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Racing’s confusing ladder system

Gordon Kirby — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:19:56 +0000

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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Villeneuve’s super-team

Nigel Roebuck — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:49:46 +0000

Villeneuve’s super-team

Dear Nigel,

Do you know the details of the ‘super-team’ that Gilles Villeneuve was putting together before his unfortunate death in 1982? My understanding is that his good friend and former Ferrari team-mate Jody Scheckter was involved in advising him, and a huge ‘blank cheque’ budget was in place. As anyone who ever witnessed his driving knew, he was clearly in need of better car.

Allan Fields

Dear Allan,

Gilles did indeed harbour thoughts of putting together a ‘super-team’, and put a fair amount of time and effort into trying to realize that aim. In the last few weeks of his life, though, I rather got the impression that he had tired of the idea, that in the end he wanted to concentrate on simply being a driver.

It was a couple of days after Imola in 1982 (where Didier Pironi ‘stole’ the victory from him on the last lap) that I had my last long conversation with him, on the phone. I’ve written of it many times, of his resolution never to speak to Pironi again, etc, and at one point I asked him if he would stay with Ferrari for 1983. “Not,” he said immediately, “if Pironi’s still there – no way”, and he added that he thought Didier probably would remain with Ferrari, not least because he was Marco Piccinini’s ‘favourite’.

Although Villeneuve loved Ferrari – the man as well as the team – I think he would indeed have left at the end of ’82 (unless the Old Man had intervened, and got rid of Pironi), and gone on to drive either for McLaren or Williams, both of whom were extremely keen to sign him.

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Highlights of the 2011 Motor Sport Hall of Fame

Web Editor — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:29:06 +0000

Highlights of the 2011 Motor Sport Hall of Fame

The 2011 Motor Sport Hall of Fame was considered another huge success. Sir Jack Brabham, Sir Frank Williams, Jody Scheckter and Dario Franchitti were all inducted on the night and some 450 people came to watch, chat and of course, have a few glasses of champagne.

In case you couldn’t make it, here’s a small highlights reel to show you how it all happened.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Hall of Fame honours racing icons

Web Editor — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:25:50 +0000

Hall of Fame honours racing icons

Motor Sport Magazine paid tribute to four inspirational racing icons last night at the Roundhouse, London, by inducting them into the prestigious annual Motor Sport Hall of Fame, held in association with TAG Heuer.

Sir Jack Brabham OBE, Sir Frank Williams CBE, Jody Scheckter and Dario Franchitti were all honoured with awards on stage in front of a star-studded audience. Collecting the award on behalf of Sir Jack was his son David Brabham, with the legendary Sir Stirling Moss OBE making the presentation.

Having won three Formula 1 titles in 1959-60 and 1966, Jack Brabham is the oldest surviving World Champion. In 1966 became the only man to ever win the F1 drivers’ title in one of his own cars, having founded the highly successful Brabham racing team.

Frank Williams received his award from legendary F1 commentator Murray Walker, who spoke fondly about the endless passion and commitment to Grand Prix racing that the Wiliams team founder has shown since the late ’60s.

The third inductee of the evening was Ferrari’s 1979 World Champion Jody Scheckter. TAG Heuer CEO Jean-Christophe Babin and five-time Grand Prix winner John Watson bestowed the honour on the South African racer. Scheckter had a sensational career, driving for McLaren, Tyrrell, Wolf and Ferrari. He was the last driver to win a world title for Ferrari until Michael Schumacher did so 21 years later.

Completing the line-up of 2011 Motor Sport Hall of Fame inductees was three-time IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti. Highly respected for his achievements in America, the Scot is also a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and undoubtedly Britain’s most successful motor racing export to the US.

The great and good of F1 gathered for the awards, with personalities including Christian Horner, Eddie Jordan, John Watson and Karun Chandhok in attendance on the night. Celebrity faces were also seen gracing the red carpet outside the iconic Roundhouse and mixing with the motor sport fraternity. James Martin, Chris Rea, Nick Mason and Johnnie Walker all joined the exclusive event.

Commenting on his accolade, Sir Frank Williams said: “Number one I must remind myself not to let my ego get the better of me, because this is an amazing magic. It is an honour, something I will try not to brag about.”

