Can-Am Racing

Cultivating up-and-coming champions, 1977-1986

Harold Pace / autoMedia.com

When the Can-Am racing series petered out in 1974, it left a vacuum in the road-racing world. The thundering McLarens, Lolas, Chaparrals and Porsches had provided some of the most thrilling racing anywhere in the world, and the sound of a full grid of 700 hp behemoths was a serious assault on the senses.

The sound of a full grid of 700 hp behemoths was a serious assault on the senses. The SCCA also had another professional racing series, the F-5000 Championship. This pitted single-seat formula cars with 5-liter, stock-block V-8s against 3-liter Formula 1 cars (although few of the latter ever showed up).

New Clothes

The Chevy and Dodge-powered racers mostly used chassis built by Lola in England, yet there were other manufacturers as well. Although F-5000 had done fairly well, the SCCA always considered it a pale shadow of the Can-Am. So in 1977 they stuffed F-5000 cars into Can-Am suits to emulate the famed series.

The F-5000 engine rules were continued, with 302 Chevys being the most popular choice. Lola, which had sold dozens of F-5000 cars to the States, introduced a rebody kit to turn a single-seat F-5000 car into a full-bodied sports-racer. Unlike the original Can-Am, only one seat was required. The body shell cost $6,000 and many were sold (the SCCA had dropped the F-5000 series, forcing teams to switch or sit it out). Other teams upgraded their old F-5000 cars on their own, and a few even built all-new cars.

The new Can-Am cars were fearsome performers; with over 550 hp they were almost as quick as the old Can-Am cars. There was also an under-2-liter class that was mostly populated by smaller Lolas with four-cylinder engines.

Wickedly Fast

The 1977 Can-Am (officially the Canadian-American Challenge) was sponsored by Citicorp and started at St. Jovite in Canada, where Tom Klauser emerged the winner driving a Schkee-Chevy. Lolas filled most of the grid. The new cars proved wickedly fast and the racing was close and exciting. Most of the races (and the championship) were won by Frenchman Patrick Tambay, driving a Lola T332CS for Lola importer Carl Haas. Tambay was the first young lion showcased in the "new" Can-Am, and he began racing in F-1 that season.

The 1978 races were just about split between beginning F-1 driver Alan Jones (in the Haas Lola), Warwick Brown, Al Holbert and Elliot Forbes-Robinson. Jones took the title with Brown second. Two years later Jones would win the F-1 World Championship, continuing the tradition of Can-Am champs moving up the ladder. The next year more well-known drivers joined the series, with F-1 stars Jacky Ickx and Keke Rosberg winning races. In addition to the new stars, former F-1 greats like Ickx dropped in for track time and extra money. The 1979 champ was Ickx in a Lola.

Patrick Tambay returned to the seat of a Haas Lola for 1980 and carried away six of the 10 races. Lolas were still the dominant cars, but other chassis designs such as Bobby Rahal's Prophet and Al Holbert's CAC-1 were also competitive. The all-new Lola T530 was a purpose-built Can-Am car, not a converted F-5000 car.