RIP Vic Elford

[PTRACER]

Vic suffered from cancer for many years and has finally lost his battle.

A great sports car driver and Grand Prix Legend sadly gone.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Vic suffered from cancer for many years and has finally lost his battle.

Indeed a sad loss.

@PTRACERVic Elford's sad passing has already been mentioned and discussed here in "Remembering the Fallen".... viewtopic.php?p=422714#p422714

Maybe you could move or copy those posts relating to Vic here to this thread, Probably would be better. And then delete this post.

A great sports car driver and Grand Prix Legend sadly gone.

Dont forget his Rally wins as well... a true all rounder. As I mentioned in a post in the other thread, he is the only person to ever win the Monte Carlo Rally and finish the Monaco GP

[PTRACER]

Vic suffered from cancer for many years and has finally lost his battle.

Indeed a sad loss.

@PTRACERVic Elford's sad passing has already been mentioned and discussed here in "Remembering the Fallen".... viewtopic.php?p=422714#p422714

Maybe you could move or copy those posts relating to Vic here to this thread, Probably would be better. And then delete this post.

A great sports car driver and Grand Prix Legend sadly gone.

Dont forget his Rally wins as well... a true all rounder. As I mentioned in a post in the other thread, he is the only person to ever win the Monte Carlo Rally and finish the Monaco GP

I had no idea he did rallying.

I missed your thread (and also the news that Danny Ongais had died), since I don't venture into Motorsport Discussion at all For such big news like this, do you think we can have separate threads?

[Everso Biggyballies]

Vic suffered from cancer for many years and has finally lost his battle.

Indeed a sad loss.

@PTRACERVic Elford's sad passing has already been mentioned and discussed here in "Remembering the Fallen".... viewtopic.php?p=422714#p422714

Maybe you could move or copy those posts relating to Vic here to this thread, Probably would be better. And then delete this post.

A great sports car driver and Grand Prix Legend sadly gone.

Dont forget his Rally wins as well... a true all rounder. As I mentioned in a post in the other thread, he is the only person to ever win the Monte Carlo Rally and finish the Monaco GP

I had no idea he did rallying.

I missed your thread (and also the news that Danny Ongais had died), since I don't venture into Motorsport Discussion at all For such big news like this, do you think we can have separate threads?

No probs at all. Personally I think 'name' drivers such as Elford, Ongais etc deserve their own thread, and in Nostalgia is the right area IMHO. Can you move the Elford posts into here when you have time. Please.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Vic suffered from cancer for many years and has finally lost his battle.

My understanding is that Vic moved to the US for his cancer treatment which struck some years ago. I believe it was a treatment only available in the US. He was in remission for a while after at the time successful treatment but it returned.

Sadly a few months ago I saw that Vic had been unable to meet the costs of his treatment in the US, and a Fund Me type of fund was set up, I think by Brian Redman (who also lives in the US) Vic was I understand pretty well penniless by the time he passed away, and Covid restrictions interfered with his ability to work to earn money to meet his costs. Very sad that he even had to work well into his 80's to try and fund his treatment.

Edit: found a link about the need for funds for Vic.... http://www.dailysportscar.com/2021/04/2 ... -best.html

[EB]

I had no idea he did rallying.

And I thought that's what he was most famous for!

Met him once, as a double act with Dickie Attwood at Stoneleigh, friendly and seemingly modest man.

[Michael Ferner]

I had no idea he did rallying.

And I thought that's what he was most famous for!

Me too!

[erwin greven]

I had no idea he did rallying.

It was because of his rallying, he was able to run the Porsche 917 when it has so dreadful to handle. Vic was used to unstable cars. Also it helped with racing in the Targa Florio. "Drive as fast as possible for as long as possible."

[Everso Biggyballies]

Vic Elford: The ultimate all-rounder?

Adam Cooper talks to Vic Elford....

As fast around Monte Carlo in a rally car as he was at the Nurburgring in a sports car, Vic Elford's CV is as diverse as they come.

