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Not No1s, but first-rate drives

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 08:28:19 +0000

Dear Nigel,

There are ‘superstars’ in motor sport, but what has always captivated me are those instances where drivers not considered in the highest echelon have their ‘day of days’ – where they elevate themselves to produce an exceptional performance, not necessarily winning but demonstrating immense skill, determination and, in some cases, courage and integrity.

I’m thinking of Brundle in Canada and Britain in 1992, Warwick getting back in the Lotus after Donnelly’s 1990 crash, Patrese on several occasions in ’91, Tambay at Imola the year after Gilles’ death, Herbert finishing within 10 seconds of the winner at Rio ’89, Hill’s races at Japan and Australia in ’94 when he took the fight to Schumacher. What would you consider to be the standout performances from the ‘not quite number ones’ over the years?

Richard McConnell

Dear Richard,

There have been so many outstanding performances by ‘not quite numbers ones’ over the years, but let me keep it to three that stick in my mind – and three that ended in victories that were not inherited flukes, but well deserved.

First, I think of Jean-Pierre Beltoise at the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix. The weather was foul for that year’s race – not only torrentially wet but also, more surprisingly, distinctly cold. I can still remember the wind howling in from the sea. JPB, driving for BRM, qualified fourth but made a fantastic start – no rolling starts in the wet after laps behind the safety car in those days – and passed Ickx, Fittipaldi and Regazzoni before Ste Devote, thus taking a lead he was never to lose. Beltoise pulled away at a prodigious rate, and what says everything about his drive is that, after two-and-a-half hours, he took the chequered flag 40 seconds ahead of Ickx, himself acknowledged as a supreme wet weather driver.

Next comes Clay Regazzoni, and while I could have picked his perfect drive at the Nürburgring in 1974, instead I’ll go for Long Beach in ’76. From pole position – more than half a second quicker than Ferrari team-mate Lauda – Clay took the lead at the start and simply left everyone behind. There wasn’t the hint of a mistake, and on days like this you wondered why Regazzoni didn’t always drive this way.

Last, I’ll go with Riccardo Patrese at the 1991 Portuguese Grand Prix. It’s often forgotten that through the first half of that season Patrese out-qualified Williams-Renault team-mate Mansell every time out, and Riccardo was very much a factor that year. At Estoril his engine blew in final qualifying and he was allowed out in the T-car only at the very end of the session, once it had been established that Nigel didn’t need it. In a fury Riccardo took pole position, ahead of the McLarens of Berger and Senna – and Mansell. On race day no one could hold Patrese – who beat Senna by more than 20 seconds…

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A-Z of the British GP

Damien Smith — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:15:37 +0000

A-Z of the British GP

They dish out the same number of points for every race on the calendar. But for the drivers some races are more important than others. A win at Monaco, Monza – or Silverstone: they’ll always mean more than a victory in Shanghai, Istanbul – or Valencia.

Sebastian Vettel dominated the European Grand Prix on the anodyne Spanish port circuit last weekend, and he had every right to take great satisfaction from the win. It was another consummate performance by this wonderfully gifted young man. But ask him in 10 years time to recall the days that stand out and I doubt this will be one of them. The same sort of unchallenged victory would mean something at Monaco. But here? It’s just another haul of 25 points.

The next GP will be different, and not just for Vettel. Sebastian has won at Silverstone before, of course. In 2009 he scored the third GP victory of his career at the old airfield track, becoming the youngest ever winner of a British Grand Prix. He knows how sweet it feels to win at a place with real history (despite being almost unrecognisable from how it used to be). Lewis Hamilton understands. So does Mark Webber. Jenson Button? Well, he’s desperate to join that elite club. The British GP is worth more than 25 points.

Jingoism on our part? I don’t think so. We like to think that Motor Sport has a broad outlook and doesn’t stoop to national bias. But at the same time we’re proud to be a British magazine and it’s only natural that our home GP should hold a special place in our psyche for us.

It’s that dear familiarity and shared experience of Silverstone, Brands Hatch and even Aintree (at least for the older contributors!) that inspired our A-Z of the British GP, the cover story of the August issue that is on sale now.

It was fun putting it together, and for those of you who never miss a British GP (and I know there are many), we hope the alphabetic guide will ring a few bells. Essentially, it’s a celebration of everything we love (and perhaps less than love…) about being a motor racing fan.

Perhaps you might have your own suggestions of British GP staples. To give you a taster, the entry we came up with for K is Keke’s lap. R is for Red Arrows. U is for Useless PA systems – and so on. Fancy getting into the spirit ahead of this year’s race? We look forward to reading your suggestions.

And for those of you who count another GP as ‘home’, we hope the A-Z will offer a few universal home truths about the experience of fans whatever part of the world you live in. We’d love to hear what you associate with your own GP, whether it be Interlagos, Monza, Melbourne, Montréal…

Elsewhere in the August issue, we continue the British GP theme by asking three past winners of the race – Damon Hill, Johnny Herbert and John Watson – to give their verdicts on the F1 season so far, and what to expect at Silverstone and beyond. Three guesses whom they expect to win on July 10…

As usual, it’s not all modern F1 in Motor Sport. We head back 25 years to recall Henri Toivonen, rallying’s greatest cult hero. He and co-driver Sergio Cresto perished in a terrible accident in Corsica back in 1986 that not only robbed us of a gigantic talent, but also spelt the end of the wonderful – but deadly – Group B monsters. Anthony Peacock returns to Corsica to visit a corner of the beautiful island that will be forever Finnish.

As well as all that Eoin Young completes his story about his first season trekking round the European racing scene 50 years ago; Simon Taylor lunches with former BRM team manager Tim Parnell who gives his unique insight into the racing world of the 1950s through to the ’70s; and Mat Oxley hits the road on Norton’s retro café racer, our first motorcycle test of 2011.

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Parnelli on a par with Jimmy…

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 09:34:36 +0000

Parnelli on a par with Jimmy…

Dear Nigel,

Other than American-based racing legends, such as AJ Foyt and Rick Mears, who do you think are the best racing drivers never to have competed in a Grand Prix. And if they had, what sort of career would they have had?

Andrew Huntley

Dear Andrew,

On two occasions AJ Foyt was entered in a Grand Prix – by BRM, curiously, at the US Grand Prix in 1964, and by Eagle at the Belgian Grand Prix in ’67. The latter was the weekend after AJ and Gurney won the Le Mans 24 Hours, and Dan went on to win at Spa, too. Unfortunately, though, Foyt took part in neither Grand Prix, and thus we have the frustration of never knowing how he would have gone in an F1 car. Swiftly, I suspect. Aggressive as he was, AJ’s driving style was silky-smooth, and he made incredibly few mistakes.

Same with Rick Mears, but he did at least test an F1 car – a factory Brabham-Cosworth at Riverside early in 1981. At the time Brabham was seriously thinking about Mears as a team-mate for Piquet, and they thought even more seriously about him after that test – for he was quicker than Nelson! The deal fell through, however, when Mears – already a superstar in Indycars – learned that Bernie Ecclestone would require him to ‘bring money’ if he were to get the drive. Rick politely – and correctly – declined, but to this day Herbie Blash, on hand that day at Riverside, describes him as ‘the great lost World Champion’…

Let me add a third name to this list, Andrew. At the end of 1963 Colin Chapman invited Parnelli Jones – who had won the Indianapolis 500 that year, with Clark second – to partner Jimmy in the Lotus F1 team for 1964. Parnelli was tempted, but turned the offer down: for one thing, there was considerably more money to be made in America; for another, he was only too aware that ‘the second Lotus’ was not the most desirable drive in the world, the team understandably tending to focus all its attention on Clark.

Jackie Stewart has said that, as far as Indianapolis was concerned, Parnelli was the greatest he ever saw there. And Chris Amon, who raced against him in Can-Am and other US events, goes even further: “I always say Clark was the best driver I ever encountered, but on raw talent I’d put Parnelli up there with Jimmy…”

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1970 – a year of change

Damien Smith — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:07:05 +0000

1970 – a year of change

‘Iconic’ is a much overused word these days, and it’s a particular bugbear for one of my team here at Motor Sport. But sometimes it’s a word that’s hard to avoid. Sometimes it’s the first thing that springs to mind when presented with a certain image. And if anything deserves this hallowed status it has to be the Gulf Porsche 917 on the cover of the August issue, perhaps the greatest racing car ever built – depending on your point of view.

Like everything of the ‘greatest ever’ nature, it is purely subjective, of course. It’ll depend on your age, your bias towards sports cars or Formula 1, and so on. And the same came be said for our assertion that 1970, a year of thrills and turmoil in equal measure, is ‘Year Zero for the Modern Age’.

We thought long and hard about such a tag when we decided to theme an issue around a single season, 40 long years ago. It seemed to fit. Rampant commercialism and concerns about safety really took hold in the final years of the 1960s, but certainly on the point of safety this was the year when people finally started to listen to Jackie Stewart. After 1970, the sport had to change.

As Nigel Roebuck writes in his introduction to our special section, this was the year when F1 drivers managed to change the venue of the German Grand Prix from the Nürburgring to Hockenheim at less than six weeks’ notice – all in the name of safety. The deaths of Bruce McLaren, Piers Courage and, later in the season, Jochen Rindt focused the drivers like never before on their attitudes to the sport. Rindt’s own mixed feelings on racing are captured in this issue with an extract from David Tremayne’s new biography. The Austrian would become F1’s only posthumous World Champion. But had he lived, the dangers and loss of close friends appear to suggest he would have retired anyway.

It went beyond safety. 1970 was the start of a new decade where the whole world changed dramatically – in some respects for the better and in others for the worse. The 1960s are often depicted, rightly or wrongly, as the end of the age of innocence. In a decade that featured the assassination of a US president and the futile war in Vietnam that’s perhaps too trite. Nevertheless, it’s a fact that nostalgia for the ’60s remains stronger than for any other decade. Nostalgia for the ’70s is popular, but it’s also remembered as a tougher, more cynical decade. The colour and extravagances of the world today can be traced back 40 years, to a time when the old values, fashions and expectations were being overtaken by new attitudes – with a harder edge. As usual, motor racing ran in parallel to the world at large. Life would never be the same again.

We chose the Gulf 917 as the image most linked to the year even though the monster was actually born a year earlier. It didn’t even win Le Mans in the blue and orange colours. But it’s so familiar, so of the time and – aided by Steve McQueen – so of that specific year.

Perhaps you might disagree with our ‘Year Zero’ premise. If there were such a thing, maybe you’d care to argue it was 1968, or ’69 or ’71… We’ll be awaiting your comments. But in the meantime, whatever your feelings, I hope you enjoy a group of features that will surely entertain you. Just check out this line-up: Rindt, Stewart, Amon, Rodríguez, March, BRM, Porsche 917s – and of course that man McQueen. With that lot, you can’t go wrong!

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Looking to the past for inspiration

Rob Widdows — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:25:01 +0000

Looking to the past for inspiration

The highlight of my year thus far was lunch in a supermarket café. Not the gastronomy, though I did capitulate at the offer of an absurdly rich pudding, but the company I was keeping.

My friend Robert Dean is an engineer, a mechanic, a racer of vintage cars and generally one of the good eggs of our universe. By our universe, I mean that which is inhabited by those of us who are just crazy about racing cars. Or just crazy. Robert’s role in life, apart from a being a doting father, is to look after a collection of racing cars owned by one Bernard Ecclestone.

I mention this because last year in the desert of Bahrain I did two things I never imagined I would. I slid down into the cockpit of a Ferrari 312 and I perched on the seat of a BRM V16 Mk ll.

For me, these were Big Moments – not only a pleasure, but also a privilege. As a child, I watched Ken Wharton and Ron Flock hart racing this BRM at Goodwood and, while the memory is hazy, I remember the noise and I know it must have left a big impression on me. I know this because I later joined the BRM Supporters Club, proudly wearing the enamel badge at every possible opportunity. There was something about a BRM, so very British in that dark racing green, and so often the underdog until Graham Hill came along and won the World Championship in 1962. By that time you couldn’t keep me away from the racetrack.

Then there was the Ferrari, this the very car raced in 1966 by Lorenzo Banding and John Surtees. You probably remember the cockpit of the 312, that wonderful black leather cladding, and that snaking nest of white exhaust pipes on the glorious V12 engine. Take a look at pictures of Banding in this car, or Ludovico Scarfiotti (who won at Monza in ’66) and if they don’t stir your blood then you won’t get what I’m going on about. The car is so comfortable, the cockpit hugging your sides. Close your eyes and you could be coming down to the Parabolica – if you were brave enough. No belts, remember, and fuel tanks all around you. Eventually I stepped out, but I didn’t want to.

So, thanks to Mr Dean, I have taken a seat in the theatre of dreams. The point, however, of these ramblings is that it is days such as these that remind us why we fell in love with Grand Prix racing.

In recent years I have sometimes struggled to maintain my enthusiasm. They all look the same, they all sound the same. They can’t overtake each other unless there’s a thunderstorm and Lewis Hamilton has a red mist inside that yellow helmet. Wandering among the cars collected by Bernie reminded me that simplicity is good – big fat tyres, tons of power, not very much grip and lots of nice engineering that you and I can understand.

No, I am not bogged down in the past. And yes, I will be watching the Chinese Grand Prix. I’m not giving up on this thing after six decades but I do believe that something radical needs to be done to improve the sheer spectacle, the drama of motor racing at its highest level.

BRM is long gone, but there will be Ferraris on the grid in China. All is not lost.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine