RE: R8

[Scott Fisher <sefisher@cisco.com>]

David Browning writes: 

> Any German team should use silver since it's their national 
> racing color.

Actually, that's not true (not that *any* team has cared about national
racing colors since Colin Chapman got Gold Leaf tobacco to pay for his
Lotus 49Bs in, um, 1969 or so).

Rob Walker tells a story about this in his autobiography.  For those who
don't know, Rob Walker is considered to be the most successful
"privateer" in Formula One from the Fifties through the early Seventies;
a huge number of great drivers, with Stirling Moss probably at the top
of the heap, drove for Rob.  Walker's quite a character in his own
right, but that's another story.

Anyway, Rob is Scots -- yes, he's of *that* Walker family, as in Black
Label and Red Label, and that's where the money came from to own a
successful privately-held Formula One team over three decades.  While
stopping short of asking his drivers to wear woad in competition, Rob's
livery was dark blue with a white stripe across the nose -- the racing
colors of Scotland (cf. David Coulthardt's helmet today, the St.
Andrew's Cross on the Scots flag, etc.).  

At a German Grand Prix in the mid-Fifties, Rob was given a hard time
over his team colors.  The officials were trying to ping him on the
technicality that his actual nationality was a citizen of the United
Kingdom and a subject of Queen Elizabeth, and therefore his cars should
properly be British Racing Green.

Rob simply pointed out that the Mercedes team were painted silver, in
spite of the fact that Germany's national color was white, and that if
he were forced to paint *his* cars, he would lodge a counter-protest
against the Silberpfeile, simply in the interest of fairness and
national propriety, of course.

The officials shut up and let him race.  Mercedes almost certainly won
the race, as it was before 1955 and after the death of Nuvolari... but
that too is another story.  

Obligatory Audi content: what color were all the works ur-Quattros in
international competition painted?  It wasn't silver...

> But, I imagine they'll paint it in whatever livery will give 
> them the most sponsor money.

Well, there is *that*.  

Be a *howl* to see it in BRG, though.  I mean, Audi own Bentley, right?

As a postscript -- somewhere on the Web, years and years ago, I stumbled
across (and bookmarked on a computer now long since left behind, I'm
afraid) a complete list of national racing colors for all the countries
that competed in international competition.  Anybody know where that
is?  One of my "had we but rooms enough and time" projects is to build a
miniature slot-car setup that duplicates bits and pieces of famous
racecourses from around the world -- La Source from Spa, Casino from
Monte Carlo, the Esses and the Dunlop Bridge from Le Mans (c. 1958),
etc., all done with the kind of detail normally associated with model
railroading (another sign of the debilitating brain disorder that will
no doubt eventually kill me, I'm sure).  I figured it'd be a kick to
paint the cars in official colors from various countries...

--Scott "And here is a 917LH in the national colors of Belize" Fisher