Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Will Power led a Penske clean sweep at the Infineon Raceway (Sears Point) road course on Sunday. The IndyCar Series title hopeful qualified on pole and led all the way, save for pitstops, to score his fifth win of the year ahead of team-mates Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe. Power’s victory allowed him to close to within 26 points of championship leader Dario Franchitti.

It was the first top three sweep for Team Penske since 1994 when Al Unser Jr, Emerson Fittipaldi and Paul Tracy scored no fewer than four 1-2-3 finishes for Roger Penske’s CART team. Meanwhile Brad Keselowski won again for Penske’s NASCAR team at the half-mile Bristol bullring on Saturday night. Roger himself was on the scoring stand in Tennessee, and after flying west to California did the same at Sears Point.

‘The Captain’ is one of America’s leading entrepreneurs as well as one of its top team owners, and he was delighted to see his NASCAR and Indycar teams perform so well. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this kind of run on the Indycar side,” said Roger. “And then for Brad and Kurt [Busch] to run so well and Brad picking up that win it’s an awesome time and a credit to all our people, whether it’s the Indycar or NASCAR side. What a run here, I just can’t believe it. There’s a lot of competition [in IndyCar] and I think we had a good set-up this weekend, just a little bit better than Ganassi.

“But we’ve got a lot of work to do. We want to win this championship. We’ve been ahead and fell behind and now maybe we’re making a surge. But Dario and [Scott] Dixon are outstanding and when you get on the [Sprint] Cup side, man, it’s a whole other story.”

Four races remain in the IndyCar championship – two street or road races and two ovals. Franchitti has 475 points to Power’s 449, while Dario’s Ganassi team-mate Dixon is third and another 49 points behind Power. Franchitti and Dixon qualified fourth and fifth at Sears Point and finished in the same places, unable to offer a challenge to Penske’s cars.

Giorgio Pantano, the 2008 GP2 champion, stepped into the injured Justin Wilson’s Dreyer & Reinbold car and drove an excellent race to finish sixth. Pantano did so without the benefit of testing and was able to shoulder out Sébastien Bourdais in one of Dale Coyne’s cars, but was penalised for diving inside the Frenchman to steal sixth place on a late-race restart. Pantano was unaware of IndyCar’s strict restart rules, which don’t allow such aggressive manoeuvres, and the disappointed Italian then found himself moved back to the tail of the unlapped finishers.

IndyCar races again this weekend at a new street circuit in Baltimore, followed by a visit to Japan Motegi’s road course and two oval races in October at Kentucky and Las Vegas. It will be interesting to see if Power can run down Franchitti to win his first IndyCar title and stop the Scot from taking his third championship in a row.

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In her blog this week ‘Does Formula 2 get your vote?’, Gillian Rodgers and some of the comments from readers have hit on a key point about the sorry state of international single-seater racing’s ‘ladder system’. The absurdly confused jumble of formulae that now exists in place of the old system of F1, F2, F3 and Formula Ford surely is one of the FIA’s biggest failings. The old ladder system thrived for a few decades but was subverted by the easy acceptance of a plethora of manufacturer-driven spec-car formulae by the FIA and many other national sanctioning bodies.

Some will argue that it’s a crime against the sport, but most everyone who’s been around motor racing for any period of time will shrug their shoulders and remark, ‘That’s motor racing’s way of doing business.’ And I guess they’re right.

Still, well do I remember a season I spent in the UK almost 40 years ago helping my friend David Loring run his Merlyn FF1600 in the three leading British Formula Ford championships of those days. Back then the ladder system was very clear, and after winning four FF1600 championships in the United States and Canada in 1971, Loring was anxious to race Formula 3 in Britain and Europe. But financial realities meant he had to race Formula Ford, which was a bit of a letdown.

Some bad luck and a few accidents strained our budget even more and David was disappointed to finish the year with ‘only’ five wins, one track record (at Mallory Park) and sixth in the primary British Oxygen FFord championship. Still, it was a great pleasure and a tremendous learning experience for us both to enjoy a season in the UK when the old system was at its height.

David ran more than 30 races that year and close to half of them were on the same card as an F3 race. Another four or five accompanied F2 rounds (in addition to a roaring European F2 championship there was a British F2 series in ‘72 won by Niki Lauda) and three times we raced at F1 races (in those days there were half a dozen non-championship F1 races in England).

