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 Hours 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?
Denis Jenkinson
Motor Sport Magazine
Standard House, Bonhill Street
London, EC2 4DA
Date: 14 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 1000km 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 GP 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.
Switzerland. Jackie Stewart.