Mention the name Vic Elford and it doesn’t take long for the phrase ‘all-rounder’ to crop up. It may be a bit of a cliché, but just consider Vic’s achievements in the first half of 1968. At the end of January he won the Monte Carlo rally in a Porsche 911, and at the beginning of July he finished fourth on his GP debut at Rouen – and bear in mind he’d made his first single-seater appearance in an F2 race just weeks before. And along the way he won the Daytona 24 Hours, the Targa Florio and the Nürburgring 1000kms.

If that wasn’t enough, the following February he took on the good ole boys of stock car racing in the Daytona 500. Rallies, sportscars, F1, even NASCAR – it seemed that Vic Elford could shine in anything with four wheels. He’s usually regarded as a rally driver who drifted into endurance racing and thence into Grands Prix. And while that is basically true, it’s not the career path the man from Peckham would have chosen.

“My dad was a cycling champion, and he took me to the first British GP after the war in 1948 at Silverstone. He was keen on racing, and it was quite an event. I was 13 years old and I said to myself ‘That’s what I am going to do.” Vic had no money with which to kick start a racing career, but while training as a design engineer with the Gas Board in 1956 he finally found a way to break into motorsport.

“I couldn’t even afford a car when I first started, so I navigated in little club rallies for a friend of mine, Alex Rhodes, whose mum had had the good luck to win the Irish sweepstakes. He got an MG out of it, and he needed a navigator. I wanted to get my foot in the door, so that’s where it all started. After a little while he decided he was getting married and would have to give up the car, so I joined up with David Siegle-Morris.”

Vic Elford of Great Britain holds aloft the trophy as he stands beside the #210 Porsche 911T after winng the Monte Carlo Rally on 25 Jan 1968 in the Principality of Monaco in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Looking dapper after famous ’68 Monte Carlo Rally win

The pair shared a Borgward, MG Magnette and Triumph TR3A before they landed a works job at BMC: “That meant Austin Healey 3000s and Minis.” Vic made no secret of his preference to be in charge of the wheel rather than the maps. BMC decided there was no room for him, but did at least allow him to buy an ex-works Mini 850, and Vic’s competition career proper started at age 26 when he raced it during 1961. He also gave up the Gas Board and made a living selling life insurance.

“I didn’t even know where Daytona was”
His circuit ambitions were put on hold when he returned to rallying, this time behind the wheel of a DKW. Success in that brought him to the attention of Triumph, before he landed a Ford contract for 1964. He won the Alpine Rally, and led Monte Carlo in ’65 until a last-minute distributor failure. He also had the occasional race, winning his class in a Lotus Cortina at the Norisring, and leading the Marathon de la Route – 84 Hours round the Nürburgring – with Jochen Neerpasch.

“Henry Taylor became Ford team manager in ’66, and he and I didn’t hit it off. I talked to Huschke von Hanstein of Porsche. I told him I’d seen the new 911 and was convinced it was going to be a great rally car. They didn’t have a rally programme at the time so I said, ‘Why don’t you lend me one for, Corsica?’ I finished third, and I was just trying to learn how to drive the car.”


He became a full-time Porsche driver in 1967. Apart from winning three major rallies outright, and taking the European title in the GT class, Vic soon got the break he’d been waiting for.

“He said to me one day in Stuttgart, did I ever think about racing? And I said ‘Huschke, I’ve been thinking about nothing else since I was 13 years old.’ He decided we’d better start with the Targa Florio, which was the nearest thing there was to a rally. I finished third in a 910, with Neerpasch again.”

There was no looking back, and Vic became a key member of Porsche’s sportscar squad. The ’68 season started superbly with that famous Monte Carlo victory, after which Vic jumped straight on a plane for Daytona.

“I didn’t even know where it was. I got off the plane and it was warm and humid, and I was assaulted by this wonderful smell of citrus trees and everything, and I remember thinking ‘one day, I’m going to live here.’”

DAYTONA BEACH, FL - FEBRUARY 4, 1968: German factory Porsche 907s swept the top three spots in the 24 Hours of Daytona at Daytona International Speedway and crossed the finish line in three-abreast formation at the checkered flag. The No. 54 was the race winner. It was initially assigned to drivers Vic Elford and Jochen Neerspach, but they were joined later by Rolf Stommellen, whose 907 crashed out at dusk. Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann drove the No. 52 car, but also took turns driving the No. 54 so they could share in the victory. To make things even more complicated, Stommellen’s teammate Gerhard Mitter moved over to the Siffert/Herrman car and drove it during the final hours as that car ultimately finished second. The third place No. 51 was steered by Jo Schlesser and Joe Buzzetta.


