Can-Am Races: St. Jovite

This lush resort country in the province of Quebec provides Playboy's LeRoy Neiman with the perfect setting to capture on canvas a spectacular auto-racing series that has helped put North America firmly on the international motor-sports map. Only a few years ago, road racing was dominated by Europe and Europeans. In the United States, it struggled along as primarily an amateur sport; only a few events attracted foreign-team cars or famous European drivers. Then, in 1966, the Sports Car Club of America collaborated with the Canadian Automobile Sports Club to institute the Canadian-American Challenge Cup--a professional road-race series that in five seasons has evolved and expanded to the point where it now rivals (text concluded on page 234)man at his leisure(continued from page 179) in glamor and excitement some of the most popular events in Europe.

The founders of the Can-Am series took a fairly traditional idea--custom-made, fendered, sports-racing cars--and eliminated almost all restrictions on chassis design and engine size. This provided incentive to experiment and innovate rather than simply refine, and has resulted in the development of ultra-high-performance automobiles with 600--700 horsepower that test engineering concepts and driver skills to their absolute limits. Stirling Moss, director of racing for Johnson Wax, which sponsors the Can-Am series, believes Can-Am Group 7 cars are what sold foreign designers on the American-developed V8 engines featured in the Formula 5000 cars now popular in Europe. Except in prestige, the Group 7 cars have surpassed even the Formula I Grand Prix machines; and their great spectator appeal has raised the Can-Am season purse to about $1,000,000 by attracting some of the biggest names in international racing.

To capture the color of the Can-Am, Playboy sent its peripatetic artist LeRoy Neiman back on the road, this time to St. Jovite. Quebec, for the running of the second race in the 1970 series at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant. St. Jovite was the Can-Am starting point in 1966 and its facilities and location continue to make it one of the most prominent and exciting events of the racing season. Reports Neiman:

"As I drove to the course, the French names, the bilingual road signs, the music on the car radio, the lush rural countryside dotted with farms and churches that show their French influence reminded me a little of Le Mans. But the Le Mans 24-hour race is almost a European Indy 500--all carnival and cops and bureaucracy and grandstands and tradition. St. Jovite, to my great pleasure, had the atmosphere and spirit of a well-planned Woodstock. Very informal, with tents, bedrolls, blankets and people scattered everywhere, talking, drinking, smoking, charcoaling, or just sunning themselves in shorts or bikinis. Much more picnic than carnival.

"The setting is spectacular. Soft grassy hills, steep mountain slopes (you can see the ski trails zigzagging through the trees) and jagged cliffs, all of which provide comfortable vantage points from which to view large sections of the two-and-a-half-mile course that reminds one of a river winding through rocky, hilly woodlands. The starting-line grandstand is too small to detract from the course's natural beauty and the pit area is reminiscent of a busy filling station. Unlike the French gendarmes, who work Le Mans as though it were a student riot, their French-Canadian counterparts know how to keep order without aggressive regimentation. This helps ease the tension among crews and drivers, for St. Jovite's holiday atmosphere can be felt even in the pits, where nerves usually fray quickly as racetime nears. The competition is there: Expensive cars carry the hopes of owners and sponsors--at speeds of 200 miles per hour in pursuit of a purse of at least $65,000 and series point awards. But irritability is remarkably low and professional fraternalism high.

"Despite its beauty and festive air, St. Jovite is a tortuous course that wears out cars and drivers alike. Only ten cars--fewer than half the starting field--held up long enough to finish. At least one driver suffered heat exhaustion and was relieved by Peter Revson, who managed to place seventh in a completely unfamiliar car. Revson's own machine had dropped out with engine failure after seven laps. On the very first lap, Jackie Oliver's Auto-coast Ti22 topped a rise at 150 mph, caught air under its front end and did a backward somersault that demolished the car but miraculously spared the driver. Two other cars were sidelined by the same crash, ten more by mechanical failures. After 75 laps, the winner was Dan Gurney, who started in the pole position with the fastest qualifying speed of 102.58 mph and then averaged 97.95 mph, giving the McLaren team its 15th consecutive victory in the Can-Am series. Gurney's triumph only served to increase the efforts of rivals--and to heighten the interest of motor-racing enthusiasts--to see who might end the McLaren team's long winning streak before the last race of the season on November eighth at Sears Point in Sonoma, California."