Transatlantic Trophy support races shared the stage with Mallory Park's sidecars

Let us start with an audacious understatement: there are not many drivers whose Formula 1 preparation involved making coffins. Perhaps there is only one, for that is where Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s story begins, in green and pleasant Mönchengladbach, in the west of Germany, where the aroma of timber and varnish was far more familiar than the scent of hot racing oil. It is the sort of detail that somehow suits him. Throughout his life he has seemed a little apart from F1’s mainstream currents: polite where others were pushy, private where others sought fame and fortune, and introspective where others shared their opinions with bluster and bombast. Even now, more than two decades after he last raced in F1, he remains one of the sport’s most enigmatic figures: a man who reached its summit, challenged for its greatest prizes, then quietly walked away.

“Sure,” he begins, already chuckling, albeit quietly, when I ask him about those early years. “My Spanish mother [Angela] was my German father’s [Heinrich-Harald] second wife. He’d had daughters before, so he was hoping for a boy next time, because in his family the tradition had always been that all the boys became craftsmen – my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, all the way back. We only ever made coffins to make good use of all the surplus wood we had, because the main work that my family always did down the years was to make wooden patterns [ie: template models] for heavy industrial machinery – steam engines, internal combustion engines and so on.

“Later, my dad began to concentrate more on coffin making, because it was easier and less time-consuming than making wooden patterns for heavy industrial machinery, and from when I was eight years old I began to help him with it. Then, when I was 11, I realised that I was quite mechanically minded, and I loved cars, so I took the engine off my dad’s lawnmower, and I tried to fit it to a pedal car, but I couldn’t make it work. Then, one day, my dad was looking for his lawnmower, he eventually found it, and he said, ‘Where’s its engine, Heinz-Harald?’ So I had to admit what I’d done. I showed him my half-finished project, he laughed, he helped me finish it, and that was my first go-kart.”

Young Michael Schumacher standing in front of a Mercedes sedan as a child — A young Heinz-Harald Frentzen; by 11 years old he was experimenting with mower engines

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Unlike many future F1 stars, young Heinz-Harald was not a child who spent every waking moment dreaming of F1 glory. “Not at all, no,” he says when I ask him whether he watched many grands prix as a kid growing up in the 1970s, “but I enjoyed my little home-made kart, so when I was 12 my dad bought me another kart, but it had a 50cc engine that produced only 4bhp, which wasn’t much good, so almost straight away he bought me a better kart, but that one was three years old and was powered by a McCulloch chainsaw engine, which wasn’t much good either. So, finally, he bought me a proper kart, which was my third kart within the first four months of 1980. I started doing club races in it, and I went pretty well. In fact I started winning straight away. Then, when I was 13, we went to a kart track in Kerpen [in the west of Germany]. I raced an 11-year-old boy called Michael Schumacher there, I won the winter trophy, and after that, in 1981, when I was 14, I did my first karting championship, the German Junior Karting Championship, and I won that, too.”

The mention of Schumacher is inevitable, for Michael’s and Heinz-Harald’s racing careers would intertwine for years, beginning on those German kart tracks and continuing through sports cars and, in the end, in F1. Yet Frentzen recalls those days not as the opening chapter of some meticulously planned ascent but simply as a happy period of youthful competition. “No, I didn’t think that way,” he says when I suggest that he must already have realised how gifted he was. “I knew I loved karting, and that I liked winning, but I was just enjoying what I was doing, not thinking about the future at all. However, my dad began to realise that I might have real potential, so he began to take my karting seriously. We started karting almost every weekend – but, actually, although I enjoyed it, and I was doing well, I missed doing normal family things, and I missed hanging out with my mates.”

Michael Schumacher racing in a Formula 3 pack at Nürburgring. — Frentzen in second place at the Nürburgring in German F3 1989

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There speaks the real – and unvarnished – Heinz-Harald. Interrogate his childhood and you will find none of the ruthless, single-minded mythology that often characterises descriptions of elite sports stars’ formative years. Even so, by the late 1980s he was climbing steadily through Germany’s fiercely competitive junior racing ladder: Formula Ford, Formula Opel Lotus and Formula 3.

F1 and Le Mans stalwart Jochen Mass’s name was attached to the Formula Opel Lotus team for which Heinz-Harald raced and won in 1988, and later Mass would mentor Frentzen, Michael Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger in the formidable Sauber–Mercedes sports car programme. At that time, if you pressed him, Mass would tell journalists that Frentzen was the most naturally gifted of that soon-to-become-famous Sauber-Mercedes trio.

“Michael Schumacher was the hardest worker. I was the one for whom things came easiest”

“To be honest, we were all talented,” Frentzen says now, refusing either to accept or reject the compliment when I remind him of it. “Michael was the hardest worker, I guess I was the one for whom things came easiest and Karl was a mixture of the two of us. We all started to do well, maybe better even than the regular Sauber-Mercedes drivers, and I think that surprised Peter Sauber. It was a very good time for me because I realised that I really enjoyed driving long, long stints in sports cars, and learning how to be fast while saving fuel, which is a skill that I took with me to F1. It was also the first time I ever earned any money out of racing. I was paid a salary of CHF50,000 [about £20,000 at the time] plus the use of a Mercedes road car. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. It felt like heaven, and it helped me clear the debt I’d accrued to pay for my F3 season, which was DM180,000 [about £55,000 at the time].”