In 2010 Mario Andretti, Tony Brooks, Jacky Ickx and Ron Dennis were inducted at the inaugural Motor Sport Hall of Fame event, along with founding members Enzo Ferrari, Tazio Nuvolari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Sir Jackie Stewart, Sir Stirling Moss, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.

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Picking an ’82 winner

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:27:05 +0000

Picking an ’82 winner

Dear Nigel,

We’ve just had a season when a Ferrari driver could/should have won the F1 title but didn’t. Very rare for it to slip through the fingers of Ferrari of all teams when in the driving seat! The most recent occasion this happened prior to 2010 was perhaps 1982, for very different and tragic reasons of course. I know you were a fan and also a close pal of Gilles but, if you are able to look at it without bias, who in your mind would have got the upper hand had we been treated to a season-long Villeneuve-Pironi battle? Sure, Gilles appeared the more spectacular/quicker of the two, but Pironi perhaps the more shrewd and he was, after all, at the time of his accident beginning to stamp his authority on the season. And, no, nor can I believe that 28 years have since passed!

Joe Gillis

Dear Joe,

Yes, Gilles was a friend, and I think I’ll always believe him to be the fastest racing driver there has ever been, but your question is a good one, and I’ll do my best to be unbiased in answering it!

We know what happened in 1982: Pironi ‘stole’ the victory from Villeneuve at Imola, and two weeks later, at Zolder, Gilles was killed at the end of qualifying. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind – after talking at length to Villeneuve on the phone a couple of days after Imola, and again on the Friday at Zolder – that Pironi’s duplicity was responsible for the all-or-nothing frame of mind in which he went to his last race.

Three months later, of course, Didier – leading the World Championship – had the accident in practice at Hockenheim which was to end his motor racing career. And five years after that, having taken up powerboat racing, he was killed in an accident in the Needles Trophy.

At the end of 1982 Enzo Ferrari had a trophy made for him, inscribed – in Italian, of course – ‘Didier Pironi, the true World Champion of 1982’. And, had he not been so grievously injured at Hockenheim, I’m sure he would have taken the title that year. Would he have done so, however, if Villeneuve had still been around?

It’s certainly not impossible. No, he wasn’t as quick as Gilles – no one was – but in 1979 that had also been true of Jody Scheckter, and although Gilles had been the Ferrari driver who supplied the blinding speed and the drama, Jody had been the one to concentrate on points, and thus came out of the season as World Champion.

It could have gone that way for Pironi, too. Let’s bear in mind that Didier had gone beyond being merely a good Grand Prix driver, and was becoming a great one. As Mauro Forghieri put it to me, “Because Gilles was on another level, it wasn’t until he had gone that we began to realise just how good Pironi was…”

So… I think it could have gone either way, as in 1979. In my heart, though, I’ll always believe that Villeneuve would have done it, and you wouldn’t really expect me to say anything else, would you?

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Celebrating F1 innovation

Damien Smith — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:33:49 +0000

Celebrating F1 innovation

When it comes to trying something new, uncovering the latest trick, getting an edge on the opposition, there are few examples in Formula 1 as visually striking and obviously unusual as the year Tyrrell decided to add two more wheels to its Grand Prix cars. As the February edition of Motor Sport celebrates, innovation is at the heart of F1 – it always has been, it always will be. And Tyrrell was brave enough to stick its neck out and run the risk of ridicule. That the P34 six-wheeler became a GP winner vindicated Derek Gardner’s decision to aggressively chase the ‘unfair advantage’.

The car that appears on our front cover this month is a museum piece from the Donington Collection. It’s Patrick Depailler’s car just as he left it at the end of 1977, and our man Andrew Frankel was lucky enough to get the chance to drive it. Meanwhile, editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck revisits a period interview with Gardner and looks back at the shockwaves the P34 created when it was unveiled in ’76. As is often the case in Motor Sport, it’s a story of what might have been because, even though Jody Scheckter won the Swedish GP in its first season, the car never fulfilled the potential Gardner saw in it. Both March and Williams experimented with two extra wheels at the back, but six-wheeled F1 cars proved to be a cul de sac rather than the road to the future. Such is the way with innovation. Even when it works it doesn’t always stick. And when it does it’s usually banned.