The point is that there was a clearly defined ladder from Formula Ford through to F1 and there was also a real fan following for F2, F3 and FF1600. It was very clear who the up-and-coming stars were and people were anxious to see how the new boys would do each year in the next step on the ladder to F1. Guys like Emerson Fittipaldi and Jody Scheckter made their names in Formula Ford and F3, just like Jim Clark had done a decade earlier in Formula Junior and F2.

I cannot help believe that it would be a great thing for the sport to recreate a new version of the old system and many fans seem to believe the same thing. But there’s no impetus or enough desire within the sport’s political structure to make it happen, is there?

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Among the many delights at this weekend’s 19th Goodwood Festival of Speed will be the sights and sounds of 33 Indycars running up the hill. Some of the cars will be driven by retired stars like three-time Indy 500 winners Bobby Unser and Johnny Rutherford, two-time winner Emerson Fittipaldi and one-time winners Danny Sullivan and Arie Luyendyk. Lord March has had his excellent team of people recreate a slice of the original ‘Gasoline Alley’ garages where the Indycars will be displayed over the weekend.

Which gives me an excuse to write a few words about a great Indy 500 racer from the 1930s who few people today know much about. His name was Billy Arnold and he was a true American superstar in the early ’30s, winning the 500 in dominant style in 1930 and starring as himself in a 1931 Hollywood movie, The Crowd Roars, with Jimmy Cagney. Arnold clearly was the man to beat at Indianapolis in 1930-32 leading more than 400 laps in those three events.

Billy Arnold and riding mechanic Spider Matlock at Indy in 1930

Arnold made his first Indy start in 1928, finishing seventh, and was eighth the following year. In 1930 he got his big break when Harry Hartz chose him to be his relief driver. Hartz had won the 1926 AAA Indycar championship and compiled a formidable record at Indianapolis. He finished second in the 500 in 1922, his rookie start, and was second again in ‘23 and ‘26. Hartz also qualified on the front row in five successive 500s (1922-26) and finished fourth in 1924-25. But he suffered serious leg injuries in an accident at the Salem, New Hampshire board track in 1927 and was out of action for a couple of years.

Hartz tried a comeback in 1930 with a new front-drive Summer-Miller he had commissioned. But after attempting some fast laps which would have got him onto the front row, he decided he wasn’t up to the job. He handed his car over to Arnold who had run some practice laps and was ready to go. Sure enough, Arnold qualified on pole and after ceding the lead at the start to Louis Meyer he passed Meyer on lap three and ran away with the race, leading the rest of the way to win by more than seven minutes – five or six laps.

Arnold was the man to beat again in 1931 but he had to start 18th after he was disqualified from his first, pole-winning qualifying run, then turned the fastest four qualifying laps on the second day. But in only seven laps Arnold was through to the lead and again ran off on his own, only to crash on lap 162 while enjoying a five-lap lead. The following year he qualified second for the 500, took the lead on lap two and took off on his own again before crashing on lap 60 while trying to avoid another car.

Arnold after winning the 1930 race in Hartz’s Summer-Miller

The previous winter Arnold had got married and his new bride pleaded with him to retire, which he did, becoming a field man for the Chrysler Corporation and serving in the UK with the US military during WWII. At the height of his fame Arnold starred with in The Crowd Roars. He played himself opposite Cagney who played Joe Geer in one of Hollywood’s most successful racing movies from the early days of ‘The Talkies’.

Without doubt Arnold’s record of laps led at Indianapolis is pretty amazing. In the three 500s from 1930-32 he led 410 of the 421 laps he completed, a remarkable 97.4 per cent. That’s better than either Ralph de Palma’s powerful record from 1912-21 or Bill Vukovich’s period of dominance from 1952-55 or Parnelli Jones through the mid-’60s. Arnold passed away in 1976, aged 70.

Photos courtesy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

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As I write, there is some uncertainty that the Korean Grand Prix – a race no one within the sport, save Bernie Ecclestone, seems to want – will actually take place. Deadlines for track inspections and signings-off have been missed (and not by just a few weeks, either), and for reasons not immediately clear the Korean organisers appear to be cut far more slack than is normal for Formula 1’s powers-that-be.

Given that there has always been minimal enthusiasm for this race in the paddock, many will be only too glad not to have to schlep to the Far East for the third time in a month. But the five World Championship contenders – or some of them, anyway – necessarily feel differently, for if Korea evaporates, only three Grands Prix will remain on the 2010 schedule.

If you’re Mark Webber, that won’t cause you too much concern, for you lead the World Championship by 11 points, and one fewer race means one fewer opportunity for the rest to catch you; if, on the other hand, you are Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel or Jenson Button, you want as many chances as possible to do just that.

Be it three races or four, we are now into the red meat of the World Championship, and usually by this point in the season we are down to two, rarely three, protagonists. The fact that five drivers still have a shot is testimony to the extraordinary year F1 has had: three teams have produced cars good enough to win several Grands Prix: Red Bull has six, McLaren five, Ferrari four.

Whereas both Red Bull and both McLaren drivers have won races, however, only Alonso has won for Ferrari – yes, I know you can argue reasonably enough that Felipe Massa would have won in Germany, were it not for the ‘team orders’ imposed that day. But the fact is that, although Massa drove a fine race, only circumstances at the start – poleman Vettel delaying both himself and Alonso – put him in a position to win. Hockenheim apart, Felipe has not looked like a potential winner this year.

That being so, Ferrari some time ago opted to concentrate – in terms of the World Championship – on Alonso, and rival teams have criticised it for so doing. Never at Ferrari – even in the autocratic days of Michael Schumacher – is there an official number one driver, but usually someone, simply by being clearly quicker, becomes the de facto team leader, and the situation with Alonso and Massa reminds me rather of that in the mid-70s with Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni.

Going into these crucial end-of-season races, therefore, Alonso has one clear advantage over his rivals for the championship, in that he does not have to fight his own team-mate. His team’s decision is already taken, whereas Red Bull and McLaren still have both drivers in contention, and the time awaits when they have to put their emphasis on one, and require the other to play a supporting role. Red Bull has suggested that that time has not yet come, and McLaren has been even more bullish, suggesting that it would never favour one of its drivers over the other (even though this has not always been the case in the past).

Of course it may not come to that: while unlikely, it is not impossible that Webber and Vettel, Hamilton and Button will go off to Abu Dhabi still with at least a mathematical chance of lifting the 2010 World Championship.

In Singapore Massa, thanks to a gearbox problem in qualifying, started stone last, and therefore was never in a position to be of assistance to Alonso. As we know, Fernando’s superb drive brought him 25 points, but had Felipe started from a normal grid position he might well have been able to steal points from some of his team-mate’s rivals – if not Vettel, then certainly the hobbled Webber, who finished third.

Alonso has no real need to worry about Massa’s points tally, for Felipe is too far behind to become a factor in the title race, but of course he would appreciate it deeply if Felipe could keep a rival out of third or fourth place or whatever. Webber, on the other hand, has to worry about Vettel, and Hamilton has to worry about Button.

In 1973 Lotus won the constructors’ championship with seven victories in the 15 races, four to Ronnie Peterson, three to Emerson Fittipaldi. Tyrrell was runner-up with five wins – but all of them went to Jackie Stewart, who won the World Championship.

In 1986 Williams easily won the constructors’ championship with nine victories in the 16 Grands Prix, six to Nigel Mansell, three to Nelson Piquet. McLaren was runner-up with four wins – but all of them (together with a great many second places) went to Alain Prost, who won the World Championship.

Only three years ago McLaren drivers Hamilton and Alonso finished the season with 109 points apiece – but finished second and third in the World Championship behind Ferrari’s Kimi Räikkönen, who had 110.

In every case two ‘number one’ drivers won a lot of races – while another driver, in a slower car, nicked the title. If Christian Horner and Martin Whitmarsh stick to the bitter end with their policy of allowing their drivers to race each other, I will admire them for it. But then I’m not a sponsor…

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In the final part of our special Jochen Rindt tribute, we hear from two more of his rivals who were due to race against him at the fateful 1970 Italian GP, where the Austrian was killed in practice before becoming Formula 1’s only posthumous World Champion. Fifteen of the 26 drivers entered for that race survive, and we’ve spoken to all but one of them (as reader Chris Hall guessed correctly – George Eaton) in the run-up to this weekend’s race at Monza.

John Miles

GB, Lotus (team-mate)

“Jochen and I didn’t really mix, so in one way I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t move in the same circles as the F1 glitterati. He had a very glamorous wife, and I lived in a terraced house in Islington with my three children, so it was a rather different lifestyle. Socially our paths didn’t really cross. We didn’t gel I think because we came from such different backgrounds. He didn’t see me as the next Emerson Fittipaldi, or whatever.

“Having said that, we were team-mates, so I got to know him quite well. He had a tremendous urgency about the way he conducted his life and he was very quick to judge, I would say – not the most tolerant guy in the world, like a lot of racing drivers.

“The Lotus 72 (the title-winning car on which Miles led the development) was such a troublesome child for me – every time I got into it something broke and there were a lot of confidence-destroying problems with that car. Jochen once said to me at Spa, ‘I wouldn’t drive that car if I were you’. I had a wheel fall off – fortunately at La Source – then two tyres went down in the race. There were an unending sequence of things going wrong.

“Jochen kind of didn’t want to drive for Lotus in one sense because he knew the cars were liable to let him down. But once the anti-dive and anti-squat were taken off, the car got very fast, and he was compelled to drive it because it gave him a very good position to win the World Championship. He was caught between the opportunity of winning a World Championship, but of the car always falling to bits.

“To me he was always fair, but he didn’t see me as a racer. He didn’t see me as someone with the same risk-taking profile as he had. His clan were the likes of Jackie Stewart and Jack Brabham – he had a good relationship with them.

“1970 was the year that destroyed my career in a sense, so it’s not one that I remember with great fondness. It was a bit like being a rear-gunner in a Lancaster bomber. The Monza weekend itself… Well, it was catastrophic, for obvious reasons. I had a big disagreement after practice on Friday about the wing situation and I didn’t want to run the car without them. We had no idea, no data that supported the aero balance without wings. I drove one lap with the car like that and I concluded it was completely undriveable; I nearly killed myself going round the Curva Grande. Colin Chapman ordered me to take the wings off the car, so they came off, but before I could get out to practice Jochen was killed. He was such a tremendous driver that I don’t believe the aero issue was what made the car leave the track. I believe that something broke, although others think differently. I followed Jochen at the end of Friday practice and his car looked dreadful. Colin already wanted to take the wings off the car, but the initial idea wasn’t Colin’s: Jochen had suggested it to him.

“There was engineering rashness with the 72. If we hadn’t been doing stupid experiments like taking the wings off with zero aerodynamic data to base it on, and if the mechanics hadn’t pulled an all-nighter to do this stuff, then maybe Jochen would still be alive.”

Emerson Fittipaldi

BR, Rob Walker Lotus (team-mate)

“My relationship with Jochen ran quite deep, because we raced together in Formula 2. By the time of Monza I was the third driver at Lotus, behind Jochen and John Miles, and I remember him helping me in the first Formula 1 test at Silverstone. He told me about the car and he was holding out the board as I went around each time.

“Monza was my fourth race and on the morning before practice I remember clearly that Jochen and I were talking about my 1971 contract over breakfast. He wanted me to drive in the team he had started with Bernie Ecclestone (his manager) and I agreed. It was very exciting and I felt so proud that I would be driving for Jochen. That was the last time I spoke to him.

“Then came the disaster. It was awful for me. I was only 22 and he was a guy I had looked up to as an idol. He was always very good to me when I arrived in Europe from Brazil, and his death was a big shock. My wife had become very close to Nina Rindt also, so on many levels it was a really difficult time. It wasn’t just the racing. Back then we never knew when we packed our bags on a Wednesdsay or Thursday whether we would be coming home on a Sunday night.

“Jochen was always extremely focused and he used to read a lot, he was intelligent. That was his way to relax. He could sometimes seem quite cold if you didn’t know him, but if you got close to him as a friend he was a really warm guy underneath. The way he treated me was fantastic and it gave me a huge motivation. He was an extreme talent and a fantastic guy.”

Anthony Rowlinson

Anthony Rowlinson is executive editor of The Red Bulletin

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I wonder if, like me, you are partial to the music of Frank Zappa? In one of his more philosophical moments, Zappa opined that the mind is like a parachute. It only works if it is opened. In August 1970 I travelled to the Isle of Wight Festival with Zappa, assigned to this task by the local newspaper. This ‘happening’ came between the Grands Prix in Austria and Italy.

Leaving aside the fun and frolics of the Isle of Wight, it’s interesting to look back on what was a highly charged season, brutally fractured by the death of Jochen Rindt at Monza in September. Already we’d lost Piers Courage at Zandvoort and Bruce McLaren in a test session at Goodwood. It seemed it couldn’t get any worse, but it did. The 1970 season is an example, too, of why we should keep an open mind. And this applies as much today as it has done over the decades.

If you recall, the mesmeric Rindt dominated proceedings, winning five races through the summer, from Monaco to the Hockenheimring. The only glitch came at Spa when the Cosworth in his Lotus 49C let go after 10 laps. Two weeks later Rindt, now in Chapman’s innovative 72, won the first of four on the trot. The championship, we thought, was surely his and deservedly so. But motor racing, as we have seen again this year, is full of surprises. Some happy, some sad.

All in all, a momentous year. Jacky Ickx was back at Ferrari after a year away at Brabham and by mid-summer the glorious 312B was coming on song, Ickx winning in Austria, Canada and Mexico. But it was not enough. Despite the tragedy of Monza, the mercurial Rindt could not be caught and he remains the sport’s only posthumous World Champion.

Intriguingly, if Ickx had won the penultimate round at Watkins Glen in October he would have beaten Rindt to the title. But it wasn’t to be. In a dramatic race that typified the season Ickx duly started from pole but this day the Ferrari was no match for the other man on the front row, Jackie Stewart in the new Tyrrell 001. Stewart led easily while Ickx pitted just after half-distance with a broken fuel line, returning in 12th place and storming back to a superb fourth by the flag. Meanwhile, a minute in the lead, Stewart retired, the Cosworth leaking oil. Who came through to win and wreck any hopes of a world title for Ickx? A young Brazilian called Emerson Fittipaldi in a Lotus, in only his fourth Grand Prix.

You needed a very open mind to keep up with the scriptwriter in 1970, and a strong stomach. It was both thrilling and awful, the sport at its best and worst. And it wasn’t over yet. Ickx won a chaotic final race in Mexico where spectators climbed the guardrails, stood trackside, and the maddest ran across the circuit itself. Eventually a dog escaped and ran into the path of Stewart’s Tyrrell, damaging the suspension and forcing the Scot to retire. Ickx came through to win and the 1971 Mexican Grand Prix was removed from the calendar.

Triple World Champion Jack Brabham hung up his helmet, having started his final season with a win in South Africa. Clay Regazzoni scored his first Grand Prix victory in a Ferrari at Monza. March arrived in Formula 1. Tyrrell built its first Grand Prix car, Stewart putting it on pole first time out in Canada. And Goodyear introduced slick tyres to the sport. What a year.

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We all know that Mario Andretti was one of the world’s most versatile drivers, winning in Formula 1, Indycars and long-distance sports cars, as well as NASCAR stock cars, sprint cars and USAC dirt championship cars. He enjoyed a long career, racing successfully into his fifties, so what was his secret?

Ed Nathman was Newman/Haas team manager during the final years of Andretti’s career. Today, he is engineering director for Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing in NASCAR, running Juan Pablo Montoya’s cars. He says Andretti had a rare talent for reading the car and reporting his findings to the team.

“Mario was exceptional,” says Nathman (below with Jimmy Vasser in 2003). “You could put him in the car and right away he’d tell you what it was doing, and not many drivers can do that. I liked working with Mario a lot. He loved testing; Goodyear liked Mario for testing tyres because there was nobody like him.”

Donnie Hoevel worked for Newman/Haas for 22 years until 2007. He was Andretti’s chief mechanic during his final seasons racing Indycars and tells of the last tyre test Mario did for Goodyear in 1994 at Indianapolis. “They had every Goodyear engineer known to man out there and they all said they were disappointed because they all loved to do tyre tests with the old man,” he recalls. “There were times when they’d slip in a set of control tyres without telling him and he’d say, ‘Ah, you guys are trying to fool me! You can’t fool me. I know what you’re doing.’ There aren’t too many people who have that kind of feel.”

Peter Gibbons (below with Mario and Marco) was with Newman/Haas for 13 years until 2004. During this time he engineered Michael Andretti’s car and was Nigel Mansell’s engineer in 1993-94. He also engineered Emerson Fittipaldi’s Indycars in the ’80s and was Rick Mears’s race engineer at Penske Racing from 1989-91. Gibbons moved to Michael’s IRL team in ’04 where he’s now technical director. He says he’s never seen another driver with Mario’s relentless work ethic.

“It was just remarkable. He worked harder then anyone I’ve ever [seen]. Mears was so amazingly naturally talented that he didn’t have to work at it. Emerson worked at it, but Mario loved working at it. He was just phenomenal. He was a major contributor to our effort until the day he retired. Mario was the team. His contributions to our set-ups were incredible and he thought about it all the time. I never got the impression that Michael enjoyed doing it, but Mario just lived for it. He set the standard.”

Mario with Johnny O’Connell during testing at Road Atlanta in 2000

Bruce Ashmore, Lola’s Indycar designer from 1988-93, says: “Mario would be in the car at nine o’clock in the morning and, if you had to, he’d run every hour until six o’clock with the sun in his eyes. Yet he would run every lap the same so that the component you were testing was the difference that made the lap time. A lot of people in motor racing get it wrong. They want something to work because it was their idea. But that’s a mistake. Mario had the ability to cut all that out and just assess the part on its performance and how it fitted into the package.”

Adds Hoevel: “The guy treated you with the utmost respect. If you worked hard for him, he worked hard for you. He was the utmost professional and he’s a great friend today. I can call him any time. Mario’s pretty far up the pedestal. He drove as hard as he could all the way ’til the last day he got out the car.”

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Talking to Emerson Fittipaldi is never less than interesting.

Alistair Caldwell, Emerson Fittipaldi and Teddy Mayer.

We didn’t see much of him immediately after he retired, Emerson preferring to spend time in Brazil. He would appear at events like the Goodwood Festival of Speed, but otherwise the chance to have a proper chat with the man was rare.

Then along came the Grand Prix Masters and, while it lasted, he was back in the headlines. His return to the cockpit was a surprise, his doctors having urged him not to race again after he hurt himself badly in a flying accident. But back he came, and on the pace too, giving Nigel Mansell a run for his money. The really good guys never lose it.

Now, Emerson is the “seat holder” (horrible phrase) for Team Brazil in the A1GP series and he takes an active interest in his investment. Like Alan Jones, who holds the Australia seat, he has a huge amount of good advice for the youngsters who come for some big single-seater experience. These former champions add much credibility to the series.

Talking to Emerson at Mugello last week, where A1GP launched its new Ferrari-powered car, he told me about the ring he never removes from his finger. This is the gold ring with the chequered square that every Indianapolis 500 winner is given. He won the 500 twice, both times for Penske, in 1989 and ’93. I was there in ’93 when Emerson beat Mansell, jumping him at the last green flag, using all the tricks he’d learnt on the ovals. Mansell learnt a bit about re-starts that afternoon.

“Yeah, it was a good race,” says Emerson. “Indy is one of the great circuits, like Interlagos, or Spa, or Monaco, or the Osterreichring – and even here at Mugello it goes up and down, has great fast corners, nice circuit. I’d like to drive the new car here.”

Indy 500, 1993 Emerson Fittipaldi (4) gets the jump on Nigel Mansell (5) at restart.

But what about that ring?

“I never allowed myself to have superstitions and I remember Fangio always said that a driver should not let himself be too superstitious. My father was a good friend of Fangio. Through my career I didn’t have special shoes, or gloves, or that kind of thing. But I always wear this ring, and I guess that is my superstition.”

Emerson was just 25 when he won his first World Championship with McLaren in 1972. I told him I thought Lewis Hamilton would take his first title this year, and he’s a year younger. “I know, it’s amazing,” he laughs, “all these kids coming up now, and Hamilton is incredible. I have this Brazilian teenager – he’s 17 and I want to put him in the A1GP car at the first race in September. He’s been very quick in karts and I want to see how he goes with 600bhp.”

There will almost certainly be an A1GP race at Interlagos next March. Emerson is very involved in both the commerce and politics of motor racing in Brazil and he is keen to see the cars at this spectacular circuit in São Paulo. “It’s time Brazil had more drivers at the top of the sport,” he says. This presumably includes the young Fittipaldis. “They are coming,” he smiles, “you’ll see.”

For now, the flag is with Felipe Massa and, on a rainy day, Rubens Barrichello. We cannot dismiss the son of Piquet, while Bruno Senna is making an impression in GP2, so Emerson has time to nurture his young drivers. Massa must make the best of this – quite how Kimi Räikkönen has failed to crush his team-mate is beyond me. It is one of the mysteries of this F1 season, as is Kovalainen’s apparently rapid demotion to rear gunner at McLaren. But we like a mystery, and there’s a long way to go yet.

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It all began with a telephone call from his son.

“Hey Dad, one of our drivers has pulled out, how about you come and drive with us? We’re testing next week, why don’t you come along?” said Justin Bell who was due to race a Riley-Pontiac for RVO Motorsports in the Daytona 24 Hours in January. His Father did not immediately accept the invitation.

“Well, it was tempting of course,” says Derek, “ but I’d been back home to England for Christmas, I’d had quite a lot to eat and drink and, although I’ve always kept in shape, I wasn’t sure about going to Daytona at the age of sixty-six in a car I’d never driven. Anyway, Justin persuaded me to go along to a test at the start of January and I first drove the thing at night which wasn’t exactly ideal.”

The initial test wasn’t all plain sailing, even for a man who has won eight twenty-four races, three of them at the Daytona speedway.

“Yes, I was a bit jet-lagged, I’d only just got back to Florida. And it was at night, it was cold, and I couldn’t get used to the sequential gearshift to begin with. I had problems changing down the gears with the paddle system, I was driving like an old woman, and I felt a bit depressed. The last time I’d used that kind of semi-automatic shift was in the Ferrari 333SP and that was about five years ago, so I was a bit all over the place. But the guys talked me through it and after a couple of days I was pretty much on the pace. I was loving the whole thing about being back in a competitive car, and being part of the whole scene again. The car is quick, you know, it’s got nearly 600 bhp and it’s quite tail-happy which keeps you on the ball. It was quite emotional and I was a bit mixed up in my own mind about what to do. So I had a chat with my wife Mistie,” he smiles, “and she said, ‘look honey, if you want to do it, do it,’ which was great, and typical of her. Then a few days later she said, ‘hey, sweetheart, do you really need to do this? It makes me a little nervous,’ and my young son Sebastian said, ‘ yeah, and it makes me feel nervous too Dad’. I understood that, with his big brother and his Father in the race, but I’d made up my mind to do one last big twenty-four hours. If it was back in the days when people were getting killed all the time, then I would almost certainly have stayed away.”

By this stage Derek had just three weeks to prepare for the race. He went to the gym, worked out a bit, got a new helmet and some new overalls, and started to get back into the routine.

“Don’t forget,” says Derek, “ I did race in 2007, I drove the Porsche 962 at Brian Redman’s event at Daytona and I beat Emerson Fittipaldi in a Toyota celebrity race, that was good. I always try to do the Goodwood Revival, too, after all it’s where I won my first ever race in a Lotus 7 in 1964 and it’s a wonderful circuit with some great memories. Then I drove the Bentley Le Mans car at Sears Point at the end of the year, and that was pretty physical, so I knew I was in good shape. In fact the doctors said I was absolutely fine, all the vital functions up to speed, you know. I mean, if I’d been out for a year or something then I probably would have said no to Justin for Daytona.”
There were to be five drivers in the RVO Riley-Pontiac – the Bells plus team owner Roger Schramm, a young Estonian called Tonis Kasemets, and Paul Dallenbach from the famous American dynasty of racing Dallenbachs.

“It sounds like a big crew,” says Derek, “ but Roger was only going to do some laps towards the end while all the younger guys would be doing double stints and I was really looking forward to one last twenty-four race, one last hurrah. We rented a big fifty-foot camper and set up home at the circuit, the families came down for the race weekend, and I felt pretty relaxed about it all, very calm about the whole thing. It’s hard, you know, to give it all up after forty-four years in a racing car.”
So, raceday came, and went. Just like that. And Derek never even got behind the wheel.

“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be, or something,” he laughs, “but I feel cheated and today, sitting at home, I do feel very disappointed, yes. I wanted to finish with one last big race, especially at Daytona, where I’ve won three times, but I’ve been here before and it was nobody’s fault.”

There was relief, however, that Justin had survived what could have been a very nasty accident and which resulted in the car being packed away.

“We were running well,” explains Derek, “I’d told everybody to keep out of trouble, stay out of the way, and only come in if you have to, just keep it going. We were up in ninth place and Justin was flashing down the back straight at over 180 mph when he felt a vibration. Before he could get it slowed, bang, a front disc exploded and bits of it came through the floor and went whizzing past his ear, it was pretty shattering. He arrived backwards into the chicane but gathered it all up and managed to pull off the circuit and get a tow back to the pits. The damage was just too bad to continue – the wheel and the disc had torn the front suspension out of the chassis and the floor was nearly worn through to the fuel tank – so it was just as well we had to stop. Disappointing, such a shame not to have even had a go.”

So, no more Le Mans, and now no more Daytona. But lots of great memories in the bag.

“God, yes, absolutely,” Derek grins, “I mean, now we live here in Boca Raton in Florida, the place is only a couple of hours down the highway and it’s a fantastic racetrack. It is now the mega place for racing in the States, great facilities, especially since the money came in from the NASCAR races. And the fans are fantastic, they love it, and they come and talk to you, know exactly who you are and what you’ve done. For me, Le Mans will always be number one, but Daytona is very special and the twenty-four hours there is a tough race to win. It’s very different, of course, from Le Mans – in many ways. At La Sarthe you’re on an eight-mile lap with fifty-five cars whereas at Daytona you’re on a lap of less than three miles with up to seventy cars. So the traffic is much harder work, twice as stressful, and it’s much more physical. You can pass on the Mulsanne at Le Mans, at least you could before they bastardised it with those two chicanes, and there’s more of a flow to the place. Before those silly new chicanes you could relax on the Mulsanne too, move your shoulders around, flex your wrists and relax some of the cramps in the muscles. At Daytona it’s all point and squirt, with lots of second gear corners, 90 mph corners, but second gear all the same. There are slower cars everywhere, so you can get badly held up on the infield – but then you can overtake on the banking. Both places call for tremendous discipline and stamina but I think Daytona is more challenging in some ways. All these 24-hour races are extremely demanding, whether it’s Le Mans or Daytona. I remember in 1987, at Daytona, I was sharing a Porsche 962 with Al Unser and Chip Robinson and one of the side windows had been sucked out, so the ventilation system was ruined and it was getting pretty uncomfortable. Al was sick, I had the cramps and Chip was totally knackered so we brought in Al Holbert, who’d been working as crew chief, and he took over for an hour and a half. In the end A.J Foyt, who’d been chasing us, blew his engine up and we had quite an easy victory. I really thought I wouldn’t be able to do the final stint that year. The masseur put me on a bed of ice and I had such bad cramps I couldn’t get back into my overalls for those last few laps, but then the guys told me I’m on in fifteen minutes, the adrenalin kicked in and somehow you jump back in and you’re racing again. Of course it does help if you are leading the race and you’re about an hour away from victory. In the days when the cars had loads of grip, you were really knackered, especially when it was just the two of you sharing a car like the Porsche 917 at Le Mans – you can do that race with two drivers – but it’s not an option at the speedway, three is essential.”

The scene of three victories, then, in 1986,’87 and ’89, but also the scene of an extremely close encounter with concrete, an encounter of the kind that was surely responsible for a few crags on the famous craggy features of the Le Mans legend.

“God, yes, I am the luckiest bastard alive,” he laughs now, but not at the time, “that was in 1990, we were running just outside the top three in the Porsche 962. It was during the night when the left rear tyre let go on the banking between turns three and four. I tell you, tyre failure on the banking at Daytona is something you can really do without. The car went straight into the wall and took off into the night. I always used to run high on the banking, close to the wall, just in case something like that happened. Anyway, the front end went up in the air and that was it – we just flew upside down for a very long way. There were guys racing underneath me while I was flying…….. then it landed on its tail on the concrete apron by the pits. It seemed to slide for ever on its roof, my helmet was wearing through on the concrete, then it stopped. I could hear liquid trickling around somewhere, and I could smell petrol, so I released the belts and banged the fire extinguisher button quick as I could. The problem then was that the gas extinguisher sucked all the air out of the cockpit – and all the air out of me too – so I passed out. Boy, I tell you, I was lucky that time. But I have great memories of the speedway at Daytona and I just wish I could have started that one last race at the place.”

So, that’s it then, is it? Has Derek Bell finally retired? Again.

“ Well, um, yes, but…………well, look, for now it’s over, yes. But I’ve thought it was all over before. I’ve never, you know, officially retired because it’s just so hard to do. I always said that I would never do Le Mans again and there’s a thousand youngsters out there wanting to have a go, prepared to pay for a drive. I have never, and will never, race for nothing. Who knows, if I get another offer I can’t refuse……………..you forget how much you love it until you get back in the car.”

To translate that response, Derek Bell will definitely probably retire. Maybe. Remember, he first started talking about retirement at the end of 1988, the year before he took his third victory at Daytona. At the time he said he hoped he would be able to stop sensibly, not make a “bloody idiot” of himself, not become some old fogey in a blazer.

So far, so good, then.

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