For this week's Friday Fun, Steven Roy has tracked down an internet meme that we can turn into an F1 related game. I can't wait to see what you come up with this week.
There is a meme which has taken over the internet in the last couple of years which I have only just heard about. A quick search for the phrase "6 Word Memoir" proves that everyone on the net except me seems to be aware of it. The idea is simply that people should write a memoir of their life in 6 words. Some of them are funny, some are incredibly moving but for our 6 word memoirs you have to write from the point of view of someone connected to F1 - be they drivers, engineers, politicians, broadcasters or someone who has been associated with the sport in the past.
An example of a 6 word memoir for Michael Schumacher would be “Leaving Ferrari, pain in the neck” or for Nico Rosberg “Button gone yay, you signed who?”
There are literally millions on the net if you are stuck for inspiration but I am sure you can come up with some crackers.
Steven Roy is back again with another story from F1 gone by. I've never heard of this driver, so once again, many thanks go to Steven for the excellent history lessons.
Credit: pietroz cc:ann
A Chevron B25 similar to the Formula 2 car Birrell drove in 1973.
Gerry Birrell was born in Milngavie, Glasgow on July 30th 1944. He left school at 15 to become a car mechanic and soon became involved in racing as a mechanic for his brother Graham. In 1961 Gerry made his race debut in the family’s Austin A40 at Charterhall. The Austin was soon replaced with a Lotus 11 which Gerry re-built from a burnt out shell. It was soon clear that he was more talented than his brother and that coupled with his mechanical background and car development ability made him a very effective driver. The Birrells were a real racing family as the middle brother Ian also raced although only briefly and Graham’s wife Jenny was also a good saloon car racer.
Despite making his race debut at the age of 17 Birrell did not sit in a single-seater until he was 24 years old. He raced a Formula Vee at Ingliston and despite leading the race he finished second to Nick Brittain who was the top Formula Vee driver in the UK. The following year, 1968, he won the British Formula Vee title and moved into Formula Ford for 1969 winning the European championship in a Crossle.
1970 was an important year in his career as he stepped up to Formula 3, winning several races, and made his sportscar debut. For 1971 he made another big step entering Formula 2 and the European touring car series as a works Ford driver in addition to more sportscar races. He won the touring car series in an Escort RS1600.
In 1972 he continued with the same programs. Sharing with Claude Bourgoignie he won the touring car class and finished 11th overall at the Le Mans 24 hours and finished second at the Spa 24 hours. His best result of the year was in the Rothmans 50,000 International Libre race where Birrell finished 4th in his F2 car behind 3 F1 cars. Birrell was followed home by James Hunt and John Watson also in F2 cars. At the end of the season Birrell went to South Africa and won the Springbok Sportscar championship in a Chevron.
By 1973 Gerry Birrell was established as a hot prospect for the future with a growing reputation. He was highly rated by Ford for his development as well as racing abilities and was known as a real gentleman. For the 1973 season Birrell contested the Formula 2 championship in a Chevron and continued driving in endurance races for Ford.
The ninth round of the Formula 2 championship was at Rouen-les-Essarts in France. During Friday practice some of the drivers had raised questions about the safety of the track. Birrell’s car had been held up at French customs for ten hours causing him to miss Friday practice. As a result he was very angry when he went out for final practice on Saturday. He put in some quick laps and was heading through the fast downhill bend at Virage des Six Freres at around 150mph when one of his front tyres deflated. He went nose first into an Armco barrier which should have absorbed the impact. Instead due to poor installation the barrier rose up allowing the nose of the car to pass under it and Birrell was decapitated.
In 1970 Denis Dayan died in nearly identical accident. His Formula 3 car was involved in a collision which caused it to leave the track and go between the top and bottom rails of the barrier at the same corner. His car was totally destroyed and he died a few days later without regaining consciousness. It says much about the attitude to safety prevailing at the time that Birrell could hit an incorrectly installed barrier in the same place three years later.
Although Jackie Stewart’s retirement from racing had not been made public it had been widely predicted. Francois Cevert was expected to become the team leader and Birrell was expected to become the second driver for Tyrrell. In fact Ford rated Birrell so highly that their head of motor sport Stuart Turner had said that they would make sure he was in F1 for 1974. It would be very difficult not to sympathise with Ken Tyrrell. His team had been started to run Jackie Stewart in F1 and had done so magnificently. Stewart had trained his apprentice Cevert who was ready to take over on Stewart’s retirement and Birrell had been identified as the new apprentice.
Birrell died on June 23rd and a little over 3 months later so did Cevert in a freakishly similar accident with Stewart retiring the same day. The well planned succession was in ruins and the team never recovered.
At that time many drivers died as the result of the lack of safety provisions at circuits which meant trees, lamp posts and the like, were exposed and there were high kerbs or big drops at the sides of some tracks. It is particularly sad that these two men died in the manner that they did. They both hit safety barriers that should have saved their lives but due to neglect the barriers had not been fitted or maintained properly and instead of saving them they contributed greatly to their injuries.
The Tyrrell team never really recovered from Jackie Stewart’s retirement. Imagine however what would have happened had Cevert and Birrell survived 1973 and lined up for the team in 1974. Cevert could have delivered on his obvious promise and made use of everything he learned from Jackie Stewart. Birrell would have learned from Cevert and Stewart would have been advising the team. You have to deduce that Tyrrell would have been one of the top teams over the next few years and you have to wonder what the effect would have been on Niki Lauda’s attempts to turn round Ferrari and James Hunt’s position at McLaren after Emerson Fittipaldi committed career suicide by leaving to join Copersucar.
Would Lauda or Hunt have won their championships and had Lauda not won a title at Ferrari what would have happened to them? Would Scheckter have been able to win with them? The whole history of the sport since could have been very different had two circuit owners taken safety seriously and made sure that their Armco barriers were properly fitted. It seems particularly cruel that Jackie Stewart, who had campaigned for 7 years by that stage to improve safety, lost both Cevert and Birrell.
Guest writer Steven Roy returns with his first post of the year, turning his attention to Frenchman Francois Cevert. Steven needs no more introduction than that, so over to him.
Credit: zawtowers cc:ann
Jackie Stewart's final Grand Prix car, the Tyrrell 006/2.
Francois Cevert was born in Nazi occupied Paris in February 1944. His father was Charles Goldenberg whose parents had taken him to Paris from Russia to escape the Russian revolution in 1905. Goldenberg was a successful jeweller in Paris but as a registered Jew he had to join the French resistance to avoid deportation. His children were given their French mother’s surname, Cevert, to keep them safe from the Nazis.
Cevert became interested in motor racing after meeting his sister’s boyfriend and future Monaco grand prix winner Jean-Pierre Beltoise. After completing two years of national service Cevert entered and won the Volant Shell competition in 1966. The prize was a sponsored season in the French formula three championship with Alpine. Cevert impressed and was offered a works Alpine drive but chose instead to drive for Tecno. This turned out to be a good decision as he won the championship.
Tecno took him into formula two in 1969 and again he impressed by winning at Reims and finishing third in the championship. He also made his grand prix debut at the German GP albeit in the F2 class. He stayed with Tecno in 1970 and also raced in sports cars for Matra.
Jackie Stewart had raced against Cevert in sports cars and formula two and when his F1 team mate Johnny Servoz-Gavin retired as the result of an eye injury, which he felt made it too dangerous for him to continue in F1, Stewart told Ken Tyrrell that he should sign Cevert. Stewart had first noticed Cevert in an F2 race at Crystal Palace when he struggled to overtake the younger driver. From then until Servoz-Gavin retired Stewart had been watching Cevert’s progress.
Tyrrell ran March cars for most of 1970 before introducing the first Tyrrell design. Both cars proved to be unreliable. Stewart retired from 8 of the 13 races, mainly due to engine related problems, but finished 5th in the championship. Cevert managed to finish 5 of the 9 races he started and scored his first point at the Italian grand prix.
1971 was a Tyrrell season. Stewart took his second championship winning 6 of the 11 races. Cevert in his first full season of F1 took two seconds and a third before recording his only win at the last race of the season at Watkins Glen, giving him third place in the championship behind Steward and Ronnie Peterson. His F1 campaign was backed up with some major F2 wins. Clearly Cevert had very quickly established himself as a top driver.
Cevert’s 1972 F1 season is best forgotten. He retired or was not classified in 5 of the 12 races due to technical problems and retired from another due to a spin. He added another couple of second places to his record but could only manage 6th in the championship.
Jackie Stewart took his third championship in 1973 taking 5 wins from the first 14 of 15 rounds of the championship. He only failed to score points in two of those races. Lotus was the dominant team but their wins were split between Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson allowing Stewart to take the championship.
Stewart had decided early in the season that he would retire at the end of the year but had only told three people as he didn’t want his wife counting down till the end of the season. Cevert was going to be his successor as the number one at Tyrrell but had not been told. As a result he was considering offers from other top teams. He did not win any races in 1973 but he was second 6 times. Three of those were one-twos behind Stewart who said he believed that at some of those races Cevert could have passed him at any time he wanted. Despite not winning he finished fourth in the championship only 8 points behind the second placed Fittipaldi.
As with all the drivers at that time, although he was established as a top F1 driver and a star of the future Cevert was racing in all sorts of classes. He helped MATRA-SIMCA to win the World Constructors Championship in sports cars in 1973 winning the Vallelunga 6 hour race along with Gerard Larousse. He also won the F2 race at Pau.
Going into the last race of the season at Watkins Glen, Stewart had already won the championship and Ken Tyrrell suggested that should he and Cevert be running first and second Stewart should wave his team mate through to take the win and symbolically hand him the baton of team leadership. This was to be Stewart’s 100th grand prix and as he himself has said the whole thing was just too neat.
On Saturday morning Cevert left the track and crashed horribly. His car lifted the bottom rail of the Armco barrier and he was killed instantly. Jackie Stewart was one of the first drivers to arrive at the scene of the accident and got out of his car and went over to see Cevert. He was still in his car and obviously dead. Stewart returned to the pits and then did one of the bravest things any racing driver has ever done. He and Cevert were very close and Stewart had taught him everything he knew. He wanted to know why Cevert had crashed so he got back in his car and went out again. Cevert had gone off on a fast uphill right-left esses section. Stewart ran a few laps to try to identify the cause of the accident and decided that Cevert probably took the bend one gear lower than Stewart and as a result the engine was much higher in the rev range so that when he hit a big bump the tail stepped out leading to the accident. Stewart always took that section in a higher gear so that the engine revs were lower and the car more docile over the bump.
Having satisfied himself as to the cause of his team mate’s death Stewart pulled into the pits and retired from racing.
An interesting postscript to Cevert’s death is the supernatural aspects to it. Now, I make no judgement on these but simply re-tell them for the reader to consider. Cevert’s girlfriend Anne Van Malderen had seen a clairvoyant who told her that Cevert would die before his 30th birthday. She told Cevert of some of the other things the clairvoyant had said but not about his death and he decided that he should see the same clairvoyant. The clairvoyant told him exactly the same prediction that he would die before his 30th birthday. The race at Watkins Glen where he died was the last race he would have done before his 30th birthday.
That may seem curious enough by itself but in his latest book Jackie Stewart added an anecdote of his own which adds to this aspect of Cevert’s death. Cevert was very close to Stewart’s wife Helen and had told her that if he died he would try to contact her. As well as being a racing driver Cevert was a classical pianist and his favourite piece was Beethoven’s Pathetique which was a piece he played at every opportunity. In the two weeks between the Canadian and US GPs Cevert went to Bermuda with the Stewarts and played this piece on the hotel’s grand piano every night. Just before Xmas that year Stewart’s younger son Mark decided he wanted to buy his parents a present so asked for some money to buy it. He decided he was going to buy a record and insisted on going into the record shop on his own. He was about 7 years old and picked the record because he liked the cover. He had no idea what music was on the record. On Xmas morning the present was unwrapped and it was Beethoven’s Pathetique.
Having previously discussed Jim Clark on a couple of occasions, Steven Roy returns to highlight some more of the man's success, but from another perspective
Credit: Lotus
Clark's Lotus Type 18, at Group Lotus' HQ in Hethel.
Having watched BBC4’s re-run of Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion recently I was surprised at the effect that he had on people even though I know all the stories and I have seen the film before. It seems incredible to me that someone like Dan Gurney still breaks down and cries when speaking about Clark even though the film was made 40 years after his death.
I have never been a big fan of using statistics to assess a driver’s ability. There are many examples of drivers who never achieved the results that their ability deserved. Chris Amon was rated as one of the very best drivers of his time but never won a world championship race due to his incredible ability to change teams at exactly the wrong time. However there are other cases like Fangio where the raw statistics tell you that this was indeed a great driver. There is only one interpretation that can be made from 24 wins from 51 starts.
Clark’s results like Fangio’s lead to only one conclusion but I want to dig into the bald statistics to show how he dominated the sport.
In simple terms, he started 72 races and won 25. Given that the reliability of the cars in the 1960s was nowhere near as good as it is now these are clearly exceptional results but they don’t come close to showing how good Clark really was. He drove only for Lotus and Colin Chapman made cars with two characteristics. They were fast and they were unreliable. Clark as a result retired from 23 of his 72 races and in many of those he retired from the lead.
So although he started 72 races he only finished 49 and he won more than half of those. You may think those statistics sum him up but there is better to come. Of those 49 finishes 32 were podiums and 40 were points scoring. In a career that lasted 8 seasons he only finished out of the points 9 times.
Any driver who pushed the limit too early was liable to have a very short career
In those days, of course, young drivers were not able to spend time in simulators learning the vagaries of their car and the circuits. Neither did they have telemetry to let them know where they were gaining or losing time. So they had to take time to settle into F1 and learn how far they could push their cars. Any driver who pushed the limit too early was liable to have a very short career.
Jim’s first race was the Dutch GP of 1960 but it was not until 1962 that he won his first race. The real measure of his domination is to be found in his results from the start of 1962 until his death after the first round of the 1968 championship.
During that period he started 58 races and failed to finish more than a third of them recording 20 DNFs. From his 38 finishes he scored 25 wins, 29 podiums and 34 points scoring finishes. In just over 6 full seasons he won two-thirds of the races he finished and only finished outside the points 4 times.
In those 6 seasons he only finished outside the top 3 in the championship once. This was in 1966 when the engine regulations were changed from 1.5 litre to 3 litres and Lotus did not have a very good engine until the Cosworth DFV arrived the following season. He won two championships but had Chapman gone for a bit more reliability at the expense of a little speed he could easily have taken 5 and drastically improved his already impressive statistics.
It didn’t matter what he drove he was just as good in any kind of car
Of course, in those days, drivers drove in many other categories and few drove in as many as Clark . Frustratingly for his rivals, it didn’t matter what he drove he was just as good in any kind of car. In 1964 he finished third in the world championship but he won the British Touring Car Championship in the Lotus Cortina. He won in formula two, sports cars and saloon cars. He won the Indianapolis 500 by two laps in 1965 and but for some dodgy lap scoring and some officials ignoring their own rules to ensure that one of their own won he would have won two more. He was even at home at the wheel of a rally car.
In the winters of the 1960s the top F1 drivers drove in the Tasman Series which was a series of races in New Zealand and Australia . It goes without saying that Clark dominated. He entered the championship for the first time in 1965 winning 4 of the 8 races and finishing second once to take the championship. The following year was his least successful finishing third in the championship with one win and 2 seconds.
In 1967 he was truly dominant. That year there were only 6 races of which Clark won 3 and finished second in the other 3. He scored 45 points while his nearest rival Jackie Stewart scored only 18 from his two wins. In 1968 the championship was again up to 8 races and Clark won 4 and was second in another to take yet another championship.
In four seasons Clark scored 12 wins, 7 seconds and one third from 30 races. In 4 seasons he finished on the podium in two-thirds of the races in the Tasman Series, winning 40% of them and taking 3 of the 4 championships.
It is hard to put into words how utterly dominant Jim Clark was but the numbers give an indication.
Gosh, that title has way too much 'sidepod' going on. Initially, I had planned to write a short post for each of the Sidepodradio shows encouraging audience interaction. Steven suggested the hosts write their own posts, and offered to do the first one.
When Sidepodradio became reality Christine volunteered me to do the Sidepodspace show and since I have been too shy to refuse I guess I will have to do it.
The show is going to be 30 minutes on many if not all aspects of space that have been discussed on Sidepodcast in the past year. One day last year I mentioned that I was watching the preparations for a space shuttle launch and after a few questions and answers we ended up with a group of us watching. Since this is Sidepodcast, we live commented the launch. Once the launch was complete people started asking why the shuttle had been launched, where it was going and what it was going to do so now we watch launches, landings, spacewalks etc, as well as playing I Spy from the point of view of an astronaut on the ISS. As a result of all the interest in matters astronomical, we have this show.
The show covers a range of topics but a quick rundown looks like this:-
Space rocks - do we need to cryogenically freeze Bruce Willis now?
Jupiter strike – What happens when a big rock hits a huge planet?
The moon – Is it really made of cheese?
Manned exploration – Where have we been and where are we going?
The sky – Is it really space and how much does it weigh?
I have already received a lot of questions from commenters on subjects as diverse as what falls off the shuttle during a launch, how to navigate through asteroid belts, what is the correct downforce settings for a GP on Pluto and should we be going to Mars now.
I will also be revealing the answer to the question, the ultimate question, the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything: Has there ever been a Major Tom in space? If you want to know the answer you have to listen to the show and who doesn’t want to know the answer? Who was David Bowie really singing about and does the revelation of Major Tom’s real identity – should he exist – change the meaning of the song?
There is already a lot of content in the show but as ever I would love to have more questions on any aspect of space that people are interested in. No question will be neglected and left to stand unanswered, unless I don’t know or can’t find the answer. Don’t think any question is silly or too simple. If it is something you want to understand just ask. The show can be about some aspect of space that interests you or it can just be me waffling away about the bits that interest me and no-one really wants that. Really you don’t. I can spend 30 minutes discussing Neil Armstrong’s middle name and for some reason people find that boring. Who knew? To make sure you don’t have to listen to that, ask me about something you find more interesting.
If anyone would like to be on the show please let me know. It doesn’t matter if you just want to ask a question, express an opinion or have a full blown argument over whether we should be spending money on space, whether the Apollo landings were faked or whether it is a bad idea to replace the space shuttle with an old fashioned rocket stack with a capsule on the top. Any participation will be welcomed.
Please feel free to leave any comment on this post or on the show page. You can also email questions to Christine, who will happily pass them along: christine at sidepodcast dot com.
There are people who believe that the thing that sets F1 apart from other classes of racing is technology. The theory is F1 has the best people and has always had a technological lead. Only F1 could have ever made the great breakthroughs in technology that have taken us from barely modified road cars to cars that, in theory at least, could run upside down on a ceiling. Every time a piece of technology is outlawed we get howls of protest that F1 won’t be F1 any more because F1 must have better technology than any other class.
Of course all of this is based on a false premise. F1 has not always led all other classes and at times F1 has even been behind road car design. It has also been argued by those same people recently that USF1 has no chance of success because American racing technology is and always has been a long way behind European racing technology.
It has been argued that only a genius of Colin Chapman’s stature working in the unique pressure cooker environment of F1 could have shaped the under-side of the car to produce ground effect aerodynamics. Except that is not true. He was beaten to that technology by Jim Hall. Jim Who?
Jim Hall designed Chaparral 2H
The thing that made Chapman’s ground effect Lotus 79 so special were the side skirts fitted to the car to seal it to the ground. Only a Chapman in F1 could do that. Except that is not true either. Jim Who did that before Chapman as well.
Only a genius of Gordon Murray’s standing having to find an answer to Colin Chapman’s ground effect Lotus could have come up with a revolutionary idea like the Brabham fan car. Except that is not true. Jim Who did that too.
Only a genius like John Barnard working under the pressures that only F1 can exert could have invented the semi-automatic gearbox. Except that is not true. You guessed it. Jim Who did that too.
Jim Who, sorry Jim Hall was born in Abilene, Texas on July 23rd 1935. His family were very wealthy oil people so Jim enrolled at the California Institute of Technology to study geology. A month before he was due to start his course his parents and sister were killed in a private plane crash. Jim inherited $15 million and went off to university while his brothers ran the family business. The family firm sponsored Carroll Shelby and while at college Jim became interested in racing and Shelby taught him race driving.
Jim started racing his brother’s Austin Healy and changed his course from geology to mechanical engineering. After graduation he worked in the family oil business while financing Shelby’s sportscar business and his own racing program.
Hall’s racing eventually led him to F1. In 1960, 1961 and 1962 he hired a Lotus to compete in the US GP. He failed to start one race, retired from another and finished a lap down in 7th in 1960. In 1963 he contested the full F1 season in a British Racing Partnership Lotus 24. His best results were sixth place, two laps behind the leader at Silverstone and a fifth, one lap down at the Nurburgring. Hall did not enter the final round of the championship in South Africa and turned his back on F1 to return home to run his Chaparral sportscar company which he had set up at the end of 1960.
Hall had set up Chaparral Cars Inc with Hap Sharp in Midland, Texas in 1962. From the start Chaparral produced fast, innovative cars. Chaparral 2 was a mid-engined car with a semi-monocoque fibre glass chassis. Towards the end of 1963 Hall took Chaparral 2 to Riverside for its race debut. He took pole position and quickly built a substantial lead before an electrical problem ended its race. In 1964 Hall won the United States Road Racing Championship with that car taking 7 wins from 25 starts. The following season was one of utter domination with 16 wins from 21 starts including a win against a top international field in the Sebring 12 hours.
For 1966 Jim introduced not one but two new sports cars. Chaparral 2D competed in the World Endurance Championship winning the Nurburgring 1000 kilometres in the hands of 1961 F1 world champion Phil Hill and Swedish ace Joakim Bonnier. The Chaparral 2E was entered in the Can-Am championship. This was a very high level sportscar championship which took place in Canada and the USA hence Can Am. Many F1 drivers including the likes of Jackie Stewart competed in it and McLaren, over the life of the championships, built its best cars. Rules were few and far between giving someone like Hall the chance to indulge his innovative streak. Chaparral 2E had its radiators in sidepods rather than in the traditional location in the nose. Its most striking feature was a huge rear wing mounted on struts. By taking the radiator from the nose Hall was able to shape the front of the car to generate downforce. Bear in mind this all happened in 1966 before F1 cars had sidepods and still had radiators in the nose and when the only aerodynamic aim of F1 designers was to cut drag and reduce frontal area. In addition Hall fitted a pedal which could be use to adjust the rear wing and ducts in the front of the car. As the car came on to a straight the pedal flattened the wing and closed the ducting to give less drag and at the end of the straight the driver pressed the pedal to open the front ducts and raise the wing to create maximum downforce. 2E was more advanced than its opponents but had a 5.3 litre engines while many of its rivals had 7 litre motors. It won only one race at Laguna Seca with Phil Hill driving.
Hall’s magnum opus was the Chaparral 2J of 1970. This car was a car that was so far ahead of its time it is ridiculous. It pioneered technologies that would be hailed as breakthroughs in F1 nearly two decades later. In 1977 Colin Chapman introduced the F1 world to ground effect aerodynamics by shaping the underside of the Lotus 78 to produce downforce. The Chaparral 2J did that 7 years earlier. In 1978 Chapman’s Lotus 79 featured side skirts which created a seal to the ground and massively increased the downforce that could be generated. The Chaparral 2J had skirts 8 years earlier. Also in 1978, to combat the Lotus 79, Gordon Murray used a substantially increased engine fan of the Brabham BT46B to suck air from under the car to produce downforce. Eight years earlier the Chaparral 2J had two fans driven by a snowmobile engine which did the same job.
Perhaps the most advanced feature of the Chaparral 2J was a semi-automatic gearbox. It would be 19 years before John Barnard’s Ferrari 640 introduced such a device to F1. Despite, or perhaps because of, all this technology the 2J was anything but a success on the track. It frequently qualified on pole by more than two seconds such was its performance advantage however poor mechanical reliability no doubt partly due to the stresses caused by all that downforce meant that results were poor. At the end of its first season before the reliability could be sorted out the SCCA banned the car. Like so many of Colin Chapman’s innovations in F1 the car was legal but the organising body gave in to pressure from other teams who simply couldn’t compete with it.
Chaparral moved in to Indy cars and in 1978 Al Unser won the Indianapolis 500 with a Chaparral prepared Lola. In 1979 Unser led the race in the John Barnard designed ground effect Chaparral 2K and in 1980, 2K won the 500 in the hands of Johnny Rutherford. This was the last Chaparral car.
After taking some time away from racing Jim Hall returned to run customer Indy cars via Jim Hall Racing but this was never as successful as Chaparral. He also set up the Jim Hall Kart Racing School in California with his son.
There will always be people who think that F1 is all about technology and that taking away any of that technology automatically devalues it. The next time someone tells you that F1 has always been more technologically advanced than any other class of racing just tell them about Jim Who.
On April 7th 1968 Jim Clark died in a formula two race at Hockenheim. He remains one of the small group of drivers inevitably mentioned whenever the subject of "the greatest of them all" arises. This tribute explains the effect that Clark's fatal accident had on a small boy in Scotland.
Jim at the 1967 USGP
40 years ago the greatest driver of his generation was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in West Germany. Today it is inconceivable that a top grand prix driver would compete in a lower formula but then it was quite normal.
It is well known the Clark drove for Lotus in all 72 of his world championship grands prix and Lotus like Brabham made F2 cars and their GP stars drove them. Although, on this occasion Clark and his team mate Graham Hill were originally scheduled to drive Alan Mann’s new Ford F3L sportscar in its debut at Brands Hatch but Lotus boss Colin Chapman insisted they go to Hockenheim.
Most people first become interested in racing after watching a race on TV or being taken to a track. My introduction was a bit different. At the time I was eight years old and living in the west of Scotland. In the 11 years between 1963 and 1973 Scotsmen won 5 drivers’ world championships yet there was practically no media coverage. Races were not shown on TV and newspapers covered football and nothing else. It is hard to imagine someone growing up in Germany during the Schumacher period that would not have recognised him but Jim Clark could have walked through almost any town in Scotland unrecognised. Motor racing was very much a minority interest.
During my childhood my father worked night shift for a total of six weeks. I only remember this fact because one Monday morning he came in while I was eating breakfast and put a newspaper down. There was a picture of a man in a helmet and a line saying he had died. I asked if that was another astronaut dead and he said ‘No son, it’s Jim Clark. He was a racing driver.’ That was the limit of his knowledge. Despite being someone who read the paper every day he knew Jim Clark was a racing driver and nothing more. I have always been curious as to why I asked if it was another astronaut who had died and the only astronaut deaths I can find any record of were those of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo test AS-204 that was retrospectively named Apollo 1 but that took place 15 months earlier - which is a lifetime at that age.
That afternoon when I returned from school as I always did I took the paper and spread it out on the floor and read what I could. As always I started with the sport at the back but what caught my attention was the double-page spread in the centre of the newspaper. It was all about Jim Clark. It had a few pictures of him racing, on his farm and one of him as a young child on a pedal car. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The opening line read ‘Jim Clark grew up as a boy who loved cars’ and I can remember thinking that is just like me. Needless to say he wasn’t just like me and over the decades since I have acquainted myself with his legend. I read every word of those two pages and became fascinated with the man and motor racing.
To me it still seems incredible that at a time when Scotland (and England) was dominating F1 there was no coverage of it. At that time I knew Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Graham Hill were racing drivers and I knew that the little snippets of racing I had seen on TV interested me and that was it.
Jim’s career is well documented from his original meeting with Colin Chapman, where Chapman beat him in a race where they both drove Lotus Elans, to his two world championships, to the two others he lost to mechanical failure in the last race of the season. His win at Indianapolis, the second ‘win’ that was credited to Graham Hill although most people believe that was due to a lap scoring error. His second place at Indy to Parnelli Jones whose car was spewing out oil but the officials refused to black flag him because the didn’t want a ‘furriner’ in ‘one of them funny little cars’ to win. After that race which was his first visit to Indy he demonstrated the well disguised steeliness in his personality by insisting Chapman took his car to another oval race. They went to Milwaukee and won.
Clark would race anything. He famously raced the Lotus Cortina in the British saloon car championship and won that. The images of him three-wheeling that car around a track have gone down in legend. He raced sportscars, he almost won the RAC rally, he even raced in NASCAR.
Nowadays all that matters is a driver’s results in the F1 world championship. Jim Clark contested 72 races and won 25 of them; a record number of wins at the time. He took 33 pole positions which was also a record. The most telling statistic is that, although he won 25 races, he only finished second once. If the car was good enough to win, he won. Of course Lotuses had two distinct features: they were quick and they were fragile and Jim lost a lot of wins because the car broke down while he was leading. He was very much the driver who liked to get pole, make a good start and lead from the front. He drove for seven full seasons and won two championships in 1963 and 1965. He also lost the 1962 and 1964 championship to mechanical problems in the last race of each year. With a little bit of luck he could have won the majority of the championships he completed.
In 1963 he won a record 7 races in one season. There were ten races in the season with the driver’s best six scores to count. So not only did he score the maximum number of championship points he had a win to spare. However it could be argued he was more dominant in 1965. After 7 world championship races he had won six and again a driver’s best six scores counted so he was champion by August 1st. He did not win the Monaco GP but that was because he was winning the Indianapolis 500 instead.
During the winters of the 1960s top racing drivers did not spend weeks on end pounding round Barcelona, testing endless new pieces of carbon fibre. They decamped en masse to Australia and New Zealand for the Tasman series. This championship was run for formula one cars but with 2.5 litre engines. The championship ran for six seasons from 1964 to 1969 and was made up of 4 races in each country. Jim Clark contested the four of these championships and won three of them.
Jackie Stewart tells a story about Jim Clark that shows the difference between the assured, confident racing driver in total control of his environment and Jim the man. The two of them were in the USA and arrived at a railroad crossing in open country. According to Stewart they could see about two miles in each direction with no-one else around and Clark, who was driving, turned to Stewart and asked if he thought it was safe to cross.
At his funeral Jim Clark’s father pulled Dan Gurney aside and told him that he should know that he was the only driver Clark feared on the track. Gurney admits to shedding a tear that not only did the great man rate him so highly but his father took time out of what was a personally tragic time to tell him.
Jim Clark was regarded by all of his peers as the best driver of his generation. There really was no debate on the subject. Clark drove at a perilous time to be a racing driver and the fact that the universal reaction to his death was shock that it could happen to him tells you all you need to know about how he was regarded. The corollary of course was that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone and all of a sudden they all felt more vulnerable than they ever had.
Jim Clark was the greatest driver of his time. Was he the best ever?
This week, Steven Roy takes us back to the early days of motor racing, when sport and politics still mixed, but talent was all you needed.
Audi Rosemeyer Concept alongside an Auto Union Silver Arrow
Some drivers slide under the door of grand prix racing unnoticed and after serving a respectable apprenticeship get promoted into top drives. Some like Kimi Raikkonen fly through the junior formulae so quickly that they can only be granted a license to compete on a probationary basis. One man never drove a race car of any description before he drove a grand prix car and died a legend less than 3 years after his debut with his entire motor racing career lasting less than 1,000 days.
Bernd Rosemeyer was born in Lingen, Lower Saxony, Germany on October 14th 1909. His father owned a garage and it was here that his fascination with cars and motor bikes began. The more I learn about Rosemeyer the more he seems like a previous incarnation of Gilles Villeneuve. Like Gilles he had what appeared to be super-natural car control. Like Gilles he seemed to have no fear and like Gilles he didn’t stick rigidly to the law on the road. At the age of 11 he borrowed his father’s car to take some friends for a drive and when at the age of 16 he received his driving license it was quickly removed after the police took a dim view to some of his stunt riding antics on his motor bike.
After gaining some speedway experience he started road racing with a private BMW motor bike in 1933. Like Gilles mere details like money were irrelevant but fortunately his brother Job acted as his manager and dealt with contracts and the like. He started winning almost immediately and for the 1934 season he was signed by the DKW motor cycle team. DKW was one of four companies which combined to form Auto Union.
For the 1935 season Auto Union were looking for new drivers for their fearsome rear engine grand prix cars which were designed by Ferdinand Porsche. 12 drivers were selected to take part in trials on the Nurburging. Rosemeyer turned up late dressed in a suit without overalls and when asked why he was so dressed he replied that this was an important day for him so the suit seemed appropriate.
He got in the car wearing the suit and clearly impressed enough to be selected as a junior driver. Bear in mind that experienced drivers struggled to deal with the Auto Unions which handled very oddly as a result of their rear engine layout and that not only had Rosemeyer never driven any kind of racing car but the car he drove that day had ten times the power of any machine he had ever driven. In some ways it is surprising that he ever got a second run. Team manager Willy Walb went out to Muehlenbach corner to observe the trials. Rosemeyer on his first lap turned in at full speed and spun out requiring the team manager to throw himself in a ditch for his own protection. Being a fast learner the next time round Rosemeyer took the corner perfectly. He was soon able to match the times of the very experienced Hans Stuck.
Rosemeyer practically lived at the factory from the second the ink was dry on his contract. He spent his time asking endless questions to anyone who would listen to him. He had a hunger for knowledge about his new career. The first race of the 1935 season was at Avus in Berlin. Avus consisted of two parallel straights (sections of autobahn) of about 2.5 miles in length joined by a hairpin at the each end. Avus was fearsomely quick and definitely not the place for a rookie to make his debut. But Bernd would not be put off by conventional thinking. He started leaving notes around the office for Walb with comments like “Why is Rosemeyer not driving?” and “Where is the car for Rosemeyer?”. Walb eventually relented and gave him a car for the race believing that if, despite all his warnings, he wanted to risk his life then so be it. Despite never having raced a car of any kind, and driving a car that could scare the bravest of men on a circuit that his team manager didn’t think he was ready for, Rosemeyer qualified third but a broken engine put him out of the race.
The next race was the Eifelrennen on the Nurburgring. Rosemeyer was the fourth driver in the team and was supposed to back up the more experienced drivers however all of them had problems and Rosemeyer was let off the leash to chase the leaders. This he did with gusto catching and passing Chiron and Fagioli all the while power sliding the car around the Nurburgring at angles never before seen. Only the Mercedes of Rudolf Caracciola stood in his way but not for long. To the amazement of all, not least Caracciola, Rosemeyer passed him for the lead with three laps to go. Three 14 mile laps. Caracciola the most successful driver of the time sat on the tail of the unknown junior driver unable to pass. On the last lap Rosemeyer mistimed a gear change and Caracciola was through and went on to win by a couple of seconds. On the run from the finish line to the pits Rosemeyer was devastated. He drove one handed while his other fist pummelled the car.
On the basis of that drive he was promoted to full time third driver behind Hans Stuck and Achille Varzi.
Another parallel with Villeneuve is that driving in the manner Rosemeyer did coupled with his lack of experience resulted in damage to his car but like Gilles the mere detail that the car was a bit bent was not going to make him stop, or slow down. A good example came in the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara in Italy. Rosemeyer started from the back row but was soon in second place and challenging for Tazio Nuvolari’s lead. Pushing the car beyond its limits resulted in Rosemeyer leaving the track bursting both rear tyres. After a quick pit stop to replace the rear wheels he continued at unabated pace, locked his brakes and again left the track. The car vaulted over a ditch and passed through the gap between a telegraph pole and a bridge parapet. Despite the rear of the car being badly bent he carried on and finished second to his team mate Achille Varzi. Ferdinand Porsche is reported to have been so amazed that he could get the car through such a gap so he went and measured it. There are various figures reported which range from the gap being narrower than the car to it being 5cm wider.
Some people believe the fact that Rosemeyer had never driven any other racing car an advantage. He had no idea how a proper racing car was supposed to behave so he didn’t realise how bad the Auto Unions were and while to anyone else it took a long time to adapt to the cars idiosyncrasies to him it was all he knew. Like Gilles with the evil handling Ferraris his solution was to grab the car by the scruff of the neck and to drive it sideways into positions it had no right to be in.
His first season of car racing ended with a victory at the Czech GP at Brno. While the win was a significant event in itself, more significant was that on the podium Rosemeyer was introduced to Elly Beinhorn. She was the German version of Amelia Earhart or Amy Johnson. Elly held many long distance flying records and was only the second woman after Johnson to fly solo from Europe to Australia. They met on 29th September and married on 13th July the following year. The daring young racing driver and the fearless aviator were very much the celebrity couple and had been noticed by those in power. Heinrich Himmler ordered Rosemeyer to become a member of the SS. To say the least Bernd was reluctant to comply but at the time had little option. The couple’s only child Bernd junior was born in November 1937 ten days before his father’s death.
Elly was not only brave in an aeroplane. While the Auto Unions were capable of scaring the most experienced of drivers they did not scare Elly. She got in and drove one of these fearsome cars round Monza and later round the Nurburgring in the fog. She also on one occasion got in the car with her husband so that she could experience what the car felt like when he drove. The car we are talking about had skinny tyres, very inefficient drum brakes and a V16 engine in the back that produced over 500bhp. She sat on the edge of the only seat hanging on while Bernd drove the Nurburgring in his usual exuberant sideways manner. She said that her initial enthusiasm was replaced by a conviction that they would not make it to the end of the lap after she was almost thrown out of the car at the first corner. He claimed that he had driven slowly to be safe however he completed the lap in 12 minutes as compared to the 9 minute 46 second time he recorded in qualifying.
While her husband died ridiculously young Elly died on 28th November 2007 a few months after her 100th birthday.
Rosemeyer’s second season did not get off to the most auspicious start as he did not finish any of the first three races, including the Monaco GP which was the first of four rounds comprising the European championship. The rest of the season was much better though with wins in the non-championship Eifel GP and the German GP both of which were run at the Nurburgring. He also won the Swiss GP at Bremgarten and the Italian GP at Monza to clinch the championship. It is hard to comprehend the scope of that achievement. We are not talking of a Lewis Hamilton whose entire life had been dedicated to perfecting everything required to be a world champion. Lewis Hamilton’s achievement in winning the top championship of the day at the second attempt after years of preparation in incredible but Bernd Rosemeyer won the ultimate championship of his day within two years of sitting in a racing car.
The return of Mercedes with Rudi Uhlenhaut’s W125 for 1937 meant that they dominated that year’s European championship with Rudolf Caracciola winning 3 of the 5 races to clinch the championship and team mate Manfred von Brauchitsch winning one of the two remaining rounds. However, as was the norm at that time, there were many more non-championship races than championship rounds and Rosemeyer still managed to record a few victories. He won the Eifelrennen at the Nurburgring in June and the following month travelled to America to win the Vanderbilt Cup. In August he won the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara in Italy and at the beginning of October he won the Donington GP.
As mentioned previously Bernd Rosemeyer was no fan of the Nazis and a good example of this comes from Dennis David’s fabulous website.
“At the German Grand Prix he stunned Mercedes, by taking pole position by six seconds. His race was marred by numerous off track excursions, but still he charged on in the ill-handling Auto-Union. After four hours he finished in third place behind the winner, Caracciola. As they mounted the victor’s rostrum they were congratulated by the ranking Nazi, Adolf Huhnlein. Caracciola was presented with a large trophy depicting the Goddess of Speed. Showing his disdain for bureaucrats in general and National Socialism in particular he placed a lighted cigarette between the statues lips while Huhnlein's back was turned. Alerted by the crowds burst of laughter Huhnlein turned back only to see Rosemeyer's feigned innocence.”
It can reasonably be argued that any death in a racing car is pointless and some are more pointless than others but few have ever been as pointless as Bernd Rosemeyer’s.
In order to maximise the propaganda value of motor racing to the Nazi regime, the Mercedes and Auto Union teams would at the end of the season fit slipstreamer bodywork to their race cars and attempt to set speed records on a closed section of autobahn. It is impossible to underestimate how dangerous this was. At the speeds the cars had achieved by this time if a driver had his steering angled by one degree he would have two wheels on the grass verge in one and a half seconds. That is the margin they had on cars that were bouncing all over the place passing under bridges with central pillars.
On January 8th 1938 Caracciola had broken the flying kilometre and flying mile records that had previously belonged to Rosemeyer. Auto Union had fitted some new basic ‘ground effect’ skirts to the car and not wishing to spend more time than necessary on this utterly futile activity Rosemeyer decided to fit all the new pieces for his first run. On that run he reached a speed of 429.9 km/h or almost 270mph. After that run some apparently minor modifications were made including sealing the skirts. One and a half minutes after having started what was to be his final drive the Auto Union left the road at a speed of 432 km/h. The car somersaulted many times and disintegrated.
Caracciola’s speeds set earlier that morning remain the fastest ever set on a public road.
Such was Rosemeyer’s profile that his wife Elly received condolences from Adolf Hitler and his deputy Rudolf Hess. The Nazis wanted to give him a show piece funeral but Elly said if they did she would walk out of it. He was buried next to his friend Ernst von Delius who had also died at the wheel of an Auto Union. Every year on the anniversary of his death the city of Berlin in accordance with Elly’s wishes places 13 roses on his grave. Bernd regarded 13 as his lucky number.
Few people ever have a car named after them but there must be a very select club who 62 years after their death receive such an honour. In 2000 Audi produced a concept car which unfortunately was never intended for production called the Audi Rosemeyer Coupe. It had clear styling cues from the Auto Union GP cars and featured a mid mounted 16 cylinder engine. It really is a striking car.
Leif Snellman is generally regarded as the premier authority on this period. The following are his thoughts on Bernd Rosemeyer.
“In sheer natural speed and car control, was he the best ever? The only car Rosemeyer ever raced was the monstrous rear-engined Auto Union, a car that even Nuvolari found hard to master. Yet, in a meteoric career Rosemeyer established himself as the world's fastest driver and Germany's most popular GP driver ever. Starting in 1935 he was challenging for the lead in only his second race. In 1936, in his first full season, he clinched the European Championship and forced the mighty Mercedes to retire from racing in the middle of the season. On the infamous Nürburgring track, the ultimate challenge for any driver, Rosemeyer's abilities came to his own. He held the lead every single time he raced there and he finished 2nd, 4th, 1st, 1st, 1st and 3rd. No one (with the possible exception of Gilles Villeneuve) has been able to fully copy Rosemeyer's driving style. In total disregard for the laws of physics the thrill seeking driver, whose favourite number was "13", threw the heavy car around in impossible angles. While he made the occasional mistake, his 10 victories during a time of just two years show his class. Sadly his career was cut short by a 400 km/h crash during a world speed record attempt in early 1938.”
I see no point in providing my own summary as Snellman knows far more than me about the period and the driver than I. I will only say that from my first acquaintance with Bernd Rosemeyer the parallels with Gilles Villeneuve seemed obvious and I am pleased that Snellman has come to the same conclusion. It was only on the second reading of his summary that the full impact of it hit me. “No one (with the possible exception of Gilles Villeneuve) has been able to fully copy Rosemeyer's driving style.” He is saying that Rosemeyer was even more extreme than Gilles. Surely this must be time polishing the memory of a favourite driver. No-one could be more Gilles than Gilles. Could they?
Note: If any one is interested in reading about this era the best source of info is The Golden Era of Grand Prix Racing by Leif Snellman. It is a stunningly good site.
Following on from the success of the first Steven Roy guest post, we invited him back to share some more history. A note from the author: "This was originally written to mark the 26th anniversary of Gilles Villeneuve’s death. I decided to post it here unchanged." Now on with the good stuff.
Gilles Villeneuve died on 8th May 1982 during qualifying for the Belgian GP at Zolder. He was in a rage after being betrayed by his team mate in the San Marino GP two weeks earlier. F1 lost the greatest driver of his generation and one of its most popular drivers ever. I decided to write a few words to mark the anniversary and it turned into a bit of a monster. I could easily have written 10 times as much.
Gilles positions his Ferrari 312T4 at Zandvoort '79
Twenty-six years ago today the fastest grand prix driver there has ever been died. The bare statistics of Gilles Villeneuve’s formula one career are nothing special but few drivers have ever been held in such esteem by both their fans and rivals. Gilles competed for only 4 full seasons, starting 67 grands prix and winning 6. It says much about the manner in which he raced that those of us old enough have distinct memories of so many of those races. It is difficult to think of anyone having such a short career making such an impact. As a comparison Felipe Massa has already started 25 more GPs than Villeneuve did in his whole career.
For those who were not fortunate enough to watch his career it is difficult to understand what he did, how he did it and the effect he had on people. Nowadays we tend to think of a number two driver spending his whole career as a number two. There was a time when young drivers would have a spell as a number two before becoming a team leader. Team orders were very much the norm and in 1979 Gilles was number two to Jody Scheckter at Ferrari. Imagine that Massa was the definite number two at Ferrari last season and Raikkonen after a few seasons running near the front was on course to win the title. That is the situation we had in 1979. Now imagine a race where first practice is so wet only eight drivers decide to risk going out. Raikkonen comes in and admits he had driven so fast that he scared himself; genuinely scared himself and swears to his pit crew that no-one could possibly have gone any faster - only to be told that Massa had beaten his best time and beaten it by eleven seconds. Gilles did that to Jody at Watkins Glen.
"I scared myself rigid that day", Jody remembered. "I thought I had to be quickest. Then I saw Gilles's time and - I still don't really understand how it was possible. Eleven seconds!"
Jacques Laffite (think Mark Webber), on seeing Gilles go out, went round his pit garage urging people to come out and watch because he knew Gilles in those conditions would be something very special.
Some drivers arrive in F1 with barely a ripple while others arrive with a bang. Gilles managed to create an impression in his first practice session. He had started in snowmobile racing and won the 1974 snowmobile world championship derby. Gilles had a reputation in certain quarters of not really understanding the technical aspects of the sport; however, while he was racing snowmobiles he designed and built a revolutionary suspension system which was subsequently copied by all the works teams.
In the 70s it was still common for F1 drivers to compete in other formulae. James Hunt entered a Formula Atlantic race in Canada along with a few other F1 drivers and was so impressed by Villeneuve he phoned McLaren and told them they had to sign him. Gilles won the 1976 Canadian and US Formula Atlantic Championships in a self-run car. His budget was so low that he couldn’t afford the entry to the race at Mosport. He won the Canadian championship again the following year.
At the time it was quite common for F1 teams to run a third car for a young driver every now and then. McLaren signed Gilles for five races starting from the 1977 British GP. James Hunt and his teammate Jochen Mass had the new M26 and Gilles had the tried and trusted M23. Having never sat in an F1 car nor ever having seen Silverstone, Gilles came up with an innovative way to learn the circuit. He knew that this may be the only chance he had to show the F1 world what he could do and he was determined to make the most of it. He decided that the best way to learn the track was to go through each corner a little faster each lap until he spun and then he would back off a little. Initially people thought he was simply out of his depth but as soon as it became clear that he never hit anything and that he recovered each spin without fuss and set off again, people realised he was a bit special. It should be remembered that this was not the modern sanitised Silverstone with all the twiddly bits - this was the old fashioned Silverstone that Keke Rosberg lapped at 160mph a few years later.
Despite lacking experience on a scale that is incomprehensible today, and driving the old car, Gilles qualified ninth, 2 places ahead of Mass in the new car. That in itself is a stunning achievement. Despite his total lack of experience, and the need to create an impression, Gilles noticed the engine temperature rising during the race. Rather than carrying on and blowing up the engine, he pulled into the pits to report the problem and was delayed for two laps while the team diagnosed the problem as a faulty gauge. Gilles returned to the race setting fifth fastest lap and finished 11th. Had he ignored the problem and just carried on he would have finished 4th in an out of date car at a circuit he had never seen before. Despite this incredible performance McLaren released him from his contract and Ferrari snapped him up. Before Ron Dennis took over, McLaren gave both Villeneuve and Prost their F1 debuts and let both go.
1978 was dominated by the ground effects Lotus 79 which immediately rendered the previous season’s championship winning Ferrari obsolete. While it is fair to say Ferrari struggled, Gilles scored his first podium finishing third on the mighty Oesterreichring and in the final race of the season he won the Canadian Grand Prix on a circuit that was soon to be renamed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
For 1979 Clay Regazzoni was replaced as Villeneuve’s teammate by Jody Scheckter. Jody had number one status and used that to win the championship. Gilles won 3 races and a legion of fans. He won on Jody’s home ground in South Africa and the US GP West at Long Beach early in the season. At the Italian Grand Prix Gilles sat behind Jody knowing that finishing in those positions would guarantee Scheckter the title. Gilles was outraged when after the race someone suggested he should have passed Jody. He was quoted as saying that it never crossed his mind to break his agreement but that he stared at the back of Scheckter’s car willing it to break. Gilles won the final race of the season at Watkins Glen after that incredible first practice performance. Gilles was happy to stick to the terms of his contract because he knew soon he would be number one and would benefit in the same way.
It seems odd that in a year where a driver establishes himself as a regular grand prix winner and as the fastest driver in the sport, that his most memorable performance should be one in which he finished second. At the same 1977 race Villeneuve made his F1 debut, Renault introduced the turbo charged engine to the sport. In its initial guise it was notoriously unreliable and rapidly gained itself the nickname of the kettle because it boiled so often. By 1979 the engine was much more reliable and powerful. Appropriately at the French GP at Dijon it won its first race in the hands of Jean-Pierre Jabouille and no-one remembers it. All anyone remembers about Dijon 1979 is the titanic battle for second place between Rene Arnoux in the second Renault and Villeneuve in a totally outclassed Ferrari. Fortunately Gilles never recognised the limits of a car or let the laws of physics limit his performance and put on the most incredible display of driving to wrestle second place from Arnoux. Arnoux’s performance that day was very special but what Villeneuve did with that Ferrari was beyond belief.
Jacques Laffite best summed up the view of the drivers of the period when he said "I know that no human being can do a miracle. Nobody commands magical properties, but Gilles made you wonder. He was that quick." I can’t imagine any current driver making a similar comment about any of his rivals.
One of the best examples of Gilles’s refusal to accept defeat or reality came at Zandvoort that year. He suffered a slow puncture in his rear left tyre. This eventually caused him to spin off. Gilles wrestled the car back on to the track and drove it with his usual verve back to the pits with the left rear wheel flailing around breaking bits of suspension and body work. When he slid to a halt in the pits he was furious that his mechanics had not fitted a new wheel. It was only when he stepped out of the car and saw that there was nothing for them to attach a wheel to that he calmed down.
The Ferrari 312T5 of 1980 was a terrible car. It is difficult to comprehend how bad it was. Suffice to say Gilles did things with it that should not have been possible but by this time that was the normal state of affairs. Scheckter managed only one points scoring finish and suffered the ignominy of being the only reigning world champion in history to fail to qualify for a race in Canada. Gilles managed 4 points scoring finishes for a total of 6 points but somehow managed to finish fifth in the race Jody didn’t qualify for. Imagine if we still had qualifying and Raikkonen didn’t manage to do a fast enough time to qualify even on the back row and Massa finished fifth in the race. Unbelievable!
For 1981 Ferrari replaced the unloved 312T5 with the 126CK which housed Ferrari’s first turbo. This was variously referred to as the big red Cadillac, a truck and by Gilles as a s**tbox. Enzo Ferrari believed that cars won races and drivers lost them. He was totally intolerant of any criticism of his cars by his drivers but simply laughed at Gilles’s description. He knew that Gilles took that car to places it never belonged. Gilles was asked by a journalist what he thought of the car. He replied ‘It is a s**tbox. I am not complaining. It is my job to drive it and I will but it is a s**tbox.’ I can imagine how a few team principals would respond to a comment like that today.
Scheckter retired after the 1980 season and Gilles became the number one Ferrari driver as he had always believed he would. His new number two was Didier Pironi who Gilles trusted implicitly, despite being warned by his wife to keep a close eye on him. Joann Villeneuve decided very quickly on first meeting Pironi that he was not to be trusted. If only Gilles had listened to his wife.
The 126CK had a very powerful engine but didn’t like corners. On a straight there was nothing to touch it but it was hopeless when it had to go round any corner. As usual Gilles didn’t let reality get in the way of his adventures and won in Monaco with it. Who else could win in Monaco with a car that didn’t do corners and was only good in a straight line? As Laffite said, sometimes Gilles made you wonder. Clearly he was playing by a different set of rules to everyone else.
The following race was the Spanish GP at Jarama. This race ended in yet another legendary performance. In 1981 a grand prix consisted of 26 drivers leaving a starting grid and driving unaided to the chequered flag. Proper grand prix racing in other words. Gilles won the race by doing his version of the Trulli-train except he was in first position and the train comprised positions two to five. Gilles was lightning quick down the straight but had to drive a defensive line through the corners. He didn’t do it by blocking or making ‘one move’. He drove a perfect, clean line lap after lap after lap and won the race despite having four faster cars on his tail for the whole race. He knew that if he made one small mistake he could drop four positions.
Keke Rosberg best summed up Gilles attitude to racing. "To Gilles, racing truly was a sport, which is why he would never chop you. Something like that he'd look on with contempt. You didn't have to be a good driver to do that, let alone a great one. Anyone could do that. Gilles was the hardest b*****d I ever raced against, but completely fair. If you'd beaten him to a corner, he accepted it and gave you room. Then he'd be right back at you at the next one! Sure, he took unbelievable risks - but only with himself - and that's why I get p****d off now when people compare Senna with him. Gilles was a giant of a driver, yes, but he was also a great man."
Nigel Roebuck commented that all drivers took risks but 'Gilles was the only one working without a safety net'.
Gilles follows Alan Jones in Montreal
The victory at Jarama was his last and stands as a fitting tribute to the man and the racer. He won in a car that had no right to be anywhere near the front of a grand prix. He won in a car he had described as a s**tbox because he knew it shouldn’t be able to run in the positions he put it in, and he won by driving absolutely correctly and by not making a single mistake for the entire race distance.
The Ferrari 126C2 of 1982 was a car capable of winning a championship and Gilles as number one knew this would be his best chance of winning a championship. Despite this he had already made up his mind to leave Ferrari. He had considered setting up his own team which gives a different perspective to Jacques Villeneuve’s BAR adventure. However he was negotiating with McLaren and it was likely that he would have been Niki Lauda’s team mate in 1983. The ‘discussions’ at times were a little too public. At one test session Ron Dennis walked out of the McLaren garage and picked up a pit board and some numbers and put it down facing the Ferrari pit showing 2.5 (meaning $2.5 million per season). After Ron returned to the garage Gilles strolled over and took out the 2 and replaced it with a 3.
We were at the height of the FISA-FOCA war and the start of the season suffered with the drivers strike at Kyalami amongst other problems. The FOCA teams boycotted the San Marino race but the event still went ahead with only the FISA teams in attendance. Gilles led followed by Pironi and Ferrari signalled to them to hold station to save the car. They were winning easily and cars were nowhere near as reliable as they are now so there was no point in taking a risk. Pironi eventually took the lead and Villeneuve re-took it. Gilles said after the race that he thought Pironi was only putting on a show for the crowd and he had expected him to honour his contract in the same way Villeneuve had honoured his when he was number two. However, on the last lap, Pironi dived into the lead and finished first. Gilles was livid and swore never to speak to Pironi again.
Nigel Roebuck was a close friend of Villeneuve’s and tried to phone him in the days after the race. He eventually spoke to him and the conversation became the basis for his Fifth Column in Autosport on the Thursday before the Belgian GP at Zolder. It is the most chilling piece of motor racing writing I have ever seen. Gilles explained that he thought Pironi was putting on a show and that he would let him lead for a bit then pass him and slow the pace. Gilles claimed that the laps he led were several seconds slower than the laps Pironi led, backing up his argument. He said that although both drove Ferraris as far as he was concerned they now drove for different teams and he would treat Pironi as another opponent. He was clearly furious at the betrayal.
The Ferrari management made matters much worse by refusing to state publicly that Pironi had broken his agreement and so Gilles felt doubly betrayed. He was quite clearly not in the right state of mind to be behind the wheel of a racing car at Zolder. In 1982 we still had qualifying tyres. These were very soft tyres which lasted for one lap and in some cases less than a lap. A rule had been brought in which allowed each driver only two sets of qualifying tyres. This resulted in drivers being forced to take ridiculous risks because if they didn’t get a clear lap on one of their two sets of tyres they had to make one.
Gilles may have taken more risks than anyone else but he was well aware of the dangers. "I don't have any fear of a crash. No fear of that. Of course, on a fifth gear corner with a fence outside, I don't want to crash. I'm not crazy. But if it’s near the end of practice, and you are trying for pole position maybe, I guess you can squeeze the fear..." On his second set of qualifiers at Zolder, Gilles had already completed three flying laps and been shown the in board by Ferrari, but he was still going for it because Pironi was marginally faster. He clipped the back of Jochen Mass’s March and was launched into the most sickening accident I have ever seen. Gilles was pronounced dead in hospital that night.
The loss of Gilles was a huge blow to anyone with an interest in motor racing. To those that knew him the blow was enormous. I remember reading Keke Rosberg’s comments about his drive past the circuit on the Monday after the race. "It's the emptiest place in the world after the race. After all that activity and intensity, there's not a soul about. It's dead. Nothing but litter. And parked out there was Gilles's helicopter. Then it hit me. Very hard."
You would not expect Jackie Stewart to be a fan of Villeneuve’s as they were polar opposites in their approach to racing, but JYS recognised his ability. "Oh, I think he's superb, and I believe he'll get better and better. At the moment he still makes mistakes, misses the odd apex, gets up on a curb, uses a little too much road on the way out sometimes, but I'm being hypercritical here. His level of natural talent is phenomenal - there's real genius in his car control." Gilles received plaudits even from those who have made a career of being hard to impress. Niki Lauda said: "Gilles was a perfect racing driver, with the best talent of all of us. He was the best - and the fastest - driver in the world." A lot of people thought he was the fastest driver but to someone as analytical as Lauda he was also the best driver. Can you imagine any driver in the last 20 years saying that about a rival?
Like Nigel Roebuck when some new rule is brought into F1, one of the ways I look at it is to ask if Gilles would approve. Somehow I think he would hate the current set up. He had a very clear idea of how F1 should be. "I love motor racing. To me it's a sport, not a technical exercise. My ideal Formula One car would be something like a McLaren M23 with a big normally aspirated engine, 800 hp, 21 inch rear tyres. A lot of people say we should have narrower tires, but I don't agree because you need big tyres to slow you down when you spin. And you need a lot of horsepower to unstick big tyres, to make the cars slide. That would be a bloody fantastic spectacle, I can tell you. We would take corners one gear lower than we do now, and get the cars sideways. You know, people still rave about Ronnie Peterson in a Lotus 72, and I understand that. I agree with them. That's the kind of entertainment I want to give the crowds. Smoke the tyres! Yeah! I [care about the fans], because I used to be one of them! I believe the crowd is really losing out at the moment, and that's bad." If only he had survived and become FIA President. I much prefer his version of F1 to Max’s strategic chess match.
Gilles didn't just attack a race track without fear, he attacked all aspects of his life in the same manner. The following is from Gerald Donaldson's excellent book on Villeneuve and shows his total lack of fear and innovative approach to problem solving.
'I flew with them in the Wolf helicopter to Fiorano for training. Every time we took off Jody left his heart on the ground and picked it up again on the way back. We were coming back to Monaco when a red light started flashing. Jody said, "What the hell does that mean?" Gilles says, "No problem. Not important." The light kept flashing and Gilles drops us down at the airport to go through customs out of Italy. Gilles goes into airport to sign the papers and Jody pulls out the flying manual and looks up flashing red lights. It said that it means the battery is overheating and might explode. It's a warning and you've got 30 seconds to land!
Gilles comes back and Jody tears into him. "Villeneuve, the f***in' battery is kaput! You aren't gonna take off and kill us all!" Gilles says, "Take it easy, there is no problem", and we take off 3-4,000 feet. We were over the sea coming into Monaco and the light starts flashing again. Then Jody almost flies out of his chair. "Villeneuve, what the f*** are you doing? Stop!" - Because Gilles is cutting the motor off - and we're going sh, sh, sh, sh, sh - then he starts it up again. He's cooling the battery. The rotor is still turning but we drop - zzzzzz - until he starts the motor again. He cooled the battery all the way into Monaco like this and Jody is having a heart attack. He got out of that helicopter as white as sheet and said "F*** you Villeneuve, I'll never get back in that goddamn thing again!" And he didn't.'
His drives from Monaco to Maranello were as legendary as his on-track exploits. He and Pironi would take turns each to see who could keep his foot flat to the floor for the longest, without lifting, with the passenger operating the stop watch. I believe it was Scheckter who said that a normal person would take 5 and a quarter hours for that journey. If you were really quick you could do it in 4 and a half. Gilles routinely did it in 3 and three-quarter hours.
Like Jimmy Clark, Gilles was a mass of contradictions. He drove without fear but never put another driver at risk. He was as competitive as any driver we have ever seen but was loved by his rivals. The other drivers accepted that he was the best but because of his personality there was never any animosity toward him. He was the last true maverick but, in some ways, he was the most modern driver of his time. He was a traditionalist but capable of the most incredible innovation.
As I mentioned earlier, some people mis-interpret his antics in some of the hopeless cars Ferrari provided him with as over-driving or not understanding the technicalities of the sport. In reality the cars were rubbish so he simply took them by the scruff of their necks and forced them to do things way beyond their capabilities. As a result he did not drive nice, neat lines in them - he threw them around because that was the only way to get speed out of them. When he had a good car he drove precisely and accurately but, unsurprisingly, it is his performance in less than stellar machinery that is etched on the memory. There are people who believe that the only way to measure a driver is by what he can do with sub-standard machinery. On that scale, as on many others, Gilles was the best there has ever been.
In the days before the fax or internet were invented, telex was the only way to communicate in writing. Effectively, a telex was a typewriter connected to a phone line. At a time when most of the drivers only thought about their cars while they were sitting in them, Gilles had a telex installed in Monaco and every day sent long messages to Ferrari's secretary with suggestions for improving the car. He not only understood the technicalities of the car well enough to come up with a never ending list of improvements, but he pushed the team into trying them in the manner of Schumacher.
It is unlikely that we will ever again see a driver like Gilles Villeneuve.
It's been a while since we've had a guest writer, and there's no one better to bring the series back than Steven Roy. We're encouraging the man to get his own blog, but until then, enjoy his words.
Imagine if Rory Byrne, who designed the Ferraris that Michael Schumacher dominated F1 with, had found himself at Spa in 2003 with the latest Ferrari but without a driver. Now imagine that he decided with no drivers available he would test the car himself. Now stretch credibility to breaking point and imagine that he was as fast as Schumacher. Utterly impossible? Of course it is nowadays but once upon a time...
The Uhlenhaut designed W154
Rudi Uhlenhaut was born in London in 1906 while his father was head of the London branch of Deutsche Bank. After studying in Munich he joined Mercedes Benz in 1931. In 1936 he was put in charge of the newly created Rennabteilung or Racing Department. The Mercedes Benz racing structure had been archaic and there was little communication between the racing team and the experimental department which designed the cars and was generally led by old drivers with little technical knowledge.
By 1936 there was a need for action as Mercedes Benz had fallen behind Auto Union who ran uniquely at that time with the engine behind the driver. The Auto Unions were designed by Ferdinand Porsche who had designed rear-engined race cars in the 1920s. Both teams were financed by the Nazi party and being the second best team was not a healthy place to be. Auto Union was formed from four companies Audi, DKW, Horch, and Wanderer. The 4 ring logo that Audi use today is actually the Auto Union logo.
In those days the teams delivered cars to the track and drivers got in and drove them as they were delivered. There was no possibility to modify the cars at race meetings. Imagine F1 teams turning up at a race today and having no option to change any aspect of the car.
Uhlenhaut organised a test at the Nurburgring in August 1936 to try different tyres, suspension and even to test the effect of putting 60kg of lead in the nose to try to get some front end grip. Two of the team's drivers Rudolf Caracciola (the most successful driver of the era and 3 times European champion in the 1930s) and Manfred von Brauchitsch were on hand to test the cars. After two days they left and with no other option Uhlenhaut, who had tested many road cars at the Nurburgring in his previous job, simply got in the race cars and drove them himself. He soon found some fundamental flaws in the handling and design and was able to identify how to resolve the problems.
The result was that the team pulled out of the rest of the races in the 1936 season after Auto Union thrashed them in the Swiss GP. All efforts were immediately focused on 1937 and the result was the W125. With this car Caracciola won his second European championship with von Brauchitsch and Hermann Lang also winning races that season.
For 1938 a new 3 litre formula was introduced and many of the lessons of the W125 were carried over to the W154. In 9 major races that season the W154 won 6 races and took 6 second places and 5 thirds. The results were enough for Caracciola to take his third European championship. A modified, more streamlined version of the W154 was raced in the 1939 season; a season that was never to finish.
After the war Uhlenhaut worked on various Mercedes road cars including the 300SL gullwing sportscar. When Mercedes Benz returned to racing Uhlenhaut returned to his position in charge of the racing department. He again produced great cars including the W196 which gave Fangio the F1 world championship in 1954 with 4 wins from 6 races. The Indianapolis 500 was in the championship at that time but none of the regular championship competitors contested it. Fangio had started the season with Maserati and won both the championship races he started for them. The W196 ran as a conventional single-seater and with all enclosing bodywork for better streamlining at some tracks. The 1955 championship consisted of only 7 rounds including Indianapolis. Fangio won 4 of the 6 he contested and took his third world championship. At the end of that season Mercedes withdrew from all motor sport as a result of the disaster at Le Mans in which Pierre Levegh's Mercedes left the road and went into the crowd killing 80 spectators.
There is no doubt that Uhlenhaut was an incredibly talented driver and could have raced successfully had he decided too. It is rumoured that he did not because his wife was not in favour or because he was too valuable to Mercedes Benz for them to risk letting him race. During the mid 1950s stories came out that at one test at the Nurburgring Uhlenhaut, who by this time was in his late 40s, went faster than Fangio. Now we all know that conditions can change quickly at the Nurburgring and what had been a competitive lap time a few minutes previously can be beaten comfortably. Regardless of the accuracy of the comments, the fact that a man in his late 40s who had never raced anything can be even suggested to be as fast as or faster than the greatest driver of that era is simply astonishing.
In addition to the grand prix cars Uhlenhaut's department produced sports cars that won many of the great races of the day including the 24 hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana and the famous 1955 Mille Miglia. Many of these races had equal stature to Grands Prix wins in the eyes of the competitors and the fans.
Following the withdrawal of Mercedes Benz from motor sport, Rudi Uhlenhaut returned to their road car operation producing numerous cars including the Uhlenhaut Coupe. He retired from Mercedes Benz in 1972 having never owned a car in his life. By this time he wore two hearing aids to overcome the deafness resulting from the many hours of testing cars with very loud engines.
Imagine Rory Byrne taking an F1 Ferrari round Spa faster than Michael Schumacher. Just think how impossible that is and you get some idea how remarkable Rudi Uhlenhaut was.