Michael Schumacher chats with Mika Häkkinen and Heinz-Harald Frentzen early in their careers. — From left: F3 days – Michael Schumacher, Frentzen and Mika Salo, Macau GP, 1990

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Next he did Formula 3000, first in Europe then in Japan, without a huge amount of success I feel honour-bound to remind him. “So how did you make your way into F1 with Sauber in 1994?” I ask.

“It’s complicated!” he replies, smiling broadly. “I was in not-great cars and I had a not-great time in F3000 in Europe in 1990 and 1991 – I was driving a Reynard when the car to have was a Lola, and I was driving a Lola when the car to have was a Reynard – then, after that, I did Japanese Formula 3000, and at some point during my first year in Japan, 1992, I thought I was going to have to give up racing altogether because it didn’t look like I was going to have a drive at all for 1993. In fact I went home and I started making coffins with my dad again. Then I got a phone call from [driver, team owner, and sometime drug dealer] Charles Zwolsman Sr, whom I’d got to know in my Formula Ford days and in whose Euro Racing Lola-Judd I then raced, alongside him actually, at Le Mans that year [1992].

Michael Schumacher discussing strategy with Mercedes motorsport boss. — Loyal Frentzen with F1 team chief Peter Sauber, 1994 Spanish Grand Prix

“I could talk about Le Mans all day – sadly we haven’t got time – so I’ll just say that I’d like to have raced there more often, because I did Le Mans only one more time, for Aston Martin, many years later, in 2008, but in that Lola-Judd in 1992 I drove the fastest lap overall in the warm-up and the fastest lap overall at night in the rain, too.

Michael Schumacher driving the Sauber-Mercedes Group C prototype. — Le Mans 24 Hours 1992 debut – 13th overall

“Anyway, Le Mans 1992 reopened the door to motor sport for me, because Charles Zwolsman Sr then offered me the chance to race for him in Japan. I got that opportunity because his driver Volker Weidler was going to have to retire, even though he was only 30, because he had severe tinnitus [which was widely attributed to the noise and vibration of the extremely loud quad-rotor Wankel engine of the Mazda 787B that Weidler had driven to victory alongside Johnny Herbert and Bertrand Gachot at Le Mans in 1991]. So in 1992 I raced Volker’s Lola-Mugen in three Japanese F3000 races [finishing sixth at Suzuka, seventh at Fuji, then third at Suzuka], and if that hadn’t happened I’d probably be a funeral director now.”

Instead, the following year, 1993, while Frentzen was continuing to race in Japanese F3000, Peter Sauber summoned him for an F1 test. “Peter had stayed in touch with me, and in the late summer [of 1993] he invited me to test his Sauber F1 car at Mugello. Karl Wendlinger would also be testing the car, and I’d have to use JJ Lehto’s seat, which is never ideal, but I did well. I was quick, and Peter offered me a Sauber drive in F1 for 1994.

“As you can imagine, I was super-excited. I mean: just over a year before that I’d been making coffins with my dad, and now I was in F1. It was a dream. But, remember, I hadn’t watched F1 much as a kid, although when I was 12 I’d seen Ayrton Senna race in a World Cup kart race at Nivelles [Belgium]. I’d been standing behind the fence, and it was obvious to me even then that he was outrageously good and just wonderful to watch. So Senna was my hero – then and always – but that was a result of his karting brilliance more than his F1 brilliance. Yes, always, for me he was the man.

“And at the end of a pre-season test day at Estoril in 1994, Josef Leberer [Senna’s friend, physio and confidant] came up to me in the paddock and said, ‘Someone would like to meet you.’ So I went with Josef to the Williams motorhome, and Ayrton was there. He said, ‘Hey, you were looking good out there today.’ We had a nice chat, and that was a big moment for me.

“Then, at Interlagos, which was the first grand prix of the [1994] season, and therefore my F1 debut, Ayrton was on the pole, and I qualified fifth. As I was walking up to the drivers’ briefing room after qualifying, he was walking behind me, and he caught up with me and tripped me up, as a joke. I kind of almost fell into the drivers’ briefing room. It was quite funny actually, and that gave me a big lift, too.

“The next day, in the race, my F1 debut, I spun off [on lap 16], then in my second F1 race, at Aida, I finished fifth, which was obviously not too bad. I think I had a decent F1 rookie season – I was fourth at Magny-Cours and sixth at both Jerez and Suzuka – but it was a tricky year for Peter Sauber because he lost the backing and support of Mercedes to McLaren for 1995. I wasn’t fully aware of the politics at the time – I was an F1 rookie focusing on my driving – but for Peter it must have been super-stressful.”

Overhead view of Michael Schumacher in the Sauber-Mercedes Formula 1 car. — Frentzen’s F1 breakthrough came with Sauber in 1994, and he wasn’t on the grid to make up the numbers – fourth here in the French GP

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Loyalty is a quality often praised in sport, albeit rarely practised, and events were soon to prove that Frentzen possessed it in abundance. When Senna was killed at Imola in 1994, Frank Williams offered him the suddenly vacant Williams seat. “I said no – I felt I had to – because I had a strong feeling that I had to be true to Peter, who had given me my F1 chance. But, after that, watching Williams win so many races with Damon Hill and David Coulthard, I was super-keen for Sauber to develop and improve our car. I was pushing the team very hard, wanting progress, and I had a few decent results in 1994, 1995 and 1996, but actually the 1994 Sauber was quite a well-balanced car whereas at first the 1995 Sauber was crazily pitch-sensitive and therefore extremely difficult to drive. But we worked hard to improve that 1995 car, and it was pretty OK by the end of the season. Actually, overall, although 1995 was frustrating at times, I now consider it one of my best years in F1.”