That is certainly true in today’s F1, as former Renault technical director Pat Symonds discusses in his first feature for Motor Sport. We’re delighted to welcome him to our pages because, as you might have noticed in our recent audio podcast with the man, he is brilliant at explaining the complexities of our sport. A restrictive rule book stymies the modern designer, but forward thinking still allows them to gain an edge – as McLaren’s F-duct proved last season. And like all great innovations, it is now outlawed. Nothing really changes.

The theme of innovation in the February issue focused our minds on the big breakthroughs in history. I asked former editor Paul Fearnley to look back at some of the ‘epoch’ moments from the past, which was a gigantic task. His vast research distilled to a clear conclusion: the 1970s and early ’80s – the ‘analogue’ era – was an intense time for experimentation and high-reaching concepts. It was a time that directly shaped today’s ‘digital’ age, which is why Paul talked to five men – Tony Southgate, Robin Herd, John Barnard, Gordon Murray and Peter Wright – who all pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved.

Our snapshot of 40 years of F1 innovation is completed by Nick Wirth, who argues the case for designing an F1 car purely by computer. Like Gardner back in the mid-70s, he is putting his reputation on the line by bucking the trend with what he is trying to achieve at Marussia Virgin Racing. Grand thinking and ambitious pioneers – whether they fail or succeed – still give F1 its edge in the modern age.

It’s fitting that in an issue that is themed around innovative thinking one of the great racing car designers should join our team. Williams co-founder Patrick Head has signed up as our new columnist for the next 12 months, and is sure to bring us great tales from the past, as well as personal insight into life in F1 today. We’re delighted to welcome him on board.

The February issue also marks the 10th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt’s passing, US editor Gordon Kirby putting into true perspective the giant legacy of NASCAR’s Man in Black. Meanwhile, Simon Taylor travels to Spain to meet John Webb for lunch. For 30 years the man who ran Brands Hatch was perhaps the most influential, forward-thinking figure in British motor sport. In his own way, Webb was as innovative as the great designers who shaped the races he promoted.

A happy new year to you. Enjoy the issue.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

The importance of qualifying

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:31:49 +0000

The importance of qualifying

As Fernando Alonso chased Nico Hulkenberg in the early stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix, it was apparent that on the long climb at the end of the lap the Ferrari was making little impression on the Williams, and you had to be impressed by what Cosworth has achieved this season. Rubens Barrichello suggests that ‘driveability’ isn’t all it might be, but on horsepower – so long as the engine is reasonably fresh, anyway – it apparently lacks for little. Pretty impressive, you’d have to say, for what is supposedly a ‘customer’ engine, supplied to four teams: whatever else Lotus, Virgin and HRT have been short of in their debut season, it hasn’t been grunt.

Alonso found himself in the unusual position of chasing Hulkenberg because the young German – although swiftly dispensed with by the Red Bulls – had succeeded in putting his Williams on pole, and it was pleasing that this should have occurred at Interlagos, where the team’s last victory – by Juan Pablo Montoya – was scored six long years ago.

The manner in which Hulkenberg achieved his pole position reminded me rather of qualifying for the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in 1975, when Jody Scheckter – in freezing conditions – threw his Tyrrell around with such vigour that he alone got decent temperature into his tyres, and achieved a time no one else could approach. In the case of Hulkenberg, a wet Interlagos was drying out by the end of qualifying, and he – one of the first out on slicks – drove as quick an out-lap as he dared, got his tyres up to temperature, and went for it, setting a time more than a second faster even than the Red Bulls.

As we saw so often in the season past, Adrian Newey’s wonder cars duly waltzed it in the race, but Alonso wasn’t very far behind Webber at the flag, and might have been able to exert a little more pressure had he not lost a significant amount of time behind Hulkenberg in the early laps. The importance of qualifying is perhaps even greater today than at any point in the past.
Most would agree, I think, that on many occasions in this era of Formula 1 the highlight of the weekend – in terms of excitement – is Q3, that final 10-minute period when only the 10 fastest cars are out, and the track is relatively uncluttered. Since refuelling was dropped, thank God, so the need to ‘qualify with fuel for the first stint of the race’ has gone with it, and thus the cars are in pure, ultra-light ‘qualifying spec’.

