Gove Races to Victory in Vintage Car Grand Prix : His Resurrected Williams Has Original Decals and More Than Enough Power

Refinements in space-age technology have come so fast in Formula One racing that even a six-year-old car is considered eligible for vintage races.

On a Sunday so filled with nostalgia that one of the highlights of the Palm Springs Vintage Grand Prix was the sight of a 1934 Alfa Romeo running alongside a 1950 Talbot-Lago, Gary Gove drove a 1980 Williams to victory in the Victory Lane Formula One Invitational race.

The winning car was originally driven by world champion Alan Jones of Australia in the Long Beach Grand Prix. Gove is a car dealership manager for Pete Lovely in Tacoma, Wash.

Gove passed pole-sitter Bobby Unser, in a baby blue Eagle 5000 car, on the second lap of the 15-lap race and won by holding off Warren Sankey, who was in a McLaren once campaigned by world champion James Hunt.

Sankey, of Lafayette, Calif., is a collector of rare stamps who also collects and races old cars. He has never raced anything but vintage cars.

In most vintage car gatherings, the “races” are no more than exhibitions with no hard driving in tight corners. Here, on a 7-turn, 1.1-mile course laid out adjacent to the Palm Springs airport, even though some of the equipment was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the emphasis was on racing.

“Before I started, Art Evans (one of the race organizers) told me not to pass Bobby Unser,” said Sankey, who started 11th. “But I did.”

Gove, who drove four years on the professional Can-Am circuit from 1978 to 1981, was also apprehensive about passing Unser, the three-time Indy 500 winner and recent record-setter on the Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

“I felt I had the horsepower to pass him, but you never know about someone like Bobby,” Gove said. “I passed him on the inside of the hard left turn after the chicane when he got pretty sideways. It looked like his tires didn’t give him the grip he would have liked to have.”

Gove has been driving race cars for Lovely, who finished fifth in a ’68 Lotus 49, for 20 years. In 1980 he won 8 of 10 races and the two-liter championship. The green and white Williams had the same Arabian oil company decals it had when Jones drove it in Formula One.

The car was built for the Williams team in 1980, but it was sold in midseason to the Ram Racing team. Eliseo Salazar crashed in a non-points Formula One race at Outland Park, England, and the car was written off. The following year, Gove and Chris Lovely, Pete’s son, purchased it and converted it to a Can-Am machine, complete with fenders and a huge rear wing.

Gove drove in the Can-Am series until an engine mount snapped at 120 m.p.h. during a race at Watkins Glen and the car smashed into a guard rail. Gove broke both legs and the car was written off for a second time.

Two years ago, Lovely brought it out of the junk pile and had it rebuilt to its original Formula One specifications to drive in historic car races.

“It’s a great feeling, driving a car like this,” Gove said. “There is something special about getting into a magical car with a wonderful legacy and taking it around the course.

“The Williams has so much horsepower, and this track was so tight, that I never got it into fifth gear.”

Unser, in a car that Dan Gurney built for the Formula 5000 series in 1974, jumped into a quick lead but before his second time around, his fuel filter was clogged.

“These old cars need maintenance and I don’t think this one has had any,” Unser said. “All the running we did Saturday apparently loosened up a lot of gunk and it plugged the filter.”

The true Formula One drivers didn’t fare so well in the race designed for them. Sir Jack Brabham, the three-time champion from Australia, pulled off on the sixth lap and was closely followed into the pits by George Follmer, Innes Ireland and Bob Bondurant, last year’s winner.

Two other advertised drivers, former world champion Phil Hill and Indy 500 winner Rodger Ward, did not appear.

John Morton, driving a ’69 Chevron that he tested in 1974 for BMW, won the Can-Am race after Bondurant was penalized for shortcutting a chicane--an artificial jog in the track designed to slow down cars.

“Bob just straightened it out but it was so slippery out there it was like driving on grease,” Morton said.

The incident occured with two laps to go. Bondurant, a racing school director who was a late replacement for Reginald Howell in a ’72 McLaren, continued on to finish second.

“I missed the chicane at the far end, got in the oil and it was either go into the hay bales or go straight and miss the chicane,” Bondurant said. “If that hadn’t happened, I’m pretty sure I could have hung on and won.”

Morton, a veteran sports car driver from El Segundo who won the 1985 Times Grand Prix at Riverside and finished third this year at the 24 Hours of LeMans, was surprised at the intensity of the competition.

“I can’t imagine if I owned a Dino Ferrari I’d let anyone race it like some of these guys did today,” he said. “Even lapping a $150,000 Ferrari is intimidating because I’m scared I might hit it. Those cars are worth more than my body.”

Morton was driving the Chevron for Vasek Polak, a Redondo Beach imported car dealer, for whom he has driven since 1972.