Motorsports Trivia Thread!

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prisonermonkeys
Sort of.

It didn't happen because Peugeot said no - they didn't want to risk an engine. But Jordan were using a Mugen-Honda engine in 1997.
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Even if Jordan were using a Mugen Honda at some point in 1997, they raced Peugeot engines all season.
 
Someone ludicrous like Bertie Ahern or John Bruton? The British angle is throwing me a little, which leads me to think it might be someone from Northern Ireland or even someone like Daniel Day-Lewis.
 
Roo
So Peugeot said no in 1996 to this person racing in the 1997 British GP, is that right?
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Yes and no. Yes because they were worried about losing an engine - but they may have been worried about being made to look very bad. Because of this person's reasons for doing it, the idea was dropped altogether and they did something else instead.

No because I never said that they were necessarily going to race - only that they were going to make an appearance.
 
prisonermonkeys
Yes and no. Yes because they were worried about losing an engine - but they may have been worried about being made to look very bad. Because of this person's reasons for doing it, the idea was dropped altogether and they did something else instead.

No because I never said that they were necessarily going to race - only that they were going to make an appearance.
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It's a tough one. I'm guessing Rowan Atkinson aka Mr. Bean.
 
Liquid
James Bond, Pierce Brosnan?
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Yes!

One of the first ideas for the film that became Tomorrow Never Dies was to have Bond drive a Formula One car at the British Grand Prix. Eddie Jordan was keen on the idea, but Peugeot said no - the nature of filming would require the car to be stopped and started several times, which Formula One engines aren't designed to do, and so they were worried about losing an engine, which would reflect poorly on the company. Details are scarce - the scene was abandoned quickly because the script needed to be written - but it may have been a take on the famous golf scene in Goldfinger where Bond tricks Auric Goldfinger into cheating; that would look poorly on Peugeot as well.

A variation of the scene seems to have found its way into Charlie's Angels, with Cameron Diaz stealing an Indycar for a chase sequence, but I cannot find anything to put someone who worked on Tomorrow Never Dies as working on Charlie's Angels.
 
Huh, that's interesting. I'd love to know what the planned scene was and how the British GP tied in with a scene in a James Bond film. If Peugeot didn't want to look bad couldn't Jordan have used old Judd units or something like that just for the shooting? I suppose Jordan GP's commercial contract with Pug might have stopped that.

Anyway, here's three for you, mixing it up a little:

Who was the first man to hold both the land speed record and the water speed record?
Who was the first man to do it in the same year?
What race track posthumously links the two men?
 
Liquid
Huh, that's interesting. I'd love to know what the planned scene was and how the British GP tied in with a scene in a James Bond film. If Peugeot didn't want to look bad couldn't Jordan have used old Judd units or something like that just for the shooting? I suppose Jordan GP's commercial contract with Pug might have stopped that.

Anyway, here's three for you, mixing it up a little:

Who was the first man to hold both the land speed record and the water speed record?
Who was the first man to do it in the same year?
What race track posthumously links the two men?
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I'll say Malcolm Campbell for the first, Donald Campbell (as @SVTCobraGT notes) for the second. For the third... Brooklands?

EDIT: Does Pendine count as a track? I think not, I'll stick with old-school Brooklands :D
 
Liquid
I'd love to know what the planned scene was and how the British GP tied in with a scene in a James Bond film.
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The scene itself would have involved Brosnan jumping into a Jordan and heading out onto the circuit. A stand-in likely would have driven the car, but they'd no doubt want shots of Bond in the cockpit.

The details themselves are pretty scarce; I could only find a brief reference in an interview with one of the writers in a decade-old film magazine while I was waiting for the dentist yesterday; all it really said was that they wanted to do it, but Peugeot turned them down. I imagine that the villain would have been the owner of a racing team - the billionaire industrialist with his eye on world domination is a popular stock character for the series - who challenges Bond to race his star driver; Bond accepts and is beaten, but deduces that the engine isn't entirely legal, and uses it as leverage to get into the villain's inner circle. All I'm really going by is the golf scene in Goldfinger and the scene in the final film where Bond poses as a banker and tries to rattle the villain.

But I would like to see Bond at a Grand Prix someday. Maybe not driving a car - that would be silly - but meeting the villain in the Paddock Club or the corporate suite could work. Or maybe a villain who is a racing enthusiast and challenges Bond to a one-lap race around the Nürburgring in classic Formula One cars, with the threat of a bullet in the head if he loses (which he does, but the villain points out that the threat of death made him push harder); Fleming wrote a similar scene that was never used.

If Peugeot didn't want to look bad couldn't Jordan have used old Judd units or something like that just for the shooting? I suppose Jordan GP's commercial contract with Pug might have stopped that.
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It was a logistical thing. The script needed to be written and the film had to go into production, so when Peugeot said no, the producers decided to do something else instead of try and negotiate, which would only delay things further.
 
Also. If I'm not mistaken (and this is very vague in my memory), I'm sure somebody called Seagrave held the records at the same time?
 
SVT Cobra GT
Crap. The second one is Donald. ;)
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TenEightyOne
I'll say Malcolm Campbell for the first, Donald Campbell
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Correct! Donald Campbell broke the land speed record and the water speed record in 1964. He went 403 mph on the grounds of Layke Eyre in July to set the new land speed record and he went 276 mph on Lake Dumbleyung to set the water speed record with hours to spare on New Year's Eve.

However...

J_Starscream
Also. If I'm not mistaken (and this is very vague in my memory), I'm sure somebody called Seagrave held the records at the same time?
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Henry Segrave is the right answer!

He broke the land speed record with 231 mph at Daytona Beach in March 1929 and still held the record when he set a new water speed record of 98 mph over two runs at Windemere in June 1930.

Tragically, on his third run his boat capsized. He was dragged unconscious from the water and regained consciousness long enough to be told that he had indeed broken the record before dying.

Now, a race track does link Donald Campbell, Henry Segrave and one other land speed racer...
 
Tired Tyres
Corner names at thruxton?
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Bingo!

Campbell, Cobb and Segrave is the right-left-right section of Thruxton and each corner is named after a land speed record holder. John Cobb set it at 368mph in 1939 and again at 394mph in 1947. He also held the outright lap record at Brooklands; a 143mph average speed in 1935, which was not broken by the time the track closed in 1939.

So to summarise:

Who was the first man to hold both the land speed record and the water speed record?

Henry Segrave.

Who was the first man to do it in the same year?

Donald Campbell in 1964.

What race track posthumously links the two men?

They, along with John Cobb, have corners named after them at Thruxton.

Next question please. :)
 

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