Think of Singapore. Alonso stole that race from the faster Red Bull of Vettel because he drove a perfect qualifying lap, and Sebastian, heading for pole on his final run, lightly clipped a guardrail. That meant starting second, and although he pressured Fernando for the entire race, second was where he finished, too. Saturday, in other words, decided Sunday, and often it has been that way because overtaking, as we know, is extremely difficult with F1 cars of the contemporary era.

The top six drivers in the 2010 World Championship represented three teams. At Red Bull, Vettel out-qualified Webber 12-7, at McLaren Hamilton beat Button 14-5, and at Ferrari Alonso was ahead of Massa 15-4. Ten times Vettel started from pole, followed by Webber (five), Alonso (two) and Hamilton and Hulkenberg (one apiece).

No wonder the young man looked so gratified in Brazil. It’s a tragedy that financial considerations – Hulkenberg isn’t loaded down with personal sponsorship – have obliged Williams to part with him, but Nico will surely get a drive elsewhere for 2011. Most drivers, after all, go through an entire F1 career without once starting from the front.

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Remembering Gilles at play

Gordon Kirby — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:36:57 +0000

Remembering Gilles at play

Saturday is the anniversary of the death of Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder in 1982. I still recall Gilles’s four years in Formula Atlantic, and his 1976 season in particular when he won all but one race and began his leap to Formula 1 legend status with Ferrari. Back in 1976 and ‘77 former March F1 and F2 team manager Ray Wardell ran Villeneuve’s Atlantic cars out of Kris Harrison’s Ecurie Canada shop in Toronto, and Wardell has some funny stories to tell about Gilles.

“I remember the first time we went to a track together,” he says. “We went to Savannah in Georgia to test the new March Atlantic car. Bobby Rahal was going to drive the car first and then Gilles was going to try it.

“Gilles was driving us in a rental car and we arrived at the track and the gate was closed. So I got out and opened it, and Gilles pulled the car through and stopped. As I was getting back in the car he decided he was going to do a tyre burnout. He just lit the rear tyres up on the rental car and kept going until one burst! There was so much smoke I couldn’t breathe and I thought, ‘What the hell have I got involved in here?’

“Then about three or four hours later we were sitting in the pitroad waiting for our turn with the new car. Gilles and I were sitting in the hire car chatting. He’d changed the flat rear tyre and Rahal cruised by on track in his hire car. Well, the conversation immediately stopped. Gilles turned on the ignition and we were off down the pitroad. He was going to catch Rahal.

“We were hauling ass down the straight and there was almost a 90-degree corner at the end. I was thinking, ‘He’s gonna brake. No, he’s not gonna brake!’ And he threw the rental car sideways. I was hanging onto the hand-strap on the roof and my feet were almost in Villeneuve’s lap as we went around this right-hander on two wheels. I thought, ‘my God!’ I’d never seen car control like this. He kept going round the track like that until some more tyre tread flew off and he had to stop. That was Gilles. Any opportunity he had he was going to drive fast.”

Wardell recalls how close the Villeneuve family was and how champion-to-be Jacques behaved as a child. “I had quite a nice relationship with the family. Gilles and Joann were inseparable and little Jacques hardly spoke any English. He would come creeping round the car and if he saw me standing there he’d come running by and kick me in the shins. Then he’d run away laughing his head off!”

Wardell also recalls that, fierce racer though Gilles was, he was also an eminently fair sportsman. “Obviously he had a good working relationship with Jody [Scheckter], who I enjoyed working with as well. I think Gilles was lucky to go to Ferrari with the other driver being someone like Scheckter. On a couple of occasions Gilles actually tried to help Jody win races or points to win the championship.

“And of course who can forget that 1979 French Grand Prix when Gilles and René Arnoux had their fantastic wheel-to-wheel race, both of them racing as hard as humanly possible but both leaving each other room? They weren’t trying to be dangerous in any way. They were just being full-blown racing drivers. It was wonderful to watch.”

It was indeed.

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Psychological battles

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:44:40 +0000

Psychological battles

Dear Nigel,
Having just watched both the qualifying at Melbourne and highlights of the 1969 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, courtesy of YouTube, I was struck by the enormous gulf between F1 then and now. I was born in 1974 and my earliest memories of motor racing come from the early ’80s, but I’m a huge fan of ’60s and ’70s racing.

