Racing in Israël!

In November 1970, two German businessmen, who had some commercial activities in Israël, had the strange idea to organise an international car racing meeting; the first one in this nascent country. Three years only after the Six Days War, fifteen Formula 2 single-seaters arrived on the Barnea Beach circuit near Ashkelon, not far from Tel-Aviv.

But the “racetrack” was non-existant, surrounded by sand and hardly demarcated, under the surveillance of a few marshals, and for 20,000 spectators arriving on the said day. Overwhelmed, the organisers had no other choice but cancelling this “Israël Grand Prix”… (poster can be seen here-under).

The curtain raiser, a Formula Vee event was red-flagged because spectators were crossing the track during the race and, with the more powerful F2’s coming next, the organisers, frightened, decided to cancel the event at the last minute.

Ernesto Brambilla had captured pole position in his Brabham BT30 (picture here-above  next to Patrick Dal Bo’s Pygmée) on Friday, before Saturday’s big crowd prevented the race to take place in the most elementary security conditions, putting an end to this sandy dream…