Johnny Claes driver profile; All parts online!

[tommykl]

After literally years of saying I was going to do this, I have finally delivered.

Johnny Claes was one of the 21 drivers on the grid for the 1950 British Grand Prix. He was the first Belgian to race in the World Championship, and he was arguably the championship's first real backmarker, the first true reject.

In a three-part, 13 000-word article, I've taken a look at Johnny Claes' early life and career, his racing accomplishments and failures, his influence on the history of motorsport in Belgium and the world and the general of European motor racing in the early 1950s.

Today, Johnny Claes would have turned 100 years old. To commemorate this anniversary, here is the first part.

Johnny Claes: Part 1 - The Staert

Enjoy.

[tommykl]

Now that everyone's had time to read the first part, I'm sure you're all eager to know what happens next. If you're not, shut up and let me have my dream

Anyways, the second part is now live on the website!

Johnny Claes: Part 2 - Top Of His Gaeme

[watka]

Incredibly impressive! Really enjoy finding out about the early rejects, the trend-setters if you will!

Seems like he makes Mark Webber look like a demon off the start line given some of these first lap performances!

[Bobby Doorknobs]

I see it still says the 1951 German GP was the first post-war edition of the race

Not that it takes away from an otherwise well-done piece of work

[tommykl]

I'm sure you're all waiting with semi-bated breath to know how the Johnny Claes story ends. Well, never fear, as the final part of the article has now been published, and it's the longest of the three.

Find out about how Johnny Claes pulled off one of motorsport's greatest ever drives and cemented the future of Belgian motorsport.

Johnny Claes: Part 3 - A Claes Of His Own

[Yannick]

Thank you for the 3-part series of articles on Johnny Claes. It's been quite a fascinating read.

[Kuwashima]

Phenomenal work!

We will be mentioning on the next podcast.

UPDATE - we'll save for tie-in with post-Belgian GP podcast.

[dinizintheoven]

It's only now thaet I'm caetching up with these all-new profiles aend aerticles, aend I thought I'd staert with this one.

That was a quite brilliant read - and also, if anyone ever says to us "you call these drivers rejects, are you mocking them in some way?" we can all point to this article and show that for all Johnny may have had very little success in the F1 World Championship (including the years where it was F2-only), for all that we formulated the Johnny Claes Award for spending the most laps in last place, it explains why he spent so long at the back of the F1 field and how he had other successes in his own right.

As for that 52-hour stint in Rome to Liège, if I've got it right and he drove all that time continuously, that is absolutely phenomenal. I was recently (well, a year and a half ago) presented with the potential daunting task of covering the thousand-mile journey from Banská Bystrica to Sangatte in a single day - twice as long as the 500 miles I'd usually consider to be the maximum I can handle, and there's no way I could have done it. Rome to Liège isn't quote that far but is still far in excess of what I could deal with... and this was in a race!

We salute you, Johnny. Give that trumpet a good polish.

[tommykl]

It's only now thaet I'm caetching up with these all-new profiles aend aerticles, aend I thought I'd staert with this one.

That was a quite brilliant read - and also, if anyone ever says to us "you call these drivers rejects, are you mocking them in some way?" we can all point to this article and show that for all Johnny may have had very little success in the F1 World Championship (including the years where it was F2-only), for all that we formulated the Johnny Claes Award for spending the most laps in last place, it explains why he spent so long at the back of the F1 field and how he had other successes in his own right.

As for that 52-hour stint in Rome to Liège, if I've got it right and he drove all that time continuously, that is absolutely phenomenal. I was recently (well, a year and a half ago) presented with the potential daunting task of covering the thousand-mile journey from Banská Bystrica to Sangatte in a single day - twice as long as the 500 miles I'd usually consider to be the maximum I can handle, and there's no way I could have done it. Rome to Liège isn't quote that far but is still far in excess of what I could deal with... and this was in a race!

We salute you, Johnny. Give that trumpet a good polish.

Thanks for the comment, it means a lot!

And you did get it right, he drove those 52 hours continuously, though presumably stopping at checkpoints and for coffee breaks and necessary relief. The Liège-Rome-Liège took place in an era where there were no motorways through the Alps. The race was often considered plain sailing through Germany, which already had the Autobahns, but became significantly tougher once Switzerland was reached. Each segment had a target time, and every time a team finished a segment behind that time, they would get a time penalty equal to that time loss. The overall winner was the team with the fewest penalties, and I believe Claes and Ickx managed to win in 1951 without incurring any penalties at all. The event itself did not have rest days, and usually lasted from 3 to 4 days, so Claes only started this monster stint about a third of the way through.

As the years progressed, the format became tired and progressively changed. The time scoring method was unchanged, but the finish line moved to Spa, while the midway point moved first to Zagreb, then all the way to Sofia. In 1965, Yugoslavia refused to allow the race to pass through it, and from then on, the race became a timed event on the Nürburgring, starting at 82 hours and steadily increasing in length until its final hurrah in 1971, at which point it was a full 96 hours long.