If there is a cooler thing in modern technology than the ability to take grainy, old, maybe even damaged film and digitally remaster it into high-definition, we’re not sure what it is. Take this video from one of the wildest F1 races ever held, the 1970 Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama. It would be one thing to see it in the original form, but when the film is made more vibrant, clear, and eye-popping, it truly is jaw dropping.
This is the race was was made most famous by the crash of Jacky Ickx and Jackie Oliver. The result was a literal raging inferno and one of the most incompetent fire responses in F1 racing history. At one point you will see Ickx laying on the ground with his fuel soaked fire suit burning. He recovered quickly and made the next race. But the real action was on the track itself with the burning cars being a pair of seemingly death defying obstructions as the cars continued to whiz by during the local yellow.
Fire crews sprayed hellacious amounts of water on these things and all it did was spread the fire like a lake and cause the track to be sodden at that one spot…in a corner. Cars were now hitting the area and spinning amidst the flaming carnage. It was then they decided to use fire fighting foam and even that seems to have been a pain in the backside. Watch racers like Jack Brabham enter the corner and loop. Not just one car, MANY suffer this fate.
This is an era of F1 that seems so foreign now. It is almost alien and damn is it impressive to watch these drivers race like there is no tomorrow while the world, or at least part of it, burned around them.
