On this day in Motor Racing's past

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Everso Biggyballies
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#1156

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Bottom post of the previous page:

DoubleFart wrote: 2 years ago When did Honda achieve the aim then? That article says they hit 397.
Their original aim was to hit 400..... they revised that (after they failed to reach the magic 400) to one of setting the fastest ever speed for an F1 car from what I recall.

Of course long before that Peugeot had exceeded 400kph in a Group C car at Le Mans in race conditions with their WM P88 "Project 400", whose sole aim was to break the 400km/h barrier down the original 6 klm long Mulsanne Straight, which I think they managed in the 1988 LM24 with I think 407 klicks, after which, ambition achieved, the engine expired and it DNF'd the race.

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#1157

Post by DoubleFart »

Everso Biggyballies wrote: 2 years ago
DoubleFart wrote: 2 years ago When did Honda achieve the aim then? That article says they hit 397.
Their original aim was to hit 400..... they revised that (after they failed to reach the magic 400) to one of setting the fastest ever speed for an F1 car from what I recall.
Then this is a load of bollocks isn't it:
Honda achieved its aim - but no one had predicted it would take two years instead of the planned 10 days.
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#1158

Post by MonteCristo »

They would have been better served going to one of the oval proving grounds.
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#1159

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day, 3rd August 2016

We lost Chris Amon, probably the greatest driver to never win a Championship Race. He won a lot of races other than that though...

1966 Le Mans winner Chris Amon sadly passed away on this day five years ago. probably fitting to relate what the Kiwi himself described as his greatest race.(France, Clermont-Ferrand 1972)

Not even an engine from a Sportscar could stop Amon claiming pole and fastest lap. Had it not been for a puncture, he would have walked it..... Matra had been having all sorts of problems with the engines and when they got to Clermont there were no F1 engines available so they had to use a sportscar engine. The F1 engine was quoted as having 30 or 40 more bhp,


Chris Amon – My Greatest Race
I have particularly fond memories of Clermont-Ferrand in 1972 – I thought I could walk on water that day. Clermont stands out as almost a perfect day – I had pole and led from Denny Hulme and Jackie Stewart. It was the race debut of the Matra 120D. One of problems of the Matra chassis was that, though it was basically a good chassis, they weren’t really strong enough. I’d found the previous season with the 120C that they started off really good in the first few races, only to get less and less responsive to changes. As they got older, there was more flexing and while the 120D was bloody good, it still suffered the same problem.

There was one other trouble with the Matra: we suffered from this big fuel load at the start. They could get off the line in front, and then you’d to struggle to keep the others at bay. This particular day I thought that once I’d got rid of some fuel I’d be able to pull away, and that’s exactly what happened.

I was only just in front fur the first few laps; you had to keep your tyres and brakes in order too while you were running these fuel loads because you could easily undo the whole thing in the first few laps. There wasn’t the luxury in those days of coming in and changing tyres – at least, not as part of a strategic plan!

The first few laps were a struggle, then I started to pull away and gained a huge lead; Denny had dropped back so Stewart was running second, and suddenly the thing got all twitchy coming back up the hill towards the pits and I realised I’d got a flat tyre.

We had this pitstop which took a minute and a half. The wheel jammed, and they couldn’t get it off. It seemed like an eternity, and when I rejoined I just went for it.

It was one of those days when everything came together. It was a wonderful circuit, though there was a lot of rubble on the track. If everything was working it gave you the opportunity to really express yourself. I think I came out of the pits maybe 10th or 12th – it must have been nearly half-way through the race that I suffered this puncture. I think I was about eight or nine seconds ahead of Jackie when it happened, and Emmo was running third by then, probably 20 or 30 seconds adrift of Jackie.

As the heavy fuel load lightened I drove the Matra quicker and quicker, until I broke the lap record. I know I passed both Ronnie Peterson and Francois Cevert on the same lap. They were going for fourth and fifth, and at the end of the race I was only four seconds behind Emerson, and Jackie’s Tyrrell was just over 30 seconds further up the road. I think I made up a minute or so on Jackie. Mind you, he would have backed off once I had disappeared into the pits.

Funnily enough, the engine we used in that race was actually a spare sportscar engine. They were essentially the same, but the F1 engines used titanium con-rods which suffered a problem from thermal expansion differences with steel, and we’d blown up so many of the F1-specification engines we’d virtually run out

At Le Mans the previous weekend, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and I were driving together. He drove it in qualifying and said “it doesn’t feel as smooth as it should; why don’t we change the engine?” Ducarouge said “we’re so short we need sportscar engines for F1; let’s leave it in.” I said to Beltoise “if we’re not going to finish let’s get this over with early” and the thing threw a rod on the first lap… When he eventually got back to the pits I said “well, that was pretty bloody early…” The engine I used at Clermont was the engine that would have gone into the sportscar at Le Mans.

ImageBlast off for Amon from the France ’72 grid

The interesting thing was that the Matras suffered very badly from oil scavenging problems, so a lot of the horsepower on the bench never actually made it as far as the chassis. But the sportscars had three-ring pistons instead of two, and had less blow-by and less crankcase pressurisation than the F1 engines, so although it would appear to be down on power on the bench it probably gave more power in the chassis.

So I got pole position at Clermont and then set fastest lap using nothing more than a spare sportscar engine. Afterwards we went back to using the F1 engines – and broke some more!
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... ris-amon-2

Some other images I found of Amon that day.

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* I started life with nothing, and still have most of it left


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#1160

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day, 6th August 1961

The Late Great Sir Stirling Moss won his final Championship Grand Prix in Germany.

Less than a year later, his racing career was finished after a horrific crash at Goodwood left him in a coma for over a month.
:tearful:
On the afternoon of April 23rd 1962, the professional motor racing career of Stirling Moss ended against an earth bank on the approach to St Mary’s Corner at Goodwood. The cause of the accident has been endlessly debated, but Stirling himself has no memory of it.
“I remember chatting up a South African girl at a party the night before, and I remember knocking off the exhaust of my Lotus Elite that morning reversing out of the car park of The Fleece, John Brierley’s pub in Chichester. After that, nothing. I woke up six weeks later in a room filled with flowers, and I remember thinking vaguely, ‘Somebody must have thought I was going to die...’”
As a huge fan of Sir Stirling from those days until his sad passing I always read anything I could about him.... books, magazines, newspaper reports whatever. Fortunately for me his profile was such that even 60 years on from his F1 retirement he was still a household name, loved by millions, and arguable a name known to more than most of the modern day 'stars'. As such he was 'media gold' and always newsworthy.

Over 10 years ago when he turned 80, Motor Sport magazine ran an interview with him regarding his life after those days, his decision to retire, how he made a living after, and how he filled his time.

Oh and the not that well known story of his planned but never to happen (due to the crash) agreement with Enzo to run a Rob Walker entered works supported (Blue with White noseband!) Ferrari in the WDC from 1962 on
.

It even covers his refusal to conform and resulting special dispensation from the FIA to run in later years Historic races with his outdated (outlawed) 'mixing bowl' 60's crash helmet and period overalls and sixties safety equipment. :bow:

I thought others might enjoy reading it as much as I did, so here it is..... Enjoy :smiley:

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After recovering from his '62 Goodwood crash, Moss was left to mull on his future



Stirling Moss at 80 – Estate agent or MP?
If you know nothing about anything, those are the only two jobs available, and after my crash I didn’t want to be either.

Simon Taylor came to ask me how I’ve earned a crust since 1962.....

The race was the Easter Monday Glover Trophy: a comparatively minor event, no championship points at stake, not even much glory. Stirling’s car was a Lotus-Climax, an elderly 18 chassis despite its 21 bodywork, owned by Rob Walker but running in the pale green colours of the British Racing Partnership. It was well out of the running, having already been delayed by a pitstop to fix a jamming gear selector on the Colotti gearbox. Graham Hill’s BRM was comfortably in the lead, and the Lotus was two laps behind.

But Stirling always regarded whatever race he was doing today as the race that mattered. It was typical of the man that he wanted to give the paying spectator value for money, and there was still the outright lap record to go for. He’d already equalled the new record, set a few laps earlier by John Surtees’ Lola, and there was more to come.

I was in the St Mary’s grandstand that day, a teenage Moss fan revelling in my hero’s progress. I watched him climb back to seventh place, driving very hard as he always did, smooth, stylish, head back in the cockpit, arms outstretched. With seven laps to go he came up behind Hill’s BRM to unlap himself. As Hill moved left to take his line for the beginning of the right-hander, the Lotus ran onto the left-hand verge at around 115mph, and straight into the bank.

Why? Theories have included some sort of mechanical failure – jammed throttle, braking or steering malfunction – or that Hill acknowledged the marshal’s blue flag with his left hand, and Stirling misinterpreted that as a signal to pass Hill on the left. As far as could be established from the wreckage, the brakes were functioning and the car was in fourth gear, which would have been Stirling’s usual ratio at that point. We will never know the truth, although Stirling says now, “My mother told me Graham went up to her later and said, ‘I didn’t mean that to happen.’ I think he probably did move across on me, quite frankly, not realising I was already there.”

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Moss with Surtees (left) on that fateful day at Goodwood

The impact against the bank was immense and, in the manner of spaceframe cars of the early 1960s, the Lotus folded up like a penknife. Hearing that he was trapped in the wreckage, BRP’s Tony Robinson and Stan Collier leapt into the team’s Morris Minor van, drove onto the circuit – while the race was still going on! – and rushed to the scene. It took marshals and helpers 45 minutes to cut the deeply unconscious Moss from the car, Tony and Stan carefully removing the battery and lifting off the fuel tank over his legs. Mercifully there was no fire. He was taken to Chichester Hospital and then, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, to the Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon.

His head injuries – no seat belts, of course, and a thin Herbert Johnson crash helmet – were dreadful: the left side of his brain was massively bruised and partly detached from his skull, and his left eye socket was crushed. His other injuries included a broken leg and broken arm. He did not properly regain consciousness for 38 days. When he did come round, he was partially paralysed, and he could not speak.

In 2009 it is difficult to comprehend – even though F1 racing was very much a minority interest then, with none of the TV and media coverage of today – how huge a presence Stirling Moss was in the national consciousness. He was one of Britain’s most famous men, and the whole country was galvanised by his accident and hungry for news of his condition. Unlike today, with 24-hour news channels and hourly bulletins on every radio station, back then the BBC Home Service only broadcast the news four times a day. The only exceptions were emergency announcements in time of war, or when the King was dying. Yet I clearly remember, as one of millions horrified by the injuries suffered by the world’s greatest racing driver, that Stirling was treated like royalty. In the days immediately after the accident, when most expected him to die, the BBC ran hourly radio bulletins on his condition.

As he regained full consciousness his will to recover, which had worked miracles after his 1960 Spa accident, began to assert itself. “When I started to come round I knew I’d had an accident, but I didn’t know where or when. Then I realised the left side of me was paralysed, so I started to focus on the bits I couldn’t move. It gave me something to work on. Eventually I started to get a slight movement in one finger of my left hand, so I concentrated on that, then I moved on to the other fingers, and then the whole hand. Lying there, I assumed absolutely that I would get back to racing. I reckoned I’d had much worse accidents – breaking my back and my legs at Spa, I came back pretty quickly after that. So I just thought, I’ve got to get on with this. But gradually it dawned on me that it was much more serious than I’d realised.”

On July 20, nearly 13 weeks after the accident, he left the Atkinson Morley, greeted by a huge press posse outside the hospital. Hobbling on crutches, he took the 11 nurses who had looked after him out to dinner, and gave each of them a small gift. “I went to Nassau to recuperate. But I was still in a bit of a state. I couldn’t remember anything, and my body temperature was different one side to the other. One cold hand, one hot hand. My speech was slurred, so people thought I was drunk. And I had no concentration. To open a door I had to think, consciously, ‘Put your hand on the knob. Now turn it.’ But the press gave me no peace. There were even paparazzi on the roof of the hotel in Nassau, with long lenses. Everybody was asking, ‘When are you coming back? Are you going to race again?’ The papers kept running stories about it. There was a lot of pressure on me to make up my mind. I knew I had to get the decision out of the way.”

So just over a year after the crash, on May 1 1963, a damp, grey day, Stirling drove a Lotus 19 sports car around an empty Goodwood. As he went through St Mary’s no memories of the accident came back. He drove at proper racing speeds – at one point he spun coming out of the chicane – and his times in the conditions were competitive. But as he got out of the car he knew his decision was made.

“My times were quite reasonable, I was on the pace. But I found that I had to do everything in the car consciously. I’d approach a corner and think, ‘I’ve got to get over to the edge of the road here, I’d better brake now, this is where I should get back on the power.’ It all had to be worked out, nothing was automatic any more. Before, I could always jump in a car on any circuit, and get straight down to within a fraction of my best time. Then, if I wanted to put in a quick one, if I was going for pole, I’d work at coming off the brakes a little earlier, getting back on the power a little earlier. But I couldn’t do that in the same way, it was all a conscious effort. I no longer had the capability I’d had before. That was it. It was a depressing decision to have to take, but it was a very easy decision, because it was obvious to me that I wasn’t what I had been. If I couldn’t come back at the top, there was no point. I didn’t want to come back as second-best, my pride wouldn’t let me. That same evening, back in London, I announced my retirement.

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Moss took all 11 nurses who looked after him whilst he was in a coma out for dinner after being discharged

“In the years after that I sometimes wondered if I took the decision too early. If I’d waited two or three years I think my faculties would have come back, my concentration and my focus. By then Jim Clark had established himself as the best, and he might have been really tough to beat. When I raced against him he hadn’t reached his maturity: when I beat him, he was no faster than Innes [Ireland], but he got much faster than Innes later. But once I’d said I was out, I was out. If people retire, and then change their minds and come back, well, I don’t like that sort of thing.

“For years I’d been well paid by the standards of the day. Because I was busy racing every weekend, I didn’t go out and spend money much, apart from chasing crumpet. But I hadn’t salted much away. In my last full year, 1961, I grossed £32,700. Out of that I paid all my own expenses, hotels, flights – I always flew economy – and after expenses I paid tax on £8000. I suppose that was roughly what a good lawyer would have earned in those days. But you paid very high tax rates then, so I probably netted about £3200.

“Before the accident I had every intention of going on until I was 50. After all, Fangio won the World Championship when he was 46. At 32 I was at the top of my game. I didn’t see why I couldn’t do another 15 years or so. I was as versatile as I’d ever been, and I was enjoying racing in all types of car. Nowadays drivers get out earlier because they make so much money, and 32 is old. But even if I’d been making the money they make today, I’d have stayed racing. I wasn’t doing it for the money, you see. I just loved the racing. The fact that I didn’t make a lot of money was just part of how life was then.

“After I announced my retirement, I woke up next morning with no idea what I was going to do. I tell you, boy, suddenly finding you have to earn a living when you’ve been paid to have fun all the time, that was a bitter pill to swallow.

“I had no qualifications to do anything. As a teenager, before I started racing seriously, I’d done a couple of things in the hotel trade – night porter, working in the kitchens – but if you know nothing about anything, there are only two jobs available to you: estate agent or Member of Parliament. I didn’t want to be either of those. The Sunday Times was sponsoring a Cobra at Le Mans, and they asked me to be team manager, so I did that, but it was a publicity thing really. I’d never make a real team manager, I’d be impossible. I would demand too much. I’ve always demanded a lot from myself, but I know what I can do. I couldn’t start demanding it from somebody else.

“So I began to dabble in property. My father, who had about 16 dentistry practices around the London area, was starting to retire, and I took over his premises, rented the surgeries to other dentists, and got tenants for the properties upstairs. I began to understand how all that worked, and I bought a few small properties. And I started writing articles – well, I can’t write, but I’d speak to somebody on the phone or do them a tape, they’d knock something up, and I’d get paid. But it wasn’t much.

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Moss co-ordinating from his Mayfair home study – he became a gun for hire in the world of motor sport after retiring, but strictly in the non-driving capacity

“I had an insurance policy which was meant to pay out £30,000 if I couldn’t earn my living as a racing driver. The premiums had been costing me a couple of grand a year. After the accident the insurance company tried to wriggle out of it. They said, ‘You’re walking around, you’re doing things, you can live a normal life.’ I told them I’d insured as a racing driver, and now I couldn’t race any more. I was going to have to take them to court, but at the last minute they paid up.”

Although it hadn’t been announced at the time of his accident, Stirling was going to be a Ferrari driver in 1962. While remaining loyal to Rob Walker, for whom he’d raced for three seasons in Formula 1, he had negotiated an extraordinary agreement with Enzo Ferrari under which he would race a dark blue Ferrari with a white noseband. “Rob was going to run it, but Ferrari agreed to support it and give us all the latest bits. And there would be a Dino 246 for sports car racing and a GTO for GT events. Because Rob only wanted to do F1, those two were going to be light green, in the colours of the British Racing Partnership, which was set up by my father and Ken Gregory, with Tony Robinson running the cars. We were going to go public with it as soon as the F1 car was delivered – which was meant to be in time for Goodwood. But the factory was running behind schedule. If I’d had the car for Easter, I suppose I wouldn’t have had the accident. So the late delivery of that car changed my life.”

(In fact a Ferrari did turn up three weeks later, for the Silverstone International Trophy. It was a 1961 car, painted red, but with a tartan sticker across the nose denoting BRP’s sponsors, UDT. Innes Ireland drove it into a lapped fourth place, and then the car was returned to Italy. The pale green GTO was delivered, however, and Ireland used it to win the TT at Goodwood that year.)

Meanwhile, even though Stirling’s place on the race track was taken by other British heroes – Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, later Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill – the public refused to forget him. He remained in the public eye, and was called on more and more to make speeches and public appearances, open garages and supermarkets, and pronounce on any matters of public interest and concern that had a motoring slant.

The remarkable thing is that Stirling Moss was a professional racing driver for barely a dozen years, and a long time ago. Yet today, 47 years after that Goodwood crash took him out of the sport, he is still a universally popular figure, and his name has remained a household word. Always a patriot – he is one man who would never live abroad for tax reasons – he received a knighthood in 2000. Now Sir Stirling and his beloved wife Susie, who organises his life so efficiently, are busier than ever. From their base in Shepherd Street, Mayfair, where he has lived for more than 40 years in a house he designed himself, they travel all over the world. So what is the secret of his enduring appeal?

“I suppose it’s because I’ve always tried to make myself approachable. I’ve been listed in the phone book all my life. I’m a nosy bugger, always like to keep tabs on what’s going on, and if the media call up wanting to know what I think of the new Minister of Transport, or the latest FIA row, I’ll always have something to say. My diary is completely full now, which is how I like it because I’m happiest when I’m on the move. I love to keep doing things – as you know, my motto is ‘Motion is Tranquillity’. Susie and I are a team. We work seven days a week, we fit into each other’s pocket. She remembers everything and everybody: I call her my filing cabinet. We travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year, a lot of it to historic car events – the Mille Miglia in Japan, the Mil Millas in Argentina, judging the concours at Pebble Beach, demonstrating at the Goodwood Festival of Speed – and always at these things there are nice people who’ve got time for you. It takes me back, and I enjoy it. I have a good relationship with Mercedes-Benz, who seem to like reminding people about the 1955 Mille Miglia. Other companies that I drove for, too: I did a dinner at Le Mans this year for Aston Martin customers. And I do talks to businessmen, motor clubs, organisations all over the world.

“One reason I’m so busy is that the modern F1 drivers are impossibly expensive. If Kimi Räikkönen is earning £30 million a year, how much are you going to have to pay him to set aside a day to open a shopping mall? Or Lewis or Jenson, or any of today’s names? Fortunately for me people still remember my name, and I’m more affordable. I call myself the international prostitute. You get me there and pay me, and I’ll do the job.”

But a significant amount of Stirling’s travel is because, after all, he is still racing. He first got back into a race car in 1978, when he and Jack Brabham did the Bathurst touring car race in Australia, in a Holden. “I told Jack to start, because I thought Jack always used to get away well, and he got hit up the arse on the grid. Then I did a celebrity race at Macau, in a Cortina or something, and Mike Hailwood took me out. But my injuries had all long since healed, and it felt pretty good.”

That led, in 1980, to a drive with Audi in the British Touring Car Championship. “Worst decision I ever made in my life. I signed for two years, and it’s something I never should have done. It was a completely new type of driving, which I wasn’t equipped for. They all drove into each other. If my car wasn’t bent at all four corners at the end of the race I wasn’t going quickly enough. I was astounded by the lack of ethics among the drivers. Some of them were quick, but none of them had any ethics. And I’d never raced on slicks before. Slicks meant I had to do things that I didn’t find easy – I learned to brake at half the distance, but I didn’t enjoy it. I am a treaded tyre person.

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Moss made his racing comeback with Jack Brabham at Bathurst in 1978

“But then historic racing was coming in, and as soon as I got into historics I was home. The downside is that I used to be paid to race, and now I’m driving my own car it’s costing me a fortune. But I love it. I’ve had a C-type Jaguar, an Elva-BMW, a Chevron, and I’ve driven cars for other people, 250F Masers and D-types and so on. Now I’ve got this beautiful little 1500cc Osca, the only one with desmodromic valve-gear. This season we’re having a lot of fun – Le Mans Legends, then Oporto, Donington, Goodwood, Spa. I’ve noticed that corners which maybe would have been flat when I was younger, like say Eau Rouge at Spa, I’ll try to kid you I’m flat, but probably I’m not, not quite. But it’s going well. If I ever felt I was getting in other people’s way, then I’d stop. My ego wouldn’t allow me to race against similar cars to mine if they were way ahead of me.

“It’s important to me to be able to race in my old helmet and overalls, and after a lot of effort I got special dispensation for that from the FIA. I signed a waiver saying if I get hurt because I’m wearing incorrect clothing, no belts, no rollbar, no fire equipment, it’s my fault. It’s important to me: the pleasure I get is partly because I’m in the car just as things were, the way they should be for a car of this period. I’m not against other people wearing modern protective stuff, but there aren’t many people around now who know what it was like then, and I think it’s good for them to see the driver as well as the car looking correctly in period. If you look at a picture of me racing the Osca, you can’t tell if it’s 2009 or 1959.

“Many more people are interested in the history of racing now, too. Amazingly I still get three or four fan letters every day, most from the UK and Germany, some from America. Anybody who sends me a letter gets an answer. I’ve always done that, even at the height of my career. I think it’s important.”

It seems incomprehensible that this energetic, entertaining and courteous man, to most of us the greatest British racing driver of all time, is 80 years old. He is still jetting around the world, still racing and racing well in historic events, still a personality respected and welcomed everywhere, giving pleasure to thousands. It’s almost half a century now since the dreadful accident which nearly killed him, an accident that would have stopped most ordinary human beings in their tracks. But this is an extraordinary human being. Long may he continue to be the youngest, fastest-moving 80-year-old around.
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... gent-or-mp


A pic I like... just ten years ago SSM showing his exuberance in the Bahamas speed trials driving his gorgeous OSCA.

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Plus a few other pics from history which show his "if it has wheels i'll drive / race it" attitude.

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The MG EX181 "RoaringRaindrop" from 1958/59 was driven by StirlingMoss, amongst others & exceeded 250mph with a 1500cc engine.

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Nimrod Aston Martin - James Hunt and Stirling Moss at Goodwood

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In 1960, Stirling Moss won the TT race at Goodwood in a Ferrari 250GT SWB.

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Stirling Moss - Cooper T39 Mk2 Climax, ColinChapman - Lotus Eleven Climax Oulton Park 1956


What a great man he was..... an absolute legend and still even after his death one of the most known and revered names worldwide

* I started life with nothing, and still have most of it left


“Good drivers have dead flies on the side windows!” (Walter Röhrl)

* I married Miss Right. Just didn't know her first name was Always
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SBan83
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#1161

Post by SBan83 »

This is my favourite picture of Moss! Sums up the era and the man.

Image
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Everso Biggyballies
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Favourite Racing Car: Too Many to mention
Favourite Driver: Kimi,Niki,Jim(none called Michael)
Favourite Circuit: Nordschleife, Spa, Mt Panorama.
Car(s) Currently Owned: Audi SQ5 3.0L V6 TwinTurbo
Location: Just moved 3 klms further away so now 11 klms from Albert Park, Melbourne.

#1162

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day, August 17th 1975...


The Monza Gorilla, Vittorio Brambilla, won the Austrian GP...


Vittorio Brambilla brought the March team its maiden win on this day on 1975, taking the flag in almost monsoon-like conditions. The Italian was driving the March 751, designed my Robin Herd.

Before you say I did that one last year, and described the events (You can read that here: viewtopic.php?p=386710#p386710 ) I am adding a different story.

The Italian was driving the March 751, designed by Robin Herd. The 1975 Austrian GP was not even March's first win.... that accolade fell to Jackie Stewart running a March entered and run by Ken Tyrrell in the 1970 Spanish GP in what was March's 2nd ever GP. It was the first win for the works March team though.

To celebrate the occasion todays story is a brilliant interview with Robin Herd, one of the original partners of March who went on to own the outfit. It covers the motor racing side of his career and the long list of all of the great people he worked with. A bit og a long read but one I thoroughly enjoyed and could not put aside so thought others might enjoy as well.

Herd was a brilliant man and one who seemed good at whatever he did. Double 1st Class degrees taken simultaneously, and super talented Sportsman to boot. He tells some fabulous previously unknown to me stories, and I reckon it is a good read. I also learnt that Jim Clark was to leave Lotus to drive the ill-fated (Herd designed) Cosworth F1 car, his death stopping those plans.

This article is from 2010, the interview was conducted over Lunch, from the archives of Motorsport Magazine. He was one of the straightest guys in F1. So what’s he doing in jail? And just how did he get from racing to recycling?


Porridge with... Robin Herd
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This man was one of the straightest guys in F1. So what’s he doing in jail? And just how did he get from racing to recycling?

As four new teams emerge this season (2010) to take on the Formula 1 establishment, there’s no shortage of doubters prophesying their early downfall. It’s an echo of exactly 40 years ago when, to almost universal cynicism, March suddenly appeared on the scene. Having done no more than build a single F3 car in a private lock-up, the new team boasted it would have two cars on the first F1 grid of the new season in South Africa, barely 16 weeks away. Few believed it would happen. March was an acronym of the initial letter of the four founders’ surnames – Mosley, Rees, Coaker and Herd – but the joke went that it stood for Much Advertised Racing Car Hoax.

As it turned out, there were five Marches on the Kyalami grid, and the two fastest qualified first and second. One led until quarter distance, and eventually finished third. March went on to win the next three F1 races, at Brands Hatch, Jarama and Silverstone. During the season no fewer than seven Marches ran in F1, and the new marque also featured in Formula 2, Formula 3, Formula Ford and Can-Am. It was, by any measure, an extraordinary first season.

What nobody knew at the time was that the much-touted sponsor, the US oil additive company STP, had only put in £10,000. Money was desperately short, and that August March nearly sank. It was only saved in the nick of time by a £17,500 loan from Max Mosley’s half-brother. Yet in 1987, with Robin Herd the only remaining partner, March went public, valued at £14.5 million – later rising on the Stock Exchange to around £35m.

Robin spent 20 years in full-time motor racing, and he doesn’t feel he has left it yet. Even so, he has done a lot of other things with his life, from bond trading to owning a football team and devising an ecologically beneficial energy and waste process. Unlike many racing people, he talks of his exploits, good and bad, with disarming honesty and lack of conceit – and an irrepressible sense of humour. His choice of lunch venue typifies this: the Malmaison in Oxford is the old city prison, and retains its iron staircases and even some of the cells. Robin gleefully mentions two mutual motor sport acquaintances who were guests there before the prison closed in 1996. Since then the food has evidently improved: in a corner of the old cell block we eat oxtail broth en croûte, entrecôte au poivre and crème brulée, helped along with a Rioja Crianza.

Robin was always a bright cookie. At school he excelled at Greek and Latin, and most sports. A classmate was Alan Rees, and they shared a monthly copy of Motor Sport, surreptitiously reading it under their desks. At 18 he got an offer to play cricket for Worcestershire, but won an open scholarship to Oxford instead, to read mathematics. Finding maths boring – “like doing The Times crossword every day” – he took up both physics and engineering, and got a Double First. He brushes this aside. “People overestimate all that. It was just down to being organised. It certainly wasn’t down to hard work: I never worked more than five mornings a week. The afternoons were for cricket, and other things.” My researches show he represented his college in 11 different sports.

At 22 he was a design engineer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, working on computational fluid dynamics for Concorde. At 24 he was the youngest Senior Scientific Officer in the place. Then Alan Rees, now an F2 racer, got in touch. He’d heard that Bruce McLaren was looking for an aeronautical engineer to help realise his ideas for racing car design. “I went to see Bruce and Teddy [Mayer] that evening, and they hired me. McLaren consisted then of a wooden hut at Feltham with an outside toilet. Bruce was such a wonderful guy, and so was Teddy: they ran the place on a nice-cop-nasty-cop basis. Their people – Tyler Alexander, Wally Wilmott, Gary Knudsen, John Thompson, Don Beresford, John Muller, Howden Ganley – were the most able, focused group I’ve ever met in motor racing. Bruce said, ‘I’m off to the Tasman Series. While I’m away, design our first F1 car.’”

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Herd’s quirky lunch venue choice was once Oxford’s prison

This was the M2A, initially used for Firestone tyre tests with an Oldsmobile V8 engine. Ever the innovator, Robin made the very stiff monocoque out of an aerospace material, an aluminium/balsa sandwich sheet called Mallite. Then he came up with an idea to use wings on a racing car. “The lads all took the mickey, telling me a racing car was meant to stay on the ground, not take off. But we made something up and ran it at the end of a three-day test at Zandvoort in late 1965. Instantly the car was three seconds a lap faster. We took it off, three seconds slower. We didn’t want anybody else to know, so we took the wing home, sawed it in two and put it in the bin, saving the idea for later. We ran the M2B in F1 with a linered-down version of the four-cam Indy Ford V8, but that was such a struggle we gave up any thought of being competitive. It was more than two years later that Ferrari and Brabham came up with the wing idea.”

Robin designed the F2 M4, which also ran in F1 events as the M4B with 2.1-litre BRM V8; then the F1 M5A with BRM V12 power; then the M6A Can-Am car. “That really created the DNA for all the Can-Am McLarens. I worked out how we could run ground effect at the front, with a spoiler at the back to balance it. We tested at Goodwood with me stuffed into the passenger side, and an anemometer to measure pressure under the car. By the time we got to Madgwick the needle was off the gauge. Bruce said, ‘Robin, I don’t want you to tell anyone about this. If Teddy knows, soon everybody will know.’ So nobody at McLaren realised that we had a ground-effect car. We balanced it out with a big spoiler on the back.

“Then I did the M7A, the first of the orange F1 cars. It won its first two races, then three Grands Prix, and was second in the Constructors’ Championship. But by then I’d already left. At the end of 1967 I accepted an offer from Keith Duckworth. Cosworth was the top company in motor racing then, and the DFV F1 engine ruled the world. Keith wanted to do a complete Formula 1 car for Jimmy Clark, using four-wheel drive, and he hired me to do it. The idea was to get Jimmy away from Colin Chapman. Jimmy was in on it, but I don’t think Colin ever found out. Then Jimmy was killed. The project continued as a design exercise, but it was a waste of time actually. Four-wheel drive wasn’t necessary now we’d got wings and wide tyres.

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“Keith Duckworth had a phenomenal brain. I sat in a corner of his office for two years, and he didn’t suffer fools. I learned more about human nature and philosophy in those two years than I did about engineering. He had some wonderful sayings: like, ‘In engineering there is an answer to everything. We’re just usually too dim to see it.’ And, ‘People who tell lies have to remember what yesterday’s lie was. It’s much easier to be honest.’ He was an extraordinary guy. We did helicopter treasure hunts together in his Brantley 2B.”

In late 1968 Frank Williams asked Robin to re-engineer a second-hand Brabham BT26 to take a Cosworth DFV, so he could run Piers Courage in F1. Frank was looking after F2 cars for customers, including one for Max Mosley, whom Robin had known at Oxford. At Frank’s shop in Bath Road, Slough, they bumped into each other. Max, now a successful barrister, asked Robin over for dinner, and revealed his plans to found a major racing car company.

But other people were after Robin. At Winkelmann Racing, where Alan Rees drove with Jochen Rindt in F2, there was talk of an F1 car and an Indycar. Rindt, the most exciting rising talent of the day, was managed by somebody nobody knew much about, called Bernie Ecclestone. “Things were already developing with Max when Bernie approached me to do a Formula 1 car for Jochen. It was a fork in the road. If I’d gone with Bernie and Jochen, March wouldn’t have happened, and my life would have been very different. But Bernie says he wouldn’t have let me get as rich!

“Bernie is absolutely the most able person I have ever met, in any walk of life. If you behave correctly to him you will never have a better friend. There are one or two people who don’t say that about Bernie, but you’ll find it’s their fault. But I didn’t know Bernie then, and I had to make a decision, so I went with Max.”

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Herd and March co-founder Max Mosley

The ambitious Mosley naturally wanted Rindt to be part of his new operation, which by now also included Rees and F3 racer Graham Coaker as production man. But there were still no premises, and the prototype F3 car was being built in the garage of Coaker’s house. In the end Rindt decided to stay with Lotus. Despite Mosley’s blandishments, he was not prepared to throw in his lot with an outfit which had only one F3 car “built in Graham’s shack”. Jochen’s Austrian accent rendered this as “Grem’s sheck”, so at first the fledgling company was named, with typical humour, Gremsheck Engineering.

Max wanted to call the new marque Apollo, because that would put it near the top of any alphabetical list. “With about five minutes left before we had to register the name I said, ‘Let’s do an anagram of our initials. M, H, R, C, plus a vowel to make it work.’ We could have called it Charm, but I didn’t think that was quite right.

“Max lived in London, I was in Northampton, so we drew a big circle on a map, rang a lot of estate agents, and found 3000 square feet in Bicester. We were the start of quite a cottage industry that has evolved in the area – people who can make exhaust pipes, or do machining, or glassfibre. In time Reynard, ATS, BAR and others gathered around there. But what we got was just an empty box with a telephone. We pulled in a fabulous little group of people – Bill Stone and Ray Wardell were the first two employees, Alan brought Pete Kerr from Winkelmann, and we persuaded guys like Bob Dance, Roger Silman, John Thompson and Dave Reeves to join us. Without those wonderful people we would never have even got started. Money was incredibly short. We agreed that each of the four partners should put in £2500 to get us going. I didn’t have £2500, so I borrowed £1000 from my mother and got her to put a bet on Jackie Stewart to win the 1969 World Championship at 2.5 to 1.”

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Mammoth 707 was a Can-Am contender

Ronnie Peterson gave the F3 prototype a promising debut at Cadwell Park at the end of September, but crashed it heavily at Montlhéry a week later. Ray Wardell dragged him, injured, from the burning wreck. Then, in early November, Max announced March’s F1 plans to an incredulous motor racing world: works cars for Chris Amon and Jo Siffert, Tyrrell buying cars for Jackie Stewart and Johnny Servoz-Gavin, STP boss Andy Granatelli fielding a car for Mario Andretti, and Ford of Germany ordering one for Rolf Stommelen. “Max told me we were going to have a press launch at Silverstone for the F1 cars on February 6, which was 12 weeks away, with the first race at Kyalami four weeks after that. I thought, oh f***. We just had to get on with it, working flat out day, night and through the next day as well. I lost a stone and a half.

“But I was disillusioned by the 701, because it was nothing like the car I wanted to build. We had to cut so many corners. It did the job, it qualified 1-2 for its first Grand Prix and it won three of its first four races. But it was so crude. It had to be: we didn’t have the money, or the time, to do anything else. If I’d gone with Bernie and Jochen I would have done a 711 straight away, with real ground-effect sidepods. The 701 needed additional side tanks for some circuits and Peter Wright at Specialised Mouldings styled them as aerofoil sections. In a press release I said they were to add stability, but that was hype. In the turbulent air between the front and rear wheels they won’t have done much. But Peter was looking for downforce. He really deserves the credit for ground-effects, for what he did when he went to Lotus.

“Max calculated the 701s cost £3000 to build, so he charged them out at £6000, which we thought was a pretty good mark-up. Walter Hayes of Ford – who was paying for the Tyrrell cars – warned us it wasn’t enough, and told us to charge him £9000. But all the hints Max dropped at the launch about big secret sponsors were smoke and mirrors. Lack of money meant the engines in the works cars would have to go longer between rebuilds, and everything, even the shock absorbers, had to have a longer life.

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Leyton House project kept Herd in Formula 1

“I’d got to know Chris [Amon] very well at McLaren – a lovely guy, a very, very fast driver, and a very sensitive one too. Maybe all he lacked was self-belief. But he and Max never hit it off, there was always antagonism there. Chris believed the whole team was going to be wrapped around him. But, after he’d signed, Porsche offered us £30,000 to put Seppi [Siffert] in a car, to keep him out of Ferrari. In retrospect Max would have liked Seppi as No?1 and Ronnie as No?2, which would have saved a lot of money.”

Jackie Stewart won March’s second Grand Prix, the Spanish in April, and 701s clocked up four second places – Stewart at Zandvoort and Monza, Amon at Spa and Clermont-Ferrand. At season’s end March was third in the Constructors’ Championship, four points behind Ferrari. Amon could have won Watkins Glen but for a puncture, but the victory that should have been his was at Spa, which he led only to find that Pedro Rodríguez’s BRM had astonishing straightline speed. “It’s generally accepted now that Pedro had a 3.3-litre engine that day. We knew it right after the race, but putting in a protest wasn’t the sort of thing you did in those days.” Meanwhile customer cars for the other formulae had to be designed and built – F2, F3, Formula Ford, even Can-Am: Chris raced the huge 707 in several American rounds, splitting the mighty McLarens at Donnybrooke until slowed by fuel problems.

Graham Coaker, unhappy at the F1 operation sapping funds from the production side, left in September. He took with him a 712 chassis. The following Easter he crashed it at Silverstone: a broken leg turned to septicaemia and tragically, two months later, he died. At the end of 1971 Alan Rees decided to leave, going on to Shadow and later Arrows with Jackie Oliver.

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Niki Lauda heads for third in a Thruxton F2 race in 1972 in the 722 that would become the basis for a GP racer

While the 701 had been conventional, the 711 was different. The bodywork was shaped by aerodynamicist Frank Costin, with rounded bullet nose carrying a wing on a central strut. “Frank was a lovely guy. We suggested a flat fee, but he insisted on payment by results – so much per mph increase in straightline speed. At the first Grand Prix at Kyalami Ronnie was following John Love’s 701 down the straight, and couldn’t pass him. So Frank was never paid.” Ronnie’s engine, conveniently for the cash-strapped Bicester team, must have been down on power that day. “In fact the 711 was a very good car, with good airflow through the suspension and some ground effect.” Peterson – in his first full year in F1 – finished second in the World Championship to Stewart. But, having lost more money during the year, March only survived the winter because an ambitious, buck-toothed little 23-year-old called Niki Lauda arrived with cash from an Austrian bank, £35,000 for an F1 drive and £8000 for an F2 drive. He took his place in the 1972 team alongside Peterson.

“Ronnie was one of my best-ever friends. A fabulous driver and a lovely human being. He could fool himself, just like I could. Like with the first 1972 car, the 721X, which was dreadful. This was the car with the gearbox ahead of the rear axle line, to get a lower polar moment of inertia. But the first thing you have to do with a racing car is keep the tyres happy, and the 721X didn’t do that. Going into a corner it understeered madly, then it’d snap into sudden oversteer. We both so wanted it to work, and Ronnie tried so hard, then Niki got into it. Niki always spoke as he found, and at once he said, ‘This is shit.’ He was absolutely right. We replaced it with the F2-based car, which we called the 721G – G for Guinness, because in desperation we produced it in nine days, which we thought was good enough for the Guinness Book of Records.”

Ronnie’s best finish in the 721G was third at the Nürburgring behind the Ferraris, despite a spin, but he ran second for much of the Canadian GP. Then at Watkins Glen he crashed heavily in practice. “To repair it we needed some steel, and we didn’t have any. So that night we drove into the town, searched around until we found a house with a steel gate, stole it off its hinges and made a new bulkhead out of it. Ronnie started 26th, and stormed through to finish fourth.” :haha:

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Robin with Ronnie Peterson, a close friend and loyal March driver

For 1973 Peterson went to Lotus, Lauda to BRM, but March continued to play a prolific role in F1, partly because it would sell a car to anyone who could pay. That season its cars appeared under five different entrants, one being Lord Alexander Hesketh. He bought a car for his friend James Hunt, who took a brilliant second place at Watkins Glen, less than a second behind Peterson’s Lotus. There was a lot of F2 success, but it wasn’t until 1975 that March’s first works Grand Prix win came in Austria, with Vittorio Brambilla. Before that there was a remarkable pole position in the Swedish GP.

“It never occurred to me to cheat in F1, and I was never aware of anyone else cheating – well, apart from the BRM engine at Spa in 1970. From time to time one or two people ran big engines when their sponsorship was up for renewal. Or there might be a weight thing here and there. Oh, and the pit board in Sweden. In qualifying I was given the vital job of holding out the board, and our pit was just by the light beam at the finish line, and maybe I just happened to swing the pit board when Vittorio was still 50 yards up the road. Pole! But Vittorio was going well anyway. He led the race for 15 laps, until he had to stop for tyres.”

In Austria the race started wet but the weather was expected to clear, so most teams opted for compromise settings. Max had Brambilla’s car set for full wet. The weather went from bad to worse, and the race was stopped soon after half distance. “Vittorio was taking every risk, got by James Hunt’s Hesketh while they were both lapping slower cars, and led the race. Every time he came past in plumes of spray we said, ‘That’s the last time we’ll see him.’ Then they waved the chequered flag at him. He flung his hands in the air, and of course went straight into the barriers. Which led to all sorts of conspiracy theories – he’d had to crash the car to hide some evidence that it was illegal, nonsense like that.”

That season March’s No?2 driver was Lella Lombardi, backed by money from her sponsor, the aristocratic Italian Count Gughi Zanon. “Lella was a lot better than most people believed. But Ronnie was unhappy at Lotus – somehow he and Chapman never gelled – and at the first round of 1976, in Brazil, Ronnie said to me, ‘I want to come back.’ We agreed with Zanon to switch Lella’s money to Ronnie, and after second practice I went to his hotel room in São Paulo to talk about it. Then there was a knock at the door and a voice said, ‘It’s Colin.’ I dived behind the bed. Chapman came in and sat on the bed, with me hiding behind it. He’d found out Ronnie had talked to us, and for an hour he went on about what crooks we were, how we had no money – he was right about that – and all about Lotus’ grand plans for the year. After a bit I really needed to pee. I wonder what would have happened if I’d stood up and gone into the bathroom. Anyway I managed to hang on, and Chapman left eventually. For the next race, at Kyalami, Ronnie was a March driver again.

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Herd discusses his first F1 design with Bruce McLaren and Teddy Mayer

“To save money we were only using F2 brakes on the F1 car, and they were never really up to the job. But, having taken pole and led at Zandvoort, Ronnie was brilliant at Monza. From eighth on the grid he was in the lead by lap 10. As usual his brakes started to go away, but fortunately showers of rain off and on during the race gave them a bit of respite. With Regazzoni’s Ferrari closing he set a new lap record with two laps to go, and won by 2.3 sec. We knew he was going to Tyrrell, but after the race he gave me the winner’s trophy. He said, ‘This is for you until I come back.’ A couple of years later, when he was with Lotus again and obediently following Andretti round in every race, he called in to see us at Bicester just before Monza. He said, ‘Robin, please make a decent car for me so I can come back. I know you can do it. Coming to March is always like coming home.’ A week later he was dead.”

In 1976 Tyrrell produced its six-wheel P34, but Robin reckoned it was all wrong. “With the big rear wheels there was no effective frontal area saving.” In reply he came up with the March 2-4-0, with four small driven wheels at the rear. “It went like a shell in a straight line, with much less drag because of its smaller frontal area, and it had phenomenal traction. But it was heavier, and the problem was making the transmission work. We tried it out at Silverstone, and of course Max invited the press to come and watch. The transmission seized on the first lap. Howden Ganley, who was driving it, coasted in and we said we had an electrical problem. Then we disconnected the drive to the two back wheels, and sent him out again. It was wet, so with only two little driven wheels we implored him to be gentle on the power leaving corners. Howden did a good job, because the journalists all said the traction was amazing, with no detectable wheelspin coming out of Woodcote. The 2-4-0 never raced, but it made us good money, because Scalextric made a very popular model and had to pay us a royalty on each one.”

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Herd’s passion for Oxford United led to him buying the team

At the end of 1977 Mosley, increasingly involved with Ecclestone in the Formula One Constructors’ Association, sold his March shares to Robin, who became the sole owner of the company. “Max and I worked together for eight years, and we never had a falling-out. We disagreed about lots of things, but we could always find a way to talk through it. He is a very intelligent man. Like Bernie, he takes what he does very seriously, but he doesn’t take himself the slightest bit seriously. He has made a few enemies, of course: with him everything is black and white. I was very surprised by the sadomasochism business, because in all the years I worked and travelled with Max I knew nothing about it. I decry the way self-righteous people have gone for him over his private life. What he did was completely legal, and he and his wife had an open marriage. Everybody who really knows Max stands by him. In fact, our mutual friends regard my undying devotion to Oxford United FC as far more bizarre and masochistic than anything Max has done…

“Max and Ron Dennis never got on, of course. But I like Ron very much. We worked closely together in Formula 2 in the Project 4 days. He is a very sensitive soul, he’s insecure, but insecurity can create the driven human being. And don’t say he doesn’t have a sense of humour, because he does.”

For 1978 the F1 operation was sold to Günter Schmid of ATS, but March continued as a major force in F2, with Bruno Giacomelli blitzing the 1978 European Championship. “Bruno was quick, intelligent, a great team member, but perhaps lacking the mental strength to go all the way. He didn’t speak any English, I didn’t speak any Italian, but he was a good Catholic, so during pitstops we used to shout at each other in Latin. Of the other drivers we ran down the years, Brian Henton was very, very good. A first-class test driver: an excellent brain, understood what was going on, communicated well. My ideal driver pairing would have been Ronnie and Howden, because Howden was a good driver and a good tester, and he and Ronnie got on so well. If I couldn’t have had Howden, I’d have had Brian.

“When you work with a driver, you have to help them to believe in themselves. As a race engineer half the task is get the car to work, the other half is get the driver’s head straight. But you must never, ever bullshit. If they find out you’ve lied to them, you’ve lost them. So I made sure I worked with drivers I respected. You have to build trust, so that by the end of the season you can say, jump off this cliff, and they’ll say, when?”

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Six-wheeler never raced but was hillclimbed by Roy Lane

In 1980 March built 93 cars for F2, F3, Atlantic and SuperVee, and the same year came the first Indianapolis chassis. It didn’t work too well, but the Limeys rapidly got their heads around Indy’s special requirements, the cars became successful, and each year more and more were delivered to eager customers. In 1981 Tom Sneva led the 500, and A?J?Foyt gave March its first Indycar win at Pocono. In 1982 there were 13 Marches on the Indianapolis grid, and five of them finished in the top 10. In 1983 Teo Fabi put his March-Cosworth DFX on pole, its 207mph average comfortably a record, and Tom Sneva won the race. That year March delivered its 1000th car, an Indy chassis for Foyt, and in 1984 30 of the 33 cars on the Indy grid were Marches. From 1983 to 1987, the marque scored a five-year string of Indy 500 victories.

“There wasn’t much understanding of ground-effects then, so we started with an advantage. For an engineer, a thinker, Indianapolis is great. People say you just turn left all the time, but it’s not like that. All four corners are different, the wind direction has a big effect, and you’ve got to get the balance absolutely right, with just the tiniest bit of oversteer so you scrub off the minimum amount of speed. The track varies with temperature and how long since it rained. You can listen to a car going through a corner, hear the engine note ease from, say, G sharp to E, and you can reckon how much speed is coming off. One of the best drivers I ever worked with on ovals was Rick Mears. He never came to terms with road circuits, but on ovals he was sensational.”

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Bullet-nosed 711 with tea-tray wing

By 1985 Robin was spending most of his time in the US, or in aeroplanes. “I was knackered. As I flew into Miami for the final CART race of the season, I decided it was time to get out, give motor racing up. But waiting to meet me off the flight was Cesare Gariboldi, who looked after Ivan Capelli. Ivan had just won the F3000 Championship in a March, and his Japanese sponsor Akira Akagi wanted to move up to F1.” That was the start of the Leyton House F1 team. Robin persuaded his old journalist friend Ian Phillips to be team manager: “Remarkably talented, a very strong-minded guy with a very good understanding of racing. Great fun, too.” The engines came from John Judd – “one of life’s absolute heroes”.

For 1988, long-time March employee Adrian Newey, who’d been a key part of the Indy success, produced an F1 car good enough to be the class of the non-turbos. In Portugal Ivan qualified third behind the McLarens, and passed Ayrton Senna to finish a magnificent second to Alain Prost. In Japan, on the sponsor’s home ground, Capelli qualified fourth and briefly led. “Adrian was only 29 then. He stands out as the ultimate boffin. He is incredibly demanding – ask Christian Horner – because he is such a perfectionist. Money is irrelevant to him: if money is needed, he just says, ‘get it’. But he produces brilliant cars again and again. A top man, as well as an extraordinarily nice guy.”

Meanwhile, in April 1987, March went public. Robin remained the biggest shareholder, and a block of shares was made over to key employees who had stuck with the company through thick and thin. March Group plc was initially valued at £14.5 million. “I didn’t really believe it. I’d always just been worried about being able to pay the chaps’ wages at the end of the week. Having gone public we were told, ‘Now you’ve got to get some proper businessmen in to run things, people who know how to run a factory, a proper managing director and a proper chairman.’ People tend to patronise you because you’re just a bunch of racers, not realising that the calibre of people on an F1 team is very high. I moved aside into a non-executive role, but the people who came in were idiots, and subsequently had to be fired.”

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Peterson scored a brilliant victory at Monza in 1976

Things weren’t going so well in America now, and when the dollar plunged against the pound that market dried up. In other formulae, too, March was no longer flavour of the month. Taken out of the hands of the racers, the company went downhill. The situation was resolved in early 1989 when Akira Akagi’s Leyton House bought March Racing, leaving March Group plc leaner and fitter, and Robin turned his attention to other things.

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Stewart leads Amon in 701s

At lunch we concentrated on the motor racing side of Robin’s life, but late into the afternoon we were still talking, about football – as well his ownership of Oxford United during the 1990s, he nearly bought Liverpool a few years ago – and waste disposal, which is now one focus of his formidable intellect. His eyes take on a passionate glint as he describes the different procedures of his new process – sortation and pyrolysis to bring about molecular rearrangement – just as, 40 or more years ago, he would have talked about ground-effects or the torsional rigidity of Mallite. “It’s absolutely fascinating. It’s done in the absence of air, so there are no emissions. You produce a form of natural gas, which you can put through a turbine. So you’ve created energy without using any new resources, you’ve extracted all the worthwhile components of the waste, there are no emissions, and it’s carbon dioxide-neutral. I love the intellectual elegance of the cycle.

“Each of these waste sites will cost £40-£50 million, and will service a reasonable size city. Now we’ve got the first one running in North Yorkshire, the whole world wants it. But getting it off the ground was a real grind. One of life’s most dangerous sayings is, ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.’ That is just crap. At Farnborough they’ve kept the little wooden shed where Frank Whittle worked. People thought his jet engine was too good to be true, and he had 10 years of being laughed at.”

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Tony team at 701 launch

Maybe high-tech waste disposal isn’t that different to Formula 1. And, even today, Robin’s old love is never very far away. “I still get at least one phone call every day about motor racing. I have to tell you, there’s only one thing more difficult that getting into F1, and that’s getting out of it…”
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... robin-herd

* I started life with nothing, and still have most of it left


“Good drivers have dead flies on the side windows!” (Walter Röhrl)

* I married Miss Right. Just didn't know her first name was Always
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#1163

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day 19th August 1909

The first major auto event was held on the famous Indy 'Brickyard'

Today in History August 19 1909, the first major auto race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world famous Indianapolis 500.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway officially opened with balloon races June 5, 1909, followed by motorcycle races Aug. 14 and auto races Aug. 19.

The main race of the day (Aug 19th) was the Prest-O-Lite Trophy, a 100 lap/250 mile race won by Bob Burman in a Buick. Nine cars started. The race took 04:38:57.40 and the winner's speed was 53.772 mph.
(There were 4 car races earlier that day, those races only of 5 to 10 miles length... 2 of each.)

The June balloon race with the unfinished track visible.
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In 1908 Carl Fisher had plans of building a five mile track for car manufacturers to test and showcase there product.
Fisher who was the owner of the Prest-O-Lite headlight company enlisted three other partners (Frank Wheeler, Art Newby and James Allison) to fund the venture, The group brought three hundred and twenty acres of farmland opposite Fishers headlight factory.

Early reports indicate that the original plans called for a three mile outer track and a two mile oval within the infield, These plans were soon scrapped as the proposed grand stand seating would not fit on the parcel of land.

After re-assessing it was decided to build a two point five mile banked oval track with grand stands on all sides.
The surface they laid was a mixture of gravel, limestone, tar and asphaltum oil all rolled with steam rollers to form a solid sealed surface.

The auto races were a blend of success and tragedy. Most of the major American drivers entered – Barney Oldfield, Ray Harroun, Bob Burman, Tom Kincaid, Lewis Strang, Louis Chevrolet, Jap Clemens, Charlie Merz, Eddie Hearne, Ralph De Palma and Tobin DeHymel among them. With the exception of a Fiat and a Benz, the entries were American, including: Marmon, Marion, Stearns, National, Jackson, Stoddard-Dayton, Buick and Apperson. Tragedy came in the loss of several lives, including Willfred Bourque, who became the first driver to die in a racing accident at the Speedway.

The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each exactly 440 yards from start to finish, by two long and two short straight sections. In that first five-mile race on August 19, 1909, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour. The track’s surface of crushed rock and tar proved a disaster, breaking up in a number of places and causing the deaths of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators.

The surface was soon replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks, laid in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar. Dubbed “The Brickyard,” the speedway reopened in December 1909. In 1911, low attendance led the track’s owners to make a crucial decision: Instead of shorter races, they resolved to focus on a single, longer event each year, for a much larger prize. That May 30 marked the debut of the Indy 500–a grueling 500-mile race that was an immediate hit with audiences and drew press attention from all over the country. Driver Ray Haroun won the purse of $14,250, with an average speed of 74.59 mph and a total time of 6 hours and 42 minutes.

Since 1911, the Indianapolis 500 has been held every year, with the exception of 1917-18 and 1942-45, when the United States was involved in the two world wars. With an average crowd of 400,000, the Indy 500 is the best-attended event in U.S. sports. In 1936, asphalt was used for the first time to cover the rougher parts of the track, and by 1941 most of the track was paved. The last of the speedway’s original bricks were covered in 1961, except for a three-foot line of bricks left exposed at the start-finish line as a nostalgic reminder of the track’s history.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... r-speedway

This is the front page from a special Sunday edition of the Indianapolis Star that touted the excitement of the upcoming first automobile races at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The date was August 15, 1909.
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* I started life with nothing, and still have most of it left


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#1164

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day August 25th 1991

A bloke called Schumacher made his F1 race debut at Spa.

I have to say this article from Motor Sport Magazine is not quite the story as I remember.... it talks of Jordan having followed Schumacher's career blah blah blah.

My recollection is that when Gachot got into trouble and EJ needed a driver in a hurry, peter Sauber, who wanted to further evaluate his his Sportscar driver (MS) with a view eventually putting him in his planned at the time F1 car .... the stillborn Mercedes Sauber F1 team that was planned to start for 1992. (Thats another story of course, and ultimately Sauber started in F1 in 93 with Sauber branded Illmor engines not Mercedes)

On hearing of Jordan's need Sauber offered Michael as a pay driver along with a cheque for $150,000 to drive for Jordan so he could be evaluated for a future with Sauber F1. Eddie, in his first season with next to no budget left had no idea who this Schumacher bloke was.... but wanted / needed the cheque to survive and so agreed to run him.

It is said Sauber paid the money on the understanding Merc would refund him.... they never did according to him.

Also this article credits Flavio as having poached Schu for Benetton. Technically he did but it was Tom Walkinshaw, who with the Jaguar Sports Car campaign under his charge was well aware of Schumacher's abilities and bullied Flavio to get him from Jordan (TW was the technical brains and FB the commercial side in their joint running of their team.) FB only got involved because TW insisted.

Anyway this is how Motorsport recall it.....pretty much the same but a few details I challenge .....
Michael Schumacher's scintillating Spa F1 debut: 'You just knew he was special'

Never have one and half laps in a midfield F1 car sent such shockwaves through grand prix racing. It was 30 years ago today that Michael Schumacher, in the glinting emerald Jordan 191, qualified seventh for the Belgian GP, beating his vastly experienced team-mate and a whole host of other big grand prix names with a blistering, instinctive turn of speed. The next day he carried his pace into the race, launching into fifth from at the start, even entertaining ideas of a win on his debut, before the clutch exploded…

No matter – Schumacher was on an instant path to stardom. The man that was right by his side that weekend, his race engineer Trevor Foster, recalled the experience three decades later to Motor Sport – describing it as “a privilege – you just knew he was something special.”

The Jordan team’s rollercoaster debut 1991 season in F1 was worthy of its own film treatment, but perhaps the icing on the cake that year was that the Silverstone squad gave a race debut to a man who could claim to be the greatest of all time.

It all started when pilot Bertrand Gachot famously got into a scuffle with a London cab driver. Instead of being let off as expected, he was thrown in the slammer. Jordan had a problem on its hands.

“It was a shock to us all. We all expected Bertrand to get a good slap on the wrist,” remembers Foster. “it came completely out of the blue, but because the car showed quite competitively during the season, there were quite a few people ringing Eddie [Jordan, team boss] up.”

“[Technical director] Gary [Anderson] and I were always of the opinion that Jordan being a young team, would always have more success with younger drivers that we could bring in, nurture our way and build into the team.

“When we were working for Eddie’s F3000 team, we’d been seconded over to Japan to do some Formula Nippon work. We saw Schumacher over there, and he performed immediately. We knew it was not an easy transition to just pop over to Japan and perform in a very different culture. It came up in conversation when we needed a driver: ‘Why not Michael?’ He was a Mercedes junior too, of course,”

Schumacher got the nod, helped by the three-pointed star sweetening the deal with $150,000 – something a team with particularly finite resources found very useful as it headed toward the tail end of what had been a financially draining season. This was an overriding theme of the young German’s first outing in the car.

“We were working on a very tight budget and a very short timeframe before Spa” Foster recalls. “So we arranged on the Monday to do a test and seat fit for Michael, giving him a run on the little South circuit of Silverstone – just to get him acclimatised with the car.

Things started rather unglamorously for a man who would go on to become F1’s royalty.

“The race team had already left for Belgium with [his team-mate] Andrea de Cesaris’s car and the spare one too – so we literally ended up using a van and trailer to bring over Michael’s,” Foster remembers.

Schumacher might have been highly rated for a rookie, but this didn’t mean that arch-pragmastist Foster wasn’t racked with the usual worries for a novice taking a cash-strapped team’s highly expensive car for a first-time spin at Silverstone.

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“We had a limited budget on engines – it cost £30,000 just for a rebuild,” he recalls. “I was quite anxious, because I was so nervous of the impact on our spares as we were going into a race meeting.

“It’s very easy for young drivers to get over exuberant, and we’d worked with a lot of them: ‘I’ve got to impress, this is my first outing, I’ve got to make my mark.’”

As soon as he was let loose on track, Schumacher certainly did – presumably to the accompaniment of much nail-biting for Foster, who was watching with Schumacher’s manager, Willi Weber.

“The strongest memory I’ve got is that within five laps, you would’ve thought Michael had been driving the car all season,” he says. “He was just instantly on it, flicking the car around, very much in control.

“When you see a driver get onto it so quickly, you’re always a little bit concerned that they’re driving over the edge."

“So we called Michael in, and I remember having a conversation with his manager. I said ‘Really Willi, please bear in mind, we need to take our time, this car is going into the trailer to Spa!’

“At the time Michael wasn’t 100% confident in his English, so Willi spoke to him, and then replied: “He doesn’t have a problem and doesn’t know why you’re concerned!’

“By the end of it, you could see it was braking in the right areas and the right amount, no drama. Having worked with many young drivers, you recognise the ones that take it within their stride – and Michael really was one of those.”

This effortless confidence and easy-going assertiveness carried on as soon as the team pitched up at Belgium.

“Quite rightly, because of his sports car record, Andrea believed Spa was one of his strongest circuits,” says Foster. “So I asked him to take Michael round it, which he agreed to. I told Michael and he said ‘Don’t worry I’ve got a fold-up bike.’ So off he went, cycled by himself round Spa, and when he came back, Andrea said he was too busy, so Michael just did it again. That was how he learnt.”

It turned out that was all Schumacher needed. The Kerpen kid, who had never driven the Spa circuit, soaked it all up on two wheels before transferring the know-how to four.

“The following morning, in free practice, you would never know it was it was the first time he’d driven there,” Foster says. “He was just instantly competitive for where the car should have been at that moment in time.”

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The manner in which Schumacher carried himself in the Ardennes was no different from Silverstone, as Foster remembers.

“He was very relaxed in the car over the radio, very focused on what he was trying to do, along with being very calm and precise when he gave you feedback,” he says. “I remember saying to him because he was again so strong in the car, I was concerned about damage to the car.

“I remember saying to him ‘Michael – are you sure you’re not driving over the limit?’ and he said, “No, no, no. I’m on the limit, but I’m not over it’ – just as calm as that.”

What also sticks out in Foster’s mind is the young rookie’s attention to detail.

says. “He wanted to practice stopping on his pits stop marks all the time. It’s standard now, but believe me it was not then. He would look at you and want to know ‘Am I six inches over or under?’ Every single time. He’d already worked out all those little details that he felt he should be doing.”

The next test came when a reliability issue struck. A water pump issue put Schumacher’s 191 out of action. De Cesaris had deemed his race car not up to scratch, so had switched to the spare. His original Jordan was handed over to the young German, with a result that now doesn’t seem surprising, but then only amplified the noise surrounding him which had been building in the pit lane that weekend.

“We popped him in, he went out and literally went quicker than Andrea had gone all weekend. He was just very, very much at home,” says Foster.

“Without being arrogant at any point, he was just very relaxed the whole weekend. He obviously got used to the qualifying tyre, and as result did an amazing job to qualify where it did in the end.”

Schumacher’s seventh on the grid confirmed what many had quickly come to conclude already – that the German was a future star. However, Foster says the young German had even more in the tank.

“In actual fact, on his last run he was actually quick enough to go to P5, but [Jean] Alesi spun the Ferrari at the bus stop, so Michael had to bail out.”

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Former Ferrari team-mate Eddie Irvine spoke to Motor Sport in December about Schumacher’s ability to handle an F1 on a knife edge, perilously close to losing it, but more often than not using his skill to squeezing out every last bit of lap time. It’s something Foster witnessed on the German’s very first grand prix weekend.

“When you would debrief with him, you realised he was also driving the car – if you understand what I mean,” explains Foster. “There was a couple of areas where the car was maybe a little bit unstable, and I said to Michael, ‘What can we change?’ He replied ‘Don’t worry, I just left-foot brake a little bit, keep my right foot on throttle, flat-out – it steadies the car and off we go!’

Schumacher had arrived, and anticipation in Jordan was rising for an exciting race and strong result on Sunday.

“Everyone was impressed, within the team, up and down the whole pitlane – you couldn’t fail to be. Everyone was talking about him,” Foster says.

“Michael had no doubt he was there to do a job – and that was to try and win that race. That sounds very large expectations now but in reality, you know, he was thinking ‘I have to try and perform the best of my ability and I can race with these people.’”

So Schumacher was gunning for the win, but as we know his challenge barely lasted half a lap. Foster explains why the 191 gave up the ghost so early.

“It was possibly the only time his inexperience caught him out,” he comments. “But to be fair it wasn’t entirely his fault. Cosworth insisted we ran a twin plate carbon clutch due to a certain characteristic of the engine, whereas the standard clutch was a three plate punch in Formula 1.

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Schumacher shot to fifth at the start of the race

“In those days you were allowed to do dummy starts on your formation lap, so he tried a couple. Then he came to the grid of course, and did a third one off the grid.”

Schumacher rocketed into fifth place, it seeming like his dream debut weekend could only get better and better, but then…

“What then slightly showed his inexperience was that he tried to do it again, he dipped the clutch at the hairpin, let it roll around the inside of the corner trying to get a good run down the hill, virtually doing another start, because it gave him full revs, and the clutch completely disintegrated.

“That was only time his inexperience counted against him – but it could have happened to anybody, to be honest with you.”

After that disappointment, De Cesaris then became the new star of the show in Belgium, almost pushing Ayrton Senna for the win. As mentioned above, the Italian was a Spa specialist, but Foster thinks the effervescent Schumacher played his part in this too.

“I think Michael’s performance in qualifying really pushed Andrea to dig deep to really dig deep,” he comments. “The way Michael drove his car with left-foot braking techniques in certain areas of the track, Andrea learned from it and then used it himself, because he was not doing it beforehand. But Michael was just doing what he felt came naturally to him.”

De Cesaris might have used the young pretender’s braking technique to good effect, but ultimately had been left seriously ruffled after being comprehensively shown up by a complete rookie.

“He found it quite difficult to understand,” Foster recalls. “There was a conversation after Spa in his office, where he wanted to take the car that Michael had raced for the rest of the season – he wanted us to switch them around. Andrea was convinced there was something different about that chassis which allowed Michael to perform.

“He kept using the words ‘It’s just not possible, it’s just not possible! Spa is my strongest track, there’s no way a young guy can come in and perform like that.’

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De Cesaris was perplexed by his new team-mate’s searing pace

“In the end we didn’t change them, because I said to Eddie ‘Should we go down that road, it’s a slippery slope. It never ends.’

“To be fair to Andrea, he was big enough to have a conversation about it with me several years later, and he said, ‘Yeah, I got that one wrong, didn’t I?!’

But De Cesaris wouldn’t have to worry about the direct Schumacher comparison any longer, as the sensational Spa performance quickly took the young star elsewhere. With the help of Bernie Ecclestone, very keen to have a strong German driver to promote the Hockenheim race, Flavio Briatore poached Schumacher for Benetton – his tenure with the green team lasting just one race weekend.

“It would’ve been very difficult for a small team like us to hold a driver of his ability into the following season,” says Foster. “But also to be honest, it would have been really nice to work with him for the remaining five rounds of the season. Everyone was waking up to just how good he was.”

Whilst Foster also recalls obvious disappointment with how an ultimately supreme debut ended, his overall feeling is quite the opposite.

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Jordan brought Schumacher into his F1 team, but then was helpless to stop him leaving after just one race

“When you relive conversations you had with a young driver at the time, of all the cautions you were giving them, you look back at what they’ve achieved over the years, and realise it really wasn’t necessary. He was just so calm, so collected.

“I always believed with Michael, and this is endemic of all very special drivers, he only needed 5% of his mental capacity to drive the car because he had so much natural ability. The other 95% he’s using to work out how to get the best out of the car, and all the little circuit niggles: where best apexes were, the best exit, which kerbs to use, which kerbs to avoid.

“The whole weekend for him for me was was super impressive – it was a privilege. It wasn’t a surprise what he went on to do afterwards.”
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arti ... as-special

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#1165

Post by acerogers58 »

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#1166

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day 31st August 1906


Raymond Sommer was born


His innate talent had team managers knocking at his door, but this racing rebel chose his own path.

You might think the man who gave Ferrari their first GP win, humbled Nuvolari, won Le Mans twice, and upset Alfa Romeo’s seemingly invincible apple-cart in both its pre- and post-war heydays would be remembered as one of the gods of motorsport.

The fact that the name of Sommer does not trip as easily off the tongue as Varzi, Chiron, Farina and Ascari is actually, and entirely, Sommer’s fault. If he’d taken even half of the works drives he was offered, he’d now be remembered as one of the greatest drivers that France — or any other nation, for that matter — ever produced. But, as we shall see, such was not Sommer’s way...

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Sommer refused to conform and sign up for a works team for most of his career, yet still took a brace of Le Mans wins



From the Motorsport Mag archives.

Raymond Sommer: the racing hero with an independent flair

Raymond Sommer was born in Paris on the last day of August, 1906 — one of few blessed dates that ensured you were too young for the First World War and too old to fight in the Second — though he hardly idled his way through the latter.

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With Tazio Nuvolari (third left) after inning Le Mans ’33

Money was never going to be a problem for the young Sommer, thanks to the family carpet-making business in Sedan, a medium-sized town to the north-east of Reims, where France meets the Ardennes. But the Sommers were more than just millionaires. Before little Raymond’s third birthday, his father Roger took to the skies in his Farmer aircraft and did not come down again until he’d flown further than anyone else in history, breaking the record held by the Wright Brothers.

Yet it would be 1931 — when Raymond was already in his mid-20s — before driving racing cars, rather than applying spanners to them, started to play any significant part in his life. He’d bought a 4.7-litre Chrysler Imperial sports-car the previous year, and after breaking himself in at the Grand Prix de Picardie and the Paris-Nice rally, he headed for the big one: Le Mans. He didn’t finish, but there was no shame in that: it was one of those years when almost everything broke, with just six of the 26 starters seeing the flag. The race was won by the Alfa Romeo 8C of Tim Birkin and Earl Howe.

Appetite suitably whetted, Sommer knew that, if his plans were to be realised, nothing less than an 8C would do, despite the fact that he had won his class in the Chrysler at the Spa 24 Hours. And, being Sommer, he went out and bought one. But if this ability to equip himself with the best machinery spoke volumes for the healthy state of his bank balance, it was what he then did with it that spoke more volubly of the man himself.

At Le Mans the next year, he teamed up with Luigi Chinetti, and surveyed the opposition. There were six other 8C Alfas, two of them works-entered cars that Sommer estimated to be 20mph quicker down the straight than his own version. There were also a brace of Type 55 Bugattis, three Aston Martins and privately-entered Bentley, Mercedes and Stutz.

From the start, Sommer held back, watching with incredulity as the other Alfas tore each other to pieces in an orgy of overtaking and lap records. The result was that, before half-distance, the race was between Sommer and the sole surviving works Alfa 8C of Franco Cortese and Giovanni Battista Guidotti. That was the good news; rather more worrying was the fact that Chinetti — either through exhaustion or illness — had retired hurt after just three hours at the wheel. Imagine what confronted Sommer: in only your second Le Mans, and with just a handful of races under your belt, you know you will have to drive solo for 21 hours just to reach the flag.

He won.

Sommer was clearly a master of understatement and described his epic drive as “a tiresome task” and likened it to “driving along an endless road through a desert”. He failed to mention he was also being slowly gassed by a broken exhaust. No wonder he became known in his homeland as Coeur de Lion, a title more famously conferred on the Francophile King Richard I. Sommer had single-handedly defeated the might of the greatest racing team on the planet. It was something, he felt, he could develop a taste for.

In fact, he had the nerve to do it again before 1932 was out, in the Marseilles Grand Prix at Miramas. This victory dwarfed even that of Le Mans, for while he had by now traded in his Le Mans-winner for a Monza Alfa, he beat the works monoposto P3, the greatest race car of its era. Moreover, and most staggering of all, it was being driven on this occasion by Tazio Nuvolari. In a straight fight, and using a two-seat sportscar, Sommer beat one of the five greatest drivers of all time in the quickest grand prix machine the world had ever seen.

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Leading the way at the 1950 Paris Grand Prix

Of course, there were excuses, the most popular being that the Alfa team had become confused and let Sommer by, believing him to be a lap down. The result, however, speaks for itself.

The 1933 Le Mans 24 Hours was to be Nuvolari’s first and only appearance at the Sarthe and, being nobody’s fool, he asked Sommer to drive with him; it was an opportunity the Frenchman could not pass up. Eschewing his preferred role as a privateer who beat the hell out of works teams, he accepted and formed a one-off Le Mans dream team the likes of which we’d not see until the days of Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell.

Nuvolari set the tone by breaking the outright lap record from a standing start on the first lap, a feat Sommer countered in the only way possible, breaking Nuvolari’s lap record to set fastest lap. In truth, however, this was Nuvolari’s race, as a relative cakewalk was turned by shot brakes and a leaking fuel tank into a last-lap thriller against Chinetti’s similar Alfa. It was left to Tazio to win by just a quarter of a mile. Despite their troubles, it would be four years before anyone travelled further, or completed a quicker lap, at Le Mans.

Elsewhere, however, Sommer’s dogged determination to race only what and where he wanted meant that he remained at a perpetual disadvantage to his many less talented, works-employed rivals. He may have been able to buy the best that was for sale, but then as now, works teams kept the best for themselves, and there was no more notorious protagonist of this policy than Alfa’s race boss, Enzo Ferrari. Neither Sommer’s Maserati 8CM nor the Monza allowed him close enough to the big boys for his talent to make the difference.

Other than that Le Mans win, the next three seasons offered slim pickings to Sommer. And even at Le Mans, though he led the race every year from 1934 to 1938 (when he set fastest lap again), his machinery always let him down. On the Grand Prix circuit, the Mercedes and Auto Unions teams were making everyone else look antediluvian, and while Nuvolari won memorably at the Nürburgring in 1935 using a very special 3.8-litre P3, Sommer’s three-year old ex-Enzo P3 stood no such chance.

It was inconceivable, too, that Sommer would ever have raced for either of the peerless German teams. First there was his reluctance to race for anyone but himself, and second he was no fan of the Nazis. Besides, Hitler favoured drivers either from Germany or Mussolini’s similarly fascist Italy.

In 1936, and with no hope of a result on the international GP scene, Sommer turned his attention back to sportscars, winning the French GP with Jean-Pierre Wimille in a Bugatti and finally signing for Scuderia Ferrari. He was at once entered for the Spa 24 Hours, which he won by a clear six laps. The next year, he raced for Ferrari in Grands Prix, but with predictably little success against the W125 Mercedes and C-type Auto Union. Rather more promisingly, he began his association with Talbot-Lago but, being Sommer, insisted on operating as a privateer, albeit it with works support. Thus with his ideal set-up at last in place, he came second at Pau before winning at Tunis and Marseilles to become the Champion of France.

He enjoyed no such success in 1938, even though Alfa by now had the 158 at its disposal — it broke on him every time he raced it. And at Le Mans, a 12-lap lead and certain win evaporated when his Alfa’s tyre exploded, ripping through the bodywork

And so, bar a few unmemorable races in 1939, concluded Sommer’s pre-war career. He was still only 33 when war broke out and, like many of his racing countrymen, he made a magnificent nuisance of himself working for the French Resistance.

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Finally in a works team, before winning the 1950 Turin Grand Prix, bringing Enzo Ferrari to tears

The post-war era of front-line European racing kicked off in France in 1946. The third race that year was held in St Cloud, an affluent suburb of south-west Paris. This 3.73-mile circuit included an 800-metre tunnel. The works Alfa Romeo 158s were there, and now the German teams were no longer extant, they were theoretically unbeatable. Sommer was not driving one, however, preferring his time-honoured role of privateer underdog in a Maserati 4CL, which he put on pole. Staggeringly, the Alfas broke and Sommer won, too, memories of Miramas 14 years earlier flooding back: he was the first man to beat both the P3 and 158. It would be five long years before they were beaten again and, tragically, Sommer would not live to see it.

With one shining exception, 1947 was to be forgotten. Maserati never got near Alfa Romeo again, and diversions like the disastrous CTA-Arsenal did little to shore up Sommer’s dismal season. Then, on October 12, he won the Turin Grand Prix, which would have been cause for celebration in any car. In fact, he won in a Ferrari, and thereby notched up the first GP victory for a car bearing Enzo’s name. Il Commendatore sought out the bench in Valentino Park (scene of the race) on which he had grieved for his departed brother and father in 1918 — and wept once more.

Sommer had another brief dalliance as a works driver, this time for Ferrari, in 1948, but despite coming third in the Italian Grand Prix, his supercharged 125 was once more no match for the Alfa 158s. He left the team halfway through the following season for the private life as a Talbot-Lago racer. He did, however, leave a legacy at Ferrari: Enzo himself credited Sommer with persuading him to abandon the thirsty supercharged 1.5-litre V12 engine for a normally-aspirated 4.5. And it was this tactic which finally conquered the Alfas and changed the course of racing history.

The next season, with its inaugural driver’s world championship, was to be Sommer’s last He started it as a works Ferrari driver, coming home fourth in Monaco behind Juan Fangio’s Alfa, team-mate Ascari and Louis Chiron’s Maserati 4C LT/48. It would be the last world championship GP he’d finish. Yet his finest hour was still to come.

By the time the circus arrived at Spa in June, he was back in a private Talbot, a car slower even than the works Talbots, and something of a joke compared to the Alfa 158s, which travelled around 30mph faster all the way down the straight from Malmetly to Stavelot But Sommer was convinced that in the Alfa’s fuel consumption lay their fatal flaw. And where better to prove it than among the flat-out swerves of Spa?

He outqualified all three of the works Talbots to claim fifth on the grid behind the three Alfas and Luigi Villoresi’s Ferrari. At the start, to the astonishment of Alfa, Ferrari, the crowd everyone except Sommer he kept station with the Alfas and even dispatched Villoresi in a dazzling move through Burnenville, perhaps the scariest corner in motorsport. Then, as the Alfas came in for fuel, Sommer stayed out, taking the lead on lap 13.

In the Alfa pit, they did their sums and realised their cars would have not only to catch and pass Sommer but that they would all have to stop again. Panic broke out and this time, instead of becoming confused as to Sommer’s position as they had at Miramas 18 years earlier, it was confusion they sought to create. A team was sent to the timekeepers to tell them Sommer was, in fact, a lap down. They returned with fleas in their ears.

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The centre of attention at Silverstone 1950 whilst at the wheel of the BRM V16

Who knows if Sommer would have won? His Talbot let him down, as it would in every other GP of the year. And when he was asked by Raymond Mays to drive the BRM V16 in its maiden race, at Silverstone in August, that broke too.

Sommer’s last race came on a 3.44-mile track at Cadours, near Toulouse. Driving an 1100cc Cooper, he shot off into the lead, only to overturn on a quick corner, with fatal consequences.

So often, talk of drivers who never quite made it to the top suggests that bad luck alone prevented their true talent from being realised. Such is not the case with Sommer. Sure, a lot of cars broke underneath him, but he was hard on them and raced as a privateer and therefore without works engineering entirely out of choice.

The demonstrable truth about Sommer is that he never wanted to make it to the top enough to put up with the politics and bullshit that, even then, went with the job description. He made his own way and derived his particular pleasure from racing on no-one’s terms but his own. He had nothing to prove, he just wanted to race. And if, in the process, he could send a works team scuttling in disbelief back to its time-sheets, so much the better.

If you want Sommer in a nutshell, he said more about himself in one quote than you’d learn in a lifetime reading the opinions of others. On the same day in 1950 that he was supposed to race the BRM at Silverstone, he replaced the injured Lance Macklin in an Aston Martin DB2 in the one hour production car race. Having never hired him before John Wyer asked Sommer how he’d liked to receive his pit signals. Sommer replied: “I don’t want any signals. I always go as fast as I can anyway, so it’s no good signalling me to go faster because I can’t. And it’s no good signalling me to go slower because I won’t.”

Flat out and on his own terms the only way Sommer knew.
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#1167

Post by erwin greven »

Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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#1168

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

Gosh was it really that long ago? Yes it was. He would have been well into his sixties now, had he lived.
I still reckon he was up there with Caracciola as a wet weather meister, way ahead of Senna and other more recent wet specialists.
I was fortunate enough to witness him win in the wet on his F2 debut at Silverstone..

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#1169

Post by Everso Biggyballies »

On this day, September 8th 1957....

Vanwall lined up for the 1957 Italian Grand Prix, held on this day 64 years ago, 1-2-3, in the order of Stuart Lewis Evans, Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks - it was Moss who would go on to win.

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More to the point it was a new beginning in Motorsport, and it happened at Monza. Led by the tireless Tony Vandervell, Vanwall came from nowhere to dominate grand prix racing in just a few years – a British outfit beating the Italians at their own game..... and teams from Blighty have been buzzing ever since.


Despite their position deep in enemy territory, three green aliens had captured the entire front row of the grid. Behind them, poised for attack, flowed a crimson tide of scarlet machinery. For the fanatical Tifosi, to have the front row occupied by cars clad only in the camouflage-like garb of the opposition was not just unbelievable, it was unthinkable.

Swiftly reacting to the impertinence of the intruders, the grid layout was amended from the traditional 3-4-3 to 4-3-4. Squeezed onto the far end of the front row was now a splash of red…Juan Manuel Fangio and his Maserati 250F handily placed to challenge in the skirmish for the first corner.

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or, in colour.....

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The leader of the British squad that had invaded Italian soil was Tony Vandervell. September 8 was not only race day; it was also Vandervell’s 59th birthday. The 1957 Italian Grand Prix would continue Vanwall’s frontal advance in Formula One. Despite the euphoria-inducing front row lockout, Vandervell still had his feet planted firmly on the ground. His only interest was in winning. Securing the first three places on the grid were only the preliminaries to the final assault.

I found this article I enjoyed, about Vandervell and Vanwall.....

Vanwall – To Beat Those Bloody Red Cars
Vanwall had already unlocked their previously unrealised speed during the 1957 Grand Prix season. In July, enveloped by a force field of patriotic fervour, Stirling Moss, closing out the race in Tony Brooks’ car, had recovered from ninth place to win their home Grand Prix at Aintree…the first World Championship victory for a British born driver in a British built car.

Their second victory came a month later, Stirling Moss winning at the high-octane street circuit of Pescara, Formula One’s only championship appearance at the intimidating 25.8-kilometre track situated on the Adriatic Coast of Italy. These previous triumphs paled into insignificance compared to the possibility of conquering their antagonists at the hallowed grounds of Italy’s oldest race track…Monza.

Tony Vandervell’s aspiration may have been “to beat those bloody red cars”, but his first Grand Prix race car began its life painted red. And it was not just any red. It was Ferrari red! Needless to say, it didn’t stay that colour for long. Before appearing on the track at the 1949 British Grand Prix, the Ferrari Tipo 125 GP was reincarnated, freshly painted with British Racing Green, and embellished with the appellation of “Thinwall Special”. But beneath the name and the colour, it was all Ferrari.

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With enough surplus funds to buy a Ferrari, it was apparent that Vandervell had more ready money than most. The source of his capital came from bearings…thin-wall bearings. Negating the need to dismantle the lower end of the engine to fit them saved both time and money. Tony didn’t invent them, but he was quick to see their potential. Patiently loitering for six days outside the office of Ben Hopkins, their American co-inventor, he eventually obtained the exclusive UK rights to their manufacture.

As a young man, Tony’s focus had been more on amassing speed than assets. While still a teenager, he was a regular attendee at local hill-climbs, riding a Norton motorcycle. Academia and Tony had never seen eye to eye, so lying about his age, he quit school in 1916 and joined the Army Service Corps, continuing to use his love of speed as a despatch rider. Promotion to workshop officer furthered his mechanical education, tasked with rehabilitating London buses conscripted for use as troop transport vehicles in France.

After World War One, Vandervell diversified into four wheels, buying a Talbot from Malcolm Campbell, though he also continued to race his Norton motorcycle. Autocar, reporting on his exploits at one of the local hill climbs, wrote that “G. A. Vandervell must be given credit for the most hair-raising skills. His stripped four-seater Talbot tackled the first corner at over 40 mph, skated round until it was almost broadside on the hill, slid the opposite way, when the driver cleverly corrected the steering, shot back again…and continued round the second bend at high speed, executing the same gyrations, the solitary passenger in the back bouncing from one side of the body to the other…”

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Vandervell Senior had made his fortune in electronics. He attached lighting equipment, initially to horse-drawn carriages, but later to vehicles powered by combustible liquids rather than green vegetation. Thankful that his son had found a more sensible outlet for his energy and talents than racing, he provided the necessary financial backing to get the fledgling factory started. Tony was now on his way to making his own substantial fortune from the smaller fortune his father had risked on him. Factory operations began in 1936, and by 1939 the onset of war had escalated demand to half a million bearings…per week!

Bearings continued to be a growth industry even after the war, so there was no shortage of superfluous funds to divert into satisfying Tony’s addiction to speed. His foray into racing post World War Two began as one of the many sponsors and supporters of BRM. Unfortunately, BRM’s progress was slow and haphazard. There were too many bosses with a plethora of ideas, but not enough doers with the pragmatism needed to bring those ideas into fruition.

Racing was not an activity based on the theoretical. It was instead an activity eminently practical. Vandervell was nothing if not practical. He decided it was too time-consuming to construct the first car from scratch, only to find out the multitude of reasons why it wasn’t fast, and probably never would be. What was needed was a proven race car. It could then teach them not only how to build a car, but just as important, how to race it.

Vandervell was after the best race car money could buy. A current Ferrari was never going to be a bargain. It involved adding 4,350 pounds to the coffers of Ferrari, as well as another 5,430 pounds into the even greedier hands of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, needed to gain permission to race the rare and costly import. Vandervell may have thought he was getting up to date Ferrari technology. Instead, he got the 1948 car…albeit slightly upgraded…but not surprisingly still a significant step behind that furnished to the favoured drivers of the Scuderia.

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The original Ferrari, with its short wheelbase, tended to be twitchy and unpredictable. With only minimal time for Vandervell’s drivers to discern its vices before the 1949 British Grand Prix, it was a case of not if but when it would all go wrong. By mid-race distance, Raymond Mays had had enough of the recalcitrant vehicle and handed it over to BRM chief mechanic and development driver Ken Richardson. The car continued its capricious ways, spinning into the bystanders at Abbey Curve with fortunately neither driver nor onlookers suffering any significant injuries.

Peter Berthon, the chief engineer of BRM, had prepared the Thinwall Special for its first race. He penned a report which summed up his and Tony’s disenchantment with the car and its handling: too little power, too much weight, and much too unstable on fast bends. At least it gave Tony some hope. They had bought a Ferrari, and it was rubbish. If they couldn’t build a car better than this may as well give up now!

The terse missive to Enzo resulted in a compromise. Return the car to the Ferrari factory, and it would be exchanged with a more up to date model. Vandervell eventually obtained possession of a 2-stage supercharged 1.5 L engine…ensconced in the current long-wheelbase chassis. As a further conciliatory effort, Enzo also offered the services of Alberto Ascari to race the Thin Wall Special at the 1950 BRDC International Trophy.

During the race, an unhealthy sounding clamour emanating from the engine forced Ascari to abandon the contest before the waving of the chequered flag. When Vandervell stripped the engine down for post-race diagnosis and repairs, he was livid. It looked to be old and run down – a Ferrari reject rather than cutting edge Ferrari technology. The final affront was that it didn’t even contain his thin-wall bearings!

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Alberto Ascari driving a Ferrari Thin Wall Special during the 1950 International Trophy Race at Silverstone

The last thing Enzo wanted was a renamed and repainted Ferrari beating up his own progeny on the track, but he was also loath to get off-side one of his vital supply sources. Not only did Vandervell furnish Ferrari with his state of the art thin-wall bearings, but he also consulted on design features affecting the bearings and their lubrication. The ongoing negotiations balanced precariously. Tony complained…Enzo placated…Tony wheedled…Enzo promised…each doing their best to keep the other happy, but both still trying to seize the better part of the deal for themselves.

Tony eventually procured two different versions of the Ferrari 4.5 L normally aspirated engine. This was the power train with which Ferrari took Alfa Romeo down to the last race in 1951, only a smidgen of rubber causing them to come up short of the world championship spoils. As Thin Wall Specials…piloted by such celebrated names as Gonzales, Farina, Hawthorn and Collins…these would have enough non-championship wins to give Tony the incentive to continue in his quest as a constructor in his own right.

Giving every impression of being a rich man “playing” at motor racing, Tony did nothing to try to disabuse meddlesome inquirers of this opinion. As far as he was concerned, the less hype, the better. When the press attempted to dig for details, Tony would grumble, “We make bearings, not engines. Ferrari makes engines.” However, at the same time Vandervell was racing and tinkering with his Thin Wall Specials he was making plans…dreaming of building his own Formula One car.

A car was nothing without a power train. Norton began as a company the same year that Tony Vandervell was born…making “fittings and parts for two-wheeled trade”. Their first engine emerged in 1907. Tony already had connections to Norton. As well as racing them as a youngster, his father was appointed one of the original shareholders in 1913. Tony himself was a director until early in 1953 when his father sold the family shares, and Norton was taken over by Associated Motorcycles.

Problematically for Vandervell, Norton was still utilising a 1-cylinder engine. With a myriad of trophies adorning their cabinets and a dearth of ready funds adorning their bank accounts, there was little impetus to push engineering boundaries with ongoing research and development. Tony had a few more kilograms than Norton to propel across the tarmac. He would need more than one cylinder.

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Vanwall VW5

Tony proposed that Norton development engineer Leo Kuzmicki fashion them a 4-cylinder engine out of four 1-cylinder engines. Kuzmicki knew that you couldn’t just take four 500 cc engines producing 50 hp, join them together, and make a 2-litre engine producing 200 hp. Engines were neither that simple nor that compliant. They were more akin to a dark art. Swish and swirl might be invisible, but their presence deep in the bowels of each cylinder could make the difference between success and failure. What looked plausible on paper wouldn’t necessarily perform when fashioned in cold and passionless aluminium and iron alloys.

Four cast-iron Norton cylinders were inserted into a Rolls Royce B40 crankcase – especially cast in aluminium alloy to keep the weight down. A Rolls Royce bottom-end may sound…posh…but, in reality, it was a crankcase developed for British Army vehicles. Its forerunner was built to embody the simple virtues of reliability, simplicity and economy…not usually the pedigree seen in the cutthroat world of motor racing. Surprisingly…it actually worked.

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Next on the agenda was a sturdy metallic structure in which to place the freshly minted powertrain. Tony Vandervell and John Cooper were kindred spirits, Tony often ringing John on the weekend to discuss the finer points of machinery and racing. He asked Cooper for a frame in which to place his engine, along with a multitude of off the shelf Ferrari components. In exchange Tony offered John a supply of 500 cc Norton engines direct from the factory, to place in his Formula 3 entrants. This negated the need for Cooper to purchase a whole Norton motorcycle, just to procure its ensconced engine.

Owen Maddock designed the chassis, and 1954 was a learning year for Vanwall…step by step boring out the cylinders of their new engine, as well as discovering all the possible means for oil to make its escape from the essential paraphernalia of hoses and connections.

In September Vanwall headed off for their first reconnaissance visit to the land of the fast red cars. Power was essential at the Cathedral of Speed, but their single 2.5-litre engine had self-destructed on the test bed before the race. Despite this lack of capacity handicapping their ability to stretch their legs on the long straights, they managed to finish 7th – pitting to patch a broken oil pressure gauge along the way.

Handling of the Cooper chassis had seemed a bit erratic and arbitrary at Monza…but maybe it was just because their lack of power meant they were pushing the car to the extremes of its limit. At Pedralbes, this was no longer just a maybe. Peter Collins totalled the car during the first practice session, and two new chassis would be built for 1955. Just to be sure, Tony also bought a Maserati 250F…minus the engine of course. Maybe there was something to be learned from how the other breed of red cars was made.

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The new Vanwall racing cars in the pits at Silverstone Racetrack before the start of the 1955 International Trophy race

The planning of Vanwall’s foreign invasion continued into 1955, upgrading their equipment and fine-tuning their strategy. This time they had the full 2.5 litres of engine power with which to do battle, but they had already lost their star driver. Hawthorn had thrown in the towel in a fit of pique after multiple DNF’s and raced the last three races of the season for Ferrari. When both Vanwall’s failed to finish at Monza yet again, you couldn’t help but think that just maybe Hawthorn had made the right decision…though even Ferrari was struggling against the relentless might of Mercedes.

Harry Schell had won four local sprint races for Vanwall during 1955, but the faster the engine got, the more apparent the deficiencies of the chassis became. It was time to make a concerted effort to improve the configuration of the skeletal framework. Tony Vandervell willingly considered all propositions on lightening, stabilising, stiffening and simplifying the scaffolding lurking beneath the overlying metallic membrane.

They put bits on. They took other bits off. But the best suggestion came from one of their transport drivers. Derek Wootton was good friends with Colin Chapman, racing an Austin Seven special with him in their youth. Tony Vandervell had heard of Colin Chapman. Chapman had even written to him, inquiring about the possibility of using his 2-litre Vanwall engine in one of his sports cars. The Lotus Mark Vlll was Lotus’ first space frame chassis, weighing in at only 35 pounds. In July 1954 everyone noticed it when Chapman won with it at Silverstone, defeating Hans Herman’s Porsche.

Chapman was duly invited to the workshop to give them some much-needed advice. He tactfully started with suggesting possible alterations to the existing chassis. Eventually, he just said what he had thought from the very beginning. The whole thing was rubbish. It was useless to try to patch something that wasn’t working and never would work. They should just rebuild it from the beginning.

Then came the crucial question. Could Chapman build them a new chassis? Money was a meagre commodity at Lotus. Vanwall had no such shortage. It was a perfect exchange of superior engineering for ready cash. Chapman suggested that Frank Costin fashion the metallic covering…the latest in aerodynamic understanding and engineering. Costin calculated out his design on paper. If the numbers worked, then the car would be fast. It may not look like any other racing car at the track, but Costin was sure it would go faster.

The new car debuted at the BRDC International Trophy held at Silverstone on May 5, 1956. Although Vanwall couldn’t persuade Stirling Moss to sign with them for the 1956 season, they did wrangle him for their first race as Maserati wasn’t racing that weekend. Two Lancia-Ferrari D-50s were entered, but both retired with clutch problems. Moss won the 180-mile race, the engine running flawlessly. Breaking the lap record put the icing on the cake.

The remainder of the season left much to be desired, the only high point Harry Schell bringing the car home in fourth at the Belgium Grand Prix for their first Formula One points. With both cars failing to finish at Monza the year before, this time Tony increased his ammunition, and three cars were sent to fight it out with the locals. None of the Vanwall drivers saw the chequered flag.

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The 1956 Italian Grand Prix: Moss with the offset-engine Maserati 250F leads the Ferrari-Lancia D50s of Juan Manuel Fangio and Peter Collins while Harry Schell challenges in the Vanwall. Schell had to abandon his car out on the course with a fractured oil line, another victim of the merciless pounding from the rough banking.

In 1957, Tony secured the driver he had been pursuing for years…Stirling Moss. Partnering him was two fellow Brits: Tony Brooks and Stuart Lewis-Evans. Vandervell was pleased. His British build car now had three top-notch British drivers. However, driver skill counted for nothing if the car couldn’t finish races. Finally, everything started to come together, so by the time Vanwall arrived in Northern Italy for their fourth campaign, they already had two wins credited to their name.

The sun beat down, the loudspeakers blared, and the mechanics shoved the cars onto their allotted places on the starting grid. The stage was set for the Blitzkrieg of Monza by the British. The dropping of the flag resulted in an instantaneous roar, as each driver fought fiercely for the lead position. Moss, from the middle of the front row, led into the first corner. By the end of the first lap Behra, his Maserati 250F getting a perfect start from the second row was behind him. Not letting the duo get away were Lewis-Evans, Brooks, and Fangio. It was three Vanwalls battling with two Maserati.

The five cars shortly had a significant gap on the remainder of the competitors, leaving the rest to fight it out for the single point spoils of sixth place. Then the cracks in the armour of the British bastion began to emerge. Tony Brooks and Stuart Lewis-Evans both pitted and then were forced to pit again…the engineers repairing stuck throttles, cracked cylinder heads, and even a missing gearbox bung. Both drivers lost multiple laps in the process. Eventually, Lewis-Evans was forced out of the race, but Tony Brooks would nurse his car through to finish in seventh place. He would also set the fastest lap…despite the major drawback of a poorly functioning clutch.

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Moss being pushed to the grid at the 1957 Italian Grand Prix

By mid-race distance, Moss had pulled out a 17.5 second lead on Fangio. Behra was forced out on lap 49 with engine problems, and now it was only Moss versus Fangio. The Maserati couldn’t match the pace of the Vanwall, but Fangio was still hoping for mechanical difficulties to beset the last member of the usurpers of Italian pride. Fangio stopped on lap 44 for new rear tyres. He was now almost a lap down on Moss. Stirling wouldn’t stop until lap 77, ten laps from the end, for a quick splash and dash…a splash of oil and a dash of rubber on his right rear tyre.

Finishing almost a lap ahead of Fangio, the Tifosi crowding around Moss were as enthusiastic as if an Italian driving an Italian car had won the race. The Vanwall was enveloped by a British Flag. Moss was wrapped in the winner’s laurel wreath. The British anthem played. The victory Vanwall had sought for so long was finally theirs.

For the 1958 season the powers that be decided that racing needed to become more relevant to the everyday punter on the road…or maybe just more relevant to the pocketbooks of fuel company advertisers. Out went methanol based fuels and in came AvGas…still not what the everyday motorist used, but at least it was a step closer.

The change had critical repercussions on the Vanwall engine. Now in the fifth year of its development, it relied heavily on the cooling effects of methanol. Ferrari had an engine all ready to run on the new 100/130 AvGas. The Vanwall engine needed major modifications…spraying oil underneath each cylinder for cooling and reducing the pump stroke to keep the optimum air/fuel ratio.

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1958 Vanwall 2.5 litre – Photo by National Motor Museum

All this took time, and the engine still wasn’t ready by the beginning of the season. Argentina hosted the first race in the middle of January. Stirling Moss continued with Vanwall but kicked off his championship campaign by borrowing a Copper-Climax, managing to eke out his fuel and tyres to get to the end without stopping, beating Luigi Musso’s Ferrari by a smidge under three seconds. It was the first race victory for a rear-engine car, but at the time thought to be an aberration due more to strategy than outright speed.

In the end, it was close…very close…between Ferrari and Vanwall. The Vanwall was still very fast, but reliability remained its Achilles heel. Tony Brooks had three wins. They were the only races in which he would get points. Stirling Moss had four wins and one second place. Ferrari driver Mike Hawthorn had only one win but finished second five times. At Monza, Tony Brooks would take the laurels for Vanwall, Moss and Lewis-Evans both retiring with engine and gearbox issues.

The championship went down to the last race at Casablanca. Stirling Moss finished first, one place ahead of Mike Hawthorn, who was gifted second place by his new teammate Phil Hill. When the points for fastest lap were added up (three for Moss and five for Hawthorn), Moss was one point adrift of his fellow compatriot. For the fourth year in a row, Stirling Moss would finish runner-up in the championship.

It was enough to give Vanwall the first constructor’s championship…though if all ten race results had been counted – rather than just the top six for each marque – the two antagonists would fittingly have been tied on 57 points. Tony Vandervell then retired from Grand Prix racing, his health deteriorating rapidly, both physically with a failing heart and mentally after the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans six days after his accident at Casablanca.

Denis Jenkinson and Cyril Posthumus wrote in their book on Vanwall that, “It was the “chief’s” racing team and they were all proud to be part of it, working with ultimate victory in view as much as Vandervell did. He himself always made the point that his cars were the result of a team effort, no one person being singled out for praise. From the number-one driver to the boy who swept up the workshop, all were essential members of the team, and the ever-present Tony Vandervell imbued a strong feeling of solidarity and devotion to the great cause.”
https://taflach.blog/2019/07/10/to-beat ... -red-cars/

“Working together in common cause, to produce the miraculous.”


Oh and here is the Pathe News review of that 1957 Italian GP.


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#1170

Post by erwin greven »

Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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#1171

Post by erwin greven »

Everso Biggyballies wrote: 2 years ago
DoubleFart wrote: 2 years ago When did Honda achieve the aim then? That article says they hit 397.
Their original aim was to hit 400..... they revised that (after they failed to reach the magic 400) to one of setting the fastest ever speed for an F1 car from what I recall.

Of course long before that Peugeot had exceeded 400kph in a Group C car at Le Mans in race conditions with their WM P88 "Project 400", whose sole aim was to break the 400km/h barrier down the original 6 klm long Mulsanne Straight, which I think they managed in the 1988 LM24 with I think 407 klicks, after which, ambition achieved, the engine expired and it DNF'd the race.

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The Sauber Mercedes cars ran 399kmh at the Mulsanne Straight. One difference with the Peugeot: They finished the race.
Brian Redman: "Mr. Fangio, how do you come so fast?" "More throttle, less brakes...."
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