F1
Scandinavian Raceway in Anderstorp, Sweden is a unique Formula 1 race circuit with one of the strangest, yet most astonishing stories ever.
Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, and of course the one and only SuperSwede Ronnie Peterson are lined up side-by-side on the grid. The sound of Formula One engines roaring and, with over 50 000 spectators lining the track, vibes are running high. The year is 1973 and the first-ever Swedish Formula One Grand Prix is about to get under way at the Scandinavian Raceway in Anderstorp.
Complete with a flashy racetrack, an airstrip, and a grandstand it's hard, if not impossible, to believe that this piece of land was a bog five years earlier. Maybe even more unbelievable is that there is no big federation or state with endless amounts of cash behind the build, but three local men with big racing dreams.
This is the story of Scandinavia’s one and only Formula One race circuit, Scandinavian Raceway in Anderstorp. A mesmerising journey that includes parking international airplanes in gravel pits, famous race drivers playing “catch me if you can” on Swedish gravel roads, and probably the bravest racing club in the world.
01
“The last four”
It’s almost 50 years since the first Formula One Grand Prix was held at the Scandinavian Raceway, and the air is once again buzzing with excitement. The powerful roar of a race engine echoes through its grounds and men and women dressed in 1970s boiler suits and casual clothes are walking around like some sort of time capsule just opened. It’s production day and the whole Oracle Red Bull Racing team, including mechanics, directors and famous ex-Formula One driver David Coulthard, are on site filming an edit:
Peter Sanell, son to one of the founders of the racetrack, is sat behind the old grandstand together with his friends Kjell Svensson, Ingmar Eriksson and Bosse Runbjörk, enjoying the show. They call themselves "the last four", all having played an important role since the racetrack's beginning. They start to tell the amazing story of this place.
02
From small idea to big time reality
Anderstorp is no Monte Carlo, Ponza, or Spa. It’s a tiny town in the depth of Småland surrounded by forests and bogs. There is no real big towns in its proximity. So how did Anderstorp turn into one of the biggest destinations in motorsport? Well, it all started with three locals daring to dream big and a whole town rallying behind their crazy idea. Together they managed to build a legacy so big it’s still goosebump-worthy today.
It started with three friends back in 1965. Sven “Smokey” Åsberg, Bertil Sanell and Åke Bengtsson wanted somewhere local to practice their racing. Something better than sneaking off to the local highway in the dark and something closer than Falkenberg. The drifty trio took matters into their own hands and a plan to build a small 1500-meter-long tarmac track started to take shape. Quickly, however, the plans somehow escalated.
Within a year, Åsberg, Sanell and Bengtsson had not only done test blasts out on the nearby Stötabomossen, purchased its land rights, and created Anderstorp Racing Club. They had also expanded their plans of a small local track into a four-kilometre-long race circuit of international standards, including a thousand-meter-long runway for planes. How, one might wonder, did this happen?
Well, it turned out that their small racetrack would be very expensive to build and have no real value to investors. So instead of scrapping the plans all together, the trio decided to go even bigger, building something that would really draw the attention of local investors. Brave, bold and, well, brilliant. Because it worked.
03
The track takes shape
Things went in warp speed. Well, 70s kind of warp speed, at least. The track was designed by an employee of Smokey named Holger Eriksson together with pointers from Sweden’s most experienced Formula One driver at the time, Joakim Bonnier. The track itself was mainly built of the back of the local community.
“We started building in 1966 and two years later it was ready”, Bosse explains. Everyone from Anderstorp was involved. Local business, organisations and people, all volunteering time, money and maybe, most importantly, their enthusiasm to make it happen.
“What are you doing on Saturday? Grab a shovel and come help out over by the bog”. And it worked. Hundreds of people came to help build the track.
“It’s the mentality of the people around here, it’s something special”, Ingmar continues and remembers everyone as being supportive of the initiative. “Smokey had the whole town rallied up and everyone chipped in. Everyone thought it was fun”. Kjell takes over: “You’d see Smokey drive around town in his Ford Mustang and if he saw someone who walked around doing nothing, he’d ask “What are you doing on Saturday? Grab a shovel and come help out over by the bog”. And it worked. Hundreds of people came to help build the track”.
Wait a minute. Bog? Yep, because as if building an international racetrack from scratch isn’t crazy enough, how about plonking it all on top of a wet, sunken bog. But that is exactly what they did. Kjell again: “Well, we had Björklund come in for some soil samples and it showed that the bog was only 3,5 meters deep and underneath there was sand. So we were all good really. Björklund was great, he was the local rock blaster and his car was always full of dynamite, so whenever we needed something blowing up, he was there to help out”.
Björklund was great, he was the local rock blaster and his car was always full of dynamite, so whenever we needed something blowing up, he was there to help out.
04
He who laughs last…
Whilst the town rallied behind the idea, not everyone believed it was going to be successful. When Åsberg, a man with big plans, huge authority and always with a fat cigar in his mouth, stated to a bunch of journalists that Anderstorp was going to host a Formula One World Championships within five years of its opening, they all laughed him right in the face. No one had ever gotten a Grand Prix that fast and with flashy circuits like Monza and Monte Carlo, why would they come to the deep, dark forests of Småland where there wasn’t even a hotel big enough to host everyone?
But, as the saying goes, he who laughs last, laughs the longest. Åsberg, being a man of many talents, backed by Sanell and Bengtsson, made it all happen. After having successfully hosted two MC World Champs in record-time and nagged enough people with influence in the Formula One world, the Grand Prix came to Anderstorp exactly five years later, in 1973.
05
Formula One takes over Anderstorp
The 70s were a time of innovation, great drives, and even greater parties. For six consecutive years the Grand Prix was held in Anderstorp, gathering crowds of up to 65 000 from all over the world. Amazing, yes, but how do you fit that many people into a rural town of 500 inhabitants?
“I, for one, always had Jackie Stewart staying in my home whenever he was here”, says Ingmar. “All of us here in Anderstorp opened up our homes so that people could stay somewhere”. For some, accommodation got even more creative and unexpected than staying in local people’s homes, especially when it came to the spectators. “Haha, yea some of them camped in the forest here”, Peter says and Kjell adds: “I found a German spectator sleeping in the ditch over there once” he says and points to a nearby area.
I, for one, always had Jackie Stewart staying in my home whenever he was here.
It’s safe to say that the racetrack added some noise to the otherwise pretty quiet town. Most of the drivers stayed at the newly built hotel, High Chaparral. It was described as a cowboy hotel in the middle of nowhere. The word cowboy being extremely fitting as everything in those days were just little bit more “wild, wild west”. Ever heard of Kulltorp Kurva Grande? A story that in many ways capture the essence of those days.
Peter tells the story: “It was Collin Chapman, who owned the Lotus team, Ronnie Peterson, who at the time drove for Lotus and Peter Pandy, I think. Every day when leaving the racetrack, the three of them, all in separate rental cars, raced each other back to the hotel on the small gravel roads. A lot of the drivers did. And in Kulltorp, a small village between Anderstorp and High Chaparral, there was this a long gravel straight into a long tight lefthand corner, that really pinched in the end, with a field on one side. And one day racing back they all got a little bit too giddy and ending up sliding off the road, crashing into the field. All three of them, on the same day, haha. There they were, stuck in the field. And so, the corner was named Kulltorp Kurva Grande”.
06
The airstrip & cash in the boot
It wasn’t just the roads and homes that were invaded by Formula One, so was Anderstorp’s airspace. Remember the airstrip that was built into the racetrack? Well, it came in handy when flying in drivers and teams from all over the world.
“At one point I remember us having 126 planes landing, and we parked them all in a nearby gravel pit”, Ingmar and Kjell say. And there is one guy they remember in particular: “He was a British driver named Graham Hill, a very nice guy. He had a normal pilot license and didn’t actually fly with the instruments but used Michelin’s car maps to navigate. And his radio was so bad that whenever he was coming in for landing, the traffic control said that “here comes Graham”, cause they could barely hear anything over the radio. But, obviously, Graham always heard the traffic control and when he’d landed, he always came up to say hi to everyone in the tower.”
At one point I remember us having 126 planes landing, and we parked them all in a nearby gravel pit.
However, out of all the crazy stories from that time, maybe the most mental one is when Ingmar was driving around with 1,2 Swedish kroners in the boot of his car over a race weekend. “At the time, me and Smokey were discussing how we should store the money. We had to pay about a million kroners to the drivers and organizations over the weekend, and we decided that the most convenient thing was to have it in my boot”. Did he bother locking his car? Of course not.
And maybe this is most unique thing about the Scandinavian Raceway. The money. Because whilst all other race venues had big backers, like a state or big federation, pouring in cash, Anderstorp had none of that. It was the local race club who took the economic risk of the whole thing, and who made it happen. “Even today, we are still the only club to ever have arranged a Formula One Grand Prix”, Ingmar says proudly.
07
The life and death of Sweden’s Grand Prix
From 1973 to 1978, Anderstorp was part of the Formula One calendar. At the time there were several Swedes competing, including Reine Wisell and Gunnar Nilsson. Yet no one was as popular with the home crowd as multiple Formula One-winner Ronnie Peterson. “I think Ronnie was the biggest thing in Swedish sport at the time, bigger than any football or ice hockey player” Ingmar remembers.
Ronnie came close to winning the race at Anderstorp in 1973, but a slow puncture saw him lose the race in the final lap to Denny Hulme. Whilst no Swede ever won at their home venue, Anderstorp saw other big names take the prestigious win including Niki Lauda and Jody Scheckter.
Not just famous drivers showed up to race on the track in Småland, some interesting cars did too. Niki Lauda’s 1978 race winning “fan car” for example. A car that was raced only once, at Anderstorp, then banned never to be raced again. There was also the six-wheeler Tyrrell P34 which also eventually got banned. It was a decade remembered for its innovation and experimentation when it came to the cars. Maybe it was even the turning point of driver and car safety. Chris Gregory from the Red Bull Racing team explains: “You look at the cars back then and how exposed the drivers were and how many accidents they had. It was that era that really pushed the safety because there were so many accidents. Compared to now, the drivers still have accidents today, but they are so much safer.”
In a roundabout way, it was also an accident that would be the end of the Formula One era at Anderstorp. In 1978 Ronnie Peterson passed following a tragic incident at the race in Monza, Italy, and as a result the interest for the sport in Sweden declined rapidly.
“Everything was ready to go for the 1979 race but then Ronnie tragically passed away, and with Gunnar Nilsson also having passed away from illness that same year, it was a little bit like motorsport died in Sweden. There was just no interest anymore”, Peter and the gang recalls.
With no money coming in from sponsors, the club wasn’t able go ahead with their 1979 race. After that, despite serval attempts by the club, Formula One never returned to Anderstorp. “The way Anderstorp got Formula One was completely unique and once it left, it became economically impossible to have it come back.”
08
The legacy
Racing, however, continued on Scandinavian Raceway for many years to come. The circuit saw both motorcycle Grand Prix and World Championships in Road Racing and Touring Cars, which were raced until the mid-90s. Although the circuit today is mainly used for events, its history is a great legacy to the Sweden’s motorsport scene and the memories of the wild 70s will live on for many years to come.
“It’s only just now I guess that we’ve started to understand the real value of those Formula One races and the grandeur of pulling it all together”, the four men agree and once again, turn their gaze towards the racetrack where the RB7 roars passed with David Coulthard behind the wheel. “It feels good to have a Formula One driver back on this track”.
