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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, March 1999

In the end, it is just a car. You sit with a steering wheel in your hands. You change gear by shifting a lever fore and aft, working your way across a gate while depressing the furthest to the left of the three pedals at your feet. The one in the middle makes the car stop while on the right is one to make it go. It is that simple. There are no electronic instruments, no paddles for changing gear. The steering wheel is entirely circular. In theory, anyone with a driving licence could drive a Brabham BT49.

The practice is rather different and while I will come to that shortly, just to give you an idea for now, lodge in your head that this car, a 1982 BT49D, weighs about 530kgs and is powered by a Cosworth DFV engine producing about 530bhp. That’s a nice, round 1000bhp for every tonne of car. To put it another, slightly more alarming, way that’s just about double the power-to-weight ratio of what is currently the world’s fastest road car, the 240mph McLaren F1.

That’s for later. Now I am simply sizing the car up in the pits at Donington during a test day for Thoroughbred Grand Prix competitors. The car belongs to Ian Giles who, as well as proving exceptionally relaxed out of the car and hugely quick on board, is also about the same size and shape as a conventional grand prix driver whereas I, sadly, am not. He has agreed to let me drive with no restrictions but seems as curious as I am to see how I am physically going to get myself on board.

Right now, however, we have another problem with which to contend. Giles’ two-man crew are rather less keen to see me in the Brabham and are not shy about showing their feelings. It is made crystal clear that our photographers are not welcome while replies to questions come, at best, in single syllables, usually in single words and, once or twice, not at all.

I sit out the morning watching others howl around the track, wondering what I have taken on. My colleague, Matthew Franey, is having a ball in an ex-Michele Alboreto Tyrrell 012, Bob Berridge is awesome in his Williams FW08 and when Giles drives the Brabham, I realise that his claim that it will take the Craner Curves flat in sixth gear is not idle. You can hear the DFV right around the lap and not once between Redgate and the Old Hairpin does its note falter.

Mention the BT49 to its designer and, even for a man with a track record such as Gordon Murray’s, it’s clear it is a car of which he remains exceptionally proud. “I love its simplicity and elegance. There is nothing in the least bit complicated on the car – it all just worked. We ended up using it for four seasons, from 1979-82.”

Brabham BT49 Frankel

With no seat and essentially bolted into place, Frankel takes to the track, where he was easily distracted from the discomfort

It may have been simple but it worked. Introduced too late in 1979 for its true effect to be felt, the next season Piquet came second only to Alan Jones’ Williams, before claiming the first of his three titles the following year. It was finally overcome in 1982 by the turbo revolution and, then, the ban on skirts, the latter a move the BT49 felt more than perhaps any of its opponents.

“Our big drivers had left, so I chopped a few inches off the chassis… how on earth did you get in?!”

Nor did its design lack innovation. As Murray points out, “it was the first F1 car to use carbon fibre in its tub, and though it was also part aluminium, we used carbon fibre in the car’s structure two years before McLaren did.”

That, however, was not the BT49’s secret weapon, the reason which made the car the class of the F1 field and gave Brabham its first driver’s title since 1967. The ace up its elegant sleeve, says Murray, was downforce. “It just had more of it, more than any other car out there and it all came from the ground effect. We ran the car with no front wing at all and scarcely any at the back. It all came from under the car and it generated more pure downforce, I think, even than the Williams. When we had to run a flat bottom, we lost two-thirds of the downforce in an instant.”

Its engineering simplicity did, however, play a key role. “It was the most reliable car of its era. In Nelson’s championship year he never failed to finish through mechanical failure.” The books support this: 15 starts, 11 finishes, four accidents and just the one mechanical failure when his engine blew at Monza on the last lap relegating him to sixth. But he still finished.

The elegance and simplicity Murray refers to is not simply beneath the skin. To my eyes, the Lotus 79 is the only one of its contemporaries with a claim to greater beauty. It’s at its best seen from dead head-on, where the downward curve of its gently sloping side pods have elements of Concorde’s wing profile. The nose sharpens to a defiant point, there is nothing to interfere with the airflow over the body save the mirrors and driver’s head while the Parmalat livery is one of the smartest of all.

Patrese Monaco in 1982 Brabham BT49

Patrese took this car to victory in Monaco in 1982, the final win for the team with Ford power before BMW’s turbos came to the fore

Beautiful, however, does not mean big. The BT49 was the first GP car Murray had designed which was unable to accommodate his six-foot-four frame. “Our big drivers like John Watson had all left the team, so I chopped three or four inches out of the monocoque. How on earth did you get in?!”

By removing the seat and bodywork that’s how. The elegant body is, in fact, all one panel and lifts off easily. I could then just about cram myself into the tub, rear seat-belt mounting points dug deep into my back and strap myself in before the bodywork was replaced. If I’d had an accident or had to get out of the car in a hurry for any reason at all I would have stood no chance at all. Someone plugged in a starter and, with a whoop and a bang, eye-wateringly loud even through a helmet, balaclava and ear-plugs, the Cosworth fired up. This DFV sounds different to most hammering around the track, reflecting its extreme state of tune. Its note is more melodic, smoother and exciting than usual. Giles cautions me never to let it run below 6000rpm, suggests I shift at 10,500rpm to give myself a little room for error (he takes it to 11,200rpm) and advises that it only really gets going above 8500rpm.

The first couple of laps were easy enough. The Hewland six-speed ’box is one of the best I’ve used, the tyres were already warm and my only interest was making sure I found my way around the track without getting in anyone’s way. Two thoughts occurred: first, it was only with the greatest effort that I could lift my right foot sufficiently for it to disengage from the accelerator and move across to the brake and, secondly, I was not sure I had ever been more uncomfortable in my life.

Brabham BT49 cockpit

What I had hoped would be one of the great experiences was fast turning into a misery and much as I would like to blame anyone else, the real reason was me. I simply did not fit this car and should have given up the struggle, saving myself a great deal of pain and making the day of at least two people back in the pits.

It was only the knowledge that the experience would remain long after the bruises had faded that kept me out there. On lap three, I started to drive the Brabham rather faster and, as the rev-counter swept past 8500rpm, so all thoughts of how I had got myself into this situation in the first place vanished. Funnily enough, it didn’t seem to hurt any more either.

“I had the knowledge that the experience would remain long after the bruises had faded”

Suddenly I was busy, more busy than I remember ever being in a car. In this car, there are no straights as such. Straights are where you relax, change gear every so often, check instruments and think about where the traffic is, how many laps remain and such like; straights are called straights because they are where you straighten up those affairs left untended while your concentration is required in the corners.

Not in this car; coming out of Coppice in third (I expect the truly brave use at least fourth) the usually long stretch to the start of the Melbourne loop seemed to have gone missing, absorbed into a frenzy of gearshifts, tachometer needle flicking into five figures time and again and, more than anything else, utter determination to arrive in the braking area in good shape to lose three gears and 100mph in time to angle into the Esses. I was surprised to feel the Brabham under- and over-steer in the hairpins that led back to the pitstraight, feeling restless but not uncomfortable on departure from the Melbourne hairpin, and using every inch of track at Goddards, simply to get around the corner. Giles had noticed as much when he was driving and suggested it probably had more to do with a quirky differential than anything I might be doing. In the faster corners, despite no longer boasting the skirts it once used to such effect, I got nowhere near to the limit.

Brabham BT49

Not cut out for grander drivers: the Brabham was deliberately designed tight

I returned the Brabham to its owner and pulled up outside the pit and thought back to this car’s finest hour. It coincided with one of grand prix racing’s darkest. The 1982 Canadian GP will only ever be remembered for the death of Riccardo Paletti, coming scarcely a month after the loss of Gilles Villeneuve. It marked a watershed in attitudes to on-track loss of life and, to date, there have been just three deaths in F1, one in testing, one in practice and one during a race.

Brabham had used a mix of DFV and BMW turbo power all season, the latter having hitherto finished just one race to date. Piquet had a 1.5-litre BT50, Patrese this BT49D. Nelson led from lap nine to win, Riccardo running home to an unchallenged second. It was BMW’s first grand prix win and, as it transpired, Brabham’s final 1-2.

Driving it was an experience you only appreciate once it’s over. On the track, there was simply too much to do to enjoy it at the time; if you knock back a drink without pausing for breath, you only taste it once it’s gone down; so it proved with the Brabham. Sitting in the pit, waiting for the bodywork to be removed to allow my escape, I was both aghast and relieved the experience was behind me. Driving back to London, I started to appreciate the extraordinary privilege, the generosity and trust placed in me by its owner. Some months later, I now know this day that had started so badly will be one I will cherish for years to come.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, March 2010

We all remember our first grand prix. You can watch it for years on the television but until you actually go and watch a gridful of Formula 1 cars come past, feel your insides churn and your ears itch, you will only have seen it. You will never have experienced it.

Mine was at Brands Hatch on a sunny summer’s day in 1978. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but in the case of the Lotus 79 I am prepared to make an exception. I can remember looking at Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson streaking away from the rest of the field in their now usual 1-2 formation and my 12-year-old mind knew exactly why. Everything else on the grid that day, the Ferraris, McLarens, Renaults, Brabhams and Tyrrells, looked obsolete.

The Lotus 78 had been a pretty impressive piece of work, but the following 79 was something else: the lowest, sleekest racing car there had ever been. I recall perfectly poring over its lines and concluding it would be impossible to design anything to look more modern than this: any wider and it would break the rules, any lower and… well it was already on the ground. Truly I believed everyone else should just give up because it was not conceivable that anyone could do any better than this.

Andrew Frankel Lotus 79 cockpit

And I wasn’t entirely wrong, though cause and effect had become somewhat muddled. Its speed was not a symptom of its looks, but the other way around. True, both Colin Chapman and Peter Wright had an eye for the aesthetics, but the reason it looked so different to any other car out there was simply because it was.

“We called it the unfair advantage,” says Clive Chapman, son of Colin, boss of Classic Team Lotus and custodian of this Lotus 79 since it stopped racing. “The 78 was our first attempt at a ground-effect car, but the 79 was the first Formula 1 car to really exploit its potential. Straight out of the box it was two seconds a lap faster than the 78 everywhere, more at some tracks. We had to do some serious sandbagging.” The reason the advantage was so wonderfully unfair for Lotus was that the main opposition came from Ferrari, which had just completed a hat-trick of constructors’ titles; but its wide and low flat-12 engine made designing a true ground-effect car with proper venturi tunnels impossible. “Not only did we have something they did not, rather more importantly, they couldn’t go out and get it.”

Bizarrely, both the 79s failed that day at Brands and it was Carlos Reutemann’s Ferrari that pulled a devastating move on Niki Lauda’s Brabham to claim victory. But I only had eyes for one car, becoming mesmerised by Mario’s inch-perfect lines, lap after lap while it lasted. If you’d told me then that one day I’d drive not only a 79, but that 79, I’d have probably passed out.

But that car is this car: Lotus 79/3, Mario’s main weapon in his title year. The 79 didn’t even make its championship debut until round six at Zolder in late May, which Mario won in 79/2, before going on to win at Jarama, Anderstorp and Hockenheim in 79/3, with his fifth win of the season coming at Zandvoort in 79/4. The 79’s other win of the year was Ronnie’s last victory, at the Österreichring driving 79/2. Two races later he would crash his 79 in practice for the Italian Grand Prix and, with the spare set up for the considerably shorter Andretti, started his last race in a 78.

Of the two other 79s, 79/1 was the development car and raced just once in 1978 (with Jean-Pierre Jarier to no great effect at Watkins Glen) before being sold to privateer Hector Rebaque for the 1979 season. The last car, 79/5, was built for the ’79 season, almost as if Colin Chapman knew he needed a long-stop in the event of the radical Lotus 80 failing to realise its potential.

“With this weather, you won’t get heat into any of the tyres we could put on it”

Today, the 79 has another beauty, one conveyed on it by history. It seems scarcely believable now, but when it won Mario his championship, the era of the slicks-and-wings F1 car had not yet seen its 10th birthday. All we knew then was that, of those seen so far, it was the most beautiful of all. But now more than 30 further years have passed and I still cannot think of another that comes closer to visual perfection from more angles. If a spaceman fell to earth pondering the meaning of the phrase ‘if it looks right, it usually is right’, you could do no better than point him in the direction of this 79.

But there’s an added magic of this particular 79. Unraced since 1979, it’s not a recreation clinging to a chassis plate as some kind of identity – it’s all real. The tub, bodywork and even the engine and gearbox you see here belonged to this car in period. Clive is usually very relaxed about his cars being raced, but just a few are regarded as simply too important to risk compromising, and 79/3 is one of them. Gently restored to fully-functioning condition about 10 years ago, it goes to shows, has run up the Goodwood Hill and has attended other demonstrations, but that’s it. It is fabulously original.

Today, its task is to carry me around the same Hethel test track upon which it would have been shaken down all those years ago. Sadly conditions are terrible – the air is a single degree above freezing, track conditions vary from quite damp to properly wet, and fog limits visibility to around 100 metres – not much for a car capable of making a Bugatti Veyron’s acceleration look very ordinary indeed.

Frankly, I’d been expecting a call to reschedule, but Classic Team Lotus – still staffed by ex-Team Lotus engineers – is made of sterner stuff. Chris Dinnage used to be Ayrton Senna’s chief mechanic but today he has the somewhat less edifying task of looking after me. Conditions are right on the cusp between slicks and wets, but the slicks stay on because they’ll look better in the shots. As Chris says, “in this weather you won’t get any heat whatever we put on”.

Before climbing aboard, there’s time to soak up a few last details. The front of the car represents standard F1 thinking of the era, but as your eyes pan back past the cockpit with its effective little wind deflector, things change. There’s no fuel in those long sidepods because, unlike the 78 that had three different fuel cells, all the 79’s petrol goes directly behind the driver, freeing up space for the venturi tunnels that would change the face of F1 racing. It still wears its skirts, too, but on a bumpy track like Hethel, they’re stowed in the pods. Simply dropping them to the floor doubles downforce.

1978 Lotus 79 Andretti Brands Hatch

That fateful day in 1978: Frankel fell in love with the Lotus 79 when Andretti led team-mate Peterson through the opening turns at Brands Hatch

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Likewise at the back, everything has been moved out of the way of the airflow under the car: brakes and springs are inboard and years of traditional suspension design was abandoned because longitudinal radius arms would have got in the way. In their place came wide-based wishbones. Indeed when work began on the 79, ground effect was the dominant principle around which the rest of the car was designed and, where needed, compromised. Even the air intakes that wrapped around the roll-hoop of a 78 were abandoned as they interfered too much with the flow of air to the rear wing.

Needless to say, power is of the Cosworth DFV variety. The 79/3 runs a standard long-stroke engine to period specification which means around 480bhp at 10,600rpm, perhaps 80 more than the earliest DFVs, but at least 60 less than the maddest short-strokers have shown. As expected, it directs its power through a Hewland H-pattern gearbox, the Getrag sequential shift Chapman had intended proving insufficiently robust for racing.

It’s time to go. Thanking Peterson’s lanky frame for the fact that I can get in the 79 at all, I’m struck by how traditional the driving environment is… how backward, even, compared to its cutting-edge exterior. In terms of its dynamic abilities, it’s probably closer to modern F1 than an early ’60s machine, but the cockpit design appears to have evolved hardly at all. You still have to peer at tiny Smiths instruments with spidery numerals to read your revs, pressures and temperatures, which must have been irksome in a car of such retina-detaching performance. There’s a brake balance bar and separate controls for the front and rear rollbars (Dinnage says Ronnie could never remember which way to move them until Mario chipped in with ‘hard in, soft out’, after which he never forgot again), but that’s it. Compared to the jet-fighter interior of a modern F1 car, the 79 seems nearer 50 than 30 years old.

But it also makes it gratifyingly simple to drive. Just flick on the fuel and ignition, wait for the external starter to spin the engine, catch it on the throttle and settle down to an even 3000rpm idle. There is an exquisite nastiness to close encounters with DFVs, like eating raw chillies or downing neat bourbon, and you’ll put up with all the discomfitures just to feel the power. The clutch is sufficiently kind to avoid red-faced getaways and this particular Hewland ’box is as light, precise and easy as you could wish. But how would this irreplaceable slice of British racing heritage react to such terrible conditions?

studio Lotus 79

The Lotus 79 in all its glory.

At first it was unexpectedly accommodating. The motor would pull from as little as 4000rpm and felt quite strong at 6000rpm. The steering is light, the brakes meaty but responsive. I wasn’t stupid enough to risk full throttle in the lower gears, but once up into fourth, I felt I could risk stretching its legs. But I was wrong. In that instant the car jinked right, and the revs and my heart-rate leapt as one. Wheelspin at 8000rpm in fourth gear. I’d bet plenty it would have done it in fifth too. Gerhard Berger once told me that a car could only be said to have enough power if it could spin its wheels at any given point on a race track. That day at Hethel, the 79 was that car.

Now treating it with even greater circumspection, I learned after several more laps where it could and could not be pushed, and as long as you trod ever so gently, full throttle could eventually be reached but not for sufficiently long in the fog to feel full thrust for more than an instant or two. It was mesmerising, tantalising and really rather frustrating.

“I felt I could risk it. But the car jinked right… the revs and my heart leapt as one”

Still, I think the 79 inspired as much confidence as you could expect from a bewinged F1 car on stone-cold, soaking wet slicks. I’d anticipated next to no grip in slow corners, for its springs have to be stiff enough to maintain ride height at maximum speed and downforce, but lateral adhesion was actually good enough not to make you fear going straight on every time the wheel was turned. It understeered, but mildly and predictably. The only frightening deficiency was traction, which was fairly forgivable under the circumstances. As for the quicker stuff, it would have been insanity to try. Even in that weather, it was quick enough through Hethel’s infamous Windsock curve to make driving little more than blind. Certainly had something unexpected appeared out of the gloom there would have been no chance to stop, leaving high-speed evasion the only option. And I didn’t much fancy that.

So on the last lap I cruised, surreally driving a Lotus 79 like it was a road car. Not only was it a lot less frightening, it allowed time to look around and savour what I was actually doing, a prohibitively dangerous luxury at any higher-effort level. Mario’s wheel was in my hand, Cosworth’s DFV at my back and Chapman’s incomparable design all around me.

break down Lotus 79

The less-than glorious Hethel weather

I can’t say I consummated my 32-year-old love affair with the 79 that freezing, foggy day in Norfolk – to be honest it wasn’t much more than a fumble round the back of the bike sheds – but when you operate from the position of someone who never even expected to sit in one, even that fleeting glimpse into its world is precious beyond words. Statistically the 79 was far from the best grand prix car in the world: it was competitive for just one season – compare that to the 72 which won races in five consecutive years – and chalked up just six wins to its name. But it did change racing and stands today as one of the most iconic cars of its or any other era. And as we move into a new era of Lotus F1 cars, it’s worth bearing in mind too that it was the last to win a world championship. And that is an act that will take some following.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, December 1997

The last Formula 1 car I drove was a March 891. It was powered by a 3.5-litre V10 motor built by Ilmor, the people who build the Mercedes engine in today’s McLaren. It was about halfway into the electronic and aerodynamic revolution that led to the space-age missiles of today, but its technology was only for the small of stature. I could only fit in the one-piece carbon-fibre tub after the seat, moulded to fit Austrian Karl Wendlinger, had been removed. Even then I stuck out of the cockpit like a duck coming up from a dive and couldn’t bend my elbow enough to reach the gearlever properly. The engine could only be started by a technician with a briefcase and the tyres had to have warmers to be safe on lap one. The chassis preferred minute attention to aerodynamics, rather than alteration of roll bars or springs or other old-fashioned stuff, and it was so close to the ground and had so little droop travel on its suspension that the tub beached on the yellow lines between paddock and track.

Ferrari 312 T3

Once out there, I was allowed to rev it to a conservative 14,000rpm as the combination of wind battering my protruding helmet and a brutal mix of 750bhp and 3G lateral acceleration or thereabouts through Club Corner was enough to wilt my neck muscles inside 10 laps. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it, before or since.

Awesome, both technically and physically, but… it was a March. A good car; a successful car. But a hybrid. It was a mix of clever people’s ideas and someone else’s engine and gearbox. It wasn’t a Lotus or a Williams which, while similarly configured laid claim to a greater pedigree and it was not, definitely not, a Ferrari.

Nobody I know can successfully explain what it is about Ferrari, but they all acknowledge there is definitely something. It’s the something which makes every driver with the talent long to drive the red cars with the famous exception of Lanfranchi, who passed up the opportunity because Enzo Ferrari wouldn’t pay for a plane ticket to Fiorano and besides, Tony would have had to give up fags, booze and birds. What Tony eschewed was enough to make Schumacher senior pass up the chance of a third consecutive championship with Benetton. It wasn’t just the money, whatever the press might say.

Hales in Ferrari 312 T3

The March experience was a few years ago now, but today’s job would be at the same venue – Silverstone’s South Circuit. Today though was to be very special in my life. Today I would drive a Formula 1 Ferrari. Today I would sit in a cockpit once occupied by Gilles Villeneuve, the man who was so uncomplicated in his love of driving that everybody loved him for it. The man whose touch in adversity helped carry the prancing horse through bleak times and who struck his rivals a psychological blow whenever it rained, just as Schumacher does now. And it was in this very Ferrari 312 T3, chassis number 034, that, in 1978, Gilles steered to victory at his home grand prix in Canada.

“This car endured a shipwreck which soaked it in salt water for days before it could be rescued”

Pensioned off by the factory in ’79 in favour of the ground-effect T4, 034 had been sold to an American collector and became the high-profile subject of a massive bankruptcy in the mid ’80s before it was rescued by racer and musician Nick Mason. It then endured a shipwreck while en route from a museum in Canada which soaked it in salt water for days before it was rescued again, rebuilt and restored to corrosion-free health once more. A few years in the tender care of crew from Mason’s Ten Tenths company gave the car a good home and regular exercise before it had a huge accident at the 1994 Goodwood Festival of Speed which cartwheeled it end-over-end, shattering the front end of the car and worse still – the ankles of former BRM grand prix driver Mike Wilds.

Ferrari’s 312 T3 Villeneuve 1979

Ferrari’s 312 T3 would yield Villeneuve just a single win, but laid the foundation for him to excel in the T4 of 1979, winning three races and finishing second in the points

Getty Images

Today’s job was to drive it for the first time since the Maranello factory had lovingly replaced the crumpled aluminium sheet and after Ferrari specialist, Bob Houghton, had repaired the bodywork and John Dabbs and Dave Griffiths at Ten Tenths had carefully reassembled the car.

