The Speed Merchants

An account of the 1972 motor racing season, outside of F1. Le Mans, Sebring, the Nurburgring and the infamous Targa Florio. Narration comes from two drivers who raced that year - Mario Andretti and Vic Elford.

I don’t quite know why this has faded into relative obscurity, it’s a great document of a moment in history and shows some of the daily grind drivers went through in that era. Perhaps the dated edit puts people off, with its slightly jazzy soundtrack covering some of the racing.

The standout sequences are from the Targa Florio - a mad dash time trial through Sicily on tight mountain roads and through little villages. By Elford’s own admission it’s a dangerous race that even in 1972 is on its last legs. The next year would be the final FIA race there, then by 1977 it was completely gone, so this film is one of the last to capture an event we’ll never see again.

Not only that, but the footage from Sicily is outstanding, with a camera strapped to Elford’s car on a test-run and Elford walking you through some of the moves there. They could only close the roads for the race, so practice and testing involved dodging people, cars and sheep. It’s completely fucking bonkers.

It’s easy to look at this and think that the 70s were somehow better times than ours, and there definitely is something more human about machines back then. But death haunts this sport far more than it does now and The Speed Merchants does not shy away from this. Even while making the film they lost Jo Bonnier at Le Mans.

Once or twice there’s an attempt to understand why people do this. Why risk your life for sport? Human nature is surely self-preservation, but it seems like some of us simply live to go faster and further than the last person did. Elford says he doesn’t particularly enjoy racing in the moment, but after a race he gets a sense of clarity and optimism he can’t get from doing anything else. Perhaps for him it’s only in cheating death that he feels alive.