Brings a smile to the dial... and to Dick's face when we talked to him before Christmas too...
Back in the days, drivers were forced to used more discretionary caution... and it's not just a touring car phenomenon. Ask yourself this: how much quicker would guys like Jackie Stewart or Jim Clark have been, had it not been almost certain that they would pay for a mere slip with their lives? Jackie Stewart lost 59 friends and colleagues during his ten years at the pinnacle of the sport - imagine that: 60-odd people that you have known or worked with in the last 10 years, killed by the same thing you do for a living... and wonder to yourself how long a guy like Schumacher would've lasted had he driven as he did, but thirty years earlier...
The Maestro, Juan Manuel Fangio, won his final GP at the Nurburgring in a stupendous drive from a lap down (at Nordschliefe!!! 21 miles?) where he drove savagely to haul in the Ferraris... he retired not long after, and allegedly said that his decision to retire came from the realisation of how intensely he had driven there, and the consequences of one mistake at the levels of commitment he had used...
Niki Lauda was the first man to break 7 minutes at the 'Ring, qualifying for the 1975 German Grand Prix, and his recollection was that he was in a "special" frame of mind, that he had "permitted" himself to drive so fast (his words, from To Hell And Back) in a manner in which he seldom did.
My point is that drivers in the day, certainly in most cases, kept a (miniscule) margin for error, where current-day drivers have the luxury of increased car and track safety which reduces their risk of injury considerably.
In the Series Proddie days, they'd set fuel mixture based on the colour of the pipe and condition of the plugs - a lot more painstaking and time-consuming that reading the value from a stochiometer and adjusting accordingly.
The really good current guys - the ones with good natural car control and feel - the Lowndeses and arguably Rick K, Junior, et al, would probably make a good fist of the old cars, once they adapted to babying them along. The others would probably be more inconsistent, in the manner of Bob Morris, whose distaste for slippery surfaces was well-noted.
Guys like DJ, whose career spanned a number of eras (given he won the first of his fice ATCC titles aged 36), had the luxury of experience across the full evolution, even into the present day.
