This month we bring you another You Tube link, one featuring this issue’s focus on Jaguar, Group 44 and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. From this particular view, however, what you see all seems so matter-of-fact and that’s-just-the-way-you-do-it simple as Chip Robinson guides the Group 44 Jaguar XJR-5 around the circuit’s original configuration at top speed.
It’s a short lap for a car as quick as the GTP Jag, and nothing much happens, but that’s really because both car and driver were so capable there. Still, we get to see how daunting Turn 2 used to be as a high-speed, left-hand corner and how easy the Corkscrew can be if you do it right.
Mario Andretti generally did it right, setting the ultimate lap record for the old circuit, and he called taking Turn 2 flat his big challenge. “There was a pucker factor, to be sure. If you missed an apex by an inch, the way everything was, you were gonna wind up who knows where. To put the lap time together you had to really, really strap it in there.”
For anyone who is fortunate enough to have driven the old 1.9-mile, 9-turn circuit, this will be a lap down Memory Lane, and for those of you who haven’t, this is a bit of what you missed.