Porsche goes for a formation finish at Daytona ’68 – Elford’s car is No54

Vic won at his first attempt, although his efforts were devalued when Porsche insisted that all the top drivers took turns in his car and qualified as winners. “Fortunately they had an immense wreath and we all fitted in it!”

In April he made his single-seater debut in the unloved F2 Protos at the Nürburgring. In May he scored a sensational Targa Florio victory with local hero Umberto Maglioli, and then won the Nürburgring 1000kms with Jo Siffert. A second F2 outing at Monza in Jochen Rindt’s Winkelmann Brabham saw Vic lead a thrilling slipstreamer – only to retire when a spinning Derek Bell triggered a multiple shunt.

Piers Courage (Parnell BRM), Jo Schlesser (Honda) and Vic Elford (Cooper-BRM) on the opening lap of the 1968 French Grand Prix at Rouen. Schlesser crashed fatally a fex seconds later.


On left, making a famous F1 debut at Rouen – Jo Schlesser in the white Honda would be killed in a fatal crash moments later

Shortly before that race, Tim Parnell had offered Elford a BRM F1 test at Silverstone. John Cooper was also present that day, and gave Vic a run.

“I didn’t like the Cooper, it was a monster. When you turned in you got massive understeer and halfway through it changed to massive oversteer. I got out of the car and John said, `What are you doing in two weeks’ time?’ So I found myself driving a Cooper-BRM at Rouen! I qualified last, and then to my utter delight on Sunday morning it rained. I finished fourth…”

Later he qualified an amazing fifth at his beloved Nürburgring, and finished in the same position in Canada. But when Cooper closed down at the end of the season, there were no F1 offers for 1969 – despite Vic deciding to retire from rallying after January’s Monte Carlo.

“I think a lot of the British teams were going through a phase of `he’s got to have a foreign sounding name to be any good,’ which didn’t exactly endear me to the F1 world.”

A welcome distraction came at Daytona in February. The previous year he’d befriended Bill France Sr, and the NASCAR boss organised a ride in the 500 with a Dodge. Vic finished a creditable eleventh, albeit many laps down.


Vic Elford-Cooper-BRM T86B, 4 August 1968, German GP, Nurburgring.
An impressive fifth in qualifying came at Nürburgring ’68

“I expected to be treated like some sort of interloper, but nothing was further from the truth. All those guys, Buddy Baker and David Pearson, were so nice. Richard Petty said to us rookies if anything ever goes wrong on the banking, turn left, and stand on the brakes. Close your eyes if you like, but that’s not obligatory! The car is going to carry on spinning, but at least it’s going to spin down the banking.”

Unable to find a works F1 ride for 1969, Vic drove under the Antique Automobiles banner. “One day the owner Colin Crabbe said I’ve bought a Cooper-Maserati – do you want to drive it? Then after Monaco he said the Cooper is no good, it’s not quick enough, you deserve better. Bruce McLaren was about to sell the M7A, and Colin bought that.”

Vic finished fifth at Clermont-Ferrand, and sixth at Silverstone. He again starred at the ‘Ring, qualifying sixth, but disaster struck in the race when Mario Andretti crashed.


“He slid off the road and took off the two left wheels. One of them came bounding back across the road. Beltoise squeezed past. By the time I got there, which was only a yard later, it had done another little bounce and I hit it. I did a huge 20 foot high somersault and landed upside down in the trees. Fuel was dripping out, I was trapped underneath, and I couldn’t move. I could see the marshals standing about 20 yards away with their fire extinguishers ready! It wasn’t until Andretti came back and kicked their arses that these guys actually thought about getting me out…”

Vic was lucky to escape with a broken collarbone and arm. But the McLaren was scrap, and Vic’s F1 career was all but over. For the next few seasons he concentrated on sportscars, winning the ‘Ring 1000kms twice more and showing blinding speed in Can-Am races, but in the mid-1970s he slowly faded from the scene. In 1973 he won the GT class and finished sixth overall at Le Mans, sharing a Ferrari Daytona with Claude Ballot-Lena, and the following year made a few appearances in Porsches, but that was the end of the line for Vic Elford, professional racing driver. He was 39 years old.

For a while he was March’s sportscar agent in France, and in 1976 he was hired by Jean Rondeau to run his Inaltera Le Mans team. In 1977 he had a brief and very unhappy spell managing the ATS F1 outfit. There was also to be one final fling as a driver. In 1983 old pal Rondeau invited Vic to race one of his Group C cars at Le Mans. “It came along out of the blue. It occurred to me that it was nine years since I raced at Le Mans, and I’d raced at Le Mans nine times, so how about one more?”

Vic Elford-Kurt Ehrens won in a Porsche 908 in the Nurburgring 1000 kms race Germany, 31 May 1970.


Elford won the 1970 Nürburgring 1000Kms with Kurt Ehrens in a Porsche 908

Alas, the car was hardly a frontrunner, and it retired after nine hours. After living in France for 15 years Vic headed to the States in 1984, when former co-driver Larrousse steered him into a job managing Renault and AMC’s motorsport programmes. He later returned to his roots working for Porsche in North America, and found time to write The Porsche High Perfomance Driving Handbook. More recently he worked as an instructor at the famed Skip Barber school; in 1992 he came across a teenager called Juan Pablo Montoya.

“At the end of the three day course I announced to everybody that he was a future World Champion. And they all fell about laughing! The kid was just brilliant, right from the word go.”

Now 64, Vic is enjoying life in sunny Florida, still smoking like a chimney. He’s far from retired, and has turned his attention to coaching drivers one-on-one. Does he have any regrets?

“In the early seventies I should have said to hell with Europe, and gone to the States to go stock car racing. I’d already proved a couple of times that I could do it. Not that I ever had any doubts. Whatever I did in a car I could always do it, whether it was driving downhill on ice or snow, or driving down the Mulsanne straight at night at 250mph in a 917. It was the one thing I could do well.”

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... ll-rounder

[Everso Biggyballies]

Vic Elford obituary: Master of all he drove
MARCH 14TH 2022
From Motorsport Magazine today.

If he could race it, Vic Elford would race it — fast. One of the most versatile drivers in motor sport history has lost his battle with cancer at the age of 86, after a career racing just about anything

Vic Elford: 1935-2022

The motor sport career of Victor Henry Elford, who has died after a long illness aged 86, just goes to show you can never put too much faith in the statistics. He never even scored a podium in Formula 1, let alone won a race. He never won Le Mans either, despite eight separate attempts. And yet when people think of Elford today, there is one word that springs most readily to mind, ‘quick’ and only partly because it rhymed with Vic.

And quick he was, in almost anything he drove. And he drove almost everything: rally cars, rallycross cars, touring cars, sports cars, Can-Am cars, even in NASCAR. If it competed, Elford required little encouraging to compete in it.

Behind the headlines that record zero wins in Blue Riband events, his actual successes were legion. Away from Le Mans, he won every single globally renowned sports car race: the Daytona 24 Hours, Sebring 12 Hours, the Targa Florio and the Nurburgring 1000km no fewer than three times. But the most astonishing fact of all is that because he was already 32 years old before he got his big break in sports cars, his full-time, front-line career as a driver was just five seasons long. Had he started earlier, or ended later, like almost all his contemporaries, who knows how much more he would have gone on to achieve?

Vic Elford and David Stone in 1968 Monte Carlo Rally

Elford and co-driver David Stone in the 1968 Monte Carlo Rally
Vic Elford celebrates after winning 1968 Monte Carlo Rally
Elford won in Monaco...




Porsche 907 KH at 1968 Daytona 24 Hours
... followed by Daytona victory in Porsche 907


He was, of course, a successful rally driver long before his racing career started, and a successful co-driver before that. He was the European Rally Champion in 1967 and then, famously, won the 1968 Monte Carlo Rally in a Porsche 911 before flying to Daytona and, nine days later, winning the Daytona 24 Hours in a Porsche 907, a car in which he’d had little experience at a track he’d never visited and all well within a year of his first ever competitive motor race.

