Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Motor racing fans who missed out on tickets to this weekend's Gulf Air Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix should rush down to the video store and snatch a copy of what critics have described as 'the best motor racing movie of all time'.
There have been several high-profile attempts at motor sport movies, but none has matched John Frankenheimer's cinematic masterpiece Grand Prix for impact.
The film's super-widescreen Cinerama format was exploited by the director to the full with extravagant split-screen techniques and stunning in-car footage.
According to Simon Arron and Peter Hall of the UK's Telegraph newspaper Frankenheimer successfully combined in-car footage with film of the 1966 F1 season to create "sustained and even poetic on-track drama".
Toni Mastroianni of the Cleveland Press agreed saying the movie had "the most authentic and exciting racing sequences" ever filmed.
A leading on-line movie review website believes Grand Prix, despite being described as "essentially a soap opera interspersed with racing footage", is also "definitely a film for racing fans".
Frankenheimer mixed fact and fiction by dressing actors and (F3) cars in liveries that matched the real stars of the time; Pete Aron (James Garner) wears Chris Amon's helmet, Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) is easily mistaken for John Surtees, Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) is a dead ringer for Jackie Stewart and even the briefly featured painting of Stoddard's elder brother in a Vanwall is by renowned motor sport artist Michael Turner.
Frankenheimer even had a camera car - driven by 1961 world champion Phil Hill - running during official practice in Monaco and Belgium, hence his ability to add an occasional in-your-face-at-racing-speeds gearbox to the mix.
Small beer today, perhaps, when miniature cameras are attached to almost everything from rear wings to drivers' earlobes, but at the time the motor sport fan was starved of decent coverage outside the specialist press.
So it didn't matter that Grand Prix wasn't real, the Telegraph reported, that the pace was slightly inconsistent, that the identity of the Ferrari boss was fudged or that you couldn't fathom out why Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabˆto's character, and as good a name for a racing driver as there has ever been) allowed Franoise Hardy to drift out of his life during the film's closing stages.
Close-ups of compressed suspension, whirring drive shafts and stressed bolts brought the cars to life in vivid, fearful detail, and the scary reality of contemporary circuits, including a rain-drenched Spa and the infamous banking at Monza, was clear for all to see.
That the sport's genuine heroes had cameo roles - walk-on parts for Jim Clark, Juan Manuel Fangio and many others, merely added to its charm.
The dialogue also shows that some aspects of F1 haven't changed in years. "Why d'you all wear sunglasses on top of your head?" Pete Aron asks Pat Stoddard (Jessica Walter). "It looks ridiculous."
In fact, of the 32 real racing drivers involved in the film, nine (including Lorenzo Bandini) were dead by the end of the following year, and by 1980 the toll had reached 21.
Fortunately safety improvements have been paramount in F1 in recent times although there will always be risks in any high speed competitive sport.
At 179 minutes, twice as long as the average modern blockbuster, Grand Prix is a true epic. It won three Oscars, for effects, editing and sound; Maurice Jarre's musical score, which cleverly adapted the same tune to every circumstance of plot and location, deserves special mention.
But its scope and cinematography are what really make Grand Prix the greatest motor racing film of all time; Paul Newman's Winning (1969) and even Steve McQueen's stylish Le Mans (1971) seem derivative and clichŽd by comparison.
Indeed Frankenheimer never lost his feel for automotive action; in 1998, four years before his death at the age of 72, he directed Ronin - a thriller with one of the finest car chases in cinematic history.
