The picture and its story - or: The picture behind the story
03/24/2026
In the announcement "Kessel becomes official service center for Gordon Murray Automotive" , a picture from the Kessel family's "archive" appears, probably by chance, showing Loris Kessel, Ronnie's father, in the Brabham BT44, which was designed by the star designer of the time, Gordon Murray, at the Austrian GP in Zeltweg.
I took this picture on August 15, 1976 as a 16-year-old from the spectator area of what was then the Texaco chicane. The Ticino native started his third and final F1 race as a team-mate alongside the only woman ever to score a world championship point (albeit only half a point in the end), the Italian Lella Lombardi in the English RAM team, from the last row of the grid. Lella Lombardi finished twelfth, 4 laps down, while Kessel had to retire on the 44th of 54 laps.
Sometime later, I gave Loris an enlargement of the photo and had him sign a second one for me. I was delighted to discover that the photo has not only survived in the Kessel family archive, but is also still in my possession, complete with my personal signature. Unfortunately, the likeable Loris Kessel died of leukemia on May 15, 2010, at the age of only 60.
In the meantime, a long 50 years have passed since the exposure, in other words half a century. Photographs will outlive us all, that is clear, and they are and will forever remain cultural assets of inestimable value. They capture moments of contemporary history forever and ever. Times change, but pictures remain and document events in both good and bad times. Many moments that we have almost completely forgotten, even without signs of dementia, are passed on to future generations.
But I still remember exactly how we stood at the "Oe-Ring" at 5:00 a.m., only to be standing at the front of the fence a full 9 hours later for the start of the Grand Prix. It was wet and it was cold, but we bravely persevered with umbrellas and blankets and as you can see today, it was somehow worth it.
Of course the picture won't win an Oscar, but it clearly shows an ultra-short clip from 1976.
The moment was captured with a still analog Asahi Pentax Spotmatic 135mm camera, equipped with a 135mm telephoto lens and exposed on Ilford HP5 black and white film.
At the end of the day, John Watson (Penske-Ford) surprisingly won his first of five F1 races as a complete outsider ahead of Jacques Laffite (Ligier-Matra) and Gunnar Nilsson (Lotus-Ford).
So things keep coming full circle, not only between Kessel and Murray, but in a way now also between Ronnie (Kessel), Gordon (Murray) and me ...
In my two books "Inside Formula 1" and "Inside Formula 1 Lap 2" you can read countless of these stories and see their pictures. A few of them, whose stories didn't make it into the books, will now find a place here in future.