Before I drove, I spent a few moments just looking at the car; appreciating that Ferrari made not only the car, but the engine and the gearbox, an effort that remains unique in F1 to this day. I study the 312’s hunched forward stance which seems to place the driver so close to the front wheels. Size up the polished aluminium, double triangle rear wing which tops a vertical post sticking up from the transverse five-speed gearbox. It looks so much smaller than the long, wide front wing, mounted on the very apex of the nose like some space-age snowplough. No doubt about it, the 312 T3 looked so very different to its contemporaries at the time. Two decades later, it is still a very distinctive machine.

Ferrari 312 T3 on track

Stick the boot in, or don’t, as it turned out. Our bestockinged driver found the footwell a squeeze

It is also so much wider than the needle-thin projectiles of today. Each of the sidepods contains a radiator and its exhaust ducts and these pods almost fill the gap between front and rear wheels, rather like a sports car’s body. Climbing in also proves a simple affair after the March; a handful of strategically placed turn and lock fasteners release the top bodywork which lifts to reveal a shallow, gleaming aluminium tub. Legs disappear under the steering wheel, your upper body is firmly wedged by the braces for the roll over hoop and belts clamp torso, crotch and shoulders with vice-like grip. The diminutive Villeneuve would doubtless have had a moulded seat to fit him, but I seem to fill the bare aluminium just about right. Apart that is, from in the footwell. Gilles must have had tiny feet, because mine wedge solid before I can even reach the pedals. The only solution is to remove my fireproof boot and tape up my stockinged foot.

Bodywork on, belts tight. Booster battery connected. Click on master switch and low-pressure fuel pump. Wait for the needle to flick up, then hit the starter. Start the flat-12 spinning, then turn on the ignition. The engine catches instantly, but you must then hold a good 2000rpm while it warms up. Let it drop for any more than a few seconds without the booster battery and the minimal on-board electrical system cannot feed both sparks and fuel pump. The engine stops. This happens regularly and occasions tutting and shaking of heads from the assembled crew who then have to wheel over the slave battery and go through the starting litany again.

Engine warmed and ready, the gearlever falls to the right hand and the clutch is light underfoot although its travel is minimal. Gear lever down then left and back for first with a gentle grate as the gears stop stirring. To move off, hold the engine at about 3500, then just relax the left foot the merest amount. The clutch grabs fiercely with the tiniest movement and the car starts forward like a pouncing cat, but don’t give up. Just hold what seems like far too many revs and don’t relax the foot until the car is well and truly on the move. It’s a simple and easily forgotten technique — you can stall the engine repeatedly if you don’t get it right. Out now towards the track, surging and stuttering as the right foot jerks in sympathy with the lumps and bumps which 50 passing years have wracked from the few remaining pieces of wartime Tarmac.

Smooth Tarmac gained, you can feel the flat-12 behind you spitting and snuffling in protest, thrumming and tingling through the tub, buzzing through your back and tickling your hands through the wheel’s rim. Squeeze the silken throttle pedal some more.

Now the car is on the move, the revs are higher and it leaps forward in response as if a giant gust of wind has just swept it along. The tachometer needle whips up to 8000rpm in an instant, so quick that you must remember to shift up. Guide the lever forward and across to second. Fumble as it hits the edge of the gate… The Italian cars were possibly unique in having a slotted metal guide around their shifters, added to which there is a positive stop detent. This means you have to go all the way up — or down — in sequence. The idea was to prevent drivers getting the wrong slot and detonating the engine in the heat of battle. The theory is fine and it probably worked well when it was new…

Second to third and third to fourth is a straight fore and aft flick and as confidence grows and arms relax, you can snick the lever up and down as fast as you like, like a switch. The motor meanwhile assumes a different persona as it climbs up the scale. At about 6000rpm, the hoarse-throated braying from behind suddenly develops a harder edge. The tingling and buzzing disappears and the shove becomes a kick. The note washes through your senses and you forget the air roaring and hissing around your helmet. Push towards a still conservative 10,500rpm — our limit for the day — and the wail becomes a chainsaw’s howl, braying screaming and rasping all at once. It’s a noise that only a flat-12 Ferrari can make and the soundtrack alone can make you forget that you are in sole control of this piece of history, now drawing close to flat out in fifth gear and approaching Stowe corner.

Lift, brake and shift down. The car slows even more quickly than it accelerates, and I find myself cruising up to the corner on a trailing throttle. Turn the wheel to the right and the car leaps instantly into the corner. Too much. Regain the line and relax. The next corner is Club and again I use more lock than needed and twitch the nose. It’s as if the car has castors at the front: There’s an initial, instant swivel and then it settles. I can at least give the engine a push through the safety of Club’s long, wide sweep. Once its aimed and settled, the front pushes wide, and then the tail skips to the left, revs rising as it goes. It’s easy to catch, but once again, I use too much lock and the car darts back the other way.

The flat-12 engine’s Ferrari

Simplicity in the details: The flat-12 engine’s note differed hugely across its rev range

So far not elegant, but at least we’re still motoring. I can drive this Ferrari. In fact almost anybody with a licence could. So far the hardest thing has been managing the idling engine, then moving off. The gears need a relaxed hand and some planning while the steering is so sharp you need a gentle touch, but nothing anyone who has driven a kart won’t understand. But, the T3 is driveable. Just driving, though, is not what a Formula 1 Ferrari is meant for.

The hardest thing now is to work out how to dig safely into the T3’s reserves. Was that slithering tail a pointer to bigger scares in store? Was it warning that if you press harder the slide will become a spin, and was that darting nose another caution? Would it grow yet more insistent with speed and upset the tail further? Difficult… But you must have confidence in the car’s ultimate capability, even if you may not reach its limit. Villeneuve had a gift not given to many, but even he could have done little without some help from the car. So you must trust it, but before you do, you must, simply must, get the tyres hot enough to work. The rears are over a foot wide and unless you heat them throughout, the Ferrari cannot work. This is the trap. Cold slicks make a thoroughbred like the 312 feel frighteningly horrible, but how to go fast enough to warm them without crashing? Maybe those tyre warmers weren’t such a sissy idea after all.

“Anybody could drive a 1970s F1 Ferrari. Only a select few could win races with one”

So do it gently. Just carry more speed into the corner but don’t do anything sudden. Don’t try and brake too hard, but lean on the front tyres rather than attack the corner with them. Then pour on the power and feel that flat-12 closing on its 510bhp peak. And as you step up the speed, warm the slicks and ease the car into its envelope, it begins to flow. The steering stops darting and becomes a precision tool. Turn-in is still sharp, but you can use it to point the car towards a more distant apex. Then there’s just a hint of push which prompts you to nail the throttle. The skip and yaw from the tail is now merely a suggestion but this neatly sweeps the rear round the corner as you ease the wheel straight. Belted in so tight, you forget that you are a human addition to the cockpit. Instead you become part of the car’s fabric and aim through the entire corner rather than trying to drive it in sections. The process seems more relaxed and you look further up the road, point the car further around the bend, carry more speed in and, as a result, out.

Ferrari 312 T3 number 12

Learning to bring in the foot-wide rear tyres proved key to performance

Sadly, my relationship with the gearshift does not develop at a similar pace. Moving the lever fore and aft is as fast as you can move hand and foot, but moving it across the gate is something of a lottery. I tried doing it fast, doing it slow, guiding the lever and letting it guide itself, but without consistent success. At least the detent meant all I was likely to get was neutral (irritating but not expensive) rather than the next one down (potentially expensive as well as likely to lock the rear wheels). Dabbs and Houghton did say the accuracy of the ’box varies according to temperature fine adjustment, but I can’t help thinking that the Hewland method of a wide throw but no gate is easier to live with. You just aim the lever and it finds the slot for you.

Fortunately, that wonderful engine was usually willing to lug the next gear up which was preferable to a fistful of neutrals while I tried to find a rhythm. Each lap brought more temperature to the tyres and the confidence that the next lap could be faster still. You start to sense the forces at work, especially through the faster corners. The T3 has a lot less grip than the March, reflecting some 10 years of tyre and aerodynamic progress between the two, but it was sufficient to begin tugging at the helmeted head, enough to make those neck muscles tingle once more after a 15-lap session.

All too soon this fascinating experience was over. It had not been so brutal as the later car, but all the better for it. The Ferrari communicated better, slid more and gave more time to plan ahead. And it had a better, more individual noise. Yes, almost anyone could drive a 1970s F1 Ferrari. Only a select few, though, could win races with one.

Villeneuve-Ferrari-on-track-

Villeneuve en route to a breakthrough victory at the track that would one day be named in his honour. Having qualified third, he ran clear of Scheckter’s Wolf to win

The 312 T3: better than the books suggest

It was only Lotus might that masked how good Ferrari’s design really was

Ferrari has Colin Chapman alone to blame for the fact that the 312 T3 has not been remembered as a landmark Ferrari in the same way as the championship-winning 312 T, 12 and 14. It won five races in 1978, more than required by Williams to walk the constructors’ championship in 1980. But the might of the extraordinary Lotus 79 with its unsurpassed ground-effect aerodynamics meant Carlos Reutemann ended his Maranello days just third in the championship, with the young Villeneuve a distant ninth and Ferrari as runner-up, but effective also-rans in the Lotus-dominated constructors’ championship.

The T3 was, as its name suggests, an evolutionary car which was both longer and wider than the T2 and heavier too. Unlike the Lotus, there was nothing radical about its design, though it had an effectively new chassis with the engine lowered in the car and the suspension revised to cope with the Michelin radials it would carry in place of Goodyear crossplies.

The simple truth was that, like every other grand prix car of its era, it was no match for the Lotuses. But when they failed, such as during Reutemann’s epic drive to victory at Brands Hatch, the T3s were almost invariably there to pick up the pieces, cleaning up between them all bar three of the remaining races. Two of these were claimed by Lauda’s Brabham — using in Sweden the subsequently outlawed ‘fan car’ — and inheriting a win at Monza after Andretti and Villeneuve both received time penalties.

Although it led for 39 laps at Long Beach, the claim to fame of 312 T3 chassis number 034 will always be Villeneuve’s first grand prix victory, on Canadian home ground at the newly configured Notre Dame circuit in Montreal. To be fair Jean-Pierre Jarier, taking over the second Lotus seat from the late Ronnie Peterson, looked the likely winner having stormed the 79 to pole position and leading for the first 47 laps. An oil leak denied Jarier victory and, egged on by an exultant crowd, Villeneuve crossed the line 13 seconds ahead of Jody Scheckter’s Wolf and 20sec ahead of Reutemann’s Ferrari. AF

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

For 27 years it sat — up on blocks, under a cover – in his mother’s suburban garage: last in line of an evocative motor-sporting bloodstock… a works grand prix Alfa Romeo, designed, built and run.

The car was a (parting) gift to Bruno Giacomelli after a fourth season spent in Formula 1 with Ingegnere Carlo Chiti’s Autodelta SpA. That was 1982. Their agreement, however, had been struck in October 1980, a few days before the GP of the United States.

“I was in a strong position after Watkins Glen [Giacomelli had led convincingly from pole until halted by an electrical gremlin] and I signed a two-year contract,” says this ex-British Formula 3 and European Formula 2 champion. “And I insisted that they gave me a car at the end of each season. Chiti didn’t want to, to begin with, but he was a good guy and made sure that I got cars in perfect working order.”

Giacomelli took delivery of both – a 179B, chassis 03, and a 182 – on the same day: 20 December 1985. “I had to insist a lot.”

Alfa Romeo 182 of Bruno Giacomelli

After 27 years locked in his mother’s garage, the Alfa required a seven-year restoration to get back on track

The latter was the work of ex-Ligier designer Gérard Ducarouge and featured the first all-carbon F1 tub – made by Roger Sloman’s Advanced Composites of Heanor, Derbyshire – to emerge from female moulds. Powered by Chiti’s 60-degree V12, it showed well initially, particularly on street circuits – Andrea de Cesaris was on pole and led at Long Beach and would have won in Monaco given a splash more fuel – but its performances tailed away thereafter.

“I had done all the development work,” says Giacomelli. “It was a clean car, with good power – we had 530bhp – and on the weight limit. I set a lap record for non-turbos testing on the short circuit at Paul Ricard.

“I got on very well with Andrea. He was fast, but I was more meticulous, more precise. When the team started falling in love with him, it was not really listening to me any more. And I don’t like to shout and bang my hands on the table.”

Alfa Romeo of Bruno Giacomelli at the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1982

Giacomelli in the 182 at Long Beach in 1982. The car fared well on street circuits, with team-mate Andrea de Cesaris starting this race on pole – then becoming F1’s youngest pole-sitter in the process at 22 years 308 days – before brake troubles hit.

Giacomelli, let go late, would sign with Toleman for 1983, while de Cesaris remained at a restructured ‘Alfa Romeo’: the beleaguered state-owned manufacturer would farm out the design and running of its F1 cars to Paolo Pavanelli’s Euroracing for the next three seasons.

“I was busy getting on with my career and the rest of my life and I almost forgot that I owned this 182,” says Giacomelli. “My mother – she was one of my biggest fans – was its guardian. But eventually I knew it was the right time to put my hands on it again.”

The car was wheeled back into the daylight in May 2012 and transferred to long-time Autodelta engineer Renato Melchioretto, his twin sons Andrea and Daniele and daughter Manuela, the A, D and M of ADM Motorsport. Better known for its involvement in junior formulae, running the likes of future two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Earl Bamber, this was to be the Milanese team’s first historic restoration.

“Renato had started as an engine man at Autodelta but, when Ducarouge arrived [in 1981], he became a chassis expert, too,” says Giacomelli. “So he knew everything about this car. That was very lucky because there are no drawings, nothing; everything from Autodelta is lost.

Alfa Romeo 182 engine

The Carlo Chiti 60-degree V12 engine developed 530bhp in period, but had to have extensive restoration work to correct a bagful of issues, such as seized pistons and a pesky corroded water pump.

“But we did it without pressure. There was no hurry. They never worked full-time on it. And I was the supervisor. I trained as an engineering draughtsman for three years before I became a racing driver and the technical side of the sport has always fascinated me, so I enjoyed this project a lot.”

All seven years of it.

Its most onerous task was the water pump, its original magnesium casing having been ruined because someone – ahem – had forgotten to drain the coolant.

Alfa Romeo 182 cockpit

the Alfa is full of date-correct details, with Giacomelli insisting on originality.

Mario Tollentino, another Autodelta man, an early advocate of CAD and the designer/reworker of the subsequent 184T and 185T, helped greatly with this part of the project.

Giacomelli: “He didn’t have anything from those days – can you believe it? – but he had kept working in motor sport [in F1, sports cars and rallying, for AGS, BMW, Dallara, Hyundai, Lamborghini, Volkswagen] and he had a great enthusiasm for our project.

“If you have the drawing, it’s not a problem. But we had nothing. So we had to look at the piece itself and, even after a 3D scan, we double-checked the interactions of the shafts, built a dummy and changed some measurements before establishing the definitive part to be cast and machined.

“We could have made it in aluminium but I wanted to stay with magnesium. But I didn’t want people to think that it was an original part, so I had it painted a strange colour rather than be chemically treated, which used to turn parts golden.”

Elsewhere, three pistons had seized in the bores of their wet liners. The gearbox – an Autodelta casing – was split to reveal perfect Hewland internals, complete with a brand-new crown wheel and pinion. Koni shocks were disassembled and rebuilt; this company’s former representative in Giacomelli’s hometown Brescia had not only attended the tests at Balocco back in the day but also kept his detailed notes. The Magneti Marelli distributor and the metering unit for the Lucas fuel injection underwent the same processes – the latter being the only part sent to the UK for renewal.

New gaskets, new bearings in the uprights, new pipework, new stickers, new skirts, refurbished wheels – and the car was ready for a 15-mile shakedown at a chilly Varano, near Parma, in December 2019.

Bruno Giacomelli climbs into his restored Alfa Romeo 182

Giacomelli saddles up for his first runs at Varano

Bruno Giacomelli sits in his restored Alfa Romeo 182

Giacomelli: “People were asking if I was excited to drive it again, and I kept saying, ‘No.’ I am razionale. For me, this is normal. Remember, I was a part of the development of this car: the seating position; its steering wheel; the dash and its instruments. I had decided all these things. Yes, very many years ago, but still I knew exactly what to expect. I knew all the good work that we had done. I jumped in, started the engine, spun the wheels, went sideways a bit, and drove onto a wet track. On slicks. Normal. It ran perfectly and really I felt a sense of achievement from that.

“There are no drawings, nothing; everything from Autodelta is lost”

“I’d sold my 179B many years ago, but I kept the 182 because I felt it was an important car, even though it had never won any races. It’s pure Alfa. That doesn’t exist now. It’s just a badge and a brand today.”

But which 182 is it?

A bewildered Denis Jenkinson wrote in Motor Sport in 1982: “When you see an Alfa Romeo engineer making notes on a technical sheet about a specific car and there is no engine or chassis number on the sheet you begin to wonder if the Autodelta racing department works to any sort of system.”

Its previous aluminium chassis at least had plates glued to them – these could and would be swapped about, warns Giacomelli – but 182’s carbon item carries no identifying marks. (That’s how it left Derbyshire and how it is now.) Thus the scuffed piece of paper bearing Autodelta’s letterhead and Chiti’s signature that is in Giacomelli’s possession is priceless: it confirms his car as chassis 01. Except that even Bruno is not entirely sure if that’s right.

Alfa Romeo of Bruno Giacomelli with ADM restorers

Giacomelli poses alongside the ADM Motorsports team. This car was ADM’s first historic race car restoration. It is more accustomed to running modern Formula 3 cars and most recently Italian F4 entries.

Bruno Giacomelli in his restored Alfa Romeo 182 F1 car

New stickers in place for the test.

 

Onboard with Bruno Giacomelli in his restored Alfa Romeo 182

Cue oversteer on fresh slicks

The car’s rebuild revealed professionally repaired damage to the tub’s right-front corner. Might this be the car – 02, reportedly – which De Cesaris stuck in the wall while chasing Niki Lauda’s leading McLaren at Long Beach? Sloman recalls one of the batch of five (or six) chassis – Chiti initially ordered a dozen – being returned for repair, but is unable to remember the precise date and circumstances.

Or is it the chassis which Giacomelli drove that crisp March day in the South of France, when all was new and promised so much; in which he qualified third at Monaco and briefly held second before a badly heat-treated driveshaft broke; and which pitched him into the Brands Hatch catch-fencing when its rear wing failed on the 175mph downhill approach to Hawthorns?

“It’s very difficult to see a Formula 1 car from this period that doesn’t have pieces missing or that are wrong,” he says. “That’s normal in historic racing today. My car is complete, after being stored for almost 30 years in a garage, where nobody touched it. It still has its complicated underbody wing. It has the later style of engine cover from 1982 – but it’s exactly how it left Autodelta and came to me.”

“It’s difficult to see an F1 car of this age that doesn’t have bits missing”

The pandemic stymied plans to demonstrate the car in 2020, but again razionale Giacomelli is prepared to wait. The car is stored safely – minus its coolant! – in readiness for the next right time. He might sell in the future, when provenance will be all-important – and likely quibbled over – but for now he knows exactly what he has: a genuine and moving – in both meanings – tribute to his Alfa Romeo fratelli.

“I wanted Gérard – I phoned to tell him that the car’s restoration was progressing – and Mario – he was ill, but we didn’t know – and also Andrea to see the car run again,” he says. “Sadly they have all gone now. So, too have my Autodelta mechanics.”

And Bruno’s mother Rachele, who rode Moto Guzzi in the 1950s, passed away three years ago, aged 101. Hers was a strong life that spanned the works Alfa Romeo grand prix cars of Tazio Nuvolari, Juan Fangio and her beloved son.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken From Motor Sport , July 2024

The tension’s almost unbearable as a chilling breeze sweeps down the old Silverstone pitlane. Will it, won’t it? Silence descends for a second, and the atmosphere ratchets up one more notch, before being brutally shattered: an 800bhp turbo beast roars into life.

The machine in front of us is the Toleman TG183B – Ayrton Senna’s first grand prix car. We’re here to see it run today, as Sky F1 shoots a tribute film signifying 30 years since the F1 legend’s death to air over the Emilia-Romagna race weekend. It’s a precursor to the car joining a bumper Senna demonstration at this summer’s Silverstone Festival.

Tolemon steering wheel

No paddle shift

Jakob Ebrey

Pierre Gasly behind the wheel of Toleman

“Stoked” Pierre Gasly

Jakob Ebrey

Fears allayed that the 1980s monster might not stir, the man sourced to get behind the wheel is nothing less than a bona fide Senna fanatic – grand prix race winner and current Alpine driver Pierre Gasly.

“I’m so stoked,” he says beforehand, clutching his special-edition Senna crash helmet. “I get the chance to drive this beautiful piece of engineering.”

The future three-time world champion, already a man to watch when he made his 1984 F1 debut, first raced the TG183B in anger at his home race in Rio de Janeiro, before scoring a first world championship point next time out in South Africa, and another at the following race in Zolder. In historic racing terms, this is a highly significant car.

1.5-litre Hart 415T gives 800bhp Toleman

1.5-litre Hart 415T gives 800bhp

Jakob Ebrey

Gasly proudly sports the Senna-style helmet

Gasly proudly sports the Senna-style helmet.

Jakob Ebrey

Also making his grand prix bow for Tyrrell that Brazil weekend was Senna’s British F3 archrival from the previous season, Martin Brundle. More than a little au fait with slightly unwieldy turbo grand prix cars, the Le Mans winner, F1 veteran and broadcaster is on-hand – along with Sky presenter and racer Naomi Schiff – to give Gasly a few pointers, while key Toleman figures are also present: team manager Alex Hawkridge, press man Chris Witty and mechanic Barney Drew-Smythe.

This track test has an added poignancy in that team founder Ted Toleman died in April, highlighting the impact his small band of racers had on F1, going from serial DNQ-ers to podium finishers in just four seasons – not to mention giving a debut to the driver many view as racing’s greatest. Helping Senna make that first leap into F1 was chief designer Rory Byrne as well as engineers John Gentry and Pat Symonds – a stellar line-up.

“There was no surprise with Ayrton’s speed but his competitiveness was unbelievable”

It’s now 40 years since that landmark season, but the memory of Senna’s arresting presence and searing pace is still clear as day for the former Toleman charges.

Not only was the intense South American immediately at one with the car, he fitted in with the driven privateer outfit when hired as a replacement for Derek Warwick, the team’s talisman who had moved to Renault.

“It was going to be Rory’s decision effectively, and Ayrton tested at Donington with us after he’d already done so for Williams and McLaren,” says Witty.

“Ayrton and Rory immediately clicked. There was no telemetry then – the only interface to make the car go quicker was driver to engineer – and Rory was able to talk to him like he did with Warwick.

