Matt Bishop: He was Williams' first winning driver but so few know his name

Then there is that curious, wonderful, and unappreciated footnote that ought to be written in bolder type. At Thruxton, in 1976, in a round of the Shellsport International championship, driving an ex-works Williams FW04, the very car that Jacques Laffite had raced to second place in the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring in 1975, McGuire qualified on the pole and took the win. On the surface it is just another result in a busy 13-round series of cheap-ish Formula Libre-status single-seater racing; just another line in an old magazine. But scratch that surface and it gleams with historical significance, because on that rainy September afternoon in Hampshire Brian McGuire became the first driver ever to win a race in a Williams.

Think about that for a moment. We are talking about Williams, that grand old F1 team starring a cast of legends: McGuire’s old mate Jones, Clay Regazzoni, Carlos Reutemann, Keke Rosberg, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, et al; a team of nine F1 constructors’ world championships and seven F1 drivers’ titles; a team that would come to define excellence, innovation, and resilience in F1. Yet the first race win for a Williams arrived not in a grand prix, nor even in a non-championship F1 race, but in a Shellsport International round at Thruxton, scored by an Australian whose name barely registers in the modern consciousness. It is one of those delicious ironies that the motor racing annals sometimes serve up, and it deserves to be celebrated, not forgotten.

That Thruxton victory, McGuire’s only Shellsport International win in 1976, was evidence of his ability, for it was proof that on a superfast circuit on a damp and tricky day he could grab a mediocre F1 car by the scruff of its neck and bully it to victory. It should have been a calling card. In some respects, it was. In others, it was just another moment that slipped through the cracks of a crowded sport, for, as the mid 1970s wore on, in truth McGuire was edging no closer to the top tier of single-seater racing.

He had already done two seasons of F5000, 1974 and 1975, initially in a Trojan-Chevy then in a Lola-Chevy; but, although he had bagged podium finishes, he had scored no wins. He won just that one Shellsport International race, at Thruxton in 1976, then he bought and with his own calloused hands he fettled another ex-works 1975 Williams FW04, an ex-Lella Lombardi car this time, into something that he hoped would be faster in 1977, and he renamed it the McGuire BM1. He entered nine 1977 Shellsport International rounds in that car, but it proved dreadfully unreliable and he finished just one of them, fifth at Oulton Park. He entered the same car in that year’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone, too, but it was hopelessly uncompetitive compared with the state-of-the-art F1 Ferraris, McLarens, Lotuses, and Brabhams, and he was one of six drivers who failed to pre-qualify.

In short, he endured the highs, the lows, the hopes, the fears, the indignities and, of course, the dangers of any racing privateer’s life 50-odd years ago. It was an era in which single-seater series were unglamorous and lethal, when safety was just about beginning to improve but still very far from adequate, and when bravery was assumed and survival never guaranteed. So it was that on August 29, 1977, the Monday of the summer bank holiday weekend, in practice for a Shellsport International race at Brands Hatch, McGuire was killed in a violent accident that also claimed the life of a trackside marshal, 24-year-old John Thorpe: a grim reminder that motor sport’s risks are not borne by drivers alone. Just 15 days before, Jones had scored his maiden F1 grand prix win, at Österreichring, in a Shadow DN8. Sliding doors indeed.

McGuire was 31. His racing career, like his life, had been brutally curtailed, and consequently for ever frozen in time. We will never know what he might have become, how he might have evolved, or whether he might have found the break that his talent warranted. In truth, he might well not have done, for so few did. What we do know is that his death left a hole: in the lives of those who had loved him, in the paddocks that he had inhabited, and in the parallel universe of what-ifs that motor sport fans endlessly construct.

It is tempting, and perhaps inevitable, to compare him with Jones, his old mucker, and thereby to imagine a world in which their career trajectories were reversed or at least converged. Jones would go on to become F1 world champion in 1980, driving for Williams, a coincidence that should have been a joy to McGuire, who raced a Williams to victory before anyone else did, but he never lived to enjoy.

Would McGuire have thrived in the same environment? Some of those who knew him think he just might have done. He had the bloody-minded tenacity that Jones himself would cite as essential, and perhaps he had the talent, too. He also had something else: a sense of perspective, a willingness to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and the ability to recognise that racing, for all its intensity, was not the sum total of existence. That perspective was born of the necessity of juggling racing with business, from knowing that there was a world beyond the circuit gates. Windmill Motor Caravans was not a hobby; it was a livelihood.

