The Miami Circuit’s fake marina has been one of the biggest talking points at the inaugural Formula 1 grand prix at Hard Rock Stadium .
But it is not the first time that someone has put an artificial port on a Formula 1 track, since at Silverstone almost 35 years ago an Autosport cartoonist played a joke doing something similar.
The late Jim Bamber , who sadly passed away in 2014, was commissioned to draw a map of the English layout for Autosport magazine as part of a pre-supplement he was doing for the 1988 British Grand Prix .
The map arrived on time, looked good, and printed without any problems.
But unbeknownst to Autosport’s staff (let alone his readers), in extra details including car parks and children’s play areas, Bamber had brazenly placed a marina on the inside of Becketts Bend .
He drew the yachts and water conveniently close to the main grandstand and with a good view of the circuit.
The Silverstone circuit map in vignette
It didn’t stand out on the page where the map appeared, and no one saw it when the magazine went on sale. Bamber himself was silent as he watched his joke spread.
But the following week, when Bamber presented his post-British Grand Prix vignette, some doubts began to arise.
His cartoon, where Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost mentioned the marina while discussing a lap, made no sense to the Autosport staff as they couldn’t get the joke.
1988 British GP vignette
So Andy Hallbery , the former Autosport editor who was a junior writer at the time of that British grand prix supplement, called Bamber to ask him about it.
And so he remembers the moment reality hit him when Bamber finally revealed his trolling .
“The Silverstone/Becketts ‘Marina’ I knew nothing about,” Hallbery comments many years later. “I was fairly new to Autosport and trusted their well-known collaborators, like Jim.”
“After I edited the 1988 British Grand Prix pre-supplement, Jim sent in his weekly strip for the main magazine.”
“None of us got the joke, it didn’t make sense to any of us. “I called to ask, ‘Marina?’ His answer was simple. ‘Look at the map in the preview we posted last week…'”
Everyone saw the funny side of that, and the magazine itself eventually ran an alternative cartoon of the faux marina in the following week’s magazine .
1988 British GP vignette
The inclusion of a fake marina at Silverstone was not an isolated case, as Bamber frequently tried to pull some pranks on Autosport.
As Hallbery recalls: “Working with Jim Bamber was both a joy and a nightmare. An absolutely gifted artist with a wicked sense of humor.”
“His work was brilliant, but every so often he would throw in a joke. Sometimes they were obvious, like his map of old Hockenheim with two circular car parks below it in the stadium section, and the trees turning from green to red towards the Ostkurve, which made you never look at old Hockenheim the same way again.”
“It was a privilege to work with Jim over those years, but I thoroughly reviewed everything he submitted after that.”
“He had a mind full of creativity, combined with the nature of a college boy who never grew up! And that’s exactly what made him great. I’m sure he would be at his worst with Marina Miami.”