Martin Brundle, Gasly and Naomi Schiff

Tips from Martin Brundle for Gasly and Naomi Schiff

Jakob Ebrey

Ayrton Senna’s 1984 Monaco GP

Ayrton Senna’s first podium came at the 1984 Monaco GP – when Toleman was robbed

Getty Images

“It was something extra special, his ability to remember minute details for feedback. Rory just said to Alex: ‘You’ve got to do everything you can to sign this guy.’”

“I’d been following him since karting,” adds Hawkridge. “We knew that he was super-quick. There was no surprise with his speed [but] his competitiveness was unbelievable. He just couldn’t come second. I’d never seen that intensity before in a driver.”

The car Senna was presented with to both test and make his F1 debut is the one Gasly drives today. However, the design is from the 1983 season, and was used to tide over the Brazilian and team-mate Johnny Cecotto until the new TG184 was ready for round five – the French Grand Prix.

“Gasly is immediately comfortable with a car built 13 years before he was born”

While its successor was a more considered concept, the TG183B was a last-minute effort conjured up by Byrne and co under high-pressure circumstances. It went through the same crisis-management that most other teams faced at the start of ’83 – the FIA banned ground effect on the eve of the season, meaning all participants had to come up with a new design overnight.

With its quirky features such as a radiator located in the front wing, aggressive floor aero down the side of the car and double rear wing structure, the TG183B was one of the most creative solutions to the conundrum.

“We produced a ground-effect car at the end of ’82 called TG183 which was going to be our car for the following year – it raced at Monza and Las Vegas [in ’82] – which had sliding skirts and everything,” explains Witty.

Pierre Gasly racing in Toleman

Shades of ’84 as Gasly channels the spirit of Senna for the Sky cameras

Jakob Ebrey

“Pat, Rory and John had done some really nice work with the 183 – it had a pointed nose, with a little radiator inlet at the front – and then they had to redesign the car.

“It was just downforce, downforce, downforce and because its Hart engine was an aluminium monobloc design, it needed a lot of cooling.”

The aggressive approach to aerodynamics is stark as the car sits in the old Silverstone pits, giving off a menacing air – not that it would intimidate the old hand Brundle, who looks on the car of his ’80s nemesis Senna with slightly misty eyes.

“It’s just a big Formula Ford car really, isn’t it?” he says. “And seeing that helmet design with that livery is a bit eerie…”

Looking the part, Gasly is now ready for his first run. The Brian Hart 1.5-litre turbo sounds pitch perfect, and the Frenchman wastes no time in getting up to speed.

Pierre Gasly racing the Toleman Hart

It’s a cool 9°C as Gasly runs on grooved tyres, but the GP winner appears immediately comfortably with a car built 13 years before he was born. It harrumphs down the straight before the driver launches into Copse with full enthusiasm, clearly making use of an increased sightline with no halo, cumbersome wheel covers or extra-large tyres in the way – he can actually see the apex!

The clear joy from behind the wheel is almost immediately transmitted to the small crowd on the pitwall, all suitably thrilled by seeing such a visceral machine in action up close. Forget the fact Gasly hasn’t used an H-pattern gearshift in a racing car before, or isn’t supported by all the usual electronics, he hasn’t ever driven a vintage competition prototype of any kind at all. And yet he doesn’t miss a beat. Once out of the car following that first blast, the Frenchman is positively bouncing.

“It’s just exceeded my expectations – it’s my first ever time running in a car that was built before I was even born,” he enthuses. “It’s obviously a piece of history, just seeing how different it is to what I’m used to. No dash on the steering, just plain, so pure – gearstick, steering, clutch, brake, throttle, and that’s it! I just love the raw driving, no buttons, not looking at the dash – you’re just there, yourself and the track. It gave me a feeling which I’ve never experienced before.”

Despite the quirky aero solutions, 183B is an F1 design from a more unreconstructed racing age, and Gasly reveals that getting to grips with the 800bhp rocket in the back is one of the trickiest aspects.

Senna in ’84 headshot

Senna in ’84

Getty Images

Toleman No19

The Brazilian raced No19 for his first F1 season

Jakob Ebrey

“The turbo was quite particular in the way it kicks in,” he comments on a car which weighs in at just 540kg – a third less than his own modern-day Alpine. “I’ve always been used to paddle shifts. Using an H-pattern is very unusual for me. With the clutch, the way the car behaves in relation to the gearshifts is also quite different.”

Schiff, who also tries out the car, concurs: “You’ve got to really throw it into the downshifts. It’s a long time since I’ve done heel-and-toe!”

Would Gasly like to have been racing in the ’80s era of fire-breathing turbos among heroes like Senna, Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell? He concedes the TG183B might have had a profound effect on his thinking.

“I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t ever really attracted by classic old cars,” he says. “I’m very into all the latest [road-going] hypercars. However, this experience made me feel something unique. In my generation, any time I’ve jumped in a car I’ve never really thought about safety – even if sometimes it’s thrown right in your face with some tragic events. Generally these days things are safer.

“I was thinking these last few days about driving in this car. Back then the safety was different. You respect the machine even more. I was pushing, getting closer to the limit – but then you have this sense of [the relative] safety [or lack of] which comes to the back of your mind.”

The emotion is clear for Gasly in emulating Senna in some small way – so why did he gravitate towards the Brazilian and not French hero Alain Prost?

Pierre, you have some work to do

Pierre, you have some work to do

Jakob Ebrey

Pierre Gasly, infront of Senna Toleman

No Pierre, you can’t swap this Toleman for your Alpine for the rest of the F1 season…

Jakob Ebrey

“Obviously, Alain Prost is one of the most successful F1 drivers of all time, and in France, of course, he’s a legend,” acknowledges Gasly. “His and Ayrton’s rivalry is probably the most iconic in F1 – whenever you’d hear about Alain, Ayrton’s name would usually be mentioned.

“I started to watch documentaries and learn more about Ayrton. I really like the personality you had inside the car, but also outside it: his values, his beliefs and what he was giving back to his community in Brazil. You could see how huge he was and how many people were impacted by the accident in Imola. You still see it now around the world at race tracks, people screaming his name. He was more than just an F1 driver.”

It also isn’t lost on Gasly that he is now driving for a team whose lineage – via Renault, Lotus and Benetton – owes itself to Toleman. It’s essentially the same team at which Senna started his career. A handful of people who were there at the start in the early ’80s are still working at Enstone today.

“You think about it, the legacy is really, really cool,” Gasly says. “There are some original Toleman people here today, it’s crazy – I’m working with team members that actually worked on Ayrton’s car 40 years ago! It’s a lot of history.”

Senna was nothing less than a whirlwind in the TG183B. After helping Witty get the F1 car resprayed in the Rio favelas following a late promotion of Segafredo to title sponsor, the young charge would haul the car as high as 13th on his debut before the turbo let go.

Ayrton Senna No 19 Toleman

Chassis 05 is the actual car Senna raced.

Jakob Ebrey

Barney Drew-Smythe, Alex Hawkridge and Chris Witty

Barney Drew-Smythe, Alex Hawkridge and Chris Witty

Jakob Ebrey

However, there was improvement in the following two rounds at Kyalami and Zolder. In South Africa, Senna scored a point through what Witty describes as “sheer bloody mindedness” after his front wing was smashed to pieces on lap one, and he was promoted into the points in Belgium after Tyrrell was later thrown out of the world championship – retroactively disqualified due to its trick water refilling system.

Senna would then fail to qualify – for the only time in his F1 career – at the San Marino Grand Prix after a deluge soaked Imola, but he was undeterred.

“I really like the personality you had in the car, but also outside it”

Next would come the TG184’s arrival in Dijon, the famous Monaco podium, his departure for Lotus and everything else. But it all started with the Toleman TG183B.

For Hawkridge and Witty, 40 years on from that landmark season with Senna, the car represents both the start – and end – of something special, with Toleman lasting just one more year before selling to Benetton.

“I’d achieved everything I wanted to do in F1,” says Hawkridge. “We never won a race – but we did. We were ‘winning’ Monaco ’84 [when Senna was bearing down on Prost], and they red-flagged it. It was a stitch-up, and I lost my appetite.”

Team Toleman would taste title glory in future incarnations, and with some of the original figures involved with the TG183B. As Witty concludes: “It was just a great, great team with some great, great people.

Pierre Gasly driving into the distance

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, July 2003

When kitsch was cool, John Travolta was new and the only skirts in Formula 1 were mini, soft porn strutted and pouted its way onto the grand prix grid. On the arm of the ‘Penthouse Pets’ was a rich, handsome young Englishman, one of the latest junior racing sensations with the world seemingly at his feet.

Rupert Keegan in his Hesketh

Fittingly enough, for both sides of that good-time alliance, they joined what has become affectionately remembered as F1’s last ‘partying’ team, the effervescent Hesketh squad. With the Penthouse name, allied to that of Rizla cigarette papers, the team contrived to come up with one of the most brazen and distinctive colour schemes the sport has known, complete with a Memphis Belle-type French maid draped alluringly along the car’s bright blue flanks.

To the outside world, it appeared a combination tailor-made for Hesketh’s new charge, Rupert Keegan. Newly crowned as British Formula Three champion, the 21-year-old looked to be straight out of the James Hunt mould: a hard-charging, chain-smoking public schoolboy with straggly hair. A tyro who eyed up the girls and the smallest overtaking chance with the same gung-ho alacrity. A young man in a hurry; a rebel without a pause. But then reality bit.

Lord Hesketh, Keegan and the Penthouse Pets

Lord Hesketh (left), Keegan (middle) and the Penthouse Pets. No wonder the team got a reputation

Donington Park is fresh but bright as Keegan lowers his now far-sturdier frame into the cockpit, a 26-year separation melted by one breakfast meeting as he once more slides alongside his favourite painted lady (he actually knew the artist’s model, Suzanne Turner, quite well).

This is Rupert’s regular car, chassis number one, and the sensations and memories of that 1977 season come flooding back. The 308E’s present owner, successful historic racer Philip Walker, and the Legends Racing preparation company are happy to reunite the car with its original master before it’s sold on. With that same distinctive orange helmet in place (but only go-karting overalls), Keegan eases the car out onto the circuit among buzzing test-day traffic of Formula Fords and Caterhams. He hasn’t so much as sat in a racing car for eight years; double that for the last time he drove a big slicks-and-wings single-seater. A dozen or so laps later, though, there’s a big smile.

“I was now surrounded by all these women, and I was 21… what was I meant to do, object?!”

“I haven’t driven a car that quick for so long, but by the third lap I started giving it a go,” he says. “It was like riding a bike, it all came back. It was tiring, but exhilarating. I did no more than 15 laps, but it was enough.

The 308E was a fine-looking car, with its tapered, slimline wine-bottle shape, and was striking when clothed in a series of different colour schemes. But the fact that the team’s public face was so chopped-and-changed was a strong indicator of internal problems. Although Keegan’s car remained resplendent in its garish outfit throughout the year, there was a continual flow of liveries on the other cars as ‘pay drivers’ came and went; a tell-tale sign of the echo of empty coffers. Three joined Keegan in 1977: Harald Ertl, Hector Rebaque and Ian Ashley. None distinguished themselves (or ever outpaced Keegan), but they were essential because funds were so very, very short. It was a hand-to-mouth existence that prohibited any meaningful testing, and therefore any positive development of what started out as quite a promising package.

Young Rupert Keegan smiling

We know now that Hesketh was in its death throes by 1977. Three of the four main pillars from the heady days when the patriotic little team dumbfounded the sport’s giants with victory at Zandvoort in 1975 were long gone. James Hunt was, of course, a world champion with McLaren; Lord Hesketh, playboy patron extraordinaire, had walked; and designer Harvey Postlethwaite had been prised away by Walter Wolf. Only the team manager, Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley, remained, soldiering on through ’76 running outdated 308Cs for rent-a-drivers.

It may have been a shell of the original team, but Horsley was putting the pieces in place for a better 1977. One of his drivers the previous year was sponsormeister Guy Edwards, who had landed backing from Penthouse and Rizla. They agreed to stay on, and promising young designers Frank Dernie and Nigel Stroud produced the neat, all-new 308E. All they needed now was a good young driver, a natural successor to the inspirational Hunt.

2 Rupert Keegan Hesketh

Keegan back with his first love. British F3 success earned him an F1 drive, even if Hesketh was already in trouble.

Malcolm Griffiths

“‘Bubbles’ came to see me at the 1976 F3 finale at Thruxton,” says Keegan. “He put it simply: ‘If you win the title today, we’ll give you a drive in F1 next season.’ It was between Bruno Giacomelli and me, and we never got past the first corner: I was champion, and in F1.”

In just three years Keegan had gone from Formula Ford to the top, and he clearly possessed a genuine gift. He had won the first three F3 races of 1976 in a two year-old March, although he’s quick to recognise the part played by his brilliant young engineer, Adrian Reynard.

3 Rupert Keegan Hesketh

“Like riding a bike” getting back into the swing of driving the 308E

Malcolm Griffiths

What Keegan also had was a wealthy father willing to back his son’s career. Mike Keegan, owner of British Air Ferries, even bought FFord chassis constructor Hawke to aid Rupert’s path. The cynics had already attached to Keegan the undesirable tag of a rich-kid playboy who was paying his way to the top.

Keegan, therefore, was eager to prove he deserved his place in F1 on merit, but the lack of funds meant he missed the first three fly-away races of 1977. He immediately made waves on his and the 308E’s F1 debut in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, running as high as fourth and pulling off a stunning overtaking manoeuvre around the outside of Jackie Oliver’s Shadow at Paddock Hill bend.

Hesketh Rupert Keegan

His world championship debut at the Spanish GP was also encouraging. Qualifying 16th, he made his way through the field and was battling for eighth with Ronnie Peterson and Alan Jones before he had an accident. The point had still been made: this Keegan fellow was committed and brave, and maybe deserved his F1 place after all.

“I joined Surtees the following year, now I was sponsored by Durex!”

Still, being surrounded by scantily clad women can lead to you not being taken as seriously as you might like. Penthouse was making the most of its opportunity in the glamorous paddock, a posse of ‘pets’ attending every race. Keegan was left with the arduous task of spending time with them to satisfy his sponsors.

“We wouldn’t party at the weekend, we’d go to bed early,” he insists. “But Penthouse did enliven my playboy image, because I was surrounded by all these women. I was 21 years old. What was I supposed to do – object?

Keegan Hesketh 308E at Donington Park

Keegan reunited with his Hesketh 308E at Donington Park. The memories soon came flooding back, especially of Suzanne on the side

“It didn’t make it any better when I joined Surtees the next year – now I was sponsored by Durex!”

Hesketh chief mechanic Dave Sims corroborates his driver’s protestations: “All that playboy stuff was exaggerated. Now James, he was a real party man; Rupert was nowhere near like that, he was fit. He was a hardcase and I’m convinced he could have made it.”

At the end of May, Keegan was lucky to walk away from a light aeroplane crash, but soon his main concern was the lack of progress with the 308E. The Belgian and Swedish GPs were disasters because and inherent handling problem, chronic understeer leading to snap oversteer, was becoming overwhelming – and rookie Keegan could not get to the bottom of it.

Rupert Keegan Spanish GP at Jarama in 1977

Keegan tries to make up ground at the start of the Spanish GP at Jarama in 1977. An accident would rule him out on his world championship debut

“The difficulty was we couldn’t afford any testing, and had no driver experienced enough to pinpoint the solution,” explains Stroud. “Frank designed a modification whereby we put the oil coolers in the nose to put more weight forward, but we never really got to the source of the problem. I believe the characteristic was inherent.”

The redesign did help initially. In France, Keegan qualified 14th, at Silverstone he was 13th. The Austrian GP in August was a high point, although there was a hiccup when Rupert missed first qualifying – he’d been arrested! Trying to bypass a traffic jam on his way to the circuit, the police had waved him down. The young Keegan thought it wiser not to stop, and the ensuing chase and road block meant a trip to the cells: “The police didn’t find it funny, but the magistrate did and let me go!” He recovered to finish seventh, his best result of the season.

It was at this point that Keegan’s never-say-die enthusiasm behind the wheel – it was quite an achievement that he qualified for every GP entered that year – seemed to have paid dividends.

Bubbles Horsley, Keegan at Zolder, 1977

Bubbles Horsley (centre) with Keegan at Zolder, 1977, days after Keegan’s plane accident

getty images

“I was dissatisfied because people were going forward and we weren’t, but then Colin Chapman came up to me in Austria and made it very clear we’d do a contract for 1978.”

Fortunes failed to improve as the season tailed off but, confident of his Lotus position, Keegan was a happy man. Then things went wrong: “In the Canadian GP, I collided with Hans Binder; it shot me in the air and I came down, nose first, right onto the top of a barrier and broke my toes.” This followed team-mate Ashley’s monumental accident in qualifying, when he’d sliced through a television tower, so Hesketh headed home with two bags of bits.

“It shot me into the air and I came down, nose first, right on top of a barrier and broke my toes”

Worse was to follow: Mario Andretti turned down Ferrari to stay with Lotus, and then Chapman signed Peterson.

“I believe outside pressure was brought to bear on Colin; he was really apologetic,” says Keegan. “I had been näive. Although my father had known Chapman for years, it had been a mistake to be so trusting.”

The curtain was falling on Hesketh’s brief but bright history. With Olympus Cameras money it tried to qualify for eight GPs in 1978, Eddie Cheever’s the lone successful effort. The 308Es were then run for Divina Galica in the British F1 series. The show was over.

Keegan had to make do in 1978 with a drive at Surtees. For the second year in a row he’d joined a team on the way down, and a poor season ended early when he broke his hand at Zandvoort. The bright-eyed boy had lost his momentum; even if Reynard and John Macdonald got him back into F1 briefly, in 1980 and ’82.

John Surtees 1978

Surtees move for 1978 didn’t pay off, even with Durex branding

Getty Images

Keegan climbs from the Hesketh. He’s enthused enough to boldly say he would happily race it in the Thorougbred Grand Prix series. Since selected Group C and Indycar appearances in the mid-1980s, Keegan has left motor sport far behind.

Glancing over the pristine car, eyes lingering on Suzanne (recently repainted by the original artist), reflection sets in: “The press told me I was the next James Hunt, and maybe if I had gone to Lotus, I might have been. It could have worked out better, but there you go.

“Life is life.”

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

What does it take to drive a Formula 1 car? What does it feel like and yes, what happens when you get it wrong? Over the decades Motor Sport has been granted some extraordinary opportunities to answer these questions and more. We have reviewed, rated and even reunited some of the greatest grand prix cars ever built.

From pre-War forerunners right up to modern space-age hybrid racers, we have enjoyed unparalleled access to icons of the sport. Whilst these sorts of features are rare (and getting gradually rarer still as modern machinery becomes ever more complicated requiring a whole team of engineers armed with laptops to operate them) we have raided our archives and compiled the best, most compelling stories that span all eras of grand prix racing.

Our team of journalists have been incredibly fortunate to get behind the wheel themselves on multiple occasions, and it’s always enlightening to hear the tales of mere mortals tackling such machines first hand. But sometimes the stories run even deeper when Motor Sport’s unrivalled connections come into play, allowing us to introduce, or even reunite, key players with their long-lost partners in crime. Stirling Moss and his Gold Cup-winning Ferguson P99, anybody? How about Adrian Newey driving his own Leyton House for the first time? Modern-day F1 drivers stepping back in time to try their own hero’s car? These are the stories no writer can tell alone, and that’s part of what makes this issue so bewitching. So please enjoy this compilation of the great grand prix track tests, and we’ll work to keep them coming.

Read more track tests, race reports and interviews spanning the past century in Motor Sport’s vast archive.
Visit: motorsportmagazine.com

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport , February 2011

When I say there will never be another track test like this, I say so with a confidence inspired not simply by the subject’s unique, six-wheeled selling point. It’s also because what I’m sitting in can be seen almost as more a historical document of record than a racing car.

Tyrrell P34 sketch

I’ll explain. What you’re looking at here is Tyrrell-Ford P34/2, the first of the six-wheeled racers (P34/1 being the unraced prototype) which made its debut in May 1976 at the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama, the fourth race of the season, and effectively retired to unused T-car status after the 1977 US GP West at Long Beach a little less than a year later. And while it didn’t win any of the 14 grands prix it contested, it did put Patrick Depailler, the only man ever to race this car, on the podium on five of those occasions. So we can agree it is quite an important car.

Combine this with the five podiums scored by Jody Scheckter’s P34/3, including a top step at Anderstorp, plus four more achieved by three other P34 chassis, and what we have here is not quite the failure that history suggests it was. But even this is not really the point.

“We were in a straitjacket and needed an unfair advantage. The six-wheeler was it”

The thing about P34/2 is that after its final season it became frozen in time, ending up as a long-term exhibit in the Donington Collection. Every single thing you can see on or in this car with the sole exception of the tyres was there in 1977. And I don’t just mean engine, gearbox and chassis, I mean wishbones, wings, wheels and wiring, seat, belts, switches and dials. It is a time capsule, in essence.

Tyrrell P34 cockpit

Cockpit shows its age

Of course there are other cars in other museums in similar condition. The difference here is that this one runs. Bought by Roger Wills after the death of Tom Wheatcroft, he commissioned WDK Motorsport to see if it could get the car going in time for the 2010 Goodwood Festival of Speed. “We cleaned out the fuel system as best we could, changed the oil and put a match to it,” says WDK’s Ian Cox, only slightly metaphorically. Somewhat remarkably, P34/2 sparked up as if it had been days, not decades, since she last ran. Roger and Joe Twyman drove it up the hill and now it’s sitting in the Silverstone pitlane waiting for me.

Depailler in Tyrrell P34

Depailler is the only driver to last two seasons in a P34, both Scheckter and Peterson called it quits after one.

It looks frail, probably because it is. The 1977-spec bodywork with its front oil coolers is scored, pitted and blistered. The foam headrest support has perished almost entirely, and when the body comes off, exposed and ancient wiring makes me pleased this is a gentle test at a wide and safe Silverstone. At least I don’t have to think about the state of the suspension; this is one test where caution will be my watchword.

What has occupied my thoughts, not just in the run-up to driving the P34 but for years beforehand, was the thinking that led to its creation. Even our own Denis Jenkinson, who was never short of a sentence, admitted to being ‘speechless’ when he saw it for the first time.

Tyrrell P34 engine

Like many others I had bought the line that it was all about reducing frontal area, but a quick chat with its designer, Derek Gardner, soon set me straight on that. “We found ourselves in a straitjacket. Almost everyone had the same engine, gearbox and tyres; we needed an unfair advantage, and the six-wheeler was it. But it was never about frontal area: that was determined by the width of the rear tyres.”

Instead it was about grip. Four small wheels put more rubber on the road than two conventional wheels; you also gain a greater swept area of brake disc. Better, because a wheel and tyre exposed to a moving flow of air will generate a force at right angles to its cylindrical axis, and the size of that force is directly related to the size of wheel and tyre, so the smaller the wheels the lower that force will be. In short, small wheels meant less lift, which meant more grip. It was pure genius.

The driving forces behind the car were not just Tyrrell and Gardner, but Depailler too. While Scheckter was and remains to this day dismissive of the P34 – he told me he thought the car was rubbish, except his language was a little more colourful than that – it was Depailler, a lover of all things mechanical and experimental, who urged it on. The fact that it was known merely by its project number, rather than as the next in the line of ‘00’ racers, demonstrates how unsure Tyrrell was about its viability, and Jenks cites Depailler as the man who provided the ‘real impetus’ to go racing with it.

Tyrrell P34 project 32:2

It’s such a shame Patrick is no longer with us, and not just because his broken Alfa Romeo at Hockenheim deprived the world of a driver who, if greatness was measured by how good a driver was to watch, would have been up there with the best in the world. With his 1977 team-mate Ronnie Peterson gone too, and Scheckter indifferent to the point that it and the dreadful Ferrari 312 T5 are the only significant cars from his Formula 1 career which he doesn’t own, there is no one who drove it in anger in period to speak on its behalf.

If you go onto YouTube and look at the on-board footage of Depailler hoofing it around places as diverse as Monaco and the original Kyalami, flinging this very car into extravagant drifts at ludicrous speeds just because he could and, I suspect, because he knew there was a camera on the car, you’ll know man and machine rarely achieved a more harmonious union than this. He once told editor-in-chief Nigel Roebuck: “I run all the time at the limit. I like to run at the limit, to push things as far as I can. I am the same at everything. If I decide to do something, I give it everything. All the time.” See that footage of him and the P34 together and you won’t doubt his word.

Tyrrell P34 rear

With its DFV heart and chassis plate untouched, this P34 is a rolling museum piece

But today, some 35 years after it was first unveiled to a disbelieving Jenks on the lawn of Tyrrell’s house in West Clandon, and despite the fact that I still own a rather battered die-cast model bought as a child, it remains a strange beast. It’s sitting in a garage full of other period racing F1 cars, but so far as the attention they’re getting from onlookers relative to the P34 goes, they might as well not have been there. If you hold up your hand and block off the front at the cockpit, it seems conventional, less pretty in its 1977 First National Travelers Checks (sic) livery than simple 1976 Elf blue, but normal enough. But move your hand to obscure the rear and reveal the front and what you’re looking at might not even be a racing car, but something as likely to be designed to function on the moon, or the seabed. No wonder words failed our intrepid Continental Correspondent all those years ago.

Those diminutive 10-inch front wheels, the same diameter as those used on a 1959 Mini, are nothing like so interesting as the miniature double wishbone suspension system behind each one and the tiny ventilated discs they carry. I’ve not seen the data but for all they brought in terms of mechanical and aerodynamic grip, the price was paid in mechanical complexity and, surely, unsprung weight.

Tyrrell P34 front - on track

In its 1977 colours, the P34 returns to the track. The design ran for two seasons, scoring a total of 13 podium finishes plus one victory in Sweden

It’s a surprisingly and, some might say, needlessly spacious car. No modern aerodynamicist would allow such a wide aperture for accommodating a component as easily adaptable as a driver, even if he was the size of Ronnie Peterson. But as someone used to driving such cars in agony, if at all, it’s a blessed relief. We need to remove Patrick’s seat (how strange it is to write that…) but once installed on the bare aluminium tub there’s room aplenty for my shoulders, feet and elbows. Even his now somewhat threadbare belts fit.

Most of what I can see represents standard thinking of the day. The driving environment could as easily date from the early ’60s as the late ’70s – as if, shark-like, it had evolved to a point where there was no practical room for improvement.

“The fear of damaging its ancient internals informs my every action”

That seems laughable now as, just for a start, the dials are so small you almost have to squint to see readings for fuel and oil pressure, water and oil temperature. The rev-counter is larger and straight ahead but still needs to be consciously looked at, rather than assimilated in your peripheral vision. But that’s just one of many differences between now and then: we watch gauges like hawks because these are old cars and expensive to repair; they just went flat out because nothing else mattered.

There’s a stubby, wood-topped gear-shifter exactly where you would expect, less than a hand’s breadth from the small, black steering wheel, and then there’s a porthole. Yes, a porthole, through which I can see not one but two front wheels. Back then the ports were cut into the P34’s body to allow the driver to aim the car more accurately and, some say, monitor front tyre wear. Now they serve only to remind me that the rearmost set of front wheels are approximately parallel with my knees. I’ve never driven a car that can’t provide a straight answer to a question as simple as: ‘what’s the wheelbase?’

Tyrrell p34 pit lane

Patrick Depailler was one of the few fans of the P34, and pushed for its development.

LAT

Time to go. Master, pump and ignition on, throttle on the floor, press the button and the DFV explodes into life much like any other. Except the pistons shuttling up and down the bores of this one as it warms up at an even 4000rpm are 33 years old, meaning they have exceeded their life expectancy by at least 32 years.

To say I am mindful of this is to understate the obvious. This P34 is about to go into a year-long front-to-back restoration, and as the last person to drive it in original form the fear of damaging its ancient internals informs my every action more even than the usual fear of taking to the track in someone else’s F1 car with a power-to-weight ratio approximately double that of a Bugatti Veyron.

The clutch needs pumping before it will give me a gear, which is less than encouraging, but with a bit of gentle rocking first engages and with a surprising lack of drama the P34 eases out into the pitlane.

The first lap is a voyage of discovery but not for reasons I had expected. With tyres still cold I’m not going to do much more than guide the car around the track, but what strikes me first has nothing to do with its unique configuration. It’s the delightful ease with which the engine and gearbox can be used. I’ve been lucky enough to have had a few DFVs under my right foot over the years, but none as tractable as this, suggesting a degree of drivability which has been sacrificed in more modern times in the pursuit of raw power. It pulls very nicely from under 5000rpm and starts climbing properly onto the cam from as little as 6000rpm. I drove one once that would scarcely function below 8500rpm…

“The P34 would have been over a second a lap quicker if its front tyres had kept up with the rears”

And the Hewland five-speed gearbox is as nice and light as any I’ve tried. It may be that this one was particularly sweet when new and is now well run in, but once you’ve retuned your brain to accept just how close the gate is, you don’t have to think about it again because with two such well-defined planes, and first a safe distance away to your left, wrong-slotting seems inconceivable.

So it seems safe to up the effort level a little. Back in its day Depailler would have revved this engine to 10,500rpm or more, and until I’d discovered just how flexible this motor was, I’d worried about the unavoidable need to stay well shy of such numbers. In fact, because it comes on song so early you can gain a good impression of its raw speed without running the risk of decorating the Hangar Straight with its insides.

The punch of this era of F1 car is a novelty that must never wear off. Even this old Tyrrell, being driven necessarily gently and defensively, is so fast I can hear myself cackling in my Arai even above the exquisitely ugly din of the DFV. Coming out of Luffield in second it eats gears so fast that, even on the short pit straight, there’s all the time in the world for it to consume third, fourth and all the revs we’ll be using in fifth before you’re heading into Copse.

Beneath the bodywork is a remarkably original setup, soon to be restored

Beneath the bodywork is a remarkably original setup, soon to be restored

We sail through in fourth — I’m sure that on fresh rubber, with new suspension and a driver better versed in such cars it would get through in top — and head to the series of curves at Becketts. This is the bit I really wanted to get to: I was interested not so much in how it behaves on the limit because that was one place we’d not be visiting today, but simply how the six-wheeler addresses the road through the sweeping series of alternate lefts and rights.

And to be honest, it feels bloody strange. It’s so reactive to your every input the wheelbase seems shorter even than it is. It appears that you need do little more than look at a corner for the car to want to turn into it. Moreover the car plays a trick on you, I think because your mind is given the wrong impression of where the front wheels are relative to the rear and where, therefore, the yaw axis should be. But because — most of the time at least — the wheelbase has to be determined by the distance between the rear wheels and the aft pair of front wheels, that axis is further back than you think.

I imagine it’s a car that even someone who’s raced many F1 cars of this period would need to build up to; it may even provide some clue as to why a driver as gifted as Peterson never felt entirely at home behind its wheel. I suspect it’s a taste you either acquire, like the free-spirited Depailler, or don’t. Even the iron-willed Scheckter, who mastered this car better than anyone, never really got on with it, singling out the brakes for special criticism: “As soon as one set locked you had to lift off. It only really worked on very smooth surfaces, and back then there just weren’t many of those around.” He has a point.

Happily these are issues that will never concern me. I’m just astounded to be sitting here, guiding this car through Silverstone’s twists, watching those tiny wheels bob up and down, wondering about what might have been.

What appears beyond dispute is that none of the P34’s apparent shortcomings — its extra weight, mechanical complexity, variable wheelbase and unchanged frontal area — were responsible for its downfall. Instead it was undone by its tyres, specifically Goodyear’s inability or unwillingness to develop the fronts, unique to Tyrrell, at the same speed as the rears, which were the same as every Goodyear runner on the grid. Anecdotally it’s been suggested that by the end of ’77 the P34 would have been over a second a lap quicker if its front tyres had been able to keep up with the rears.

“The great irony is the P34 was undone by front-end grip”

But it was not to be: Scheckter left the team at the end of ’76 despite the P34 coming home a mere three points behind McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship (whose driver James Hunt was champion too) and soon after Gardner jumped ship. Maurice Phillippe came on board and moved the oil radiators forward and widened the front track, but all to little avail. As Gardner told me, “by then the car was fundamentally unbalanced front to rear”, and the results spoke for themselves. The great irony of the P34 is it was undone by front-end grip, the pursuit of which had sparked its creation in the first place. But as has since been suggested in historic racing, where another P34 driven by Martin Stretton has proven the class of the field thanks to Avon making front tyres that are just as good as the rears, its story could have been very different.

The good news is that P34/2 will race again, too. Roger Wills feels disinclined to let it remain a museum piece so will have it sympathetically restored, keeping every nut and bolt that can’t be used but making it safe to do once more what it was born to do. He’s even invited me back to have “a proper go in it”. I can scarcely wait.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, November 2003

John Surtees was always destined to become a constructor. At least that’s how it appeared from the outside. For he absolutely knew his own mind – how a team ought to be run, how a car should be — and would stick to his guns even if it meant irking influential people. For instance, he turned his back on Lotus before the 1961 season because he felt that Colin Chapman wasn’t being honest with him. He then convinced Lola’s Eric Broadley to build and badge – a rare occurrence for this prolific yet low-key designer – a Formula 1 car for ’62.

Tim Schenken TS9B Brands Hatch 1972

Tim Schenken handles the TS9B during a test at Brands Hatch in 1972. The team ran an exceptionally tight test programme, with Surtees himself often driving

By 1963, he felt ready to join Ferrari; he pulled a lethargic team up by its bootstraps and secured a surprise F1 title the following season. Yet he left the Scuderia just as he appeared ready to really cash in; he had tired of its incessant internal politics. However, not long before this, the shock move of ’66, he’d persuaded Enzo, not a man renowned for concessions, to let him to set up Team Surtees in order that he could run another manufacturer’s cars. The Old Man knew a kindred spirit when he saw one.

Then came Honda, and the Japanese way of doing things, in 1967. Surtees boldly concluded that its car wasn’t up to it and that he should build one for its singing V12 powerplant. Thus the ‘Hondola’ emerged from his Slough workshop and won thrillingly at Monza. But Honda had come to learn as much as to win, and its mechanics and engineers were shuffled with unsettling alacrity before the programme was shelved at the end of ’68.

John Surtees and Mike Hailwood at Silverstone in 1971

Surtees and Mike Hailwood at Silverstone in 1971

Getty Images

And so to 1969 – the worst year of his career: BRM in F1 and Chaparral in Can-Am, campaigns of which neither of these famous teams can be proud. Surtees became sick with worry – literally, he finished the season with viral pneumonia! – about the opportunities that were slipping by. Yet it was only now, after all of the above, that his famous name appeared on the nose of an F1 car – and even then, he insists that it came about completely by accident.

“I was in America doing the 1968 Can-Am series when I was introduced to James Garner [the actor],” Surtees explains. “He was keen to boost his image via motor racing – I think he felt a poor relation to Steve McQueen at the time – and he told me that he wanted to contest the Formula A [5000] series in America. But he didn’t just want to buy a car, he approached me about building a car.”

TS9 1971-73, 1972 Italian GP at Monza Mike Hailwood

The TS9 made 25 grand prix starts between 1971-73, with a best finish of second in the 1972 Italian GP at Monza with Mike Hailwood driving. Powered by the 3-litre Ford-Cosworth DFV, it would score a total of 33 points across its career

Surtees knew that Len Terry – the fastest pencil in the west – had a suitable design on the go; there is some debate, however, as to which one. It’s often stated that Surtees took over the Leda project; but according to Terry, Leda came later and the half-built car which morphed into the 1969 Surtees TS5 was originally commissioned by Roger Nathan, whose money had run out. What’s more, Terry lays claim to the T in the original TS. The bottom line, however, was that Surtees wasn’t impressed with the car when he first tested it.

“James Garner approached me, not about buying a car, but about building one”

“The original idea was for me to act as an agent, to develop the car and then hand the project over to Garner – for a commission.” he says. “But the cars would have my name on them so I wanted them to be right; I put in more work than anticipated.

Surtees TS9b suspension

Surtees TS9b cables

“Len did some modifications and we decided to run in the [inaugural] UK F5000 series, too. Things went pretty well for us, but the Americans were unhappy and so I sent David Hobbs over to sort things out. The truth of the matter is that their money had been spent; I wasn’t going to get paid and so I took over the project.”

Surtees TS9b rear

Surtees was now, at last, on the constructor “roller coaster”. He moved his operation from Slough to Edenbridge in Kent — and determined to take his F1 matters into his own hands.

The TS7 that appeared at the 1970 British Grand Prix was neat, simple and distinctive with its delta nose on a narrow, sharp-edged body. It did well, too, Surtees rising to as high as seventh (from 20th on the grid) before its oil pressure sagged. He was the ‘man on the move’ in Holland and Austria, too, before two more engine failures forced him out. And then he won the non-championship Oulton Park Gold Cup, prevailing with some comfort in the first 20-lap heat, and finishing runner-up in the second to pip on aggregate the Lotus 72 of Jochen Rindt.

Surtees TS9b rear on track

TS9 chassis 006 was raced regularly by Tim Schenken, right. The highlight was a strong debut in Argentina (fifth), despite the gearlever making a bid for freedom

The team’s first championship points came one month later (fifth at Mont Tremblant). Two weeks later still, Derek Bell, in the second TS7, scored the only F1 point of his career (sixth at Watkins Glen). It had been an impressive beginning, but eponymity had its frustrations, too.

‘The budget was meagre [£23,000] and we had to come up with a design that suited our pockets,” explains Surtees. “TS7’s shape was dictated by the funds and facilities available to us. I actually used some of my motorcycle contacts: its bulkheads are made of Reynolds 531 tubing.”

Surtees TS9b logo

As TS7 was a compromise, TS9 was a development, with a longer, wider wheelbase and improved centre of gravity

Surtees TS9b grill

Circumstances dictated that the TS9 of 1971 be a derivative: longer wheelbase, wider track and lower CoG. And it, too, was quick out of the blocks. New recruit Rolf Stommelen lost a probable victory in the non-championship Argentinian GP because of a moment of madness early in its second heat, while a seized gearbox cost Surtees a strong finish at Kyalami he was second, ahead of the Ferrari of eventual winner Mario Andretti, when the unit began to stiffen. But thereafter fortunes slumped – barring a second Gold Cup victory for Surtees. That changed with the arrival of Mike Hailwood.

“The TS9 was nice, but it just couldn’t quite get its power down onto the road”

‘The Bike’ had made a faltering start to his car career, but he clicked with his fellow motorcycle legend and, after strong performances in the TS8 F5000 machine, was called into the F1 squad for Monza. He played a key role in that amazing race, crossing the stripe in the lead on five occasions and finishing fourth – 0.18sec behind Peter Gethin’s BRM. Plans for Surtees to give his new side-rad TS9B its debut had been put on hold because of overheating worries, but John was delighted for Mike. He knew, though, that a tough decision was looming: to continue to race or to concentrate on running the team.

Australian Tim Schenken was signed to partner Hailwood in F1 in 1972, but John raced the F2 TS10 – in which he scored two wins and Hailwood took the European title. He also contested two F1 races – the International Trophy at Silverstone (third) and the Italian GP – and did F1 testing.

Surtees TS9b behind

Schenken: “There were days when I would be called to Goodwood for a test and I’d arrive at 9am and wait there all day while John drove round. Then, with about 20mins to go, he’d ask me to get in and see what I thought. The seat, pedals and wheel were all set up for him… It was a difficult situation.”

Surtees: “Quite frankly, we couldn’t do a lot of testing because we couldn’t afford to put big mileages on our engines. If a new part had to be assessed, I would normally do it. I don’t think that detracted from the team; from Mike Hailwood’s point of view, it’s what he wanted.”

There was logic to it – Surtees’ superb driving and chassis-sorting abilities came free to a financially stretched team – but it perhaps wasn’t the best example of motivational skills. Nor was Schenken’s racing of a Motul Rondel-run F2 Brabham in direct competition to the Matchbox-backed Surtees squad!

Schenken: “We were very different characters. I don’t want to take anything away from John – he was a fantastic driver. He didn’t have much budget to play with and he was doing all he could to make his team succeed.”

Schenken drove TS9 chassis 006 – the car you see here – for the bulk of the season. It was the newest of the team’s three chassis – pay driver Andrea de Adamich had been added to its roster. It was also the car in which James Hunt would finish third on his F1 debut, the 1973 Race of Champions.

Surtees TS9b steering wheel

“It was nice to drive; it reminded me of the Brabham I had driven in 1971,” says Schenken. “But it had the same problem as the Brabham: it just couldn’t quite get its power down onto the road.”

He’s right, it certainly feels beautifully balanced, stiffer than the Lotus 72 I tested last year. And, after a spate of recent ham-fisted struggles, my right hand finally alights upon a gearbox that at least makes me feel like a racing driver. Its lever flies around the gate; the faster your wrist can flick it, the happier this Hewland FG400 is. Such snappy cog selection frees up a typically willing and punchy DFV and, for what it’s worth, I push it harder than any previous F1 car I’ve dropped my desk-driving backside into. I even break my own golden rule: come in on the lap you think, ‘Just one more lap.’ Twice.

Schenken finished fifth in the season-opener at Buenos Aires, despite the gear lever coming off in his hand – he threw it at his pitcrew! Then Hailwood set Kyalami alight. From the second row of the grid, he disposed of Denny Hulme (McLaren M19A) and Emerson Fittipaldi (Lotus 72), setting the race’s fastest lap in the process and rushing up to the gearbox of Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell. Mike had the champion all tucked up and it was only a matter of time. And then a bolt on his TS9B’s rear suspension snapped.

Surtees TS9b vent

Silly little things hit the team hard: an overheated engine caused by a failing pressure cap cost Mike victory in the subsequent International Trophy, and had he not lost his airbox because of a broken spring clip, he might have won the Italian GP instead of finishing second.

“One of the problems we had was that we had a big turnover of mechanics,” says Surtees. “We had some very good people, real stalwarts who stayed with me right to the end, but a lot of guys learned their trade with us and were then lured away by teams who could pay them a better wage. Outsiders tended not to realise the sort of compromises we were having to make in order to stay alive.”

Between them Hailwood (13), de Adamich (3) and Schenken (2) rustled up 18 points, making a two-year total of 26 for the TS9 family – both marks upon which Surtees would fail to improve.

With Brazil’s Carlos Pace replacing Schenken for 1973, Surtees had what he believed to be his best-ever driver line-up – and, in the shape of TS14, his best car. His team, however, was stymied by outside influences.

John Surtees with helmet

The new car was ready too soon (!), Surtees running it at Monza in 1972, his last GP start. It conformed to the new-for-73 side-impact regs, but by the time the season came around, argument had shaved a little off the rules, leaving the Surtees a bit overweight. Not only that, but Firestone had withdrawn at the end of 72 — and then un-withdrawn one month later; it was in a bit of a pickle. Lotus switched to Goodyears, and was still dialling into them as TS14 set the pace at the big Kyalami test in January – on last year’s Firestone. Come the races, though, grip was suddenly very scarce. Ironically, Firestone had plumped for the tyre that had better suited the black-and-gold 72s; TS14 tended to burn through them, especially the fronts.

And if the tyres didn’t get them, Jody Scheckter did, the impulsive young South African wiping out all three Surtees in Silverstone’s ‘motorway pile-up’. Pace impressed, setting fastest laps in Germany and Austria while finishing third and fourth, but it was in the main another year put down to experience.

“At times we competed with the best, but compared with my career as a driver, my team was a disappointment”

The Silverstone wreckage had forced Surtees deeper into the red. Thank God, then, for the (just) six-figure sponsorship from Bang & Olufsen for 1974-75. John at last felt able to plan ahead, and he had a new factory built in Edenbridge. He would never move into it. He’d irked somebody influential, telling a paymaster that his wannabe racing driver son wasn’t quite the ticket. The money went elsewhere in ’75 at the last minute, and a two-year court case ensued. This drained vital time and energy in return for only ‘costs’. The team survived until ’78, but it never recovered from this financial hammer blow. It’s still a painful topic for Surtees…

Carlos Pace TS14A in the 1973 Brazilian GP

Carlos Pace aboard the TS14A in the 1973 Brazilian GP at Interlagos. Despite the team showing huge potential – Pace would score its second and final podium in Austria that year – results would dry up due to external factors

Getty Images

“I’m my own worst critic, and I look back and see things that I didn’t get right. Yes, we weren’t far off and at times we competed with the best, but when compared with my career as a driver, my team was a disappointment. That was not entirely our fault, there were factors beyond our control, but I set high standards and we didn’t achieve them.”

Hard but fair. Like the man himself.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, March 2013

How difficult is it to win in Formula 1? Ask Toyota. For the eight seasons and 140 races that the world’s largest car company contested between 2002 and 2009, not once did it manage to place a driver on the top step of the podium.

I mention this only because it puts the achievements of the car you see here into some kind of perspective. It’s a March 701, its name denoting the year and formula in which it ran. When March made its F1 debut, at Kyalami in March 1970, Jackie Stewart put his Tyrrell-run car on pole and led for the first quarter of the race until his Dunlops started to wilt in the South African heat, letting Jack Brabham‘s Goodyear-shod BT33 and then Denny Hulme‘s McLaren M14A through before the flag. Still, it was a podium for a brand new constructor.

A fortnight later at the Race of Champions, the same car and driver took pole and scored March‘s first F1 victory. Stewart could only manage the front row at Jarama for the Spanish GP, but won the race and lapped the entire field in the process. Its next race was the Silverstone International Trophy, but while JYS won one of the two heats, overall victory went to Chris Amon in another 701. Two more Grands Prix followed, at Monaco and Spa; it would be hard to imagine two circuits more different in character, but Stewart’s 701 made no distinction. He claimed pole in each, although in both races his DFV let him down.

Max Mosley and Herd Brands Hatch pits, 1972

Mosley (left) and Herd in talks in the Brands Hatch pits, 1972

LAT

And that was that. The March, chassis number 701-2, retired. In two months it had done six races, scored four poles, two wins, a second and a third. After Spa the car was returned to Tyrrell’s base at Ockham in Surrey and sat in the workshop until it was sold to Eoin Young in 1977. It then found its way to the York Motor Museum in Perth, Western Australia. Thirty years later it was repatriated by Andrew Smith and, after two painstaking years of what’s best described as preservation rather than restoration by WDK Engineering, it was raced again at last year’s Monaco Historic Grand Prix. Smith put the car on pole and was leading by 45 seconds when he nudged a barrier, burst two tyres, crept back to the pits, changed the wheels — and still finished third.

Smith believes he was only the second person to drive the car and, after he let his Ecurie Ecosse team-mate Joe Twyman do a few laps, that makes me the fourth. Donington Park is cold but dry, 701-2 looking and sounding like it means business. The car is as original as it can safely be: the DFV had to be replaced, because the one used at Spa blew itself to bits (though its cam covers have been retained), and you’d not want to race on the original wishbones today, even though Smith still has them. Otherwise everything — the bodywork, tub, wings, gearbox and uprights — are the only ones it has ever had.

“Suppliers thought we were sitting on a huge pile of cash”

“We were really quite lucky,” says the unmistakable voice of Max Mosley, the man who provides the ‘M’ in March and found the money to make the 701 happen. “The general view was that no one would start a venture like ours without a huge amount of money. One journalist speculated we must have had about £500,000 to play with. In Fl terms that’s like having a budget of £500 million today. I didn’t start these rumours but nor did I think it was really my place to set them straight. It meant suppliers were very relaxed about getting their bills paid because they thought we were sitting on a huge pile of cash…”

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The four founders — Mosley, Alan Rees, Graham Coaker and Robin Herd — stumped up £2500 each, but even with a derisory budget of £113,000 for the first season that left a mountain to climb. “In September 1969 we had 10-20 people working in one unit,” Mosley says. “We had, I think, one metal bending machine and a lathe. That was it. But they were outstanding people.”

March 701 Ford engine

Ford’s tried and tested 3-litre DFV V8 formed the heart of the 701 project, coupled to a Hewland gearbox

Stuart Collins

The source of the next tranche of cash was surprising. “Porsche gave us £30,000 to provide a seat for Jo Siffert. He was about to do a deal with Ferrari that would cover both sports cars and F1. To keep him in its sports cars, Porsche had to put him in somebody else’s F1 team.”

The bulk of the remaining money came simply from selling cars: the works kept two but sold three to Tyrrell initially for £6000 each minus engine and gearbox, which Ford’s Walter Hayes then told Mosley to raise to £9000 and ‘not worry’ about the difference. The Blue Oval would cover that. Mosley remains convinced to this day that March wouldn’t have survived its first season without those extra funds. “Staying with Matra meant using its new V12, which Ken rightly refused to do,” Stewart says. “He’d tried to buy cars from Lotus and Brabham, but both refused, I guess because they didn’t want to risk being beaten by one of their own cars. So March was really the only way to go.”

Jackie Stewart and March 701 at Jarama in 1970

Having qualified just third, nothing could touch Stewart and March 701 at Jarama in 1970, as they lapped the entire field.

Other customers included Andy Granatelli, who bought one for newly crowned Indy 500 champion Mario Andretti, and Colin Crabbe’s Antique Automobiles team, for whom a talented young Swede called Ronnie Peterson would make his F1 debut.

“The 701 was a simple car,” says Robin Herd. “It had to be, really, because we had neither money nor time. It seems unthinkable now, but in November ’69 we had nothing but a few sketches. Then Max goes and announces to the world’s press that we’re going to launch the team at Silverstone in February. We had 10 weeks to design and build a Formula 1 car. All hell broke loose. I lost a stone and a half, but on that cloudless day we had two cars, a red one for Amon and a blue one for Stewart.”

Mosley takes up the reins. “I think most people thought we’d have one car parked there. We turned up with two and both ran. Then we announced we’d sold another to Granatelli: that really got people’s attention.”

“I saw our cars first and second, I was 29 years old and on top of the world”

The simplicity of the 701 is easy to see. It had a monocoque tub to which a DFV was bolted as a fully stressed member, but by 1970 so too did most cars on the grid. Suspension was by wishbones, brakes outboard at every corner. Those inverted aerofoil sidepods are interesting, though: Peter Wright was in charge of the 701’s bodywork and was clearly trying new ways to exploit airflow. “We didn’t have the money or time to do what we wanted with the suspension or bodywork,” Herd says. “It could have been the first ground-effect F1 car.” Instead Wright would need to wait until he was at Lotus at the other end of the decade before he could perfect the technique.

Simple it might have been, but the 701 was quick. Walking down the pitlane at Kyalami, Mosley could hardly believe his eyes. “I was there with Robin and saw our cars first and second on the grid. I was 29 years old and on top of the world.”

Frankel Frankel steps into March 701

Frankel primed for action

The car had flaws, though, and Stewart for one was not shy about saying so. “I have massive respect for Robin,” he says, “and the car he built was robust and clearly very fast, but it was not easy. In fact I’d say it was the most difficult F1 car I drove. The H16 BRM had all sorts of issues but was very manageable compared with the March. On jounce and rebound the 701’s responses were incredibly fragile. I think Chris and I were able to go quickly because we were probably the two smoothest drivers around at the time, so therefore did least to upset it. But I had to stretch my personal elastic much farther than I cared to get the lap times. The Tyrrell was very straightforward, even with its short wheelbase. And as for the Matra — I could have slept in that and still been competitive.”

The problem was weight distribution. Herd: “We had this big, heavy radiator at the front, which I balanced by putting the big, heavy oil tank at the back. But having these masses at either end gave a high polar moment of inertia that made it unpleasant to drive, although the problem was mainly in slower corners.”

Herd admits there was a more fundamental issue, too: “Because the car was so simple, it didn’t leave much room for development. While our rivals got quicker throughout the season, we stood still.”

If you look at 701-2 in close detail, you’ll see all sorts of unique Tyrrell modifications, including adjustable front aerofoils, a steering damper and different pick-up points for the rear suspension.

Andrew Frankel on track with the March 701

Tales of wayward handling proved misleading during our test at Donington Park, perhaps a result of decades of tyre advancement?

The engine is warm now. It’s a strong DFV built to modern regulations, if not to the ultimate specification, but it still gives better than 500bhp at a very safe 10,500rpm, compared to the 430bhp it would have had when new. In a car weighing little more than half a tonne I am under no illusions about what is about to be unleashed.

I’d feared the cockpit would be so small as to deny me access, but the only real problem is that the top of the surround is too narrow to accommodate my shoulders. Happily this can be detached with the loss of only the headrest and some purity of line. As a car designed mainly for customers, I guess Herd knew it had to be able to take a wide range of physiques.

Clearly no efforts have been made to vary the driving environment from the norm of the day. A simple central tacho is flanked by combination dials providing the temperatures of water and oil, plus oil and fuel pressures. Everything is in slightly the wrong place — the gearlever too far back, the elbow slots cut into the body sides too far forward, which says nothing about Herd’s interior design and everything about the difference in forearm length between Jackie Stewart and myself.

“We stung a lot of very talented people, like Colin Chapman, into action. It was always going to be hard after that”

The DFV blasts into life. There’s never much theatre with such motors: no little coughs, splutters, bangs or rasps to build expectation before treating you to the full choral magnificence of its voice. This is a DFV, the Mike Tyson of racing engines: not nice, not pretty, but capable of hitting harder than anything else of its era.

That said, a modern DFV is far easier to manage than those of 10 or 20 years ago, which could be made to give more than 500bhp but only with that power concentrated into a tiny band somewhere between 8500-11,500rpm. They don’t exactly run like road car engines even now, this one requiring a steady foot and 3000rpm just to maintain an uneven idle, but it’s tractable enough to pull out of the pits and onto the track without making you look like the out-of-depth amateur you really are. Donington Park’s wide open spaces, smooth surface, quick corners and long straights are the perfect place for this.

I’d expected the steering to be finger-tip light but it’s not; even gently easing my way into the experience the car feels brutish, physical and intimidating. The tyres have been in warmers, so at least there’s grip on this not-quite-freezing day, but if I don’t get my foot down and start to make the car work, it won’t last long.

So I do exactly that: on the long straight after Coppice, I press the throttle as far as it will go. And lift. It wasn’t something I’d planned in advance, nor even something I intended at the time it happened: it was an instinctive, involuntary reaction to a force which some subconscious, primitive part of my brain saw as a clear threat to my ongoing wellbeing. The acceleration felt like standing still while all the world you could see was pulled towards you.

Andrew Frankel cockpit March 701

Frankel gets a tour of the March cockpit from Smith ahead of his test

Stuart Collins

But it is amazing how quickly you adapt even to forces as alien as this. Next time around I could keep my foot there and hurtle through space, time and gears until 10,000rpm showed in top, probably 170mph or more, and still leave the braking margin of a true coward.

In fact it is above 100mph or so that the March is at its most explosively extraordinary. Even by the standards of other DFV-powered F1 cars I’ve driven, it gathers momentum at a surreal rate. You might remember that last year I drove a Lotus 92 from the other end of the DFV’s long and illustrious career. But while the 92 clearly started to slow above 150mph, the 701 charges madly on. The reason is simple: it has no drag. Smith reckons that even its considerable rear wing is so far forward and so compromised by the position of the driver’s head that it makes little or no difference.

To test my theory I do an impromptu back-to-back with a Mercedes-Benz SLS GT3 race car that happens to be circulating at the same time. It’s 42 years younger than the March, has an engine of more than double the capacity, with more power and a doubtless preposterous torque advantage. It thunders out of Coppice spitting fire only for the little old March to drive past as if it were a diesel-powered E-class.

The brakes, by the way, are not nice. The pedal travel is long and soft, which not only fails to reassure when you most need reassuring but also makes crucial heel and toe downshifts both difficult and painful. It slows well enough, but shows its age compared with modern machinery that will let you hit the pedal as hard as your thigh will allow from top speed all the way to the turn-in point.

“Realistically we were lucky. We caught Formula 1 when it was half-asleep”

And what of that Wild West handling? I couldn’t find it and, more relevantly, neither can Smith, who drives as hard as I’ve seen someone handle an historic F1 car. The 701 clearly likes to understeer, but as long as you’re prepared to take charge and are not shy about correcting any loss of grip at the front, it feels composed and even quite faithful, especially in quicker curves where you need it most.

I was surprised by how firm its springs are: of course it feels soft by modern standards, but compared with other 3-litre F1 cars of a similar vintage (those that didn’t need much spring rate because they had no downforce), it maintains its ride height remarkably well. But I expect the real difference is partly down to JYS driving on an entirely different level to even its current owner, and of course the immense variance between a 1970 treaded Dunlop and a 2012 Avon slick.

The light of the 701 burned brightly, but briefly. Although Herd maintains that a little reliability might have made the 701 a title winner in Stewart’s hands, the car having taken pole in three of its first four world championship races and won the other, there were no more firsts in qualifying or racing for the rest of that year. Lotus finally started to extract the potential of the 72 while Ken Tyrrell, who had always viewed the 701 as a stop-gap while he built his own car, immediately put his top driver in the Tyrrell-Ford 001 as soon as it was ready, before the season’s end. The Scuderia woke up too, scoring a hat trick of late victories with its 312B.

What Herd says about the car lacking development potential is entirely true, but there was something else going on, too, and Mosley doesn’t hesitate to put his finger on it.

“At Kyalami I really thought we’d done it,” he says, “but I was too young to realise it was only going to get harder from there. Realistically we were lucky. We caught F1 when it was half-asleep. At some races in 1969 you’d only get 13 cars on the grid. And then we came along and made the F1 establishment look stupid. We were, if you like, the most enormous wake-up call and stung a lot of very talented people like Colin [Chapman] into action. It was always going to be hard after that.”

Quite so. But you make a lot of your own luck, and the fact is that four young men, relatively penniless in F1 terms, came together and in 10 weeks designed, built and delivered a grand prix car good enough for a talent like Jackie Stewart’s to score pole in its first world championship race and then lap the field en route to victory in its second. Formula 1 has always provided a rich seam of stories, but few that are more extraordinary or less widely acknowledged than this.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, July 2005

I have memories like this stretching back to early adolescence when, on the first day of a new term, the most beautiful girl in the school came running towards me, arms outstretched. I remember the elation, the fear, the sheer disbelief, the hope that all my mates were watching — and then the utter desolation when she continued straight past into the unseen embrace of her boyfriend standing behind me.

Honda’s RA300 hood, number 14

Well, I had it again this morning. As I write I am in a Tokyo hotel room, waiting to catch the first flight home tomorrow. But this morning I was standing in the pitlane of the Twin-Ring Motegi circuit, looking at the Honda RA300 I was apparently about to drive. And the feeling came. Something seemed less than real, just as it had when that girl came sprinting towards me: however much I wanted it to be true, the disbelief would not go away. I could not conceive that I was about to become the first journalist to drive a Honda Formula 1 car. I’m lucky, but I’m not that lucky. Instead of grinning inanely, I could be found pacing up and down the paddock muttering “too good to be true” under my breath.

Andrew Frankel in Honda RA300

Windscreen removed, Frankel was finally on the go

All old grand prix cars are legitimate slices of the glorious history that made you pick up this magazine, but few can call themselves unique. The Honda Racing Automobile 300, however, is one of them. Winning your maiden race is not a freak occurrence and, somewhat surprisingly, there have been seven world championship F1 races with winning margins closer than the 0.2sec that separated John Surtees’ RA300 from Jack Brabham’s BT24 at the line of the 1967 Italian Grand Prix.

Honda RA300 cockpit

Honda’s RA300 only contested four grands prix in total across 1967-68, all in the hands of John Surtees. Its victory at Monza put it into the record books. It’s also a one-of-one rarity

The RA300 it is, to date, the last Honda to win a world championship round and, somewhat amazingly, the only grand prix car ever to have won a race by leading only the last lap of the only grand prix it ever led. And it’s rare, even by the absurdly scarce standards of 1960s Honda F1 cars. Its chassis plate describes it as RA300/1; there is no RA300/2 and there never was. What you’re looking at is the very car that did all of those things and, soon, I was going to drive it. Apparently.

Honda-RA300-engine

When growing up, I often heard of this weird machine called the ‘Hondola’ and was never very sure what it was. In fact it was a knee-jerk response to the demonstrable fact that its predecessor, the RA273 which was meant to contest the 1967 season, was so heavy it was never going to be competition for the Lotus 49. By now Surtees was not just Honda’s one and only driver, he was also its technical advisor. He persuaded the company that what was needed was a new car, and that Lola’s T90 Indianapolis chassis should provide its basis. Honda’s engineers duly headed to Slough, where both Lola and Team Surtees were based, and between them the RA300 — though Lola would call it the T130 — was created in just three weeks.

“Gouts of flame spat from the 420bhp quad-cam 48-valve V12 motor”

And despite the apparent haste with which it was conceived and born, the baby itself was unusually beautiful, even in its era of unusually beautiful grand prix cars. It appeared at a time when F1 car design was at its purest and competed in the last season where aerodynamic efforts were directed entirely to avoiding, rather than exploiting, the airflow. By the end of 1968 F1 cars had started to sprout wings and their shapes would never be as clean again. Seen next to Honda’s other ’60s F1 machines—the RA271, 272, 273, 301 and the innovative, ugly and lethal 302 — it is startlingly clean of line. Unfortunately for me, the car was also designed to fit Surtees, a man as short on physical stature as he is long on raw talent, guts and commitment. Adding to my pitlane misery was the memory of the previous day’s seat fitting, which had ended up simply as a seat removal. But even sitting on the car’s aluminium floor, I had doubts I could drive it. My shoulders were clamped by the windscreen surround, forcing my body down and my feet against the pedals.

Honda RA300 headdress of exhausts

A headdress of noise with the multitude of exhausts

All around me Japanese stars such as Shinji Nakano leapt effortlessly in and out of other Honda-powered racing machines to the collected gasps of the 5000 fans who had turned up to this supposedly private test session to shake down the cars for Goodwood. By comparison, the outsized Englishman would need to be crammed into the cockpit and looked likely to crawl around and return shamed and pained at the end of one lap to the deafening silence of the crowd.

And then, just to really brighten my day, the RA300 broke. Very wisely, Honda sent out a test driver to make sure the RA300 was up to the challenge of having me at the controls, and it was clearly not happy. Gouts of flame spat from the mighty 420bhp, quad-cam, 48-valve V12 motor as any number of cylinders fired save the requisite 12. Every one of the dozen other machines, from a 1961 125cc motorcycle to Senna’s mighty McLaren-Honda MP4/4, ran beautifully all day. By contrast, the RA300 stayed silent for hour after hour, save for the clank of spanners as two Honda mechanics laboured to get its ignition timing back on track.

Honda-RA300-driving-seat

Clean and clear with twisted rev counter

Eventually they cracked it and the test driver was sent out again. Now it sounded perfect; the rich, savage, deafening blast of its unsilenced 3-litre engine an almost physical presence as the RA300 shot down the pitlane.

When it came back, I saw the mechanics taking their tools to it one more time, on this occasion to do what I had been told was simply not possible: they removed the windscreen surround.

As you’ll see from the pictures the result somewhat spoiled the lines of the car but I cared not at all: climbing aboard, I felt I was in a different car, one I could occupy in something approaching comfort. And I knew, at once, that I’d be able to drive it.

Honda RA300 engine

The rapid engineering was done by Honda and Lola within weeks;

Drinking in my surroundings, it was clear the RA300 subscribes very much to early 3-litre F1 thinking. Walking around the car I’d already clocked the suspension, a thick upper rocker with lower wishbone at the front, trailing link and reversed lower wishbone behind. The engine is not a stressed unit like the DFV Cosworth, but is carried conventionally on a separate subframe, driving through a five-speed gearbox with a dog-leg first. In the cockpit now, gorgeous Smiths instruments looked back at me, a rev-counter twisted so the 10,000rpm red line pointed due north, flanked by gauges measuring the pressure of oil and fuel, the temperature of oil and water.

Desperate not to stall in front of the 5000, I lifted the clutch just enough to see the treads on the fat Firestones blur before raising my left foot while lowering my right. And there it was! Simply and easily I was driving a Honda grand prix car. You have to have confidence doing this, even if it’s manufactured. This car may be nearly 40 years old but it’s still an F1 car: it will sense hesitation, it can smell fear. The engine is truculent below 6000rpm and suspicious of part-throttle use. Before the end of the pits I fired the stubby gear lever in the general direction of second and was surprised and grateful to feel it slot instantly home.

Andrew Frankel behind the wheel of Honda RA300

Frankel belted up as he heads into the light

On my first lap I stooged around, learning the track and discovering the cross-gate lunge from third to fourth was a lot further than I’d expected. The brakes seemed adequate and the suspension surprisingly soft, even for its age. But, aware that time was not on my side, I cut the foreplay short as the pitstraight appeared and, with a firm foot and a deep breath, I gave it everything.

You forget, or at least I do, just how bloody fast these cars are. The temptation is to see them as nice old things, quaint relics from another age. In fact the RA300 has a power-to-weight ratio no road car has ever approached. A Maserati MC12 has an impressive 630bhp but weighs nearly three times as much as the 590kg RA300; it would need well over 1000 horsepower to match the old Honda’s power-to-weight ratio. But Honda’s V12 has so much torque from 6000rpm there’s no last-second bang in the back. Power arrives in a great, elastic torrent and is not as frightening as the statistics suggest. The main straight at Motegi is long, long enough to use all of fourth and a bit of fifth too and, crucially, long enough to savour the sabrous snarl of the V12. If this were the last thing I ever heard, I’d die with a smile.

Honda RA300 gear-lever

The gear-lever liked precise movement, and precise revs to match, as it told our man later

The arrival of the 150-metre board jolted me out of dreamland: I needed to be two gears lower and 100mph slower in a hurry. I jabbed the lever forward into fourth and then back to third, failing to give the engine enough revs. So it kicked me, gently but there was enough of a wriggle for me not to misunderstand its message: a bit more respect, chum, if you’d be so kind. Which is what it had for my remaining laps. By the end I was driving it as hard as I could without taking risks, using five-figure revs and finding that sweet spot where relaxation and concentration come as one.

It understeered a little when I was too ambitious with my entry speed but in the main it was a pure delight: no vices, no hidden agenda, nothing between me and the best time I’ve had in a car for years.

John Surtees triumphant at Monza in 1967

Surtees triumphant at Monza in 1967, having just pipped Jack Brabham by 0.2s at the flag in the only lap the RA300 ever led

Getty Images

But the best was yet to come. Bringing the RA300 down the pitlane for the last time I saw Honda engineers grinning at me and as I climbed out, shaking hands and gabbling thanks, I was aware that something quite wonderful had actually happened, something no-one could take away. I’d driven a Honda F1 car, the same car that, on the fastest GP circuit in the world, had beaten every other in a straight fight.

So at last I got the girl and the only thing left to do now is to ride off into the sunset. She’ll not be with me but I can wait the few days until I see her again at Goodwood. The plane leaves in two hours.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, August 2013

David Coulthard cuts the ignition, wiggles the red leather steering wheel and folds his arms. “Well, if you’d just like to put me in the back of the truck I’ll stay in here. Tell the wife and kids I love them, but I might not be home.” It’s a nice soundbite from the professional broadcaster; maybe he composed it on the run down the pitlane, aware cameras were waiting, that the BBC crew has him miked up in the car. But it becomes plain later that the enthusiasm is real, the pleasure unfeigned. One Scottish driver who took the chequered flag here at Silverstone connecting with another Scotsman who did the same 50 years ago, one brick in an over-arching year that made him champion. This is Jim Clark’s Lotus 25, a revolution in design that fulfils a well-used phrase. It really did make all other racers obsolete overnight.

“Well, if you just put me in the truck, I’ll stay in here. Tell the wife and kids I might not be home”

This is an appropriate place for DC, retired Formula 1 driver and popular BBC commentator, to experience his countryman’s view over that minimal screen: Coulthard twice won the British GP here, in 1999 and 2000; Clark did so three times — ’63, ’65 and ’67, and the upcoming Silverstone Classic will honour the late double champion with a commemorative dinner and two Jim Clark Trophy races. But if a Chapman Mk9 time machine (that restless innovator would have got around to one eventually) dropped Jim here today he’d not know where he was, blanked off by barriers, constrained by concrete. Yet he’d learn the updated track in a couple of laps, and similarly DC soon has the feel of the gearchange, the light steering, the airy ride of a car that, aerodynamically, performs worse rather than better as speed soars.

David Coulthard with Lotus 25

David Coulthard surveys the engineering and sleek lines of the Lotus 25, it’s a far cry from modern F1 construction

Matt Howell

What Jim would recognise instantly is his car. Yes, like all racing cars it had an afterlife, especially when Chapman wouldn’t sell new 25s to his faithful customers, lumbered unknowingly with its spaceframe sibling, the 24. Customers like Parnell, which got its hands on this only once Chapman and Len Terry had already schemed the similar but uprated 33, and then modified it trying to keep up. But Jim Clark drove this car first, and in his delicate hands it was a grand prix winner. Now returned to 25 spec, this is the car you’ve seen Andy Middlehurst race at all the big meets for owner John Bowers. It’s prepared and maintained by Classic Team Lotus, which means that the guys who built it in 1962 still look after it; not just the firm, the same people. In our quiet corner of the Wing pits — although this is Media Day for Silverstone Classic the crowd hasn’t yet twigged DC’s presence — Bob Dance is preparing the car. From the 1950s Bob was one of the bolts holding the Lotus race team together, and he literally knows this thing from the inside out. We’re sharing this drive with the BBC, and while Bob is busy, DC is doing pieces to camera, supermodel-slim in his white overalls. Bob props a hair drier on the Climax FVMW, making a tent of his Lotus jacket over the intakes, to warm up the fuel metering unit. It’s practically the entire Team Lotus crew here: Derek Wild, Willy Cowe and Cedric Selzer, Clark’s mechanic for many years. Jim would know them all.

I ask Cedric about constructing the 25’s ground-breaking monocoque. Chapman already had experience with the eggshell principle through the Elite, but as he squeezed his single-seaters from slabby 18 to smooth 21 to slim, low 24, the chassis, driver and fuel tanks all battled for the same space across the cockpit. Sheet ally and structural fuel tankage, plus the fact than you can squeeze drivers’ bodies as he’d proven with his ‘compressibility of bums’ theory over the 22’s flat-bottom seat, would resolve this. Lighter and stiffer than steel tubes, the riveted aluminium structure slides the driver way down between two large D-shaped tubes containing bag tanks, connected by welded bulkheads and stressed floor. Two deep sponsons carry engine and rear suspension, and a wedge of tank puts a few more gallons behind the seat. Did Chapman explain it to the team? “Not much,” says Cedric “He just did a GA [general arrangement] drawing — he was a marvellous draughtsman — and we expanded from that and some vague sketches. It was trial and error. No one knew if it would work. The big problem was fitting in enough fuel: Dick Scammell and Ted Woodley had riveting experience — at that time we couldn’t weld that hard ally — and made the tanks bigger and bigger and the cockpit smaller and smaller, with Jim trying it each time. We really didn’t know if it was a leap forward until I did the torsion tests, when it was obvious it was far more rigid than the 24.”

Jim Clark in action during the 1963 British GP

Clark in action during the 1963 British GP. He started on pole and won by almost 30sec

Getty Images

“Mind you,” adds Bob as he checks panel fastenings, “the drivers said the 25 was better on corners but the 24 was more forgiving.” DC strides past to change into sponsor’s overalls for another task and pauses to introduce himself to me, not the other way around. “Let’s talk after the drive.”

There are earlier contenders for the first racing monocoque, but this is the car that in one unveiling moment sent every other designer to his drawing board, and Colin Chapman to the front row of the design grid. No, it didn’t win first time out, and spaceframe BRMs, Coopers and Porsches still scored victories in 1962, but this was a balance-tipper: if you didn’t follow you were going to be left in the wilderness. By 1964, four of the six constructors would be running monocoques.

“Chapman did a drawing and we expanded from that and some sketches. It was all trial and error”

“Everyone at Lotus knew about the secret car,” recalls Cedric, “but there were no leaks. We took it straight to Zandvoort in 1962 without even a test run. And Dan Gurney said, ‘With a car like this we could win Indy’.” Among the dunes Jim’s clutch failed and Trevor Taylor’s 24 followed Hill’s BRM to the flag, but in the revolutionary machine Clark would score another three championship wins at Spa, Aintree and Watkins Glen, almost enough for the title as he led at East London in South Africa — until the oil escaped from the Climax and a season-long tussle fell to Graham Hill. For 1963 there would be no doubt at all. On smaller, fatter 13in wheels and with improved suspension geometry, this slim panatella of a car would in the shy Scotsman’s hands reel in pole after pole, seven grand prix wins and five non-title victories and make Clark champion for the first time. The greatest driver of the era (pace the injured Moss) had squeezed into the cleverest car and no one could stay with them.

Coulthard is back for a seat fitting, now in white overalls once more. It’s hard work, being famous. Abandoning the seat padding he wriggles down between those tanks, asking Bob if this is how Clark sat, click-clacks the gear lever, practises heel and toe. “Have to think myself back to the 1980s,” he grins, arms and broad shoulders spilling over the car until Bob and Derek cap him off with the bodywork. Everyone decides this will work, the body comes off and he clambers out. “I can almost get my hands on the ground!” he exclaims, used to being ears-deep in carbon fibre. He has questions: he’s been reading up about the 25, asks about fuel capacities, seat position, whether drivers complained about heat from the front radiator. He’s never sat behind one in a racing car — a hotshoe who’s never had hot shoes. “They just put up with it,” shrugs Bob. Film crew collars him again; Bob removes the hair drier, climbs in (pretty spry for 77), flicks on pumps, checks for neutral, hits the starter. Everyone except Bob jumps as the V8 bark echoes round the pit. DC looks over and smiles.

While the Climax warms, Cedric has produced a photo album and the Lotus boys, plus team photographer Peter Darley, still snapping 50 years later, trade stories about all-nighters, relentless lorry drives to Italy, practical jokes shared with the Grand Prix stars in their hotels. The thread to the current Lotus F1 race team may be long since broken, but if Team spirit continues it’s among the lads who are still part of CTL.

Ten minutes later the temperatures are up. Bob cuts the engine, the car is pushed to the pit door and DC gets out goggles and helmet — not the one we know, but an open-facer painted with the Scottish saltire especially for today. “I couldn’t drive Jim’s car in a full-face job,” he smiles. Belt buckles lock him down and he looks up at Dance. Suddenly a man you’d pass in a crowd and a man who creates a crowd have swapped authority: Coulthard is the tyro, Dance the expert in charge. He’s strapped in a hundred drivers before; this is just another grand prix winner. He nods, the V8 barks and DC propels the green and yellow machine smoothly down the pitlane.

David Coulthard Jim Clark Lotus25

Coulthard dreaming of days past with the 25 at Silverstone. Although a tight fit, he said it made him feel like “a real racing driver”

Matt Howell

A gentle lap, a firmer one, then open throttles as he explores how a car moves on tyres with large slip angles, how it dances on those soft springs. When he returns for a check there’s a big crowd — finally word has got around. Helmet off, he lets every lens catch his smile, ever the professional, before Bob checks everything and he goes out again, some laps for the Beeb, some for our photographer, some for himself.

“That was brilliant! Really cool! Never thought I’d be so excited. I feel completely at home. For a moment I almost felt like Jim Clark — then I woke up.” The car is back, engine ticking as it cools, shutters clicking as DC extricates his lengthy frame, pulls off the crash hat, tidies his hair in the mirror. “Got another wig somewhere. Oh no, it’s Eddie’s.” All laugh, and the public performance is over; the roller shutter lowers and car and star are secluded inside for our debrief and photo shoot. Photographer Matt Howell wants to catch DC inspecting the Lotus; that’s no effort as he’s already asking Cedric and Bob about damper placement, sliding-spline driveshafts, the ducted air screen. Maybe it’s for his BBC piece, but then he gets out his phone and takes his own pictures. Later I ask Cedric if Clark was au fait mechanically. “I wouldn’t say he had trouble holding a screwdriver, but…”

“I felt completely at home. For a moment I almost felt like Jim Clark — then I woke up”

The BBC steals David back, an unspoken tug of war between us. The cameras are insatiable; a tense director orders DC to walk around the car looking pensive, then the other way, to redo his lines describing that first-lap moment at soaking Spa in ’63 when Jim Clark surged from eighth to first to eternal legend, first victory for the 25 that steam-roller season. DC is patient until he makes the same fluff four times and bad words erupt. Maybe he prefers working live, quizzing his peers on the grid, no lines to learn.

My turn again, asking about sitting in such a slim car. “You have great visibility but I did feel exposed,” DC says. “You feel that at Monaco you could almost reach out and touch the barriers. I was very aware of the tanks wrapped around me, and the hot air blowing up from the cooling system.”

“Everything was packed tight inside,” adds Cedric. “With the 11/2-litre engine Colin wanted the smallest frontal area so everything came inboard, including the dampers.”

“Now I see how drivers from that period drove with straight arms,” DC continues. “There’s not a lot of load in the steering. A huge amount of lock, but not much load. In a modern GP car there’s so much load and feedback it self-centres; this doesn’t, or at least not with the same force, so you have to centre it yourself and be delicate. Hence the straight arms. Made me feel like a real racing driver. Haven’t felt like that before…”

A bit of a squeeze, though? “It was, like the Leyton House I drove for you guys last year — ridiculously small cockpit but once you’re doing your thing you don’t think about it. It was difficult for me to get to fifth — I had to do a reverse-hand upshift. That would have cost me time in a race.”

Did he reach for a shift paddle? “Ha, ha! Not once. Thankfully I’m long enough out of F1 that that’s no longer my default setting. But the first F1 car I drove, the McLaren in ’91, had a manual shift anyway. That V8 — it’s not a young engine, but it’s smooth and it delivers. They said I could go to 9000 — I only went to 8.5 but that was useable rpm. For the grip it had it could handle more power; that’s just under 200 and it would comfortably handle 50 more. But that’s what they had at the time.”

So he didn’t get it sliding… “Nope. Generally it pushes a little at the front. I almost had it drifting at Stowe where it’s fast, but I didn’t want to find out I’d got that wrong! I’m used to downforce pushing the car into the ground, but without that it moves around so much more. You can feel air under the car. Presumably it generates lift at speed?” he asks Bob.

“If you go fast enough.”

“The idea of the high ride level was to get the air passing underneath,” explains Cedric.

“And it’s softly sprung,” adds Bob. “The Old Man used to say ‘there’s no substitute for wheel movement’.”

Jim Clark in 1963 in Mexico

Clark would score seven wins from 10 grands prix in 1963, with victory in Mexico his penultimate

LAT

“It certainly moved laterally in a straight line, more affected by the wind than I expected, almost as if it’s floating on a current of air. It made me feel a bit uncomfortable in Turn 2, the long, fast left-hander. I’m sure in a classic expert’s hands it would be flat, but I didn’t want a high-speed rotation. But you’d get used to it; that would be your reality. In the low-speed corners I was starting to play a little with the brakes and the downshift, feeling really pleased to be behind the wheel.

So it was a pleasure?

“Yes — it’s a racing car! Any road car on the track, even the DTMs I’ve been racing, is still a compromise. This is designed from the start as a racing car, designed to win Grands Prix. There may be less road feedback, but it delivers both lowand high-speed grip in proportion. A modern GP car develops grip in an out-of-proportion way — at low speed there is relatively little because there’s no downforce, but at high speed the level of grip is difficult to comprehend. So a normal person jumping into this could quickly get the feeling of the low-speed, medium and high-speed grip. It would still take one of the greats like Jim Clark to balance the lateral forces against the extremes of tyre adhesion, though.”

I’m conscious he has a plane to catch, but as we talk he never looks at the enormous watch under the sleeve of his tailored blue shirt, his fourth clothes change so far.

“What stands out here,” he resumes, “is the drivability of that little V8. A modern F1 engine is peaky — you have to rev it constantly and it’s annoying. This has only five speeds but you get a journey through the gears that is 100 per cent more pleasurable. You feel the dog going in and you think ‘I’ve just rounded the corners of the dog a little bit and I’ve got two hours to go…’ I know when Jim won here it was 2hrs 14min, where most of my races were 90 minutes.”

“I rang Dario Franchitti to boast because he’s a big, big Clark fan. The legend is there for good reason”

Clearly he’s been doing his research. “I wanted to learn the 25 story because I didn’t know it in detail. My racing history is pretty good from the ’70s on when I was watching with my dad, who was a fan of Jim and got his autograph. But I don’t have anything from that period in my own museum, not like Dario [Franchitti]. I rang him to boast about this because he’s a big, big Clark fan. But the legend is there for good reason. It was a remarkable period in the development of motor sport; the genius of Colin Chapman and the great driving qualities of Clark.”

What about some historic racing?

“This was brilliant, but with my lifestyle, all the GPs, not seeing enough of the family, I’m not tempted. But beyond my current career? Why not? I’m a racer. We’re sitting at a track and it may be in the nice comfortable Silverstone Wing, but if it we were sitting on plastic chairs at the side of the track we’d still feel comfortable because racing people go to racetracks. I’ve been going since I was a kid and I hope to be doing it as an old man.”

David Coulthard Jim Clark Lotus 25 wheel

Coulthard got to meet one of his heroes, and experience racing in a simpler time

Matt Howell

DC and JC both took the chequered flag here. Did he feel the connection?

“Very much. I actually whooped on Hangar Straight! I’ve never done that before in a car. It’s just how I felt. Pleased and honoured, connected with a piece of history that guided the path of Jim Clark and many British drivers. I’m proud to have done it.”

It’s airport time. DC punctiliously shakes hands with everyone and strides off towards Spain. Bob and Greg the driver strap down a priceless element of British racing history in the lorry and head for Norfolk, three hours away. Getting up at 5am is nothing new for the Lotus lads — even if they’ve been doing it for six decades.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, November 2010

Okay. But please ask the announcer to tell the crowd why I’m not waving.” Sir Stirling Moss – the original professional racing driver and at the age of 80 still keenly aware not only of today’s job but also his duties to his public. We’ve brought him together with a special car, a machine with a unique place in racing history, and we want pictures. That means asking him to trail a camera car at a frustrating speed, and not wave until we’ve got our snaps. It’s hard for him – everyone on the banks treasures that wave as a personal greeting and he knows it – but it’s only for one lap. After that, Stirling, go as fast as you want, wave as much as you like. He does, and he does, and the crowd love it.

Stirling Moss gets in P99 at Oulton Park 1961 and 2010

Twin snapshots, 50 years apart. Moss slides into the P99 chassis at Oulton Park in 1961 and 2010

LAT / Matt Howell

It’s the Gold Cup, now Oulton Park’s major historic meeting, but once a prime Formula 1 race in the days when they weren’t all bound to the championship. And Stirling was the master, winning it five times in four different makes of car. It’s the last of those wins we’re here to applaud, when he jumped into an experimental machine with little racing behind it and pulled off something which remains unique to this day – the only Formula 1 victory in a four-wheel-drive car. Almost 50 years on that vehicle, the Ferguson P99, has returned to Oulton Park, and, thanks to Motor Sport, Sir Stirling is driving it.

Around the circuit the banks are packed. In the pits the track director tells me this may be the biggest crowd the Cheshire track has ever seen; they’ve even had to close the paddock gates.

Run by the HSCC, this huge meeting has drawn 480 cars from buzzing 500s to thundering F5000s, and if the range of races wasn’t enough, The Legend has entered his OSCA in a race called the Stirling Moss Trophy. Everyone wants an autograph or a photo. Every time he moves Moss is attended by a comet tail of fans; when he stops the programmes appear and he signs patiently, nodding and smiling to those who aren’t getting an autograph. If rarity mattered his John Hancock wouldn’t be worth diddley, but that’s not the point. It’s to be able to say ‘I met him’.

There’s a respite for him at the Motor Racing Legends corral, where he’s having a quiet (until I interrupt) coffee with Susie Moss and Jamie Sheldon, who has brought P99 from the Ferguson family museum at Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.

Stirling Moss P99 Gold Cup victory

While not convinced initially, Moss did a lot of running with the P99 and finally proved the technology with a historic Gold Cup victory

Sheldon is grandson of the P99’s progenitor, the creative Irish engineer Harry Ferguson, who built and flew a pioneer aeroplane, reinvented the plough and the tractor, won a lawsuit against Henry Ford and lost $1 million on the toss of a coin (business, not gambling). But though his ‘little grey Fergy’ would at one point comprise three-quarters of all the tractors in Britain, Ferguson himself became increasingly interested in the safety benefits of all-wheel drive for road vehicles.

In 1948 he had backed ‘The Crab’, an all-steering, all-driving race project schemed by fiery racer Freddie Dixon and Tony Rolt, engineer and Le Mans-winning driver. Two years on he founded Harry Ferguson Research, and both men joined him, along with Claude Hill, designer of Aston Martins. And though that sounds like the recipe for a race team, the aim was primarily to bring all-wheel drive safety to the road. By 1959 Ferguson’s prototypes had reached the R5 estate, which with 4WD, Dunlop Maxaret antilock disc brakes and a hatchback was 30 years ahead of any Audi Avant. But at a time when heaters were optional and ‘safety features’ meant padded sun visors, British makers – tiny Jensen apart – flocked to ignore it. 4WD was for Land Rovers only. Ferguson needed a high-profile billboard to demonstrate that, thanks to the crucial viscous coupling apportioning power smoothly front to rear, a Ferguson Formula-equipped car could also be a high-performance machine. And there’s nothing with a higher profile than Formula 1…

“The P99 compared well with its rivals from Cooper and BRM”

With Rolt as technical chief (Dixon had baled out by now) P99 was rapidly readied for the 1961 season. There was nothing unconventional about the racing car side of it: tube frame designed by Hill, all-wishbone suspension, the same Climax four most teams chose for the new 1½ litre formula, though as it was originally designed to the 2.5 rules it could also accept the bigger Climax to run in the short-lived Inter-Continental series. To eliminate bump-steer and joint plunge the lower arms are in line with the driveshafts, hence the high and slightly inelegant spring turrets. Packaging meant the block was canted over and the propshaft pushed the driver off to one side, but many cars had gone that route before in the quest for low seating. Putting the engine up front was more surprising, but it offered the desired 50:50 weight distribution for the 50:50 torque split, and of course the traction of 4WD would negate that advantage of rear engines. Speaking of weight, this was not automatically higher for 4WD: spreading the drive means lighter shafts, while inboard discs mean the shafts take the braking loads, allowing lighter suspension arms. In fact the P99 compared well with its rivals from Cooper and BRM.

Inevitably the 4WD system is bespoke, which might have made things difficult when after a long rest period the time came for restoration in 2004. Luckily the man who tackled the job is looking after it here at Oulton today, and once he’s warmed it up and it’s sitting ticking quietly in the garage waiting for Stirling to arrive, he talks me through the 18-month project.

wet-weather Fairman British GP Aintree 1961

A wet-weather weapon: Fairman sits in the pits at the British GP at Aintree in 1961, but would be disqualified for a push start

“It hadn’t run since 1969, but there wasn’t much wrong with it,” says Barry Snow. “Fatigue in a couple of driveshafts so we had to make new ones, but otherwise the car today is as it was raced in 1961. Stirling has a waiver to drive it without harnesses or extinguisher.”

Snow’s Calbourne Garage on the island is used to preparing 4WD rally cars, so the one-off transmission did not faze them. Front and rear diffs are identical, just rotated, and the viscous coupling works the same way as today’s ones, except that it contains automatic transmission fluid instead of silicon. Under the driver’s left hand the tall lever controls a five-speed Colotti dog-box. “There are drawings for it in Italian,” says Barry, “but we don’t know if they were drawn at Ferguson and translated for Colotti, or designed in Italy.”

Barry says the ’box is easier on the palm than many dog-boxes, yet this was the item that spoilt the car’s debut. Ferguson handed the car to Rob Walker’s team, under the charge of Alf Francis. “This made good sense,” says Tony Rolt’s son Stuart, later to be marketing director of Ferguson Developments. “My father had a long connection with Rob – he’d raced Rob’s Connaughts – and Stirling was regarded as a very intellectual driver. It was a business move: Ferguson was an enthusiast [he had raced in his youth] but P99 was a serious business proposition, and Rob and Alf and Stirling were the right people to exploit it.”

In fact Jack Fairman raced it first, in 2.5-litre form in the British Empire Trophy at Silverstone. Moss practiced it, but chose to race his Cooper T53, saying he didn’t believe the P99 could win. Struggling with the gearchange, Jack had a grassy off and retired. Nothing daunted, the team entered it for the British GP at Aintree, and this time Ferguson’s vision started to become clear. It rained torrentially in practice, and in the novel machine Moss set fastest time, even ahead of the very rapid Ferraris with their wailing V6s. There just might be something in this 4WD. However, for the race Moss stuck with Walker’s Lotus. Good choice: splashing past the front-row Ferraris of Richie Ginther and Phil Hill in another downpour, Moss was hunting down von Trips for the lead when a brake pipe burst. Sprinting to the pits he took over the P99 from Fairman, running low down with electrical gremlins, and set off praying for more rain. Instead it was the Clerk of the Course who dampened his hopes: Jack had had a push-start earlier, and now the car was black-flagged. An ignominious end to the last front-engined outing in a championship grand prix.

Fergusson p99 engine

Its Coventry Climax heart was nothing unconventional, but was highly effective

Matt Howell

I won’t bring up that DNF right now as Stirling and his cloud of followers arrive in the pit. The fans cluster at the door, but the pitlane is packed too: marshals, mechanics, drivers, press people all want to get close to a living legend. After his lift accident walking is clearly an effort, and Moss sinks thankfully into a canvas chair for his briefing, nodding briefly before his request about the waving. Then with a bit of help he’s settling in the car, helmet, goggles, gloves all correct. Sir Stirling Moss is in his element.

Clack of gear lever, brief nod to crew, Climax barks, and for the first time in 49 years four driven wheels launch him down the Oulton Park pitlane.

To many at Oulton back then it was a puzzling choice: a front-engined car when that tide had clearly turned; twice the running gear soaking up power; the same motor as half the grid. Why would a great like Moss – by then into his second decade of racing and if anything more competitive – take that risk?

“Curiosity,” says his then-manager Ken Gregory. “He was always looking for a technical advantage, even though he didn’t need it. And because Rob asked him to.”

Moss expands: “Tony Rolt was a friend of Rob’s, as everyone was, and he lent it to us as an experiment, just to see if it worked. I did a lot of experimenting and a lot of it didn’t pay off, but I was always interested to try new things.”

Moss was so keen to add to his Gold Cup shelf that he had some frantic travel plans: he was entered in the Tour de France which finished on the same day, so he intended to leave the tour the day before, take a helicopter from Corsica to Nice, then fly to London and on to Manchester. In the end he did not do the Tour, so was able to have dinner with his one-time Jaguar team-mate Rolt the night before.

Sir Stirling. Moss 2010 driving Ferguson P99

Hands on the wheel, Sir Stirling. Moss resists waving to the crowds just long enough to secure the tracking shots

Although neither the Ferrari nor Porsche teams attended, the Gold Cup grid included Clark, Brabham, McLaren, Surtees, Brooks, Ireland and Graham Hill. This was by no means a second-rank event. Propitiously, Cheshire offered up a damp weekend and Stirling claimed a confident second place on the grid alongside McLaren, with Clark and Hill just behind. But that gearbox almost stymied him – he could not get bottom gear when the starter raised the flag and as the bellow of F1 engines echoed round the landscaped park the P99 limped away in second. Once on the move, though, who needs bottom gear? Stirling began to pull back the six places he’d dropped. On the damp surface the Ferguson system gave him the edge, and by lap six Moss had taken the lead from Clark. Though the track began to dry, Moss took the flag 46sec ahead of Jack Brabham (Clark having had a suspension failure) and set a new F1 lap record. It was special even for Moss, who collected £250, the Gold Cup and the Lookers Cup for FTD. Suddenly car makers were calling Ferguson. Sadly Harry Ferguson did not see his vision vindicated: he had died only months before the great event.

“You had to drive it in an unconventional way. The P99 is very neutral. You just aim where you want to go”

The cheers that day can’t have been louder than they are today as Moss crests Deer Leap and enters the pitlane. Roger Dobson should know – he was present on both occasions. In 1961 he was chief pit marshal. “I thought I’d done a good job keeping people out of the pits, but when Moss came back in suddenly there were hundreds around him. Everyone hoped he’d win, against the odds as it were, and we all thought this was the forerunner of the future.”

As he kills the engine and removes his goggles Moss is again swamped, but this time after another polished performance at the mike it’s back to his OSCA for his race. He’s sharing with Ian Nuthall, but up against Chevy V8s and Jaguar power their 1500ccs were never going to go far. After the prize-giving, when he collects a class trophy and comments on the crowd – “Do we get a cut of the gate?” – it’s time for our download.

MHowell042

The gearbox was a bit of a sticking point, but proved adequate. High suspension mounts were used to keep lower arms and driveshafts aligned

Matt Howell

Ferguson-P99 blueprint sketch

The layout of the powertrain demanded the driver be moved off-centre, allowing space for the gearbox and rear driveshaft to pass through the middle of the car, achieving four-wheel drive

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. “People all the way round. Oulton’s changed quite a bit, though. Not at all as I remember it. I don’t recall Old Hall being a double apex, and the hairpin seems to have shifted.” After 50 years that mental map is still in the neural filing system. And the car?

“Exactly as I remembered it. That soft wheel, very comfortable. Hardly even noticed the driving position was offset. It all felt in good nick, the engine felt as strong as before though I didn’t push it, of course.”

“Everyone hoped Moss would win.We all thought this was the future”

And when he was pushing it, back in ’61? At the time he was quoted as saying he had never driven a car that did things so well but was so difficult to cope with.

“You had to drive it in an unconventional way,” he says now. “In a rear-engined car you’re moving the apex along, aiming ahead of where you want to be, but the P99 is very neutral. You just aim where you want to go.”

Today was sunny, and this was only a demo. But when conditions were bad…

“It was incredible in the wet. I could overtake on the outside of corners. I remember passing Phil Hill at Aintree and having time to thank him, it was so relaxed. And it has phenomenally good braking. I’ll tell you what, if I were a rich collector I’d buy it to take along to races with my Cooper or whatever and just have it ready in the paddock in case it was a wet race.”

Stirling Moss win the Gold Cup 961

That magic moment, complete with signature wave, as Moss takes the Gold Cup win clear of the field in 1961

LAT

In Pit 3 Barry and his crew begin to pack away the P99 ready for a long haul home. (Moss in his 1961 diary recorded managing Oulton to London in just over three hours. Not so very likely in 2010…) The car’s next stop will be an auction, the first time it’s ever been sold. It’s been loaned out, though: despite the Gold Cup win there was no swathe of 4WD GP cars for 1962, but in ’63 Graham Hill took it to Australia and New Zealand fitted with a 2.5 Climax. At Lakeside it rained and Hill took second, and while the Australian GP at Warwick Farm was less successful Hill later persuaded BRM to begin a 4WD research programme. It concluded there was little to gain in F1 (though the 4WD BRM, the P67, would later win the British hillclimb title), but other teams had become interested and when a range of F1 4WD machines appeared in 1969 they all relied on FF technology. Racer and hillclimber Peter Westbury borrowed P99 and used it in 2.5-litre form to win the 1964 British Hillclimb Championship, as well as tackling Brighton Speed Trials and even some drag racing in it. Running it for three seasons he was a convert and went on to build 4WD racing cars, but the F1 experiment, which involved McLaren, Lotus, Matra and Cosworth, was rapidly side-stepped by wings, improving tyres, and finally a ban. So that came to nothing – except that Ferguson loaned an engineer to Matra who impressed Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrrell. His name was Derek Gardner. P99, now just an interesting relic, spent many years on loan to the Donington Collection before returning to the family firm for restoration.

“It was rallying that boosted 4WD, and much of it had Ferguson’s name on it”

But if all-wheel drive did not sweep the board in Europe, it did have a flare of success across the Atlantic. In August 1963 Ferguson sent P99 to Indy, where under the eye of Andy Granatelli, Fairman and Bobby Marshman drove it. Looking for a way to harness over 700hp of Novi V8 power, Granatelli was impressed enough to commission a new car, the P104. Or to anyone who devoured Scalextric catalogues, the Indy Novi Ferguson. Neither it nor its US-built successor achieved much at Indy, but Granatelli pushed on and for a while 4WD, especially combined with gas turbine power, looked like the future. But two very near-misses – STP Paxton in ’67 and Lotus 56 the year after – prompted the Indy powers to strangle turbines, particularly suited to 4WD with their double-ended drive and no gearbox, as a way of outlawing all-wheel drive. The best a 4WD machine would achieve was third in 1969, though ironically it was a Lola with Hewland, not Ferguson transmission.

Stirling Moss Oulton Park 2010 Ferguson P99

Exactly how he remembered it, the car that is. Oulton Park may have changed across five decades, but the P99 remained a constant

Matt Howell

However, Harry Ferguson’s dream is finally visible. He was not the first to essay a 4WD racing car – Bugatti, Miller, Porsche and Mercedes had all dabbled. But while Jensen’s bold FF made a brief impact among road cars in 1966, it was rallying which finally boosted 4WD into the performance arena, and much of that boost had Ferguson’s name on it. We barely notice that all-wheel drive is available in a compact hatch and standard in Bentleys and Lamborghinis, and it is no longer permissible to sell a car in Europe without ABS – though Moss raced the Ferguson with the system switched off, preferring to rely on foot-brain feedback.

If the P99 did not in the end start a revolution, Stirling’s remarkable ability to get the most out of any car he drove and the unique victory he scored with it kept the bubble afloat until the market was ready. Fifty years ago the Oulton Park crowds thought they were seeing the future of racing; in fact the Ferguson P99 was pointing towards the future of road cars.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Complacency: a strong word when aimed at brittle motor racing people.  But… “Why change it when we’re winnin’?”  Sounds complacent, doesn’t it?  Well, at the dawn of the 1960s John and Charles Cooper have every right to feel comfortable. Their little ‘English Beetle’ with its engine in the ‘wrong end’ has made them world champions. Stick a Vanwall next to a Cooper: Formula 1 is going through its biggest ever metamorphosis — thanks to the hard-working men in Surbiton.

BRM have already cottoned on to the mid-engine revolution, late in 1959 with the P48, but the Coopers reason there is no need to panic. Then Colin Chapman — ‘Flash ‘Arry’ to Charlie Cooper — joins the trend. The ugly, boxy Lotus 18 makes its F1 debut at the first World Championship round of 1960 and proves that Chapman is serious about grand prix racing. Now the Coopers sniff a true threat.

Innes Ireland’s Lotus 18 leads Stirling Moss Cooper T51 in 1960

Innes Ireland’s Lotus 18 leads Stirling Moss in a Rob Walker-run Cooper T51 during the 1960 International Trophy. This was one of the races that would spark Moss’s switch to Lotus

Innes Ireland leads the Argentinian GP comfortably in the 18, only for a broken gear linkage and a subsequent spin to drop him down to sixth. Cooper’s works young gun Bruce McLaren scores his second consecutive GP win and the team is delighted, but any charge of complacency is blown clean out of the water: both the BRM and the Lotus have outperformed the T51, and as world champion Jack Brabham and the rest of the Cooper team fly home they sketch out a design for a new car. The ‘Lowline’ T53 is being conceived as a direct response to the threat from Lotus. Just the reaction you’d expect from driven, competitive, obsessive racing men.

As its nickname suggests, the T53 features a slimmer body than its predecessor, its longer nose contributing to a reduced frontal area in an attempt to boost speed on fast circuits. The pedals, steering gear and radiator are brought forward, allowing the driver to lie further back. Following the line of Cooper evolution, the chassis is formed from a basic curved four-tube frame. Brabham has been pushing for straight tubes in line with the Lotus, but designer Owen Maddock is insistent. His reasoning hasn’t changed: he wants the chassis to fit close to the curved bodywork, and with the Coventry Climax FPF dropped an inch lower the new car can still boast a 25 per cent improvement on torsional stiffness.

One subject that all concur on — apart from the Old Man — is a switch to coil spring rear suspension. Charles Cooper is sceptical and insists that the old leaf-spring option should be left open. He isn’t baulking at the expense of Maddock’s brilliant new transaxle gearbox, the Cooper-Knight C5S… because he doesn’t know about it!  But the investment is clearly worth it: the T53’s transmission turns out to be bullet-proof. The Lowline makes its test debut at Silverstone on May 6, just seven weeks since that flight back from Argentina… and it flies. Brabham and McLaren lob six seconds off their best times! Charles Cooper is no longer sceptical.

Jack Brabham in his Cooper 1960 Argentinian GP

Jack Brabham aboard his Cooper in the 1960 Argentinian Grand Prix. He would retire from the season-opener, leaving team-mate Bruce McLaren to win

Getty Images

Forty-five years later Tiff Needell slides his six foot one inch frame into the cockpit. The venue is Mallory Park. It’s tipping it down, but that doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm as he gets into character.

“I’ve got a face mask in my bag — do you want me to wear it?” “No, it’s OK Tiff, they didn’t bother with them until a few years later…”

Needell has driven an awful lot of cars over the years as a racer and TV presenter, but he’s never been powered by a 2.5-litre Coventry-Climax before. He’s really up for it.

This car is FII-5-60′, McLaren’s chassis throughout 1960. It’s been well-used: after its life as a works car the Lowline passed to Arthur Owen, who used it to win the 1962 British Hillclimb Championship. It continued as a climber until 1980, then returned to the tracks. Current owner Barry Cannell bought it four years ago. “It’s had lumps knocked off it over the years,” he says. You wouldn’t know it now.

After a couple of decent runs the Lowline trundles back to the pits. “Brilliant,” says Tiff. “It was actually nice to feel the rain on your face and the drops on your lips. It was a bit cramped with a chassis tube under my left foot, impeding my clutch movement, and my knees were pushed up — I’m used to that with my height. But it’s fantastic sitting upright. The thing that always strikes you in the old cars is the visibility.” He’s driven a Lotus 25— and that’s when drivers really started to go to work on the horizontal.

Brabham leads Moss in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort

Brabham leads Moss, now in an 18, in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. This would be the first of a five-race winning streak for Brabham.

Getty Images

So Tiff, what do you think? “I wasn’t expecting the steering to be so responsive, and nothing was clattering or shaking. And it was so much fun. The Cooper twitches a lot and you are constantly correcting it as you corner. You can hold a slide at slow speed, but the little corrections make it more difficult around Gerards. Maybe I was tentative and should have let it go a little more, but it’s very wet and it’s someone else’s lovely car…”

“The thing that always strikes you with old cars is the visibility you get”

Stirling Moss was a signed-up fan of Cooper, but that didn’t stop him switching sides in 1960. The threat of the Lotus 18 was confirmed at the Goodwood Easter meeting: Moss’s Rob Walker T51 was beaten by Ireland’s 18 in the Glover Trophy, Innes famously doing the double over Stirling in the Formula Two Lavant Cup. A month later it was a similar story at the International Trophy: Ireland won at Silverstone after a wishbone broke on Moss’s car. But more significantly Brabham and the new T53, on its race debut, were beaten into second.

Moss and Walker decided after Goodwood that they needed a Lotus if they were to stand a chance in the world championship. Not because of a lack of faith in the new Cooper: they knew they couldn’t get one because of a clash over fuel sponsorship. The works team was signed to Esso, Walker and Moss to BP, so the order was placed for a Type 18.

Tiff in his element

Tiff in his element

The move hurt the Coopers, but was justified at Monaco when Moss delivered Lotus its first world championship grand prix win in Walker’s 18. Brabham uncharacteristically hit the wall at Ste Devote. He eventually continued to the finish but was unclassified, while team-mate McLaren survived a spin to finish second. At this stage Bruce headed the championship, while his team leader had yet to score…

To this day it is a decision Moss wishes he had not been forced to make: “The Coopers were much nicer to drive. They were everything that was fun about racing; the Lotus was not. It was far more delicate and unforgiving. But if a driver was of sufficient ability the 18 was quicker, at the expense of fun — although it’s always enjoyable to win!”

Chapman’s answer to the Cooper mid-engined revolution was typical of the man. Lotus restoration expert and historic racing ace Simon Hadfield: “The Type 16 was fast but massively complex, a real pain to work on. To take the engine out is an all-night job. So the Type 18 was Chapman saying, ‘Enough’s enough. Let’s have the least amount of racing car we can, put the engine in the back because Cooper seems to be making it work, and take the front-engined gearbox and fit it in the back.’ Simple, no frills.”

Everything is packaged so tightly within the box-shaped car. The glassfibre body panels, originally made by Williams & Pritchard, cling snugly to straight small-gauge tubes that make up the rigid chassis frame. Remove them and it is the bulbous fuel tank covering the driver’s legs that immediately draws your attention. It holds a massive 22 gallons and looks horrendously dangerous to modern eyes.

Another tank behind and to the right of the seat allows the car to hold over 30 gallons of fuel. With engine, transmission, oil tank and fuel packed within the wheelbase, handling characteristics remained constant.

The third generation ‘Queerbox’ lived up to Chapman’s quest for simplicity as speedy ratio changes could be made after just removing the rear cover. And it is this gearbox that surprises Needell the most.

Lotus and cooper side by side

Two striking silhouettes from a rapidly changing era of Formula 1. Lotus simplified many things with the 18’s design

“The Cooper had a fantastic gearbox, but this has really taken me aback,” he says. “I didn’t even know there were sequential gearboxes back then! It isn’t a proper sequential as we know them because the lever doesn’t flick back to the middle; it is of course ‘migratory’…” He chortles at Hadfield’s terminology for the action of the left-hand mounted lever, which pulls back closer towards you with each upshift. “I did miss a couple of changes as my elbow hit the back of the cockpit,” Tiff admits.

He is behind the wheel of a car with some history. This is reported to be chassis ‘373’, the car that gave both John Surtees and Jim Clark their first tastes of F1…

Clark made his debut in the Dutch GP, then finished fifth in Belgium and France. Surtees, still very much a ’bike ace in 1960, joined Team Lotus at the International Trophy, then made his first world championship start at Monaco. Runner-up in his second grand prix, at Silverstone, was impressive enough, but he should have won his third, at Oporto’s tramlined street track. “I was leading when I came up to lap Stirling,” he says. “I didn’t cross the tramlines at a sharp enough angle, got stuck in them and hit the brakes. The front fuel tank was leaking, as it often did, and my foot slipped off the brake pedal. Instead of going up the escape road I tried to take the corner. That was my inexperience — I clipped the radiator. Tragedy.”

The car is now owned by Michael Schryver, who drove it to a dominant victory in the Richmond & Gordon Trophies race at Goodwood this year. He recounts a fascinating history of the car. After 1960 it passed through various hands, including Wolfgang Seidel (17th in the ’61 British GP), before ending up in Holland in ’64 with Willem Butterman, who used it for grass-track racing! It was found in ’84 by Peter Bloor, who sold it on to Don Orosco. It was then owned by Jeremy Agace, and finally Schryver.

Mallory is drying out as Tiff hits the track. He soon finds some parallels to the Formula Fords in which he began his career. “The Cooper reminded me of my Elden PRH10, while fittingly the 18 was more like my Lotus 69, which would gently understeer and then turn with oversteer progressively. You can hold longer slides with opposite lock through Gerards with the 18 than with the Lowline. It doesn’t constantly twitch and want to be corrected like the Cooper. At high speed the Lotus is more on a knife-edge and it’s harder to find the limit. Put it like this: the Cooper is ‘working class’; the Lotus is refined. But the Lotus seems quite friendly to me.”

‘Friendly’ is not a word Moss ever uses of a Lotus, especially after the Belgian GP of 1960. A hub failure sent him into a dreadful crash in practice at Spa, breaking both legs, his pelvis and his back. Almost simultaneously, privateer Mike Taylor was severely injured when his Type 18 crashed into the trees at another part of the circuit when the steering-column weld failed. The Lotus fragility tag was stuck fast.

John Surtees drives his Lotus 18 in California US Grand Prix

Not your everyday commute: John Surtees drives his 18 through the streets of California ahead of the US Grand Prix

Worse was to come in the race when promising Yeoman Credit Cooper racer Chris Bristow died in a gruesome crash. Then, shortly after, another young hopeful, Alan Stacey, perished at the wheel of a works 18, although not because of a car failure — he is thought to have hit a bird. Following a maiden win for the Cooper Lowline at Zandvoort, Brabham took a convincing victory at Spa, but it’s hardly surprising that he took little pleasure in it.

With Moss out of the equation, Brabham dominated the season. With Team Lotus, Surtees and Clark still finding their feet in F1, and the Type 18 proving less than reliable, the threat subsided. Jack swept to a second world title with five consecutive victories. He was brilliant at Reims in the French GP, then had a stroke of luck at Silverstone: Graham Hill stalled at the start in the BRM but forced his way through to take the lead, only to fall off at Copse with fading brakes as Jack stalked him.

“There aren’t many photos of Lotus 18s on opposite lock. It was not easy”

At Oporto Brabham inherited from Surtees, securing the title as the British teams boycotted the Italian GP when the organisers insisted on using Monza’s banked circuit. Then Jack was beaten to victory in the United States GP at Riverside by Moss — who incredibly had returned to action in Portugal just eight weeks after his Spa crash. “I always worried more in the Lotus and I never felt comfortable,” Moss admits. “After a big accident like that it does play on your mind, but you have to block it out. I had great concentration in a racing car and found it easy to fall into that [mindset].”

Surtees has greater affection for the Type 18: “Compared to the opposition it was the most competitive car I ever drove. A great car – but you needed to watch it. It was very fragile: the gearbox was great, but at Monaco it never stopped giving me trouble, and when I went to New Zealand at the end of the year the steering fell off!

“You couldn’t drive it like a Cooper. It was like racing on tiptoes – you had to be so precise and correct. You couldn’t treat it with abandon and throw it around like a Cooper – there aren’t many photos of Lotus 18s on opposite lock. It was not the easiest car with which to start my GP career.”

Jack Brabham and Cooper in 1960

Jack Brabham and Cooper would be unstoppable in 1960, but times were about to change

Getty Images

The Lotus was the quickest car of 1960, but Cooper’s trusty know-how and Brabham’s wily nous delivered the title. The Type 18 was fragile, the T53 rock solid, and the quest for competitiveness on faster circuits like Spa and Reims was a success. So would Moss have won the title if that hub hadn’t failed at Spa? Considering the 18’s reliability record, probably not.

At the season’s end Surtees leaves Lotus in the wake of bad feeling over the termination of Ireland’s deal. Chapman will build his team around Clark from now on. In Surbiton, Brabham and Cooper have every right to feel comfortable – again. If they were on top of the world in 1959, they now appear to be rocketing into orbit.

But the F1 metamorphosis has not stopped – it never does. The change to a 1.5-litre formula for ’61 causes a blip for the English teams, but that’s all it is. Out the other side it is clear that Cooper has peaked: Brabham knows, and leaves to form his own team. It is now Chapman and Clark who are on a stellar trajectory. Five years after Jack’s zenith, Clark wins six grands prix — and conquers the Indy 500 too. Cooper might have started the British revolution, but it is Lotus that’s left flying the flag.

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, August 2025

Seventy years on from its first post-war grand prix win, Mercedes-Benz hasn’t forgotten the significance of Stirling Moss’s landmark Aintree victory in the summer of 1955. That’s why the German carmaker wheeled out one of its glorious W196s, took it back to the Liverpool race course and gave its current Formula 1 star George Russell a golden chance to briefly slip into Moss’s racing shoes.

George Russell drives mercedes w196 at Aintree

Of course, the sharp-eyed among you will know that Juan Manuel Fangio raced No10 in the 1955 British GP, but nevertheless this is the actual car the ‘Old Man’ drove to second place

Finn Pomeroy

Or more accurately Juan Manuel Fangio’s. For this was chassis 000 13/55 in which – as Mike Doodson has already covered – the ‘Maestro’ was either beaten or displayed generous discretion, depending on what you choose to believe of that July 16, 1955 race.

Russell, ahead of his fine win at the Canadian GP, appeared to revel in the moment at what was a private commemoration played out in front of a select audience and a couple of film crews from the BBC and Channel 4. A full lap of the period three-mile circuit was impossible thanks to the potholed surface at Waterway (the first corner) which continues to create a major hurdle to the independent Aintree Circuit Club’s ongoing ambitions for a proper motor racing revival event at Jockey Club Racecourses’ world-famous venue.

“The speed, the noise, the look – it’s incredible. It was a privilege to get behind the wheel”

The rest of the lap still exists, winding through what is now an infield golf course and driving range. But even if a proper surface was laid at Waterway, the closure of Melling Road – at two points, on the way out and on the way back to the gigantic grandstands – would also have been required. Then it absolutely wouldn’t have been a secret event, of course. Perhaps one day it’ll happen properly, and in a manner where we can all be invited.

As it was, Russell had to be content with a couple of runs up and down the old start/finish in front of empty grandstands that are only packed out once a year for the Grand National. But at least the W196’s distinctive straight-eight howl had rung out again at the too-often overlooked British GP venue, where Moss and Fangio created a joyous slice of Silver Arrows history all those years ago.

George Russell sits with Mercedes W196

Beyond this secret commemoration, the Aintree Circuit Club is also hosting a ticketed 70th Anniversary Celebration – Display, Drive and Dinner at the race course on Saturday, August 9. From £99. Go to ormskirkmotorfest.com/aintree1955

Finn Pomeroy

“I am speechless after driving the W196,” said Russell. “The sensation of driving this car is indescribable. The speed, the noise, the look – it’s incredible. I can’t believe that Sir Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio were racing this car 70 years ago. To bring the car that Fangio raced here at Aintree in the 1955 British Grand Prix back to the track is so awesome. It was a privilege to be entrusted to get behind the wheel. I want to say a massive thank you to everyone at Aintree, the Aintree Circuit Club and Mercedes-Benz Classic for making this happen.” DS

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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, November 2010

They called it ‘Alfetta’ – the little Alfa, because that’s what it was. 

Unable to stay the relentless pace of the Silver Arrow steamroller, in 1937 Alfa Romeo charged Gioacchino Colombo with designing a monoposto racing car in which to go voiturette racing. With a little 1.5-litre straight-eight engine, something close to 200bhp was achieved, and in August 1938 the 158 – as then it was called – recorded its first win in the Coppa Ciano at Livorno with Emilio Villoresi at the wheel. And then it just kept on winning. Relentlessly, indomitably and with few exceptions (most notably the Tripoli Grand Prix in 1939 when Mercedes spoiled the party by rather inconsiderately unveiling the W165 for its one and only race) it annihilated the largely Maserati opposition right up to and even past the start of hostilities. And then, having weathered the conflict hidden in a farmhouse in Melzo near Milan, the 158s were wheeled out, dusted off and kept on going as if the world had not just spent the last six years at war.

Fangio poses 1951 world champion

Fangio poses for the cameras after becoming 1951 world champion.

Except now the big silver guns had been silenced, the 158 slipped into the role of world’s premier racing car as if it had been born to it. With the likes of Farina, Wimille and Varzi on the strength, it owned what little world-class single-seat racing took place in the remainder of the 1940s, save the last year of the decade when, with nothing more to prove, the team elected not to take part.

Then came 1950 and the inaugural year of what is known today as the Formula 1 World Championship. The 158 was a dozen years old but it was an opportunity Alfa could not resist. And still nothing could touch it. Now a portly Argentine called Juan Manuel Fangio was on the driving crew and, between him and Dr Giuseppe Farina, they swept the board. Ron Dennis is rightly proud of McLaren winning all but one round of the 1988 season, but only one manufacturer has clean-swept the lot and, thanks to the 158, it was Alfa Romeo.

Alfa Romeo’s 159 steering wheel

Oil stains, patina aplenty

Charlie Magee

Alfa Romeo 159 dials

But others, notably Mr Ferrari to the south and east, were coming on strong, which must have been a little galling as it was his Scuderia that had developed the 158 in the first place. Even with ever more power being coaxed from the straight-eight, it was clear the 158 could not prevail without a fundamental rethink. Which is how the 158 begat the 159 you see here.

The cars are more different than they look. The differences in bodywork may only be subtle, but beneath it had been extensively modified to stop Maranello’s Prancing Horse trampling this aged racer into the dust.

“The team was left with the problem of how to deliver its monstrous output to the road effectively”

Structurally the 159 (in ultimate form at least) incorporated extensive bracing tubes to the 158’s chassis, creating a substantially stiffer ladder/spaceframe hybrid. Perhaps most importantly a two-stage supercharger was fitted, increasing power to 425bhp at 9300rpm, which is V16 BRM territory, but with the handy added benefit of being able to run reliably for hours rather than minutes at a time. This had a predictably calamitous effect on its already fairly rude fuel consumption so the fuel tank by your right knee was increased in size from 7.7 to 16.5 gallons, bringing total fuel capacity with the unchanged tank in the tail to just a smidgeon short of 50 gallons. It has also been stated that the 159 engine could be made to deliver 450bhp, but at a dizzying 10,500rpm, at which speed it was never officially raced.

Alfa Romeo 159 reversed gear stick

A reversed gear gate, they all add to the 159’s charm

Charlie Magee

Alfa Romeo 159 oil spill

But an increased thirst was not the only problem brought by all this added power. The 158’s four-speed transmission needed beefing up to cope with it, while bigger, more powerful drums were fitted to try and ensure that its ability to lose speed bore some relation to its appetite for gaining it.

Even then, the team was left with the problem of how to deliver its monstrous output to the road effectively. The 158 had swing axles at the back originally designed to cope with less than half the power the 159 was now producing, so in their place came a De Dion tube to help keep the rear tyres vertical under load. Transverse leaf springing was retained at both ends.

“The 159 came from a time when cars needed to be manhandled”

And now we must disappear briefly into the fog of Alfa Corse past. This is an era long on opinion, suggestion and supposition, and remarkably light on incontrovertible fact. We cannot state for certain even when the 159 made its competition debut because it seems that some updated 158s were referred to informally or otherwise as 159s, nor does there appear to be a definitive record of which chassis did what. This is also one of those subjects that becomes more rather than less confused the more research you do, as consensus among the many authors who have written on this subject is often horribly hard to find. The clearest steer we have is that team manager Battista Guidotti told our own Doug Nye that ‘il vero 159’ didn’t actually make its race debut until the German Grand Prix in July 1951.

Fangio wrestles Alfa Romeo 159 1951 Spanish GP

Short and stocky was the way: Fangio wrestles his 159 to victory in the 1951 Spanish GP at Pedralbes, his third win of the year giving him the title ahead of Ferrari’s Alberto Ascari

What has recently come to light about the car you see here, chassis 159/111, is that it was the test and development car – the 159 muletto – and it was raced by Felice Bonetto at the aforementioned German Grand Prix from which it retired, and by Fangio at the non-championship Bari Grand Prix, which it won.

Somewhere in a dusty corner of a Milanese workshop, more information must surely exist, just waiting to be uncovered.

But that must wait for another day, because now we’re on the way to Alfa’s once-secret Balocco test track between Milan and Turin where, to mark Alfa’s centenary, the 159 has been wheeled out for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I’m not sure quite what I imagined would be the circumstances in which I would be afforded the privilege of driving the Alfetta, but it definitely involved rev limits, lap limits, extensive tuition, signed disclaimers and slowly-driven pace cars. What actually happened still seems beyond belief.

Andrew Frankel looking at Alfa Romeo 159

However, more of that in a moment, because you’ll not be surprised to know the 159 is not a car you just jump in and drive. The cockpit is cramped enough to suggest why the majority of the most successful racers of the era – Fangio, Ascari, Gonzalez and so on – inclined towards the short and stocky. The 159 came from a time when cars needed to be manhandled by men with colossal upper-body strength.

At least it all looks pretty straightforward. The dash behind the faded wooden rim of the three-spoke wheel is dominated by a huge rev counter, next to which sits a fuel pressure gauge. Then, in a pod to the left, are grouped dials for oil temperature and pressure and water. They’re so faint I can hardly see them.

“This is a car that cannot be mastered – there were world-class professional drivers of the era who never would”

You sit bolt upright and, as your feet find the pedals, they discover a central accelerator and the brake on the right. To make matters more challenging still, the gear lever is next to the seat by your left thigh where it cannot be seen and feels completely unnatural. And, just in case that’s not enough unfamiliarity with which to wrestle, its gate is reversed, with third and fourth in a plane to the left of first and second. You are, of course, surrounded by tanks. There’s fuel behind you and by your right leg, and oil to the left. The mirrors are unadjustable and set so low I doubt even Fangio could have seen much through them. Then again, if you were driving a 159, you probably didn’t need to look behind you.

Alfa Romeo 159 dial

The faded rev counter dominates what little dash there is.

Charlie Magee

The engine is massive, seemingly at least three times larger than needed to displace its diminutive 1479cc. A man plugs the same external starter into the nose as the team used in period. It doesn’t start. After several more attempts the air is split by a bang that has me ducking for cover. The team nod approvingly. After judicious squirts of a neat fuel cocktail (methanol, castor oil and, apparently, water as you’re asking) it fires, and this time holds. When there’s some temperature on the dials, the engine is cut and all the plugs come out. Only once a second set has been installed am I ushered into the cockpit to be told something I don’t want to hear. I have to drive very slowly. I must not use full throttle or even sharp stabs at the throttle. At all times I must follow a man driving a van. This, then, was the rub. I would get to drive the 159, but not in any way that had meaning.

Alfa Romeo 159 spark plugs

Spark plugs got a workout

Charlie Magee

So I climbed in, grabbed a gear and set off trying to divine what I could from this emasculated experience. The smell of the fuel was wonderful, matched by an engine noise I thought only Bugattis made. The gearbox was better than I’d hoped, the brakes considerably worse. But there was no chance to fling it at a corner or squirt it down the straight. After two laps my chaperon in his Fiat van signalled me to follow him off the circuit. I’d probably done 50mph. Game over.

Or maybe not. I didn’t refuse to get out of the Alfa out of protest, more I stayed aboard to savour what few moments remained. And it puzzled me why they felt the need to change the plugs again – we were up to 24 and the car had run for less than 10 minutes. So I asked. And the reply was that they were putting in cold plugs so I could drive the 159 fast. Fast? Heart racing now. What’s fast? I gestured towards the rev counter. “Sorry, but no more than this. Please,” came the sheepish response. I followed the finger expecting it to point to around 4000rpm. But it wasn’t. It was very definitely pointing to 8500rpm. Fear and euphoria rising in unison, I asked the last question. “How long?” “As long as you need.”

Nino-Farina-at-the-Geneva-Grand-Prix-1950

Concentration, or fear, etched hard on the face of Nino Farina as he hits the brakes during the Geneva Grand Prix des Nations in 1950

Getty Images

Need is a difficult thing to quantify in such circumstances but I thought that, somehow, the car would tell me when the time was right.

There are moments that even in the very instant of their occurrence you know will be with you for life. And the moment I first opened the throttle of Fangio’s 159 as wide as it would go, felt the rear tyres chirp and then that forward thrust, was as vivid as any. Statistically at least I always try to relate old racers to modern road cars, and the truth is the power-to-weight ratio of a brand-new Bugatti Veyron looks rather sick compared to that of this Alfa, now in its 60th year. When it hits, you don’t know whether to swear or laugh, so I did both.

Even by old racing car standards, this is not an easy car to drive. Even if you can cope with the reversed pedals and gears, the surfeit of power is utterly intimidating.

“The moment I opened the throttle of Fangio’s 159 was as vivid as any”

You feel wretchedly ill-equipped, the lack of grip, braking and talent at your disposal informing you better than ever how skilled and heroic were those who wrestled these around the Nürburgring, and clung onto them at over 190mph at Monza and Spa. For some reason an image of climbing an icy rock face without ropes while wearing nothing but Bermuda shorts briefly flicked into my head.

But even if this is a car that cannot be mastered (and there were world-class professional drivers who never did), if you have long enough the 159 can at least be understood and controllably deployed. You have to trust that all its actions, however extreme, are also both reliable and linear. However powerful the engine, it is the spread of torque I’ll remember more: any speed, any gear, it goes. And that gives you thinking time, time to be smooth with your upshifts and double-declutched downshifts. It also means that on this thankfully dry track, you’re not going to accidentally overdose the rear tyres, so that when it starts to slide (as it will almost anywhere) you can wind off the lock and ease off the pedal long before any drama develops.

Alfa Romeo 159 Andrew Frankel

The only thing I never trusted were the brakes, which may not have been quite as bad as they seemed, but I felt disinclined to investigate further.

It is possible no one will ever believe this, but it really was my intention to come in on the lap the engine died. Thankfully the gut-tearing panic was removed by the sight of zero fuel pressure. At 1.6mpg it doesn’t take long to get through it. So I got to coast into the pits in silence, rather regretting I didn’t have any goggles to push up onto my oil-stained forehead. Later I calculated I’d driven it for more than half an hour before the car had indeed told me when enough was enough.

There are reputedly just three complete 159s in the world, all owned by Alfa Romeo, and now, some days after I drove one, I am glad it didn’t turn out to be one of those surprisingly easy and accommodating race cars. Even so, I felt a fraud behind its wheel, for this is a car only legends like the death-defying Farina or Fangio should drive.

Alfa Romeo 159 logo

It marked the end of many eras: the 159 was the last successful grand prix car to have been designed in substantial part before the war. It remains Alfa Romeo’s most recent grand prix winner. Most of all, though, it slammed shut the book of the truly unhinged grand prix car; the F2 machine that took its place the following year with less than half its power must have seemed mild indeed. By the time F1 engines put out this kind of power again, they were located behind the driver and the cars to which they were mounted had vast slicks, huge wings and monocoque tubs. It was the 1970s and the age of the 159 was long since gone. But as the greatest racing machine of its era, and one of the finest of all time, it will never be forgotten.

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Special Issue Contents Archive - Motor Sport Magazine
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Brabham BT49: Driving the Ground-Effect F1 Title Winner

Taken from Motor Sport, August 2025

Gosh!” comes the ever-so-polite exclamation from Britain’s newest Formula 1 star. “I was scared I wouldn’t fit, but then again there’s no height limit…”

Ollie Bearman isn’t peering over the high-tech controls of his Haas VF-25, but the oversized steering wheel of ERA R4A – a car involved in the very first Formula 1 World Championship grand prix. And he’s got company: F1 veteran, Le Mans winner and broadcaster Martin Brundle is shaping up alongside to take out an Alfa Romeo 158, whose sister car won the aforementioned race – and first title – in the hands of Giuseppe Farina.

Alfa Romeo 158

Luigi Fagioli in his Alfa Romeo 158 leads Bob Gerard’s ERA, British Grand Prix, 1950

Jakob ebrey

All are here at Silverstone to film a Sky Sports feature commemorating 75 years since that epoch-defining 1950 British Grand Prix (or Grand Prix d’Europe for sticklers). The Alfa will form part of a gargantuan grid at this year’s Silverstone Festival in August, with a car to represent each F1 world champion in history – the 158 on behalf of ‘Nino’ Farina.

The two machines look magnificent as they’re prepared, gleaming in the National Paddock, but their respective histories couldn’t be any more different.

“R4A was ERA’s first customer car, ordered by racer Pat Fairfield for £1500 in 1935”

R4A was built 90 years ago, and hasn’t stopped racing since. One of the voiturettes built by pre-war racer Raymond Mays’ English Racing Automobiles project (ERA), R4A has history and then some. It was the company’s first customer car, ordered by racer Pat Fairfield for £1500 in 1935. The man known as ‘Skidder’ Fairfield would use it to win that year’s Nuffield Trophy at Donington and the 1937 South African GP, as well as races in France and at Brooklands.

R4A would change hands several times following the death of Fairfield at Le Mans ’37, before being bought by Bob Gerard. It would be his spare car at the 1950 British GP, as Gerard raced his other ERA, R14B, to sixth that day.

Martin Brundle and Oliver Bearman sitting on the couch

Ollie Bearman and Martin Brundle settle by the TV, 1950s-style.

Jakob ebrey

R4A then moved seamlessly into historic competition. It’s now lovingly looked after – and raced – by Nick Topliss; the car holds the pre-war class record at Shelsley Walsh – 33.03sec, driven by James Baxter in 2014.

The 158 varies in that it was only present at the 1950 British GP in spirit. When thousands of original spare 158 parts were put up for a job-lot sale in the late 2010s, vintage race car builder/restorer Jim Stokes was commissioned to buy them all and construct as authentic a 1950 grand prix car as possible.

What resulted is a brilliant ‘new’ 158 made from 70% original components – and with a supercharged straight eight putting out 300bhp, it sounds as good as it looks. Not that they’ve fired up just yet.

“It’s very different to what I’ve been used to, but the power and acceleration are impressive”

First Bearman and Brundle have a bit of cramming to do. They are filmed watching highlights of the very first Formula 1 World Championship grand prix, doing so in the genteel surroundings of a mocked-up 1950s living room – no matter if it’s actually a re-purposed Silverstone garage in reality.

That momentous day in 1950 saw Farina lead home an Alfa Romeo 1-2-3, with Luigi Fagioli and Reg Parnell following in behind. Gerard chalked a fine sixth behind the three Alfas and two Talbot-Lagos after starting back in 13th.

Martin Brundle and Oliver Bearman with 1934 Era R4A and Alfa Romeo 158 racing

Bearman in the Alfa with Brundle – open-faced helmet – in the ERA; this was Bearman’s first experience of a historic

Jakob ebrey

1934 Era R4A on track

Brundle opens up the Old English Upright.

Jakob ebrey

This was the genesis of the series we know as F1, and the two designs our drivers are taking on today were in the thick of the action. After taking it in, hay bales, oil drums and all, Bearman observes that the current F1 grid “aren’t as fierce as we think”.

As we’ll soon find out though, the Haas man has no fear in driving what Brundle describes on observation as “an oversized Formula Ford car”.

Bearman has to become au fait with the off-set steering column, using the fuel pump at low speed and utilising the pre-selector for gearchanges but, being 20 years old, he takes things in his stride.

Bearman is in his full F1 gear, while Brundle has gone for the historic open-faced helmet look. As the R4A’s supercharged 2-litre rips into life, Bearman is off without hesitation, soon followed by Brundle in the Alfa.

The pair howling down Silverstone’s old pitstraight is a true sight to behold, running side by side and engaging in faux duels as the Sky cameras follow.

Alfa Romeo 158 engine

1479cc, eight-cylinder engine made the 158 the world’s best

Jakob ebrey

Computer 1934 Era R4A and Alfa Romeo 158

Where do you plug in the computer?

Jakob ebrey

Both indulge in a few power slides, but it’s the current F1 starlet who’s really lost in the moment.

“This thing is amazing – it’s so fast!” shouts Bearman shortly after skidding into the pitlane. “It’s a proper workout.”

He then tears out for another run probably quicker than R4A’s done in 50 years, as its operators look on through gritted smiles. Once Bearman’s caught his breath in between sessions on track, the youngster takes a seat with Motor Sport to re-live the experience.

“You always get out of these cars thinking, ‘How did they do that?’”

“The oldest car I’d driven before today was from 2021 – so it’s one extreme to the other,” he laughs. “It’s very different to what I’ve been used to, but the power and acceleration are really impressive. Actually, I was quite shocked. When you’re in it, there are so many different things to think about. I was having to pump the fuel because we were going slowly, to keep it flowing – no electronics on this car!

“You definitely get more visibility [compared to today’s cars]. I feel like I’m sitting so high in the car. It’s incredible. It was honestly an absolute pleasure today. Really, really fun.”

Martin Brundle and Oliver Bearman with Alfa Romeo 158

“That’s correct Ollie, no halo…”

Jakob ebrey

1934 Era R4A suspension

ERA suspension

Jakob ebrey

While R4A is both pliant and exhilarating, the Alfa operates more on a knife edge, as Brundle soon finds out.

“You always get out of them thinking, ‘How did they do that?’” he says of vintage F1 machinery, and particularly the Alfa. “It just seems impossible with how little grip and driveability they had. It’s very tail-happy – also with the fundamentals like shifting gear and blipping the throttle. The gearbox pattern is probably the reverse to where you’d expect it, and the pedals certainly are too.

“You can’t just go breezing into a corner and lean on the mechanical grip – it’s just not there! We were doing 120mph on the straight, they, in period, were doing 180mph-190mph. When you see what drivers of these cars, and people like Stirling [Moss] and Jenks did at Mille Miglia… they were gladiators to say the least.”

1934 Era R4A engine

ERA – English Racing Automobiles.

Jakob ebrey

Alfa Romeo 158 steering wheel

The ‘Alfetta’ was formidable in 1950, winning all F1 World Championship rounds (except the Indy 500)

Jakob ebrey

Both Brundle and Bearman reckon that these cars make them look at Silverstone differently, not just from a safety point of view, but in terms of how to drive it too.

“The corners are definitely a lot tighter,” Bearman points out. “Copse in our F1 car is flat out – it’s not today. It’s a big change.”

“The cars were a lot less robust than they are now. As you go back through the decades, survival was more and more of a thing,” says Brundle. “Even just cornering through Woodcote, I could feel my leg up against some bits and pieces, some sharp edges in the Alfa.

“You just know that if you were in the car when it had a massive shunt, you’d be chipped, basically. Ollie said the same thing. You work out where you definitely don’t want to have a crash!”

Martin Brundle and Oliver Bearman race the 1934 Era R4A and Alfa Romeo 158

The day’s filming is all part of what is not just a highly significant year for F1, but also Silverstone. And this is where it all started – grand prix ground zero. Both men emphasise how the history isn’t lost on them, but also how their own lives have revolved around the circuit.

“It’s fast and challenging, and importantly for F1, Silverstone has still got that history and heritage”

“I already have a decent amount of knowledge about the past of F1 because I’m a huge fan of the sport,” says Bearman. “It’s a very important grand prix in the championship’s story and I’m very excited to be heading here for my first ever home race. I did one of my first practice runs with Haas here last year and also announced my drive for this year at Silverstone [in 2024]. It was already a very special weekend, but this time it’s going to be even better – and I’m really excited.”

Alfa Romeo 158 rear

This is the view ERA cars would mostly have had of the 158 in 1950 – although this racer isn’t ‘real’; it was made from 70% original parts

Jakob ebrey

“It’s important to me because I stood at Copse Corner in 1965 when I first came here,” adds Brundle. “And then I did lots of racing here in touring cars, junior formulae and F1. The work I did here with the BRDC [as chairman] and the circuit over the years means a huge amount. The drivers love it because it’s fast and challenging. But much more importantly, for F1, it’s still got that history and heritage. They’ve upgraded the show here. Silverstone has caught up with some of the world’s circuits in that it puts a festival on for four days, of music and racing and lots more besides. The drivers are smiling, the fans are smiling – everyone goes home happy.”

Judging by the recent crowd-pulling successes of the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Festival and so much more at the track, it’s sure to keep happening for years to come.

Martin Brundle and Oliver Bearman with 1934 Era R4A and Alfa Romeo 158

1934 ERA R4A

Engine 2-litre supercharged inline six cylinders chassis Ladder frame

Power 260bhp

Transmission Wilson preselector four-speed manual

Suspension (front & rear) Semi-elliptic leaf and Hartford friction shock absorbers

Weight 750 kg

Alfa Romeo 158

Engine 1.5-litre supercharged straight-eight chassis Tubular frame

Power 350bhp

Transmission Five-speed manual

Suspension (front) Double longitudinal links, transverse leaf springs, hydraulic shock absorbers

Suspension (rear) Transverse leaf spring, hydraulic dampers

Weight 700kg

 

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