Fast Company (approx 21 min B&W/Color)

This re-cap of the 1973 Grand Prix campaign shares many traits with another documentary we’ve reviewed, The Quick and the Dead. At 21 minutes long, Fast Company is obviously more compact and straight forward, but it does include some interesting bits that few will have seen before…

At Monza, for example, an impromptu foot race is held around the circuit.  Drivers, team members and others compete for the bragging rights.  We’re treated to a humorous shot of Graham Hill, out of breath.  The winner?  A very lean Frank Williams, sporting the Iso-Marlboro colors on his shirt.  37 years later, this image is somewhat tragic, seeing as Williams has been confined to a wheelchair since 1986.

Fast Company also captures the organic, almost free-balling nature of Formula One in 1973.  Races were started with a flag back then, and it was typical for the drivers to creep up to the line in anticipation.  It makes today’s starting procedures look anal retentive by comparison.  In the early 1970s, timing and scoring was also less sophisticated. So there was a much higher potential for confusion to set in under extreme circumstances.  Case in point:  The Canadian Grand Prix at Mosport.  A collision forced the first-ever use of the safety car in Formula One, which failed to pick up the leader of the race.  Because of this error, some drivers were able to gain almost a lap on the field!  Even after the race was over, no one was sure who had actually won.  At one point, Howden Ganley was congratulated on his victory.  Then, Fittipaldi was congratulated.  Finally, the confusion subsided, and Peter Revson was declared the official winner; the last American-born driver to win a Grand Prix.

And there is, of course, an acknowledgment of the risks involved in trying to be the fastest.  As with The Quick and the Dead, this is accomplished by showing the brutal price one can pay for a miscue.  But the narrator, who we’ve heard in other F1 re-caps like The Shape of Things to Come and Car Wars, adds this well-crafted description: “Somewhere on the other side of 180 miles per hour, there is a limit beyond which a Formula One Grand Prix driver cannot safely go.  The limit, both human and mechanical, is invisible.  There is no gauge to warn the driver that he is approaching the frontier of his skills and the outer capability of his tightly-tuned machine.  To drive too far under the limit is to lose the race.  To drive above it confronts disaster.  A champion must drive exactly on the edge of that limit.  Few men in the history of this sport have been able to find that edge.”