There is a tendency, when talking about ghosts, to romanticise them, to polish their stories until they shine with unearned perfection. Doing that would do McGuire no favours. He was not flawless. He could be stubborn. He could be impatient. He could overreach. But those flaws were inseparable from the qualities that made him good: the refusal to back down, the readiness to take risks, and the belief that the next race or the next opportunity might be the one that would change everything.

And now let me tell you a touching little story. Divina Galica finished sixth in the Shellsport International championship of 1977, in an ex-works Surtees TS19 entered and run by Nick and Charlie Whiting – yes, the very same Charlie Whiting who would go on to join the Brabham F1 team as chief mechanic then would become F1 technical delegate and F1 race director for the FIA. On the 1977 August bank holiday weekend on which McGuire met his maker, Galica qualified second and finished third, beaten by Emilio de Villota in an ex-works McLaren M23, who won, and Tony Trimmer in another ex-works Surtees TS19, who was second.

In 2019 and 2020 I was the comms and PR director for W Series, that much missed free-to-enter single-seater series for female drivers only. The last round of W Series’ inaugural season, 2019, took place at Brands Hatch, and on the eve of the race, together with Divina, whom I had engaged that year to coach our drivers, I walked the track. As we approached Stirlings, the fast 90-degree left-hander that funnels the cars to Clearways, Clark Curve, and the end of that majestic lap, she abruptly stopped. “This is where Brian breathed his last,” she said, almost inaudibly.

It was a balmy evening, and she and I were entirely alone. Suddenly, she was overcome. She did not cry, but she welled up. For a time she could not speak. I am extremely fond of her, so I gave her a hug, then, after a while, I dared to ask her, “What was he like?”

She did not reply immediately, then she spoke at some length. I did not record what she said – that would have been inappropriate given the intimacy of the circumstances – but I wrote in my notebook what I had remembered of it as soon as we returned to the paddock. Divina can be a lyrical storyteller when the mood takes her, and here is what I wrote.

“He was a nice guy. He was pretty quick, too. He raced hard, he lived hard, and he played hard. He didn’t get the breaks, but he absolutely belonged in the messy, noisy, oil-stained world of 1970s British motor racing, where deals were done on handshakes, where cars were fixed with ingenuity and optimism, and where the line between triumph and disaster was often measured in inches. In the end it was measured in inches for him, certainly. He was part of the fabric of our world, and, when he was gone, that fabric was subtly but permanently altered. I realise, now, standing here at Stirlings, that I haven’t thought of him for years. Perhaps I should have done, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, I’m thinking of him now.”

Eighty years on from McGuire’s birth, it is worth asking ourselves why we take time to remember some racers but not others. Success, of course, is the most obvious answer, but it is not the only one. Context matters; timing matters; and survival matters. Brian McGuire did not survive long enough to become a champion, a regular winner, or even a fixture. But he survived long enough to matter, and long enough to leave a mark, however faint it may seem from the distance of 48 years. After all, he was Alan Jones’ best mate; he had the gumption to cross hemispheres in pursuit of a dream; and he scored the first ever Williams win.

In the end, perhaps that is the most fitting way to mark what should have been his 80th birthday: not with exaggerated claims or sentimental excess, but with recognition; recognition that motor sport is richer for having had this hardy Aussie in it, however briefly; recognition that behind every F1 world champion, from Giuseppe Farina to Lando Norris, there was and is a posse of talented but rarely remembered contemporaries whose stories are no less compelling for the absence of silverware; and recognition that ghosts are only ghosts if we let them fade.

So, today, spare a thought for Brian McGuire. Picture him in an Earl’s Court pub with Alan Jones, two young Aussies plotting their futures over pints of Watney’s Red Barrel and improbable optimism. Picture him at Thruxton in 1976, climbing from that Williams FW04 with a grin that suggested that he knew, on some level, that he had done something special. Picture him at Brands Hatch in 1977, on the day he died, doing what he loved, and doing it as hard and as well as he knew how. He should have turned 80 three days ago. He should have had more time. He should have had more chances. But he had enough, just enough, to ensure that his name, whispered now rather than shouted, still resonates. RIP Brian McGuire.