‘box’, which to most of us appears to have come from nowhere to effect a takeover in F1 terminology, so where did that particular verbal irritation come from, who could Doug blame, maybe one of his ‘Old Friends’? The only convincing explanation I’ve seen appears on page 102 of Max Mosely’s eponymous autobiography, which it’s quite possible that Doug, in common with many members of TNF have not read, though with certain reservations I’d recommend it.
In FOCA’s early days, there were many conflicts with race organisers and related officialdom, much of it instigated of course by J M Balestre. A particular problem back then was passes, which were issued at the Organiser’s discretion, teams never knew how many they were going to receive, or even who exactly would be issuing them. At a FOCA meeting before the 1974 Monza race, Bernie and Max suggested that FOCA should itself issue these essential items. On the air charter flight to Milan for the GP, they travelled together in those days remember, these new FOCA passes were distributed, a simple piece of yellow cardboard with ‘Monza’ and ‘Box’ printed on it, simply because those concerned believed that ‘Box’ was Italian for ‘Pits’, though possibly it isn’t, who knows? At the circuit, all concerned offered these items to officials, ignoring the supposedly ‘Official’ items, and the passes were accepted by pragmatic officialdom. According to the late Max, that was when ‘Box’ entered motor sport terminology.
I knew Max Mosley a little back in the 1970s, he was part-timing as my law lecturer at university, and we met again during his time at MARCH. I suspected then that he didn’t remember me from earlier days, but he hadn’t changed a bit, charmingly erudite, brilliantly sharp, and always the last to put his hand in his pocket to buy a round. We all knew about his slightly dubious background of course, but back then I liked him a lot, honestly.
