Dorf's pit crew member Pops Morgan is actually Tim Conway's "The Oldest Man" character from The Carol Burnett Show (1967).
The opening credits and subsequent newspaper and magazine headlines appear over shots of Tim Conway as Dussel Dorf interspersed with footage taken from the 1979 Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile Formula 1 World Championship. Among the F1 drivers that appear in this footage are Mario Andretti, Nelson Piquet, Alan Jones, Jacques Laffite, Gilles Villeneuve and Patrick Tambay.