Frentzen’s good form and his remarkable loyalty were both rewarded, because Williams came a-calling once more. “That’s right, and that was great, but, again, it was complicated,” he exclaims, grinning broadly. “When I’d said no to Frank Williams in 1994, I’d added, ‘But I’ll be there for you in three years’ time, in 1997, once I’ve completed my three-year Sauber contract.’ Also, in those first three grands prix of 1994 I’d heard rumours that Ayrton had been recommending me to Frank as an eventual replacement for himself. So, because of that, I stayed in touch with Frank, and he’d obviously remembered our conversation back in 1994, because by 1997 I was a Williams driver alongside Jacques Villeneuve.”

Many F1 drivers would have regarded joining Williams at that time – the mid-to-late 1990s – as a dream finally realised, but Frentzen’s memories are rather more nuanced. “[A pause] I mean, yeah, 1997 and 1998, my two seasons at Williams, were the most horrible years for me. It was a brilliant team, so advanced, with the best car, and winning so much – the mecca of motor sport – but it was also a difficult place to be. Frank told me that I had to understand every nut and every bolt of the car, and that’s just about all the support he ever gave me.

Sauber-Mercedes Group C prototype during endurance testing. — There was a single outing in the WSC in 1990 – a second at Donington Park in Sauber’s Mercedes

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“Also, Damon had been a right-foot braker, like me, but Patrick [Head, technical director] wanted me to do left-foot braking, like Jacques. OK, that was the correct approach, because left-foot braking is quicker than right-foot braking, but it took me a little while to get used to it – and that’s why in Melbourne, the first race of the [1997] season, although I’d qualified on the front row, I went off a couple of laps from the end with brake failure, because I’d been riding the brake pedal a little too much in some of the corners, without meaning to, and it had been enough to make the brakes overheat.

“At Williams there was so much technology – so much extra software – over and above what I’d been used to at Sauber. It was just unbelievable. Jacques had had a year there already [1996], and he enjoyed making set-up changes all the time. The team always allowed him to do it, and they’d just keep changing his car again and again in so many ways. They were prepared to be so flexible in that way, and Jacques loved that, but I ended up being super-confused because I didn’t feel comfortable making so many changes, and as a result I always felt I was lagging behind.”

Even so, there was an early grand prix win – his first – I remind him, at Imola, which was only his fourth outing for Williams. “Yes, but I was nearly four-tenths slower than Jacques in qualifying. He was on the pole. I only won at Imola because I’d worked out a very good fuel-saving strategy that would enable me to jump Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari in our pitstops. I’d practised a fuel-saving driving style in free practice, and it had worked, so I explained to Patrick that I could use it in the race, stay out after Michael had pitted and overcut him that way. ‘No, no, no,’ said Patrick, like a schoolmaster. He said my idea was ’shovelling shit uphill’ – I didn’t even know what that meant. Anyway, I spoke to my race engineer and my data engineer, and we agreed that, if I was on target fuel-wise by the time of the pitstops, we’d try it. Well, we did try it, it worked, I stole two extra laps in clean air after Michael had pitstopped, and I won the race. And I used the same trick quite often at Jordan in 1999.”

Jacques Villeneuve driving the Williams FW19 during the 1997 season. — For 1997, reigning world champion Damon Hill was dropped by Williams and Frentzen brought in as a replacement; the German was quick, winning at Imola

DPPI

If Williams represented education through adversity, Jordan represented liberation through conviviality – and Frentzen’s 1999 season in Eddie Jordan’s hard-working yet easy-going team remains one of F1’s underrated masterpieces. While Mika Häkkinen and Eddie Irvine fought over the F1 Drivers’ World Championship in McLarens and Ferraris, Frentzen carried lowly Jordan into genuine world title contention. “Yes, 1999 was great for me,” says Heinz-Harald now, allowing himself a diffident chortle. “But, you know, although my time at Williams in 1997 and 1998 was tough, it was also extremely important, because it taught me a hell of a lot. As I say, Frank had told me that I had to understand every nut and every bolt of the Williams car, so I worked really hard to do exactly that, and I was exposed to so much sophisticated technology, which really interested me. So, with respect to Sauber, I learned a hell of a lot more in my two years at Williams than I did in my three years at Sauber.

“I mean, 1997 and 1998, my two seasons at Williams, were the most horrible years for me’”

“When I got to Jordan, in 1999, I started working with Sam Michael, my race engineer, and that was really good. I was older than him – I was 31 and he was 28 – and it was clear to me that here was an intelligent and motivated young person, and we developed a really good working relationship. He pushed me hard but our friction was always productive. Also, which was significant, by that time I’d completely mastered left-foot braking, whereas my team-mate [Damon Hill] was still right-foot braking.”

Jacques Villeneuve celebrates winning the 1997 Formula 1 World Championship. — Victory with Williams in the ’97 San Marino GP

DPPI

Hill, famously, struggled that year. “Yeah, I guess so,” says Frentzen, with a shrug, “but Damon is a good guy. I don’t see him these days, but we sometimes exchange ideas on X. I’d like him to come and ride motorbikes with me in Spain, where I spend a lot of time now, and he’d like me to come on the F1 podcast he does with Johnny Herbert.”

Both are great ideas, I suggest, and I toy with probing both areas further, but I do not want to divert my interviewee from telling me more about 1999, including its bitter-sweet denouement. “Anyway,” I begin, “going back to 1999, you won brilliantly at Monza, and that win pushed you into contention for the F1 Drivers’ World Championship. Häkkinen and Irvine were both on 60 points, and you were on 50, with three rounds to go. Next up was Nürburgring. You were on the pole; you led at the start; after the first set of pitstops you’d retained your lead, whereas Mika and Eddie had both dropped back; and things were looking very good for you, both race-wise and world championship-wise. Then, on lap 32, your Jordan just stopped, and there are lots of stories about why that happened. So, tell me, why did it happen?”

Frentzen looks down, then he sighs. “It was a horrible situation, and it was avoidable, but we had a software bug, and that software bug was connected to an FIA safety feature that was designed to trigger a stall if the driver was unconscious for example, and it deployed, which it shouldn’t have done, and that basically cost us our outside chance at the world title. Honestly, I was feeling really good at Nürburgring, leading the race, and very confident. The weather that day was my kind of weather – dry then damp – and I’d won at Magny-Cours earlier that year in similar conditions. Oh well…”

He sighs again, then he continues. “Then we were off the pace next time out at Sepang – Irvine won, Häkkinen was third, and I was only sixth – then at Suzuka Häkkinen won, Irvine was third, I was fourth, and I was therefore out of contention for the title. That’s it. That’s what happened. What more can I say?”

Michael Schumacher waves after a strong Jordan Formula 1 performance. — A move to Jordan in 1999 gave Frentzen a competitive season, with wins at the French and Italian GPs

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It feels like a good time to move on rather than to wallow in the calamity of the missed opportunity. Frentzen continued to race for Jordan the following season, 2000, and again in 2001, so I ask him whether during his Jordan years he felt what other Jordan drivers have told me they felt – Jean Alesi, Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli for example – which is that the Jordan team buzzed with a warm, chummy, family atmosphere, which presumably made it an easier environment to work in for a placid man like Heinz-Harald than was the authoritarian regime dictated by Frank and Patrick at Williams?

“Yes, initially, and yes, overall, I felt very comfortable at Jordan. It was a lot smaller than Williams, less sophisticated technically, and certainly friendlier, and Eddie Jordan’s fun, colourful and impulsive character made it possible for everyone to be more open and relaxed. But ultimately a driver always enjoys himself more when his team and his car are working well, and he never enjoys himself when they aren’t. It doesn’t really matter so much what the culture of the team is like, because the level of performance of the car and the team has a bigger influence on a driver’s feelings than anything else.”

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He raced on in F1 for a few more years – for Prost, then Arrows, then Sauber again – and he was third in the last grand prix he ever finished, at Indy in 2003, for Sauber. But in truth those years were not great in terms of results. “So, now, more than 20 years later, when you look back on your F1 career,” I ask him, “how do you view it?”

“Well, I’m glad I raced in F1 when I did,” he begins, “because for me the current F1 power unit regulations – the storage and deployment of battery power and so on – are a disaster. The driver has to be able to make a bigger difference, and I think F1 should make more of an effort to focus on making that a reality once again. But maybe that’s because I’m an old guy.”

“I’d like Damon to come and ride motorbikes with me in Spain; he’d like me on the F1 podcast he does”

“You aren’t really an old guy,” I reply. “You’re 60 next birthday. But, yes, I’m sitting and looking at you, and you have a grey beard, that’s true. Some retired F1 drivers, including some of your contemporaries, have chosen to stay involved in F1 and motor sport either in team roles, such as Pedro de la Rosa, Alex Wurz and others, or media roles, such as Martin Brundle, David Coulthard and others, but you’ve never done any of that. Why not?”

“I’m not really interested in doing that, to be honest,” comes Frentzen’s disarmingly straightforward reply. “The only reason I go to any grands prix at all these days, which is rare, is that my eldest daughter [Lea, 26, an F1 social media content creator] wanted me to take her, so I took her to Silverstone a couple of years ago. I re-engaged in F1 a bit after that, and I started being active on social media, but to be honest I did that only to promote Lea’s content.”

We have already overrun the time he has agreed to give me, so I feel that I should begin to wrap up. “And how do you spend your time nowadays?” I ask him.

“Well, I like my private life, which is a quiet life. I live in Mönchengladbach but I spend a lot of time in Spain, in the countryside between Valencia and Alicante, staying in a house that I built in 1994, originally for my mum. She’s 89, and she still lives nearby. I love that part of Spain, and I really enjoy riding my motorbikes through the beautiful countryside there. I absolutely love motorbiking. You can see so much, riding on wonderful roads through spectacular scenery, and you have no negative g-forces, so it feels like a combination of driving and flying because you have only positive g-forces. Honestly, when you go into a corner on a motorbike, it flows in such a fantastic way, and it feels like it must feel to fly a fighter jet. You put the visor down, you focus 100% on what you’re doing, you disconnect from all the things you’ve been worrying about all day, and you just do it. Yeah, I really love it.”

Michael Schumacher driving the Jordan 191 during his Formula 1 debut. — Chasing the F1 world title in the 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring – until lap 32…

DPPI

if that joyously uplifting disclosure is not revealing enough, now comes perhaps the most illuminating observation of our entire conversation, a statement that neatly exemplifies why Frentzen was, is, and will always be a little apart from his erstwhile rivals. “For me F1 was a special job, of course it was, but at the end of the day it was just that – a job – and I’m not doing that job any longer. I loved doing it, the technology fascinated me and I tried to do it in a professional way, because it was my profession, but it isn’t my profession any more, and I’ve never defined myself as an F1 driver. It isn’t the central element of my persona. Now, to be honest, I love being in Spain, I love going for long walks, I love taking in the beauty of the Spanish countryside, and I love – I really, really love – riding my motorbikes there.”

It is an answer that lingers in my mind long after our interview has come to an end, for its import is clear: in the life of Heinz-Harald Frentzen, F1 was a remarkable chapter, brilliantly lived, but now closed. These days, far from the hustle and bustle of F1 paddocks and pitlanes, and the endless churn of modern motor sport’s hurly-burly, he can instead be found rapidly but fluently threading a fast motorcycle along the sunlit backroads of rural Spain, visor down, thoughts stilled, immersed in the rhythm of the curves and undulations of the coastal N-322 and the mountainous CV-70 that lead from Valencia to Alicante. The boy who once made coffins became one of the fastest racing drivers in the world. The man he now is seems happiest chasing something less grandiose: the unimpeded, solo movement through landscape, air, and light.

Ralf Schumacher with family members in the Formula 1 paddock. — With daughters Lea, left, and Sarah at last year’s British Grand Prix

Formula 1 Via Getty Images

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BORN: 16/5/1967 MÖNCHENGLADBACH (D)

● 1981 Wins German junior kart title.

● 1985 Enters German Formula Ford 2000 series; runner-up in 1987.

● 1988 To German Formula Opel Lotus with Jochen Mass Junior Team; finishes 1st.

● 1989 German F3 – against Michael Schumacher and Karl Wendlinger; 2nd.

● 1990-93 International Formula 3000, Japanese Formula 3000; Le Mans debut driving a Lola T92/10 (13th).

● 1994-96 Joins Sauber in Formula 1; podium at Monza in 1995.

● 1997-98 To Williams; championship runner-up in first season. Win at Imola.

● 1999-2001 Transfers to Jordan; wins at French and Italian GPs, 3rd in title. Sacked midway through 2001; switches to Prost.

● 2002-03 To Arrows, then returns to Sauber; ends season 11th in ’03.

● 2004-06 DTM with Opel; 4 podiums.

● 2008 Second run at Le Mans; 16th.

Transatlantic Trophy support races shared the stage with Mallory Park's sidecars

As the Greek tragedians demonstrated two millennia ago, every great protagonist demands an equally formidable antagonist. For Jackie Stewart, it was a bespectacled journalist with a long, wispy beard for whom the word ‘eccentric’ might have been coined. Denis Sargent Jenkinson, known by the byline DSJ to readers of Motor Sport, was the magazine’s longtime European correspondent. From April to September, he would cover races by speeding around the continent on a series of high-performance vehicles ranging from a Norton Manx to an E-type Jaguar.

Burning Formula 1 wreck highlights racing's dangerous era. — Getty Images

In his private life, Jenks was an odd duck. He lived in a small cottage with a domesticated sparrow, an extraordinary library of automotive books and a wrecking yard’s worth of car and motorcycle parts. He had one dinner plate, one chair and no running water. Lighting was provided by six-volt bulbs hooked to a generator powered by a Fiat 500 that was parked outside. He lived for racing and fast motoring. This is a man who once tested a Formula 2 Lotus on public roads on Christmas Day because he figured the police would be less likely to be on the prowl.

“Jenkinson was, if anything, an anarchist with no interest in business or politics”

There were some obvious differences between Stewart and Jenkinson in terms of style and attitude, but most of them came down to the fact that they were products of different generations, with different mores. Stewart, paradoxically, was the more conservative of the two – a committed capitalist despite the Swinging Sixties plumage, while Jenkinson was, if anything, an anarchist with no interest in business or politics. What’s more striking in retrospect is how similar they were in so many ways. Both of them were small in stature yet large in character, willing to take on and maintain unpopular positions no matter how fierce the criticism. Both of them were cosmopolitan characters comfortable in the world beyond the borders of the British Isles. And both of them were repudiations of the stereotypes that their enemies constructed for them.

Denis Jenkinson watches events from the Formula 1 paddock. — ‘Jenks’ was no stranger to racing’s dangers, having been navigator for Stirling Moss in the 1955 Mille Miglia

REVS

Detractors called Stewart a pampered baby who lacked the cojones to race on circuits that had been mastered by the titans of an earlier age. Yet it was Stewart who scored a win for the ages at the Nordschleife, finishing 4min ahead of his closest competitor, Graham Hill, in the German Grand Prix in 1968, in rain so heavy and fog so thick that BRM team manager Louis Stanley wrote: “Only a miracle prevented several major accidents that could have left a trail of spectator deaths and injuries.” Then, in 1973, during practice for the South African Grand Prix, Stewart’s foot went to the floor in the brake zone at the end of the long front straight at Kyalami. He spun the car at 180mph but still went through three layers of catch fencing before his Tyrrell ground to a stop, inches before his helmet would have hit an embankment. “There may be people who feel offended by safety gear, but had not Stewart himself suggested the placement of those wire fences in this location a couple of years earlier… well, there wouldn’t be a Jackie Stewart to kick around any more,” Pete Lyons reported in Autoweek.

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Not only did Stewart stick around for the race, but he won it. As for Jenkinson, critics dismissed him as an antiquated blowhard as callous and ill-informed as the generals who’d ordered tens of thousands of young men to their pointless deaths during World War I. In fact, Jenkinson had been a conscientious objector during World War II, and he was a genuine and highly respected speed demon. He was the sidecar rider when motorcyclist Eric Oliver won a world championship in 1949. In 1955, he served as Stirling Moss’s navigator during their epic victory in the Mille Miglia in a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Before the race, Jenkinson invented the modern version of rally pace notes. Afterwards, Motor Sport published his long first-person account of the gruelling event – an article that’s generally acknowledged as one of the most memorable pieces in the history of racing journalism.

Jackie Stewart surrounded by photographers before the Monaco Grand Prix. — Stewart became president of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association in ’68, where emphasis switched to saving lives rather than prize money

DPPI

Jenkinson was the author of The Racing Driver, which was the first book to look deeply at the technique and psychology of motor sports. In it, he popularised the concept of ‘tenths’, as in ten tenths being balls to the wall and, say, five tenths meaning idling around like a poseur. He relished nothing more than a driver who could ‘tiger’, a term he used as both a noun and a verb to refer to someone who could grab a car by the scruff of the neck and make it go faster than reason – or, it seemed, the laws of physics – would permit. Moss was his paragon, not only for his unparalleled speed but also for his equanimity while driving flat-out, leaving no margin for error, even when he knew that a mistake could have serious, and perhaps fatal, consequences.

Formula 1 drivers relax between sessions at Spa-Francorchamps. — BRM chairman and safety pioneer Louis Stanley joins the F1 drivers at Kyalami in 1969

REVS

Stewart was elected president of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association in 1968. Previously, the job had been held by Jo Bonnier, an urbane gentleman racer old enough to have raced against Juan Manuel Fangio, Moss and pre-war great Louis Chiron. During Bonnier’s tenure, the GPDA’s chief concern had been negotiating more starting and prize money for the drivers. When Stewart succeeded him, safety became the focus. Speaking with his squeaky Scottish burr, Stewart gave voice to the convictions that most of his fellow drivers shared but were reluctant to say out loud – namely that drastic action had to be taken to make circuits less dangerous. At the end of the 1968 season, he wrote a remarkable essay in Autocourse titled Circuit safety, which served as the opening salvo in the war between JYS and DSJ.

“Stewart wrote a remarkable essay which served as the opening salvo in a war between JYS and DSJ”

“I earn my living from being a racing driver,” Stewart wrote. “I want to retain my interest in motor racing through being able to continue as a competitive driver for many years to come. This I feel will be more possible if I try to suggest improvements that will allow me to have accidents without serious consequence. I don’t pretend to think that I will have no motor racing accidents, but I would like to feel that if and when they do occur I have a reasonable chance of survival. I am not above making mistakes, and it is wrong for anyone to suggest that a Grand Prix driver should always drive within his limits. No human being is without the possibility of making errors, and I don’t see why death should be a necessary consequence of human error.”

Denis Jenkinson discusses racing with drivers in the paddock. — Stewart and Jenks, 1970 British GP

Getty Images

To modern sensibilities, this sounds like a truth as self-evident as all men being created equal. But in Jenkinson’s eyes, Stewart’s statement of first principles challenged the existential foundation of the sport. “I have seen a matador killed and I have also seen a racing driver killed,” Jenkinson wrote. “To reach the ultimate one must ‘Dice with Death’ and often Death claims a victim, but when he does so under such circumstances let us not bewail the fact, but rather salute and admire a man who died doing his utmost in his own specialised sphere.

“I remember Jackie Stewart hollering at me about defying the boycott to race at Spa”

“Man has always strived for the unknown, it is that small factor beyond his knowledge that keeps him going, without it he would deteriorate. Remove the challenge and you remove the reason, whether it be to go faster than anyone else in a straight line, whether it be to accelerate faster than anyone else, or corner faster, or brake later; there has to be a challenge.”

Formula 1 crash scene underlines Spa's historic dangers. — Jo Bonnier’s Cooper balances on a parapet after leaving the track at a wet Spa in 1966; Stewart would also crash in the GP

Sutton

In Stewart’s article in Autocourse, he outlined changes that the drivers wanted at various circuits on the F1 calendar. Most of the track owners agreed to implement at least some of the upgrades. But the GPDA couldn’t reach an agreement with the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium regarding Spa-Francorchamps. So in 1969, the drivers boycotted the Belgian Grand Prix, and the F1 round at Spa was cancelled. Jenkinson thought the decision was disgraceful. As he wrote: “I have always thought that one of the endearing features of a Grand Prix driver was that he had GUTS and would accept a challenge that normal people like you and I would not be brave enough to face; now I am not so sure.”

Ironically, several of the drivers who boycotted the race competed in the Spa 1000Kms later that year even though the 5-litre sports-prototypes were even faster than the 3-litre F1 cars. Some of them, most notably Mexican Pedro Rodríguez, were fatalists who considered most safety regulations pointless. Others, like Jacky Ickx, professed to be unfazed by the terrors of Burnenville or Stavelot. And then there were those who were drawn like moths to a flame. “I remember Jackie Stewart hollering at me about defying the boycott to race at Spa,” Howden Ganley recalled. “I said, ‘Jackie, but you’ve raced there and I never have, so I have to do it.’ It turned out that I loved Spa. It was second only to the old Nürburgring.”

Denis Jenkinson inspects Spa-Francorchamps with fellow journalists. — Track examination at Zolder in 1973, with Stewart assessing the state of the newly laid surface and threatening a strike. Jenks is observing, but the race went ahead; Jackie won

LAT Images

Although Jenkinson never missed an opportunity to crow about the defectors from the GPDA’s party line, the truth of the matter is that most of the drivers privately agreed with Stewart, though, for a variety of reasons – self-interest, self-consciousness, self-preservation – they declined to speak out publicly. As Ganley said, looking back at his own behaviour: “Sadly, I was a bit ambivalent, and to my regret I did not support Jackie. I mean, I went along with him. But I was not vociferous about it. I was kind of like, ‘OK, that’s great, Jackie. Do what you want to do, and I’ll vote for you.’ But I wasn’t getting up on the pedestal and shouting about it.”

“I know we have recently had a series of nasty accidents, but we must not get hysterical”

Stewart was reviled as the personification of the lily-livered, money-grabbing, self-centred drivers who were supposedly ruining racing. He was name-checked in vitriolic letters to the Motor Sport editor and jeered by members of the old guard. Retired driver Innes Ireland, who’d given Team Lotus its first grand grix victory in 1961, would stroll past Stewart on the grid, flapping his arms like a chicken. Back in Ireland’s day, remember, drivers didn’t even wear what he described as “hysterical” safety belts.

Spectators crowd a hillside at the Mexican Grand Prix. — Fans get close to the track in Mexico, 1970

REVS

“Stewart was the one who started all this crap, going on about his blood-group on his underpants and things,” he said. “You think it’s a good idea?” Moss was another ex-driver who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. “They are emasculating our sport with safety demands,” he declared. “Over the years, we looked upon road racing as exactly that – road racing. When there was a kerb on a turn, we made damn sure we didn’t slide into it. Today, drivers insist kerbing be removed.”

To his credit, although Jenkinson routinely bad-mouthed Stewart as the “beady-eyed little Scot”, he never let his contempt for the man corrupt his appreciation for the driver. “I don’t think anyone will argue when I say that Stewart is easily the best driver in Formula 1 racing today,” he wrote in his report about the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in 1971. “To watch his skill and reflexes at work on the wet track was to watch an artist at work and it was a joy to behold.”

Aerial view of the original Spa-Francorchamps road circuit. — “Pious Scot” Stewart believed the Malmedy corner at Spa was dangerous; a chicane was added for 1970

LAT Images

As perceptive as Jenkinson was as a race observer, he was like a horse wearing blinkers when it came to safety. Commenting on a four-week span in the summer of 1970 when Bruce McLaren, Piers Courage, Hans Laine and Derrick Williams died in four separate road-racing incidents, he wrote: “I am well aware that motor racing, or any other form of racing, is dangerous, bloody dangerous, but that is what makes it exciting for spectators and competitors alike, and I know we have recently had a series of nasty accidents, but, for goodness sake, we must not get hysterical.”

But people did get hysterical, and Stewart was able to leverage the hysteria to effect major changes. In 1971, the Nordschleife was revamped before being allowed back on the F1 calendar. The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, which had been reinstated the previous year, was cancelled again. Ditto for Mexico, which had been marred the year before by out-of-control spectators sitting on the edge of the racetrack, as if they were attending a rock concert rather than a motor race. In 1972, the Dutch Grand Prix was cancelled when the organisers failed to upgrade Zandvoort, and the Belgian Grand Prix was moved to Nivelles.

Formula 1 car races through Spa's fearsome Masta Kink. — Brabham’s Rolf Stommelen in the 1970 Belgian GP – the last race on the old Spa layout

David Phipps/Sutton

Like a time traveller transported to an alien future, Jenkinson was bewildered by the transformation Stewart had wrought. Speaking about a chicane that had been added in an effort to save Spa in 1970, he wrote: “Later, when I saw Jackie Stewart, who is the leader of the anti-Spa brigade, I asked him what purpose the GPDA chicane served, apart from adding some braking and gear-changing to the scene, as the cars seemed to be going just as fast down the Masta straight. His reply was that the chicane made Malmedy corner safer. I was speechless. It was the first time I had heard that Malmedy was a dangerous corner. ‘Oh, yes,’ said the pious little Scot, ‘it was very dangerous.’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, I was so confused. I thought the danger they were bleating about was the high speed, and suddenly here I was being told a corner was dangerous.’

Portrait of Motor Sport writer Denis Jenkinson. — Getty Images

Continental notes

June 1972

Just before the Sebring 12-hour race last March a certain beady-eyed little Scot was going-around amongst the sports car drivers encouraging them to sign a GPDA petition that was calling for a complete boycott on all Formula One or FIA Manufacturers Sports Car Championship races at the Belgian Spa-Francorchamps circuit. A week later a letter arrived from the GPDA headquarters in Switzerland stating that at their meeting at Watkins Glen last October, they agreed by a majority decision that they would not participate in any future Formula One or Manufacturers Sports Car races at Spa-Francorchamps. So why the need for the petition at Sebring in March?

At this majority vote there was one dissenter and four abstainers, and since then some members had reversed their decision due to being committed to teams by written contract. The GPDA missive from Switzerland went on to say that the fact that certain GPDA members would be competing at Spa on May 7th did not “in any way indicate a change of heart on the part of the Association as a whole regarding the desirability of participating at this circuit at any future time.”

I frequently receive letters from readers who ask why I keep attacking Stewart and his GPDA; surely the reason is becoming all too clear. If he said “I had a nasty experience at Spa in 1966 and I have no intention of ever going there again” I would accept his feelings completely, have nothing further to say about it and the matter would be finished. But it is not as simple as that, his pious whinings have brain-washed and undermined the natural instincts of some young and inexperienced newcomers to Grand Prix racing and removed the Belgian Grand Prix from Spa-Francorchamps. I will readily admit that Grand Prix racing is his life and business and he has every justification in anything he does concerning Grand Prix racing. BUT WHAT HAS LONG DISTANCE SPORTS CAR RACING GOT TO D0 WITH STEWART? To the best of my knowledge he has never been a serious competitor in a long-distance sports car race, he has never shown any desire to become involved in driving in long-distance sports car racing, and I doubt whether anyone would ever ask him to join their team for sports car racing, yet he was trying to persuade drivers to boycott the Spa 1000 kilometre event.

Many years ago Colin Chapman took a little Lotus 23 sports car to Le Mans that was not only going to win the valuable Index of Performance but was going to steal all the glory from the little French cars of the time, providing it lasted 24 hours. Certain people in the Le Mans Club were not prepared to accept this state of affairs, and by dint of some very shady manoeuvring of the regulations during pre-practice scrutineering they ruled the Lotus 23 out of court. In a furious temper Chapman said he would never go back to the Le Mans 24-Hour Race, having been a regular entrant for a number of years up to this point.

HE NEVER DID RETURN TO LE MANS, and I will always admire him for it. Can you really ask me in all honesty to admire, or even tolerate, our current reigning World Champion driver? DSJ

“In my humble opinion a corner is as dangerous (or safe) as the driver cares to make it,” Jenkinson continued. “When race planning with those two Champions, Eric Oliver on sidecars and Stirling Moss on sports cars, if we thought a corner was dangerous we didn’t have it altered, we said, ‘That one is dodgy, we must treat it with respect.’ So Malmedy corner is dangerous. The leader of the GPDA milk-and-water brigade and his chums have made some remarkable statements in the past, but that is the best yet.”

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By 1972, Stewart felt confident enough to beard the lion in its den. In a letter published in the August issue of Motor Sport, [full exchange, above] he wrote: “What Denis Jenkinson thinks or says concerns me little. To me he is a fence-sitter, doing little or nothing to secure a future for our sport. The readers of Motor Sport, however, are much more important. I would like to say to them that whatever criticism I get will make no difference at all to my personal effort to make motor racing, of all classes, safer for as many people as possible within our sport. There is nothing more tragically sad than mourning a man who has died under circumstances which could have been avoided had someone done something beforehand. It therefore always angers me to hear of people who oppose an effort to make our sport safer and reduce the tragic losses that we have all painfully experienced. Such men to me are hypocrites, the only consolation being that in years to come they will probably be looked back on as cranks.”

Motor Sport readers debate Jackie Stewart's safety campaign. — LAT Images

Stewart forecast the future with uncanny accuracy. Jenkinson is often described as the most authoritative race reporter in F1 history, and he served as a mentor for a long line of journalists. But when it comes to safety, he’s remembered as a crackpot, whereas Stewart is regarded as a hero. Later, Bernie Ecclestone, Max Mosley and Dr Sid Watkins would pick up the torch. But it was Stewart who lit the fire and almost single-handedly kept it burning through one of the darkest periods of racing history.

Portrait of Jackie Stewart during his Formula 1 career. — Getty Images

Letters

August 1972

I feel compelled to write in response to Jenkinson’s outburst in attacking me personally in your June issue.

I do not feel it is necessary for me in this letter to give details as to why certain GPDA members driving for Alfa Romeo and Ferrari entered to compete at Spa, wanted to sign a letter of agreement not to drive in the 1000 km race.

It is however important to me that your readers, a large proportion of whom must be keen supporters of modern motor racing and therefore desirous that the sport has a healthy, prosperous and safe future, see that what Jenkinson is trying to say is not necessarily justified. I try terribly hard devoting considerable time and effort to make motor racing as a whole for as many people as possible – officials, spectators, drivers and even journalists – safer than it has been in the past. The sport will never be totally safe, and I perhaps know that better than Mr. Jenkinson could ever know. But it is imperative that people act in a positive and constructive way to bring race-track safety, medical and fire-fighting facilities up to modern standards. It is very easy to sit on the fence and criticise – notoriously easy. You can always find faults in what the other people are doing, but at least they are doing something. All Mr. Jenkinson seems to do is lament the past and the drivers who have served their time in it. Few of them, however, are alive to read his writings.

If a present-day driver criticises a new modern racing facility he is often applauded by the Jenkinsons of this world as being made of the “good old stuff”, but if he condemns one of the old-established racetracks for lack of proper facilities, he is shot at by the same people and accused of trying to damage the sport or even of being cowardly.

It seems however that even Jenkinson is changing. A year ago he would not have allowed himself to say that I had every justification in doing anything concerning grand prix racing. Last month he was only concerned that I took an interest in long-distance sports-car racing.

What Denis Jenkinson thinks or says concerns me little. To me he is a fence-sitter, doing little or nothing to secure a future for our sport. The readers of Motor Sport, however, are much more important. I would like to say to them that whatever criticism I get will make no difference at all to my personal effort to make motor racing, of all classes, safer for as many people as possible within our sport.

There is nothing more tragically sad than mourning a man who has died under circumstances which could have been avoided had someone done something beforehand. It therefore always angers me to hear of people who oppose an effort to make our sport safer and therefore reduce the tragic losses that we have all painfully experienced. Such men to me are hypocrites, the only consolation being that in years to come they will probably be looked back on as cranks.

Whatever Mr. Jenkinson thinks, I am a racing driver who loves his sport. The sadness that I have seen and experienced, which could have been avoided, only makes it more detestable to me that your magazine is prepared to project within its pages the sort of thinking that is negative to efforts of others to make motor racing claim fewer lives.

Jackie Stewart, Switzerland

The Deadliest Decade: How Speed, Money, and Technology Transformed Auto Racing by Preston Lerner (Octane Press, £34.99) is out now.

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