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F1 back at the ‘Green Hell’?

Nigel Roebuck — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:18:57 +0000

Dear Nigel,
Is there any possibility of competitive single-seater racing ever returning to the old Nürburgring circuit? It seems so sad that the greatest circuit ever built is not hosting a big event. I know there are dangers associated with the track, but car design has made massive strides since the 1970s when Formula 1 cars last raced there. Modern circuits are fine but seem to lack any real challenge to the drivers.
Jacqueline Carter

Dear Jacqueline,

A return of ‘competitive single-seater racing’ to the original Nürburgring, the Nordschleife? Unfortunately, I’d say there’s about as much chance of Gordon Brown admitting to destroying the British economy. Zilch, in other words.

In 1970 the Grand Prix drivers collectively decided they would not participate in the German Grand Prix there, after which the event was switched – at extraordinarily short notice – to Hockenheim.

We have to remember that this was an extraordinarily dangerous time in motor racing. Feelings were running very high when the drivers met in London to discuss the matter of the Nürburgring: that morning they had been to a memorial service for Bruce McLaren, and the day after they were due to attend the funeral of Piers Courage. Three months later Jochen Rindt was killed in qualifying at Monza, becoming the sport’s first posthumous World Champion.

Safety had long been a subject barely discussed – motor racing was dangerous, always had been, always would be – but now, thanks especially to the efforts of Jackie Stewart, that was changing. For some years changes to the Nürburgring had been requested, and ignored – there was no doubt that the track was regarded as sacrosanct, that the German Grand Prix would always be run there no matter what, and when the drivers opted to boycott it, the organisers were more than shaken.

It worked, though. At once work began on the old, 14-mile track and when the drivers returned there, in 1971, they found it greatly changed – not in terms of the actual circuit layout, but in the way it had been opened up. Vast numbers of trees had been felled, Armco barriers installed in places where there had been none, and there were even minimal run-off areas in places.

The purist in a man like Chris Amon was dismayed in a way, for, as he said, knocking all the trees down took away much of the challenge, in the sense that a driver could now see much further ahead: part of the satisfaction, he said, had always come from committing to a corner when you couldn’t see all the way through it.

Even Amon agreed, though, that the changes had been necessary – and no one for a second thought that the Nordschleife had suddenly become safe. It was merely less perilous than before.

“It’s very nice to reminisce about the Nürburgring,” says Stewart, who won there three times, “on a cold winter’s night, sitting by a log fire! Of course it was an incredibly satisfying circuit to drive round – but I don’t believe there was ever a driver who didn’t feel relief when he drove out of there…”

True enough – and what finished the Nürburgring in terms of Formula 1, of course, was the accident in 1976 which so nearly killed Niki Lauda. The race was immediately red-flagged, and when it was eventually restarted Amon – of all people – declined to take part. Like many drivers, he had stopped at the scene of Lauda’s accident, and what he couldn’t accept was the length of time it had taken for rescue crews and medical personnel to reach Niki. Chris and Hans-Joachim Stuck, indeed, took it upon themselves to find a field telephone, to alert race control to what had happened.

Amon was that day driving an Ensign, which had already suffered suspension failure more than once that season, and well knew that if a car were going to break anywhere it was more likely to happen at the ‘Ring, with all its ‘yumps’, than anywhere else. Were that to happen, he said, he would hope that marshals and doctors could be swiftly on hand, but from what he had seen of the Lauda accident that was not the case. It was impossible to provide adequate cover at a 14-mile track.

I’ve driven countless laps of the Nürburgring in a variety of road cars, some very quick, and a few years ago had a never-to-be-forgotten lap in a Merc with Bernd Schneider, but I’ve never really been able to conceive of what it must have been like to go round there at F1 speeds.

A few years ago, for a BMW publicity stunt, Nick Heidfeld drove one of the team’s F1 cars – with greatly increased ride height to cope with the undulations and surface – round the Nordschleife. Although he didn’t go hard he was entranced by the experience, and very regretful, he said, not to have raced in an era when circuits like this were in use for F1. That said, Heidfeld admitted that he simply couldn’t imagine how a German Grand Prix must have been in those days…

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Jochen Rindt – by his rivals (1/5)

Guest Writer — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:41:29 +0000

Jochen Rindt – by his rivals (1/5)

This weekend’s Italian Grand Prix marks the 40th anniversary since the death of Jochen Rindt, who was killed at Monza in practice for the 1970 race. Having been that season’s dominant driver for Lotus – first in the 49B, then in the 72 – he came to Monza with 45 points and a 20-point lead over nearest rival Jack Brabham. It would be enough to confirm him as champion two races later when Ferrari’s Jacky Ickx, by then the only man who could overhaul Rindt, finished fourth at Watkins Glen. The three points he scored meant Rindt would remain out of reach and become Formula 1’s first posthumous World Champion.