It is tempting to imagine that at heart Vic was a rally driver who just got sidelined into circuit racing with Porsche after his Monte win. Not so: Vic rallied simply because he couldn’t afford to race, and started in the navigator’s seat because he couldn’t afford to drive. He was a south London boy whose parents ran a café in Peckham and money wasn’t tight, it was essentially non-existent.

Vic Elford in Chaparral 2J at Laguna Seca


Elford in the Chaparral 2J at Laguna Seca, 1970


Vic Elford races in NASCAR at Daytona 1970
Elford back at Daytona with NASCAR in 1970



Porsche 911 of Vic Elford and David Stone in 1967 Lyon-Charbonniers rally
Lift-off in Lyon-Cahrbonnières Rally, '67


His co-driving career started in a Triumph TR3A in 1960 and ended the following year when he was fired from BMC because he kept on insisting he was better than its official drivers. He was then an official Triumph driver until 1963, then spent three years with Ford before Porsche’s Huschke von Hanstein came knocking.

His transformation year was 1967, during which he won the European Rally Championship, the 2-litre class in the British Saloon Car Championship (both in 911s) and had his first taste of top-level motor sport when he was tried out on the Targa Florio in a 910. Approaching the race with the mindset of a rally driver, he did ten recce laps in various cars before coming third in the race itself. From that moment, his career path was sealed.

He did try Formula 1, completing a baker’s dozen of races between 1968-71 but his first result, fourth in the 1968 French Grand Prix, would be the best of his single seater career. It is perhaps significant to note that this race was held at the notorious old circuit at Rouen which in parts made the old Nurburgring look tame, the race was conducted in the wet and claimed the life of another F1 debutant, poor Jo Schlesser, on its very first lap. What it must have been like to aim his V12-powered Cooper through the downhill swerves in the pouring rain in his very first race at the top is beyond imagining. By the end only Jacky Ickx, John Surtees and Jackie Stewart did better.

McLaren Cosworth of Vic Elford in mid air at the Nurburgring 1969


In a McLaren-Cosworth at the 1969 German GP


Vic Elford in Cooper Maserati at Monaco GP 1969

Cooper-Maserati carried Elford to 7th at Monaco '69

Vic Elford in Porsche 908 on 1971 Targa Florio

Elford/Larrouse Porsche 908 set fastest lap at the 1971 Targa Florio but crashed out

But, as this illustrates rather well, Elford was not just quick, he was ridiculously brave too. In the 84-hour Marathon de la Route held in 1967 he did four consecutive night stints at the Nürburgring, each 7.5 hours long, because none of his co-drivers fancied being out there. By the time one of them, Jochen Neerpasch, drove the car over the line to win, Vic was already back in the UK, racing at Brands Hatch.

Helmet of Vic ElfordPerhaps the greatest evidence that Vic was cut from a rather different cloth to even the legendarily courageous drivers of the late 1960s is that he is the only person I’ve ever spoken to, or heard of, who actually enjoyed driving the earliest version of the Porsche 917. ‘It was a brilliant car, and you could tell how good it was going to get. It kept you busy for sure, but when it was so much faster than anything else, it was a price well worth paying.’ At Le Mans in 1969 he and Richard Attwood (who to this day regards it as by a distance the worst car he ever raced) were two laps in the lead after 21 hours when the car finally broke.

It is to be remembered too that in at Le Mans in 1972, it was Vic who stopped his Alfa Romeo 33 out the back of the circuit to try to save the life of the driver of a burning Ferrari Daytona. Wading into the flames he was not to know said driver had already vacated the scene unharmed, nor that his friend, Jo Bonnier had been part of the same accident and had lost his life when his Lola left the track entirely and disappeared into the trees.

He quit full-time racing at the end of that season, no longer regarding the rewards as worth the risk. It wasn’t that he feared dying at all, but the life-changing injuries suffered by too many of his friends and rivals.

Porsche 917 KH of Vic Elford and Gerard Larrouse at 12 Hours of Sebring


Elford and Larrouse won Sebring in '71 with Porsche 917 KH

Vic Elford in McLaren M8D at Laguna Seca Can-Am race 1971


Elford's Can-Am McLaren M8D at Laguna Seca in 1971


Vic Elford in Porsche 928 at Daytona 1984

1984 Daytona 24 drive was a Porsche 928


He came back briefly in 1973 to race a Porsche 917/30 in an Interserie race at Hockenheim. The turbocharged monster had 500bhp more than anything else he’d ever raced and he was up against no fewer than seven other 917s. He took pole, led into the first corner and was still leading when the flag fell, three full minutes clear of the next car.

I last saw Vic two years ago for dinner at the Goodwood Members’ meeting and I asked him what the 917/30 was like to race. ‘‘I can’t really tell you I’m afraid. It was never in the plan to actually race it. The plan was to start in front and stay in front. No racing required. And that’s exactly what we did.

“What I remember most clearly was when it came out of the old Ostkurve and I changed from third to fourth at 150mph, it could still leave thick black lines behind it. I did find that quite impressive.”

Vic Elford, Targa Florio

Elford in Sicily for the 1972 Targa Florio

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... l-he-drove

[Everso Biggyballies]

I posted this little tribute in the Remember the Fallen thread but now we have a personalised Vic Elford Tribute thread here thought it made sense to copy the post here....

RIP Vic Elford,



.....arguably the best all rounder of all time and still the last British driver to win the Monte Carlo Rally before marking his name in F1 and Sports Car record books. He is still the only person to have won the Monte Carlo Rally and finished the Monaco GP. As an aside, Vic won the first ever rallycross event

He was also the first person to ever lap Le Mans at over 150mph in the Porsche long-tail 917 in 1970.

Although he achieved his successes with many marques he will be remembered for his involvement with Porsche for much of his career.

He was the first person to ever win (outright) a 24 hour race with Porsche..... a feat he managed at the 1968 Daytona 24 hours in a Porsche 907. Remarkably just the week prior he had won the Monte Carlo rally driving a 911!

At the Targa Florio, despite starting the second lap of the ten lap, 720 km race more than 18 minutes behind the leading car, Vic and co-driver Umberto Maglioli came back to win by more than a minute. Porsche, in recognition of his efforts, dedicated their traditional victory poster not to the car, but to the driver. The only time a Porsche poster ever featured only the driver - not the car.





1968 was a spectacular year for Vic, winning the Monte Carlo Rally, Daytona 24 hours, The Targa Florio all as already mentioned, but then without testing found himself in a works Cooper BRM at the French GP at Rouen..... called in to replace the injured Brian Redman in what was a dog of a car. He qualified last, but the race was damp.... Elford finished 4th on debut, in the process scoring 25% of that years Cooper points tally. He continued with Cooper until the end of the year but only finished 2 races... finishing 5th in Canada and 8th in Mexico.

Add to that a victory too in the impossibly long Marathon de La Route in 1967 that combined both the Nordschleife and now disused Sudschleife in a 28 km lap, Vic completing 7 hour long stints to win the race with Hans Hermann and Jochen Neerpasch.

In 1970 Vic Elford turned his attention to America, driving for Jim Hall's Chaparral team in TransAm (with a spectacular win in the rain at Watkins Glen) and CanAm (with sensational performances in the 2J "sucker" car).

By 1971 Vic had become one of the very few drivers to have won both the American Crown Jewels of endurance racing, the 24 hours of Daytona and the 12 hours of Sebring.


Lap records included:

Targa Florio
Nurburgring
Daytona
Sebring
Norisring
Monza
Buenos Aires
Road Atlanta
Laguna Seca
Riverside
Le Mans



As an aside, to show his bravery and the sort of fuy he was, during the 24 hours of Le Mans, when a Ferrari crashed in front of him, Vic stopped in mid-race to extricate the driver from his burning car T.V. cameras caught the action and Vic was named Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite by French President Georges Pompidou for his act of courage and heroism.

Edited by Erwin Greven
Vic Elford stopping to help the Ferrari driver at the 1972 Le Mans 24h.
[fatal accident Jo Bonnier]

[fatal accident Jo Bonnier]
[/edit]

I know Vic had his cancer return last year, so I imagine it was this that finally took his life.

Goodbye Vic....














A bit James Hunt-ish in this pic.... sat in the car, with long hair and having a smoke.

[Jmoxley52]

RIP to the legend Vic Elford

[julif]

RIP Vic :/