The biggest difference, it seems to me, is that the psychological challenge was greater in earlier years than it is now, when climbing into a racing car and going to the limit was extremely perilous. The kind of ‘mind management’ needed to overcome natural fears of death or injury mark out yesterday’s drivers as a breed apart.

I’m always staggered at the reaction to François Cevert’s death in 1973. The accident couldn’t have been more horrific, yet both drivers and team managers seemed able to put it behind them and get on with the job of racing. In Peter Revson’s biography, Peter Manso mentions Revson going to an exhibition of motor sport art which looked out on the spot where Cevert was killed that same day without batting an eyelid. Bernie Ecclestone has recalled mentioning the accident to Carlos Reutemann, and then the two of them moving on to discuss tyre choices for Sunday! Meanwhile Jody Scheckter, who did at least admit that what he saw changed his outlook on motor racing forever, was already in discussion with Ken Tyrrell with regards to joining the team in ’74. The only driver, it seems, who reacted ‘normally’ was James Hunt, who was described as looking pale and visibly shaken, yet remarkably he went on to finish second the next day!

Did it ever strike you that this sport is not only very exciting but also callous and indifferent to the lives of its main protagonists, and did you ever entertain doubts about whether it was all worth it?
Ryan

Dear Ryan,
No getting away from it, Grand Prix racing has changed out of recognition in the last 40 years, and no change has been more dramatic than that in safety. At Jacky Ickx recently said to me, “Nowadays you can do it, and you’re almost at risk zero – and that’s wonderful…”

It wasn’t like that in his era, though, and to some degree there was a sort of ‘Spitfire pilot’ attitude to the risks involved. During 1971, my first year of working as an F1 journalist, three Grand Prix drivers – Ignazio Giunti, Pedro Rodríguez, Jo Siffert – all lost their lives in racing accidents (although only Siffert was killed in an F1 race). That wasn’t untypical of the time. The year before, Piers Courage, Bruce McLaren and Jochen Rindt had all died. No surprise that Ickx – as you can read in the next issue of the magazine – is so grateful that he is still around.

I think you’re wrong, though, to suggest that the attitude within the sport to these tragedies was callous. Certainly, the death of a driver was more commonplace in those days, and therefore the sport’s participants were more accustomed to dealing with it, but that didn’t mean that the losses were not keenly felt. Of Jimmy Clark’s death, for example, Chris Amon said this: “We all felt we’d lost our leader. If it could happen to Jimmy, what chance did the rest of us have?”

It’s a fact that I have on occasion encountered callousness in motor racing – less than an hour after Gilles Villeneuve’s accident in 1982, another driver asked me, “Who d’you think will get the Ferrari drive?” – but it’s been very much the exception to the rule. The fact is, times were different, death was more prevalent by far – and the belief, I think, was that it had always been part of the sport. Very regrettable, but occasionally inevitable. And bear in mind, too, that this was all long before ‘public grieving’ became so fashionable. Motor racing people may have borne their grievances discreetly, but certainly they felt them.

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Crystal-clear memories

Nigel Roebuck — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:42:24 +0000

Crystal-clear memories

Dear Nigel,
To my mind you’re the best racing journalist I’ve ever read, and Motor Sport has to be the most factual racing mag.

My question is this: were you a regular spectator at Crystal Palace and did you view from North Tower?

Each time I’ve passed you in a paddock or some place I’ve always forgotten to ask you in person. A daft question, but I’d love to know.
Berni

Dear Berni,
First of all, thank you so much for your compliments, and I’m pleased to hear you’re a fan of Motor Sport.

I can’t say I was a regular spectator at Crystal Palace because I’m a Mancunian, and didn’t move to London until 1967, soon after I left school – and that was only five years before the track closed. Prior to that, whenever I did come south for a race, invariably it was to Brands Hatch for Formula 1 or major sports car races.

That said, once I had started living in town I made a point of going to Crystal Palace, notably for the Formula 2 races run – as far as I remember – on Whit Monday, and invariably, yes, I did watch from North Tower. Don’t you feel sorry for anyone who never saw Jochen Rindt through there?