He was also Austria’s first World Champion, and in his home country he remains feted to this day.

A hugely charismatic figure, Rindt was not, however, universally popular and some of his rivals, in particular, considered him aloof, even arrogant.

Fifteen of the 26 drivers entered for the 1970 Italian GP are still alive and to commemorate a majestic driver, cut down in his prime, we’ve spoken to all but one of them. Here are some of their recollections, with more to follow in the run-up to this weekend’s race at Monza.

Jackie Stewart

GB, Tyrrell

“By the time the race came around a lot of the immediate emotion had somewhat reduced. The day before had been very traumatic. Helen went to the hospital with Nina and that’s never a nice thing for a wife to do, to look after another wife.

“I think I finished second. I can’t remember where I was on the grid [he was fourth]. I went out and did quite a good qualifying after Jochen died. It’s in Winning is not Enough. Tried the March, went back to the Tyrrell, and then the March. As a racing driver, when the visor goes down and the lights go out, you have to get on with it. Driving a car, you are so totally consumed by what you are doing, you’re never allowed to be distracted. In that respect it was maybe it was one of the advantages I had: being able to block things out. I always tried to remove emotion and I was able to do that. I had won the championship the year before. From about halfway through ’68 I suddenly matured mentally and was able to manage everything better in my own head.

“That was a bad year, 1970. Bruce McLaren and Piers Courage were killed, and of course Jochen. It was quite difficult to deal with these things, because it’s not just at the track, and seeing the things I saw. It’s brought back to you the next week because of the funeral, and two months later there’s a memorial service. Monza was one of those circuits where we didn’t have a problem with safety. We’d refused to go to the Nürburgring and that was a big deal. Jochen was part of that with me.

“There’s always emotion involved at the start of the race. I was lucky enough to be able to remove most of it. I can’t remember much about it. To finish second in the March was a good result.”

And the Coke bottle-smashing incident after qualifying?

“I make no excuses for that. I’d been to Jochen. I’d been to him and come back to Nina, who had disappeared with Helen. Then Ken…

“Going back out was the right thing to do. The barrier had been fixed, but I suppose because of what I had seen when I went out I was in tears. But when I had the visor down that was when I did my qualifying time, which was the best lap I had ever done at Monza. I didn’t have a death wish. But as I came back in, my best friend John Lindsay handed me a Coca Cola. I took a drink and I will never forget I had it in my hand and I was so angry, I took the bottle and smashed it against the concrete wall that separated the pits from the track. That was my emotion. But not in the race. That’s what I remember.”

Jackie Oliver

GB, BRM

“I remember that most of us were staying the Hotel de Ville on the edge of the park. I had breakfast with Jochen’s wife and we went to the circuit together. We certainly all knew each other.

“Jochen had certain people he wanted to associate with and others he didn’t. He tended to be very self-centred, which isn’t unusual in a successful racing driver. I wouldn’t count him as a friend. He associated with people, I believe, who were as good as him and then he’d make a judgement on the others and didn’t give them space in his life.

“We raced together in Formula 2 the year before and then again in F1. Colin Chapman, Jochen’s boss at Lotus, saw Jochen as a replacement for Jim Clark, and he was probably right about that.

“It was a very dangerous period for motor racing. Lots of us were getting nailed. The cars were not as safe as they are now. They tended to catch light in a crash. No fuel bags. In that situation, it was a bit like being in the military, I imagine. There was no point in dwelling on it. If you were dwelling on it for too long, you weren’t doing a good job. You were better off doing something else.

“I didn’t dwell on it. I knew there were people dealing with the situation so I shut myself down. A few drivers were able to engage with the death of another driver, perhaps because they needed to immerse themselves. Certainly Jackie Stewart felt he had to be involved because he was pushing to get improved safety standards. But I just went my own way and thought ‘there’s another one of us gone and it will never happen to me.’

“No remorse. No sadness. No tears. As far as I was concerned Jochen was just gone. Looking back it was probably an inappropriate way to behave, but I suppose a number of others were exactly the same.”

Jacky Ickx

BE, Ferrari

“Not winning at Watkins Glen was such a release. How could you beat someone not able to defend his own chances? The fact that Jochen won the World Championship was the most perfect solution. As for me not having won, it doesn’t create any kind of sorrow at all. Now, when I think back, I feel so sad for all those around me – probably more talented than I was, and certainly more dedicated, who didn’t have that extra piece of luck that made you a survivor. That was the great thing about that era – survival.”

Anthony Rowlinson

Anthony Rowlinson is executive editor of The Red Bulletin

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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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