Formula Once: watching motor racing's heritage

By James Snodgrass for CNN

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PAU, France (CNN) -- It's Sunday 27 May and wealthy men are racing exceedingly fast cars through a street circuit passing apartment blocks and a casino. But this is not Monte Carlo, where the Monaco Grand Prix is taking place, but the charming town of Pau with its stunning vista over the Pyrenees mountains.

For six years Pau has hosted the Grand Prix De Pau Historique, an event that allows owners of historic racing vehicles to compete on a narrow road circuit. The circuit was home to Grand Prix racing between 1933 and the World War Two and continued as a venue for non-championship Formula 1 racing until 1963. It continues as a venue for Formula Three racing to this day and next week will play host to the first French leg of the World Touring Car Championship.

I arrive in Pau in a Morgan Plus Four, a hand-built British sports car that has been in production -- in an evolving form -- since the 1930s. It is a very rare sight on France's roads (the company sells around 30 cars here annually) so we attract a fair amount of attention.

The drive to Pau was an eventful trip over the Pyrenees devised by my co-driver Chris Hatton, managing director of The-Classic-Route.com, a Toulouse-based hire car firm that rents Morgans, and prepares personalised itineraries and route plans.

Exhausted, we look for parking spaces. Despite being a 2007-model car, the Morgan's vintage appearance means we are invited to park alongside the cars belonging to the members of the local classic car club, including Brass-era De Dion Boutons and Renaults, and various vintage and pre-war Citroens and Panhards.

There is little of the glamor of Formula 1. There are a few celebrities -- a couple of rock musicians from the generation for whom LSD didn't just mean 'limited slip differential', and a few names from the world of motor sport -- but people aren't in Pau to be seen. They are enthusiasts.

The river, Le Gave du Pau, is swollen from the torrential rain that had caused flooding and devastation in much of south-western France the day before, but the sun shines brightly and the omens look good for a pleasant day.

There are plenty of races throughout the weekend. Unlike a Formula 1 weekend -- where the Formula 1 Grand Prix is the dominant event -- most of the races inspire similar levels of interest. We sit down to watch Formula 1 cars from the transitional era of 1961 to 1966 -- the era of Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Graham Hill.

The 1500cc rear-engined cars sound weedy compared with the shrill roar of today's F1 machinery. But the non-professional drivers provide an exciting spectacle. It's fairly easy to judge the abilities of the drivers. The fastest drivers drift out of the bends to achieve the racing line, the slower drivers describe the arc of every corner with their steering wheels.

This race -- one of 13 to be held throughout the day -- benefits from a reasonably-dry track, good visibility and sunny weather. The climate holds for a race of 1970s Formula Two cars. But by the time of the race for pre-61 Grand Prix cars the rain starts to pour and continues incessantly throughout the afternoon.

We had been inspecting the paddocks, where racers and their assistants were preparing their cars for upcoming races or inspecting the damage done in previous ones, when the deluge started.

We join the bedraggled diaspora of spectators, seeking sanctuary from the rain in the only covered grandstand on the circuit, facing the start-finish line. Formula 5000 (an abandoned open-wheel race series that ran between 1968-1982) cars throw clouds of spray behind them. Once again the good drivers are evident by their ability to slide the cars. The best drivers are also those who have thrown caution to the wind by driving on slicks (untreaded tires) on the sodden track.

Other races follow and are inevitably cut short because of the conditions. The keenest spectators seem to be the motor-racing wives who wear the resigned faces of women who will always come second in their husbands' affections (the cars always coming first).

The idea of a motor racing weekend that is less-bloated than Formula 1 -- with more racing and less pageantry -- is appealing but the Grand Prix Historique disappointed.

Perhaps it was the rain -- and the spectator discomfort and driver caution it brought with it. Perhaps it was the fact that many of the drivers were in late middle-age and past their physical peak. And perhaps it was the absence of the visceral noise of F1 (though the roar of the 1960 Ferrari V12 had its own unique power) but the atmosphere among the crowd was as damp as the weather that had brought them together.

There were some mutterings in the crowd that the event wasn't as good as previous years. Where were the 1970s F1 cars? Or the Ferrari-Maserati challenge? But the general feeling was that a better time was being had 500 miles east, where the sun was shining and Alonso was taking his McLaren-Mercedes to Monaco GP victory.

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