Crystal Palace had an atmosphere all its own. Although it was very short, I always thought it a real drivers’ circuit – and an extremely unforgiving one at that. There was no run-off area anywhere, and a mistake meant contact with those forbidding sleepers. I remember, too, that even in the early ’70s, when trees at race tracks were being felled by the hundred, a great many of those at Crystal Palace remained. Very dangerous, of course, but undeniably they allowed the place to retain its ‘parkland’ feel.

I was there in ’72, when Jody Scheckter’s McLaren won the last big race, and have only the best memories of the place. When I saw your question I had a look at YouTube, and came across the most wonderful footage of Jimmy Clark, hurling his Lotus Cortina round Crystal Palace in 1964 – made me quite dewy-eyed, and reminded me of those youthful days when I loved saloon car racing. If you haven’t seen it, go ito youtube.com and put ‘BRSCC Crystal Palace 1964’ in the search window. You’ll thank me, I promise you…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Cevert was secure at Tyrrell

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:10:14 +0000

Cevert was secure at Tyrrell

Dear Nigel,
In 1973, we lost François Cevert in a horrific qualifying accident at the US GP at Watkins Glen. My question is: did François know at the time of his accident that Tyrrell was retaining him for 1974? Jody Scheckter was confirmed for Tyrrell that weekend. He and Cevert had been involved in an accident in the previous round in Canada and François had hurt his ankle. He was quite angry with Jody.

Anyone watching Cevert over the US GP weekend thought he was driving a bit over the limit. Do you think that caused him to loose it in the uphill section? Did Arturo Mezario, blending into the course from the pits, affect his line?

And finally, did he have a solid offer to go to Ferrari in ’74? As we know, François had an amazing season, with six second places, three of them 1-2 with Jackie Stewart. It’s very sad that we lost him before he reached his peak.
Allan Fields

Dear Allan,
Yes, François knew absolutely that he would be a Tyrrell driver in 1974, although he never knew that Jody Scheckter was to be at Tyrrell because he never knew that Jackie Stewart was going to retire at the end of ’73. In April of that year JYS informed Ken Tyrrell and Ford’s Walter Hayes of his decision, but told no one else – not even his wife Helen.

There has never been any doubt that Cevert’s accident was the result of driver error – he was going for it, and he overdid it, and in those days, sadly, there was a strong possibility that a high-speed accident would result in a driver’s death. The Tyrrell hit the near-at-hand guardrail at 150mph, and François had little chance of survival. I have no recollection of any inadvertent involvement of Arturo Merzario.

As for your last question, there’s no doubt that Ferrari talked with Cevert about a move there, but François was extraordinarily loyal to Ken Tyrrell, who had given him his break into F1, and had no interest in leaving the team.

Personally I’ve no doubts at all that Cevert was good enough to become World Champion. He was a lovely bloke, and – like Pedro Rodríguez – he just got better and better. As well as that, he was utterly devoid of jealousy and never resented the successes of Stewart, whom he worshipped, and from whom he learned a lot. Yes, he won only one Grand Prix, at Watkins Glen in 1971, but think of the number of times he finished on Stewart’s tail, as the pair reeled off 1-2 results for Tyrrell.

A little story Ken told me: “The car Jackie won his last championship with, in ’73, was 005, and it was a very quick car – he and François finished 1-2 on several occasions, including at the Nürburgring. The old Nürburgring. Now you’ve heard how Jackie helped Francois – he couldn’t have done more, told him everything, OK? Well, in that race at the Nürburgring, they went round together, from start to finish, first and second – and afterwards Jackie said to me, ‘François could have passed me any time he liked…’”

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Jody Scheckter’s mozzarella mission

Web Editor — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:11:50 +0000

Jody Scheckter’s mozzarella mission

Jody Scheckter, the 1979 World Champion, recently launched his own mozzarella from his organic farm Laverstoke Park.

It’s not very ‘Motor Sport‘ to upload a video of cheese making, but I suppose it’s not every day that an ex-Formula 1 champion takes to the world of organic farming. Nor I doubt is it very often that said champion launches his cheese in London while sat in a Ferrari with a live buffalo in one hand and a plate of its mozzarella in the other…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine