Remembering Chris Amon at 80 – F1's greatest unfulfilled talent?

But even so, he should by right have won a hatful of grands prix fully on merit. In fact had he enjoyed just average luck, he could have been the 1968 world champion for Ferrari. He was utterly brilliant, polished yet spectacular and technically in tune with the dynamics of a racing car in a way that had Ferrari’s Mauro Forghieri say of him: “Not only was he a driver of the calibre of Clark, but he was the best analyst of car behaviour of any driver I ever worked with.” Forghieri was at Ferrari from ’61 to ’86…

Amon, as a 17-year-old local driving an ancient Maserati 250F bought for £1,000, caused something of a sensation when the international stars turned up at the Levin track early in ‘63. He was among the quickest and his high-speed drifting technique drew gasps of appreciation. F1 team owner Reg Parnell sought him out. “Yeah, he said he’d never seen a 250F being driven like that since Fangio,” chuckled Amon years later. Parnell’s interest was Amon’s ticket into the European racing scene. He was on the F1 grid as a 19 year-old, the cars weren’t great but he was on his way.

Bruce McLaren saw something in Amon and recruited him to his burgeoning new team, and it was there his reputation as a test driver took hold as he completed thousands of miles of tyre testing for Firestone, the company which was largely funding McLaren at that stage. The tyre guys once played a trick on him, putting the same tyres back on they’d just taken off to see what he’d say. He came straight back in to ask if they were sure they hadn’t put the same set back on by mistake because they felt identical to the previous set. In later years Goodyear would be paying him even more than it paid Jackie Stewart.

The Firestone link played its part in Ferrari calling for ’67 and as McLaren hadn’t been able to provide him with an F1 car because of engine supply issues, he left Bruce, though they did win Le Mans together. Forghieri had been able to create very good handling chassis for Ferrari but they were hamstrung by the ancient technology of their V12s, which were basically from the 1950s, trying to compete against the brilliant new Cosworth DFV. But they were good enough for Amon to become a contender.

In the period 1967-1972 Amon arguably delivered a greater quantity of virtuoso performances than anyone other than Stewart.

Mexico ‘67 was where Amon first got to go wheel-to-wheel with the great Jim Clark. “He was the best of us,” said Amon in retirement, “but I was able to have a brief nibble at him in Mexico and that precluded some fantastic ding-dongs with him in the Tasman series that winter.”

The Tasman series for F1 cars was held over eight races in Australia and New Zealand. It was a straight Clark vs Amon contest, Lotus 49 vs Ferrari 246T. Amon won the New Zealand Grand Prix at Pukekohe but only because Clark retired when leading. The following weekend at Levin he won again, but this time on merit, with Clark clipping a marker board in his chase. Clark won at Wigram, a track which favoured the DFV’s greater power. In Teretonga both had incidents in the wet race and Bruce McLaren won. At Surfers Paradise the pair were passing and re-passing virtually throughout but this time it was Amon’s new 4-valve head engine which broke. At Sandown Park they renewed their dice. Clark won it, but Amon was level with his rear wheel as they crossed the line. Clark took the title but Amon had made him work for it.

Clark was killed a few weeks later and the ’68 world championship was fought out between Graham Hill, Stewart and Denny Hulme, all DFV-powered. Amon should by rights have been in the thick of that contest but his luck was appalling. He started from the front row in 8 of the 11 races, and his three pole positions included that of Spa, where he was four seconds faster than the next man. It was attributed to the Ferrari’s new-fangled rear wing but, as he pointed out, “I’d done a virtually identical time without the wing.” He retired from the race with radiator damage from a stone thrown up by the car ahead.

He’d been leading the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama by almost a minute when his fuel pump failed. He was similarly dominant at Mont Tremblant in Canada before being forced to retire near the end.

During the off-season he again took part in the Tasman Series. Rindt had replaced Clark at Lotus and was Amon’s main rival. This time Amon prevailed and beat Rindt to the title.

In the world championship of ’69 the Ferrari was hopelessly outclassed yet Amon produced a couple of miracle drives to put it in contention. At Montjuïc he assumed the lead after Rindt’s wing failure and accident and was leading by over 40sec when the engine broke. At Monaco, despite a ridiculously heavier fuel load than the DFV cars, he was running second, well ahead of eventual winner Stewart when the diff failed.

He left Ferrari just as it was on the cusp of producing a brilliant new car with a flat-12 engine to take on the DFV. He joined the new March team for 1970, won the International Trophy, beating Stewart’s sister car, and set a fastest lap in excess of 150mph around the old Spa track as he chased Pedro Rodriguez’s winning BRM. His time at Matra in ’71 and ’72 is recalled for winning the non-championship ’71 Argentine Grand Prix, losing his visor pull-offs while leading the Italian Grand Prix and his magnificent performance at Clermont Ferrand for the ’72 French Grand Prix. From pole he simply left everyone else in the distance and looked comfortably on the way to victory before he picked up a puncture. He rejoined eighth after pitting for a replacement and shattered the lap record in his recovery drive, on the tail of Fittipaldi’s second place Lotus as they took the chequer. His pace was of a completely different order to anyone else that day.

“There are some days where you feel ‘I don’t think anyone else can do it quite as well as me today’ and that was one of them,” was how he summarised it when I interviewed him in the ‘90s. He had quite a few of those days, far more than his CV would suggest. Almost 40 years into retirement when he passed away, he remained a legend.