1970's Formula Super Vee Racing Documentary - New Young Giant of Racing (restored)

This 1977 film a documentary titled, "Super - Vee --- New young Giant of Racing", Was funded and produced by Montgomery Wards in in cooperation with USAC and the Sports Car Club of America. It is narrated by Chris Economaki of National Speed Sports News. The film includes some history and details of the Formula Super Vee racing class. The film features drivers: Bob Lazier, Herm Johnson. Steuart Moore, Tom Thompson, Noel Bennett, Bill Alsup, Bill Follmer, Howdy Holmes, Jim George, And Eddie Miller. Along with driver interviews there is lots of great pit crew and racing footage. There is a surprise guest announcer seen twice in the film, "ZsaZsa Gabor".
Formula Super Vee was an open-wheel racing series that took place in Europe and the United States from 1970 to 1990. The formula was created as an extension of Formula Vee, a racing class that was introduced in 1959. Formula Super Vee in Europe was similar to F3 or Formula Renault today, a steppingstone to F1. In the United States, Formula Super Vee, often referred to as Super Vee, was a natural progression to Indy Car and Can-Am. On both sides of the Atlantic the series also was a platform for the promotion of VW products, similar to how Formula Renault promotes Renault products today. Initially it was seen as a simple step up from Formula Vee, using the same type 3 air-cooled VW engines, but in 1600cc. However, it soon transformed to using the very different and more powerful fuel injected water-cooled engines from the VW Golf/Rabbit.
This film came from my personal collection. This film was not downloaded from any website and is not reused content. This restoration is my work. The restoration process started with cleaning, repairing, and spooling the original 16mm optical sound print. Next the scanning to digital process was performed on the Lasergraphics Scanstation motion picture film scanner in 2k resolution. This film was in poor shape with severe color fade and lots of scratches and damage. Excess film grain noise was removed and the images upscaled to 4k resolution utilizing Topaz AI software. Then extensive color correction was performed in Davinci Resolve. After multiple color correction passes, noise reduction passes, and image sharpening, the film was processed for dust and scratch removal in Neat Video. Due to the aggressiveness of the final process, there was some unintentional artifacts added by the program, but I think it came out pretty nice. Finally, the film was downscaled back to 2k for uploading to RUclips.

[@petercarey6883]

All I can say is thank you so much for this video on the Super Vee's. No one really covers the Super Vee racing. So many back in the day thought these were just "toys" if you will. They were far from toys! Save the Wave🙋‍♂

[@theemulsionalchemist5688]

Glad you enjoyed it! There were not many films on Super Vee produced. Always looking for more like this.

[@petercarey6883]

Thank you again. I would enjoy seeing more, but I suppose I'm in the minority as to my enjoyment of the Super Vee. They were actually quite brilliantly designed and would love to know who came up with the Super Vee idea. Enjoy your weekend.

[@RandysRacingPlace633]

RIP Tommy Thompson. 😢😥😭😭😭😭