Grand Prix Century: The First 100 Years of the World's Most Glamorous and Dangerous Sport 1844251209, 9781844251209

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The first 100 years of the world’s most glamorous and dangerous sport

It began at 6am on Tuesday, 26 June 1906, when the first of 34 pug-like cars prepared to go onto an immense, stone-strewn circuit outside Le Mans. At the instant that Lorraine-Dietrich accelerated away, the great, astonishing, frightening, heroic 100-year dynasty of Grand Prix racing was born. The sport which millions of people worldwide watch on television today is the direct, unbroken descendant of that. Grand Prix Century tells the whole story — from there to here — in a continuous narrative of living detail embracing many men, great and small, recreating a host of the most thrilling races and exploring in plain language the stunning technology.

Woven into the text are the winners of every

race since that dawn in 1906, through to the Grand Prix that completed the century — by a coincidence in France. It was won by a young Spaniard, Fernando Alonso. Here, competing again, are the pioneers with their moustaches and goggles, who drove brutally primitive machines up to the First World War. Here are the good chaps of the 1920s and the sinister 1930s, when Hitler decreed that German cars must conquer the world — and got Mercedes and Auto Union to do it. Here, driving those cars, are the Italian maestro Tazio Nuvolari, the tragic Bernd Rosemeyer and Dick Seaman, the man lost between England and Nazi Germany. And here are the monstrously dangerous tracks they risked their lives on. Post-war we see Juan-Manuel Fangio

raising the art of driving to new heights, Stirling Moss who pushed him so hard, Mike Hawthorn who drove in a bow tie. Here are the 1960s and a new generation:

ambassadorial Graham Hill, shy Jim Clark, forward-looking Jackie Stewart — a generation that melted into the 1970s. Then there was Alain Prost and the man who might have been graced by God, Ayrton Senna. The next maestro was the youngster who really wanted to be a footballer, Michael Schumacher. And so it goes on. Ace storyteller and respected historian Christopher Hilton is the author of a number of Haynes books including best-selling biographies of Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya and Murray Walker.

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

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Other books by this author: Ayrton Senna The whole story

Memories of Ayrton Ayrton Senna

As time goes by Murray Walker The last word

Murray Walker The very last word Ken Tyrrell Portrait of a motor racing giant Michael Schumacher

The greatest of all

The Motorsport Art of Juan Carlos Ferrigno Hitler’s Grands Prix in England Donington 1937 and 1938

Inside the Mind of the Grand Prix Driver The psychology of the fastest men on earth: sex, danger and everything else

The first 100 years of the world’s most glamorous and dangerous sport

CHRISTOPHER

HILTON

Haynes Publishing

EAST SUSSEX COUNTY LIBRARY

ee © era

a

Hilton 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. First published in October 2005

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 84425

1209

Library of Congress control no. 2005926142 Published by Haynes Publishing, Sparkford, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7JJ, UK Tel: 01963 442030 Fax: 01963 440001 Int. tel: +44 1963 442030 Int. fax: +44 1963 440001

E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.haynes.co.uk Haynes North America, Inc., 861 Lawrence Drive, Newbury Park,

California 91320, USA Printed and bound in England by J. H. Haynes & Co. Ltd, Sparkford

CONTENTS Introduction

Dusty road The Chaps

49

Plate section

65-72

In Nuvolari’s time

End of innocence Shadowlands Plate section

NI

In Fangio’s time In Clark’s time

Safety first Plate section

273-280

In Senna’s time Plate section

11 I2

169-176 192 230 263

Money men

10

OF. 13 150

313 362 377-384

The Centurions

416 457

The major records Acknowledgements Bibliography Index

463 465 467 473

In Schumacher’s time

INTRODUCTION he high brick walls of the factory beside the Seine formed a shield chee preying eyes. Somewhere deep within, shrouded by absolute secrecy, three cars were being prepared: fast cars, racing cars.When they were ready, one of them had a trial run. It emerged from the factory gates — two brick pillars spanned by an arch of ornate, wrought iron bearing the words Renault Fréres — at a place called Boulogne-Billancourt on the rim of Paris. The car turned on to the quayside, houses to its left, trees standing like sentries to the right in front of the river. This early spring day, sunlight fell on the trees creating a geometry of shadows. As the car moved it ran across these shadows. The driver, a Hungarian, wore gloves, a stout leather jacket and cloth cap. He didn’t have goggles because on this test run he wouldn't be stretching the car. He’d do a lot of that very soon, but not here and not now. His riding mechanic — who'd help change wheels, carry out running repairs and any other tasks — sat immobile beside him, similar jacket, similar cap. Both had moustaches and looked severe, the way people did in public in 1906. The driver was Ferenc Szisz, known as Francois, and where he led many, many would follow, all the way to Michael Schumacher. The riding mechanic was known simply by the surname Marteau because riding mechanics were usually drawn from the working classes and that’s how the working classes were known. Marteau translated means Hammer — in motor racing, it’s as good a name as any. At the end of the run the car went back through the gates and into the absolute secrecy again. Some time after this, a small handpicked team in ordinary saloon cars drove to the provincial town of Le Mans 120 miles away and, methodically, explored the triangle of roads outside it. Once or twice Monsieur Renault himself came down and did that, too. Very early in June he set up headquarters in a chateau near the village of Changé, outside Le Mans — sloping rooftops, verdant gardens — and

INTRODUCTION

7,

the racing cars were brought. Day by day, the team prepared for the scrutineering in a tent in a field, and then made ready for 6:03 on the morning of 26 June and the first Grand Prix ever run. The race started at 6am, with cars being sent off every 90 seconds, which is how a driver called Camille Jenatzy — Belgian, but by coincidence of Hungarian origin — went at 6:07.30. The car he drove was a Mercedes. When Szisz won the race, Louis Renault stood with tears flowing down his face. Some say it was for his brother Marcel — killed in a road race three years before — but the tears surely mingled with that profound intoxication of creating a machine and hiring a driver to beat the best that anybody could put against them. Louis Renault may have been the first man to cry in Grand Prix racing. He would not be the last. Late winter, and three specially chartered Boeing 747 transport planes lifted off from England, Germany and Italy, bound for Melbourne, Australia. The little world born in 1906 had, a century later, become a global presence requiring jumbo jets to move it from continent to continent. There’d be the blood-red Ferraris from Italy, Williams with their BMW engines, Toyota from their base in Cologne, Sauber from Switzerland and — two arches across time — McLaren with Mercedes engines, and Renault moving 34 tonnes of freight and three cars. Renault’s engines came from Viry-Chatillon, not far from BoulogneBillancourt, the cars from their Enstone factory near Oxford. Renault alone took 80 people, including 40 mechanics and technicians, 10 race engineers, 5 caterers, 10 people to handle media, marketing and hospitality. Each of the three cars had mechanics, an engine mechanic, a hydraulic specialist, an electronics specialist, a race engineer, a data engineer, a control systems engineer, an engine

technician, an engine electronics technician... The Renault of 1906, watched by a decorative crowd of great decorum in formal dress, averaged 62mph over almost 770 miles. Then everybody went away and didn’t come back for a year. After the Australian Grand Prix in 2005 — watched by the world — Renault and all the other teams went to Malaysia, Bahrain, Imola, Spain, Monaco, the Nurburgring, Canada and the United States before they reached the circuit of MagnyCours for the French Grand Prix in July and a century of racing. That Grand Prix racing began in the pastureland of one French Department and ended in the pastureland of another, 180 miles away, is just one of those coincidences which make history so wonderfully unnerving. That, at Magny-Cours, a personable Spaniard called

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

Fernando Alonso put his Renault on pole and won crisply and cleanly one sun-blessed afternoon is another. Surely somewhere Up There a certain Ferenc Szisz nodded his approval. Alonso beat a Finn, Kimi Raikk6nen, and his McLaren with its Mercedes engine... Here is the story from that misty dawn to that sunny afternoon. It is one of the greatest human stories and it all happened just like this.

Chapter 1

DUSTY ROAD n January 1886 a severe-looking man with a drooping moustache, Karl Benz, applied for and was granted a patent to manufacture a motor vehicle. It resembled a frail, skeletal rickshaw with a small wheel at the front and two big wheels at the back, steered by a handle. Benz had a rival. A few months after patent’s granting, another severe-looking man with a drooping moustache, Gottlieb Daimler, put one of his engines in a coach and created the horseless carriage. The car had been born." Since recorded time, a horse had been the fastest means of transport over land. In the 19th century, and with a great suddenness, an era of innovation changed everything, and this new era moved to its own urgency, spread its own infinite possibilities. A Scot, James Watt,’ coined the term ‘horsepower’, but British inventors developed steam for locomotion and by 1829 when Robert Stephenson built a locomotive driven by steam, the horse had become extinct as a serious means of

transport. Trains profoundly changed life in Britain, and then the world, but there was an inherent constriction to the freedom they brought because you could only go where the railway lines went. The car offered personal choice. Steam needed big engines that weren’t really practical, or even safe, for anything as small as a car. Daimler solved this with the internal combustion engine and soon a lot of companies started to make cars because enough rich people would buy them. The by-product was probably coincidental — as well as chugging around in them looking pleased with yourself, you could race them. ed Competition seems to be a basic characteristic of man and originat the with survival. Darwin’s theory of evolution describes this. Even have — ng swimmi , simple acts of motion — walking, running, jumping hunt — become competitive events; and so have the simple acts of the sms — throwing, sprinting, working as a team. The defensive mechani have — down punching, kicking, seizing an opponent to throw him

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become boxing, kick-boxing, wrestling and judo. The spear has become the javelin, and the bow remains in archery. Rifle and pistol shooting are both Olympic events, and we still race horses just as we race bicycles. To do the same with cars was no more than extending man’s basic characteristic to the technology which, in 1886, had appeared. It didn’t take long. Soon enough, and there is something almost haunting about this, names familiar today would come in. Daimler and Benz were in already. In 1888, Michelin brothers Edouard and André set up a tyre company.’ Peugeot had been making racing bikes but in 1889 produced a threewheeler powered by steam. They soon understood Daimler’s engine was the future and, in 1891, a Daimler-powered Peugeot went across France to Paris and on to Brest in Brittany. No petrol-driven vehicle had made such a journey before and it produced a sales surge, from five cars a year to 72.

In November 1892, an Italian champion cyclist who lived in Castel d’Ario — a sleepy little stone-clad town with a through road, a broad square and church spires near Mantua — had his fourth child, a son. He earned a good living by farming the fertile plain which encircles the town. The fourth-born was a lively little lad and, as was the way of it, would surely work the land as his father did and one day no doubt inherit some of it, toiling in anonymity. He was called Tazio Nuvolari. Far from tilling the soil he’d become, some insist to this day, the greatest driver who ever lived - but he was born before a race had been run. While Grand Prix racing was not yet in its birth pangs, here was its future. The first race was in 1894, a trial of reliability and partly propaganda to prove that cars really could go faster than anything horse-drawn without exploding. Drivers had to cover the 78 miles from Paris to Rouen in eight and a half hours, and over a hundred entered. The internal combustion engine had not yet conquered all opposition and some of the vehicles were powered by steam, although they weren’t really cars at all; some worked on electricity and, anyway, of the hundred entrants only 21 showed up. A rich American newspaper owner based in Paris, Gordon Bennett, watched the start and was so captivated he even despatched a reporter to try to follow the event by bicycle, which is a lovely contradiction. It is tempting to portray the era in terms of caricature, seeing them all as drooping moustaches under black hats perched on strange, pug-like vehicles bounce-bounce-bouncing along rough country lanes; and more tempting because having your photograph taken was an event to be

DUSTY ROAD

ll

treated very seriously — capturing your dignity for posterity — which is why they all look so severe. They were just being normal. Then, of course, life was very different. No world war had yet been fought or imagined, no plane had ever flown, no man had ever travelled at the speed your saloon car will do effortlessly today. The west was a place of monarchies, rigid social strata and imperial certainties. Britain, made vastly wealthy by the Industrial Revolution, ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen and kept it in order with the largest navy. France had an extensive African empire and designs on being a global presence. And so it went. There was huge disparity between rich and poor, and by definition only the wealthy could buy cars. Racing would cost more again. En route to Rouen the 21 race entrants halted at the small town of Mantes, just short of halfway, and reports suggest that the townspeople enjoyed seeing the cars as much as the drivers enjoyed having their lunch there. The diners could certainly afford the price if they could afford a car. The first of 19 who reached Rouen was a Count driving a steam tractor which could carry six people, and it received no award because of that. It took 6 hours 48 minutes, averaging 11mph and keeping Peugeots in second and third places. All the vehicles had solid wheels. Michelin were the first to produce a practical rubber tyre for cars, in 1895, the year proper racing began, and a matrix was forged by necessity. Since there were no circuits, public roads had to be used with towns as markers. The first race ran from Paris to Bordeaux and back, 745 miles, and was won at an average speed of 14.9mph. That year, Italian and American racing began and the

Automobile Club de France was formed. The town-to-town matrix lasted until 1903. There would be twelve of these races, including Paris—Marseilles—Paris, in 1896. In October that year a certain Hon Charles Rolls journeyed to Paris to buy a Peugeot, which became Cambridge’s first car. A Paris—Amsterdam—Paris race was staged in 1898. ‘Manufacturers were already producing cars specifically for racing while drivers’ names were becoming familiar and almost professional.” a There was René de Knyff, a Belgian racing for France. He had flowing beard and habitually wore a yachting cap. father There was another Belgian, red-bearded Camille Jenatzy, whose won Jenatzy . had built the first factory making rubber in Belgium obtained his bicycle races but was also ‘of a studious nature and when he thought)’.’ he as (forever sport degree as a civil engineer he abandoned Paris to get into He wasn’t happy in the family business and moved to

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

motoring. He’d thought electric cars were the way to go and started making them... In February 1898, a snowstorm paralysed the town of Modena on the plain outside Bologna. The snow was so deep that for two days a petit bourgeois merchant and landowner® could not reach the town hall to record the birth of his second son. The family surname was extremely common in the area, and when the boy was registered as Enzo Anselmo Ferrari, he took his place among the hundreds of other unremarkable, anonymous Ferraris. Yes, while Grand Prix racing was not yet into its birth pangs, here was its future. That December, a Count with a name like a line of poetry — Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, younger brother of the man who founded the Automobile Club de France (the ACF) — took his chain-driven 40horsepower electric car to a village road — Achéres — outside Paris and did 39.2mph to claim the World Land Speed Record over a flying kilometre. This had a profound effect on Jenatzy who laid down a challenge for 1899. In January he and Chasseloup-Laubat met on the same road and Jenatzy pushed the record to 41mph. Chasseloup-Laubat responded with 43mph, and the possibilities which direct competition could, and did, create were being revealed moment by moment. It was more than that. It showed, seven decades before the rarefied, specialised craft — an aeroplane on land — pushed the record to 600mph that speeds could be increased in attainable increments. Each land speed record was also a way of saying to the motor racers: You can go faster, too. Chasseloup-Laubat and Jenatzy agreed to do it again and went off to build bigger engines.’ Jenatzy pushed it to 49mph and this was attracting so much attention the ACF drew up rules and sent officials along to supervise. Chasseloup-Laubat pushed it to 57mph, Jenatzy through the 100kmh barrier (62mph). The increasing speed was reflected in the May 1899 Paris~Bordeaux race where the winner averaged 29mph. A month later a company called Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino was founded, but you know it by its initials, FIAT, later styled Fiat. That year, Daimler’s agent in France, Emil J ellinek —who was also the dashing Austro-Hungarian consul in Nice — entered a Daimler in the 1899 Nice Speed Week. He understood the value of publicity. He raced the car under a pseudonym, using the Christian name of his nine-yearold daughter, Mercedes. Newspaper tycoon Bennett thought the French were monopolising motor racing and decided to break that; and whatever Bennett wanted Bennett got. His father had founded the New York Herald, and that

DUSTY ROAD

13

helped. Tall, handsome, he'd always got a lot of women. Once, for a bet, he drove a coach from Rhode Island to New York’s Central Park, naked. He started, and won, the first trans-Atlantic yacht race. His engagement to a ‘prominent Baltimore socialite’ was terminated when he came to her New Year’s party drunk and ‘relieved himself in the grand piano.’ Hence his exile in Paris.* Now he’d get a motor race, an annual event of at least 550 kilometres (340 miles) between national teams chosen by their governing bodies; teams a maximum of three cars. The French were so strong that they held a ballot to pick theirs and it produced ‘much bickering’.’ The first of these races, known as the Gordon Bennett Trophy, was from Paris to Lyon in June 1900, with seven entries. De Knyff had a Panhard” and Jenatzy a Snoek-Bolide."” Karl Benz’s son Eugen drove, naturally, a Benz while two American entries were elderly single-cylinder cars called Wintons. Jenatzy retired after hitting a lot of small animals presumably dogs, cats, chickens and rabbits — along the route. One driver ran full into a St Bernard, jammed the steering, swerved across a ditch and went between two trees into a field. Here was foreboding. Rising speed, the long and rough open roads, villages and towns — unpoliced and unpoliceable — were by definition potentially lethal and one must assume villagers had no experience of estimating speed, never having seen it before. In a race a month later, one car struck a cart and in another race a car struck a cow. In a race the year after, one car collided with a tram and another killed a boy standing in the middle of the road. A rhythm of progress had been established. In 1902 the Land Speed Record was pushed to 75mph before another very rich American, William K. Vanderbilt, beat that and by year’s end it stood at 77mph. In 1903, it would be beaten four times, once by Charles Rolls. The foreboding deepened. Despite French Government reservations, the ACF organised a race from Paris to Madrid. It attracted 230 ‘very fast and sometimes dangerously flimsy cars’? which started from Versailles at intervals from 4am. As they thundered off into the dawn, they were

about to kill road racing. A tremendous duel developed between two Frenchmen, Fernand Gabriel and Marcel Renault, but Renault’s car overturned, killing him; a riding mechanic died when a car hit a tree so hard that it broke up and parts were embedded in the tree itself; a mechanic died when a car hit a wall; a car veered into a crowd, killing the mechanic and a soldier. The Spanish and French governments moved to stop the whole thing so and did when it reached Bordeaux. The French Government was

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nervous it ordered the cars to be hauled back to Paris by horses or on horse-drawn vehicles — a savage irony — but this proved unworkable and they were allowed to drive slowly. Even then one car struck a woman, injuring her. There would be no more town-to-town races. The Bennett Trophy remained, and it assumed central importance. In 1904, a third very rich American, Henry Ford, pushed the Land Speed Record to 9l1mph over the flying mile on frozen Lake St Clair, Michigan and others would push it through the 100. That same year the Hon Rolls was introduced to a Mr Royce in a London hotel. The 1905 Bennett Trophy was run in the Auvergne region of France, the year the Land Speed Record reached 108mph. The Auvergne was preceded by an eliminating race and during it a Briton, Maurice Farman (sometimes referred to as Henry) missed a turn in his Panhard. He... found himself engaged in a short cut through the woods

to the valley

below. The two men [Farman and his riding mechanic] were thrown out, caught in the branches of the trees and held there while the car leapt along its wildly destructive path. Report has it that Farman, caught on a higher branch than his mechanic, pulled out his cigarette case and, looking down,

quietly remarked: ‘I wish you would pass me a match up, Tom.’®

As it seems, in this eliminator or the race itself, a US entry struck trouble and American manufacturers... were rather raw at the racing game in those days. [The car] broke its main oil feed pipe and had no facilities for repairing it. The men were of that rough Western type that never knows defeat. The mechanic sat on the frame of the machine, his legs dangling over, and with a can poured directly into the crankcase [but] more went on the outside than the in.

They finished but as they stepped off the car oil was dripping from them in such quantities that [when] champagne was offered to them they could not hold the glass, they could not put it to their lips until some of the oil had been wiped away with a rag."*

Perhaps this is how a certain class of people saw themselves and their world, and how they wrote about it. Whatever, Rolls finished eighth in a Wolseley. Two months later, Tazio Nuvolari’s uncle Giuseppe took him to Brescia to watch a three-lap event with the leading manufacturers and drivers, including wild Victor Hémery, Vincenzo Lancia and Felice N azzaro, clean shaven, a particularly studious-looking man. For anyone from solid,

DUSTY ROAD

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sleepy, virtually silent Castel d’Ario” it had to be intoxicating, 22 racing cars covering 500 kilometres and averaging a hundred kilometres an hour. Nuvolari had touched the passion which would ignite and rule the rest of his life. The Bennett Trophy rules’ limit of three cars per country irked the French because, compared to the strength of their automobile industry, they resented Switzerland with a sole manufacturer having the same and resented Mercedes entering three each from their German and Austrian factories. The ACF found a solution. They’d organise their own race in 1906 under their own rules. They selected 64 miles of country roads outside the town of Le Mans as their circuit. To pacify the government they would make sure these roads were closed off and build extensive barriers to keep the spectators back from the cars. They’d make it a monumental event spread over two days, six laps a day, giving a total distance of 769 miles — more than double the length of any race before. They’d find the perfect name for it, too, not the Championship of France, not the Coupe-this or the Trophée-that. No. It would be known as the Great Prize in motorsport. Grand Prix racing was about to be born. The year started with a flurry of World Land Speed Records, one of them set by Louis Chevrolet at Daytona, climaxing at 117mph over the flying mile but, beyond that, it was a time of solid beginnings. On 5 May, three weeks before the French Grand Prix, a race called the Targa Florio, named for Vincenzo Florio who founded it, was run for the first time (and would continue until 1977). It represented a brutal test of man and machine: three laps totalling 277 miles of rugged Sicilian tracks and mountain roads which rose and fell, not to mention bandits and wolves. It attracted ten entries, including Lancia driving a Fiat and Alessandro Cagno who won it, in an Itala car. He’d make his mark, but

doing something else.” Maybe the Targa Florio was a staging post for Le Mans. Cagno took his Itala there while Florio himself (he hadn’t competed in Sicily) took a

Mercedes. Le Mans is a typical French provincial town surrounded by verdant countryside, languid straight roads and strung out stone villages. The circuit did not touch on the town and that gave it a pastoral, almost rustic feel. The cars had a maximum weight of 1,000kg [2,204]b]. The Grand Prix attracted 34 entries, but only from France (25), Italy and Germany. The British were not tempted because they felt the French

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were using it to demonstrate their superiority and, even if the British did win, the French would claim they had lost it by accident. The ACF was so determined to make the race a success it spent a considerable amount on the circuit although not nearly enough on its surface. (The expenditure was regained by grants from the town and hotel owners plus the entry fees.) Mindful of the Paris—Madrid fiasco... the towns are barricaded from end to end; villages are fenced, also there is not a single house, or cottage, or road, or lane, or footpath without

its

palisade. The total length of this palisading is 65,000 metres, or 40 miles. The tribunes — grandstands, the time-keeper’s box, the telegraph boards etc — are situated at Montfort, about 20 kilometres from Le Mans [...] On the opposite side of the course a whole length of the frontage is given up to the firms competing in the race, so that they may be able to re-victual their cars.’”

The circuit formed a triangle, another matrix, because every French Grand Prix to 1914 and on into the 1920s would follow that basic shape. This one began on the main road outside Montfort, a little town, and went towards Le Mans then turned sharp left ‘at so short a radius that any car travelling at 30 miles an hour must run off.’* That was on to the first full length of the triangle: it flowed in a straight line to a village and the other side of that in a straight line towards the town of St Calais, but the road was so bad there that the local council agreed to build a by-pass of roughly laid planking in a field. That was on to the second leg of the triangle: it turned north towards the town of Vibraye but before it got there it veered into the forest, and more rough planking, in a tight dog-leg. It flowed north again to the town of La Ferté Bernard, and turned hard-hard left. That was on to the third leg of the triangle: it flowed south but the road wriggled and bucked and twisted. One of the wriggles was through the town of Connerré where the road became a gully between the palisades with two corners, a right, a left. Montfort was shortly after Connerré. These were 1906 roads, more like flattened, dusty tracks and dust meant you couldn’t see where you were going. In an effort to beat this, the ACF treated the whole length with tar; and the cars’ exhaust pipes had to be angled upwards so dust wasn’t blown about, but the corners cut up so badly during practice that they had to be rolled and more tar was laid to try to seal them. This had agonising consequences and forced at least one driver to retire from the race because he couldn’t bear any more pain. Thereby hangs a tale of what wasn’t.

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Long before, a Scot called John McAdam had worked out that if you raised the bed of a road and put drainage underneath, then covered it in small stones, the traffic would compact it until it was strong and smooth. Another pioneer used water stirred into stone dust — cement — to fill gaps between the stones. Later, a binding based on bitumen was laid on that: tarmacadam. The very first road made with this was in Paris in 1854, but clearly the technique had not reached Le Mans’s countryside, 52 years later. Instead, the roads guaranteed a plague of punctures. Three companies — Michelin, Dunlop and Continental — supplied tyres, another matrix: deploying innovation to gain an advantage. A puncture took about 15 minutes to repair because the tyre had to be levered off the rim and a new one levered on. Michelin produced a detachable rim, complete with tyre. The driver and mechanic undid eight nuts, lifted it off, lifted a new one into place and did the eight nuts up again. It took two minutes, but it came with its own penalty because each detachable wheel weighed 9kg, a real consideration with the car’s maximum at 1,000kg. The Fiats carried four, other teams two, but some couldn’t afford the extra weight at all. It would bring them constant back-breaking labour and cost them any chance in the race. The cars were scrutineered and weighed inside a tall, broad tent in a field beside the track. As each car came, a crowd gathered to watch, and it was a crowd of its time, almost exclusively male, wearing suits, waistcoats, white panama hats, caps or boaters. Nobody was bare-headed. Some carried canes and used them to point to any interesting aspects of the cars. A woman in elegant white held the brim of her be-ribboned matching white hat in case it blew away. They all moved in a genteel, unhurried way, stopping to talk. The grass looked parched — and dusty. Mechanics in dirty overalls pushed the cars on to the weighbridge in the tent, pushed them away again. The cars were squat and shaped like small railway engines, the driver and his mechanic sitting high up as if perched, unprotected, behind the engines. They favoured woollen or leather hats, or balaclavas. They all wore goggles. The main grandstand, which held 2,000, spread along one side of the track and — in cream and gold, with an intricate canopy above it — looked like something from a fairground. Banners advertising Michelin ran along its frontage, hip high. This faced the ‘pits’ on the other side, a basic, stone-strewn working area inside the palisade with a counter on which the fuel churns and oil cans could be put. The race was scheduled for a Tuesday. On the Sunday, people from all over France had begun to gather and...

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Le Mans was en féte. Firework displays, running with bulls, banquets, singing and disturbances of the peace, nothing was missing. You got to bed late.”

The night before... cars arrived ceaselessly, always coming in to the Place de la Republique {the main square] which swarmed with curious people, some grouped in front

of the Stock Exchange’s blazing windows where the ACF was holding a gala whose programme alternated between dancing and theatre. The café terraces overflowed. People bumped into each other, and bumped into each other again. The evening closed with the sensational arrival of a steamdriven omnibus

which, leaving Paris in the morning, had energetically

devoured the 207 kilometres without stopping.”

The cafés remained open until 4am, by which time the spectators needed to be on the move to reach the circuit. The roads would be closed at 5am so the race could start at the scheduled 6am. (The Motor’s correspondent stayed at a little inn, woke at 3.30 and was given ‘coffee and the curious soapy sort of bread one gets in such a place.’) Rain, likely to be heavy, had been feared, but the dawn broke blue and pure and clear, the sun burning off a little low-lying mist. By 4am a tide of vehicles and bicycles flowed towards the circuit and so many people tried to get on a train to a stop on the circuit that it appeared to be under assault. At the circuit... among the hordes of cyclists and cars covered in dust, under the shade of the trees, in the fields, or in homemade tents held up by haphazard staves and draped by canvas or sheets, sat vast tables of drinkers, their ruddy faces happy, content.”

Soldiers cleared spectators off the course and tried to clear the journalists off it, too, but after ‘heated discussion’ the journalists stayed. A man in a white boater and white overalls placed a tub of paint on the road and, using a long brush, set down the start-finish line with careful strokes, his back bowed. The cars were driven from the field acting as a parc fermé into a passageway leading to the track and called one by one to the start, a white line across the road in front of the crowded grandstand. They halted there, waiting for the command to go. They were sent off at 90second intervals and alternately, one car going from the left-hand side of the track, the next one already moving up to the line on the right. When

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that went, the next car on the left would have come up and be in place. The grid, this first grid, was already as it would somehow always be, a mingling of cars, mechanics, officials, bystanders, officials with

armbands and who knew who else? A flat-faced Lorraine-Dietrich car,” its bonnet sloping to either side like a rooftop, its radiator painted with the race number 1A,” its driver and mechanic sitting far back over the rear axle and so high up they might have been enthroned, chugged up to the line, slowed, and stopped. At ground level in the grandstand, perhaps ten feet away, a clutch of women spectators, all in white with their matching white hats, watched. The sea of men all around them, still be-suited and be-hatted — an almost impossible formality in the open on a summer’s day — watched, too. You could feel the intensity in their eyes. A knot of officials stood on the road beside 1A. The next starter, the Fiat of Vincenzo Lancia numbered 2A, must have been chugging up at that moment or perhaps it, too, had stopped and the two cars stood shoulder-to-shoulder, the drivers gazing down the long road ahead. There is no precision about these moments before it all began, no precise countdown, no photographic record. One of the officials held up a board illustrating what the flags round the circuit meant: Blue = beware Yellow = stop

The poignancy of the very final moment is that nobody knew because nobody could know, not least the devil-may-care Frenchman Fernand Gabriel who, at 25, was good enough to have survived the carnage on the 1903 Paris—Madrid killer — and been first to Bordeaux, winning it; nobody knew, as the official gave the signal and the Lorraine-Dietrich lurched forward creating a dust-storm behind, what had just been set in motion. Nobody can conceivably have imagined, either, as the LorraineDietrich crossed the line and accelerated away, its narrow tyres rutting the dry earth, the immensity of the future. Or even of the men who would be drawn into it, Nuvolari no doubt preparing to go to school in Castel d’Ario at this moment, Bernd Rosemeyer of mythical eyesight who'd be born in a little north German town three years on, JuanManuel Fangio who’d be born in an Argentinian town near the Atlantic five years on...or, two world wars later, that an Englishman called Stirling Moss would heat the blood, a quiet Scotsman called Jim Clark would redefine speed and simplicity, a rich Brazilian kid called Ayrton Senna would be touched by grace, another German from a small town,

20

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

Michael Schumacher, would reshape and rewrite everything... There were already celebrated, heroic figures preparing to come forward to the white line. It was 6am — there is precision about this — on Tuesday, 26 June 1906. The driver of car 1A, Fernand Gabriel,* had been winning races since 1899 and it was he who had been in the lethal duel with Marcel Renault. He had a long-term contract with the LorraineDietrich team and came to Le Mans as their leading driver. Now, as he headed down towards the turn into the first full leg of the triangle, he was the pathfinder and all others in Grand Prix history his followers. Gabriel had gone at 06.00.00. Now decorously, while a sombre bearded official in dark hat and clothes noted the times, the others were waved on their way. Cars coughed and churned, their fumes wreathing the grid and making the people there suddenly ghostly, and then, like clouds, drifting towards the grandstand. 06.01:30: Vincenzo Lancia set off in a Fiat. He was from a small Piedmont village and his father had made money canning soup in Argentina. Young Vincenzo had an aptitude for numbers but machinery fascinated him, and the fascination lead all the way to here. He was 25. 06.03:00: Francois (Ferenc) Szisz set off in a Renault 90. He was from a large Hungarian family and his father practised faith healing. He’d been trained as a mechanic and to pursue that he went to Munich then Paris to join Renault and it had brought him all the way here. A shortish, strong man he had chiselled, swarthy features. He was 33. The Renault had a sloping, aerodynamic bonnet which made it look unlike all the other cars. At the signal, Szisz corrected the front wheels, so they made a short jerking motion to be pointing straight ahead. It set off slowly, needing time and distance to gather pace. A small knot of people standing behind the white line gazed wistfully as it receded.

06:04.30: Hemery set off in a Darracg. He was a tempestuous, turbulent man and the year before had reportedly been banned from racing in Italy after he'd ‘insulted his Italian rivals, snubbed the British and dismissed the Americans as mechanical peasants, unworthy of consideration.”* One time in America he aimed his powerful Darracq at a fellow competitor, and was disqualified.

06:06:00: Paul Baras set off in a Brasier..He’d been a ‘tricycle champion and brilliantly fast with cumbersome cars.’ More than that, he’d twice held the World Land Speed Record in 1904.7

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06:07:30: Jenatzy set off in a Mercedes. He was known as the ‘Red Devil’. An engineer by training, he adored speed, as he had proved on the road to Achéres. He was 38. He was followed away by Louis Rigolly (Gobron-Brille).

06.10:30: Alessandro (Jacopo) Cagno set off in an Itala. He was a thinfaced, clean-shaven adventurer who had begun racing in 1902 and had come here from the Targa Florio. He was 23.

Ninety seconds later, George Heath, a Franco-American, set off in a Panhard-Levassor and so it went; Albert Clément in a Clément-Bayard at 06.18:00, Henri Rougier in a Lorraine-Dietrich at 06:19.30. 06:21.00:

Nazzaro

set off in a Fiat. He was

the son of a Turin coal

merchant and had started in the motor trade with a small company as errand

boy, mechanic,

aristocratic in manner’

cleaner,

apprentice

he introduced

at 15.” ‘Tall, quiet, almost

the gentleman’s

way of driving,

changing gears silently and treating his cars with respect.

These were the fast men — although that didn’t prevent Nazzaro stalling, gentleman’s style or not. The car was restarted without outside help, which would have disqualified him. As they went, sometimes drivers saluted their mechanics or the crowd; some hunched forward and held the steering wheel tight, others sat rigid. From a distance, the symmetry of the cars was mostly similar. The spectators, often in little groups behind the palisades or the solid barricades in the towns, saw the cars bounding and bouncing, and sometimes they slithered. The drivers looked as heroic as knights in armour had once done, galloping through. Trains had broadened the ordinary person’s conception of speed but this cavalcade was coming round the corner into your main street at, to take the average of the fastest lap, 73.3mph. A primed racehorse will do barely half that and then only for a short time. The racing car, experienced in all its sound and fury, and from such close quarters, must have had a stunning impact all round the circuit. It still does. At one point, behind a tall palisade in a town, a group of nuns watched, captivated. The crowds were in the country as well as the towns, standing at corners beneath tall trees while the cars fought their way round the

bends, each trailing a plume of dust. Gabriel got as far as St Calais when a mechanical failure made the car swerve ‘violently in all directions, each swerve being checked by the

22

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

driver ...it may have saved the lives of both in the car.”° Gabriel was out of the race. A rough ride. On this first lap, one car ran off the planking at St Calais, bending a wheel. The car ran into a bank of loose earth built up against a palisade, burying its right rear wheel. While driver and mechanic struggled to repair it — that would take three hours, so they completed the first lap in just under 4 hours 20 minutes — an official positioned himself in the road and stood, hands behind his back, monitoring what was going on. Three cars retired: engine failure, damaged radiator and a crash where the car overturned having taken a corner too fast. It was torn to pieces. Szisz, with the advantage of two detachable rear wheels, moved into the lead on lap three of the six and would not lose it. The tar was worse than the dust. It melted in the heat, got behind the goggles and burnished the eyes. One Renault driver had broken goggles and on that lap and asked for them to be replaced but this was refused — it could only be done for the second day. This was Edmond (initial J. — his first name does not seem to have survived) who pitted with his eyes swollen by the tar, and burning. Another driver offered to take his place, got in and was moving away when Louis Renault flagged it down by making big gestures. Renault knew the rules: you couldn’t change a driver during the day. Edmond got back in and set off to a ‘thunder of bravos’ from the crowd. He slogged on but the pain overwhelmed him and he stopped briefly to recover, continued to the end of lap five when, his eyes on fire, he couldn’t see the road any more and retired. Louis Renault, dapper in straw boater, waistcoat and suit, led him gently away, a cloth draped over his head to keep the sunlight from his eyes. Renault was everywhere, talking to officials, supervising the pit work. Another driver was so exhausted his car got away from him at the Vibraye planking and he crashed. The exhaustion was partly the heat of the day, partly the incessant and laborious tyre changing — they were lasting only a lap or two — and partly because of the drivers’ and mechanics’ eyes. The roof and rear of the main grandstand lacked ventilation, and when the temperature reached 120°F it was so hot inside that 60 people had to be treated for sunstroke. Spectators, too, had inflamed eyes from the dust the passing cars churned up. It had been a long morning and now, completing the six laps the crowd would know who led at halfdistance...

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It was a quarter to twelve when, everyone being on the alert for the arrival

of Szisz, a bugle call was heard in the distance, and as a car came over the brow of a hill a mile away, powerful binoculars

showed that it was a

Renault. At once a great yellow flag was held out, and amid a yell of delight Szisz roared past. [...] An official boarded the car when it stopped, and then it returned along the course between lines of cheering spectators to the enclosure, and there the car was run under the tent and barricaded round, not to be touched until next morning.”

Szisz said that from start to finish he hadn’t had a moment’s anxiety over anything mechanical. ‘Once I got into the lead I didn’t push. I only changed tyres every couple of laps as a precaution. Monsieur Renault told me to lap at 58 minutes. Now, I averaged 57 and a half minutes. That tells you what a pleasure it was to drive such a car.’ When he came from his car, goggles up on his head, a well-wisher gripped his hand and shook it. Szisz looked at that moment like a warrior. Seventeen cars survived this first day, with two and a half hours between the first of them, Szisz, and the last, a Lorraine-Dietrich. The leaderboard: SZiSZ

5h 45m 30.4s

Clément

6h 11m 40.6s

Nazzaro

6h 26m 53.0s

The retirements included Hubert le Blon, whose wire wheels gave way on the planking at Vibraye, and Henri Tart, while ‘replenishing his Panhard, was asked to look at the dumb iron” carrying the front spring. He looked, and found it broken, and, just like a Frenchman, he at once threw up his hands and commenced to sob.’” Jenatzy and Lancia said they couldn’t face another day like it. Other drivers ‘smothered their ravaged faces with ointments and had their eyes treated by a doctor.™ Lancia’s eyes were ‘fearfully enflamed’ and Jenatzy told The Motor’s correspondent he ‘had never suffered such agony before. Goggles were no protection. The face became smothered with tarry emanations, and the vapour from this passed under the goggles and then set up inflammation of the pupil and cornea of the eyes.’ Like Szisz’s Renault,

the cars were taken to the parc fermé — some pushed by half a dozen men — to be guarded overnight and, as a further security precaution, the area was floodlit. Nobody was going to do any tampering, even with their own cars.

24

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

An ingenious method had been put in place for the second day’s starting order. Cars were sent off at the time they’d done on the first day, so Szisz went first at 5.45am, Clément at 6.11, Nazzaro at 6.26 and so on down to the slowest, that Lorraine-Dietrich, at 8.15am. This meant their positions on the road were their actual positions, no adding and subtracting necessary... The cars were towed out of the ‘park’ by a horse” and brought to the starting line (and it was typical of the thoroughness with which the race details were carried out that yesterday afternoon the horse was continually

practised in hauling a car out to the line, the engine being at once started, so as to accustom the horse to the noise, in case it should be on the line when the engine of a racing car was started this morning.*

The animal, white and clearly a carthorse, had a harness which trailed back to the front axle of the cars. One man guided the horse — the cars seemed to be of no great weight for it —- while another walked alongside the car steering it. Szisz and his mechanic did not mount their Renault, but on the order to ‘Go!’ pushed it across to their pit, refuelled it and changed two wheels. This needed 11% minutes and when it was done they set off to a tremendous cheer. Other competitors would do the same... A glance at the colossal

grandstands showed them to be admirable, ravishing, built with so much taste. In the middle of a desert of sand and pine trees, under the blinding light of a ferocious sun, one saw — in the ‘dress circle,’ among the dyes of the white drapes, orange drapes and garlands of flowers — a dazzling bevy of deliciously pretty women, adorned in white, pink and blue. An incomparable ensemble of gaiety, radiance...”

The race had attracted celebrities and important people, another matrix: the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg, the Duke of Parma, barons and marquises, the Minister of Public Work, several generals and the occasional viscount. Lancia was due to go at 7.12 and this produced a moving scene. On the line his mechanic had cranked the engine into life, Lancia engaged the clutch and started. The mechanic didn’t have time to get out of the way, grabbed hold of the bonnet and Lancia drove him the 200 yards to their pit. ‘What anxiety! We thought the valiant boy had had it. He laughed .’* Meanwhile...

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Shepard, who is an American and a cousin of the Vanderbilts, had made a good impression [...] and it was rather a pity that he should have had to

spend half an hour in revictualling and tyre changing

this morning.

Hémery spent an hour in replacing defective inlet valves, and he earned the sympathy of the crowd over his many unavailing efforts to get the engine started, and went away with it missing rather badly.”

This was Elliot Shepard and before the race he had worn a cowboy hat. He was driving a Hotchkiss, a barrel-shaped car with wire wheels which set off in a great cloud of smoke and dust. Jenatzy really couldn’t face this second day and handed over to a giant of a man with a pseudonym, ‘Burton’, although he appears in The Motor as Alex Burton. Vincenzo Lancia had intended to hand the FIAT over to his reserve driver, but he wasn’t around. Lancia had no time to go and change, and started in his ordinary clothes. On the first lap a Panhard swerved so hard at a right-hander that the steering wheel was plucked from the driver’s hand, the car lurched off the road into a gutter and overturned. It struck a tree, breaking the driver’s leg. Szisz completed the lap with eleven cars still waiting to go, and even the lap after that there were still four. The corners had suffered a fearful pounding on the first day and were now strewn with stones and pebbles, the cars trying to navigate through. The punctures kept coming. Clément had one in a tight right-hander out in the country, the car slewing towards the edge of the track, a dust shroud pursuing it. Clément fought it, held it, straightened it, slowed it — then, with practised speed, he and the mechanic were out starting their work, lifting the spare from just behind their seats. Two gendarmes with obligatory moustaches came up to watch. The planking at St Calais kept bringing problems, too. At one point an official signalled frantically to Shepard: Slow! Corner! waving his left arm up and down. Shepard didn’t take the corner but went straight on down the road ahead, missing the turn for the banking completely. He vanished in a cloud of exhaust fumes, stopped, reversed in another cloud of fumes, drove on to the planking and stopped. He readied himself and proceeded, the car belching fumes like an industrial chimney. He didn’t get far: a wire wheel failed, the car gouging into a bank beside a leafless

sapling. He was out. Szisz had held such a substantial lead that he only had to keep going of to win and as he drove he raised a hand to acknowledge the cheering FIAT s Nazzaro’ between ed the crowd. Behind him, a lively battle develop

26

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

and Clément’s Clément-Bayard. Szisz did keep going. On lap nine Nazzaro got past Clément and the order stayed like that. Szisz slowed to protect the car. He’d do his slowest lap of the race by three minutes, but that didn’t matter any more. Finishing did. He sawed the big steering wheel round a last time on to the straight towards the pits and the grandstand. He moved towards the white line beside the time-Keeper’s hut and an official with a black flag, standing poised, dipped it as he passed. He had covered the twelve laps across the two days in 12 hours 14 minutes and 7 seconds, an average speed of 62.8mph. The crowd raised their hats high to him, some raised their arms and the ladies applauded politely. Fernard Gabriel had been the first Grand Prix driver, Francois Szisz was now the first winner. Nuvolari and Rosemeyer, Fangio and Moss, Clark and Senna and Schumacher, were all his followers, too. ‘The last lap was for me — despite the confidence I had in the car — a great anxiety,’ he said. ‘I feared something small which would take victory away at the moment when it had seemed to be won. Little by little, having gone through Saint-Calais, and Vibraye I came to Connerré. I drove carefully to avoid any problems and at last when we got to BelleInutile [just before the finish] my mechanic, who was so anxious he hadn’t said a word all the lap, suddenly clapped me on the back. “Bravo, that’s it!” Nazzaro came in at 12h 46m 26.4s, Clément more than three minutes behind... Albert Clément is a general favourite, and his father Adolphe Clément is one of those cheerful, short bearded men with no ‘side,’ always courteous and universally liked. When Clément fils was called up to be received by the Minister of Commerce he waited for his father to come along as he would not accept the honour or congratulations without him.”

When the race was done, Renault stood before one of the senior officials, the Minister of Transport, with his straw hat down over his face so that no-one would see his copious tears. In this moment of personal solitude, no doubt, he savoured the triumph and thought of his brother.*! One reflection was that, as a replacement for the Gordon Bennett races, the Grand Prix had left a great deal to be desired, and it had been decided by tyre choice, to use a modern idiom. Szisz changed 19 times while at least one car changed 14 times on this second day alone — but Szisz had the detachable wheels. The race had clearly been too long and, because of the nature of the circuit, no dicing seen, just lonely cars

DUSTY ROAD

OT,

coming by and, at the end, only eleven of them. Szisz finished at midday, the last at 4.30pm. Despite everything the race served its purpose. The matrix had been forged and it could be adapted to make it better and better. Le Figaro’s reporter caught a mood after Szisz came in... One o’clock. Enthusiasm falls away, the stomachs speak, you rush to the buffets, for a small fortune you grab the exquisite champagne of G. H. Mumm

to go with skinny little chicken, dusty slivers of ham which crunch

in your teeth, warm drinks, stale bread and cheese, seasoned by the calls of those vending it.

The French Grand Prix was now poised to become, with the American Grand Prix, the core of motor racing. Up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the French would be run six times and the American five. There were no other Grands Prix. Of course there had been nationalism, as there always would be. That, too, seems very basic to human beings. However, ‘over the years it is the magnificent machines and heroic drivers who have stirred the blood rather than the country that either have happened to originate from. In November that year a poor blacksmith who also repaired bicycles in the small town of Komyo outside Tokyo had a son. Some miles away was a mill with a petrol-powered engine and the little lad used to be taken there by his grandfather so he could watch the engine working. It

captivated him. He was called Soichiro Honda. The ACF decided that their 1907 Grand Prix should be near the Channel port of Dieppe (perhaps to attract British entries), although it might have gone to Fontainebleau, the elegant and regal town south of Paris; but either way here was another matrix and the second staging post on the race’s long journey through the years. Uniquely the ACF, in what seems to have been an enduring spirit of egalitarianism and accessibility, would take the race to many staging posts all over France — a total of 16 up to Magny-Cours in the present day. Although the 1908 and 1912 races were also at Dieppe, by 2005 they had also been run at Amiens, Lyon, Strasbourg, Tours, the banked Montlhéry circuit near Paris, Miramas, Cominges, Pau, Reims, Rouen, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Paul Ricard and Magny-Cours. The people would come to the races, and

the races would go to the people. Dieppe in 1907 was significantly shorter than Le Mans, ten laps of 47 miles each against twelve laps of 64 miles, a total difference of almost 300 miles. That allowed adaptation, the race run on one day. The circuit

28

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

was surprisingly similar to Le Mans in shape and feel, although several temporary bridges had been built. Palisades were erected in the towns and the whole circuit laid with tar again. First aid posts were connected to a telephone system; and to guard it all on race day the ACF had 700 policemen and 4,500 soldiers on hand. Each car was allowed 231 litres of fuel, replacing the limit on the weight of the cars, and manufacturers could again enter three cars. That produced 24 French cars while six other countries entered 14, including Weigel® from Britain and the front-wheel drive Christie from the United States, the first time a car like that had ever raced in Europe. Once Dieppe had been chosen several manufacturers went there to carry out trials, especially for fuel consumption on sections where they felt their rivals couldn’t see them. The roads were not, of course, closed and the trials became very dangerous. Clément crashed outside a little village and was killed, a Darracq driver hit a cart and was killed. The outcry in the French Press was so intense that for a time the race came into question. They’d race. At scrutineering the day before, the fuel tanks were ‘filled from the elaborate official apparatus and the balance of the fuel allowance was fed into cans, each of which was sealed and numbered. Cars and cans were then locked in individual wire pens for the night and placed under military guard. It had rained, and many worried what they would do to the course if it lingered to the morrow. It didn’t. The organisation of a Grand Prix was being refined. The police set out 17 articles governing how the race would be run, crowd controlled, and who could go where. Article 7 described places where the cars had to slow — round corners, through villages — and these were signalled by streamers stretched over the road... Article 8. The signals will be 400 metres before the precise place where the slowing-down of the cars must be observed. The competitors must slow their speed to 40kmh. A bugler is to be positioned 200 metres before all built-up areas and will sound each approaching car.”

The race began at 6am again, but this time the cars went at 60-second intervals. To enable spectators to savour its scale special trains ran from Dieppe. Starting at 3.17 on race morning, there were eleven of them before 10.20, shuttling people up to Le Treport, a coastal town at the tip of the course and its neighbour Eu, where there was a hard, spectacular left-hander, the cars hugging it. The special trains also went across to the

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town of Envermeu, halfway down the first leg of the triangle. Those who preferred to stay in the start-finish area were reminded by the local paper that ‘for the day of the Grand Prix, a popular terraced stand has been built. The entry is 2.0 francs and cold meals will be served at 3 francs 50.’ Many would watch the race in the countryside, strung out along tree-lined roads in small groups standing on the grass verges or bordering fields as the big beasts fled by just before them. As the cars left the parc fermé to make their way to the start over a pathway of duckboards, a band played. The start was laid with duckboards, too, and the crowd stretched away into the distance. A vast grandstand loomed and it was full of people. For the first time, pits had been dug at the side of the track so spares and tools could be stored there. Lancia in the FIAT was sent off at 06.01, Szisz in his Renault at 06.09, Nazzaro in his FIAT at 06.18, Gabriel in his Lorraine-Dietrich two minutes later. Because of the fuel limitation, cars did not start their engines until just before they were due to go and that caused problems with some cutting out as they crossed the line. The mechanics got to work with the crank handles immediately. Despite the tar, the road out in the country was so dusty the tracks each car’s tyres cut were clearly visible to the little groups who’d gathered to watch. There was a downhill left-right (the first Grand Prix chicane?) flanked by high earthen banks with the crowd on top. It imposed great demands on the driver and produced its own catalogue of incidents. Drivers could drift — or try to drift — their cars through, the back end hanging out, slewing back in — or they could misjudge it, as a Lorraine-Dietrich driver did, skittering across the right-hander into the bank and thumping that hard. Driver and mechanic had to get out and push it to safety while an official stood at the mouth of the chicane with two flags preparing to warn oncoming cars of the danger. Another car did come through and three women in long dresses and bonnets, to positioned to watch it enter the chicane, scampered along the banking wrong so mouth see it go through — or if it went through. Some got the One, a that they had to reverse. Some slithered on the edge of control. virtually in came car, Renault which may have been touched by another throwing sideways, whipped round and butted the banking, then rolled, anything driver and mechanic out. The next car was too close to do at the banking the except turn sharply away from the crash, towards

other side. as it seems, One driver stopped by the wreck on the right and, then sped off, the enquired of the driver standing beside it, if he was OK, driver waving.

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

30

Lancia led but at half distance Arthur Duray (Lorraine-Dietrich) had got past him; Nazzaro third, Gabriel fourth and Szisz fifth — and all of them separated by under eight minutes. Duray and Lancia duelled and they could see each other. Lancia regained the lead on lap six, Duray retook a lap later, but now Nazzaro made his move. He overhauled Lancia on the time stagger — Nazzaro had started 17 minutes later — and Szisz, consistently fast, was making his move in the scoop-nosed Renault. Lap 7

Lap 8 |

Duray

Duray

Nazzaro

Nazzaro

Lancia

Szisz

Szisz

Lancia

Duray’s gearbox failed, then Lancia’s FIAT misfired so that on lap nine, with one lap to go after it, Duray was gone, Lancia had fallen away and the race lay between Nazzaro and Szisz. At lap nine Nazzaro led by more than five and a half minutes but the start times had to be factored in to that, Szisz off at 6.09am that morning, Nazzaro at 6.18. It meant in the most simple, direct way that nine minutes had to be subtracted from Szisz’s 6h 13m 45s — making him 6h 4m 45s. On this last lap Szisz had to find almost three minutes and he couldn't. He did 39 minutes 25 seconds and crossed the line shortly after 1pm. He’d been driving for 6 hours 53 minutes and 10.6 seconds. He knew that if Nazzaro appeared within those nine minutes the race had been plucked from him. While Szisz was driving away Nazzaro’s red FIAT hoved into view as it crossed a low hill on the straight towards the finish. He crossed the line at 6 hours 46 minutes and 33 seconds, and he’d won it easily enough. For 1908, the race stayed at Dieppe but the rules changed, the minimum weight raised to 1,100kg and with engine restrictions to try to make it safer. It attracted a huge entry, 49, of which 48 started: as well as the usual FIATs, Renaults and Mercedes came three Austins, three Opels (one driven by Fritz von Opel), and three Benzs apart from the lovely, almost poetic, names of the era: Brasier, Porthos, Mors, Germain, Motobloc, Itala*” and Thomas. Jenatzy had of course driven a Mercedes at Dieppe in 1907 and waited to get his hands on one again now, but the company had selected a new generation of drivers. Mors had made a late entry of. three hastily assembled cars and Jenatzy asked for one of them.

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The race was scheduled for 7 July and, because these were public roads, all practice banned for five weeks and a 15kmh speed limit rigorously enforced in case any competitor tried to (this caught the occasional tourist unawares). To get round the ban some teams practised on similar strips of road nearby and an Austin driver, Dario Resta, ran into trouble twice. Resta... who was born to drive but lacking in road experience, had a tendency to be

reckless

and was

involved

in two

crashes,

wrecking

his car on both

occasions. In the second he collided with a horse and cart ending up in a

ditch with the car on top of him. He and his mechanic, rescued

from

this

dangerous

situation

then

became

having been

involved

in an

altercation with some locals who had come to the assistance of the driver of the cart. Finally, Resta was dragged off to prison and only released when

his friend Mr Fry, whose Mercedes he had driven at Brooklands, bailed him out in time for the weigh-in.”

An English enthusiast, Hall Watt, who had bought the 1906 winning Renault, was a non-competitor, but drove the course, crashed and died. On Sunday, 5 July the ACF ‘summoned drivers and mechanics to a lecture on the need to protect their faces.’ Some of these drivers were staying in tents in a field near the start and so were spectators. A whole

tented village had arisen. On Monday 6 July there was a six-lap Voiturette” with 47 entries, and although the circuit’s roads had had extensive work done on them, the Voiturettes dug this up. On this race eve the local newspaper La Vigie De Dieppe wondered: speed will be reached? Nazzaro achieved an average speed of 113kmh last year and the fastest lap was covered by the same competitor in 38 minutes 16 seconds (120kmh). There are hopes of doing better this time and most of the drivers estimate that Nazzaro’s total time will be beaten by several minutes. They believe themselves capable of doing a lap and between 38 and 39 minutes and thus averaging between 115

What

120kmh.

For the Grand Prix some drivers wore only goggles and others ‘added the masks and helmets’, but these offered minimal protection against g patchin and clearing te flying stones. Although there had been ‘despera of numbers through Monday night’ of the damaged corners huge ahead. car the stones remained to be thrown back by

32

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

On a cold morning a bitter wind, strong enough to keep blowing Monsieur Renault’s straw hat off, raked the start at 6am. The start was given by a small cannon in grass beside the track. A nervous looking man in a dark suit borrowed a match and applied it —- and was enveloped in a pall of smoke. The cars were sent off at one-minute intervals and Szisz in the Renault was soon travelling fast, leaving plumes of dust behind him as he moved out on to the narrow ribbon of road which undulated through the countryside, turning and twisting through the towns. The duel was resumed: Nazzaro’s FIAT took the lead by lap two but now Christian Lautenschlager — a 31-year-old who had joined Daimler in 1899 as a mechanic, risen to foreman in the racing team by 1905 and was in his first major race — was threatening in his Mercedes. Lautenschlager, from near Stuttgart and of poor parents, had been apprenticed at 14 as a locksmith. He travelled as a journeyman, and when he was 22 returned to Stuttgart and trained as a mechanic. Old Daimler liked the young man and he became a works driver. As he tackled Nazzaro’s FIAT, he knew what he was about. And, as is the way of motor racing so infuriatingly often, duels are destroyed by circumstance. On that lap two, Szisz had to swerve to miss a car which had misjudged the sharp triangular fork outside Dieppe, and Szisz did this so violently that his car threw a tyre and rim. He went some way on the iron bonding underneath but damaged that so badly that he couldn’t fit another tyre. He limped to the Renault pit, spoke briefly, and retired. Some say the ‘man fairly broke down under the blow.” Nazzaro’s engine broke on the next lap. That left Lautenschlager clear. He drove calmly, shedding the squarejawed, youthful, determined Hémery (Benz), whose goggles had broken, but the circuit was full of perils. One car had to change tyres 19 times. Another suffered a puncture in a right-hand corner and the car twisted out of control, killing driver and mechanic. Mercedes actually ran out of tyres. Lautenschlager had stopped ten times for new tyres, once when his right-front was completely shredded. He negotiated the last two laps with great care, using the engine’s power whenever he judged the road surface safe, then picking a path through the damaged sections. He came in after 6 hours and 55 minutes to the consternation of the silent French. The band played the German national anthem, as it was obliged to do, but then moved immediately into the stirring French national rallying cry, the Marseillaise. Hémery came next, another Benz third, and by now the band had fallen silent, too. Lautenschlager, a short, stocky man wearin g a pullover, was escorted to the victory ceremony by an official in hat and armband

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33

who gripped him by the arm to steer him there. The podium was entirely German and The Motor’s correspondent wrote: The French have created for themselves a kind of Frankenstein’s monster in motor racing. They have made of the mere winning of a race the essence of commercial success, and the natural corollary is that the losing of a race becomes a catastrophe. The horror, the chagrin and the humiliation of their defeat [...] filled the

cup of the French to overflowing and, as a consequence, they lost their heads and took their beating very badly. In the paddock I saw notable Frenchmen

livid with rage, stamping about and showing their bitter resentment.

It had been an endurance test again, with 25 retirements, although reportedly Lautenschlager proved to be ‘exceedingly modest and free from self-consciousness. There was no posing, no straining after effect and one felt delighted to go up and congratulate’ him.” The endurance element was captured in a single paragraph: At the end of the race some drivers were in a parlous state. Flying stones had smashed the glass of some of the goggles, Hémery for one being in agony for a couple of laps through a spicule [small, sharp piece] of glass working into his eye. He had to stop and be attended to by a doctor before he could finish the race. Resta had to stop twice [...] to get a doctor to wash his eyes out, so inflamed were they, and at the end they were dreadful to behold. Perhaps the most pitiful sight was Henry Fournier [Itala] who was so bad he could scarcely see to bring his car into the enclosure and he was completely blindfolded after medical treatment and had to be led away.”

Jenatzy finished 16th, lost in the pack. The career of the first great Grand Prix driver was over. The race had proved that almost whatever regulations were in place the potential danger remained. At the left-hander at Eu, one driver either misjudged the corner completely or the car wouldn’t turn in. It travelled at great speed to the protective wooden wall at the far side and struck it so hard it smashed a section. Later, another went directly into and the wall, striking it so hard it brought down several sections scattered the crowd behind. In a different left-hander, a car went straight on into an advertising hoarding, mincing the DU of DUNLOP. to Two months later, ten-year-old Enzo Ferrari and his father went Lancia in their watch a race at Bologna, and there he saw Nazzaro and

34

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

awesome FIATs. Ferrari had touched, and been touched by, motor racing for the first time. In due course, he would touch it and shape its very soul. He’d employ Nuvolari and their relationship would develop into an eternal question: what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? The French were livid and bitter. For 1909 a race had been tentatively set for Anjou and the ACF had drawn up regulations for a minimum of 40 cars but when only nine entered they cancelled it and didn’t hold another until 1912, at Dieppe. Pausing here, it is important to stress that the story of Grand Prix racing cannot be properly appreciated without considering the social context in which it happened. It was impossibly exclusive and although ordinary working folk may have thronged to watch, they were watching another world go by. Throughout this book I’m going to use various measures — comparing increases in speed (for example, at Monaco when we get there) — and three will be social in nature: the number of vehicles registered on Britain’s roads from 1926, the first year it seems when we have accurate figures; the average weekly earnings of a Briton; the cost of the lowest priced Ford in their range. In 1909, a Briton earned £1.50 a week. A Model T Ford cost £220. Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 2 years 42 weeks to buy one. To chart one aspect of the rise in motoring, every decade I'm going to give the cost of an average small Ford and the ever-decreasing time the Briton took to buy it. For long decades, motoring was the province of the wealthy and motor racing the province of the even wealthier. Eventually, motoring was for everyone — which must be reflected in the enormous appeal of motor racing. By 1912, the World Land Speed Record had been pushed to 141mph by an American in a Benz at Daytona. The Grand Prix at Dieppe reverted to two days of ten laps each, and to safeguard against a small entry, it was opened up to Voiturettes as well, producing a total entry of 58. The Grand Prix drivers included Hémery (Lorraine-Dietrich), Louis Wagner (Fiat), newcomers Jules Goux (Peugeot), Georges Boillot (Peugeot) — a stern, rounded countenance, a

decorative handlebar moustache — and two Americans, Ralph de Palma (Fiat) and David Bruce-Brown (Fiat). Goux, a studious-looking, sharp-eyed Frenchman and de Palma, handsome in the open, clean-cut American way, were of a new generation whose careers would span the First World War. Goux, a Frenchman and then 39, competed in 150 races, winning several dozen including the Indianapolis 500. He'd actually drive in the 1926 French Grand Prix.

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De Palma began in 1906 but on motorbikes. ‘For Americans, he was a symbol of “up-by-the-bootstraps” industry; Italians considered him part of their folklore, even though he had left Italy as a nine-year-old and remembered little of the mother tongue. Sportsmanship and showmanship were wedded to his nature.’” He’d earn his fame with Mercedes, for whom he would win the Indianapolis 500. He didn’t retire until 1933, and the number of his wins has been put at 2,557. Boillot, who had a particularly fierce-looking moustache,” had also been racing since 1906. He and Goux helped build their own Peugeot, and in 1910, he won the Targa Florio with it. Boillot, who worked for Peugeot, was ‘fully skilled as a mechanic and able to assist in the design of a racing car as well as in its preparation. Strong, square-built, determined [...] very sure of himself, he would tackle anything.” Bruce-Brown was born to wealthy parents*® and became a mechanic then a driver. In 1909 he was beating de Palma and in 1911 he drove a Fiat in the first Indianapolis 500. Because of the way he drove, the French nicknamed him the errant schoolboy. Of him, someone said: ‘The instant I rested my eyes upon him, an utter stranger, I had a fairly accurate gauge of his character. He was the personification of and splendid youth and upon him was an fine, wholesome unmistakable stamp of good breeding. [...] was a fellow of natural poise and courteous deportment, attired nattily yet inconspicuously and spoke in a soft, modulated voice. He introduced himself as David Bruce-Brown, a student at Yale, but he was too much the true gentleman to add that he was the scion of a very wealthy and socially prominent New -York family. His code in fact did not tolerate braggadocio of any sort.’” Several teams tested over the Dieppe course well before the race and six early-morning sessions had also been-arranged. Boillot in his Peugeot — often described as the first modern Grand Prix car with its overhead camshafts — did successive laps of 41, 37 and 35 minutes while BruceBrown, who had arrived in Paris with de Palma the previous Wednesday, did 37. ‘The roads were hastily patched and their surfaces were sprayed with a calcium chloride solution to keep down dust.’® very The arrangements to start the race, at 5. 30am, were striking and both visual. A set of posts with numbered cards on them, were set down other. the to numbers odd sides of the track, even numbers to one side, up one This was not like the original Le Mans alternation, cars arriving respective after another, because here, the cars drew up behind their as it grid, The ly. numbers. They would however be sent off alternate would seem, had been created.

36

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

The cars were in place by 5.15 and the track cleared. The starter marched to the head of the grid and at that moment the mechanics of the first few cars rushed to their starting-handles, the engines were fired and it sounded like a salvo of cannon fire. The starter signalled the cars away at 30-second intervals. Bruce-Brown and his mechanic ‘created a sensation by coming to the starting line in their American make-up, this comprising a grey cloth mask, through which peered a pair of ghostly-looking eyes.’ On that first lap Hémery overtook ten cars and Boillot thirteen but Bruce-Brown had the lead on elapsed time (37m 18s), Boillot second (38m 40s). It was the story of the first day: Boillot raced Bruce-Brown and Wagner raced Boillot. Bruce-Brown and Boillot pitted together to intense excitement, BruceBrown accelerated away but Boillot’s Peugeot hesitated — to the anguish of the crowd. He ‘wrestled’ with the gear lever and he was away, too. Boillot was ‘anxious to see’ how Bruce-Brown would react to an attack and launched one in the V-shaped Dieppe corner. He went past and at speed but ‘as I soon as I had pulled in to my side of the road again I , glanced back. In a fraction of a second I was on the edge of a grassy bank. I had to cut out my ignition to save myself and, taking advantage of my error, Bruce-Brown roared past me.’ This first day finished: Bruce-Brown

6h 36m 37s

Boillot

6h 38m 40s

Wagner

7h 03m 12s

A French driver, Leon Collinet, put a wheel into a ditch trying to overtake a car in the Voiturette class and the car rolled, killing his mechanic. Goux had been disqualified in extraordinary circumstances. A stone broke his petrol pipe and he soldered it at the roadside, but this cost so much time that he resumed at the rear of the field and, when he finished, the timekeepers told him he still had two laps to do. He protested and they reduced it to one. As he prepared to set off they realised he had done the ten rounds but then it emerged he had obtained petrol from ‘outside sources’, presumably to get back to the pits after the broken petrol pipe. It was illegal and he was out. De Palma was out, too, for the same offence. Anyway...

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soon after the winner had come in, a fox terrier escaped from the paddock

on to the track, tearing down the course at top speed in a frantic endeavour to overtake a racing car. In the rear [John] Hancock was approaching on

the Vauxhall. Evidently with the intention of removing all possibility of danger to himself and the other competitors, he made

straight for the

animal, hit it with his right front wheel, and killed it instantly.”

Drizzle melted into rain as the second day began and, under the regulations, no work could be done on the cars until they had been flagged away. Even when one mechanic tried to dry his car’s steering wheel he was warned. A Rolland-Pilain had a problem with the plug leads and didn’t move for an hour until Monsieur Pilain corrected the problem himself but, because he had physically touched the car, he had to take over the driving himself and supply his own mechanic. They finished eighth. It was a fascinating sight to watch the drivers start up their cold motors and get away in the shortest possible time. Bruce-Brown rushed at his car in well-reasoned fury, but although there was a determined rage in all his

actions there was

never a false movement.

After a few strokes on the

pressure pump the big motor spluttered, the mechanic leaped on behind, and the car ran a few yards ahead to the pits, where, with the motor still running to warm it up and save time, tyres and petrol were taken. In an

incredibly short space of time it was off, throwing up a cloud of water.”

The race was decided when Bruce-Brown’s Fiat suffered a fuel pipe fracture — one report suggests he’d hit a dog — and to get back to the pits he had to borrow fuel. He was disqualified. Wagner tracked Boillot and, on lap 18 of the 20, went past him near the small town of Londinieres. Boillot was stationary and trying, using a tyre lever, to repair the gearbox and other damage caused by a stone. When he had done that he had only second and fourth gears, and kept the Peugeot in fourth wherever possible because changing down was so difficult. He was good enough to maintain speed in spite of that and although Wagner came in first, on the time stagger Boillot won. The pride of the French motor industry had been restored and the future of Grand Prix racing was safe. Bruce-Brown was killed three months American Grand Prix at Milwaukee.

later,

practising

for

the

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

In 1913, the race went to its third staging post outside Amiens, a substantial town 90 miles north of Paris. It was in July again, so Goux came to it having won the Indianapolis 500 in May with a Peugeot — regarded as a tremendous feat because no European had won it before and, at pit stops during his 6 hours and 35 minutes of driving, he drank the equivalent of six bottles of Champagne. The Amiens circuit formed the by-now traditional triangle with a long, straight outward side, a 90° turn to a much shorter second side, twisting right again in the village of Moreuil and then following curves and corners all the way back on the third side. There would be 29 laps of 19.6 miles, giving a race distance of 579 miles. The rules had been changed to 800kg minimum weight, 1,100kg maximum and a 14mpg fuel consumption limit (20 litres per 100km). This effectively ruled out the big, heavy cars which had dominated the Grands Prix so far, but in any case, ‘new companies were now building special cars for racing, and Peugeot remained in the ascendant.’ Of the big manufactures, Mercedes and Fiat didn’t enter. Goux and Boillot had Peugeots, Nazzaro an Itala, Adam Opel entered a single car but Sunbeam fielded four —- Gustave Caillois, Resta, Jean Chassagne and Kenelm Lee Guinness, an Irishman of the brewing family with a wicked sense of humour. He was known as Bill.® Chassagne was known as . ‘Chass’ and would become a leading European driver. ‘Usually his attire is a model of neatness. He wears white kid gloves, and nothing can perturb him. He never makes a fuss, but if any expected or unexpected assistance can be given, he gives it.’ There had been some testing on the circuit but it was opened to the public in May and the Itala team, who had come with one racing car, had to learn it in a tourer. They then travelled to Brooklands and practised there before returning to France and the old circuit at — Dieppe. Early one morning Bigio, a company executive, went out with a mechanic for a run, and crashed. Both men died. Soon after, leading driver Paul Zuccarelli® was trying his Peugeot on a long straight. A farm kart emerged from a side turning and he hit it, killing himself. Rationalising danger is always the hardest part of motorsport, and it is no easier when you're trying to recapture the mentality of eras long gone. It does seem that there is a constant all the way through: men prepared to measure their desires against the possible consequences. In that sense, Paul Zuccarelli was just like Jim Clark or Ayrton Senna although Zuccarelli had to know he was doing something very, very dangerous and with no safeguards. Too many have died, as we have

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seen, for him not to know - yet, until the 1960s, they all accepted either no safeguards, or inadequate safeguards. The Motor indulged in whimsy when it reported that the Sunbeam team were lodged in an old chateau near Moreuil which ‘has a superb collection of ghosts’. One of the team said they ‘disturb him in the early morning, and he dislikes being called early. Resta finds them distinctly companionable.’ Caillois ‘declares that the ghosts were guaranteed in the contract, and if they are not supplied before the day of the race he will protest.’ The ladies were ‘somewhat divided’ — one thought she could face a French ghost, another that ‘frankly she will not try.’ The Motor added: ‘It is worth noting that when night falls and the long, hollow corridors are plunged in obscurity and the big dining hall, with its oak ceiling bedecked with the fleur-de-lys, is dimly illuminated by candles, no proposal is ever made to wander far afield...’ At the weigh-in only the Itala cars were over the weight limit, and they made it by shedding parts. ‘Who will win?’ the local paper, Le Progrés de la Somme, wondered. ‘The Italas have engines without exhaust valves. “That doesn’t mean anything for the race!” a driver told me yesterday. One of the Italas is driven by Nazzaro, the famous Italian who is never very far from winning.’ Peugeot? The writer thought Boillot ‘a bit fat, a bit heavy, certainly still affected by the loss of his friend Zuccarelli’ and found Goux ‘dry, agile, calm, marvellously fit.’ The start, due at 5am, had to be delayed by half an hour for fog. ‘It was impossible to see a person in the field behind the tyre pits on the opposite side of the track, while the yellow advertising balloons presented mere dim outlines in the sky.’ This did not deter an enormous crowd from coming and ‘for miles down the fast stretch, the human road lining was continuous, the greater proportion of the crowd being of the poorer classes.’ The race finally began when Caillios was sent off at 5.31, but the first lap was

slow because of the fog and cold. Boillot led it. One car... stalled his motor on the first hill. The mechanic tired himself until he was away no longer able to crank the engine, and the only means of getting on backwards run to car was by putting it in reverse gear and allowing the

the hill.”

ands The driver of an Itala lost control at the hairpin near the grandst Driver and and his car slithered into the banking, flipping on to its side.

40

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

mechanic managed to right it then the driver locked arms round the mechanic to hold him rigid while he cranked the engine and they set off again to loud applause. They had a damaged steering column, but wouldn’t be deterred by anything so trivial. As the fog cleared speeds increased. Near half distance, Albert Guyot (Delage), who had been given pit the instruction attack, was past Goux, Boillot running third. On lap 17 however Boillot went past the pits in the lead, Goux behind him — Guyot came in a long time after. He’d had to change two tyres out on the circuit and then a third blew. The mechanic [only referred to as Semos], in a desire to save time, vaulted out of the car before it had sufficiently slowed down. Instead of travelling at 15mph as the mechanic supposed, Guyot declared later that he must at the moment have been running at 30. The mechanic was knocked down,

the car passing over him. No bones were broken, but he suffered flesh wounds, was injured in the head, and fainted with pain. It was necessary to wait a few minutes until the man regained consciousness, lift him into the car and drive round at a reduced speed to avoid shaking him. To have returned without the mechanic would have entailed disqualification.”

Guinness crashed on lap 15 when a front tyre on his Sunbeam let go at a village. He fought to keep control of the car but it struck the protective pailings on a bridge over a little river. The car flipped, hurling a spectator into the water. Guinness and his mechanic were thrown into the water, too, and suffered minor injuries, but the spectator was dead. Boillot won it from Goux, giving Peugeot first and second places. Boillot drove the Peugeot into the winner’s enclosure, a narrow path across grass between twin rows of wooden staves. He and his mechanic got off and posed for a photograph: Boillot round faced — almost cherubic — but that face was marked by grime. He wore leather boots and a stout jacket. His right hand was black, perhaps more grime, perhaps oil. The mechanic, stocky, swarthy and slightly shorter than Boillot, wore a leather jerkin which seems to have been completely coated by oil, and so had his face, and so had his hands. He wore a beret, his goggles hoisted up to rest on it. Both men were grinning, but they were tired grins. They had been in the car for 7 hours 53 minutes and 56.8 seconds, a margin of some 2/4 minutes over Goux. Not all the arrangements during the race had evidently proved satisfactory:

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A car would come in to change a tyre, take in some oil or what not, and the mechanic or driver would ask for a drink. A couple of glasses of wine, beer

or mineral water would be poured out and placed on the edge of the track. Driver and mechanic having completed their separate tasks, the former would spring into his seat, the latter would jump to the starting handle,

both having entirely forgotten their desire for a drink, whilst the members of the pit staff who had filled the glasses would make no attempt to remind them, but, as the car moved off, would calmly step down and perhaps give

the drinks to the pit attendants, or stand them on one side — to gather a surface of dust — for the next time round.”

In October, Jenatzy — who hadn’t raced in Grands Prix since 1908 — was out with a party hunting wild boar in the wooded Ardennes. At nightfall, he left his hiding place, but the hunt wasn’t over and, by a hideous irony, the friend who had invited him to the hunt mistook him for a boar and shot him. They carried him to his Mercedes and he died in it a few moments later.” The 1914 American Grand Prix, in February, didn’t attract the Europeans, although a Mercedes came fourth. The Indianapolis 500 at the end of May did. René Thomas, who had driven at Dieppe in 1912 and Amiens in 1913, won it in a Delage, Duray (Peugeot) second, Guyot (Delage) third, Goux (Peugeot) fourth. Boillot set a new track record in qualifying: 99.6mph in his Peugeot. Europeans wouldn’t do anything like this again until 1966, when Graham Hill won from Jim Clark; Jackie Stewart sixth — Stewart had seemed certain to win but his car suffered

an oil leak. On 24 June 1914, a Briton called L. G. ‘Cupid’ Hornsted set a new World Land Speed Record at Brooklands of 124.0mph. Although considerably slower than the 1911 Daytona record this was the first ‘two-way’ run — a flying mile, turn, a flying mile back — and as such recognised by the governing body the FIA,” which had recently been

formed. Four days later Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in the Serbian town of Sarajevo, and it set in train the lock-step of events of a culminating in the First World War. One British newspaper spoke ‘clap of thunder’ over Europe. Prix at Lyon This was the atmosphere surrounding the French Grand

ed a great — the fourth staging post — the following Saturday. It produc land shadow the because was race, some say the great race. Perhaps that the all because of war was moving across the landscape, perhaps it was Vauxhalls — de leading drivers and makes were there, including three

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

Palma had one — while mighty Fiat returned and the entry of 37 was motor racing; perhaps it was because, at its heart, Peugeot was challenging Mercedes: France against Germany. An estimated 300,000 came to see. They had to be spread round the circuit which remained triangular with a long, straight backbone, where in the fields, workmen would watch, some standing beside an old cart. A lot of twisting turns formed the rest of the circuit, including a Ushaped turn where cars slithered gloriously and the crowd thronged the hillocks all around it. There was a section like a ledge, with a rockface to one side and, beyond a stone parapet, a drop to the other. There was a tight uphill right-hander and, rounding it, the cars exhaled great, sudden, elongated plumes from their exhaust pipes. There was a narrow section through a town, under a temporary wooden bridge, and the crowds were dense everywhere you looked. Beyond the temporary bridge stood a railway viaduct and during the race trains would slip across it while beneath them the beasts roared and smoked. Although the race had moved to central France for the first time, the roads were better than the previous circuits and a local grant improved them further, but it still had a corner called /e piege de la mort — the trap of death. The engine capacity had been set at 4,500cc while the maximum weight was held at 1,100kg. Initially, there wasn’t any practice, although reports suggest some of the French drivers had covered some of the circuit in their racing Cars. ‘Then local authorities relented slightly and at 48 hours notice allowed the roads to be closed for two 90-minute practice periods. [...] The Indianapolis drivers [...] got back to France just in time to take advantage of these, many foreign drivers could not for one reason or another, and, in the eyes of some sections of the French press, officials inevitably “rested under the unpleasant odour of favouritism.’””% One estimate suggests that half or more of the entrants hadn’t been able to practice at all. The local paper, Le Progres, caught the intoxication of the start: The drivers are in place, several wearing gaudy headgear but the most elegant are the Pic-Pic” whose hats and jerseys are well matched with the colours of the car. To facilitate the start, which is to be given simultaneously to cars in pairs, a long line had been whitewashed in the middle of the track [so the cars didn’t run into each other]...Little by little the track was evacuated; the service personnel stand immobile , almost incrusted against their refuelling equipment. It is 8 o’clock. The course is entirely cleared and, ranged into two columns, odd numbers to the right,

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even numbers to the left, the cars wait for the signal. Brusquely the starter lowers

his flag and in a tremendous

roar of engines,

in a cloud of

impenetrable smoke from the exhaust pipes, the competitors start, fly off and disappear round the corner.

This sense of anticipation and action was heightened because, going off in pairs at 30-second intervals, the 37 were all away by 8.10am. A little-known Mercedes driver, Max Sailer, made a tremendous start from the sixth ‘row’ and accelerated clean away from the Fiat paired with him. Sailer led on elapsed time completing the opening lap — Boillot led ‘on the road’ — and by lap three Sailer had pulled a minute and a half away. Sailer was forcing the Mercedes hard — he set a new fastest lap on lap four — while the other four Mercedes drivers, including Lautenschlager, held back, watching and waiting. Or did they? ‘There was, apparently, a good deal of rivalry between the veteran Lautenschlager and the dashing

Sailer.’”* At the end of lap five: Sailer

lh 43m 16s

Boillot

lh 46m 00s

Duray

lh 46m 51s

Lautenschlager

lh 46m 57s

Soon after this a connecting rod in Sailer’s engine failed so that into lap six Boillot led but Lautenschlager was up to second, a minute behind. Lautenschlager made his scheduled pit stop and resumed, stalking his distant prey. Boillot was ‘flogging’ his Peugeot, cornering as fast as he could — or dared — and forcing it to its maximum on the ‘long switchback straight composing the third leg of the triangle.’” At 15 laps, Lautenschlager was 2 minutes 28 seconds behind but, cut seeming to be able to pace himself, cut that by 23 seconds on lap 16, car the but d, possesse it further on lap 17. Boillot was driving like a man (he’d had nothing more to give him. Lautenschlager led on the stagger As 18. lap of end the at seconds 33 started 5'%4 minutes after Boillot) by one by led they crossed the line to begin the last lap Lautenschlager minute and seven seconds. s. At the The Peugeot sounded as if it was running on three cylinder and Boillot virage de la Madelaine (Madelaine Corer) a valve broke despair, in what stopped. ‘In a moment which must have been of utter stagger] Christian was to be his last heroic race, he saw [because of the past.” Lautenschlager for the first time as the Mercedes swept

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

People asked what could have happened

to Boillot: people murmured

improbable noises like these — he’d gone into the canal at Givors, he’d killed himself at the virage de la Madelaine, he'd hit a barrier.”

As Lautenschlager crossed the line, the crowd were silent, but this wasn’t like the bitterness of Dieppe in 1908. They were not anti-German, not showing disrespect, they were stunned, and further stunned when Louis Wagner’s Mercedes came in second, Otto Salzer’s Mercedes third. Goux brought his Peugeot in fourth — scant consolation, if any. Three weeks later, Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Within a week, Germany had declared war on Russia and France, and invaded Belgium; Britain had declared war on Germany. The unremitting slaughter would last until November 1918 and, although nobody knows exactly how many men died, 10,000,000 seems likely. It remains beyond imagining. Some say as the vast crowd ebbed away from the circuit outside Lyon that the heroic days were over. The pioneering days certainly were and, in that sense, an era closed forever just before the guns played their deadly music across Europe. It had been exactly 20 years since the Paris—Rouen reliability trial. The first World Land Speed Record, four years after that, was 39mph. Now, in 1914, it stood at 124mph. The fastest lap in the Le Mans Grand Prix averaged 73mph and although comparisons are elusive — regulations, different circuits — the fastest at Lyon, 4mph slower. This wouldn’t happen again. And the end of heroic days? No, no. They were just beginning.

Notes 1. Daimler and Benz did not merge until 1926. ‘The essential difference between the two great early pioneers was that Daimler was a visionary who dreamed of his engines serving mankind, while Benz only ever wanted to be a car-maker.’ (The Dawn of Motoring, Mercedes-Benz). 2. James Watt, born in 1736, was trained as an instrument-maker. In 1763 he was sent a steam engine to repair and while he was doing that he ‘discovered how he could make the engine more efficient. Watt worked on the idea for several months and eventually produced a steam engine that cooled the used steam in a condenser, separate from the main cylinder.’ http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Scwatt.htm 3. The Michelin brothers André and Edouard were the first to use: demountable pneumatic tyres on motor cars (1891). Micheli n also

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promoted motoring, putting milestones on French roads, producing road

maps and, in 1900, a Red Guide with restaurant ratings. . A Record of Grand Prix and Voiturette Racing, Volume 1, Paul Sheldon. . Great Racing Drivers, edited by David Hodges. . Enzo Ferrari, Brock Yates. . The Land Speed Record, Peter J. R. Holthusen. . See http://www.8w.forix.com/gbt03.html . The History of Motor Racing, William Boddy. wo ementawvu 10. René Panhard and Emile Levassor were French pioneers of the internal combustion engine, and built their own in 1876. They built their first car in 1890 with the engine under licence from Daimler. In 1891, they ‘produced their second model and this vehicle is generally reckoned to be the first to establish the architecture of the modern motor car — front-mounted engine, clutch mounted between the engine and gearbox and driven rear axle.’ The firm was bought by Citroén and stopped car manufacture in 1967. http://www.citroen.mb.ca/citroenet/html/p/panhard1.htm 11. Snoek-Bolide, a 10.6-litre four-cylinder Belgian car (bolide means racing car). 12. The French Grand Prix, David Hodges. 13. The Motor, 1906. 14. Ibid. 15. Before motor cars, even towns must have been quiet, or rather the sounds — people talking, shouting, laughing, church bells, the hum of markets, the lowing of cattle at auction, the barking of dogs — the same that had echoed down the centuries. The car did not immediately drown all this. As Brock Yates points out (in Enzo Ferrari, The Man and The Machine) there were no more than 27 private cars in Modena in 1903. Conversely, there’s a

photograph of Londiniéres’ main street on race day 1908 (the circuit bypassed the town) and it is choked by cars, many parked neatly side-by-side outside the local hotel. I don’t want to read too much into any of this — pedestrians are wandering the street, presumably in the way they did with horse-drawn carts and carriages — but high streets would not be reclaimed until the traffic-free zones of our own time. 16. Cagno was also a flying enthusiast, and he designed and tested aircraft, founding Italy’s first flying school in Pordenone. He volunteered to fight in the war in Libya, and built the first bomber aircraft. i lig The Motor. 18. Ibid. 19: Le Figaro. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid.

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22. Lorraine-Dietrich made railway locomotives in Alsace-Lorraine, and then began to build cars under licence. Bugatti was one of their engineers. They

changed their name to Lorraine-Deitrich in 1908 and specialised in big, heavy cars. 23. The cars were numbered by teams for ease of recognition rather than

where they started. For example, at Lorraine-Dietrich, Gabriel had 1A, Rougier 1B, Arthur Duray 1C 24. Gabriel died in 1943 during a British night bombing raid on Paris. There is

a memorial to him in the Museum of the Automobile at Le Mans. 25. Szisz became Louis Renault’s riding mechanic, test driver and finally driver. He has been described as an unflustered and accomplished driver, with a wonderful handlebar moustache and a twinkle in his eye. He died in Hungary in 1970, at 97. See

http://www.katylon.com/harisauto/x_archive/formula1/szisz/lstgp.htm 26. Quoted in Speed on Sand by William Tuthill (Ormand Beach Historic Trust,

Florida, 1978). Pile The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 28. Old race reports invariably describe a driver as ‘on’ a car rather than ‘in’ it.

This is clearly because in the early days the driver did sit on it, high up. 29. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges, op. cit. 30. The Motor. 31. Ibid. 32. The side piece of a chassis, which joins it to the front springs. 33. The Motor. 34. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 35. Figaro said there were two horses ‘hauling’ the cars one by one. The reason for using the horse (or horses) was, presumably, to adhere strictly to the rule that driver and mechanic must not touch their car until it was on the line ready to re-start. Then ‘the driver and his mechanic get on board; two

aides start the engine. Will it go, will it not go? Agitation, anxiety. It goes. Hurrah!’ (Le Figaro). 36. The Motor. 37. Le Figaro. 38. Ibid. 39. The Motor. 40. Ibid. 41. For a full portrait of Louis Renault see under Rhodes, Anthony in the Bibliography. 42. Sheldon, op. cit. On the matter of motor racing’s international character you can see the logical conclusion in the early 2000s: Michael Schumacher of Germany driving for the iconic Italian team Ferrari under a French

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director, Jean Todt, and a British race tactician, Ross Brawn, with a South

African, Rory Byrne, designing the car and an Italian, Paolo Martinelli, designing the engine. 43. A London car manufacturer between 1907 and 1910.

. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 45. La Vigie de Dieppe. 46. For the technical the cylinder bore was limited to 155mm for four-cylinder

engines, 127mm for six cylinders. 47. Itala was a Turin-based company, formed in 1904 to build sporty cars with large engines. In 1907 an Itala won the Paris—Peking race. The company

ceased production in 1934. 48. Brooklands was a banked track near London, holding race meetings from 1907 to 1939. It was a place where British society met, as they did at The Derby, the Henley Rowing Regatta and Lord’s cricket ground. 49. Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914, Taso Mathieson. 50. This has been described as the ‘little brother’ to the Grands Prix racing and

compared to the modern Formula 3000 or Indy light series. The cars had wonderful names — for example, in the 1906 race at Rambouillet you'd find (among others) a Civelli de Bosch, Sizaire-Naudin, Auto-Stand, LionPeugeot and a car driven by Henri Ballileau, built by Ballileau and called a

Ballileau. Apart from that, presumably, Monsieur Ballileau had nothing to do with it at all... 51. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 52. The Motor. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges, op. cit. 56. Boillot joined the (new) French Air Force when the First World War began and was killed in 1916 in a dogfight over Verdun. Several French streets

and at least one school are named after him. 57. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges, op. cit. 58. At 18, Bruce-Brown bluffed his way into motor racing 1908. He was of wealthy stock but started humbly. He and was evidently known as the millionaire mechanic. racing his mother threatened legal action against race

didn’t work. 59. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges, op. cit. 60. The French Grand Prix, Hodges op. cit. 61. The Motor. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid.

at Daytona in worked for FIAT To try to stop him organisers. It

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64. Boddy, op. cit. 65. Guinness brothers Algernon and Kenelm Lee scored international success

in motor racing. Algernon, the older, did 117.7mph over a flying kilometre at the 1906 Ostend Speed Trials. He won notable races, too. Kenelm Lee

was the first Irishman to ‘win a major international motor race’ when he won the 1914 TT on the Isle of Man. There’s an example of Kenelm’s sense

of humour later in the book. (Adapted from The Irish Times website, 26 March 2003.)

66. Full Throttle, Tim Birkin. 67. Boillot’s team was commissioned to develop a Grand Prix car for Peugeot, and they hired, among others, Zuccarelli. The result? The first modern

racing engine. See http://www.grandprix.com/ft/ftjs006.html 68. The Motor. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. gals Ibid. 72. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges, op. cit. 73. The original governing body was called /’Association Internationale des

Automobile Clubs Reconnus, which in 1946 became the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). 74. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 75. Two wealthy Geneva sportsmen, Charles and Frederic Dufaux, wanted to build racing cars. For engines they went to Piccard & Pictet, who had a workshop. This may have inspired Lucien Pictet to make cars himself. 76. Mathieson, op. cit. ids The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 78. Ibid. 79. Le Progres, Lyon.

Chapter 2

THE CHAPS Ve the First World War ended at 11am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month — November 1918 — the political map of Europe had become unrecognisable: the Bolsheviks poised to seize Mother Russia, the Austro-Hungarian empire dismembered, Germany humiliated and, for the first time, decisive military action had been undertaken by the United States on the European mainland. None of this prevented ordinary folk from resuming those activities which pleased them and so there was continuity, however fractured. Many motor racing people had served, including Tazio Nuvolari, Enzo Ferrari and Antonio Ascari. Motor racing continued in the United States until they entered the war in April 1917 and resumed there without delay, at the Indianapolis 500 in 1919 where de Palma finished sixth and at Daytona where, driving a Packard, he pushed the World Land Speed Record to 149mph. The United States and Europe were now much closer then than they ever would be again, and at Indianapolis ‘Howdy’ Wilcox, a studious-looking American, won in a Peugeot. René Thomas and Guyot were in cars manufactured by Edouard Ballot.’ In 1919, the average wage in Britain was £2 10s and a Model T Ford cost £170. Saving all his money, the Briton would have had to save for 1 year 28 weeks to buy one. (1910, £220 — 2 years 42 weeks). The Land Speed Record ran like a backdrop down the years to come and it would be broken a further 28 times before the shadowlands of war moved across the landscape again. Here were new heroes, new heroism, and they interweaved in a way unthinkable now: of the seven Britons Prix; who held the record from 1919 to 1939 six also drove in Grands Ernest Kenelm Guinness, Malcolm Campbell, J. G. Parry Thomas, Captain and Segrave, Hane de Eldridge, the elegant Sir Henry O’Neal and, like George Eyston. Money means freedom to do what you want . Gordon Bennett, they did. mother his gh althou family, Segrave came from an old Leicestershire to Eton but was American and his father now lived in Ireland. He went

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had left when war broke out and, at’ 18, became an infantry officer, serving in the trenches until 1915. He joined the Royal Flying Corps, ‘was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, broke an ankle, and had to have several silver plates in his foot to be able to walk again. Invalided out of active service, he joined the executive side of the Air Ministry, went to the United States as attaché to an aviation mission.” He’d come to racing through Bill Bruce-Brown, brother of David. They ‘talked racing’, Segrave did a little on Long Island then in England, headed for the Sunbeam-Talbot team. Interesting. Years before, Enzo Ferrari gazed at a photograph of de Palma and vowed to become a racer himself. During the war he’d been called up by the Italian Army and given the job of putting shoes on mules for a mountain regiment. He fell ill, needed two operations and after discharge went to Turin to get into the motoring industry. He almost starved for lack of work until he found a job as a delivery driver. When the war ended, it emerged that Italy was suffering from a desperate shortage of transport vehicles: as a stopgap, Lancia military lorries were

being turned into vans and buses, and it was Ferrari’s job to drive the chassis from the Lancia plant to the workshops where the conversions were carried out.’

In 1919, he frequented ‘the network of bars and restaurants along the Corse Vittorio Emanuele II where racing champion Felice Nazzaro and the equally prominent driver Pietro Bordino‘ ate and drank. The Bar del Nord, near the immense Porto Nuova railway station, was a centre of racing gossip and deal making.” On one of his deliveries Ferrari met a ‘brash, moustachioed former bicycle racer’ — Ugo Sivocci, now the chief test driver for a car factory. He lived, Ferrari remembered, where there had once been a crime of passion. Ferrari did a hill climb in October, in a car called a CMN which resembled a barrel on wire wheels with a seat, an enormous steering column and an equally enormous steering wheel which Ferrari, goggles perched on his forehead, sumo-wrestled. Even at 21, Ferrari had a distinctive demeanour, a Roman nose and the crowd, spread thin up the hillside and dressed decorously in their coats and hats, their collars and ties, all saw the Roman nose as the barrel bored its path in front of them climbing and climbing. There was fog, there was rain and 31-year-old Ascari won it. Ferrari also drove in the Targa Florio. On the way down, wolves chased Ferrari and Sivocci’s car in the mountains, but Ferrari held them off with an old Army revolver.

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Sil

He retired on the third lap of the race although 12 others had already done that, including Ascari, whose Fiat plunged down a ravine and wasn’t found for a long time. A great passion held Ascari. His career began modestly in 1911 and during the war he worked on aeroplanes. When the war ended the passion which had been smouldering erupted in a volcanic way. He’d watched a race at Cremona which leading driver Giuseppe Campari won and immediately afterwards congratulated him. Ascari: ‘I can drive like that!’ Campari: ‘maybe...’ Ascari established an agency selling cars made by the Societa Anonima Lombarda Fabbrici Automobili, ALFA. He had a little, cherubic son, Alberto, and it seems certain that Alberto inherited the passion in full measure. De Palma finished sixth in the 1920 Indianapolis 500, a place behind Jimmy Murphy in a Duesenberg. Murphy had been orphaned by the earthquake at San Francisco in 1906 and came into racing as a mechanic before driving. He crashed in his first race, but the Duesenberg brothers were impressed enough to offer him a car for a Californian race. He won. Fred and August Duesenberg taught themselves engineering,* emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1885 and began building engines. They developed a straight eight engine’ and now it delivered enough power for a one-eyed driver, Tommy Milton, to push

the Land Speed Record to 156mph. In Italy, Ferrari finished second in a swamp of a Targa Florio — rain fell for a week making the mudbath. Campari in an Alfa Romeo led the first lap but dropped out and Ferrari, driving a sports model Alfa Romeo, kept going for more than eight and a half hours. At the end, he, his mechanic and the car were completely caked in mud. A photographer advanced and Ferrari turned his head for the picture to be taken. He was bareheaded, his hair a dark thicket with one little curl hanging down on to his forehead. He looked severe in the composed Victorian way when confronted by a camera, and he would remain so all his life. Campari liked good food and weighed nearly 16 stone (2201b). He was other also an opera singer with a baritone voice, and sang arias to drivers. Known as II Negher, The Dark One, because of his swarthy complexion, he married a famous singer.® nearby, Grand Prix racing came back to where it had begun, or rather an become 1921 of Prix Grand and not much had changed. The French mild pride, ordinary story of several immigrants, an orphan, national shocking circuit, chaos, hiding behind bushes, elements of mystery, a danger, and the heroes who hadn't disappeared.

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The race, at Le Mans although not the 1906 circuit, provided yet another matrix. At 10.7 miles it would form, later, the basic contour of the 24-hour sports car race and although extensively re-directioned remains like that today. In 1921, apart from round the pits, the surface — strewn with stones and small rocks — resembled a lunar landscape. An American writer said it was more like a pebble beach and added: ‘It seems likely that no race before or since has been run on such a surface.” The 30 laps (321 miles) stretched like an eternity. Entries arrived from Britain and Italy but no Germans were welcome and wouldn’t be for years. Ballot fielded four cars, for de Palma — who had driven one at Indianapolis - Chassagne, Wagner and Goux. These were old hands from pre-war days. Duesenberg entered late, and paid double because of that. They fielded four cars, for Guyot, Louis Inghibert — a wealthy, nattily-dressed sportsman — Boyer and Murphy. Inghibert, however, would be hurt in practice and his place taken by André Dubonnet, another nattily-coiffured sportsman, playboy and heir to the aperitif fortune bearing his name. Playboy? He’d also served in the artillery during the war before joining the French air force where he earned a citation for bravery. The French didn’t take the Duesenberg invasion particularly seriously because the cars were Indianapolis specialists with ‘inadequate stopping power and three-speed gear-boxes’ and, anyway, they hadn’t even won Indianapolis. They competed in America ‘with rear wheel brakes only, but for this race they were fitted with powerful hydraulic four-wheel brakes.’ This was to be decisive.!° De Palma embarked for France the day after Indianapolis, leaving his nephew Peter de Paolo (the riding mechanic) and a couple of others to accompany the Ballot on a ‘glorified tub’ of a boat. When Peter arrived in Paris he found de Palma living in splendour at the Crillon Hotel, but he was directed to a grimy little place opposite a railway station. When Monsieur Ballot discovered guests in such unsatisfactory accommodation he felt the honour of France at stake and ‘went wild in typical French fashion’.” Ballot was paying, so it couldn’t have mattered to de Palma either way, but as Peter remembered: ‘It conflicted with his ideas of discipline to have his mechanics stay at a place that offered too much luxury.’ They worked on the cars for a couple of weeks in Paris and decamped to the village of Ecommoy south of Le Mans, where they tuned them in an old barn they had made into a temporary workshop. The team had a spare car they called ‘the mule’ — in modern Grand Prix racing, the French still call a spare car un mulet — and the drivers

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53

used it to learn the course during official practice at 5.0 and 6.0 in the morning when the roads were closed to ordinary traffic. This meant ‘the Grand Prix entrants could be reasonably sure that the right of way would not be challenged by bands of sheep, parades of strutting geese, loads of hay and high-wheeled carts piled with produce.’ Fiat had labour problems at their factory, their car was delayed and they withdrew. The Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq entry should have compensated for that with seven cars. However...‘many attempts have been made to unravel the mysteries of this conglomerate as, at the time, various names were used quite indiscriminately.’ The seven were described as two Talbots, two Sunbeams and three Talbot-Darracqs although they were ‘all identical under their mildly old-fashioned skins, none of them remotely ready to race with ten days to go.’* Louis Coatalen, the great Sunbeam engineer who appreciated the importance of racing, surveyed the state of play and withdrew all seven entries. The drivers were unhappy about that and eventually all but two cars were reentered. This meant Segrave got the drive he cherished so much. He’d badgered Coatalen mercilessly but he had ‘objected, time after time, that although I seemed to be able to drive a car fairly reasonably on the track I was woefully lacking in road experience and he made no bones about telling me that he did not believe I should be any good in a road race.’ Finally Coatalen relented and offered an incentive. If Segrave finished within a time limit he might join the team on probation. There were, Segrave judged, no ‘really difficult corners...and the course was everywhere reasonably wide. On the other hand, the people responsible for it had evidently no ideas whatever of the wear and tear which a racing car can impose upon a road. After a few circuits [laps], the road, especially at the corners, was cut up in a shocking manner, and the number of loose stones was The Duesenberg team walked difficult parts and a photograph in shadows beside a corner, tree one man is clearly writing. The

incredible.” the whole circuit making notes of the survives of them doing this. They stand trunks like sentinels behind them, and road in front of them does look like a

pebble beach. During practice, a group of the Ballot people were at the right-hander at Mulsanne village and heard a racing car approaching. They couldn’t see which one because of a hump in the road but, by the engine noise, they knew it was coming fast and might be Murphy or one of the other immaculate white Duesenbergs, sensuously slender and streamlined, their chassis frames and numbers blue, the Stars and Stripes on their

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long graceful tails. They were wrong. When it crested the hump they saw their own ‘mule’ being driven by the reserve, Giulio Foresti, and he was travelling far too fast to take the corner. De Palma: ‘He’ll never make it!’ Monsieur Ballot: ‘He’s crazy!’ Foresti went clean past the corner, went straight into Mulsanne village, went right through that and continued to Ecommoy. It was breakfast time. Murphy crashed heavily during practice taking Inghibert round showing him where he could go faster. It may have been a loose horse or it may have been a brake seized. The car went through an earthen bank towards trees and seems to have somersaulted several times. Inghibert was thrown out, breaking three ribs and suffering concussion. Murphy had only bruising to his ribs. Both were taken to hospital. Dubonnet, due to drive one of the withdrawn Sunbeams, paid a considerable sum to replace him. Goux was a passenger in a Delage which swerved into a ditch to avoid a dog cart but he, like Murphy, was able to start the race. Ralph de Palma proved to be, according to nephew Peter, consistently faster than the other Ballot drivers despite the fact that, at the factory, his engine had been switched to make him the slowest. Monsieur Ballot couldn’t understand this and neither could the other drivers — de Palma had moved the gear lever to the middle of the car so that, on command, young Peter as riding mechanic could change the gears and Ralph’s hands didn’t need to leave the steering wheel, an important time-saving device on stony tracks. How Monsieur Ballot didn’t notice this is not at all clear, but during final practice, he hid behind a bush to see what was going on. He saw. He howled in anguish. He said this won’t do at all. He shouted that the driver had to change gear — the driver! The gear lever has to go back where it belongs! Ah, thought Peter, he wants a French driver to win... De Palma seemed dispirited by Ballot’s lack of sportsmanship. As the mechanics worked, the ‘town of Le Mans slept not at all Lex The sound of open exhausts rattled in the streets; big cars, little cars with bright lights and cars without any lights at all rushed merrily to and fro. In the cafés the people discussed the chances of the teams as they ate a meal that might have been anything between supper and breakfast. They spoke of the wonderful Duesenberg brakes, how the Ballots in their secret camp at Ecommoy had even better cars than ever for the event.’®

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At that secret camp, the work on the gear lever finished at dawn and the mechanics climbed into the barn’s loft to get whatever sleep they could. Count Louis Zborowski, wealthy son of a Polish count and an American mother, suffered no such problems. He lived in splendour in a large country house near Canterbury ‘where, with his engineer Captain Clive Gallop, he built three aero-engined cars, all called Chitty Bang Bang.’ He’d originally been invited to drive a Sunbeam and was now hastily summoned. However he found his car had no spare parts and he wouldn’t be able to drive even a single practice lap. He said he’d prefer to watch, and did. Money meant freedom. Race morning dawned misty. The thirteen runners were paired to go at 30-second intervals and they lined up each pair side by side. A crowd stood in a grandstand opposite a bare field with advertising hoardings on tall, skeletal wooden supports. Teams prepared to change to the equivalent of rain tyres — studded — but the Duesenbergs didn’t have any and the team scanned the sky anxiously. The first pair, de Palma one of them, went at 9am, Segrave and Murphy as the fourth pair, a minute and a half later: Segrave had Jules Moriceau as his mechanic (‘few better have ever lived. He had coolness, knowledge, a wonderful pair of hands, and a very quick imagination’) while Murphy, one report says, had risen from his hospital bed and, heavily bandaged, had been helped into his car. Murphy in fact was ‘taped from, his armpits to the waist to try and stabilise his chest because of the bruised ribs.’"* He sat at the wheel, a boyish, slightly severe face while his riding mechanic, Ernie Olson, looked sombre in collar and tie. They must have sensed that a great ordeal was at hand, especially for Murphy. Soon enough the stony surface savaged tyres and one Sunbeam changed seven times, another driver nine and Segrave fourteen. Amidst that a startling fact emerged: speeds had visibly increased. You could hurl cars at the corners and correct them without going off, you could accelerate hard out of corners and if the back of the car wobbled you could correct that, if your rear wheels dug dirt as you skimmed the rim of the road you didn’t take your foot off the accelerator. On the opening lap Wagner’s Ballot stopped to change plugs and, as de Palma went by, Wagner raised a bottle of Champagne with the motion of drinking their health. Clearly chaps would take a bottle along for the ride, although not perhaps drink the equivalent of six a la Goux, Indianapolis, vintage 1913. Whatever, when they opened the bottle it must have been shaken enough to blow the cork over Le Mans town and into orbit.

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Despite his name Wagner was French and, according to Peter, wanted de Palma to ‘beat the other Frenchmen, especially Chassagne.’ De Palma remained angry after Ballot’s treatment. Knowing Ballot would be watching intently and listening to the engine noise as he passed the pits de Palma shut the engine to ‘get Ballot’s goat’ — Ballot thinking it had failed. The point made, de Palma switched it on again. Completing that opening lap de Palma and Boyer’s Duesenberg led on time — both did 8m 16s — with Murphy third and Chassagne fourth. There was some jostling and hustling on lap two, Murphy and Boyer both on 16m 13s, Chassagne only six seconds behind and de Palma close to Chassagne. Segrave, running tenth, found himself in a nightmare. ‘Quite soon after the start one of the wheels picked up a stone and hurled it at the oil tank,’ fracturing it so badly that Segrave faced immediate retirement but Moriceau ‘seized a large lump of cotton waste [wool], pushed it into the hole in the oil tank and, taking a hammer, caulked the hole by beating in the sides of the tank on the cotton waste.’ On lap three, the whole tempo of the race rising, Murphy pulled clear of Boyer and led by 15 seconds. The Americans had fully adjusted to road racing already and were enjoying themselves. Chassagne attacked Boyer hard, drawing level with him and lap after lap they slogged it out. On lap seven, Murphy did 7m 44s and led Boyer by almost two minutes, Chassagne still attacking. Segrave’s nightmare went on: When following Murphy along one of the short pieces of straight, [Murphy’s] car picked up a big stone off the road and hurled it back like a bullet. It was as though the Duesenberg was a sentient being and had determined to put us out of the race. The stone struck my car with such

force that it went clean through the wire mesh stone guard which formed a sort of rudimentary wind-screen, through the moulded steel scoop which was intended to protect our eyes from the wind, struck the steering wheel, severing the cord wound round it and then hit Moriceau on the head, knocking him practically unconscious and cutting his head badly.”

They kept going. Pit work was becoming more professional. Ballot gave their drivers lap times and positions by holding up a big blackboard (the first pit board?). Duesenberg waved flags of differing colours and the drivers could glance at a key on their dashboards. By contrast, the Sunbeam pits looked

disorganised.

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Chassagne passed Boyer on the ninth lap and set off towards Murphy and the lead. Murphy, meanwhile, had caught de Palma and, just after the right-hander at Pontlieue, made his attack, Olson gesturing for de Palma to move aside. Murphy pitted a lap later to change his front wheels and did that fast enough to keep the lead — but Chassagne was a lot closer and stirred the crowd a lap later by taking Murphy at Arnage. This was then little more than a dirt track through the trees, but is now a celebrated landmark of the 24-hour race. Chassagne built a 27-second lead but there behind him panted all the Duesenbergs. Boyer found a way past Murphy but it was Chassagne who held the crowd and every time he came past the pits they shouted their approval. De Palma and young Peter were into their own nightmare. ‘Suddenly,’ Peter said, ‘I noticed a leak in our fuel tank that was directly under our seats. As we hit a bump, the rear end smacked down on the axle and opened a seam in the tank. I first had trouble keeping up the air pressure in the tank then I felt petrol on the seat of my pants.’ It started burning skin ‘but I didn’t say a word about it to uncle for fear he would stop me at the pits and call it a day.’ Finally they made a routine stop but Peter was ‘very careful not to turn my back and give him a chance to see my petrol-soaked clothes. A good deal of my body was Dblistered [...] and I must have appeared a bit nervous because I couldn’t stand still.’ At half distance, 15 laps: Chassagne

2h Om 17s

Boyer

2h Om 57s

Murphy

2h 1m 26s

Guyot

2h 1m 59s

De Palma

2h 8m 02s

Dubonnet

2h 10m 39s

The day was getting hotter, the sun high up in a clear blue sky. Segrave ran ninth but around now something on the ignition failed. ‘It was necessary for Moriceau and myself to devote many valuable minutes, to say nothing of a lot of blistered skin, in retiming the engine, a job which is certainly not most appropriately accomplished by the roadside,’

he said. Only one car retired, with an Chassagne went out after 17 laps. split fuel tank forced him into connecting rod broke, crippling his

engine problem on lap five, until He had led by a minute but a badly the pits. Boyer followed when a Duesenberg.

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The Sunbeam tyre situation became so critical that Coatalen ‘was borrowing tyres from other teams, Pirellis from Ballot, Oldfields from Duesenberg.’” Now Murphy led, and that became secure when Guyot, second at lap 28, pitted for fuel and water and the car wouldn’t restart. The riding mechanic pushed so hard that, in the heat, he virtually collapsed and staggered away. He had extensive facial lacerations from the flying stones, too. Arthur Duray, who had driven in the 1906 race and was now spectating, came forward and replaced the mechanic. The regulations allowed this and Duray managed to start the engine. He and Guyot set off but the clutch slipped and they pitted again. They finished sixth. De Palma was now up into second although he, too, had had trouble restarting after his final pit stop. Murphy came down the long straight towards the finish, the crowd strung back behind fencing, and came hard. The smooth dirt surface beneath him bore the weals of the whole race: the rod-straight lines all the wheels from the thirteen cars had cut lap after lap. These lines lay in a tight pattern across the middle of the track. Murphy took his right hand off the wheel, and raised his arm high in triumph. He’d averaged 78.10mph. He was booed as he crossed the line, de Palma and Goux were cheered in their made-in-France Ballots. Segrave battled in last more than an hour after Murphy. The jagged stones, churned and flung back with such ferocity, had injured virtually every driver and mechanic. Murphy

4h 7m 11.4s

De Palma

4h 22m 10.6s

Goux

4h 28m 38.2s

Murphy and Olson came down victory lane, a dusty track, with Olson sitting on the back of the car holding the bouquets and French soldiers in their tin hats standing guarding nothing at all. Murphy and Olson posed with Augie Duesenberg sitting on what seems to be their pit counter, a canvas awning above, the bouquets on their laps. Murphy’s face was smeared with dust so that the part of his forehead covered by his driving skull cap was a band of perfect white. He looked very, very tired. An American would win the French Grand Prix again, but at Rouen, 41 years later.

Young Peter de Palma claimed that French chauvinism dominated the banquet, ‘humiliating’ Murphy. The first toast was to Goux and this ‘was

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more than Jimmy and his manager, the famous old-time racing champion George Robertson, could stand.’ Murphy ‘put down his glass and walked out, and, entering a side-street café, said to the waiter bring us some ham and eggs!’ The first non-French Grand Prix in Europe was run six weeks later, at Brescia. The Italian Grand Prix obeyed the matrix, a triangular road circuit and, surely by coincidence, 10.7 miles in length. Duesenberg returned to America; Sunbeam and Itala sent entries and withdrew them and so at Brescia the Italian dynasty was born and delivered humbly by three Ballots (de Palma, Chassagne, Goux) and three Fiats (Wagner, Bordino, Sivocci). Two Fiats broke down, de Palma broke down and Goux won it from Chassagne. Eduard Ballot, in a dark jacket, stood in front of the winning car in the ‘pits’ — a basic working counter under crude wooden roofing — and acknowledged the applause of the crowd by politely raising his homburg hat. By now, de Palma’s relationship with him had deteriorated further. De Palma had asked for modifications on his car, Ballot said no and after the race de Palma said that’s why I didn’t win. A week later, also at Brescia, a small crowd watched a lesser race, delightfully styled the Grand Prix of Gentlemen — the name Grand Prix was freely used over the years, presumably to give more minor races status: Only nine cars entered and a wiry young man did not complete a lap because the oil pump on his car broke. It was only the fifth event he had competed in and, lacking money, from now on he would concentrate

on racing motorbikes because they were cheaper. Tazio Nuvolari had been called up at the start of the war and driven a military ambulance which he crashed, no doubt exploring its maximum. He had a narrow, slightly bird -like face and, bowing to the fashion of the day, a moustache thin as a pencil. In November, Benito Mussolini, son of a blacksmith, declared himself Il Duce — the leader — of the Italian Fascist party which was winning seats — in the Italian parliament. He liked power. He intended to have a great deal more of it, and if that took violence he would use violence. He intended to promote Italy when he had that power and his roving eye would settle upon motorsport as, literally, a valuable vehicle. The two 1921 Grands Prix were run under a 3-litré formula but that was now replaced in Europe by 2 litres and meant European cars rarely raced in America and American cars rarely raced in Europe. In essence, - the interweaving ended. Ballot, meanwhile, now abandoned their racing programme in favour of passenger cars although adapted Ballots would

still compete.

.

60

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

The same two Grands Prix were run in 1922, the French outside Strasbourg — its fifth staging post — and the Italian in the gentle, sculptured, tree-laden parkland of Monza, a small town outside Milan. Monza stirred passion from its pre-birth because all Brescia exhaled outrage when they learnt the Grand Prix had been plucked from them and bestowed on this unemotional tract of controlled nature where people meandered with their dogs, a faded royal palace sank mute in its own distant splendour, and who the hell wanted a motor race in the middle of it? The project was announced in February for a September race and enough land found. Work began to a tight timetable, 100 days and counting, in May after Nazzaro and Lancia enacted the ritual ceremony of turning the first sods. A workforce of 3,500, deploying 200 horsedrawn carts, 30 trucks and two small steam engines set to. A temporary railway was constructed to move the soil because they were constructing a modern-style racing track (the configuration the same to this day) and a banked oval. The ordinary and banked tracks interlocked, sharing the start-finish straight. The whole circuit guarded the atmosphere of its own setting with parts of the track wending between tall trees. Nothing in Italy is straightforward, and almost immediately work halted because the local authority objected on ‘artistic’ grounds. Italian bureaucracy was doing its ‘utmost to foil’ the plans, ‘vetting the cutting down of trees and the use of explosives, filtering plans through numerous obstructive authorities and even posting guards to ensure that no unauthorised work was carried out.’”! The workforce returned and started again. Although Strasbourg had an immense straight and an equally immense grandstand along it — white-roofed and perhaps 300 yards long — it was an orthodox eight-mile triangle near the Bugatti factory. It is all legend now, the man, the factory, the cars he made. By an irony, Ettore Bugatti was a native of Brescia and born into an artistic family. He studied fine arts in Milan but developed an intense interest in motor vehicles. This developed into a passion to manufacture his own and, in 1909, he found a disused dye plant at Molsheim, a small Alsatian town, and converted it. He ran this like an artist ruling a fiefdom, designing the factory layout and much of the working material inside. For the French Grand Prix, Bugatti made four eight-cylinder cars shaped like armadillos. They were ‘clothed in an ugly wind-cheating barrel-shaped body from which the top of horseshoe radiator poked shyly.’ The leading drivers came: Nazzaro and Pietro Bordino in Fiats (plus Nazzaro’s nephew Biagio), Guyot, Hémery and Wagner in Rolland-

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61

Pilains,” Goux in an adapted Ballot, Segrave, Guinness and Chassagne in the Sunbeams. The Bugattis, however, were to be driven by newcomers. Zborowski had one of two Aston Martins. Segrave and Guinness drove to the race from England. At one point they were about four miles apart through the countryside towards Strasbourg. Segrave reached some straight road and opened up. At the

end of it... I swung round a corner and was amazed to see a long, straggling village ahead of me. It had been hidden by the hedges and I was into it before I

knew where I was. All I saw as I flashed through was a kaleidoscope of houses and fleeing people and a blur of blue as the local Gendarmerie poured out screeching and yelling.”

Segrave wondered what they’d make of Guinness’s arrival so he ‘stalked’ back on the far side of a hedge. ‘Half the population was gathered gesticulating in the street, screaming as only Frenchmen can, and wondering what sort of a thunderbolt it was that had disturbed their rural peace.’ When they heard Guinness in the far distance they ran to their houses to get their bicycles. They had time to lay them across the road in a barricade then scatter. Guinness saw the bikes and, braking desperately, stopped just in front of them. The residents re-emerged and ‘piled their bikes against his bonnet’ while the police bayed threatening noises. Guinness made the traditional British (Irish!) response to this, proffering incomprehension, and asked for directions. This diverted them, Guinness reversed — shedding the bikes — and sped off. The Strasbourg circuit, mostly flanked by tall trees, was unusual in that it had two enormous straights which invited big speed and only passed through one village. There it turned right through 90° past a typically ornate Alsatian house with a temporary ‘stand’ cut into its tiled roof on one side, the crowd behind a wooden barrier on the other. There | was a geometrical right-hand corner which deceived many drivers, who thundered straight on and vanished. It deceived others who battered themselves against the house just beyond the apex. Segrave and Guinness practised hard, although Segrave had a fixation about his car being perfect and during the practice it got dirty and scratched. He sent it by lorry to a coach works at Kehl, over the border in Germany, and ‘they made a very good job of it.’ The Fiats were fastest, the Bugattis close to the pace, the Sunbeams — clean or dirty — off it. Early on race morning Segrave and Guinness made their way to the circuit among the enormous crowds and a gendarme asked them where

62

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

they thought they were going. We're in the race! He didn’t believe them, then a mounted policeman came up and began asking questions. Guinness suddenly revved the engine so hard that the horse reared and they sped off again. Segrave ‘fully expected a bullet in the back because the French gendarme does not hesitate to fire at you if he gets a little excited.’ A heavy storm the night before lingered as rain. The race had been due at 8am but the minutes ticked beyond that as the Mayor of Strasbourg ‘marshalled the dignitaries gracing the event, careless of the tense and soaked drivers.” Segrave expressed irritation that ‘various dignitaries connected with the organisation of the race, and others representing the government, turned up to the start a quarter of an hour late in Italian and American cars, and received a distinctly sarcastic ovation from one of the biggest crowds that has ever assembled to see car racing in Europe.’ The drivers milled about, hands in raincoat pockets, goggles on their heads looking bored and impatient. Eighteen cars lined up for a rolling start, an important innovation because it ended the days of mental arithmetic calculating staggered times. The cars had to ‘trundle’ and ‘at a very modest speed down the long tree-lined straight behind an official motorcyclist who, without much sign of warning, suddenly disappeared down a side bend.” The cars threw showers of mud and spray as they accelerated towards a distant hairpin. When they reached it the surface was so treacherous at least two cars missed it. Nazzaro led from the first lap, the circuit began to dry and the 18 ran in two bunches, but the pace of the Fiat imposed itself. Nazzaro still led from a Bugatti, Bordino moving up and Segrave fourth at the end of lap three. Segrave pitted for fuel but Moriceau ‘bungled’ it and... petrol was splashed over the seats, leaving a pool in the middle of my cushion. We could not afford time to attend to trifles of that kind, and instead of swabbing it up I jumped in, and relied on my clothes to absorb it almost immediately. I was in agony in a few minutes. Luckily, owing to

valve trouble, the car broke down at approximately half the full distance. Even if there had been no mechanical trouble I could never have finished. Had I gone another two laps I would have fainted from petrol burns which are one of the most painful types of burn known. I spent the next three weeks in bandages.”

He was happy to escape the sheer misery of the race. As Nazzaro passed the timing hut at half distance, three laps later, the stopwatches froze: 3h

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63

12m 55s. Bordino set a new fastest lap and was now a minute and a half behind, Biagio Nazzaro three minutes after that, a Ballot fourth then three Bugattis. These were the only cars still running — Goux had just crashed. At a right-hander out in the country his car demolished a wooden fence, sending planks flying, and even as the car ploughed on the mechanic was rising from his seat to get out and repair it. The car couldn’t be repaired. Biagio Nazzaro pitted and, with his mechanic, changed the whole fuel tank in a quarter of an hour, and came back out having lost only one place. Felice Nazzaro made his single stop for fuel, and Bordino set a new fastest lap before he pitted but clearly Felice was going to win. On lap 51, nine to go, Biagio travelled at maximum speed on the straight towards the hairpin. He did not know that part of the rear-axle had been wrongly cast. It gave way and a rear wheel sheared off, pitching the Fiat out of control. It hammered into a tree, went end over end, hammered into another tree, and Biagio was dead. The car had been battered into pieces. Seven laps later Bordino’s Fiat lost a rear wheel for the same reason, but it happened just beyond where Goux’s crashed car still stood. Goux’s mechanic, who was working on the car, looked up startled as Bordino’s left rear came clean off and the car beat against the fencing. The wheel spun and fell in front of the fence. Bordino’s impetus carried him on like a ship beginning to sink and the car came to rest against palisades flanking a field. The mechanic wandered back, returned with the lost wheel — running it along the road with his hand like a hoop — laid it against the rear of the Fiat, and drank deeply from a bottle. Felice Nazzaro won it by almost an hour from a brace of the Bugattis, a third Bugatti flagged off — that’s enough, sir, thank you — because it still had three long laps to go all by itself. The Bugattis were reliable but awkward to handle in corners, where they lurched alarmingly. Mud smeared Nazzaro’s car but both he and his mechanic looked surprisingly fresh, their faces unsmeared. Subsequently, an examination revealed that Felice Nazzaro’s rear axle had a developing crack... Monza was completed on schedule in August and by then the race generated lively interest, not least because it carried substantial prize money. Although entries closed three months before, 39 had been received and they included just about every driver of note outside the United States. However after Fiat’s dominance at Strasbourg many entries withdrew because they realised they’d have no chance. Bugatti stayed in but when practice began they found the circuit so fast that their wheels and tyres couldn’t take it and they were poised to withdraw, too, when Fiat lent them enough tyres for one car.

64

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

A German, Alfred Neubauer, ought to have driven an Austro-Daimler, a car made by a firm near Vienna under licence from Daimler, but during practice another of their drivers, Gregor Kuhn, was killed and the team withdrew. Neubauer, like Enzo Ferrari, would learn that his skills were not driving, but enabling others to drive. It left eight: three Fiats (including cars for Nazzaro and Bordino), the Bugatti and a couple of Diattos, one for Alfieri Maserati.” On a wet day, between 100,000 and 150,000 paid to watch Fiat romp the race. Bordino covered 80 laps in 5h 43m 13s, Nazzaro two laps down and the Bugatti two laps further down. Nobody else finished. The following month, 24,000 of Mussolini’s blackshirts marched from Naples to Rome and took the capital amid acclaim from cheering crowds. Mussolini stayed in Milan — which the blackshirts had seized in August — preparing to flee to Switzerland if the march failed. King Victor Emmanuel sent a special train for him but troops loyal to the outgoing government blew up the track and Mussolini completed the journey in an open top car, arriving just like a racing driver — covered in mud. In January 1923 the Nazi Party, led by Hitler, held its first public congress in its natural home, Munich. That year inflation tore the fabric of Germany apart. On New Year’s Day £1 bought 85,000 marks, by June 622,000, by the beginning of August 9,000,000, a week later, 15,000,000. Hitler watched and waited. Grand Prix racing was not yet touched by this, and added the Spanish Grand Prix to the French and Italian. Great technical changes were at hand, too, as modern — and technically very different cars — superseded the cars of the immediate post-war. The famous Fiat 805 and Alfa Romeo P2 were the forerunners, the Fiat introduced this season, the Alfa Romeo in 1924. The French race went to its sixth staging post, Tours. The 14.1-mile circuit there embraced two villages and two of France’s national roads, which met at a V-shaped hairpin. One of the straights measured five miles. ‘Much of the lap was intimidatingly lined with poplars and paling or plank fences,’ Segrave said. He’d be driving a Sunbeam, along with Guinness and Frenchman Albert Divo. Segrave added, perhaps laconically, that he found the circuit ‘unsurpassed for scenery.’ The Fiat 805s had. superchargers and three of them were driven from the Turin factory over the Alps to Tours by the drivers. They ‘literally crammed the petrol-air mixture into the engine instead of letting the engine suck it in, notably augmenting the power output. Its use in Grand Prix racing for the first time was the greatest technical sensation of a sensational race.’*°

The arch oftime. The Grand Prix century started at dawn on 26 June 1906, outside Le Mans. Here a Franco-American called George Heath is tenth away in his Panhard-Levassor (Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914, Connaisseur Automobile A.B. — Stockholm). It ended on the afternoon of 3 July 2005 outside Nevers when Fernando Alonso led the French Grand Prix — and won. (LAT)

66

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

TRAE

wes TRS

Me;

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They really did use a horse to pull the cars to the start. The Motor magazine took the whole thing in its stride. The rudimentary Le Mans pits and there was trouble already: the nearest car, the Grégoire of Philippe Tavenaux, didn’t start! (LAT)

Aiea atesi DPN ARDADADRDE PPPS a PLSSSSI

nin ¢ ili a tie

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In 1906 the roads were more like flattened, dusty tracks. To improve visibility the ACF treated the whole length of the route with tar. The drivers were fast men, however, with a magnificent disregard for safety. This is Ferenc Szisz on the way to victory in his Renault. (LAT) Ferenc Szisz, aboard his Renault, is the centre of attention before the start. (LAT)

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Masters of their time: (top left) Felice Nazzaro, an Italian; (top right) the Hungarian Ferenc Szisz; (above) Frenchman Louis Renault, who gave up racing to concentrate on making cars; and (below), seen here at the 1906 race, the 'Red Devil’, Belgian Camille Jenatzy, an early star of motor racing. (all LAT)

GRAND

PRIX CENTURY

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The arch of time: Felice Nazzaro (FIAT) is anxious about something in the 1907 race (Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914, Connaisseur Automobile A.B. — Stockholm) and the same place today. (Author) Sigurd Hornsted in an Excelsior cornering in the village of Moreuil during the 1913 race (Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914, Connaisseur Automobile A.B. — Stockholm) and the same place today. (Author)

Georges Boillot drives his Peugeot at the 1914 race at Lyon. But this was not to be the great Frenchman's day — here he and his riding mechanic change a wheel. (LAT)

69

VOL. XLIIl.

No. 1,125.

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English hero Henry Segrave, who triumphed in 1923 after Carlo Salamano’s FIAT ran out of petrol and the riding mechanic ran to get more. The Motor magazine described the sevenhour race as ‘a battle such as has never before been staged’. Three years later Segrave drove a Talbot in the first British Grand Prix at Brooklands. (LAT)

:

Antonio Ascari, like his son Alberto after him, was an outstanding racing driver who was fatal accident at the age of 36. (LAT) plagued by superstitions. Each had a

In 1929 nobody could quite believe a Grand Prix was going to be run at Monaco — but it was. ‘Williams’ wins in his Bugatti, and at least one spectator doffed his hat. The great Rudi Caracciola finished third in a Mercedes. (LAT)

Titans ofthe 1930s. The advanced machines and sheer professionalism of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union teams demonstrated Germany's technical dominance. (LAT)

Maestro. Nuvolari bends the mighty Auto Union to his will at Donington, 1938. (LAT)

THE CHAPS

73

The Bugatti provoked intense interest because it was shaped like a tank, with driver and mechanic inside and peering over. The car was also known variously as a tortoise, dish cover, beetle, or roller skate. At moments it resembled each of these and at speed all of them. Bugatti said it was aerodynamically efficient and the fact that a great cloud of dust didn’t trail behind it proved that. The Sunbeam team stayed in a hotel near Tours and indulged in a little horseplay — well, donkey-play — for a cameraman. Some of the racing mechanics grouped behind the car of Guinness and one sat on a donkey while Paul Dutoit, standing like a clown on a metal container, tweaked the donkey’s ear. Dutoit, Segrave’s own mechanic, was one of the strongest men Segrave had ever seen. They are all laughing (except

the donkey). In practice Bordino lapped the Fiat in 9m 54s, and that was 34 seconds faster than Segrave could do.” The grid was arranged by entry number and at 8am on a clear, warm day the 17 cars went off to their rolling start with 50,000 watching. A touring car race had broken the surface, loosening stones. Bordino led, Guinness gamely trying to stay with him but the Fiats already looked formidable on the opening lap. Pierre de Vizcaya” in a Bugatti got the hairpin wrong and burst through the paling, killing one spectator and injuring many others. After seven laps Bordino stopped because dust had been sucked into the supercharger and now Guinness led. Segrave’s creed — start slowly, finish fast — was to protect the car but soon his clutch began to ‘slip badly, and lap after lap the car went more slowly.’ He feared the clutch would fail completely and had no thoughts of finishing. He still moved comparatively fast, of course, and that upon an created an ‘amusing incident’ on lap 12. He and Guinness came one of entering amateur, Prince de Cystria in a Bugatti, while they were e. the two villages. The streets were narrow and overtaking impossibl g behind, so, to We, in turn, were being pressed by other cars followin s put out his indicate to de Cystria that he should hurry a bit, Guinnes Cystria looked De times. clutch and accelerated his engine violently several of him, swerved wildly round, saw two enormous Cars almost on top

the palisades. The frantically from side to side of the road and crashed into ally out of the last we saw of him was the tail of his car sticking pathetic debris rained on his match-boarding, while planks, scaffolding, poles, and head. I think no one was hurt.”

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

Guinness suffered clutch problems, too, but it was a race of a different kind of suffering. Divo pulls up at the pits. His mechanic has succumbed to the terrible physical strain. Yells for Moriceau, his erstwhile team-mate. A white little figure bounces over the side of the pit, scrambles into the seat, and the green projectile shoots off again.*

Before half-distance, the Guinness problem developed into a slipping clutch and he tied rope round it so Perkins his riding mechanic... can hold it back to increase the pressure. The reverse catch of his gear lever is broken, the spare magneto carried on the footboard has come away and been sculling madly round the car, bruising driver and mechanic, and cutting their calves until blood comes through.”

At half distance

an Italian, Carlo

Salamano,

second and Segrave third although...

led in a Fiat, Divo was

I actually stopped the car half way through the race to consult aaa) whether it would be advisable to retire completely, and so not damage the car too seriously, or to continue as we were and chance some of the leading cars breaking down and thus allowing us to finish reasonably high up.**

Divo got past Salamano and led for four laps before he was re-passed. Guinness... . comes in with Perkins absolutely exhausted. His place is taken by another one — Smith — and, his white overalls stained with oil and dust and blood, Perkins staggers over the pit side, the combined strain of holding back the clutch and the blows which his head has received in the cramped position he was forced to adopt having knocked him absolut ely unconscious for over half a lap.”

Segrave struggled on, suddenly the clutch ‘went in with a bang’ and the car was fine again. After a few laps had been covered, I was signal led from our control station as lying third, close to Divo. From this instan t things began to happen. Divo, realising that I was catching him up and having to stop to take on petrol, oil, and water, lost his head at the pits, and instead of loosening his

THE CHAPS

75

petrol filler cap to take it off, started to force it the reverse way. He struggled and struggled with it till suddenly he realised that he was tightening it instead of taking it off, and started to force it back the right way. Too late!

The cap had been forced too far and jammed up solid. [...] Finally they tried to cut the solid brass cap off with a cold chisel, but even this failed.”

That was lap 30 of the 35, and 18 minutes were wasted. Segrave, seeing Divo stationary, realised he’d moved up to second. Salamano was signalled to go flat out but with two laps left his Fiat stopped about a mile and a half from the pits. Salamano thought he had run out of petrol but he held a huge lead and still thought he could win. He despatched his riding mechanic, Feretti, to run to the pits and get some fuel. The crowd in the grandstand at the finish watched and waited, not knowing Salamano had stopped although he should have come past

by now. The crowd, realising, bubbles up [...] All eyes turn towards the hilltop, yells: watches are anxiously consulted. A man with field glasses to d exhauste too almost ‘Salamano’s mechanic!’ Stumbling, sweating, demands walk, Feretti lurches towards the pits gasping for breath and place, his take to mechanic another tells petrol. The Fiat team manager run to starts — fresh — handing him a big-spouted petrol can. The new man from the up the course. The officials stop him. Boos and cries of derision pit side, snatches crowd. Feretti, seizing a bicycle, vaults wearily over the the course. Once the can of petrol and, riding one handed, wobbles up crowd can stand. again the iron hand of officialdom. This is more than the scorn and shout with whistle Rising as one man, they hiss and boo and forced to abandon his cries of sympathy to the game-hearted Feretti who, bicycle, starts staggering back to his car.”

those who had backed Part of this outpouring may well have come from ve drove as hard as he Salamano to win. While this was going on Segra could... — and I shall never forget the but with no thought of winning, till suddenly 116mph. I saw, a few hundred thrill — topping a rise in the road at about a low red car. yards away, on the right-hand side of the road, I had plenty of time to wonder One’s mind works like lightning [...] and y reason said: ‘Ridiculous even to whether it could be Salamano; immediatel ’ imagine such a thing! He’s miles in front.

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

Even passing the car I did not trust myself to glance momentarily at the number, so certain was I that it could not be! Yet it was, because no sooner had we shot by than Dutoit [the mechanic] letting go everything, and making a funnel of his hands close to my ear, shouted: ‘C'est le quatorze qui est en panne! Nous sommes en téte.’ (It’s number 14 who’s broken down, we’re in the lead’).

I could scarcely believe my ears — for the first time in history an English car was leading in the Grand Prix with only one lap to go. How can I ever forget those last few miles — every noise in the engine seemed magnified a hundredfold, every corner seemed impossible, my brain refused

to work

in complete co-ordination

with my hands

and

ts a

The finishing line lay directly in front of the packed grandstand. As Segrave crossed the line, the Sunbeam casting an elongated shadow across the road, he looked perfectly composed. He’d taken 6h 35m 19.6s, averaging 75mph over rough road. Divo came in second of the five finishers. Salamano hadn’t run out of petrol: his car suffered the familiar problem of dirt in the supercharger. Segrave and Dutoit wore white overalls and Segrave, under his, had a white shirt and tie. His hair was receding, his face ascetic. He was given a flute of champagne and drank it although, evidently, he didn’t like champagne. As they strode towards the victory ceremony Segrave smiled in a wan sort of way but Dutoit, goggles on his head, kept on walking. Meanwhile, all is sunbeams in the Sunbeam’s Coatelen, the imperturbable, alone is Sunbeam director] says racing is too exciting pats the left side of his waistcoat affectionately. Mrs

box. Mrs Clegg is smiling. Huntley Walker [a for his style of living, and

calm.

We adjust to the Sunbeam pit to help the shock absorber man out with his pailful of iced champagne. We [...] see Segrave return to the pit behind a huge bouquet. More champagne.*!

A party had travelled down with W. O. Bentley to see the race [see earlier Footnote] and one of them, A. FE C. Hillstead remembered” that ‘after the race we had lunch in the marquee, as we intended starting back for Dieppe as soon as the crowd had got away. It was then I asked W. O. why he did not design a special car for the follo wing year’s race. A futile question, of course. But then I had yet to learn that true sport and commerce are as far apart as the two poles. ’ Bentley bélieved the Le

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Mans 24-hour race, which he’d entered the year before and which his cars would dominate, offered much better commercial value than Grands Prix. Enzo Ferrari, now working for Alfa Romeo, was not at Tours. He heard there had been ‘a fight’ at Fiat between Luigi Bazzi, expert technician and engine tuner, and chief engineer Guido Fornaca. When the team got back to Turin after Tours, Ferrari approached Bazzi about joining Alfa Romeo’s racing department. They were developing a supercharged car for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza then seven weeks away. ‘Using the seductive powers that would become legendary, Ferrari lured Bazzi, a quiet, steady, tough-minded native of Novara, to Alfa Romeo. It began a relationship that kept the two men together in the automotive trenches

for sixty years.” Ferrari remained a driver and two weeks after Tours he took an Alfa Romeo to a race at Ravenna. He led every lap and afterwards met Count Enrico Baracca, the ‘father of the man who had commanded the fighter squadron of the Italian Air Force in which Ferrari’s own brother

had served during the war. Major Francesco Baracca shot down 34

enemy aircraft before he too had been shot down and killed. His family [plane] had carried the squadron badge, based on their own the on was crest of the black prancing horse of Ravenna.’ The symbol as his winning trophy and the Count thought Ferrari should adopt it great many so which own for luck.** He did. It is exactly this symbol er, from drivers would carry to victory, climaxing in Michael Schumach

2000 onwards. Fiats, J immy Monza attracted a strong entry: Bordino and Nazzaro in Alfas to be driven Murphy and Zborowski in Millers,” a Benz, and three be an energetic, to ‘known was by Ascari, Campari and Sivocci. Ascari simple, frank, enthusiastic gentleman-sportsman, a good businessman, us in the extreme. open-minded — and above all a good friend, genero panache and great with Behind the wheel he was a garibaldino driving limit. It was felt that it daring, always pushing engine and tyres to their ous as well.’ would only be a matter of time before he was victori y, Olson and team One early September day the team — Murph y station. They posed in a manager Robertson — arrived at Milan railwa and homburg hat, Olson and group for the camera, Murphy in a bow-tie s. At the circuit, Murphy Robertson in collars and ties, wearing boater posed again, seated in the seems to have befriended a large dog and on the bodywork. cockpit with the dog next to him, its paws Alfa through the Vialone*”’ During practice Sivocci was taking the Sivocci couldn’t get it back. It curve. The car lost balance and spun and

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slewed off, sideways, into trees and killed him. The other two Alfas were withdrawn, although some cynics whisper that they may have been influenced by the fact they were not competitive. Ascari would have to Wait. Two weeks before the race Bordino also crashed practising. He’d been driving the Fiat, with Enrico Giaccone — who had driven one in the 1922 race — in the mechanic’s seat. The car went off and turned over, killing Giaccone and breaking Bordino’s arm. He decided to race, using his one good arm and having the mechanic change gears. (What would Monsieur Ballot have said? Mon Dieu!) Bordino led and sustained that for 45 laps of the 80 but pain and exhaustion forced him to stop. He stood disconsolate in the pits, left arm in a sling while people gazed at him in silence. Nazzaro inherited the lead but a leak dripped boiling oil onto his feet. He resisted that but did have to stop for water and Salamano went through to win it, Nazzaro 20 seconds behind, Murphy third — of four finishers. Alfa Romeo ‘drove the few miles back to the Portello works in shambles.’ They'd lost a leading driver, the car needed re-engineering. ‘Bazzi had a suggestion. There was a brilliant engineer on the Fiat staff who might be lured to defect. His name was Vittorio J ano,’ a stocky man with a bushy, triangular moustache which dominated his face. ‘The Alfa Romeo staff knew of the 33-year-old Torinese and were aware, through their Fiat contacts (some made by Ferrari), that the man was a legitimate genius with the new supercharged engines that were beginning to dominate the sport.’ Jano said yes. The Spanish Grand Prix was run on a 1.2-mile heavily banked circuit at Sitges, near Barcelona. It was the country’s first proper track but the corners had been badly designed and it wasn’t used again. The Grand Prix formed part of a festival of speed which also featured a Voiturette race in which Nuvolari finished fourth after a typically hectic struggle against the opposition and mecha nical problems. Before the Grand Prix, Segrave went to a local bullri ng and reportedly berated the matadors for wounding young bulloc ks instead of fighting proper sized bulls. All right, one wiry matador challenged Segrave and some other drivers present, take one on yoursel ves. Segrave said I will if you'll do two laps of the Lasarte circuit with me. The matador said hmmm, don’t think so... Heavy rain threatened the Grand Prix, reducing it to 200 laps but the clouds parted and at 9am the seven cars sped away. Zborowski led but it developed into a furious battle with Divo which was only decided on lap

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190 when Zborowski had to stop to change a wheel and Divo went by for the win. In November, just a few days after the Spanish Grand Prix, a loaf of bread in Germany cost 201,000,000,000 marks. Hitler, leader of the Nazi party, still watched and waited. For 1924 the format didn’t change: France, this year at Lyon, a shorter circuit than 1914 despite incorporating some of the same sections; Spain, called the San Sebastian Grand Prix (there’s an academic debate about whether it should be regarded as a proper Grand Prix); Italy now

securely at Monza. In May young Nuvolari went to Ravenno to race a 350cc bike and met

Enzo Ferrari who had to race a car at the same meeting. They chatted before the start, Nuvolari earnest in balaclava and goggles, Ferrari dressed in overalls, sleeves rolled up, and wearing a flat cap. As he spoke lost. he rested a hand on the car’s door and smiled. The conversation is Ferrari and race his in Nuvolari retired with an unrecorded problem

won his. brilliantly Jano worked fast. His design for a new Alfa Romeo was ‘no not what was that ... unorthodox breakthrough in racing car engineering purposeful.” It he had been hired for.” It was ‘blunt-nosed, solid and Ferrari himself has been described as a masterpiece, although not one to have had a was able to exploit at Lyon. During practice he seems circuit, boarded a nervous breakdown because in short order he left the , Ascari and wily train and returned to Italy. That still left Campari veteran Wagner.

were Sunbeams Twenty two cars entered, half supercharged. There five Bugattis and one) in (Segrave, Resta) and Delages, Fiats (Nazzaro for Zborowski and they (including de Vizcaya and Chassagne), a Miller faced 35 laps: 503 miles. Segrave described the circuit as: had one fairly long ascent of a tricky one. It abounded in corners, and ely one in twelve. This was about three miles with a gradient of approximat dable by the fact that if one also a twisty bit, rendered all the more formi one of the sharp bends too fast, did happen to go off the road whilst taking ed feet sheer before hitting the one would fall at least a couple of hundr n as a test for acceleration and ground. The circuit was, however, well chose braking.”

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Something fundamental changed. The cars wouldn’t be creating dust storms — well, just one, see below — because they would be running over roads with proper surfaces. During practice a lesser Bugatti driver, an excitable Alsatian-Parisian called Ernest Friedrich, went out to set a faster lap time than any of the others had done. Segrave takes it up: All went well till he reached the beginning of the steep climb out of Givors. Here there is a sharp bend and on the apex of the bend a lamp-post. Against the lamp-post stood a girl, leaning carelessly. Friedrich saw the girl in the distance and, wishing to impress her, took the bend just ten miles an hour faster than it could be taken. He collected lamp-post and girl simultaneously and pulled up [...] When the dust subsided, no girl! However, this didn’t worry Ernest, who set about straightening up his front axle with the help of the cross-bar of the lamp-post which had broken off. Meanwhile the wretched girl was struggling, wet and bedraggled, out of a reservoir about 80ft below the road! She was quite unhurt, except for bruises. She had been shot over the fence with the top of the lamp!*

Just before the race, the Minister of the Interior and various French officials arrived, preceded by a military Guard of Honour with mounted police. Along each side of the road came a file of police, but Segrave, standing facing the pits, didn’t see them. Nor did he know that the road was supposed to have been cleared of drivers and personnel while this pomp and circumstance went by. Segrave found himself... elbowed off the road by a French gendarme. I caught my foot on the wooden side of the pits and fell headlong into them. Not appreciating this treatment I scrambled up, let drive at the gendarme and knocked him into a bunch of his friends. He, instead of arresting me, ran off as fast as he could screaming for assistance, and returned in a few minutes with an officer, complete with sword, and six more gendar mes who all screamed and gesticulated together, threatening me with immediate arrest. This did not have much effect, as it was a matter of comple te indifference to me what they did.®

They calmed and ordered Segrave to go into his pit. He refused. They moved along to Guinness who was standing there, too, minding his own business. They ordered him off the road and he didn’t take it well, either. He walked up to the ‘officer and pointing dramatically. at his car he shouted, “Je refuse a bouger, ¢a, c'est mon voitur e!” [“I refuse to budge, that,

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is my car.”]* The joke of it was that it was not his car at all — it was Resta’s.’ The officer and men marched away ‘discomfited’. As the band began the Marseillaise Resta entered the fray by revving his Sunbeam’s engine and, ‘face like a sphinx, solemnly accelerated and decelerated his engine about forty times a minute, drowning the band in

a volley or roars and bangs.’ Soon after, all the cars lined up and the rolling start did create a dust storm, Segrave into an immediate lead. He decided to reverse his creed. He’d go for it. Completing the first lap he averaged 70.15mph with Ascari behind him, then Guinness, Campari and Bordino. And Bordino was coming like the wind: by lap three he led and Segrave was in the pits to having the plugs changed. The race evolved into duets, Ascari clinging lap, Bordino, Campari clinging to Guinness. Campari set a new fastest corner. a overshot Bordino and Ascari went through into the lead when his, unDeep in to the race Segrave changed mechanics because ironically, named, had been knocked out by a piece of flying tread from, ic mechan his — go to lap a another Sunbeam. Ascari’s engine failed with , Campari win. collapsed trying to push the car — and Campari had the lly across his portly and with a flop of black hair hanging diagona over it and, script forehead, wore a jersey with Alfa Romeo in flowing for the camera. even holding a glass of champagne, guarded his severity you, Campari Mind smiled. and Everyone around him smiled and smiled gift-wrapped a with smiled too when two men in boaters presented him as a man’s thigh. Lyon sausage about eight feet long and as thick at Brooklands. He killed Three weeks before San Sebastian, Resta was who wanted to go to and Segrave were trying to set records and Resta, r runs. At speed a rear Eastbourne to see his wife, asked to do the shorte iron fence backwards — hard tyre blew and the car rammed a corrugated enough to burst through it; Resta dead. Atlantic coast included The entry for San Sebastian on Spain’s north inland, formed a loop 10.7 two Mercedes. The circuit, at Lasarte just , including Lasarte itself. The miles long and passed through four places walls, steep banks, tramlines, hazards included ‘low walls, high archway under a town hall.” excessive camber, ditches and a narrow Guinness again, found it: Segrave, who had travelled down with The corners were supposed to be in an abominably dangerous condition. nably good grip. But the Spanish sanded so as to give the tyres a reaso of avoiding any unnecessary work, workmen, true to their tradition to dig clay out of a neighbouring discovered that it was very much easier than go some little distance and get field and sprinkle it on the road rather

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the sand which they should have used. This nearly cost Guinness his life, and led to a crash in which his mechanic, Barratt, was instantly killed.”

Segrave reverted to his original creed, watch and wait, because the race had a strong entry and the course was so unfamiliar. Guinness favoured full attack from the start. It rained, making the dangerous track much more dangerous. That destroyed the creeds: completing the first lap, a Mercedes led, Segrave fourth, Guinness sixth. By lap 11 three cars had crashed and now Guinness, who had just refuelled, lost control in a corner where the wet mud glistened like ice. The wheels may have been deflected by deep ruts in the clay. The Sunbeam skittered towards an incline at the side of the track, turning over twice. That brought it back across towards a railway cutting and telegraph poles. As the car turned a third time Guinness and Barratt were thrown out over the telegraph wires and down 50 feet. Guinness suffered serious injuries, his career over, Barratt lay dead. The car emerged battered but not savaged. Segrave stopped to try to help but, powerless, drove on and ‘had to pass the two stretchers carrying them to the field dressing-station, not knowing whether my friend was alive or dead.’ Segrave won it, and would remain the last Englishman to win a Grand Prix until 1938; and no other Englishman won after that until 1953; In September, Jimmy Murphy was killed at Syracuse, New York, three days after his 30th birthday. Murphy drove on a dirt track there with cars because he found them unpredictable. He made a challenge for the lead deep into the race, couldn’t get the Miller round a bend, ploughed into wooden fencing and a stave killed him. The Italian Grand Prix was postponed in September and Fiat withdrew after Salamano and Bordino were injured in practice, Mercedes weren’t ready, and it took place in October, Four Alfa Romeo s were entered, including cars for Ascari and Campari, with four Merced es, including cars for Neubauer, Werner and Zborowski. Rudolf Caracciola, a young reserve driver with an Italian name who had worked in his father’s hotel on the Rhine, was also to be given his chance. Birkin described Caracciola poignantly: Relying entirely on his mechanics for the preparation of his car, and knowing little of its inside himself, he is usuall y asleep two hours before the flag is due to fall, and arrives on the track a little before the start. He combines colossal speed with the most acute judgment, and I can recall no

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time at which he has been guilty of recklessness or inaccuracy. He is very brave, and one of the few men not subject to an attack of nerves before the

race begins.”

Two Rolland-Pilains and two Chiribiris completed The Mercedes was driven from Germany to crossing the Alps. This, Caracciola remembered, ‘was no joy Gotthard. The car was anything but curve-happy, both arms to steer the stubborn thing up and

the entry of twelve.” Monza, which meant

ride [...] across the and I had to work with down over the rocky,

narrow, dust-covered pass.’” Neubauer accompanied him and said that on the way they would spend the night at a small inn at Sihlbrugg, a hamlet south of Zurich, ‘because Werner always stayed there and the food must be good.’ Neubauer summoned the waitress. ‘Herr Werner, which wine does he drink when he stays here?’ ‘He never drinks anything but champagne!’ Hotel They arrived at Monza next evening exhausted and went to the beside the Marchesi where they had rooms. It was in a lovely setting they because park although Caracciola and Neubauer had to share mosquitoes couldn’t get single rooms. That wasn’t a problem but the ... were and although their room had thick curtains to the white walls. hordes of the bloodthirsty creatures got in and clung into the room sneaked When it was time to go to bed, Neubauer and I window and shut it. without turning on the lights. I rushed to the on. And then we began, Neubauer, who waited at the door, turned the light on every wall. By standing each with a slipper in hand, and swatted them We must have slain at on the bed we could even reach those on the ceiling. previous guests had waged least sixty mosquitoes. The walls showed that similar battles.

but during it Caracciola was Practice began five days before the race needed so much work on unable to drive because the Mercedes cars ation at the Alfa Romeos and them. He sat patiently and gazed in admir thought how much better they looked. des. His father had been Zborowski was to drive one of the Merce in a corner, the cuff-links on his killed during a hill-climb in 1903 when, Mercedes and opened it. Louis, sleeve caught the hand-throttle of his links’ but swear that nothing ‘would show his close friends the gold cuff 1924, while ‘suffering from an would make him wear them. During

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extremely disturbing emotional entanglement with a woman’, he joined Mercedes. He arrived at Monza with ‘the cuffs of his black shirt held together by his father’s ill-fated gold cuff links.’ Caracciola watched the race from the roof over the Mercedes pit. He saw Ascari set off like a ‘fire engine’, Werner and Zborowski slower because their engines wouldn’t fire. Ascari consolidated his lead, Werner far off the pace. He pitted for new spark plugs and one of the team called up to Caracciola to take over from him. The situation was so hopeless that Caracciola pretended not to hear. On lap 44, Zborowski lost control at the Lesmo curve and hit a tree. Some say a tyre blew, others that oil smeared the track. Caracciola remembered people running, waving their arms. Zborowski was dead, his mechanic seriously injured. Mercedes withdrew, leaving six cars, the first four of them Alfa Romeos — and they kept increasing their pace. Towards the end, race director Arturo Mercanti judged that Ascari was driving so fast at one corner — a wheel on the sand at the rim of the track — he represented danger. He sent a message to the Alfa Romeo pit: If Ascari continues to take both large and small corners in a way dangerou s to

himself and others I shall be constrained to stop him. Ascari kept his foot down and won by 16 minutes. In December, Britain suffered its worst air crash. An Imperi al Airways plane had just taken off from Croydon to Paris and went down into a housing estate, killing eight. The price of technology as well as its benefits was constantly revealing itself. The Land Speed Record had been broken five times during the year, the last of them by Malcol m Campbell, pioneer aviator and racing driver. For 1925, riding mechanics were banned because of the deaths the previous autumn — mechanics were more likely to be thrown out than drivers, who had the steering wheel to hold on to.

Segrave did not like this. The mechanic’s main duty, he said, consisted of keeping ‘a constant watch behind for overtaking cars, and to warn his driver by a tap on the shoulder, in order that the latter may give Way to a faster car. If there is no mechanic [...] the driver is forced to look round himself — the most fatal error that a racing driver can commit.’ (Segrave’s italics). Mirrors had to be installed but Segrave found this ‘childish’ because the vibration on the dashboard was so intense in a racing car that you couldn’t read the instruments, never mind see a clear image in a mirror. At least some drivers were starti ng to wear crash helmets, which Segrave among others pioneered. The riding mechanic is both an heroic and anonymous figure. The

names of some of them have not come down to us at all, others were

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referred to simply by their surname, as we have seen, starting with Marteau. They deserve better and breaking the strict chronological sequence of this book, here is Wilkie Wilkinson, who had become a driver himself but acted as riding mechanic for George Eyston in one of the last races where there were riding mechanics. It wasn’t a Grand Prix but the pleasure and the pain were exactly the same. The driver and the mechanic had to do all the work. At eight o’clock in the morning you’d run across the circuit’ — the so-called Le Mans start, drivers sprinting across the track — ‘jump in the car, get it started, go. We had to fill it up with petrol churns, five gallons at a time so before the race I’d made a big funnel which held five gallons and then go and get the other churn, Making this thing I cut my hand very badly and got lead poison in it. This was quite a tough job with pumping the pressure the up all the time at 2.5lb per square inch. If you pumped too hard the carburettors would flood or go fluffy. If you didn’t pump enough through Halfway carburettor would starve and the engine slow down. wore glasses the race it started thundering, terrible race it was. Eyston so I had a same the were all the time. The lenses of his racing glasses were on we spare pair in my overall pocket and a chamois leather. When off and put the straight he’d say “change!” I’d whip his glasses quickly change. next the the other ones on, then clean them ready for jumping out of ‘My hand was terribly bad and then the car started to hold it with my gear, He said “hold the bloody thing in gear” so I had no cover on the had x bad hand in second gear. Unfortunately, the gearbo burnt off and on the side so all the flesh on the inside of my foot was y, I was in such a other side it leaked petrol so all that was burnt. Honestl care when we were state that I didn’t care if we won the race — didn’t finished fourth and by broadside on, because it was so wet. Finally, we red streaks up my arm. He this time my hand had all swollen up, I had and he rushed me straight looked at me, we had a glass of champagne days to get the poison off to hospital. I had to stay there for three down,.’” races with the addition of The Grand Prix calendar broadened to four June. This was the old circuit, the Belgian at Spa, to begin the season in Prix there until the 1960s, 9,3 miles long, and the matrix for every Grand er and the road surface much although the corners were much tight There is a wonderfully informal rougher. It looked, and was, very rural. nsely strong man, sits on the photograph of the practice. Ascari, an imme his lunch out of a bowl on his lap rear wheel of the Alfa Romeo spooning t, scans the track. It’s wonderful while Campari, standing by the bonne the whole thing was. because it captures exactly how basic

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The road surface exacted a heavy toll and of the seven starters only two finished, Ascari winning it from Campari by 22 minutes. There's a photograph of Ascari making a pit stop, the front wheels jacked up to change the chewed tyres, Ascari holding a petrol churn over the bonnet, pouring it into the tank, a mechanic working on the rear of the car An official in a colonial hat, jacket, collar and tie wanders hand on hips down the middle of the track towards the stationary car. Ascari did not hurry. He had no need. Understandably, the crowd grew restless with only the two Alfa Romeos going round and more than twenty minutes apart. They booed and, in response, Jano had a table and chair brought to the front of the Alfa Romeo pit. He sat decorously down and proceeded to eat his lunch at his leisure. The crowd booed that, too. The French Grand Prix at Montlhéry, south of Paris, on 26 July, was the first to be run in France on artificial roads — in other words, a custom-built circuit, complete with banked sections. The start-finish Straight of this, the seventh staging post, was so broad it resembled an aerodrome. The part used for the race measured 7.6 miles and, with a race distance of 80 laps, this was the longest Grand Prix (621 miles) since Dieppe’s 956 miles in 1912. Segrave openly expressed criticism:

The race from the driver’s point of view, and probabl y also from the Spectator’s, was unpleasant, as it poured with rain the whole time. Another thing which reduced my own interest in it was the encroa chments, as it were, of the track upon the road. It did not seem to me that a hybrid event of this kind was either as straightforward as an ordinar y track event, or as good a test of driver and car as an out-and-out road race.“

A strong entry came, though Fiat had now withdrawn from racing: three Alfa Romeos, five Bugattis, four Delages, three Sunbe ams. Ascari lived prey to many superstitions. He left the family home on Lake Maggiore ‘with an unexplainable, heavy sense of foreboding’ to travel to Montlhéry for practice. When he got there he couldn't sleep for more than an hour or two each night, perhaps because, like Segrave, he didn’t like the place.®

Specifically, Ascari didn’t like ‘a palisade, a wooden fence, about as high

as a racing car, stretching right the way round the circuit made up of wooden stakes held together by wire.’ The stakes were reinforced by posts hammered in to the ground. He reque sted that this palisade be taken down: they were a clear and prese nt danger in the corners, particularly if you judged cornering as finel y as he did.

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The palisade stayed. Ascari led from a rolling start and by lap five Campari had moved in behind him. On lap 11 Ascari set fastest lap and four laps after that came in for a scheduled pit stop. He had such command of the race that the team told him to slow down and keep calm. He replied that he was calmer than the people in the pits and wouldn't be holding back. While saying this, he munched a Zabaglione (an egg-flip with Marsala Wine), threw two bananas into the cockpit next to what he called his “Oriental Commodities” — Thermos of champagne and water, and a fire extinguisher — resting on the racing mechanic’s empty seat. Then he climbed back in himself and, having lost only two minutes, resumed his lead! On his reappearance, even the French public appeared to cheer and applaud him again.

On lap 20 rain fell and moving into lap 23 it fell more heavily. Through a fast left-hander Ascari reached between 110 and 120mph, and a wheel nudged one of the posts. The car went into a skid and began tearing up the palisade. It tore and tore it for more than fifty yards. The palisade under the car locked the wheels so it was completely out of control. It It somersaulted twice, hurling Ascari out, and the car landed on him. almost cut his right leg off and he was spread-eagled on the track, the head other leg broken, an arm broken and bleeding profusely from a went it as but wound. Eventually he was put in an ambulance for Paris he through the small town of Linas, a couple of miles from the track, at and round turned shuddered convulsively, and died. The ambulance rs headquarte funereal pace the body was taken back to Alfa Romeo’s villa where a mortuary room had been made ready. race. Robert Benoist and Albert Divo, sharing a Delage, won the in 1895 Benoist was born in a hamlet near the forest of Rambouillet he knew little of but he had a passion for mechanical things. ‘As a child perception became town life, but he was an early student of nature, his ized as one of the remarkably quick and even in his teens he was recogn n the family commo fairly best shots of the district.’ Although cars were cycle races. When he couldn’t hope to afford one, but young Benoist won les garage, and that’s left school he served an apprenticeship in a Versail how it began.” garland and laid it on Now, in victory, he took his great, overflowing what remained of Ascari’s Alfa Romeo. team profoundly. Ferrari The death of Ascari shook the Alfa Romeo ssionaire with a franchise had started a business as an Alfa Romeo conce

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in three districts and now he concentrated on that. He wouldn’t drive at all the following year. At Monza a month after Montlhéry, four Alfa Romeos were entered among the Delages, Bugattis and two Duesenbergs, one for Tommy Milton.® Ettore Bugatti attended, wearing a bowler hat and buttondown collar and tie. He looked very much an important man doing something... important. The Alfa Romeos were not to be caught — a Count, Gastone Brilli-Peri, winning it — although the Duesenbergs went well and Milton finished fourth. The Alfa Romeos did not go to San Sebastian, opening the way for the Delages which filled the first three places of only five finishers. Divo won it from Benoist. By September 1925, Britain’s Ministry of Transport decided to act to cut accidents. White lines were to be painted on roads to separate traffic at intersections or dangerous bends. In London, traffic lights were being considered for Piccadilly. This increase in traffic found graphic expression at the Motor Show, Olympia, where 500 stands showed the latest models from Europe and North America. The range was expressive, too, from a three-seater Citroén at £145 to a Rolls-Royce at £1,891. Many manufacturers claimed their cars would do 60mph. Speeds rose constantly. In March 1926, the first rocket to be powered by liquid fuel was launched from a field in Massachusetts. The inventor said he believed that one day such rockets could take scientific instruments into space. In Britain, Segrave pushed the Land Speed Record to 149mph and a month later, Parry Thomas pushed that to 170mph. The Grand Prix calendar expanded again, taking in Germany, but the sport was in chaos. A 1.5-litre rule (and a raising of the minimum weight to 700kg) had been brought in to combat the constant rise in speeds in the races, and Alfa Romeo and Sunbeam withdrew. ‘The racing teams objected at having to throw away their investment in 2-litre engines and start all over again, but the organisers dug in their heels and deadlock gripped the sport. All these factors [in Alfa Romeo’s view] provided a sound reason for withdrawing from the expense and uncertai nty of Grand Prix racing.’” The chaos reached the French Grand Prix at Miramas — the race’s eighth staging post — on an autodrome near Marseilles which had been made by cementing over stones. Some of them protru ded and gave racing tyres a pounding. The ACF neglected to put a clause in their rules allowing cancellation if too few entries were receive d. Only two had come by the February deadline and ultimately three Bugattis appeared,

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to cover the 100 laps. To heighten the sense of absurdity, the track was wide, the start-finish straight stretched far back and here, in a neat little row, the three Bugattis sat like dwarves. One of them retired with a piston failure after 45 laps, another had special fuel and could only go slowly, and that left Goux circling by himself for hours. Reportedly he tried to put on some sort of show for the crowd, cutting corners and churning dust. By contrast, the organisers of the German Grand Prix at the AVUS circuit near Berlin — two six-mile parallel straights linked by a North Curve and a South Curve —” ignored the 1.5-litre rule and opened the event to what they called sports cars. It-attracted an entry of 46, including Mercedes. During practice two cars collided in the South Curve, the driver Gigi Platé badly hurt and his mechanic killed. Caracciola in the Mercedes remembered driving past a minute afterwards. He saw Platé being carried away by ambulancemen while the mechanic lay where he had fallen. Caracciola went to this mechanic and gazed down at him because he’d never seen a dead person before. He would remember he was: sprawled out on his back, arms flung wide as if he were nailed to an invisible cross. His wide open eyes reflected the sky. The rain fell in long

skeins and ran over his face. Presently, an ambulance man came with a piece of canvas and covered him. Only the feet in the white canvas shoes

protruded from the covering.”

That night in his hotel, Caracciola tried to forget the image of the white canvas shoes. Race day dawned bright and sunny but threatening cloud ~a greying wall of it — came over when the race began at 2pm. The cars were sent off in groups and Caracciola stalled. He looked ahead at the track surface: ‘black and smooth in the dim afternoon light.’ He saw the cars vanish round the corner. He shouted to his mechanic get out and push! Still the motor wouldn’t fire. The mechanic pushed on, and the last of the grid nosed past. Caracciola felt his hands moist. The cars ahead were creating such a downdraught that the grass at the side of the track waved in their wake. Still the mechanic pushed. Then the engine did fire, the mechanic jumped back on - much like a bike rider at the Isle of Man, after a push start — and they accelerated. The rest were certainly a minute ahead and out of sight. Caracciola felt a dreadful depression. He had no chance against his team-mate Adolf Rosenberger.

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Soon rain was falling, light at first then so heavy it soaked the drivers and made the track surface very slippery. The raindrops danced along the circuit, stabbing at it. Caracciola’s windscreen steamed up, the tyres cast watery plumes. Completing a lap, Caracciola saw a crowd at the pit and a couple of stationary cars. He thought cars are dropping out, go slower. He eased his speed back. Better to finish last than not finish at all. On lap eight Caracciola saw, through all this, the timekeeper’s hut at the North Curve and the sight hit him hard. Rosenberger, overtaking a slower car and doing about 90mph, skidded and went into the wooden hut sideways, smashing through it. Inside two students sat keeping times and a man handled the scoreboard. The students died immediately, the man died twelve hours after his crushed legs were amputated. Rosenberger’s mechanic was seriously hurt. Caracciola saw ‘glass splinters strewn around...twisted metal.’ He saw a man lying, people running. On the next lap Caracciola pitted for fuel and Ferdinand Porsche, working for Mercedes, confirmed it was Rosenberger and that he had been hurt. That only aroused Caracciola’s suspicions after the impact he had witnessed: the car must have struck the little hut with terrible impact. Caracciola resumed and, passing the hut, saw a ‘thick, black cluster’ of people and an ambulance. Somebody was being loading on to a stretcher. Caracciola tried to concentrate on staying on the road. He peered at black asphalt streaming towards and under him and it looked ‘like sealskin’. Chassagne’s Talbot went off in the South Curve and flipped, the mechanic knocked unconscious for several hours. A car slithered off into a petrol lorry. Another Talbot skated out of control as the driver braked for the North Curve and came across on to the other carriageway, went across Caracciola ‘like a blue streak’ and ploughed into spectators injuring three, one seriously. Caracciola pitted for a new spark plug and was now, he estimated, one and a half minutes down. He drove fast, passing cars going slowly because, he assumed, of the accidents. He saw gesticulating from the pits: faster! The rain eased and patches of blue spread through the cloud. He felt on his own, disorientated, felt the race exacting a toll on his body. His legs and arms felt heavy, his eyes tired. He saw the finish line coming towards him, crossed it and had no idea he’d won. He sat when he had halted, a thicket of dark hair, a spattered rounded face, a boyish grin. He would remember the German national anthem, remember an enormous wreath being placed over his head — and remember suddenly exploding in helpless laughter. The whole day had been as sad and mad as that.

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From this moment, Rudolf Caracciola would be known as regenmeister, the rainmaster. The European Grand Prix, at Lasarte, attracted only six starters and was run in great heat. Benoist, in a Delage, pitted so utterly exhausted that he was forbidden from going back out. Two drivers stopped with burnt feet and one of them had to be revived on grass behind the pits, his right foot bare and badly blistered. A couple of cars which had long been announced as retired resumed, one 16 laps down, and amid this tumult and torment Goux won it comfortably after driving steadily for nearly seven hours. The organisers of the Spanish Grand Prix, at Lasarte a week after the European, couldn’t forget Miramas and spent long, anxious days asking themselves how many of the 23 entries would come. Nor did a baking sun, a scorching wind and clouds of dust help. Segrave found the circuit improved and faster but on lap six he saw the spectators ‘behaving in a most unusual manner. They were shouting and waving and pointing.’ He saw something wrong with the near-side front wheel of his car, which seemed to tilt. He slowed, but at 90mph the front axle sheared in two, the wheels folding in against the bonnet. The engine sank to the track surface gouging a path in a straight line for a hundred yards. Segrave couldn’t steer the car at all. Meo Costantini, later Bugatti team manager, won in a Bugatti from

Goux in another. Curiously, for a nation which would later exercise so much influence on Grand Prix racing, the first British Grand Prix was only now run for the first time. There were reasons. The Royal Automobile Club had been offered a Grand Prix opportunity in 1925 by the governing body, the AIACR, but to seal off public roads required an Act of Parliament except in the Isle of Man, where the Tourist Trophy course was considered too dangerous. Thoughts turned to Brooklands and to adapt it into a testing

Grand Prix circuit, sandbanks — what would be chicanes today — were proposed, but rejected as too expensive, then adopted. Two weeks after the Spanish race, nine cars started the first British Grand Prix; over 110 laps (287 miles), among them Segrave and Divo in Talbots, Malcolm Campbell in a Bugatti, Benoist and Wagner in Delages, George Eyston in an Aston Martin. Parry Thomas entered a car he had built himself, but it wasn’t up to it and he withdrew. Segrave found problems when the Talbots arrived. Under braking the front axle began to ‘chatter’, making the car awkward to steer as well as

affecting the braking itself. ‘It was a frightening thing to look at, because I one saw the front wheels bouncing up. After a few practice laps [...]

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realised that the cars were not really in a fit state to be run, as they had no chance of winning even though they were much faster than the other runners.’” Campbell didn’t get his Bugatti until the day before the race — and the model had never been seen in Britain before. Campbell took it round but managed only eight or ten laps in the wet. He found the engine fine but the brakes suspect, so he drove it to Povey Cross, a village south of London where he lived, with a Bugatti mechanic. He and another mechanic worked on the problem through the night. At Brooklands it was a glorious day. When the flag fell Divo seized the lead but Campbell’s Bugatti stayed alongside him until the Railway Straight along the back of the circuit when Segrave ‘swung’ past, towing Benoist’s Delage. Campbell ran fourth. Suddenly, coming off the banking, the front axle on Moriceau’s Talbot broke. Campbell estimated the Talbot, close behind, was covering almost two miles a minute. He glimpsed the Talbot as it skidded across the track but mercifully, it drew up before the edge of the concrete or it would have gone over.

Segrave judged it extraordinary that this should happen to Moriceau just as it had happened to him at San Sebastian but... the end of his axle was caught up in some way in the frame and did not dig into the ground as occurred in my case, and he was thus enabled to come to a gradual standstill on the side of the track. [...] He did not immediately apply his brakes as 99 out of a 100 other people would have done. Had he done so he would have killed himself. One or other of his front wheels

would have locked.”

Divo had a misfire and Segrave led for six laps but he’d have a frustrating race because the ‘dreadful’ brakes were forcing him and Divo to brake earlier and earlier for the corners. ‘It was pathetic to see [and] eventually we were applying them almost half a mile away. Even then we were in danger of overshooting the corner.’ They struggled on until Divo retired with an oil leak and Segrave with a cracked supercharger. Campbell watched theearly ‘dog fight’ between Segrave and Benoist, and found it happening with such ferocity that he was in a race unlike anything he’d known before. That impression was reinforced on lap four when Campbell saw Wagner in the pits ‘jumping with both feet into a shallow tub filled with water, which splashed over the concrete around.’ Wagner's Delage foot pedals were being scorched by the exhaust. All the Delage drivers suffered this and bearded French driver Robert Senechal

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had holes burnt in the soles of his shoes. On one occasion an exhaust pipe was so hot it set fire to the bodywork. Benoist led but towards the end his Delage belched smoke — Campbell saw sarshals firing extinguishers at the engine — and Wagner, who had taken, overs Senechal’s Delage, came through. Campbell was getting pit signals, faster! He couldn't make the car respond to them even though he rammed the accelerator pedal as far down as it would go. Divo retised and Campbell ran third. Benoist, back out and second, was up ahead and Campbell saw him, chased him down, overtook him. Now Campbell was getting pit signals you're second, faster! Still he could not make the car respond and by now he felt tired. The ‘jolting’ of the car on Brooklands’ uneven surface was taking its toll. The Senechal/Wagner car finished in 4b 0m 56s, an average of 71mph; Campbell ten minutes behind. Segrave Cleaned himself up a bit and drove off to the garage where ‘hjan Fenn, our racing manager, had arranged a marvellous champagne

Junch to revive our spirits.’ There Segrave found a ‘tremendous row in progress,’ Everyone was telling the Talbot designer what they thought of him and attempting to ‘eat at the same time.’ They tried to draw Segrave into giving his opinion but diplomatically, he preferred to watch. He thought that rows like this were interesting, but only if you were watching because... the pandemonium which reigns, when you have a team of foreign mechanics, is truly remarkable. They let go completely. Everybody screams avid gesticulates at the same time, and nobody listens to what anyone else is saying; consequently there are about fourteen different arguments in progress at the same time. Divo was lamenting the fact that a driver of his repute should be so insulted as to be asked to drive a car which burst into a thousand pieces every time he put his foot on the loud pedal, or took it off to tread on the brakes — the result, he said, was the same in either case! Moriceau was shouting that it was monstrous that an axle should be designed with such a low factor of safety, or if the design was sound, that _ it should be so indifferently made that it broke within three miles of the

start, [The designer] was leaning against the wall at the far end of the room paying not the slightest attention to anybody, picking his teeth with a piece of straw and waiting for the storm to calm down.”

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Eventually, Segrave drove the designer, Moriceau, and Divo back to their London hotels, dropping them at St James’s, and as he drove away he could hear the three of them still shouting at each other. The Italian Grand Prix at Monza attracted few entries, but the Maserati brothers built their own cars, one for Ernesto and the other for Materassi. They didn’t get far before engine problems halted them, Goux went out with an oil pressure problem and two cars finished, the first of them ‘Sabipa’ in a Bugatti. He was Jean Charavel, who would drive the Le Mans sports car race three times. In October, a month later, a sea plane flew from London to Australia and back in 58 days, a record. Water, it seemed, might just be the future of aviation.

Notes 1. Ernest Ballot was a ‘noted engine manufacturer’ based in Paris (The Racing Car, Batsford) and built cars in 15 weeks for contesting the Indianapolis 500 in 1919.

2. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges. we.

Alfa Romeo, Owen.

4. Bordino was a stylist and leading Italian driver of the 1920s. Born in Turin in 1887, he was killed in a race at Alexandria in 1928 when a dog ran in front of his Bugatti. . Enzo Ferrari, Yates.

. http://www.oldandsold.com/articles01/article826.shtml . An engine with all eight cylinders aligned in one row. . By Leif Snellman in http://8w.forix.com/monza33.html wo wv nona . In Omnibus

of Speed, chapter on 1921 French Grand Prix by Rex Hays.

10. Ibid.

11. http://www.ddavid.com/formulal/french1921.htm

12. A Record of Grand Prix and Voiturette Racing, Volume 1, Sheldon. 13. The French Grand Prix, Hodges. 14. The Lure of Speed, Segrave. 15. Ibid

16. The Motor. 17. http://www.brooklandstrack.co.uk/Drivrlist/zborowsk.htm 18. King of the Boards, Gary D. Doyle. 19. Segrave op. cit.

20. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 21. The Roaring Twenties, Cyril Posthumus. 22. Sheldon, op. cit.

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23. An old-established Tours firm. 24. Segrave, op. cit. 25. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 26. Segrave, op. cit. pag Ibid 28. Ibid. 29. Diatto of Turin was an old company which was surviving financial difficulties but still developing cars. 30. The Racing Car, Batsford.

31. Those Bentley Days, Hillstead. 32. Baron D. Augustin de Vizcaya was a shareholder in the Darmastadt Bank which may have helped finance Bugatti to open the Molsheim factory. He raced Bugattis, as did Pierre and Ferdinand de Vizcaya, thought to be his sons. www.bugatti.co.uk/trust/nl17-3.html 33. Segrave, op. cit.

34. The Motor. 35. Ibid 36. Segrave, op. cit. 37. The Motor. 38. Segrave, op. cit. 39. The Motor. 40. Segrave, op. cit. Al. The Motor. 42. Hillstead, op. cit. 43. Yates, op. cit. . Owen, op. cit. 45. ‘While never true Grand Prix machines, the American Millers were highly successful Indianapolis performers which did well on the fast Monza track. They were straight-eights.’ (The Racing Car, op. cit.) 46. The Man With Two Shadows, Kevin Desmond. 47. Because Monza will figure so prominently in the narrative, here are the

corners: at the end of the start-finish straight, the Variante Goodyear, into the sweeping right Curva Grande, into the kink-like Variante della Roggia, into the long horse-shoe right-right of the Curve di Lesmo, into the long-

kink of Curva del Vialone and the Variante Ascari, along the Rettifilio Centrale to the tighter horse-shoe Curva Parabolica, sling-shotting round and flinging the cars onto the start-finish straight. 48. Yates, op. cit. 49. Owen, op. cit. 50. The French Grand Prix, Hodges, op. cit. 51. Segrave, op. cit.

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52. Segrave, op. cit. Incidentally, it is difficult to imagine a more politically incorrect tale than this, or one more likely to enrage feminists — or indeed

all other women. BF Segrave, op. cit. 54. I’ve reproduced this as it appears in Segrave’s book. My car in French is ma voiture.

Se The Roaring Twenties, Posthumus. 56. Segrave, op. cit. Dl's Full Throttle, Birkin, op. cit. 58. Chiribiri, an Italian company founded before the first war (by Antonio Chiribiri) supplied aircraft parts before moving to car manufacture. It ceased in 1928. ahh Racing Driver's World, Caracciola. 60. Ibid. 61. The Man with Two Shadows, Desmond. 62. Segrave, op. cit. 63. The Power and the Glory (John Gau Productions for the BBC, 1991). 64. Segrave, op. cit. 65. Desmond, op. cit. 66. Ibid. 67. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges. 68. Milton was a leading American driver known for integrity and hard work.

Despite being blind in his right eye and of less than perfect sight in the left, he became the first man to win the Indianapolis 500 twice. 69. Owen, op. cit. 70. AVUS derives from Automobil Verkehrs und Ubungs-Strasse (car traffic and test road) and had originally been planned in 1907. During the First World

War, Czarist Russian prisoners worked on it, and after the war a financier raised the money to complete it. By a great paradox, at the end of the

Second World War Berlin was divided among the Allies and the AVUS was used as a normal road and ended at a checkpoint between the Western and the Soviet zones. The Russians had come back. rat Caracciola, op. cit. 72. Segrave, op.cit. 715%. Ibid. 74. Ibid.

Chapter 3

IN NUVOLARI’S TIME he Western world walked almost blindly into great and potentially deadly crisis. Soon enough, New York’s Wall Street crashed, bringing a generation to the hopelessness of poverty and Hitler began to strut the Continent, real power almost within his grasp. Mussolini gripped Italy, Franco prepared to grip Spain. Stalin watched, brutal and greedy, from Moscow.

By a great paradox, motor racing assumed a settled state. The Targa Florio, the Mille Miglia, the Le Mans 24-hour race and the Indianapolis 500 occupied regular places on the annual calendar and, soon enough, the Grand Prix season did, too: Monaco in the spring, the cross-country of Spa in early July, itinerant France and the mighty Nurburgring in mid-summer, Monza in the autumn. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin are long gone and hardly lamented. In its essences, the Grand Prix season has lasted until today. Many of the drivers who would inhabit this landscape were already in place — Benoist, Caracciola, Campari — but the post-war generation was coming to maturity. There’d be the debonair Louis Chiron, a ladies’ man deceived by a lady; Achille Varzi, an elegant, distant, chain-smoker who even smoked while the car was being refuelled; Jean-Pierre Wimille, son of affluent Parisian parents who had been born to race and, spectating at the 1922 Grand Prix at Strasbourg, realised it; urbane René Dreyfus who would end his days running a restaurant in New York, and Nuvolari. All, eventually, would be touched by the political crisis while others would lose their lives to it. If we were doing something dangerous, they would say, they were dangerous

times. Nothing came to typify that more than the event which began on Saturday, 26 March 1927 in the stately, stone-arched streets of Brescia in northern Italy. They echoed to the sound of 78 cars being driven hard. As The Autocar pointed out, ‘whereas in most European countries it has long been found necessary to restrict motor racing to special tracks or short,

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military-guarded circuits, the Mussolini Government permits speed contests from town to town.’ The Mille Miglia [1,000 miles] exercised ferocious and ultimately lethal fascination for another thirty years as it went down to Rome and back to Brescia. Eventually, half of Italy would line the route, more or less unprotected, as the cars passed at immense speeds just in front of them and the result, culminating in something approaching slaughter,

became too much. The driver of a square Bianchi Sport car in the 3,000cc class and bearing the number 89 would make the race his own but, this first time, his fifth place (in class) didn’t rate even a mention in the Press coverage. Nuvolari hadn’t raced a car for three years but now he would, more and more. So, on a modest level, would Enzo Ferrari during the season. Presumably the business of selling Alfa Romeos was going well enough to allow him the time off. On the Tuesday after Brescia, Segrave pushed the Land Speed Record to 203mph at Daytona in response to Campbell’s 174mph just a few weeks earlier at Pendine Sands in South Wales. Meanwhile, Caracciola examined the possibilities for a Grand Prix drive, very much as modern drivers do. He concentrated on the four major manufacturers — Mercedes, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Maserati — and concluded that in character they were dissimilar. He noticed all the leading drivers were with one of these four. Delightfully he described Bugatti as created in the image of Ettore Bugatti himself. He ‘bred cars as people breed horses; and he loved these cars, which he had himself designed down to the finest details, as if they were living creatures.’ Even the factory resembled stables and Bugatti had called one of his cars Pur Sang — thoroughbred. ‘He improvised everything — his inventions, the financing of his plant which he often, and with admirable skill, steered past the cliffs of financial ruin.” Caracciola doesn’t seem to have been put off by the very Italian nature of Alfa Romeo. At various times they had run, among others, Nuvolari, Varzi and Campari. ‘They were,’ Birkin would judge: all very fine drivers, and one or two of them notoriously wild; capable of racing desperately against each other and breaking up their team. Only the very greatest of team managers could have controlled them, and only the very greatest of team managers did. His name was [Aldo] Giovannini; his position was that of an impresario producing an opera in which all the leading roles are taken by temperamental stars. Yet he contrived to satisfy every one and calm every storm. He had a deep insight into the qualities of men and of cars.

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Caracciola drove for Alfa Romeo as a ‘semi-independent’ at Monaco, and in the future the crowd would boo him mercilessly. Until then he’d driven Mercedes in a wide variety of events, and virtually nothing else. In June, a month before the Grand Prix season began, Nuvolari took part in a major race at Rome, won it and L’Auto Italiana hailed the appearance of ‘a great driver.’ This might have been intended as mere verbal gesture, but it wasn’t. There would be five Grands Prix and Talbot had withdrawn, giving the season to Delage and Robert Benoist who dominated mediocre opposition. The French Grand Prix, at Montlhéry, attracted few entries and no new cars except Eyston in a Halford Special.’ A large crowd saluted the President of France, the guest of honour, but were startled when Bugatti withdrew just before the race — Ettore Bugatti didn’t feel his cars were competitive — and the crowd taunted him, you're frightened. Seven cars started and Benoist began the domination, winning from another Delage by more than eight minutes. The vast saucer-like circuit with the feel of an aerodrome seemed curiously empty. The Mille Miglia generated its own legend and mythology, and so did the Nurburgring, built to ease unemployment in the Eifel region of Germany, a rural area roughly at the centre of a triangle between Bonn, Koblenz and the Belgian border. Apart from racing, it offered the German motoring industry a permanent facility for experiment and testing — a clinical activity, by definition, and in absolute contrast to racing on it. At 17.5 miles, the track contorted its way through the undulating wooded countryside like an immense, forbidding roller coaster. It had 88 left-hand and 84 right-hand corners. It had switchbacks, fast downhill sections, blind climbs, humpbacks. It had ravines, bridges, ditches, hedges, trees. Some drivers felt it was almost impossible to learn in detail, some adored its challenge. All, if one may risk a generalisation, knew intuitively that it must be paid respect or it would exact its own dues. Sometimes it exacted its dues even then. The first Grand Prix there, two weeks after the French, was restricted to sports cars but attracted 75,000 (Brooklands was getting 15,000). This crowd walked, cycled, rode on motorbikes, drove and travelled in coaches to watch 21 cars set off on a cool, dry day, the seven Mercedes — Caracciola in one — drowning everything. Rosenberger led from the second row and Caracciola retired with an engine problem. Otto Merz, a bear of a man who reputedly could hammer six-inch nails into wooden tables with his hands, led when Rosenberg’s engine failed, and won it.*

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Benoist’s Delage met ‘vigorous and unexpected resistance from the daring Italian Emilio Materassi’ - a wealthy Italian amateur — in a Bugatti during the Spanish Grand Prix at Lasarte. Benoist and Materassi duelled until, with nine laps left, Materassi used too much power and thumped a wall. Benoist, ‘seeing only a thick cloud of dust ahead, spun under violent braking, lost all sense of direction, and resumed racing — the wrong way.” Marshals waved and pointed, Benoist realised, spun the car again — and won it. Delage sent only Benoist to the Italian Grand Prix to face a challenge which unexpectedly included the Indianapolis 500 winner George Souders in a Duesenberg. Souders, a 27-year-old rookie, looked older than his years with his heavy, jowelled face and furrowed forehead. Heavy rain, poor acceleration and inadequate brakes blunted the American effort. The car’s wheels whipped whisps of water and the crowd crouched under umbrellas. Benoist, a handsome man with a striking face full of character and a curl of a smile, won by 22 minutes. A movie camera craned at him and he made a mock salute for it, then his lips curled into the smile. Fiat now withdrew from racing to work on their aeroplane engine business. Several privateers entered the British Grand Prix at Brooklands in October, one with the superb name of Prince Ghica-Cantacuzino.® Eyston and Campbell had Bugattis and would clearly be overwhelmed by the Delages. So would Chiron, whose father had been maitre d’ at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco. Chiron, a socialite, raised money by being an escort to ladies. He was the ‘smiling Frenchman,’ Caracciola said, cheerful, full of jokes who had a pre-race ritual: he ‘walked around his car, patted it, talked to it [...] and then slid smiling behind the wheel.” A chill wind blew and the track glistened from earlier drizzle as the race approached. Campbell knew he needed to make a good start or the Delages would overwhelm his Bugatti. He did make a good start as the cars headed for the banked section — but Materassi roared by, flinging back spray from the puddles on ‘the track. Materassi’s Delage shivered under its own power as it went through the corner to the banking. On the banking, Campbell felt the wind gusting. What he described as squalls of rain fell and Eyston hemmed him from behind. Materassi led but the car leaked water, and Ghica was most unPrincely when a mechanical failure stopped him. He seized a large hammer and began beating it on the pit counter. Meanwhile Campbell made a pit stop and, moving along the banking, noticed Count Carlos Conelli running alongside his Bugatti down by the infield pushing it

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towards the distant pits. Each time Campbell passed for the next few laps he saw Conelli still pushing it until eventually he reached his pit. Campbell now saw mechanics refuelling it. The push, of more than a mile, exhausted Conelli so much that his reserve driver — known simply as ‘Williams’* — took over. Benoist won it to become Champion of Europe and Delages filled the first three places, with Chiron in the Bugatti fourth. In April 1928 an American, Ray Keech, pushed the Land Speed Record to 207mph, topping Campbell’s 206mph set two months before. The Grand Prix season followed the settled calendar, France, Germany, San Sebastian, Spain and Italy, but the racing had entered a wretched phase created by ‘increasing gloom on the business front and a general tightening of purse-strings.” There were no restrictions on engine size but cars had to weigh between 550kg and 600kg, and the minimum race distance was 375 miles (600km). No new cars were built and only one race, Monza, run under these regulations. Only six entries were received for the French Grand Prix at Comminges, a road circuit near the Pyrenees, and the race’s ninth staging post. A sports car race was substituted. The sports cars again contested a steaming hot Niirburgring, the race run in three groups reflecting the different power of the cars. Almost 100,000 watched the Bugattis take on the Mercedes. Cars overheated, some boiled and the Nurburgring showed its murderous character as in places the tarmac melted. One car went off, turned over and the driver died some days after the race. On lap five the Czech Viktor Junek in a Bugatti crashed on a twisting section at the far side of the circuit. He’d just taken over from his wife Elizabeth, one of the best women drivers of the time. The Bugatti overturned and Junek was crushed. Elizabeth did not race again. Christian Werner damaged his shoulder wrestling the heavy, powerful Mercedes, pitted and handed over to reserve driver Willy Walb. A doctor was treating Werner when Caracciola pitted, overwhelmed by the heat. Caracciola collapsed and, partially revived, was helped into the shade. Werner, arm bandaged, clambered in and drove off. Caracciola/Werner won it from Merz, ‘the only Mercedes teammember to drive without relief, although his great hands were torn and bleeding from the merciless wracking of the wheel.’ The San Sebastian Grand Prix at Lasarte was confined to nine Bugattis. Other manufacturers withdrew at the last minute, despite tempting start money. The race proved the fastest run at the circuit and

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attracted a huge crowd. Benoist led but Chiron caught him and broke the lap record, averaging 88mph — considered amazing on a circuit of so many bends and corners. Next lap Chiron passed Benoist which delighted the crowd and they were even more delighted when Benoist, who finished second, leapt from his car and embraced Chiron. Chiron won the Spanish Grand Prix, a sports car event run to a handicap formula, at Lasarte four days later. And now, at Monza, Nuvolari began his career as a Grand Prix driver and so did Varzi, who was significantly younger than Nuvolari (born in 1904). The son of a cotton magnate he started on motor bikes, like Nuvolari, in 1920 but could afford the best. He and Nuvolari rarely raced each other then. At the age of 19 Varzi won the Italian 350cc Championship and, years later, he’d say the first time he drove a racing car it felt quite natural. His style always reflected that. Of him, Caracciola would say he was ‘seemingly soft, and certainly a little too soft with regard to women and the horde of his admiring camp followers. But the same man, whose kindness was often misrepresented and put down to weakness, was hard as steel the moment he got behind the steering wheel of his car.” This season he and Nuvolari joined forces to race Bugattis but the partnership was perhaps too volatile, too egocentric, too intense to survive long. For Monza, Varzi bought an Alfa Romeo. Grand Prix racing had its first feud, although the relationship between the two men remains problematical and may well not have been as bad as it has been presented. Rivalry was endemic, the nature of the beast and its reason for being, but outright feuding — like Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna half a century later — would be surprisingly rare. There’s precious film of Nuvolari and Varzi before the start at Monza, 1928, Varzi bare-headed, nodding to someone just outside the cockpit, — Nuvolari wearing a jumper and scarf smiling his toothy grin. He’d been in ‘an extremely bad mood before the race because his car [the Bugatti, a private entry], which had been patched up as well as possible using pieces from two other cars, seemed unable to go fast.’ In the fleeting moment of film he doesn’t betray anything like that.” A crowd of 120,000 stood fifty deep opposite the pits, their eyes ready to follow the 22 cars down the long straight and out into the woodland. They saw ‘Williams’ lead from Nuvolari’s Bugatti, but by lap five Nuvolari had taken it from him, Varzi and Brilli-Peri (Talbot), a 35-yearold from Florence, chasing. After a lively scrap Brilli-Peri led and on lap 15 Varzi forced his Alfa Romeo past Nuvolari to a tremendous burst of applause. Gigione Arcangeli, another Italian, went past on lap 16, too.

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Somewhere in all this ran Materassi’s ex-works Talbot and, on the next lap, he was passing Foresti’s Bugatti. His right front wheel brushed Foresti’s left rear and Materassi veered off at 120mph. The Talbot struck a wall, vaulted a protective ditch and went into the crowd killing 23 and injuring around 40. Materassi got himself out of the car and walked a few steps trying to speak. He fell and died a few moments later, of a haemorrhage caused by a blow to the temple. The race was not stopped. Now Varzi led, Chiron’s Bugatti a hundred yards from him, Nuvolari, almost magical in finding such pace in such a Bugatti, working and working in third. It finished like that. The idea of a race through Monaco’s streets had been conceived by Anthony Noghés, President of their Automobile Club, because it would be good for tourism. The notion seemed fanciful within the physical constrictions: too small, too cramped, too narrow and a built-up area. Noghés worked out that it was possible, although the whole idea evidently baffled The Autocar: They have the most astounding audacity in some parts of Europe. For instance, there is going to be a Grand Prix at Monaco — a Grand Prix, mark you, in a Principality which does not possess a single open road of any length, but only has ledges on the face of a cliff and the ordinary main

thoroughfares that everyone who has been to the Casino knows so well.

This sense of disbelief echoed elsewhere, with the nature of the circuit expected to cause a chaos of crashes and breakdowns rendering the place where the beautiful lived into a breaker’s yard. Because it could be altered so little and because it endures in the same basic configuration today it can be used as a measure of progress. Year on year comparisons are possible which cannot be made elsewhere. In 1929 it was 1.97 miles and 70 years later, 2.05. In terms of longevity, only Monza stands comparison, but Monza has had many lives: 6.2 miles in 1923, 4.2 miles in 1930, rebuilt in 1948, a banked speedway section added in 1955, then the chicanes of today, themselves oft reshaped. From here on after each Monaco Grand Prix I give the winner’s time, average speed and from 1930, a comparison with the year before. I’ve included the Land Speed Record because so many of the holders competed in Grands Prix as well, and the Record is by definition a measure of increasing technology. After each decade, I’ve given the previous fastest laps — at decade intervals — and how many vehicles were registered in Britain.

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In April ‘the streets were barricaded with sandbags and hoardings, bridges were built across the streets for access to the all-important Casino and the tramways were stopped.’” The Autocar softened towards the idea, writing that the race had ‘received 23 entries, all of which the promoters appear anxious to start. This affair should be the nearest to a Roman chariot race that has been seen in recent years. Presumably the officials consider that the number of runners will be substantially reduced at the end of the first round.’ Only 16 of these entries started, many of them of the new generation — like Dreyfus and cheerful, unassuming Marcel Lehoux (Bugatti). Eight of the cars were Bugattis, and the drivers included ‘Williams’ and ‘Pierre,’ an assumed name used by Baron Henri de Rothschild to conceal his real identity because his father didn’t approve of him racing.

Caracciola had the only Mercedes and took his place on the last row. The Italian heavy-hitters weren’t there at all. As the cars accelerated towards Ste Devote corner they were already stretching out and bringing up gales of dust. They accelerated through Ste Devote, sweeping majestically round, spreading up the hill to Casino Square, Lehoux leading. Such a thing in such a place, so completely familiar now, had never been seen or even imagined before. By Casino, ‘Williams’ hustled past. In historical terms, the first lap was the most important because it proved the race’s feasibility. Soon enough, when the cars had become a snake, they were fishtailing the cars through Ste Devote, were streaming into the darkness of the tunnel, and coming like a storm along the quayside. Nobody retired until lap seven when Lehoux slid into sandbags at the quayside down from the tunnel, bending the Bugatti’s wheels. Because the pits were further along the quayside, Lehoux walked there, picked up new wheels and, one at a time, bowled them back to the car. He fitted them and eventually rejoined for a couple of laps before the transmission failed. While this slightly unreal performance went on Caracciola made a move. The Mercedes loomed vast and heavy and at the Station hairpin the spectators could see him leaning over battling the steering wheel, but his touch was so consummate that he made the Mercedes appear as nimble as a light car. At half distance he led but a long pit stop punished him. He was stationary for four and a half minutes while many cans of petrol were poured into the thirsty Mercedes. The race became a procession, ‘Williams’ winning it. He was a modest man sitting there, cap turned backwards. He had a face which was almost oval and large, looming eyes. He shook hands with someone who came up as he sat,

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said a few words, seemed embarrassed. There would be histrionics at Monaco, champagne spraying, tears of every sort, but not for many years. There were none on 14 April 1929 as the man with the pseudonym who had driven his rounded Bugatti to the kerbside, stopped and had his little chat with the man who shook his hand. He contented himself by pursing his lips briefly and exhaling as if to say to himself ‘phew.’ The Monaco measure: ‘Williams,’ 100 laps, 3h 56m 11.0s, an average speed of 49.8mpnh. The ultimate measure: the month before, Segrave pushed the Land Speed Record to 231mph. Vehicles registered in Britain 2.2 million (1928, 2.0 million). A two-seater Ford cost £145 and a Briton earned on average £3.50 a week. Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 41 weeks to buy one (1910, £220 — 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, £170 — 1 year 16 weeks). The French Grand Prix at Le Mans and the Spanish at Lasarte were run to a fuel consumption formula, 85kg of petrol and oil. This seems to have been to prove motor racing was not profligate as the great financial depression continued. The French Grand Prix proved straightforward although a dispirited and dispiriting sort of occasion run partly in

thundery showers. ‘Williams’ won it. The Bugattis took on the Mercedes at the Nurburgring, an aristocratic gathering because as well as Baron de Rothschild, a Baron Sartorio drove an Alfa Romeo, a Count von Kalnein a Bugatti, a Count Arco in a Mercedes and the Marquis de Sterlich in a Maserati competed. Varzi, due to drive an Alfa Romeo, didn’t make an appearance, the first intimation

that he might be an unreliable loner. Caracciola set an immense pace in his Mercedes to keep the buzzing Bugattis at bay but Chiron broke the lap record and came up to attack. and Caracciola went as far as lap five when a connecting rod broke Chiron brought the Bugatti home. places but Chiron won in Spain, too, and Bugattis took all the first six s, an Alfa the race was a strange, strangled event. Thirteen Bugatti eight cars, all Romeo and a Delage set off in heavy rain and only

Bugattis, finished. where there Nuvolari had a Talbot for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza Arthur Duray, the were heats. Arcangeli won his from Nuvolari g seized. In the final American, had overtaken both of them but a bearin the lead but tyres Varzi and Alfieri Maserati (in a Maserati) fought for Nuvolari by a from it were shredding, cars dropped out and Varzi won

minute and a half.

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once

again

showed

himself

to be a driver

who

admirably

combines courage and cunning, calm and driving force, intelligence and character. When he got out of the car he rubbed his hands and smiled brightly. Thin, lean, excitable, bright dark eyes, eyebrows like two thick ink-strokes, dazzling white teeth: Nuvolari is a Saracen who happens to have been born in Mantova."

Two days after Monza, a London couple called Moss — he a dentist who worked mainly in the poorer areas, she a keen horsewoman — had a son. Father wanted him called Hamish, mother wouldn’t have that but she was a Scot and had connections with a town there. They agreed to give the lad the name of the town, Stirling. Twelve days after that, Baconin Borzacchini drove a Maserati at almost 250kmh on the road outside Cremona. This had nothing to do with the Land Speed Record, now being set on sand, but was considered such a feat that it warranted a great celebration banquet. Enzo Ferrari was naturally among those invited and sat between a prominent industrialist, who had recently bought an Alfa Romeo from him, and a leading racing enthusiast. They had money, Ferrari had experience and connections. Some time during the evening the question came up why don’t we form a racing team? There seemed no reason why not. The word Scuderia in Italian means stable in agricultural terms, but also a motor racing organisation. The name of the new team was no problem at all: Scuderia Ferrari. Paradoxically, the depression was bearing away some of the Italian manufacturers, including Itala, Chiribiri and Diatto. Ferrari stayed close to Alfa Romeo, securing technical assistance from them and ‘then made similar deals with Bosch, Pirelli and Shell.’ He ran amateur drivers who could pay and signed Campari. ‘In his first year the Scuderia Ferrari could boast 50 full and part-time drivers!’ The team ‘caused a sensation. It was the largest team ever put together by one individual. None of the drivers was paid a salary but received a percentage of the prize money won.’ On 29 October, Wall Street crashed. In one day, 13 million shares changed hands and in absolute panic people were selling at any price they could get. The shares which promised unlimited wealth and had been pushed grotesquely over their value from 1927 through 1928 to almost double in 1929 were all but worthless and riot police had to be called to Wall Street to control hysterical crowds. Nobody understood on that long day what the consequences would be or where they would touch. Within ten months two million Britons were out of work.

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Neubauer wrote that the crash ‘set up a tidal wave that swept across Europe. Sell, sell, sell! ran the cry. Old-established banks closed their doors. There was a spate of suicides. In the midst of this economic chaos a new party gained thirteen seats in the election for the Berlin City parliament, and it was led by a certain Dr Joseph Goebbels. Motor racing was naturally hard hit by the crisis.’’ It hit so hard the 1930 German Grand Prix wasn’t run. The second Monaco Grand Prix, however, proved the race was not just viable but an adornment. Twenty cars came to the grid including Hans Stuck in an Austro-Daimler. Stuck, whose age was always a mystery, held dual Austrian and German nationality. He was a _ hill-climb specialist and an all-rounder, powerboat racing, skiing competitively and a six-handicap golfer. Bugattis liked Monaco and Dreyfus had one, albeit as a privateer. During practice he watched the Bugatti team and concluded that to beat them he would need an advantage. Subsequently he wondered how the idea came to him and even thought if he had dreamed it: an extra fuel tank so he wouldn’t have to stop. Initially the idea met with resistance, but a 30-litre tank was fitted. Monaco presented itself as scenic and decorous. The cars started from back towards the Gasometer hairpin, three abreast. Directly ahead they could see the road curving stately towards Ste Devote. To their left sunlight fell across the rows of houses and the pavement — decorated, at its rim, by trees planted at tight intervals. The sunlight created wedges and patterns of shadow on the road itself. To their right, twin tram tracks then the pavement decorated by tall lamp standards about ten yards apart while behind that, trees were planted thick. A few people stood on the pavement there, unprotected and in the formal dress of the day, just as the racing cars were unprotected from the trees and the lamp standards. They came in a great rush and a great roar bustling and hustling fast, still three abreast. The cars on the extreme left emerged from the wedge of shadow as they reached towards Ste Devote, ‘Williams’ squeezing the other two cars on the front row. The furthest, Borzacchini, went so far over to the right that he almost touched the lip of the pavement. up At Ste Devote the pavement protruded like an elbow and that broke e whatever symmetry remained from the grid so that as the cavalcad there, streamed up the hill the cars became a single file except, here and the round where they ran side-by-side. By the time they came led. harbourside on that first lap they were all single-file and Chiron he led e distanc half at Chiron seemed to have the race won because that. of out Dreyfus by nearly two minutes, but Dreyfus took a minute

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They traded fastest laps before Chiron had a slow pit stop and Dreyfus turned the little tap to let the 30-litres flow into his engine. It brought Dreyfus close enough to strike and he could see wisps of smoke, could smell petrol — Chiron in trouble. The people in the Dreyfus pit were wild with excitement, pointing to Chiron and telling Dreyfus he’s there, he’s there! Dreyfus went by on lap 85, broke the lap record and romped the race. An official in a light suit and homburg hat with a dark band round it stood by the crude white line painted across the road. He had one foot on the pavement, the other on the road itself and he held a small flag on a long stick which he waved twice as Dreyfus thundered towards him. Dreyfus’s goggles were so dirty that all he could see was the road ahead to the finish and, in a blurred backdrop, the crowd. As Dreyfus passed, the official flailed and pumped his left arm towards the Bugatti signalling yes! Yes! Yes! When Dreyfus stopped his gloved hands pushed the goggles down, undid the strap of his white balaclava then tugged at it to get it off. Somebody helped him and between them it did come off. His face was framed by dirt and he exhaled. He looked tired, perhaps very tired. The Monaco measure: Dreyfus, 100 laps, 3h 41m 2.6s, an average speed of 53.6mph: ‘Williams,’ 1929, 49.8mph. The ultimate comparison: The Land Speed Record wasn't improved but Segrave attempted the record on water. In June he'd been at Lake Windermere and on a third run his boat seems to have stuck a log, killing him — the ultimate price. Vehicles registered in Britain 2.3 million (1929, 2.2 million). Enzo Ferrari understood that amateur drivers, paying for their drives, were a necessary way forward, but if he was to become a serious player he’d need professionals — hence the original signing of Campari although that had been on a swop and return basis. Alfa Romeo would exercise priority for important races and during the spring Campari departed Ferrari who now approached Nuvolari. Both men ‘possessed towering egos’ and ‘did not get along.” Nevertheless, Nuvolari signed a contract in June 1930. The depression touched hard. Bentley was ‘allowed to die for the want of a few thousand pounds and Sunbeam sold off, together with Talbot. Stutz and Duesenberg were gone too, but other companies clung on. Mussolini did not permit this in Italy and new cars emerged from Maserati and Alfa Romeo.” In July, 15 cars set off into the dangerous clutches of Spa’s hills and dales. The Peugeot of Frenchman Henri Stoffel, who’d competed in the first Le Mans 24-hour sports car race in 1923, proved the only one capable of living with the Bugattis wielded by Chiron, Bouriat and Divo.

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This trio led the opening twelve of the 40 laps but Stoffel clung on. Deep into the race Divo had a puncture and Stoffel, now running second — Chiron third — chased down Bouriat but the Peugeot coughed and stopped, out of petrol. Bugatti’s management had given strict instructions that if possible the race must be Chiron’s but Bouriat was two and a half minutes up the road and uncatchable. The pits signalled him Chiron to win! and Bouriat obeyed with a flourish of defiance. He halted close to the line, awaited Chiron’s arrival patiently, watched Chiron cross the line and precisely one minute later did it himself. Visible team orders with all their consequences would dog Grand Prix racing all down the coming years and reach a twin climax, if you can put it like that, when in the 1980s René Arnoux was ordered to slow by Renault so Prost could overtake him (and didn’t), and in the 2000s when Rubens Barrichello was ordered to slow by Ferrari so Schumacher could overtake him (and did). At Monza there were heats again and in the final Arcangeli led Nuvolari but Varzi went past him. On lap five Nuvolari re-took Varzi but was soon hobbled by tyre problems, and Varzi won it from Arcangeli. The French Grand Prix, at Pau — the race’s tenth staging post — should have been under the fuel consumption formula again but such a small entry arrived that the organisers postponed it until the autumn. Then, restricted to cars under 1,100cc, it proved a cracker in beautiful weather. A massive crowd watched round a pastoral circuit which undulated

through the countryside. Philippe Etancelin was an independent who had enjoyed a good 1930 season but decided that he wouldn’t do well in such a prestigious international event and so didn’t send in his application form. He had a business in Rouen — ‘selling wool for mattresses [and] exporting the feathers and down of geese and ducks for pillows, bolsters and eiderdowns’ — and needed to devote some time to that. His wife sent the

application form in... Etancelin went to Pau as one among 14 Bugattis but, too anxious to prove himself, drove the car so hard in practice that it was unraceable. He decided to load it up and take it back to Rouen. His wife and mechanic said ring up the Bugatti factory and get spare parts. Etancelin flew shrugged. They persisted, he rang the factory, pleaded and they thumping a ‘with airport Biarritz at them down. He was on the tarmac heart’ watching the plane land. round One Delage stalled at the start and the cars coming up swept jostling and dust the him while the driver got out to have a look. Amid

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the crowd could see the Bentley of Birkin, an enormous vehicle, a whale among swordfish. It weighed two tons. Lehoux’s gearbox broke after a hundred yards and he strode back to the pits so enraged that he was unable to speak. Etancelin chose a big rear axle so it wouldn’t break and as the race unfolded he noticed that the works Bugattis — he could tell them among all the other Bugatti drivers because they wore red scarves — had smaller axles. Etancelin followed them. As she always did, Etancelin’s wife gave him a signal every lap telling him his position. When the works cars pitted he led, Chiron in pursuit after a tyre change. Pau was almost a perfect triangle with a six-mile straight culminating in a complex of tight corners, some downhill. Chiron worried about his oil pressure and along the straight took the chance to investigate. Birkin came at him fast — Birkin knew that such a huge car would lose time in the corners and have to make it up on the straights. It proved difficult. Now he had the Bentley up to 135mph and into Chiron’s wake and estimated he was travelling some five miles an hour faster than Chiron who: seemed to be having trouble of a sort. His head was continually ducking into the cockpit as if he wanted to find something. As I came up to the rear of his car, it began slowly to swerve across the road, until for an instant my left front wheel was between his two back wheels. He still had his head in the cockpit and there seemed no chance of avoiding a terrible crash. feepl sounded the horn for all I was worth and then instinctively let out one of the loudest yells that can ever have been heard. It rose above the noise of my engine and it rose above the noise of his. He looked up as if he had been shot, and switched his car over to the right-hand side of the road. The Bentley just scraped past. It is the only mistake I have ever known Chiron make.”

On lap ten an even more horrific moment awaited Birkin. ‘Sabipa’ lost control of his Bugatti in a fast corner. The car went off, rolled back on and a Peugeot just missed it. Birkin arrived at 80mph. He saw the wrecked Bugatti while lying across the middle of the road... face downwards and arms stretched rigid by his side, was the driver with a pool of blood oozing from beneath his chin. I could not brake in time. If he was killed I would have to run over him, one death being better than two, but if he was not killed there seemed to be no room between him and the edge of the road to stop me tearing into a deep ditch. The crowd was quite

In NUVOLARI’S TIME

ale

silent. No-one shouted to me to tell me what had happened. I did not dare assume that he was dead, so I went through, not daring to look at the wheels on the side of the ditch and I swear that the other wheels missed that man’s head by less than two inches.”

Birkin kept on and next lap saw an ambulance moving away from the corner. He deduced that the driver was still alive and ‘thanked my stars’ he hadn’t driven over him to save himself. At lap 19 of the 25 he was up into second place, beginning a long thrust to try to catch Etancelin who, cap round the wrong way, sawed at the steering wheel as he took the Bugatti round the downhill corners, his hands constantly adjusting as if he played a musical instrument. Towards the end he held down his usual youthful impulsiveness and nursed his Bugatti into the last lap with the fuel low and the clutch requiring tender loving care. Somewhere behind him the mighty Bentley of Birkin panted along, straining hard and as Birkin thought, catching him. Etancelin came down the straight, tall trees and the frontage of an old house within the trees to his right. An official stood holding a flag on two sticks to that it resembled a board. As Etancelin passed he lowered it, a group of four men shook their fists — in delight — and on the other side of the road a photographer in plus fours and alpine hat stepped quickly out to take a picture. Etancelin had less than a litre of fuel left when he crossed the line. At that moment he was three and a half minutes in front of Birkin. As Etancelin made his way from the line the gearbox failed completely but that didn’t matter now. He coasted to his pit just down the road, his wife in a tea-cosy hat so typical of the 1930s gave him a big kiss and he smiled broadly, shaking people’s hands while he was still in the cockpit. When Birkin crossed the line the official, the men and the

photographer had all gone... Birkin remembered this as the last big race to bring him success in the ‘old green Bentley, and the most enjoyable’ even though he’d finished second, and when he stopped found a trace of blood on his tyres, ‘Sabipa’s’ blood that he’d run through. Charles Faroux, doyen of French motor racing and intimately connected with the Le Mans 24-hour race which Bentleys had won from e 1927 to 1930, said to Birkin: ‘The crowd laugh at your Bentley, capitain Mans Birkin, but I tell them not to laugh. I have seen the Bentleys at Le fool." and I know. I am Faroux. I am not a bloody to Next day ‘Sabipa’s’ wife arrived at Birkin’s hotel in Pau and asked see him.

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After thanking me with many tears, she told me that her husband had been conscious the whole time, and saw quite clearly the wheels rushing at his head and heard the hissing sound as they went past. He confirmed my own belief that there were not two inches between them and himself.”

Birkin was the best British driver of the time, and an amateur although the fame which racing brought must have helped the motoring business he’d set up. Small, shy, ‘not very approachable’ he ‘had a stammer but he gave the impression of great physical strength and stamina. He wore white trousers, a blue open-necked jersey with a BRDC [British Racing Drivers’ Club] badge on the breast-pocket and, always, around his neck a blue and white polka dot scarf knotted at the back to allow the ends to stream behind.’” Etancelin’s career had been gathering momentum for three or four years. He was recognised for his courtesy behind the wheel, didn’t crash and didn’t get involved in incidents. A ‘broad shouldered, handsome, smiling’ man nicknamed Phi-Phi, he ‘was one of the great French drivers of the thirties. [...] He drove, in blue overalls buttoned at neck and wrists and with a tweed cap worn back to front in the manner of the early days of motoring, crouched close to his wheel, elbows flashing up and down like pistons. Etancelin drove with great effort, in contrast to the calm, debonair Chiron, who delicately changed gear with thumb and two fingers and not gripping with his fist.’ The Czech Grand Prix at Brno was added to the calendar and, reflecting the era, two drivers with aristocratic names — Hermann zu Leiningen and Heinrich-Joachim von Morgen — shared a Bugatti which won it while Nuvolari had a typical race. Nuvolari and Borzacchini — ‘shy, boyish, little, never had much money” — drove Alfa Romeos for Scuderia Ferrari. Nuvolari locked into a fierce battle with Caracciola’s Mercedes but his clutch failed on lap five. Nuvolari took over Borzacchini’s car and attacked the leaders — on the final lap his water pump failed and he finished the race at walking pace, third. At San Sebastian in October, the final Grand Prix of the season, Varzi won a hard race by 22 minutes in a Maserati. Etancelin’s Bugatti overturned when a wheel collapsed, another Bugatti caught fire and the driver was seriously injured, a third crashed, but the driver was unharmed. The depression forced Caracciola to close down his elegant showrooms on Berlin’s most fashionable street. That wasn’t the worst of it because in November 1930 Mercedes wrote saying his contract had been terminated. Caracciola and Neubauer found a way round this. They put

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together a deal with Mercedes so that officially, Caracciola became a privateer with a tiny team, himself as driver, his wife Charly, a co-driver, and a mechanic with Neubauer to manage it. In 1931, Grand Prix racing abandoned the fuel consumption formula and replaced it with minimal regulations. The minimum race distance was set at ten hours, requiring two drivers for each car. It produced ‘mixed fields’ of sports cars which had been stripped down, and proper

racing cars. Twenty eight cars entered Monaco but Alfa Romeo withdrew because they had a contract with an Italian tyre company and the tyres had been disappointing in the Mille Miglia the week before. Grid positions were by ballot giving Dreyfus (Maserati) pole and putting ‘Williams’ (Bugatti) on the second row. ‘Williams’ led but retired on lap five with a valve problem. Varzi (Bugatti) and Caracciola (Mercedes) were moving up, and so was Chiron’s Bugatti — but Varzi had a puncture and hit a kerb. Chiron led at half distance, Caracciola’s clutch failed and Chiron won by nearly four minutes from Luigi Fagioli in a Maserati. The Monaco measure: Chiron, 100 laps, 3h 39m 9.2s, an average speed of 54.0mph: Dreyfus, 1930, 53.6mph. The ultimate measure: at Daytona in February Campbell pushed the Land Speed Record to 245mph. Fagioli’s career arched across the Second War and on into the modern world championship. He was ‘short, stocky, swarthy, with close-cropped receding hair [...] his bullet head sat aggressively on an almost of indiscernible neck. Broad shoulders and muscular, hairy arms told the of mould the in great physical strength. He was indeed a man

the pioneer drivers who wrestled with the monster cars at the turn of taciturn was he laughed, he than century. [...] He scowled more often he was a and quick to fury. Like so many Italian racing men of his time true tiger in action.’ known German driver Manfred von Brauchitsch said Fagioli was well he teams for his temperament. Another view was that Fagioli enraged drove for by ‘insubordination’ to pit signals. held the opinion that Unhappily, Fagioli was no believer in team work and should be allowed to if he could outdrive the other members of his team he ving determination to benefit from his ability, but surrounding his unswer he was not driving win -was an irrepressible light-heartedness, and when be in his pit, usually would he was always clowning. His equally jovial wife Luigi in the blue overalls and they were often to be seen sitting together,

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and white helmet that he rarely bothered to take off between races, simply

pushing it up on his head as one might a bathing cap.”’

The Italian Grand Prix at Monza attracted five Maseratis, four Alfa Romeos (Campari-Nuvolari) and a couple of Bugattis (Varzi-Chiron). Because of the ten-hour rule and holding it in May, the race started at 8 o’clock in the morning to maximise daylight time. Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo broke down and he walked back to the pits. Then he lay down on a blanket on some grass, a towel for a pillow, his tartan cap resting on that. A masseur in a white coat held Nuvolari’s right hand in both his hands and rubbed it hard, keeping the blood flowing, keeping it supple. Nuvolari smiled — perhaps embarrassment, because he was being filmed. Jano decided that when Campari pitted Nuvolari would replace him. Varzi led into lap two and by lap five had stretched that to five minutes over Campari. Nuvolari took over on lap 43, fuelling the car himself, and was so dominant that he won by two laps. When he slowed and stopped a crowd gathered round the car and someone pinched his chin, a gesture of great affection. Nuvolari stood in the cockpit and, amid a sea of happy faces, took a heavy swig of what looked like champagne. The French race, at Montlhéry, produced a typical mixed entry with three works teams, Alfa Romeo, Bugatti and Maserati, while Mercedes came back for the first time since the war. Birkin met ‘Sabipa’ who shook him ‘energetically by the hand’ and thanked him for saving his life at Pau the year before. Birkin couldn’t see ‘that there was anything at work in his salvation except the very greatest of good fortune. I myself had had no time to weigh the pros and cons.’ The Alfa Romeos were favourites although they knew the Bugattis would be strong and Jano instructed his three drivers — Nuvolari , Borzacchini and Ferdinando Minoia — to proceed with caution, run at an even pace and let the Bugattis go. They had to do this until their first pit stops somewhere into the third hour of the race. Since it was over the ten hours and 1,000 kilometres there was time. Birkin was partnered by Eyston: The roads had become very slippery and every one was finding his seat almost intolerably uncomfortable; Varzi I think drove with a cushion at his back, and another driver called desperately for padding . I lost a large patch of skin which did not return for several weeks. But all of these were able to shield their discomfort with a screen of polite discretion; and, more

important, the seat of their trousers. George Eyston was less fortunate: he

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lost the latter [...] We had stopped at the pits and he was bending over the engine in front of the grandstands when suddenly a roar of laughter rose from the ranks of Frenchmen. At first neither of us could understand the reason for it, and we looked up and down the course for a source of amusement. By their signs and cat-calls the delighted crowd soon betrayed George’s disaster, but not until he himself had betrayed a liberal area of his person to them.”

The Alfa Romeos ran sixth, seventh and eighth, cars ahead began to drop out and Jano gave the instruction attack! Nuvolari responded and in the fifth hour was up to second but the Alfa Romeos had a weakness: brakes. Nuvolari’s were beginning to feel soft and all three cars pitted to see what could be done. Nuvolari continued and drove the final hours with virtually no brakes at all. Chiron, sharing with Varzi, won it and that was received with polite applause. Varzi, in his white linen cap, goggles up on his forehead, stood in the cockpit, the garlands laid across the bonnet of the car. Even at such a moment he kept his face severe, unbending, remote. Then just for an instant as if he was saying oh, all right then he did smile, fleeting, stolen from an image of himself he didn’t wish to portray. At Spa, Varzi forced his Bugatti into the lead but Nuvolari thrust the Alfa Romeo up to him and ‘it was immediately apparent that a desperate duel was to be fought between these two cars.’* Nuvolari burst by on this opening lap and for two hours it raged, ego against ego, will against will, skill against skill. During the second hour the lap record was broken twice. In the fury of this Chiron calmly brought his Bugatti up, joined the duel himself and broke the lap record again. Varzi dropped out (magneto) on lap 44 of the 88 and Chiron’s Bugatti eventually gave up about two and a half miles from the pits. Chiron ran there for tools, and ran back, but couldn’t repair the car in time. Nuvolari had to stop twice with an ignition problem letting ‘Williams’ in for the win. The Niirburgring beckoned and 100,000 paid to watch even though the banks were closed because of the financial crisis gripping Germany. and The crowd anticipated a struggle between the Bugattis of Varzi la Caraccio of s Chiron, the Alfa Romeo of Nuvolari and the big Mercede and had which weighed two tons, had an engine exceeding seven litres built cars the to ck throwba “a been described by one Italian journalist as twenty years ago.’ darker. As they Caracciola remembered the sky becoming darker and

it reminded him went to the grid at 9.30 the rain began, fine initially — the paddock had of mist — but deepening into a downpour.” By then, become a morass of yellowing mud.

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Fagioli in the low red Maserati with the brass radiator was into the lead as they bunched for the first loop at the end of the straight, Caracciola behind him. Caracciola tried to pass but that wasn’t easy. The rain smeared the windscreen, distorting Caracciola’s vision, and if he lifted his head above it the rain smacked into his face. Fagioli’s Maserati, too, flung back a wave of water. Caracciola edged up to him, pulled out at The Swallow’s Tail (Schwalbenschwanz), a pronounced loop, and went by. He thought I need to put some distance between us so I can pit for tyres. The white Mercedes went past the pits ‘like a whining bullet’ and the crowd rose to Caracciola. Fagioli came though five second behind him, then a pack of cars with Varzi, Nuvolari and Chiron among them. By lap three Caracciola was averaging more than 60mph but behind him Nuvolari had caught Fagioli and on lap six took him. The track began to dry... Fagioli got tired of sitting on Nuvolari’s tail, and was almost level with him as he passed the grandstand at the end of the seventh lap. In a desperate, although successful attempt to pass, he skidded right across in front of Nuvolari’s car.”

Nuvolari responded instantly and in a loop passed him, sliding the Alfa Romeo, and that drew a great shout from the crowd. The rain came back, drifting cloud masked the castle on the hill and wily Louis Chiron was coming. On lap eight he was past Fagioli, on lap 11 past Nuvolari. Caracciola led by two minutes but pitted. They must have practised this because they changed the enormous rear wheels and refuelled in something over a minute. As Caracciola prepared to drive off, Neubauer, holding his stopwatch, barked ‘record time!’ for the pit stop. The rain eased again and now Chiron held an advantage because, although the weight of the Mercedes had allowed Caracciola to exploit the wet track, the lighter, more nimble Bugatti liked the dry. Chiron was taking 15 seconds a lap from Caracciola but even that wasn’t enough and, with the crowd in a frenzy, Caracciola crossed the line more than a minute ahead. When Caracciola stopped he was lifted from the car and saw ‘hundreds of hands reaching out to me.’ He glanced across to the pit and saw Charly standing at the back of it, tears of joy down her face. Four days later, Britain, France and the United States agreed to renew their financial credits to Germany to prevent the curren cy collapsing completely. Confidence was so low that the banks, closed of course before the German Grand Prix, did not re-open for anothe r three weeks. The Czech Grand Prix became a freak event on lap two when Fagioli lost control of his Maserati and it skidded into the wooden posts which

IN NUVOLARI'S TIME

7

held up the public footbridge, bringing the whole thing down. Borzacchini, close behind, actually got his Alfa Romeo through as the bridge was coming down. Varzi and Nuvolari arrived side-by-side and at racing speed. They speared off in opposite directions, Varzi into a bank and Nuvolari into a ditch. Caracciola (Mercedes) and Chiron (Bugatti) arrived side-by-side, too. Caracciola went into the ditch and damaged his car but somehow Chiron ploughed along the ditch, emerged beyond the debris of the bridge and continued. Varzi gave Nuvolari a lift back to the pits and Caracciola, limping forward, hit a tree. Nuvolari took over Borazcchini’s car but it wouldn’t restart and thirty minutes were lost as they worked on it without realising the battery had gone flat. Lehoux chased Chiron for the lead and hit a tree, Chiron beating Stuck in another Mercedes by 14 minutes. To the motor racing fraternity the depression was something to be ridden out, an irritant with unfortunate consequences, like making car manufacturers go broke. In the other world, times were getting tougher. Three days after Brno there was a day of heavy rioting in London in protest at the Government’s austerity measures. Approaching 1932, Grand Prix racing was low: Mercedes gone, Caracciola free to drive an Alfa Romeo and, apart from Italy, no factory

team but Bugatti entered races. Mussolini, however, still actively encouraged motor racing for reasons of national virility. Birkin has described the extent, flavour and importance of it, beginning with the crowds. ‘Avanti!’ they yell, ‘Avanti! Coraggio!” and if [the driver] is driving without skill, they groan without restraint. There is always something to excite and them even if they have to be content with mere speed. There is a crash Every world. the in the noise that breaks out must be one of the loudest assistance, one has advice to offer: the crowds press forward to give enemies triumph and friends weep. asm for But under this hysteria there is a profound and genuine enthusi and the drivers the sport. Signor Mussolini gives it active encouragement, far more racing motor are presented to him after the race. He has made ted it. The public popular in Italy than horse racing, almost indeed substitu information about do not have to go to specialising newspapers for their segregates several races and technical improvements: the popular press not enjoyed so largely columns for the subject, which hints at a popularity September there is a to April in other countries. Every week-end from meeting on one or other of their courses.

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Monaco was in April and by now more than established, more than an adornment. It had become a centrepiece and everybody wanted to drive there. The race in 1932 was Grand Prix racing. Among the leading drivers... Alfa Romeo: Nuvolari, making his debut there, Campari, Borzacchini, Caracciola as a semi-independent. Maserati: Fagioli, Dreyfus. Bugatti: Varzi, Chiron, ‘Williams’. In Saturday practice Chiron went quickest with 2m 4s but the grid was decided by a draw and Chiron drew a place on the second row. Sunday dawned fine but clouded over before the race began. As a celebrity guest, Malcolm Campbell had been lent a Rolls-Royce to drive round the circuit. He was applauded warmly. At 1.30 the starter lowered his flag and ‘Williams’ led from Chiron up the hill towards Casino Square. Somewhere between Casino and the exit to the tunnel Chiron overtook ‘Williams’ and, going hard, was four seconds in front as he crossed the line into lap two. By lap nine Chiron had reached the backmarkers and into lap ten led Nuvolari by 17 seconds, Varzi running fifth. The next lap, Varzi moved to third. Jano signalled Nuvolari attack now, Chiron has the back-markers. Nuvolari responded and hammered the lap record, Chiron responded and they circled, equidistant, for ten laps. Varzi hammered Nuvolari’s record. Nuvolari flung the Alfa Romeo at Monaco’s narrow, unforgiving streets and by lap 25 was within five seconds of Chiron, by lap 29, three. Next lap Chiron came up behind the Polish Count Czaikowski who didn’t get out of the way, forcing Chiron to follow him through the tunnel. At the chicane Chiron’s hubcap brushed a sandbag, destabilising the car. It swerved, hit the footpath and rolled three times, throwing Chiron out. He suffered a cut forehead and bruising. Nuvolari missed him... A classic Monaco pursuit had been created, Varzi hunting Nuvolar i and closing on him. At 30 laps the gap was six seconds, Borzacc hini third, Caracciola fourth. Nuvolari destroyed the pursuit by driving so fast that at 40 laps he led by 28 seconds, and at half distance that had become 17. Caracciola caught Borzacchini and they grapple d before Borzacchini pitted for a wheel change. Caracciola ran third, second when Varzi’s rear axle broke. Jano signalled Nuvolari slow! He, Caracciola and Borzac chini were all in Alfa Romeos and team orders applied — but Caracci ola was semiindependent. At lap 60 Nuvolari led Caracciola by 30 seconds and Borzacchini by 38.

In NUVOLARI’S TIME

119

Caracciola accelerated. He’d describe the race as very difficult. He travelled at an ‘almost murderous’ speed within Monaco’s constrictions. Caracciola knew about the unwritten rule that if two from the same team are clear they don’t race each other, the driver leading at halfdistance gets the race. Otherwise they risk straining and breaking their cars. Caracciola knew also that the unwritten rule was both timehonoured and regarded as etiquette but headstrong youngsters, fashioning their careers so urgently, sometimes declined the convention. Caracciola was catching Nuvolari’s red Alfa Romeo... At lap 70, Caracciola cut Nuvolari’s lead to nine seconds. Still Caracciola attacked and across the next ten-laps found a second — not easy to do against Nuvolari — then found more. Nuvolari’s ‘signs to his pit become increasingly agitated. The pit staff were somewhat perplexed, failing to realise that as the pace had not been accurately foreseen, Nuvolari’s tanks were practically dry.’” One report found the Rascasse hairpin an interesting place to watch because you could stand so close you could almost touch the cars. Nuvolari talks to himself. Naturally the words cannot be heard above the noise of the exhaust, but his lips can be seen moving, and one can imagine the full-throated words they are emitting. As the end of the race approaches he becomes excited, hitting the side of the car with his right hand, gesticulating — not to the spectators, because he is blind to all that is outside himself and his car. His fuel to supply is very low. Perhaps he is beseeching Madonna that it may last the end.”*

With ten laps to go Nuvolari led by seven seconds but soon enough — that he Caracciola had his car up so close — Nuvolari slowing slightly watched la could see into Nuvolari’s car. Travelling side-by-side, Caraccio Caracciola Nuvolari changing gears with ‘nervous, hasty gestures.’ them any owe don’t I me, thought I am not a works driver, the team rejected d the conventions. He’d overtake Nuvolari if he could. He glimpse be shouting — grandstands, saw people on their feet — they seemed to and then he saw the finishing line.” d and was Crossing it, Nuvolari won by two seconds. He stoppe which oyce Rolls-R the from presented with a bouquet of flowers Campbell had driven. the sound of Caracciola halted and, stepping from his car, heard ‘contempt’ of in tands jeering and whistling coming from the grands the convention, robbing him. They clearly thought Caracciola had obeyed

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them of a dramatic finish. Caracciola walked over to the pits feeling miserable because, all else aside, he’d never been jeered before. Caracciola’s misery cannot have been mollified when Giovannini said ‘that was decent of you’ but this surely was when Giovannini asked if he would like to join the team. The Monaco measure: Nuvolari, 100 laps, 3h 32m 25.3s, an average speed of 55.8mph; Chiron, 1931, 54.0mph. The ultimate measure: in February at Daytona, Campbell pushed the Land Speed Record from 245 to 253mph. The start at Monza was given by the Secretary General of the Italian Fascist Party. The race would run for five hours, the Alfa Romeo clearly superior although Fagioli led the first ten laps in his Maserati and set fastest lap. Chiron and Varzi were finding their Bugattis exhausting to handle and both retired with mechanical problems. ‘The Bugatti and Alfa Romeo drivers changed cars among themselves, even driving other cars in the team for which they were not nominated as spare drivers. Nuvolari drove his car single-handed...’* By now people were using the word master to describe Nuvolari, pointing out that he had won round the streets of Monaco, round the roads of Italy in the Mille Miglia and now round custom-built Monza. The French Grand Prix was at Reims, the first time on this road circuit and the race’s eleventh staging post. The talk inevitably centred on Alfa Romeo and Bugatti, the only two makes on the grid of 16 cars. Caracciola led, Varzi slowing with a gearbox problem and reportedly Nuvolari shook his fist at Caracciola as he went past him on lap 11. Nuvolari was in that mood and even at the end — when Jano signalled him to slow for a grandstand finish with team-mates Caracciola and Borzacchini — he kept on and won by a distance. Nuvolari did not enter motor races to go slowly in them. At the Nurburgring only nine cars started, the absence of Mercedes keenly felt. A traditional contest, Alfa Romeos against Bugattis, soon dissolved into a milk run for the Alfa Romeos. Caracciola won it from Nuvolari and Borzacchini, Dreyfus in a Bugatti a long way back. Nobody else finished. The Nazis doubled their seats in parliamentary elections to become the biggest party. Within days the President of Germany blocked Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. Hitler watched and waited. The Czech Grand Prix at Brno attracted a strong entry, includi ng Mercedes sports cars to be driven by Wagner and an aristocr atic snob, von Brauchitsch. The Alfa Romeos of Nuvolari and Borzacchini had been fast in practice and they were confident they would win. In lashing rain

IN NUVOLARI'S TIME

12]

they led but the race became chaotic on lap three when at least four cars retired — one on fire, Varzi with an eye injury. Borzacchini retired, too — brake problems — and Nuvolari’s ignition wouldn’t work properly so he was constantly in and out of the pits. Chiron won it from Fagioli’s Maserati; Nuvolari half an hour from Chiron. That was 4 September, the end of another season and the beginning of something which overshadowed everything else.

Notes 1. Racing Driver’s World, Caracciola. 2. Full Throttle, Birkin. 3. Acar produced by Major Frank Halford, later a well-known designer with the de Havilland aero company. 4. Merz was chauffeur to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and was at Sarajevo when Ferdinand was assassinated, starting the First World War.

5. The Roaring Twenties, Posthumus. 6. As was the way of it, obscure people appeared in Grands Prix. There were two Ghica-Cantacuzinos, one Jean and the other simply G. They drove at Le Mans in 1928 and even the most authoritative histories of that race give him as G. The relationship between the two — brothers, cousins — is unclear or even whether both were Princes. Nor is it clear which of them

drove at Brooklands. 7. Caracciola, op. cit. 8. Charles Frederick William Grover-Williams (1903-1945) had an English father and French mother. Born in Paris, he was fluent in both languages and soon fascinated by cars. He raced motorcycles and after the First World War got a job as a chauffeur before his career in racing cars began. In the Second World War, with France occupied, he came to England and

joined the Royal Army Service Corps. Because of his command of French, he ended up in the French Resistance, was captured, taken to a concentration camp and did not survive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grover-Williams 9. Roaring Twenties. 10. The German Grand Prix, Posthumus. 11. Caracciola, op. cit. 12. L’Auto Italiana, quoted in When Nuvolari Raced.

13. Roaring Twenties.

14. When Nuvolari Raced. 15. D. David, www.ddavid.com/formula1/ 16. Speed was my Life, Neubauer.

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17. Enzo Ferrari, Yates. 18. Roaring Twenties. 19. Birkin, op. cit. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges. 24. Ibid. 25. Caracciola, op. cit. 26. Great Racing Drivers. 27. Amateur Racing Driver, Cholmondeley Tapper. 28. The Motor. 29. Birkin, op. cit. 30. Caracciola, op. cit. 31: The Motor. 32. Ibid. 33. Forward! Forward! Courage! 34. Birkin, op. cit. 35. The Monaco Grand Prix, Hodges. 36. The Autocar. Wks Caracciola, op. cit. 38. The Motor.

Chapter 4

END OF INNOCENCE n 30 January 1933, a sharp, wintry Berlin day, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It happened at noon, and the darkness began to gather then. Within a short time he began to reshape the country in the image he wished for it: not just strength but strength through calculated brutality. Hitler encouraged the belief that Germany had been deceived and humiliated after the First World War. The strength was to demonstrate, inside and outside the country, that it could never happen again. He would do this in many ways, and motor racing was one. He moved quickly. Mercedes came to him with an idea to build a world-beating Grand Prix car for 1934, when a new formula was to be introduced. For several years there had been unease that the cars were becoming too fast so the new formula — maximum weight without fuel, oil, water or tyres of 750kg, and a minimum width of 850mm — aimed at i standardisation. Dropping phrases like ‘world domination’ into any conversation with Hitler seems to have had a soothing effect on him and by the spring of 1933 he had been to the AVUS where Bugattis won — a demonstration of motor racing’s power — and made a speech at the Berlin Motor Show announcing a people’s car would be built, a National Socialist Kraft Korps’ formed to promote motoring and Grand Prix cars would be built. He’d given Mercedes the word: go, or rather he’d told them that any company making Grand Prix cars would be subsidised with 500,000 Marks. ‘The justification was simple: the machine would showcase German technology to the European masses and thereby function as a powerful

propaganda tool for the New Order.” Mercedes must have been surprised to learn they weren't alone. Auto Union — a company amalgamating Audi (cars), Horch (quality saloon and cars), DKW (smaller cars and motorcycles) and Wanderer (bicycles r had cars) — came in for their share of the subsidy. In 1931 Wandere car and commissioned a designer, Ferdinand Porsche, to draw a racing that now became part of Audi.

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Following the Berlin Motor Show, Hitler met Porsche and a couple of Auto Union representatives. The subsidy would be divided between Auto Union and Mercedes: the two mighty companies had been set against each other. On 7 March a department at Auto Union’s Zwickau plant was already working on the Grand Prix car. For generations, racing cars had been painted in their national colours, yellow for Belgium, green for Britain, blue for France, red for Italy, silver for Germany. The cars coming from Stuttgart and Zwickau would follow that and as a consequence would always be known as the Silver Arrows. We are in the land of giants, giants who made the earth tremble. ‘Even as astute an observer of the racing scene as Enzo Ferrari could not have had the vaguest notion of the crushing blow that was about to be dealt to him and his now outdated [Alfa Romeo] P3s.” The year 1933, and the six Grands Prix (minimum distance 500 kilometres) run during it, could only be a time of waiting. It opened quite normally at Monaco in April and of the 18 cars eight were Alfa Romeos, three Maseratis and the other seven Bugattis. It represented the old order, and it had only this year in waiting left to it. For the first time grid positions were determined by best practice laps rather than ballot or entry number. Chiron and Caracciola had Alfa Romeos and they had formed a ‘partnership’ because Chiron, who had just left Bugatti, didn’t know the cars. Chiron had been having an affair with Alice ‘Baby’ Hoffman-Trobeck, wife of Aldred (‘Freddy’) — a Swiss business magnate, heir to a pharmaceutical empire and racing enthusiast. Baby was a beautiful woman, spoke several languages and had an international pedigree. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, her father German, her mother Swedish. Years before, Alfred had met Chiron, thought him a promising young driver and championed him. By 1932 Baby travelled to the races with the Bugatti team, officially as Chiron’s timekeeper, and everyone but Freddy knew the truth. To compound this, Meo Costantini, the Bugatti team manager, was flirting with Baby and that enraged Chiron. To further compound this, Chiron made money at Bugatti and, according to Dreyfus, his ‘head had become somewhat swollen.’ For the Grand Prix of Monza the previous autumn, Costantini booked the Bugatti team into a small Monza hotel but Chiron said it lacked the proper amenities and intended to stay in the luxurious Principe di Savoia in the Piazza della Repubblica, central Milan. Costantini threaten ed that if Chiron did that he wouldn’t be driving for Bugatti in 1933. Chiron stayed at the Principe di Savoia...

END OF INNOCENCE

25

Dreyfus replaced Chiron at Bugatti. At Monaco, Caracciola would show Chiron the way round. On the opening day they both did 2m 3s (57.83mph), only a second from Varzi's Jap record set the year before. Nuvolari hit a barrier at Ste Devote damaging the car so badly that repairs took until the Sunday and, on the second day, Caracciola crashed heavily. On the way down to the quay he braked and the brakes failed, working on only one of the front wheels. That destabilised the car and he realised he couldn’t take the corner onto the quayside. He estimated his speed as 60mph, possibly even more. He had a choice: ram a stone wall or plunge in to the sea. He rammed the wall. Chiron, passing, called out ‘Ill send the mechanics’ but Caracciola was in agony. He felt his leg being ‘slashed by hot, glowing knives.’ He

was carried in a chair to a tobacconist’s, his face contorted by the pain. He’d smashed his thigh and would be out for more than a year. Chiron took provisional pole with his opening 2m 3s. The third day proved ‘more animated’: All the competitors were on the circuit except Etancelin, and I ask you to believe there were some beautiful struggles which make us think that tomorrow we will be attending an ardently disputed race. Varzi and Dreyfus, using the same car in relays, covered a total of thirty laps. It was

Varzi who was fastest of all.’

He snatched pole with 2m 2s, Chiron alongside, Borzacchini next. Nuvolari, using someone else’s car, managed 2m 4s. The race started at 1.30 but by then ‘thousands of people were peering down from the cliffs and from the windows of the houses on the terraces high above the course. It was a sunny, colourful scene.” From the flag Varzi, accelerating hard, took the lead. The cars dug a dust storm as they accelerated away. Borzacchini moved across on Chiron to get behind Varzi, Nuvolari fourth. By lap three Nuvolari was into second was place and on lap four, to a reverberating roar, Nuvolari — in what Casino to up Varzi described as a rather stained yellow jersey, overtook Square.

It drew The most intense struggle in motor racing history had begun.

95 laps. together the two men of the feud and it did not release them for

i seized it Nuvolari led for three laps, Varzi seized it and led two, Nuvolar

ever-changing again. Sunlight fell across them, the cars casting fleeting, cars weaved shadows as they fled round nose-to-tail. In the corners the slithering. At under the pace being forced from them, the back-ends

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moments, Nuvolari leant from the cockpit as if his body posture could help the Alfa Romeo round the corners. After ten laps: Nuvolari

21m 12s

Varzi

21m 13s

Varzi retook the lead on lap 13 and held it for four, lost it, seized it again on lap 19, the two cars fleeing round sometimes nose-to-tail and never more than 20 yards apart. After 20 laps: Varzi

42m 26s

Nuvolari

42m 27s

Nuvolari retook the lead three laps later and held it for six, lost it for two. L’Equipe reported that each lap was run ‘with an unparalleled animation.’ After 30 laps: Varzi

lh 3m 23s

Nuvolari

lh 3m 24s

On lap 31 Nuvolari, Varzi — and Etancelin — did 2m 3s. Soon after, Varzi equalled the lap record on three successive laps and seized the lead

again. Etancelin...

was driving magnificently, but just when it looked as if he might actually pass the two Italians he took the bend coming on to the quayside slightly too fast, turned completely round and hit the sandbags while at about the same time Nuvolari went over the pavement just after coming out of the tunnel.’

Etancelin’s Alfa Romeo emerged undamaged, and he was temporarily out of contention. After 40 laps: Nuvolari

lh 23m 57s

Varzi

lh 23m 58s

Etancelin recovered his pace, broke the lap record and moved up towards

the duel again. At half distance:

END OF INNOCENCE

Varzi

lh 44m 48s

Nuvolari

lh 44m 49s

Borzacchini

lh 45m 9s

Etancelin

lh 45m 18s

127

Etancelin found a Way past Borzacchini on lap 55 but drew Borzacchini with him and now all four leading cars ran together. After 60 laps: Nuvolari

2h 5m 39s

Varzi

2h 5m 40s

Etancelin

2h 5m 41s

Borzacchini

2h 5m 42s

Five laps later Varzi seized the lead again and Etancelin was attacking when his transmission failed. The Autocar captured that instant. The best place to watch this scrap is at the Gasworks hairpin: Here, on the

footpath, behind the white-washed sandbags, one is so close to the drivers that it is possible to see their lips move and to read the words they are uttering.

Varzi, Nuvolari and Etancelin approach this bend in a compact group. [...] Etancelin is three lengths behind. He swings his Alfa round the bend, grits his teeth in a manner which indicates ‘now I am going to get these

two,’ accelerates, slips into third and — slows down. A differential shaft has broken! He free-wheels into the pits, only a short distance away, and after

jumping out of the car finds that both his hands are a mass of blisters.

Borzacchini’s engine sounded as if it had a problem and he fell away from the two leaders so that after 70 laps: Nuvolari

2h 26m 3s

Varzl

2h 26m 4s

A great cheer went up when Varzi got past Nuvolari again. In front of the main stands they’d been hammering along side-by-side and gone wide to lap Freddy Zehender, a Sicilian who had ‘a wonderfully unusual and mobile face’ decorated by bushy eyebrows and a vast grin. Zehender’s Alfa Romeo was off the pace but overtaking him created a gap for Varzi. After 80 laps:

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Varzi

2h 46m 47s

Nuvolari

2h 46m 48s

Nuvolari re-took Varzi two laps later and finally the destiny of the race appeared to have been decided because Nuvolari led to lap 90 of the 100. After 90 laps: Nuvolari

3h 7m 23s

Varzi

3h 7m 27s

The decision appeared confirmed when a slower car baulked Varzi so that with only two laps to run... as Nuvolari and Varzi come into the hairpin, just as they had done for those preceding laps, Varzi, six inches astern, slips into second gear, presses on

the accelerator, and shoots his Bugatti past the Alfa. But Nuvolari has slightly higher speed and on the hill to the Casino his car flashes past the Bugatti.’

That pitched them towards the final lap, Nuvolari still leading. They were both in third gear going up the hill to Casino, both risking engine explosions. By now the crowd, the journalists and the pit crews were near hysteria. Somewhere up the hill, or just into Casino, Varzi made his supreme, sublime move and went by. It was the 34th time he had taken the lead — and Nuvolari’s car spat black smoke. An oil pipe had given way and the oil fell on to the red-hot exhaust pipe. Into Casino, going past the imperious frontage of the Hotel de Paris, a signal flashed. Nuvolari’s on fire! He drove on, down towards the Station hairpin, drove on into the tunnel. The crowd, not knowing of Nuvolari’s misfortune, had their eyes glued on the exit from the tunnel. Who would appear first? A low blue car shot into view. ‘Varzi!’ But where was Nuvolari? He emerged from the tunnel slowly, and appeared to be sitting on the tail of the car with his feet on the seat and smoke was pouring from the bonnet.’

Nuvolari drove on down the incline to the quay. Marshals wielding fire extinguishers gesticulated to stop him to put it out but, standing so he wouldn’t get burnt, Nuvolari ignored them. The engine failed and the car rolled gently to a halt. He sprang out and pushed. He ‘smiled sadly, politely, at the crowd who acclaimed him and looked out for Borzacchi ni.

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He smiled again at Varzi, who [came past] finishing his slowing down lap, a cigarette in his lips.” Nuvolari pushed on.” He never made it. On the victory rostrum, a temporary structure like a small marquee on a balcony, Varzi accepted the cup, waved politely and smiled the stolen smile because, clearly the occasion demanded it. To his left stood a cherubic nine-year-old lad, smartly dressed for the occasion and with a flop of dark hair hanging down his forehead. He had a wondrous name like a wave rippling into the harbour, Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand

Grimaldi. He would become Prince Rainier and in the decades to come make a point of standing here. He’d know Fangio and Graham Hill and Senna and Schumacher... The Monaco measure: Varzi, 100 laps, 3h 27m 49.4s, an average speed of 56.4mph; Nuvolari, 1932, 55.8mph. The ultimate measure: at Daytona in February, Campbell pushed the Land Speed Record to 272mph. Bugatti’s latest car hadn’t been completed in time for the French Grand Prix, at Montlhéry, on a cold, grey-tinged day, and a whole dimension of the race — Varzi against Nuvolari again — was gone. Nuvolari took the lead with a clean, crisp start from the flag but his Alfa Romeo was by now outdated. The cars streamed onto the road circuit and some five minutes later streamed back round the vast, still leading. He retired with a Nuvolari saucer-like banking, Earl Howe” in a privately entered laps. six after transmission problem Bugatti retired when a stone shattered his visor and hurt an eye. Campari (Maserati) won it from Etancelin after a tremendous battle, Eyston third. Campari was intoxicated. As a crowd gathered round him he was so tall he loomed above them, the swarthy face smiling and smiling. Beneath his overalls he wore collar and tie. I’m going to retire, he'd say, at the end of the season. Nuvolari was clearly unhappy with Alfa Romeo and a week before the Belgian Grand Prix he took part in a minor race at Reims, where the car broke down again. He reached a decision: I’/] take a Maserati to Spa but exploring the powerful single-seater he felt the road holding wasn’t satisfactory. ‘Diagnosing the weak point, he wasted no time and transformed himself into a mechanical engineer: he dismantled the car, fitted a crossmember under the engine and reinforced the chassis side members the using two robust bolted-on and welded liners. The car was ready on work.’ Friday after 24 hours of uninterrupted

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He started last but ‘flew off like a dart,’ led after the first lap — Spa is 9.2 miles long, of course — and won it from Varzi by more than three minutes. Monza was touched hard by tragedy, although not in the Grand Prix

where Nuvolari needed a wheel change with two laps to go — he’d gone down the straight ‘gesticulating and pointing at his wheels’ one lap, arrived at full speed at the pits next lap, ‘so fast that the car skids slightly under braking, but Nuvolari manages to regain control.’ He sat, anxious, consumed by impatience as the mechanic hammered the nut on the left rear wheel firm. Fagioli went by. Nuvolari glanced back a time or two, nervous like a bird. Deep in the pit Enzo Ferrari stood looking the stern supervisor. As the final hammer blow struck Nuvolari shifted the gearlever into first and was gone. An instant later, he took both hands off the wheel and raised them in the international gesture nothing you can do against fate.’ Fagioli won it. Dreyfus and Costantini were not at Monza because the Bugatti Type 59 wasn’t ready. This car succeeded the Type 51, outpowered by its rivals. The Type 59 ‘was the last example of what is termed the classic Grand Prix car, with non-independent suspension and comparatively unstreamlined bodywork.’ Instead they took lunch at the Pur Sang’’ — an inn which, according to Dreyfus, might have come from an enchanted fairy tale and looked as if it ought to be made of gingerbread — beside the Bugatti factory. They tried to listen to the commentary from Monza but reception was difficult. During the first heat of a supporting race a Duesenberg shed oil on one of the banked curves. For the second heat Campari helped push his car to the grid. By now he had grown into a portly man. Seeing the camera he grinned broadly. Campari told his mechanics to get a whole roast chicken ready for him because he’d be so hungry when he got back he'd eat it all. He and Borzacchini went out, both lost control on the oil, both overturned and both were killed. Campari’s car lay belly up in foliage, a policeman guarding it. In the final, Count Czaikowski was also killed at the same place. The running commentary suddenly stopped in the Pur Sang and in the silence Costantini turned to Dreyfus and said there’s been an accident. Somehow Constantini sensed it. Dreyfus felt this was the saddest day of his time at Bugatti. Nuvolari, deeply shocked, stayed away from the Czech Grand Prix which Chiron won. Chiron added the Spanish Grand Prix at San Sebastian a week later. Nuvolari, commanding that race, crashed on lap

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21 of the 30 in a downpour. His Maserati struck a wall, throwing him out and he woke in hospital, a familiar environment. In the background, work on the Mercedes progressed and Alfred Neubauer was putting together a team of drivers. He’d settled on von Brauchitsch, an awkward man with aristocratic pedigree but a brave, talented driver and had Fagioli, with all the rewards and problems the Italian would bring, in mind. For the third driver, Neubauer mused Caracciola? but had he recovered enough from the Monaco crash to drive? Would he ever drive again? In November, Neubauer travelled to Lugano, where Caracciola and Charly were staying, to find out. Neubauer has recounted how he challenged Caracciola to walk. ‘Without a word he got up and took several steps up and down the room. He laughed, but I could see the beads of sweat on his forehead and the twitch of pain round his mouth when he put his weight on the injured leg.’ Caracciola’s leg ‘hurt awfully, the plaster seemed to have loosened and I had the unpleasant feeling that Neubauer was following each step I took.’” Mercedes and Auto Union wanted to make maximum impact on their debuts, and they selected the AVUS Grand Prix on May 27 for that. Neubauer offered Caracciola a contract, but with a stipulation. In practice for the AVUS he had to prove he could still handle a racing car. Neubauer left the next day. In January 1934 Caracciola travelled to the Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart to sign the contract. The journey put such strain on his leg that for a time he simply lay on his hotel bed. He wouldn’t have signed the sort of contract on offer before his crash but now he had to be grateful for whatever he could get. In February the Caracciolas were in their chalet at Arosa in the Swiss Alps. Charly went skiing with a party of friends and an avalanche hit them. Caracciola waited at the chalet in the dining room, lighting all the candles there. That night someone came. At first Caracciola thought it was Charly, but then saw the silhouette of a man. He went down, holding a candle and the man told him that she was dead. Caracciola went back to the dining room and put out all the candles except the one

he held in his hand. Caracciola retreated into a private world. Baby Hoffman-Trobeck nursed him out of it and Chiron brought him out of it when he arrived at the chalet without warning and asked if he would like to drive the lap of honour before the Monaco Grand Prix. Caracciola said no, Chiron persisted — ‘You're still a young man, you can’t retire just yet’ — and

Caracciola said yes.

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The great career was reborn, and just in time to occupy the land of the giants.

The Mercedes, known as the W25, had a 3.3-litre engine and independent suspension: the wheels were ‘sprung entirely independent of each other. The car was fitted with a thin-gauge light alloy body, with a streamlined nose piece over the radiator and front suspension, as well as a long headrest behind the driver.’ The ‘external appearance’ was ‘entirely new [...] and a complete break from the traditional singleseater racing car.’”° In February, Mercedes went to Monza to test the W25 with von Brauchitsch but he crashed and Fagioli was called in. At Monza, Fagioli showed what he could do and convinced Neubauer. He had of course been driving for Alfa Romeo and Enzo Ferrari was ‘publicly furious over what he considered a traitorous act, but his histrionics surely veiled an understanding that Fagioli was a professional like himself and would race for the team — or the country — prepared to pay him the most money.” Auto Union unveiled their car on 6 March, exactly 365 days from work beginning on it. For the first time, the engine — 16 cylinders, initially giving 295 horsepower — was behind the driver. Stuck took it up and down the AVUS, breaking the track record. Stuck was an experienced driver, but the others in the team — zu Leiningen, Momberger and Wilhelm Sebastian — might have been a weak link. Manfred von Brauchitsch, firmly embedded in the Mercedes camp, looked carefully at this car made by the opposition and was ‘not a little surprised’ to see the engine at the back with the driver sitting over the front axle. Alfa Romeo had produced a more powerful car and it raced under the name Scuderia Ferrari, with Varzi, Chiron and Guy Moll” driving it. Maserati provided cars for the privateers, including Nuvolari, although he would drive a Bugatti at Monaco and Alfa Romeos elsewhere. At Monaco, in April, Caracciola did the lap of honour amid a conflict of emotions. He took care to go past the pits at reduced speed and there he saw the mechanics at work, heard the engines being fired. People waved. He reached the place where he’d crashed and drove past that, drove on to the shoreline at the harbour. He felt a breeze coming up from the water and thought good weather for racing. His leg ached and he manipulated the accelerator and brake pedals with his other foot. He completed the lap and by the time he had done that the grid had formed up, five rows, three deep. Caracciola stopped and gazed at the familiar faces. He saw Nuvolari’s ‘small, wiry toreador’s figure,’ Chiron ‘in his light-blue racing suit with his red-and-white dotted scarf, Varzi ‘with his

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precisely parted hair and his eternally smouldering cigarette,’ Earl Howe ‘with his shrewdly smiling eyes, this time without his grey umbrella.” Caracciola watched the start, watched Dreyfus take the lead and Chiron track him, poised to strike and take it for himself. Caracciola watched the cars scream up towards Casino then he turned round and walked away. The experience had shaken him because he understood that this was his home. A man is a racing driver as another is a hunter. He felt it came from instinct, from an urge deeper than conscious thought.** The race turned on pit stops and only three drivers of the 15 starters didn’t make one. Nuvolari suffered brake problems and a four-minute stop punished him. Chiron made a mistake with two laps to go and went into the sandbags at the Station hairpin, letting Moll through for the win. The Monaco measure: Moll, 100 laps, 3h 31m 31.4s, an average speed of 56.0mph; Varzi, 1933, 56.4mph. The ultimate measure: unchanged from Campbell's 272mph in 1933. Nuvolari drove a Maserati at Alessandria between Monaco and the AVUS but in the wet it went off and rolled, trapping him. His left leg was broken and they took him to that familiar place, hospital. It gave him five weeks to recover before he would take a Maserati to the AVUS. Caracciola travelled to Berlin and, staying at the same hotel as Neubauer, asked if he could make his first run early the next morning to avoid Press attention. Caracciola would remember a lovely May morning, the car a dream of a thing. He handled it and himself gently for a lap, the leg hurting, but bearable. He accelerated, and now the trees on either side of the track became a wall of grey and of green, the track itself became a white band and the wind rose and rose into a great whine. He said to himself I can still drive! The Mercedes cars suffered problems with their carburettors and made a tactical withdrawal. Nuvolari meanwhile made a tactical advance. He arrived at the AVUS with his leg in plaster and the Maserati modified so he could drive it using only his good foot. Violent rain delayed the start and Stuck led in the Auto Union, Chiron looming behind him out of rolling spray, Nuvolari third on dry tyres. Stuck forced the streamlined Auto Union so hard that it went out of sight. Smooth and sensuous, it seemed to skim the circuit rather than drive across it. However, Stuck retired with a failing clutch which opened the race to Moll in a streamlined Alfa Romeo, Momberger third, Nuvolari an extraordinary fifth. Moll, seated in the cockpit, had a vast, circular garland placed over him and almost submerged within it. One happy

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official in a military uniform, helping to hoist it over Moll’s head, wore a swastika armband... A week later at the Eifel race round the Nurburgring, von Brauchitsch won from Stuck, the Alfa Romeo of Chiron third, 5m 43s behind, the Alfa Romeo of a young German, Paul Pietsch, fourth, 16 minutes adrift. Everybody could see something profound had begun. Both German teams went to the French Grand Prix at Montlhéry to launch their first concerted assault. The Mercedes, under Neubauer — already a portly, rotund figure - may even have had a sense of humour they were willing to show in public. On the cockpit of one car they put up a sign Defense d’entrer [No entry] in case, presumably, anyone wandered along and fancied having a go themselves. You can understand why Mercedes were anxious this did not happen. The engines developed over 300hp, all four wheels had independent springs and, to service their three cars, they had specialists in carburation, tyres and fuel.” The Mercedes team hadn't raced in France since Lyon in 1914, when Lautenschlager won. The cars were potent propaganda — if they won — and Hitler watched closely. Stuck equalled the lap record on his first flying lap and he’d never been to the circuit before. The record was soon tumbling, although the Italian cars were beating it, too, with Chiron going particularly fast in the Alfa Romeo. All this culminated in the record being beaten by 13 seconds. A crowd of 80,000 watched as Chiron made a daring start from the third row, surging past all the German cars as they tried to get their power on. Caracciola was soon past him — the power coming on — but Chiron retook him. Stuck moved up and took the lead himself but both Mercedes and Auto Union showed fallibility. No German car finished and Stuck’s Auto Union was so difficult to re-start after a pit stop that three mechanics had to link arms to swing the handle. The French crowd cheered when Stuck, the last German car running, finally dropped out on lap 32 of the 40 with a fuel system failure. This did not hide the truth. The Maseratis and Bugattis were clearly obsolete and, although Chiron won from Varzi - making Alfa Romeo 1 and 2 — the future lay elsewhere. A crowd estimated at 200,000 trekked to the Nurburgring to cheer the German cars for quite another reason. Here was a symbol of a humilia ted and battered nation gaining its dignity again with these prehensi le, brutally powerful cars which represented them. The Nurburgring had always been an immense living panorama of an occasion and now

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Germany made cars to compliment the immensity. This was so potent, so symbolic that German politicians — and German politics — could not resist exploiting it, and didn’t. In practice, von Brauchitsch crashed badly enough to break an arm and five ribs. ‘Each racing driver will be caught out one time or another,’ von Brauchitsch would say. ‘After an accident he will always try to get back into the car as soon as possible. At the Nirburgring I had a particularly nasty one. I was blinded by the setting sun. I crashed and was bleeding from several wounds. I was unconscious on a stretcher. At the hospital they put me together again and on the Sunday I could hear the engines...’ It was a cool race day, clear and dry, and because grid positions had been drawn, the leading German car — Caracciola — took its place only on

the third row. At such a circuit, and at such a race over 354 miles, that mattered nothing. Caracciola still wondered if his leg would last that distance. Chiron, from the second row, took his Alfa Romeo into an early lead but Stuck from two rows behind, gave the Auto Union its head, Caracciola following in the Mercedes. Chiron was quickly shed and Stuck covered the opening lap from a standing start at 76.0mph, a mere one and a half mph slower than Nuvolari’s record of 1932 (no race in 1933, of course), and that had been a flying lap. Caracciola urged his car up towards Stuck and they traded fast laps, Caracciola a 78mph, Stuck at 79.1 and 79.2, Caracciola at 79.2mph. They battled hard and at the Karusel, on lap 13 of the 25, Caracciola overtook Stuck on the outside. The crowd loved that, standing and cheering and roaring. Caracciola even accelerated, but next lap the engine let go. Stuck stroked the Auto Union home, winning in 4h 38m 19.2s from Fagioli in the Mercedes, a couple of minutes behind. Chiron, third, came in more than eight minutes after Stuck, a distance of around ten miles. If Stuck and Fagioli were driving into the future, Chiron was driving

from the past. The Belgian customs decided the outcome of the Belgian Grand Prix by trying to charge both German teams duty on their alcohol-based fuel. The Germans refused and didn’t go to Spa where only seven cars set off on the 40 laps in light rain. Chiron and Varzi were conducting an ‘impassioned duel’ trying to break each other, Dreyfus running third and Bugatti team-mate Tonino Brivio fourth. Chiron crashed near Eau Rouge, Varzi led but his engine blew and Dreyfus inherited the lead. He glanced in his mirror and saw that Brivio looked like a man possessed. Brivio was intent on overtaking, Dreyfus responded, Brivio responded to that. They went faster and faster. Absurd, Dreyfus thought, for us to break each other.

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He signalled to Costantini, and Costantini signalled to Brivio back off. Dreyfus won it from Brivio by almost two minutes. The real drama happened just off the course. At the end, the spectator area over the pits collapsed and people fell onto the pits. Von Brauchitsch, discharged from hospital, went to Bremgarten, a circuit west of Berne, for the first Swiss Grand Prix. He suffered constant pain, needing help to get into and out of the Mercedes and had a pillow to soften the juddering on his back. A Voiturette race was run on race morning, in heavy rain, with two well-bred young Britons driving MG’s, Dick Seaman and Hugh Hamilton. Seaman said the course was ‘about five miles round. At first sight it appeared very slow, but later in practice we found it really fast, many of the corners that appeared to be quite sharp as you approached them turning out to be flat-out bends. This was due to the trees which bordered almost the entire course.’”* Seaman worked into the lead and won it with the Grand Prix world watching. Hamilton also competed in the Grand Prix, driving a Maserati. The rain was still heavy when the race began. Stuck led, Nuvolari in the Maserati doggedly after him for twenty laps. Eventually Nuvolari’s ignition failed. Hamilton was far off the pace and Stuck had crossed the finishing line to win when news came through that he’d crashed. The Maserati went into a ‘wild skid’”” in a wooded section and hit a tree, killing Hamilton instantly. Seaman and the British Consul arranged the funeral, and Hamilton was buried in Berne. Memories of Monza 1933, and the deaths there, lingered. The length of the track had been cut to 2.6 miles and chicanes added. Caracciola remembered how hot that autumn was, how they had to practise every day. He described the chicanes as ‘an intricate system of various twists’ and explained how you were changing gear the whole time. Another driver said ‘Monza is a real mountain course minus the mountains.’ Von Brauchitsch was back in hospital because he’d complained of a sore eye after Berne and tests revealed he had a fractured skull from the Nurburgring. Fagioli’s mechanic, Hermann Lang, was given a chance because the brakes on that Mercedes needed bedding in. This was done after practice on the Milan autostrada. Fagioli’s car, Lang remembered, ‘hardly had any brakes left and could not have lasted the race.’ Lang had strict instructions not to rev above 3,000 or ‘you'll be bounced out of your seat.’ Lang took this...

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order calmly, but inwardly got quite excited as I had my own ideas about the forthcoming run! Secretly I put a set of ‘hard’ plugs into my pocket and drove the car as ordered up and down without exceeding 80mph and using the brakes from time to time to bed them in. This autostrada, lined with mulberry trees and passing through cornfields, runs from Milan to Lago Maggiore. My [fellow mechanics] had parked the lorry by a roadmender’s

hut. The autostrada was dead straight and flat. To-day, I promised myself, I would exceed 120mph in a racing car for the first time in my life. I stopped at the hut and told those two that the brakes were all right. They wanted to load the car into the transporter and were surprised when I kept my seat. Their faces dropped even more when I pulled the ‘hard’ plugs” from my pocket. [...] After fitting the racing plugs I asked them to give me a push start. They refused at first and only relented after I swore at them in no mean fashion. After the car got going, I turned to see their long faces. As I opened the throttle, I realized quite well how high I could rev the engine. [...] I did not exceed 3,000 revs in any gear. That already brought me to the exit road from the autostrada and I slowed to turn around. When the rev counter showed 3,000 in fourth gear (about 100mph) I quickly thought, should I or shouldn’t I? 4,000 revs — 110mph, 5,000 revs — 130mph. For the first time in my life I had exceeded 120, it was wonderful! I was in a world of my own and the wind howled round my head and through my heart!”

‘Nuvolari had the new Maserati but it was heavy and only just passed the 750kg weight restriction. One report suggests that as the cars and drivers paraded past the grandstands before the start the drivers gave a Fascist salute. who On a broiling day Stuck led from Fagioli, Varzi and Caracciola glorious moved up to second while ‘in Nuvolari’s magical hands the Nothing Unions. Maserati ran wonderfully, even overcoming the Auto led in the however could resist the progress of the Mercedes.” Stuck Stuck fading. brakes i’s Nuvolar Auto Union from Caracciola at lap ten, arly particul and Caracciola wrestled over the race. The heat was he felt his leg oppressive and sweat stung Caracciola’s eyes. To his dread He answered worse? gets it beginning to hurt and asked himself what if this by doing the only thing he knew, driving on. signal Faster! Lap after lap as he passed the pits he saw Neubauer firebrand in my leg.’ All race long Caracciola tried to defy ‘the hellish burned his feet and zu On lap 59 Stuck pitted because the radiator had Leiningen replaced him. He shouted to the A lap later the pain overwhelmed Caracciola. wheels. Fagioli to replace me! mechanics not to waste time changing the

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The mechanics lifted Caracciola out and Fagioli replaced him. Caracciola walked towards the rear of the pit trying, as best he could, to prevent the leg dragging. At unguarded moments, as he must have known, he just limped awkwardly. Fagioli won it from the Stuck car, Nuvolari driving to the end without any brakes. i Stuck led Spain but an oil pipe failed after three laps, and Caracciola led now, from Wimille — a Parisian who has been described as aloof and lonely — in a Bugatti, Fagioli fourth. The Mercedes looked stronger and stronger, the Bugatti fell away and Caracciola seemed to have the race safe. Neubauer ordered him and Fagioli to hold station but that was just the kind of pit signal Fagioli disobeyed on principle. He caught and passed an exhausted Caracciola and they finished in that order. Neubauer was not pleased. He’d describe Fagioli as a man with ‘no sense of team-spirit and no time for team-discipline.’ Fagioli’s tactics in a race were ‘to wait till the opposition had been worn down, and thinned out. Then, when I gave the signal to ease off, he would accelerate. That was how he won the race.’ Neubauer ‘tried to reason with him, pleaded and threatened — all to no purpose. Fagioli’s invariable reply was that I did not want him to win because he was not a German.’* More than that, an intense rivalry burned between Caracciola and Fagioli. Neubauer put it another way: Caracciola’s successes aroused in Fagioli an ‘insane jealousy’. At the Czech Grand Prix, the entry of the local driver, Josef Brazdil, became one of the strangest stories in all Grand Prix racing. He seems to have borrowed money to buy a Maserati and, unable to pay it back, went to prison. Some of the drivers appealed to the authorities to release him so he could take part in the Grand Prix, returning to prison after it. On his first practice lap Brazdil drove at a corner flat out and crashed into woods, destroying the car and killing himself. Inexperience or suicide? Nobody knew, and nobody knows. By now the future was clearly visible. Fagioli in the Mercedes and Stuck in the Auto Union fought for the lead and Nuvola ri urged his Maserati to stay with them. It couldn't. A pit stop toward s the end cost Fagioli the race, Stuck streaming by and winning it by three minutes, Nuvolari almost a minute further back. The future was German. In 1935 there would be nine Grands Prix, from April at Monaco to Donington in England’s Midlands in October, and weaved into that a European Championship.” If that has a modem feel, so too does the fact that the privateer — the inspired amateurs, somet imes titled, invariably

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rich — had been superseded. Only three teams mattered in 1935, Mercedes, Auto Union and Alfa Romeo. Of the nine Grands Prix, only once — in France — did any other make finish in the top three (Maserati, third) until Donington, when the Germans didn’t go and a shoal of Bugattis helped themselves. Even then, an Alfa Romeo won. Auto Union didn’t enter Monaco and although the constrictions of the place prevented Mercedes from reaching maximum power they deployed enough of it. The front row became eloquent proof because it was decided by best practice times and the three Mercedes filled it, Caracciola (pole), von Brauchitsch and Fagioli. The next two rows were Alfa Romeos — Nuvolari on row two but nearly three seconds slower than Caracciola — and then an assortment of Maseratis and Earl Howe in a Bugatti. Fagioli was in hungry form, leading and breaking the lap record, neither of the other Mercedes finished and he had a famous victory. Nuvolari indulged in a lively struggle for third place before his brakes began to fade. ‘Nuvolari tried everything but he had to accept that it was useless, not to say dangerous, to fight on.’” The Monaco measure: Fagioli, 100 laps, 3h 23m 49.8s, an average speed of

58.1mph: Moll, 1934, 56.0mph. The ultimate measure: at Bonneville, USA in September, Campbell pushed the Land Speed Record to 301mph. Although not a Grand Prix in the accepted sense of this book, the Eifel race at the Niirburgring a week before the French Grand Prix was instructive because a young German driver, Bernd Rosemeyer, had just a been signed by Auto Union to race alongside Varzi. Rosemeyer made striking impression on one of the English contestants who, having to the finished work on his car one evening, had a lift with him back stayed. hotel in the village of Adenau, where the drivers traditionally a rider of This 26-year-old, impetuous German had achieved fame as He had great motorcycles for DKW, part of the Auto Union combine [...] ness in his capabilities, but in addition there was a strong streak of reckless car would his as character, fully apparent on this occasion. He drove as fast in the town was go all the time, and his method of negotiating crossroads care of itself. take to traffic simply to charge straight over, leaving all other feel thoroughly It was a brief drive, but long enough to make me Caracciola, the uncomfortable. As we drew up at the hotel in Adenau, the little wirewith leading driver of Mercedes-Benz came walking along walked with a slight haired terrier that was his constant companion. He but unmistakable limp.”

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Caracciola won the race from Rosemeyer, Lang fifth. Lang freely confessed that he could not keep up with the leaders but pointed out that nobody had expected him to and, anyway, as a reserve driver he couldn’t expect the same sort of engines as the regular team-members. He was content with where he finished and here, quite suddenly, were two drivers who would dominate: Lang the humble mechanic, much derided for his peasant origins by the haughty von Brauchitsch; and Rosemeyer who stands alongside Nuvolari as among the greatest drivers who have ever lived. Some put Caracciola in with them, too. The Auto Unions did go to Montlhéry where three chicanes had been incorporated to slow the cars. The Germans dominated the front of the grid (practice times gave grid placings) although Nuvolari wrung a 5m 23.6s from the Alfa Romeo, good enough for the middle of the front row. Nuvolari led, which prompted one Italian journalist to wonder ‘is the German superiority about to collapse?’ and he answered his own question: ‘no’. The Alfa Romeos retained their sit-up-and-beg body shapes and had new engines of almost four litres, but the expected happened. These engines, which developed at least 320hp, were fitted into the old chassis and they had too much power for them. Von Brauchitsch had ambivalent feelings about the pit signals in general. ‘They have to be followed under all circumstances,’ he would say” — but long after he had retired! — ‘and you just have to knuckle down, very often against your will, against what you want and sometimes against what you know you can really do. The driver does not have the time or the overall knowledge of what is happening everywhere and so he cannot think things through to their end. So he has to follow the signals. That’s not always easy...sometimes it can even drive him to despair.’ Deep into the race Caracciola led with von Brauchitsch closing on him. ‘I had to fight against myself when the pit signal was given and I had to let Caracciola have the victory,’ Nuvolari, whose transmission failed after 14 laps, set fastest lap but Zehender, in a Maserati, finished third, two laps down -- 15% miles. The European Championship opened at Spa, althou gh Auto Union felt their new engines weren’t ready. After Lehoux stalled his Maserati and all the other nine cars got safely round him Caracciola led, von Brauchitsch fourth and moving up. Soon enoug h the Mercedes were first, second and third. Von Brauchitsch retired with a mechanical problem and Fagioli attacked Caracciola. The insane jealously gripped him and he brandished a fist when Caracciola wouldn’t get out of the way. An intense anger gripped Neubauer, who signalled Fagioli in! For once, Fagioli obeyed.

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Von Brauchitsch was out at the back of the pits having a glass of champagne and enjoying watching the race. Fagioli shouted at Neubauer and Neubauer shouted at Fagioli. Von Brauchitsch heard people calling his name and trotted through to the front of the pit. He heard Fagioli shouting, heard Neubauer order him to take over Fagioli’s car. The mechanics changed the plugs and von Brauchitsch jumped into the car but the seat was ‘far too wide for me. Fagioli’s body was entirely different to mine and it had been made for him. I had to find room for my long legs somehow, which wasn’t easy, but after a couple of kilometres I had done that.’ He ran fourth, Dreyfus and Chiron between him and Caracciola. ‘I raced like the devil and after a hard fight I was able to overtake Dreyfus. My whole body was streaming with sweat and my hands, arms and legs were terribly tired, but before I passed the great Chiron.’ That made von Brauchitsch second behind Caracciola at the end, and he felt completely exhausted. He lay on the pit floor but got up smartly when he heard the President of the Belgian Automobile Club had his cup for finishing second.** The organisers of the German Grand Prix entertained no doubts that a German car would win it and be driven by a German. The winner's garland had been made large to fit that German, whoever he turned out to be. The only anthem available for the victory ceremony was the German. The three Auto Unions and five Mercedes would come across the outdated Alfa Romeos and Maseratis when they were lapping them, and even on a circuit of 14.1 miles that might happen several times. Nuvolari, poor Nuvolari, had an Alfa Romeo Tipo B ‘P3’. Outdated? Jano make was working on a new car but, at the Nurburgring, N uvolari had to didn’t do with ‘the largest 3.8-litre version of the P3 engine.” Nuvolari want anyone to see the engine... gined Pietsch, had joined Auto Union although he found the rear-en ; his problem another had He it. for car very difficult and he didn’t care wife Ilse was having an affair with Varzi. ly by Neubauer® describes the Varzi-Ilse Pietsch love affair discreet Peter. giving Pietsch and Ilse pseudonyms, Lil and a general subject of The ‘friendship’ between Varzi and Lil was now one who did not seem conversation, even among the mechanics. The only wrapped up in racing to realise what was going on, who was completely his eyes opened. had he cars, was Peter. But the day soon came when

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Nor was this all, or anywhere near it. Baby Hoffman-Trobeck had left Freddy for Chiron, but the ‘obsessively vain’ Chiron wouldn’t contemplate marriage to an older woman like her and she became known as ‘Chiron’s mattress’. She it was who helped console Caracciola after Charly’s death in the avalanche, and they in turn began an affair — which Chiron didn’t know about.” The grid at the Nurburgring had many other dimensions than racing as the drivers prepared for the 22 laps. The wear on tyres might prove crucial and when practice was over the chief technician of Continental, supplying Mercedes, had a look. He found Caracciola’s quite normal but von Brauchitsch had worn his much more, especially the left rear which was down to the canvas innertubing. Von Brauchitsch would have to stop at least twice and even then his ‘ruthless’ driving style might bring danger. An immense crowd streamed early towards the Nurburgring — start 1lam — under fine drizzle and when they were there some, to amuse themselves, had sing-songs to harmonicas or watched the soldiers wearing swastikas march up and down. Adolf Hihnlein, leading motorsport official and conduit to Hitler, was cheered when he arrived and Nuvolari, in an overcoat, goggles over his forehead, chatted to him. An Englishman, Raymond Mays,“ was on the fourth row in an ERA“! with von Brauchitsch and Caracciola’s Mercedes ahead and when all the German engines were fired up the noise was so violent it frightened him. Mercedes used special fuel and it ‘acted like tear gas’. Mays called out to his mechanic — handkerchief! handkerchief! — because the tear gas made his eyes stream.” The drizzle still fell, mist hung in the distant trees. The start was by lights, red, then yellow — fifteen seconds! — then green. Stuck’s Auto Union stalled and his mechanics ran on to the grid as the cars were accelerating away. Varzi’s rear wheel struck one of them, fracturing his skull. Varzi could seem cold, but under that he was sensitive, introverted, highly strung and the incident affected him so much that he drove badly after it. ‘Caracciola’s Mercedes just shoots clear of the pack, and Nuvolari with his Alfa is so close to Fagioli’s Mercedes that the scarlet and silver wheels almost touch. Spray is flung high, and car after car hurtles past, while the crowds in the stand leap to their feet amid cries of “Hinsitzen!’” (2Sit down!” )’# Caracciola completed the opening lap 12 secon ds in front of Nuvolari and into lap two Rosemeyer devoured Fagiol i and Nuvolari. The race

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assumed a turbulent shape. Nuvolari, outpowered on the straights, would do what he could, dancing his square-jawed Alfa Romeo up the hills and down the dales and gaining in the corners. Even that seemed only gesturing because he drifted back and, anyway, by lap six his was the only Alfa Romeo still running. The turbulence went on. Rosemeyer’s Auto Union struck a bank and he pitted, Nuvolari went past von Brauchitsch. At lap seven, Caracciola led Fagioli by 32.7s, Nuvolari at 48.0s, von Brauchitsch at 51.6s. Von Brauchitsch re-took Nuvolari and a great impetus began to gather within the turbulence. Nuvolari went past von Brauchitsch again, Fagioli dropping back. The impetus tightened Nuvolari onto Caracciola, von Brauchitsch onto Nuvolari — and, astonishingly, Nuvolari set fastest lap. He’d remember all this in terms of a ‘terrible battle’ and during it the German drivers tried ‘some amazing acrobatic feats, coming close to me on the grass and at the barriers. The track was strewn with earth and grass. Bits of gravel, thrown up by their rear wheels, were coming at me. Under a very dark sky I could hear the high pitched wail of their engines and see the flames coming out of the exhaust pipes.’ Somewhere out there, Nuvolari got the Alfa Romeo up to and past Caracciola. At lap ten, Nuvolari led Caracciola by 9.1s with Rosemeyer coming at

them and von Brauchitsch fourth. Von Brauchitsch’s elbow bled from repeatedly hitting the Mercedes’ bodywork, the palm of his hand bled from working the gearstick and the pedals were so hot they burned his feet. The impetus broke the whole race order up, Rosemeyer passed Caracciola into second, Caracciola clinging, von Brauchitsch snapping at pit him and on a long dip going by. Into lap 11 the mechanics readied for stops — the first four cars would be stopping together. others ‘It is a sight for the gods as mechanics leap to the wheels, and with busy are s German The insert the gigantic funnels for the refills. fuel of their cars, like ants. Jacks go under, wheels are spun off, churns . emptied in, while hubbub arises from the packed stands the car again, gets Nuvolari jumps out of the car, runs to the pit, jumps into ng to Chiron, goes out again, puts a water bottle to his lips, shouts somethi Under the excitement to one of the mechanics, jumps into the car again. nts of his arms while Chiron does knee-bends, with beseeching moveme Nuvolari urges the mechanics to hurry.”

head and shoulders to Von Brauchitsch had a large towel draped over his handed new goggles, prevent spilt fuel running down his back. He was

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

handed a damp sponge for his face. Continental would be having a close look at the tyres which had just been taken off his Mercedes just as, each lap when he passed the pits, someone with binoculars monitored their condition. More than anywhere else except Spa, on the Niirburgring a tyre burst could kill. Stop-watches clicked recording the length of the pit stops as the cars shrieked away. Von Brauchitsch

47s

Caracciola

lm 7s

Rosemeyer

lm 15s

Nuvolari was stationary. The pressure pump which forced fuel into the tank had blocked and it had to be done using a funnel. Nuvolari SWOTe, gesticulated for the mechanics to Hurry! Hurry! and in his frustration almost did a war dance. Nuvolari

2m 14s

He emerged sixth and completing lap 12 ran almost a full minute behind von Brauchitsch, now leading after his swift pit stop. Nuvolari caught and passed Stuck, caught and passed Caracciola and there was Rosemeyer chugging towards the pits with a broken petrol pipe. Nuvolari went past him into second place but the impetus had borne von Brauchitsch far away. As Nuvolari went into second place he was 1m 9s behind. As von Brauchitsch passed the pits on lap 14, Neubauer made a gesture like closing a big suitcase: calm down. At lap 16 von Brauchitsch stretched the lead to 1m 16.9s but far from closing the suitcase Neubauer felt he was driving like a ‘madman’. It may be that after France von Brauchitsch was in no mood to obey pit signals like that. In its totality, its 88 left-handed and 84 right-handed corners, its sudden pitches and rolls, the Nurburgring spread a feast of opportunities to find time — for the great driver. Von Brauch itsch had the power, Nuvolari had the greatness. At lap 17 he had found six seconds and a lap later, taking everything to the edge round the 14.1 miles, another 26. Nuvolari worked to a tactic. Von Brauchitsch, bearing family honour, the honou r of Mercedes and the honour of Germany had to respond, although that risked his tyres. In practice, Nuvolari monitored von Brauchitsch, saw how brutally he used the brakes regardless of tyre wear. Nuvolari intended’ to push von

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145

Brauchitsch so hard he’d have to stop for tyres twice and I win the race. Von Brauchitsch’s response took the lead back out to 43.1s Nuvolari cut deep into that on lap 20, bringing it back in to 32.2s. Von Brauchitsch responded to that, Neubauer pacing in front of the pit. Neubauer could see without binoculars that von Brauchitsch’s left rear was wearing. Two laps to run, 28 miles at racing speed. Neubauer talked to the Continental people because if he brought von Brauchitsch in next lap the race was gone. Von Brauchitsch estimated that slowing for the pit, changing the tyre and accelerating out would cost him half a minute — and the race. Von Brauchitsch decided to conserve the tyres as best he could, especially in cornering. ‘I braked as softly as possible although that is costing precious seconds.’ He looked at the front tyres: fine. He looked at the rears, the left showed signs of wear and the right made ‘the blood go to my head’. It’s only two more laps, he told himself. Neubauer decided the tyres would hold. Von Brauchitsch and Nuvolari crossed the line into the final lap 35.1 seconds apart. That final lap became a ‘dance of death’. At the Flugplatz, a rightAt hander two and a half miles into it, Nuvolari cut five seconds. Adenauerforst, a twisty four and a half miles into it, he’d cut another — and in three. They ran towards the 13km mark — just over eight miles that by the the lonely, tree-lined corridors Nuvolari cut it so much tsch maybe Karusel, just after that 13km mark, he could see von Brauchi here, Tazio and 200 yards away, maybe less. Between Adenauerforst ever done and Nuvolari must have driven the Nurburgring as no man had — in 1957. no man would again until an Argentinian of similar gifts still holding — but I Von Brauchitsch remembered thinking the tyres are gh clenched teeth’ can see the binding on the left rear. He'd remember ‘throu tyres... saying to himself if only the tyres, if only the hoe tightening The Karusel: a left and right, a half-right then a horses right-right-right then a lunge to a left-left-left. As von Brauchitsch went in Nuvolari closed. ri!’ echoed over the ‘Yon Brauchitsch is being closely followed by Nuvola loudspeakers. car bucked so violently Suddenly, von Brauchitsch heard a bang. The ed from his hands. The that the steering wheel was almost pluck was off the power: the Mercedes slewed and suddenly Nuvolari

Mercedes might veer anywhere. ‘Yon Brauchitsch has burst a tyre!’ s of it were being flung It was the left rear and, as it churned, chunk into the air.’ away. Nuvolari saw ‘something black fly

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

The Mercedes ‘tilted, swerved across the track’“ to the other side, von Brauchitsch wrestling the steering wheel. He heard the ‘high, metallic sound’ of the rim running on the track surface. The car slewed again and he saw, all in the instant, the red Alfa Romeo go by. Nuvolari had barely had time to miss him. The loudspeakers bayed Nuvolari leads! Von Brauchitsch felt ‘a wild energy comes over me. I am not giving in! On three tyres and one rim I drive stubbornly on at least at 140kmh’ — nearly 90mph. The crowd waited. The Alfa Romeo had to cover another three miles of the track’s contortions before it reached the straight to the finish, and here it came, quite alone, alone in its immortality. It crossed the line to a tremendous, almost primitive shout from the crowd. Stuck came through two minutes later, Caracciola a minute after, Rosemeyer nearly two minutes after, then von Brauchitsch who ran to the end on the metal rim of the wheel. He pulled up far beyond his pit so people wouldn’t see him crying. Eventually, the Italian flag was found and raised to what some say was polite applause and others the ‘hush of dead women’ . The Italian national anthem, the Marcia Reale, did not play — the organis ers didn’t have it. Nuvolari did. He took a gramophone record of it everywhere in his briefcase. A mechanic went to fetch that. Huhnle in made an improvised speech about Germany always recognising ‘an honest and great performance’ before placing the enormous garland over Nuvolari. Those around him gave the stiff-arm Nazi salute. Nuvolari crooked his arm upwards in uneasy compromise. They played the Marcia Reale — his Marcia Reale — to him. No man could sustain this, especially at circuits which did not offer a feast of opportunities. What Nuvolari had done, all else aside, was give Alfa Romeo’s P3 ‘the last and most brilliant’ of its victories ‘against the full might of the German challe nge. After this the car would win, but only when the German teams missed an event. What was now overdue was a completely new car which could meet them on more equal terms. ‘The successor to the P3 was in fact alrea dy almost ready to race. This time, given the new urgency and commitment backed by the Government’s direct interest in Italian motor racing victories, Jano had at last been able to set to work on a new design to replace the brilliant stop-gaps of the past. The only way to catch up in the power race was to design and build an entirely new engin e, and the only way to put the power gained by building a new engin e to proper use was to design a

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147

completely new suspension system, using the ideas shown in the more advanced designs used by the opposition.’* Caracciola won the Swiss Grand Prix from Fagioli, Rosemeyer third; Stuck won the Italian although Nuvolari, ‘sharing’ with Dreyfus, managed to force the new Alfa Romeo into second place. Nuvolari paced himself and when he was ready accelerated, overtaking Caracciola. He set fastest lap and during the pit stops actually led. When his engine blew he took over Dreyfus’s car and finished two minutes after Stuck. Caracciola won Spain from Fagioli and von Brauchitsch, and was declared European Champion; Rosemeyer won the Czech Grand Prix although, again, Nuvolari forced and cajoled the Alfa Romeo up to

second place. He was never close enough to threaten. A determined, earthy self-made man called Fred Craner had bought Donington Park in England’s Midlands — a stately pile with extensive grounds — and built a track there. He started holding motorcycle meetings and broadened that to car racing. Now he held a Grand Prix. The RAC, the governing body, wouldn’t allow anyone like Fred Craner to have the title British Grand Prix, and Fred Craner wouldn’t allow anyone like the RAC to put him off. The race was called the Donington Grand Prix and it attracted ‘an interesting, if not sensational, entry” including a wealthy Frenchman, Raymond Sommer (Alfa Romeo), and Giuseppe driving ‘Nino’ Farina (Maserati), a doctor of law with a ‘blunt, arrogant style which featured a chin-out Duce-like® pose with his arms extended it, far back from the steering wheel.’” He, although nobody could know was the bridge to the modern World Championship. an Alfa Richard ‘Mad Jack’ Shuttleworth, head bare, won the race in down. broke both Romeo from Earl Howe (Bugatti). Farina and Sommer

Notes National Socialist 1. NSKK: Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps, or comical home guard semi ‘a as Motoring Corps, which has been described the sobriquet no for motoring activities’ headed by Huihnlein. It earned clubs in 1933 and, in fighters, only drinkers. It took over all German motor the army. for 1939, was given responsibility for training drivers . Enzo Ferrari, Yates.

. Ibid. . My Two Lives, Dreyfus. . L'Equipe. « The Motor. . Ibid. -P wu NIA WN

/ 148

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

8. Dreyfus, op. cit. 9. The Autocar. 10. The Motor. 11. L’Equipe.

12. There is a certain degree of uncertainty about this push: when it began and what happened next. The pits were on the quayside but the finishing line on the upward slope where today’s Grand Prix grid is. What seems certain is that Nuvolari was able to push the Alfa Romeo as far as the pits but even he, with a tempest of adrenaline and frustration raging within him, couldn’t push the car round the Gasworks hairpin and up to the finish; and didn’t. 13. Edward Richard Assheton, Viscount Curzon, known as Earl Howe (1884-1956) began his racing career in his forties and competed widely. He won the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1931, partnering Birkin. He served in the Second World War as a naval officer.

http://www. brooklandstrack.co.uk/Drivrlist/howe.htm 14. When Nuvolari Raced, Moretti. 15. Ibid. 16. The Racing Car, Batsford.

17. Pur Sang = thoroughbred. 18. Speed was my Life, Neubauer. 19. Racing Driver’s World, Caracciola. 20. Batsford, op. cit. 21. Yates, op. cit.

22. Guy Moll had a brief career — two years — but Enzo Ferrari rated him very highly. Moll was an Algerian, father French, mother Spanish. He died in the Coppa Acerbo in 1934, 23. Caracciola, op. cit.

24. Ibid. 25. Shell History of Motor Sport. 26. Shooting Star, Nixon.

27. Dick Seaman, Chula. 28. Hard racing plugs were made to tolera te great heat and cope with high speed. 29. Grand Prix Driver, Lang. 30. Moretti, op. cit. 31. Neubauer, op. cit.

32. History of Grand Prix and Voiturette Racing , Volume I, Sheldon. 33. L’Auto Italiana, quoted in Moretti. 34. Amateur Racing Driver, Cholmondeley Tapper. 35. Kampf um Meter und Sekunden, von Brauchitsch.

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149

36. Ibid. 37. Alfa Romeo, Owen. 38. Neubauer, op. cit. 39. Yates, op. cit. 40. Raymond Mays (1899-1980) was the son of an early motorist and became known as driver then moving force behind two manufacturing ventures in racing, ERA and BRM. 4l. ERA - English Racing Automobiles, founded in 1934 and manufacturer of

many small racing cars. 42. Split Seconds, Mays. 43. The Autocar. . Ibid. 45. Motor Revue, Stuttgart. 46. Nuvolari, Lurani. 47. Owen, op. cit. 48. The British Grand Prix 1926-1976, Nye. 49. Duce — leader, commander. 50. Yates, op. cit.

Chapter 5

SHADOWLANDS t dawn on 3 October 1935, Mussolini invaded Abyssinia and on 22 ented the League of Nations’ imposed economic sanctions on Italy. Mussolini made several responses to this, including a boycott of motor races in France and Britain in 1936. The former was important, the latter in the nature of a gesture. There would be a Donington Grand Prix late in the season but it did not yet attract leading drivers or teams. In February 1936, Hitler opened the first factory to make Volksw agens. Designed by Ferdinand Porsche, the cars were shaped like a beetle, had a rear engine and were intended to do for ordinary German people what Henry Ford had done for ordinary Americans. A month later Hitler entered the Rhineland, that part of Germany occupied by the French under the Versailles Treaty. It was a calculated risk but in response the French and British did nothing. Hitler would not forget. On 4 March a son was born to James and Helen Clark, a farming family in Kilmany, Fife. They already had four daught ers, Mattie, Susan, Isobel and Betty. They’d called the lad James after dad, but he would always be known as Jim. As Alfa Romeo approached the 1936 season they felt they could be optimistic after Nuvolari’s fastest lap in the Italia n Grand Prix the season before, although a chassis failure in the Spanish Grand Prix was worrying. In fact, ‘the old pattern re-established itself. If the German teams turned up, they won. If they didn’t, the Alfa team usually took the honours. But by the start of the 1936 season , the Mercedes and Auto Unions were faster and more powerful than ever.’ Lang drove one of those powerful Mercedes in early season practice at Monza. He was on a fast lap and reached the Lesmo curve when he felt a ‘tremendous hit on my arm.’ The shock was SO severe that he almost passed out but, instinctively he got the car through and then brought it to a halt. He’d assumed the car had shred ded a tyre and part of it had been flung at him but, instead, ‘I saw a stone the size of a fist in the cockpit.’ He...

SHADOWLANDS

remembered

three young

|

hooligans sitting on a wall where

15]

the track

passes but 50 feet away. Neubauer glanced at my swollen arm, saw me into the care of [the doctor], and, accompanied by ten mechanics and Bianchi, the track guard, went in hot pursuit of the miscreants. He surrounded the place and after cross-examining some other boys, discovered the culprit in a nearby field. The boys had in fact been competing with each other for ‘best shot.’ The victor had been accurate enough to score a bull’s-eye in

spite of my speed of about 125mph.’

The Grand Prix season began in the rain at Monaco, sometimes hard as a storm, sometimes easing off. The cars were brought to the grid covered in tarpaulins. Chiron had a Mercedes and he had put it on pole from Nuvolari and Caracciola. At the start their wheels churned spray towards the sodden crowd. The surface glistened with treachery. His Mercedes twitching as the power came on, Caracciola led and towed Nuvolari with him. At the back, an Alfa Romeo had a broken oil pipe and oil bubbled

down onto the wet track surface... Caracciola and Nuvolari lapped this car but as it negotiated the chicane down from the tunnel a lot of oil bubbled down. Chiron scudded full on to it and slithered into the sandbags at the apex of the chicane. Farina (Maserati) hit the sandbags, too, and von Brauchitsch rammed the rear of Farina. Three other cars were involved but Rosemeyer, spinning wildly, somehow got his Auto Union through the gap. That was lap two. On lap ten Nuvolari took Caracciola out of the tunnel but as the rain increased Caracciola’s almost superhuman ability in the wet came into play. He re-took Nuvolari and at half distance led a him by over a minute, although Varzi set fastest lap. Nuvolari slowed, Varzi. from brake problem, and Caracciola won it The Monaco measure: Caracciola, 100 laps, 3h 49m 20.4s, an average speed of 51.6mph; Fagioli, 1935, 58.lmph — the difference because 1936 was wet. The ultimate measure: the Land Speed Record was not broken. her On 9 May, Mussolini announced in Rome that ‘Italy at last has Addis empire’ — Abyssinia beaten, Italian troops controlling the capital, distant the from Ababa. The shadows of world war started to creep horizon. become Rosemeyer was emerging as a great driver and would challenged European Champion while one of those who might have living hell. him, Auto Union team-mate Varzi, began a descent into ona and the Barcel After Monaco there were four races — Tripoli, Tunis, ionship round, the Hifel at the Niirburgring — before the next Champ Hungarian at Budapest. During this, Varzi descended.

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At Tripoli, Alfa Romeo had their new V12 engines but they were off the pace and the debut ‘coincided with a grave and truly upsetting disadvantage caused by a series of tyre failures’* Varzi won Tripoli from Stuck but? politics were at work here. On orders from ‘high up’, because Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were now soul-mates, an agreement had been reached that if possible Italians should win ‘Italian’ races and Libya was then an Italian protectorate. So Stuck, leading, was ordered to slow down and Varzi to speed up. Varzi won it on the final lap, much to Stuck’s rage. At the celebration dinner, when a toast was being drunk to Stuck as the authentic victor, Varzi flew into a rage himself. It may be it was that night, in his hotel room with Ilse Pietsch, she introduced him to morphine for the first time. In Tunis a week later, Varzi crashed heavily and that night took more morphine. It had a therapeutic effect, and he liked that. At Barcelona, Varzi fell out with Auto Union and didn’t drive. By now, industrial disputes spread in France and forced the cancellation of the Belgian Grand Prix. The Le Mans 24-hour race... could not be run because of the strikes which had paralysed all industrie s, and the automobile industry in particular. I was reporting in Barcelona at the time when, eight days before the race, the decision was made, and I still remember taking the last plane to leave for France, with Louis Chiron and Rudi Caracciola. The next day the Spanish Civil War broke out.®

This savage, unhappy conflict lasted until 1939, and Hitler exploited it for his own purposes. He backed the Fascist General Franco and used the town of Guernica to see what the mass bombing of civilians from the air would do. The Spanish Grand Prix became no more than a Memory. At the Eifel Grand Prix, Rosemeyer won in dense fog, a feat which remains inexplicable even today, Varzi seventh and a long way behind. In Hungary, at a 3.1-mile Budapest circuit throu gh public gardens, 100,000 watched Nuvolari take an early lead before Rosemeyer went past followed by the rest of the German phalanx. Caracciola led but had mechanical problems. Nuvolari overtook von Brauchitsch so closely he sent him spinning into a telegraph pole. Now Rosemeyer held a commanding lead but Nuvolari caught him, passed him and took the race by 14 seconds. Motor Italia wrote: Men like Nuvolari are, perhaps unknowingl y, speculators in the best sense of the word. Speculators because they have a precise and lively sense of reality and of the varied possibilities that it contains. True realists, the great

SHADOWLANDS

motor racing aces give us some

challenge rivals with much

153

magnificent lessons. Nuvolari dares to

more

powerful

machines

and he won

at

Budapest as he has won on similar occasions.

The French Grand Prix, at Montlhéry, was for sports cars because the French didn’t want another German humiliation and Wimille/Sommer won in a Bugatti. For the Milan Grand Prix on the same day — the term Grand Prix used freely — Varzi persuaded Auto Union to give him a car. Nuvolari took pole from him but Varzi exploited the Auto Union’s sheer power to lead. Nuvolari drew up and by now the crowd, partisan, passionate, were in tumult. Nuvolari took Varzi, the tumult deepened and Nuvolari won it by eight seconds. A different kind of emotion, more universal and less delirious, moved through Germany. The Olympic Games in Berlin would begin the week after the Grand Prix, as if the country was having a great sporting festival and the world was watching it. A crowd of 350,000 came to the Niirburgring to witness, as they hoped, the five Mercedes and four Auto Unions take their revenge on Nuvolari for 1935. Down the grid, young Seaman took his place in a Maserati and Cholmondeley Tapper in another. He... complicated circuit of the Niirburgring from the previous year, and soon worked up a good speed on the Maserati, thanks in part to the large signposts announcing each corner with its name. For instance, you would come to a corner hidden by the

remembered

something

of the

long

and

brow of a hill, see the signpost with the name of that corner, and stored in your memory would be whether itwas a fast or slow one, to right or to left. As many of the corners were obscured, the good memory was at a premium.’

again. The grid was by ballot, Varzi missing. He simply hadn’t arrived tely Lang lined up on the fourth row next to Seaman and immedia and me, behind driver” behind Rosemeyer. Lang ‘wanted to put “reserve the to on had a plan of campaign worked out. I was going to try to hang of this mélée tail of Rosemeyer. He was going to show me how to get out and get to the front.’ of mammoth Cholmondeley Tapper wasn’t ‘surprised to see a crowd All night long proportions on the bright, cloudy morning of the race. as thousands [the village of] Adenau had seemed in continual uproar, I left my hotel a streamed through on their way to the course, and when There was... gring.’ solid throng was moving slowly towards the Niirbur

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GRAND PRIX CENTURY

a theatrical air about the pit area, with innumerable flags and bunting bright against the dark green pines, and officials resplendent in manyhued uniforms. My pit was conspicuously naive in equipment: a few cans of petrol, an odd spanner or two and my two spare wheels contrasted unfavourably with the high-powered efficiency of the big firms, but when eventually the twenty competing cars were lined up in front of the grandstand, and Deutschland tiber Alles ponderously echoed through the crowd, I was proud to see the Maserati, the only spot of English green amid a predominantly red and white field. Once again I endured an uncomfortable interlude while surging thousands gave the mechanically militant Nazi salute, and then we prepared our cars for the start.*

Lang followed his plan. Von Brauchitsch led, Rosemeyer after ‘like a shadow’ and Lang tucking in behind determined to stay there. Into the second lap Rosemeyer began to attack von Brauchitsch who stopped — by a great irony — at the Karusel to check his steering. He must have hit something. Rosemeyer and Lang went through but Lang suddenly... noticed that my right hand was very painful and something was wrong with it. I looked down and saw that my little finger hung uselessly in my glove. Then I remembered having changed down somewhat hurriedly in a bend, I had hit the bodywork with may little finger and broken it. Damn the thing, I thought, I won’t let it disturb me, and try to pretend that the pain does not exist. I pressed on like a madman behind Rosemeyer. I could not see anyone in my mirror, and drove on almost forgetting my finger in my joy.’

Rosemeyer broke the lap record on the lap three and led Lang by 23 seconds, Nuvolari hunting Lang. Rosemeyer pitted on lap seven for new rear tyres and Lang saw this pit board as he went past: LAN-ROS-NUYV.

He felt intoxicated to be leading a race for the first time in his life but the pain from the finger grew to the point where he could barely hold the wheel. When he pitted to refuel on lap nine he saw Caracciola ready to take over. Caracciola, senior member of the Mercedes team, had had a fuel pump problem with his own car, haltin g on lap four. Lang was ‘not very pleased to hand over but reasoning told me that I could not have kept going with my broken finger.’ He was also part of a team and needed to reject any ‘false pride’ which might jeopardise the effort of the whole.

SHADOWLANDS

The

spectators

were

very

displeased

with

155,

me

and

whistled

their

disapproval [...] The public address announcer soon gave my reason for withdrawing, stating that I could not have continued with a broken finger.

I do not know if the public judged me less severely after that. I looked for my fiancée but could not see her in the pits [...] she hated any form of limelight. She was always somewhere among the spectators.”

Rosemeyer led while Lang went to the doctor and had his finger bandaged. Now von Brauchitsch pitted and prepared to hand his car over to Zehender, the reserve driver, although why is something of a mystery. Lang felt he should have the car, Neubauer said he could and Lang emerged to a tremendous cheer. After half distance Nuvolari moved to second behind Rosemeyer while supercharger trouble halted Caracciola —- and Chiron, in another Mercedes, went off on the straight, burst through fencing and plunged down an embankment. He escaped with bruises. Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo broke down out in the country. Cholmondeley Tapper remembered: it was odd that during this tremendous race I saw very few cars. The course is particularly long, and only occasionally I would be passed by the faster cars, or I myself would pass some competitors who had come to grief...I passed Nuvolari stranded by the side of the road with a broken back axle in his Alfa Romeo. He gave me a cheerful wave.

Sommer (Alfa Romeo) gave Nuvolari a lift back to the pits. Lang was in great pain. ‘Every time I changed gear, the wooden splint on my finger touched the bodywork and I almost howled. However, it had been my choice, and I managed to finish.’ Only ten cars did that, Rosemeyer winning it from Stuck, Lang seventh and Cholmondeley Tapper the last of them. He had covered 18 laps, 56 miles behind Rosemeyer. Rosemeyer’s wife Elly, an elegant, accomplished woman and pioneer wellaviator, remembered ‘Bernd was almost torn apart by the crowds of glass a wishers and the champagne flowed — how he would have enjoyed ‘Of of beer!’ Later she noticed that his hands were covered in blisters. You picnic? a is Prix course,’ he replied. ‘Do you think winning a Grand all right by can’t imagine how painful they are but everything will be next Sunday.’ from racing to Mercedes had been so unsuccessful that they withdrew they didn’t ‘iron out design or construction difficulties.” Specifically, Milan central in park a enter the Milan Grand Prix — a street race round we have just seen) _ which Nuvolari won, did enter the Niirburgring (as

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but only two of their five cars finished — Fagioli/Caracciola fifth, von Brauchitsch/Lang seventh. They wouldn’t go to the Italian Grand Prix. At the Coppa Ciano, Varzi had an Auto Union but suffered brake problems. Two weeks later for the Coppa Acerbo he didn’t show up again. Auto Union tracked him to a house in Rome but by now the morphine had changed his personality. In spite of that he went to the race and finished third. One report suggests that while Varzi was practising for the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten Auto Union’s team manager, Dr Karl Feuereissen, went to his hotel room, confronted Ilse Pietsch, then found a syringe and morphine there. If Varzi was not yet an addict he was becoming one. Mercedes sent four cars because they felt they had solved the problems. Caracciola led from Rosemeyer, Nuvolari and Lang. Nuvolari’s Alfa Romeo couldn’t stand the pace (a magneto eventually failed) while Caracciola and Rosemeyer duelled. Caracciola blocked and this enraged Rosemeyer, who was not mollified when Caracciola was ordered to stop this or face a black flag — and not mollified when Caracciola retired with a rear axle problem and he won. After the race, Rosemeyer told Elly ‘I shall have something to say to him when we meet, I can tell you. Racing is dangerous enough without having to take unneces sary risks, dammit!’? The two drivers did meet — by chance — in the hotel lift that evening. Caracciola was with Baby Hoffman-Trobeck and Elly found herself trembling at what Rosemeyer would say to him. Caracciola: ‘Well, young man, you did well. May I add my congratulations?’ Rosemeyer: ‘So you think I did well, do you? I would have done a lot better if you hadn’t got in my way so long!’ When the lift stopped Elly escaped as quickl y as she could while Rosemeyer and Caracciola argued on. The dispu te lingered and festered for six months. At the Italian Grand Prix there were now four chicanes, which did not prevent Elly driving some laps in Rosemeyer’ s Auto Union, taking care not to damage it. She seems to have been a very feminine feminist. That stood in odd contrast to the Auto Union s being wheeled past the grandstands towards the grid, preceded by three men in virgin white but bearing large flags adorned with the very masculine ‘swastika. Rosemeyer led from Stuck but Nuvolari got past Stuck on lap eight and that woke the crowd up all right. Varzi retired, an engine problem,

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and Stuck crashed in one of the chicanes. He missed the braking point, the car struck a tree, flipped and flung him out. He had to be helped away. Nuvolari ‘raced like a champion. At the wheel of a clearly inferior car, whose small fuel tank necessitated several refuelling stops, he had hoped to make up ground on the corners as he could not hope to keep up with the faster and more powerful Auto Unions on the straights.’ Rosemeyer won it to complete his season of triumph. The second Donington Grand Prix confirmed that the race was growing in stature. It attracted 24 entries, including an Alfa Romeo to be driven by a very self-confident Swiss, Hans Ruesch, and Seaman. Thereby hangs a curious (and to the English) very strange tale. Looking back on it, Ruesch says: If there was one country that cheated without any doubt it was England. They are famous

for cheating — in sport, especially, but in everything,

everything, everything. I knew it before ever getting to England from an Italian motor cycle rider who had won the Tourist Trophy — the biggest victory

he could have — but they decided an Italian can’t win so they took apart his motor cycle and measured everything. At that time you often had pit stops to

change plugs because they got oily, he had a different brand of plug on the bike than he had declared before the race and they disqualified him. So this man said ‘there’s nothing to do in England, you can’t win’ and this was repeated to me by Seaman’s manager. We spoke at various races

it because otherwise if a Siamese offended be Birabongse” wins it and all of England would does that. So’, he said, ‘Ill organise it for you so you will be a British entry with Seaman, and the moment you are a British entry, no problem.” and

he said ‘Seaman

wants

to win,

he needs

Ruesch led to lap 70 (of the 120) and handed the car to Seaman. Ruesch remembers: I felt sorry for him dangling his legs over the pit counter as if he thought I was not going to get out of the car. I could have stayed in, breaking up our agreement. He wanted absolutely to win that race.

The Seaman/Ruesch car did win, by more than three minutes and suddenly Seaman had a real reputation. That October, a new formula was announced to take effect in 1938: and maximum engine capacities of 4,500cc for normally aspirated g 3,000cc supercharged, and 400kg to 850kg minimum weight accordin to engine size.

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That October, too, a ‘two-seater racing car, its blue paintwork yet to be revealed by the dawn, travels along the dusty road that connects Tandil with Azul in the north-east of Argentina. Where Route 226 crosses 74, it will turn left. Its final destination: the town of Benito Juarez.’ The driver of the converted 1929 Ford Model A taxi, was going to his first race. He’d go out to race ‘in tremendous spirits. I felt like another person when I was at the wheel of a racing car. I felt ecstatic. I often used to sing to myself.” It was the most modest of beginnings. Juan-Manuel Fangio never did complete the race because of an oil leak. Near the start a local driver had overtaken him, hit a culvert, cartwheeled and was killed. As Fangio embarked on the journey home he understood three things: motor racing was at the mercy of mechanical parts, it could be fatal, and he wanted to do it again. The Mercedes to contest 1937 — the final year of the 750kg formula — had a mighty engine, developing 248bhp at only 2,000 revs, and 646bhp at 5,800rpm. In February Seaman had been given a draft contract by Mercedes, and when he signed it his life as well as his career altered. He would settle in Bavaria, marry an attractive, captivating German girl and find himself an Englishman far inside the Third Reich as the shadows crept closer and closer. The start of his career with Mercedes, however, wasn’t anything like that. Because the 1937 car wasn’t ready they took the 1936 to Monza for pre-season practice. Auto Union were there, too, and the teams watched each other carefully. Mercedes were so busy that they couldn’t get to Milan for their mid-day meal’* and had to make do with a cold collation put together by Mrs Neubauer. During one practice Seaman over-revved the car, lost control when the tail stepped out, and hit a tree. He was shaken up and fractured a knee-cap. Von Brauchitsch was amused to learn how superstitious Seaman was.” ‘He had a particular intolerance against Fridays and number 13. In Monza he was unlucky. From a training run he did not return. We found him later very near the burning car near the 13 kilome tre mark. In his hotel he’d had the number 113 and on the evening before we were 13 to dinner. But he quickly recovered from this accident.’ The French Grand Prix was for sports cars again (Chiron won in a Talbot); the Belgian Grand Prix was run six days after the Vanderbilt Cup at Roosevelt Field, New York, which, in an era when the Atlantic was crossed only by sea, meant drivers couldn’t compe te in both. Caracciola, Rosemeyer, Seaman and Nuvolari went to America, Lang and von Brauchitsch to Spa along with four Auto Unions , a couple of Alfa Romeos and a Maserati. There’s film of Caracc iola en route to New York

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on the luxury liner Bremen, wearing a light jacket and walking to the edge of the deck, his limp very evident. Von Brauchitsch crashed heavily in practice, his Mercedes somersaulting but landing upright in a field. He was only slightly hurt and took part in the race. The small grid, only eight cars, produced a furious race with Stuck leading from Lang and Hasse in pursuit. Attacking Spa’s sinuous length, these three drew clear. A dog, running in front of Christian Kautz’s Mercedes, might have caused a very serious accident because he braked and the Mercedes spun through 360° heading directly towards a cameraman on the lip of the road, behind a tripod, and several dozen spectators on the other side of a small ditch. The photographer ran into the road, away from the car which smashed into the tripod while the crowd instinctively sprang backwards. Nobody was hurt. There was real pace everywhere: Stuck hammered the lap record, von Brauchitsch hammered it, then Stuck again, then Lang on lap 18. The pace shredded tyres and the pit stops became a chaos of change but, with eleven laps to go, Rudi Hasse — a former bike rider who'd also been in rallies — had his Auto Union in a comfortable lead. Lang, who had just

pitted for more tyres... renewed the attack and got close to Hasse. Suddenly my car developed tail wag, which I guessed to be due to the back axle or shock absorbers. I managed to get past an apple tree and got back into the centre of the road. Trees lined the road and there was no ditch. I had to reduce speed as the car rolled all over the place and required the whole width of the road.”

This meant Hasse could win, and he did, his only Grand Prix victory. He clambered out and, with the winner’s garland around his neck, waved to the crowd — but he was groggy, lurched, almost fell. Ferrari sent three drivers to the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring — Nuvolari, Farina and veteran Attilio Marinoni. The grid was decided by practice times, which hadn’t happened here before, and it gave a front row of Rosemeyer, Lang with von Brauchitsch, Caracciola

and Nuvolari on the second. The start-finish straight was wide enough to accommodate cars three it abreast easily and the surface had been repaired so often that to rows 11 back d stretche resembled a curious concrete mosaic. The grid cannon accommodate the 26 cars and they were released by a violent grid before shot which sent a column of smoke towards the back of the across the surging the breeze plucked it away. By then the cars were

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mosaic and as they reached into the great initial curve to the left they were already strung out. Caracciola led but Lang and Rosemeyer went past him, Lang completing the opening lap clearly ahead. The speed of the cars propelled them towards the very edge of the track: in a tight right-left downhill section they skimmed within inches of the grassy knoll to one side, turned the cars hard and skimmed within inches of the grassy knoll on the other side — and they were gone, dissolving like a vision. Rosemeyer’s Auto Union hit a bank with the rear wheel, damaging the hubcap. On lap four, it came off in the South curve. Elly remembered that... not long after Bernd had gone by, an NSKK official appeared at our pits with a hubcap that had fallen off one of our cars. From my position in the pit I could see that Dr Feuereissen and the mechanics were looking anxious about something, but I didn’t know what. Then Bernd failed to appear at the end of the fourth lap and I could see that the mechanics were no longer just anxious, they were very worried. Before I could discover just what was going on, however, Bernd came rolling in with a rear tyre in shreds and although the mechanics worked feverishly it was 2 minutes and 26 seconds before a furious Bernd could get back into the race. Once Bernd had left the pits, Ludwig Sebastian came to tell me about

the missing and crash. around the danger, but

hubcap and the mechanics’ fear that he would lose the Dr Feuereissen had telephoned several of the observer circuit in the hope that someone could warn Bernd to no avail. The first he knew of it was when the Auto had suddenly slid broadside for no apparent reason.”

wheel

posts of the

Union

Rosemeyer was tenth, a wall of Mercedes — Caracciola, von Brauchitsch, Lang, Seaman - setting the pace. Caracciola’s sureness of touch revealed itself in the tightening loop of the Karusel where he kept the Mercedes perfectly placed on the inside, his hands constantly adjust ing the wheel to do that in a sequence of small, taut, precise moveme nts, and arms like short pistons. This was a master at work. Ernst von Delius, however, managed to get his Auto Union up to Seaman. It was, initially, no more than another motor racing situation, but it obeyed many historical precedents. From the ordinariness came disaster. The Autocar wrote: ‘Delius, a fiery little fellow whom the German affectionately called Kleiner — Little One — was determined to be in front.’ On lap seven, crossing a bridge, von Delius was slightly in front. ‘As he

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landed he swerved to the outside — perhaps through landing crooked, perhaps because the cars touched — and just caught a fire-extinguisher post. This was sufficient to get him into a terrific skid. The Auto Union swerved right across Seaman’s path, skidded all ways at scarcely reduced speed and, with a sickening leap, jumped the hedge on the left-hand side again. The flying car flattened a wire fence, was said by some to have cleared the heads of two Nazis, and slithered, mowing down the grass, into the main Koblenz road which runs parallel to the course. Seaman, seeing he was unable to accelerate through, braked hard, was squeezed into the right-hand hedge and, in his turn, skidded violently, was hurled out onto the road, his car finishing up through the hedge but on the right-hand side of the course. The two cars actually crashed at about 130mph.’ The loudspeakers announced that there had been an accident. Elly watched Rosemeyer go safely by and... I ran to the circuit hospital to see if I could be of any help. I must admit that

I found it difficult to tear myself away from the race just at that point: Bernd was driving absolutely flat out, lapping in under ten minutes, time and time again in his attempts to get to grips with the Mercedes once more. At the hospital the news about Ernst was better than I had expected, likewise about Seaman. I breathed a sigh of relief. It appeared that Ernst had broken a leg, torn his mouth and was suffering from concussion but he was conscious and sent greetings to everyone! Seaman had a broken nose and flesh wounds — nothing more serious than that. All this was bad

enough, but nonetheless much better than I had expected following the description of the crash. Clearly there was nothing I could do, so I returned — somewhat relieved — to the pits.”

In fact, von Delius had fatal injuries. Rosemeyer mounted a tremendous charge and, while Elly was at the hospital, shattered the lap record but even that was not enough. Caracciola held the lead to the end, von Brauchitsch second, Rosemeyer reaching so hard that he finished only a minute behind Caracciola. Caracciola took pole at Monaco from von Brauchitsch and Rosemeyer. Lang, suffering from ‘flu, felt so terrible he stayed at home in bed. Elly was amused that practice started at 6am, giving time to return to the hotel and bed again afterwards. Although Rosemeyer was on that front row somehow the Auto Union team was not optimistic. Lang meanwhile listened to the commentary on the radio.

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Huddled in bedclothes [...] when I heard the unleashed pack howling across the line, the longing to race made me go hot and cold all over. I think I even snapped at my wife when she spoke to me

Caracciola led but on the opening lap Hasse spun as he came out of the tunnel. The Auto Union slewed, just missing the tunnel wall, and came at tremendous pace backwards down the road. Hasse was thrown from his Auto Union. Elly remembered: the whole Auto Union team was still suffering from the death of our friend von Delius and although news quickly arrived that Hasse was only slightly injured, none of us believed it until after the race. Then we were able to visit him and were delighted to find him quite chirpy in his hotel bed. Until then, however, the Auto Union pits were very gloomy indeed*

On lap 19 Rosemeyer’s steering seized and, helpless, he went into the sandbags at the Gasometer hairpin. He walked the short distance to the pits and sat with Elly. Hans Stuck was now the only Auto Union driver left in the race and Bernd watched him like a hawk every time he came round. He was quick to see that Hans was in trouble. ‘Look! There is something wrong with Hans’s car too. His brakes seem to be locking up. When he stops I shall ask him to let me take over. I can’t stand about doing nothing while the race goes on!’ And that is exactly what happened.*

Rosemeyer emerged and began to overtake cars in a long thrust round all these narrow streets. Way ahead von Brauchitsch led at half distance, Caracciola chasing. As Caracciola caught him the Merced es team began signalling to von Brauchitsch Jet his through! Caracci ola is the mumber one driver! Von Brauchitsch acknowledged these orders and studiously ignored them. A mechanic stood at the roadside wavin g his arm up and down in a gesture of anger, clapped both hands to his head — what can you do? — and turned away. Lang’s suffering increased: I had a fit of rage when the interrupted by music. [...] I let people running it; this amused feel when I listen to the radio whilst you race.”**

few broadcast excerpts of the race were off steam by swearing at the radio and the my wife, who said ‘now you know what I or when I sit in the pits waiting for you .

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Caracciola forced his way through at Ste Devote but had to pit for fuel and tyres opening the race to von Brauchitsch who won it by nearly 15 seconds. The Monaco measure: von Brauchitsch, 100 laps, 3h 7m 23.9s, an average speed of 63.2mph — the first over 100kmh (101.8); Caracciola, 1936 (wet), 51.6mph. There wouldn't be another Grand Prix at Monaco until after the war, so here is the full span of the measure so far: 1929, 49.8mph against von Brauchitsch’s 63%)

The ultimate measure: in November at Bonneville, Eyston pushed the Land Speed Record to 31I1mph. Vehicles registered in Britain 2.9m (1929, 2.2 million). A Ford Prefect cost (in 1938) £150 and a Briton earned on average £4 a week. Saving all his money the Briton would have taken 37 weeks to buy one (1910, 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, 1 year 28 weeks; 1929, 41 weeks). Nuvolari raced a new Alfa Romeo in the Coppa Acerbo and was so unhappy with it that he went to the Swiss Grand Prix a week after that and tried an Auto Union, but found the experience disconcerting . because the rear-engined car was unlike anything else, and it demanded a new range of skills. He’d done ten laps; not long or far enough to assemble those skills. Lang, still weak after the ‘flu, raced although a doctor prescribed consuming a lot of cream. Caracciola took pole from Rosemeyer but on a wet track Stuck led and soon Rosemeyer crashed. That created a mix ’n’ match race at Auto Union because understandably Nuvolari was signalled in to hand his car over to Rosemeyer, who of course knew all about how to drive it. Fagioli had a hip problem and brought his car in on lap 22, handing it to... Nuvolari. Caracciola overtook Stuck and Lang slogged forward running within himself. He knew that on this track and in these conditions there would be no catching Caracciola and he was right. Lang completely recovered for the Italian Grand Prix at Livorno, a narrow road circuit where he recognised what today is a very common problem. ‘The straight led along the sea front and the starting line was at one end. This straight was also the only place where overtaking would have been possible, but it was not very long, and the high speeds obtained along it made this practically impossible.’ Elsewhere the cars threaded through the twisting streets. They’d go through a little square with a policeman standing in front of straw bales monitoring their progress. They’d lurch towards buildings clad with the bales. They’d be directed which way to go by bales laid out like marker barriers, and

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they’d corner fast enough to leave burnt rubber marks as they accelerated out of the corners. Varzi appeared unannounced at Livorno and sought out Dr Feuereissen. He wanted a drive. Feuereissen was understandably reluctant and reminded Varzi of his behaviour the previous year, but Varzi proffered reassurance that he had come off the morphine and left Ilse. Rosemeyer spoke up for him and in the end Feuereissen said he could drive here and in the Czech Grand Prix at Brno, and at Donington. Caracciola took pole, Varzi next — outqualifying Rosemeyer. It’s easy to present Varzi as an enigma, an obsessive, an addict, easy to forget that he had profound, intuitive ability. Here it was again. Nuvolari struggled with an Alfa Romeo and although in the wet he set fastest time the car couldn’t be made to replicate that in the dry. Spectators poured on to the track aborting the start twice and an ambulance had to treat a spectator who'd fallen out of a tree. When the race did start Lang contradicted his own judgement of the track because on the opening lap ‘I passed Rosemeyer and Varzi and later Caracciola. I was really back on form, but the pleasure was of short duration. Owing to the sharp bursts of speed, although the circuit was not a particularly fast one, I threw a tread and had to stop at the pits to change wheels.’ Nuvolari, ‘performing indescribable prodigies and using all his talents’” hauled the Alfa Romeo past Varzi to a tremendous roar: a gesture only. For the first time, he was so disheartened he gave up before the end, handing his car over to his team-mate Farina [on lap 31]. It was almost the

end of a glorious phase in Alfa-Romeo racing history, possibly the most brilliant and colourful years in the whole history of racing. But the series of failures on the track were viewed with displeasure in Governm ent circles. What was the point of pouring cash into the company if it didn’t deliver the prestige and publicity of racing victories?”

Lang tracked Caracciola but now the nature of the track worked against him. He couldn’t get up to mount an overtaking move although it was a desperately tight finish, the cars 0.4 of a second apart. Varzi, sixth, was close to collapse and needed help to get out of the car. Stuck was in disagreement with Auto Union and they fired him. They retained Varzi for Brno but his performance remai ns shrouded in the enigma of the man. He had two fingers of his right hand in a bandage but practised. On the first day he was slow and ‘seemed distinctly nervous, Claiming that the wounds on his finger s were very painful.’” He

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asked for changes to the car and then refused to drive it, left Brno and was not seen again until 1938. Auto Union had only Rosemeyer and Hermann Miiller, Hasse indisposed. Nuvolari and Lang, favoured by the ballot, filled the front row because Brno was so narrow that the grid couldn’t be any wider. This was fortunate for Nuvolari — the Alfa Romeos arrived late giving him only a few laps. The ballot was constructed around teams, not drivers, so that the front row position went to Mercedes and after some arguing Lang got it as the fastest of the Mercedes drivers in practice. Nuvolari ‘took command of the race and held the lead until the end of the third lap, when he had to give way to Caracciola’® Nuvolari’s left rear wheel threw its tread and he ran on the rim for a long way at a very respectable pace through the pretty villages and across cobbled streets. The crowd, gathered round the corners in the countryside or sitting in fields which sloped down towards the track pointed and gesticulated as Nuvolari went by but Brno was anything but idyllic. In a dangerous era, with Spa and the Nurburgring as the centrepieces of that, it may have been more dangerous still. At 18.1 miles it was the longest on the Grand Prix calendar and run on a combination of national roads and rough country tracks. Over such a distance, and in a rural setting, crowd control proved all but impossible. At a fast right-hander out in the woods the surface was tarmac but the corner had deep ditches on either side with a ribbon of earth and gravel in front of them. Some drivers, Lang would say, ‘used this soft path adjoining the macadam to cut a sort of rut into which the car used to slide, thereby enabling the machine to be cornered faster.’ It meant that the wheels dug stones and earth onto the tarmac, and made the tarmac into the equivalent of ice. Lang, approaching at speed on lap two, saw the road covered in this. He held the Mercedes on the correct line but once he saw the debris he knew he couldn’t brake: if he skidded, braking

might slither the car away from him. He acted by reflex, trying to make the car describe a ‘wide arc before it _ slid into the ditch.’ For an instant he thought he’d got away with it but the left-front wheel hit a granite marker by the ditch. That impact twisted the Mercedes round and it somersaulted across the ditch where spectators sat, some even dangling their legs over the ditch. They shouldn’t have been there, but they were. The somersault caused the car to fall on its back in such a manner that the cockpit was over the ditch, and I fell out, albeit hitting my head on a stone; but the car’s position upside down was only momentary, its momentum

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carried it on into another lengthwise somersault to finish up on the edge of the ditch on its wheels. I was quite dazed and not sure where I was.”

Lang remembered a lot of people running and one man leading him away by the arm. He couldn’t see two people were dead and twelve injured. The two men walked in silence through the woods, Lang concussed. Lang felt something warm trickling down his neck. The man eased Lang’s helmet off and saw a deep head cut. They walked, Lang thought, for 30 minutes to where the circuit went through a village with a first aid post in a farm. Lang estimated that the ambulance didn’t come for about 45 minutes and then, when he was in it, it continued to the accident to pick up two injured spectators. Lang was recognised and... the bystanders [...] started to insult me. Not knowing the language I could not explain that I was hardly to blame; accidents did occur in motor-racing and the spectators themselves were to blame for exposing

themselves to danger, against which they had been specifically warned. kept quiet until the driver of the ambulance, a man of Herculean physique, interfered, explaining the situation in Czech. To me, he said briefly in German, ‘Don’t worry, nothing will happen to I therefore

you.

Lang was taken to hospital and only then did he learn the full extent of the accident. Caracciola won from von Brauchitsch, late afternoon sunlight cloaking the finishing line with a huge crowd on one side and Caracciola easing the Mercedes to the pits at the other. He lifted his goggles to his forehead, smiled through the grime on his face and gorged avidly from a glass someone handed him. The legal consequences of Lang’s crash lingered for five years. In October, the Silver Arrows came to Donington and caused a genuine sensation. This is a much devalued word but here it’s used in the original, full-strength sense. The British, reared on their sit-up-andbeg little racers in the hands of good chaps, suddenly found the woodlands and straights of Donington echoing to mighty, rolling thunder, and they had never even imagined anything like it before.® Neubauer had asked Seaman to sound out Fred Craner about Mercedes taking part, Craner (reluctantly) offere d them £400 start money and so, as one convoy of Mercedes arrive d at Brno another was setting off towards northern France and the crossi ng to England.

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Those who came to Donington would see the full Mercedes team — von Brauchitsch, Lang, Seaman, Caracciola — and for good measure, the full Auto Union team, too: Rosemeyer, Hasse and Miiller. Von Brauchitsch took pole but Lang led from Caracciola and a vast crowd — the ripple effect of traffic trying to get in to the circuit had flowed back to Derby — watched awestruck on a perfect autumnal day. The knowing among them kept one eye on Rosemeyer and understood that he was in no hurry. The race lasted 250 miles. He ran third to lap 20 when the Mercedes pit stops began, then led; ran third again after his own pit stop; ran second to von Brauchitsch then led again when von Brauchitsch pitted. The race devolved into a struggle of wills between the two men and Rosemeyer won it. As he passed the pits he’d made a curious hand signal which nobody understood except his mechanic. It was ‘tick-tack’ they’d picked up the night before when they’d gone to a greyhound meeting — Rosemeyer hit himself in the neck and on the forehead — and it meant I’m well, the car is well. To capture the full impact of the German cars... The Donington

measure:

Rosemeyer

averaging

82.6mph,

Ruesch/Seaman,

1936, 69.1mph. It was the master’s final race. The rivalry between Auto Union and Mercedes extended to an annual record breaking fest on stretches of the autobahn. In January, between the Frankfurt and Darmstadt section, Caracciola raised the record speed set on a road to 271 mph (436kmh) for Mercedes. Rosemeyer, responding in the Auto Union, reached 270mph, when something happened to the car, and he was found dead at the foot

of some trees. Something went from motor racing then. Many contemporaries tried to express that but could not. Like Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna it seemed more like the defining of an era than simply the death of a great driver, but with Rosemeyer that was, and remains, heightened further because in 1938 the shadows crept closer and closer. War is about death, Rosemeyer had been about being alive. The European Championship had new rules, maximum engine capacity of 4,500cc for normally aspirated cars and 3,000cc supercharged, and minimum weights depending on engine size. In February, Seaman was at the Berlin Motor Show as part of the Mercedes team and met Hitler for the first time. Hitler shook hands with the drivers and offered his congratulations. He and Goebbels made speeches declaring that ‘the daring young race drivers present today fight their battles not for money, not for personal. glory — but for the

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greater glory of the Fatherland!’ This was greeted by a cheer although not, presumably, from Seaman. The Mercedes was a very modern operation in scale, outlook, planning and perhaps psychology. The racing department consisted of 220 personnel, and that included two teams of 25 mechanics who ‘were devoted entirely to the development and servicing of Mercedes racing cars. The Experimental Department did not manufacture any of the components but absolute priority was given to racing requirements. No expense was spared.’** In March, to an ecstatic welcome, Hitler went to Vienna to receive Austria in to the German Reich. For many months he’d undermined the government while his supporters maintained a reign of terror. It had been heavy hitting but now, many hoped, he would be satisfied and the shadows recede. The first big race, Pau in April, had lasting consequences. Auto Union, needing a replacement for Rosemeyer, contacted Nuvolari but as an Italian his first loyalty lay with Alfa Romeo who’d made an interim car for the new formula. It seemed to go well but Nuvolari didn’t realise that ‘the chassis was flexing under the cornering loads and causing the fuel tank, mounted just above his knees, to start to leak. In the race itself petrol seeped out and caught fire. Nuvolari had to steer the blazing car into the trees and bale out, narrowly escaping with his life. For the brave and unquenchable Tazio Nuvolari, it was the last straw. He swore never to drive an Alfa Romeo again, and he kept his promise until the day he died.’” In disgust, he announced his retirement. Czechoslovakia had a*significant German minority in the disputed Sudetenland (Neubauer had been born just over the border in Germany but after the war his village would become Czech). That spring Hitler turned his attention to the minority, and Britain and France gave a promise to defend Czechoslovakia against aggression and wanted to arrange a meeting with Hitler to explain that invading Czechoslovakia would mean war. Hitler had a Czech crisis to exploit. He knew what to do. Nuvolari did not go to the French Grand Prix, run at Reims for the first time since 1932. It attracted only nine cars, including two Auto Unions which were having trouble taking the corners, and crashed in practice. Muller had to be taken to hospital and couldn’t race. The Auto Unions were granted special additional practice on race morning. The starter held the flag while, behind him, someon e with a stopwatch tapped him rhythmically between the shoulde r blades to count him down: five taps, one a second, and the flag fell. Far above the grandstand, flags fluttered in the wind — the swastika promin ent.

Masters of their time: (from left, top) Rudi Caracciola and Dick Seaman; (below) Achille Varzi and Hermann Lang; and (bottom) Bernd Rosemeyer and Manfred von Brauchitsch. (all LAT)

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Was this the race of the century? It was certainly dramatic, as described in The Autocar. Nuvolari (right) in an Alfa Romeo took on Mercedes and Auto Union at the Niirburgring in 1935 — and won (LAT). Here's the grid (left) as it was handed to the Press on the day; Alfred Neubauer (top right), the Mercedes team manager, urges Manfred von Brauchitsch to be careful under Nuvolari’s onslaught; von Brauchitsch’s rear tyre shreds and this is what it looked like after the race. (courtesy DaimlerChrysler)

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

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Rudi Caracciola, a driver touched with timeless skill, holds the mighty 1937 Mercedes monster hard with his left hand, lightly with his right. (LAT)

The matrix of the 1930s distilled into one evocative study. The Mercedes of Lang, Caracciola and Seaman leading, the sublime Rosemeyer in the Auto Union challenging. (LAT)

A new generation after the Second World War — at the 1953 French Grand Prix, the desperate finish between Mike Hawthorn’s Ferrari (16) and Juan-Manuel Fangio's Maserati. (LAT) Stirling Moss with the beautiful, mighty second to Fangio. (courtesy BARC)

1955 Mercedes W196, here at Spa where he finished

If Nuvolari drove the race of the century at the Niirburgring in 1935, Fangio (above) produced something almost as momentous two decades later. Below: Here he has his Maserati between the Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins as the 1957 German Grand Prix reaches its unbearable clima

GRAND PRIX CENTURY

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Masters of their time. Above: (with goggles) Giuseppe Farina, the first World Champion, alongside Alberto Ascari, who would become the first-ever double World Champion (LAT). Fangio (below) defined the 1950s (Ludvigsen Library); and (right) Moss was no stranger to Prince Rainier, Princess Grace and the podium at Monaco. He won there in 1956, 1960 and 1961 (LAT).

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The race existed in two dimensions, a titanic struggle for the lead and behind that a handful of cars scrabbling for whatever they could get. On the opening lap Hasse went off into a field and Miiller’s substitute driver hit a house in a village. With 61 laps left only five cars still ran. The three Mercedes gave an exhibition, Lang, Caracciola and von Brauchitsch trading lap records. Von Brauchitsch won it from Caracciola, Lang third a lap down and the next finisher, a Frenchman in a Talbot, ten laps down. As von Brauchitsch pulled into the pits to get out, half a dozen Germans rushed towards him, their arms stiff in the Nazi salute. One report says ‘crowds of Nazis had come over to glory in humiliating the French.’ Auto Union lured Nuvolari out of his brief retirement and he’d have one for the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Three Mercedes lined up on the front row, Caracciola in another on the second next to Nuvolari. Now that Nuvolari was with a German team, Hiihnlein must have imagined he had some sort of authority over him, strode across the grid to where Nuvolari stood beside his car, shook his hand and gave the stiff arm salute. Nuvolari responded as he had done when he won in

1935, raising his arm crooked in a compromise. The starting lights failed. Lang glanced across at Neubauer, Neubauer made some gesture — and Lang was gone into the lead, Nuvolari after him like a hare. Nuvolari spun off backwards trying to wipe oil from his Krauss, goggles. A Nazi Obergruppenfihrer [Lieutenant-General], Irwin a presented himself at the Mercedes pit, said that the oil had come from Mercedes car and ordered Neubauer to bring all his cars in to be checked Krauss for leaks. Neubauer refused, Krauss persisted and someone said Krauss must be doing this because he favoured the Auto Unions.

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ined to On lap 16 von Brauchitsch pitted for fuel and tyres. He compla him crazy, so Neubauer that Seaman drove so close to him it was making close von Brauchitsch couldn’t catch his breath. his tyres — and Seaman pitted just for fuel — he hadn't been so hard on Neubauer told him to stay behind von Brauchitsch. d the sides of his Meanwhile, ‘the impatient von Brauchitsch slappe the refuelling mechanic Mercedes shouting: “Let’s go, let’s go!” Perhaps late in shutting off was nervous. For whatever reason, he was a second shot from the mouth of the pump. In that one second five gallons of fuel the tank, drenching car and driver.”* car when a blowback from A mechanic was starting von Brauchitsch’s my seat because I knew the the exhaust produced a flash fire. ‘I stayed in our people absolutely knew fire fighters knew what they were doing — the back of my head burning. how to handle these situations — but I felt

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I tried as fast as I could to get out of the driving seat but I hadn’t removed the steering wheel. I had to drop back down into the seat but I felt hands pulling at me.” That was Neubauer who hauled him the rest of the way out. The crowd above the pits scattered. Von Brauchitsch fell and some reports say Neubauer fell onto him to smother the flames. Von Brauchitsch remembered ‘wriggling’ and rolling to put them out. The mechanics fired foam and it lay like a snow fall all around the car. Now Seaman sat immobile in his car as the von Brauchitsch fire was put out. Neubauer went to Seaman and demanded to know why he hadn’t gone back out. Seaman replied that he was obeying his instructions, waiting to follow von Brauchitsch...*8 Seaman was ordered out immediately and, still on the ground, von Brauchitsch watched Seaman go. Once von Brauchitsch’s car had been quickly checked, he went back out, too, his: wheels cutting a path through the snowfall. Seaman was leading the Grand Prix by more than two minutes from Lang. Von Brauchitsch got as far as Flugplatz, a right-hander, and went off into a ditch. He maintained the steering wheel hadn’t been put back properly, a controversial claim which many felt was designed to conceal the fact that he’d simply made a mistake. He walked back holding the steering wheel and brandished it to the crowd. Hiihnlein stood next to him, hands on hips, and did not look pleased. He had good reason. Seaman — cheered all the way round by the crowd, thousands of hands waving him on — won the race, the first Briton to win a Grand Prix since Segrave at San Sebastian in 1924. Neubauer dipped into the cockpit and embraced him like a son. Seaman’s victory placed Hiihnlein in a very delicate, unenvi able position: he’d have to explain to the Fuehrer why an Englis hman had won the Fuehrer’s own trophy in the German Grand Prix in a German car in front of 400,000 Germans. The German newspapers faced a similar dilemma: Kissed and hugged by the joyful Neubauer, Seaman found himself lifted from his machine and escorted to the impressive awards platform. There, amid the swastika-laden trappings of Herr Hitler’s political organization, he was congratulated by an embarrassed Huhnle in. ‘On behalf of Chancellor Adolf Hitler’ said Hiihnlein unenthusiastic ally, ‘I present you with this trophy in honour of your victory.’ A huge laurel wreath was draped across the youthful Englander’s should ers as he accepted the enormous trophy. The bands played first the German Anthem, then ‘God

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Save the King’ and the Englander’s triumph.”

mighty crowd

179

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On the podium, a platform high up above the pits, Seaman faced an awkward moment. To his right, Hihnlein gave a stiff-arm Nazi salute; to his left von Brauchitsch did the same; behind him, a thicket of arms gave the salute, too. Could he, as an Englishman, do that? He compromised, lifting his arm halfway, almost exactly as Nuvolari had done. Huhnlein, a stocky man, shook Seaman’s hand, swastika prominent on the left arm of his uniform. Other uniformed men stood nearby. Krauss came back and virtually accused Neubauer of losing the race for von Brauchitsch by send him back out with burnt brakes. Neubauer pointed out that it was Hihnlein who had asked for the car to rejoin, no doubt seeing with terribly clarity the dilemma he’d face if Seaman won... Seaman said privately he wished the winning car had been British. A month later he led the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten for eleven laps in heavy rain but was baulked by back markers and Caracciola surged through. Bremgarten lay shrouded by the rain, the tall trees round its rural, undulating roads darkened by it, the track surface glistening with it — and each passing car cutting in to that, churning it, flinging it. They’d crest puddles and scatter the water there like little cloudbursts. Did Caracciola have a sixth sense — a supernatural ability — in the wet? His visor came off but he could stil] see, and see enough to win it. The rain had softened the ground in the woods and rivulets ran to the road and flowed across the track. I watched like a lynx to catch any change in the surface of the road. Baby said I had the eyes of a seal because I could see so well in the rain. But on a slippery road you must have the right feeling for the car. The car wants to act like a wild horse on the cobblestones. I had to guess what it intended doing before it was done and then I had to control it with calm, gentle motions. It required not only the hands; the entire body was involved in feeling and controlling the car.”

Once he’d won it, he lost no time lighting a cigarette. Seaman, second, said, had joined the leading drivers of the day because, as Caracciola ultimate Seaman had matched him and in the wet that was the compliment. the Hitler played the Czech crisis hard now. Three days before Monza, y. German minority held rallies and demanded union with German

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This political situation was coming to concern everyone, including the drivers. Caracciola remembered that at Monza we were ‘met with some sympathy, but on the whole with outright hostility. War seemed inevitable. However ...as yet we were still racing and the drivers of many nations participated.’ The Mercedes had been strong in practice but Hermann Miller, a former bike racer, forced his Auto Union into the lead, Lang chasing so hard that he overtook on the opening lap. On lap two Caracciola went off into straw bales and had to push the car back onto the circuit. It was as hot as only Italy can be in the autumn. It was hot in the cars, even hotter in mine because a gasket had burned out. The heat of the exhaust came directly through the openings of the gear and throttle pedals at my

feet. In spite of asbestos lining, the throttle burned a hole through the leather sole, the asbestos inner sole, right to the sole of my foot. Brauchitsch took over from me for a few laps, then he had enough. I got in again, pressing down on the red-hot throttle with just the edge of my foot.”

The sun made the tall trees into shadows across the track, made the cars into symmetrical shadows turning and returning. Nuvolari had his Auto Union past Lang and into the lead by lap ten. Someone coined a lovely phrase to cover what Nuvolari was doing, German engine, Italian heart. The rear-engined Auto Unions were extreme ly difficult to tame and exploit, as we’ve seen, and there’s enough cinematic evidence to illustrate that very graphically, the tail-ends twitching into corners, the cars Weaving. Rosemeyer had had an advantage because he had never: driven anything else and as a consequence did not have to make any adjustments of technique or even, perhaps, restructure an established technique altogether. Even Nuvolari, touched by genius, had taken this long to do the taming but, round Monza’s parkland, he had done it. The pace was so intense that Lang set fastest lap and blew his engine. Nuvolari won it, averaging more than 96mph, from Farina’s Alfa Romeo, two laps down, Caracciola third three laps down — although that was enough to make him European Champion. That only Caracciola of the Mercedes team finished prompted Neubauer to cancel a pre-planned victory celebr ation in Milan. Instead he set off with his wife to his favourite Milanese restaurant, but he’d been tricked because all the drivers came in and the Auto Union team, too. They did celebrate — Seaman’s engag ement to Erica Popp, the

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delightful daughter of the BMW president, and Neubauer paid the whole bill. The Donington Grand Prix was scheduled for Sunday, 2 October, a comfortable three weeks after Monza. When the German teams arrived, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was locked into negotiations with Hitler over the Czech crisis. On Monday, 26 September, five days before Donington, Hitler said that if the Czechs had not agreed to his demands by the Wednesday they would have to take the consequences. That might well mean the start of a general European war — and the cars (and mechanics) of both teams were already at Donington, deep in the heart of England, the drivers in London preparing to go to a luncheon at the RAC Club in Pall Mall to celebrate Seaman’s win at the Nurburgring. Nobody knows who gave the order, but it came in the early hours of the Tuesday to both teams: run for home. The mechanics loaded everything as fast as they could and by breakfast two convoys of lorries — the Mercedes had ten — were lumbering out of the circuit towards the distant Channel ports. Mercedes had instructions that if an enraged English public stormed their convoy as it passed through any of the towns along they way they were to set fire to the racing cars to destroy them. There was frantic activity between the team managements in London, the Mercedes and Auto Union headquarters, and Hihnlein in Berlin. He said that the cars must stay and race. The convoys were halted and turned round, and in those days it could be done by looking at a road map, working out the towns the convoys would go through, then ringing the police there with orders to intercept. Auto Union reached Market Harborough and a police sergeant flagged them down. They had a pleasant lunch at the Peacock Hotel before lumbering back. Mercedes reached Leicester and were drawn up outside the police headquarters. A team spokesman said that the decision to return to Donington meant

there would be no war. By Wednesday 28 September feverish horse-trading was going on in Germany. Hitler was taking it to the brink and was quite prepared to go over that brink. In the mounting confusion neither German team could get through to Germany for further instructions and took the decision themselves: run for home — again. This time they did. On Friday, 30 September Britain, France, Germany and Italy reached an agreement that the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia was to be incorporated into Greater Germany by 10 October. Czechoslovakia,

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which had not even been present at these talks, was being dismembered. That same day Chamberlain flew back to London and, in front of a crowd rendered slightly hysterical by relief, waved a piece of paper which he and Hitler had signed. It represented ‘peace in our time’. The Germans came back and the Donington Grand Prix was run on 22 October. In practice, Nuvolari’s Auto Union struck a deer and its head was stuffed, mounted and presented to him. Lang had pole from Nuvolari and an extraordinary race developed because one of the British cars dropped a large quantity of oil and the approaching cars, including Seaman, slithered off although Nuvolari got through by releasing the car to go where it wanted, not fighting or correcting it until it had done that. At 50 of the 80 laps, however, Lang led and Nuvolari ran third, 58 seconds behind. Nuvolari set off on a heroic chase and on lap 67 had caught him. A stone smashed Lang’s windscreen and the onrushing air made breathing so difficult he felt he:-was swimming. He could barely hold the wheel. On the long straight Nuvolari went cleanly by, and winning it by almost a minute and a half. That evening the world seemed a safer place, and Donington a warmer place because of Nuvolari. The Germans said at the banquet in Derby that of course they would be back again in 1939.

There’d be another Grand Prix at Donington, but with no German cars or engines and a single German driver, Michael Schumacher, on 11 April 1993.

Moving into 1939, the shadowlands became darker week by week. In February, plans were announced to provide British homes with bomb shelters; a month later Hitler crushed Czechoslovakia, and Britain and France said they would defend Poland’s independence. However much motor racing people tried to ignore all this — and they did, some right to the end — they could not. Reality was going to assert itself over their closed world and there was already evidence of that because, as relations between France and Italy deteriorated, Mussolini forbade Italian teams to compete in French races. Mercedes hadn’t modified their 1938 car except for a system of supercharging, and Auto Union did the same. In April, Mussolini occupied Albania and in May Italy and Germany signed a ‘Pact of Steel’. The Axis had been forged. The Championship began in Belgium on 26 June and perhaps Hermann Lang was typical of the desire to ignore the reality, He’d remember driving along the autobahn to Belgium, ‘dance music on the car radio, and the car smooth in over-drive. We touched. Aachen, then

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along the Rhine via Malmédy to Spa.” Seaman and his young wife Erica checked in to the Palace Hotel there. The ballot for grid places allowed Farina (Alfa Romeo) to be on the front row, and that had consequences because on the downhill start to Eau Rouge cars were apt to creep. Neubauer had frequently asked for the grid to be moved down to where the track flattened but, of course, the grandstands were facing the present grid. To avoid a false start Neubauer ordered lumps of chalk be put under the Mercedes’ wheels like chocks. These prevented the creeping and when the cars set off they crushed the chalk, but didn’t damage the tyres. Farina, Lang and Miiller made up the front row, Seaman and Nuvolari the row after that. On a wet afternoon Farina began to creep. Miiller and Lang went past him but whenever Lang attacked, Miller positioned his Auto Union in the middle of the narrow track. Passing the pits Lang could see ‘Neubauer raging against the officials ... I had signalled to him, by means of my raised fist, that I was being baulked.’ Eau Rouge was the same fundamental shape as today, the left curving into the right and then up the hill. This day in 1939, the rim of the left was grass and, passing tight beside it, the cars ran through a puddle, their rear offside wheels spewing water. The cars powered through and set off again into the watery countryside. On lap three Seaman went past Farina, too, and Lang signalled for him and Caracciola — both outstanding in the wet — to go by and attack Miller themselves. But Caracciola spun at La Source, got out and tried to push his Mercedes into the safety of the trees. When Neubauer heard Caracciola was out, he ordered a mechanic to take Caracciola’s coat and cigarettes to him, and stay with the car. Miiller pitted, and now Seaman led. By lap 22 he had almost half a minute over Lang but the rain fell heavier. Trees lined whole tracts of the circuit and no barriers protected the cars from them. Each tree trunk bore a painted white mark, that was all. The trees were sodden, the track sodden, the spectators huddled under umbrellas. Lang remembered: on a dangerous left-hand bend I was suddenly given the yellow danger flag. I slowed down at once, but was unable to find out straight away what was the matter. Coming out of the bend I saw that a racing car was positively glued to a tree, and on passing the spot I was horrified to recognise it as Seaman’s. [...] The car had almost completely wrapped itself round the tree no doubt through the considerable force of impact, the fuel tank had burst, and, wedged in the seat like a stone statue, Seaman, surrounded by a sea of flames.“

sat

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It happened near La Source, Seaman losing control of the car at some 130mph. It seemed the primitive ambition of every racing driver had gripped him: he had wanted to demonstrate that he — not Caracciola — was Der Regenmeister now. In the battered hulk of the Mercedes he sat trapped and unconscious, and when he was finally hauled from it he’d been badly burnt. Lang wanted to retire but was told to continue and won it from Hasse. Lang, distraught, managed a flicker of a smile when the garland was placed over his head, then the smile was gone. His eyelids blinked and blinked, his face locked into sombre posture. There were no celebrations that night as they all waited for medical bulletins on Seaman who had been taken to hospital in Spa and, astonishingly, regained consciousness. He died shortly before midnight. He was buried in London and the Mercedes team attended before flying to Paris and travelling from there to Reims for the French Grand Prix. Lang was in prime form and promptly broke the lap record when practice began. He had pole from Caracciola and Nuvolari. Everyone tried desperately to get into the lead, even at considerable personal risk. Even Caracciola wanted to take the first bend at sucha speed that he got into a skid and split his fuel tank. The tussle became more determined, and tougher. I had quite a job to get out of the mélées in which I was wedged, to follow the ‘Flying Mantuan’. It took four laps to pass him. Even the straight [...] was too narrow and it was only on the corners that I caught up. [...] I had occasion to watch his superb driving style. How easily he handled the car on the bends, almost caressing the wheel! On a hairpin I got my car next to him and side by side we entered the straight, without either being able to gain an inch on the other. Occasionally I glanced over to him [...] the white teeth, leathery face and jutting chin. Then came a long fast right-hander. He had the inside and neither of us gave in. I kept my foot on the throttle and just got by the footpath. I could not have done more — it would have been fatal.”

Untypically, Nuvolari backed off, soon retired with a gearbo x problem, Lang’s engine failed and Miiller won it. By the German Grand Prix on 23 July, Hitler exploited the Danzig problem, the disputed Baltic port which provided Poland with a corridor to the sea. Britain said that if he used force to seize it that force would be resisted, meaning war. Lang took pole again from von Brauchitsch and Caracciola, but Showers fell when the race began and The Ring seeme d to be brooding.

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Into lap two Pietsch, now a privateer in a Maserati, came past in the lead, the Mercedes of Lang and von Brauchitsch crippled by the damp weather and needing new plugs. ‘Loudspeakers braying excitedly at Pietsch’s effrontery almost choked over this news.’ Nuvolari responded by going by and Pietsch had to pit for plugs. As the race developed, Caracciola got stronger and stronger. He’d remember how the rain teemed down but, on lap 12, he overtook Hasse and Miller and set off to build a cushion because he had to make a pit stop again. He stretched his lead over them to 39 seconds, then 44 and on lap 15 he saw Neubauer’s pit signal — a flag - meaning come in at the end of this lap. He did that. He’d remember how fast the mechanics worked, putting in 60 litres of fuel in 17 seconds; remember how nobody spoke. He sensed the tension in the pit, sensed people looking for Miller coming. Caracciola got back out before that. ‘I heard the high, singing, metallic sound of my car and I was driving on my beloved

Nurburgring.’*’ Lang had retired — engine — and wanted to take over reserve driver Heinz Brendel’s car. Neubauer agreed and signalled Brendel in but Brendel missed the signal and halfway round the next lap saw Pietsch spinning. This seems to have distracted or unnerved him because he spun and the Mercedes went into a ditch. In the pits, Lang — unaware of this — waited for Brendel to appear and hand the car over. The pit phone rang. Brendel wanted someone to come and give him a lift back, Lang threw a cushion down in frustration while Neubauer spoke into the phone: you can walk back. Caracciola won it from Muller. Lang was ‘still bad-tempered’ that evening although he congratulated Caracciola on his victory at the Adler Hof hotel in Adenau. ‘Here amongst my colleagues and friends my good humour returned and we spent a cheerful evening. Next day, almost as pleased as the winner, we the returned home through the beautiful Eifel countryside, skirting

Rhine on the way.’ On 17 August, Hitler closed the border with Poland and on 20 August, border. the day of the Swiss Grand Prix, Poland sent troops to the how ered Caracciola watched the political clouds darken and rememb to the racing people couldn’t contemplate another war. He applied it now faced which and community which embraced so many nationalities being ‘made to hate each other from one day to the next.’ Italians had On top of Mussolini’s edict about racing in France, the them to lure To been determined to enter only 1.5-litre events. n of two heats, Bremgarten, the Swiss organisers created a bizarre solutio

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one for the 1.5 litre cars and the other for the Grand Prix cars, with the fastest meeting in a ‘final’. A wet race, and everyone murmured that it was made for Caracciola on such a cobbled track — demanding the utmost sensitivity in such conditions — but Lang, pole, wasn’t worried about that. The 1.5-litre heat winner Farina (Alfa Romeo) ran sixth and was about to be a spoiler. Lang led but Farina got up behind him and none of the mighty German cars could get past. For the opening six laps Lang couldn’t draw away from Farina any more than Caracciola could do anything about the Alfa Romeo. The rain stopped and Caracciola was past Farina, beginning a long pursuit of Lang. With 20 laps gone he was within 12 seconds and closing. ‘The pit crew, the papers and the spectators said afterwards that it had been the most exciting tussle they had ever seen,’ Lang wrote. He held Caracciola by three seconds at the end and was Champion of Europe. ‘Caracciola asked me afterwards why we had driven like maniacs. “Yes — why?” There was nothing else I could reply.’ Three days later, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a NonAggression Pact. It left Hitler free to do what he wanted in the rest of Europe without a stab in the back from the east. Inside a week troops all over Europe were being mobilised. The Yugoslavian Grand Prix in Belgrade was scheduled for 3 September. Hitler increased pressure on Poland hour by hour and only five cars went, two Mercedes (Lang, von Brauch itsch), two Auto Unions (Muller, Nuvolari) and a Bugatti for Bosko Milenk ovic, a rich Viennese who'd lived in Belgrade for twenty years and indulged his passion for racing, moving from bikes. to hill-climbs to a Bugatti. On 25 August, the Mercedes convoy moved out of Stuttgart for the long haul to Belgrade. Louis Chiron was havin g his 40th birthday at his villa near Como and, Caracciola would say, ‘asked us to come down with von Brauchitsch to celebrate. We remained together for quite a while. It seemed as if war might break out any day and we had so many things to tell each other. Before we parted we promi sed Chiron that we would phone him at once if we learned of such a catastrophe.’ Von Brauchitsch ‘left us with a heavy heart and gave us his luggage for safe-keeping.’ He

flew to Belgrade.

The circuit, in the City, was on roads round a park and had a rough surface cut through by tram lines . Some of the corners looked dangerously unprotected. Both German teams could sense the political tension rising and Auto Union even decided to stay in their hotel in the evenings. The Mercedes

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team, however, went out strolling. As much as possible they didn’t talk about the possibilities of war. At 5.45am on | September, the Friday, Germany invaded Poland. All the Germans in Belgrade faced the immediate question: race or run for home? One source claims Hiihnlein ‘ordered’ them to stay because he ‘wanted the race to be a frightening demonstration of German expertise.’ That day Lang went quickest in practice but von Brauchitsch took pole

the day after. From this point on, accounts become confused, contradictory, slightly hysterical. On race morning, Neubauer would write: ‘I could see that both Lang and Brauchitsch were oppressed by the worsening international situation and in no condition to drive their best. The evening before the race we were sitting in our hotel when the news came through that German troops had invaded Poland. We looked at one another in horrified silence.’ But of course the invasion had been the day

before that, and at dawn, not in the evening. Britain declared war on Germany that race day morning, 3 September, and Lang says ‘all of us lost every inclination to race but Neubauer returned from our Embassy with the news that we must keep calm and start. We owed this to our hosts.’ At some point in the confusion von Brauchitsch tried to fly home. Neubauer wrote that he — Neubauer — headed out to the airport, got onto the plane and confronted him. Von Brauchitsch gave an account confirming some details — Neubauer getting on to the plane, his hat at an angle as it always was when he was angry — but suggests it happened on the Friday, when news of the invasion of Poland came through. Von

Brauchitsch raced. It began at 3pm in front of some 50,000 spectators. The French at ambassador to Yugoslavia had taken his seat in the grandstand, gazed with war at be not the four German cars, risen and left. France would away rather Germany for another two hours and it may be he was called than registering his disgust. furiously Von Brauchitsch led immediately from Lang and they drove for six laps before, as Lang remembered: my eyes; with suddenly something hit me and everything went dark before car had thrown up a tremendous effort, I tried to see again. Brauchitsch’s both glasses in also but a stone, which not only shattered my aeroscreen Dr Glaser [the my goggles. My eyes were full of splinters and when and furious race was Mercedes doctor] took out the last bits the short over.”

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Reserve driver Walter Baumer took over, a lap down. Miiller in second place, Nuvolari third. When Miiller pitted Nuvolari attacked von Brauchitsch — and proud, perhaps arrogant, von Brauchitsch resisted to the point where Neubauer predicted a crash at any instant. Von Brauchitsch overtook Baumer so brutally that he thrust the German reserve driver into the straw bales. Then, on lap 16, von Brauchitsch spun and Nuvolari was through. Von Brauchitsch couldn’t catch him although, as a final flourish, he set joint fastest lap. That gesture distilled the spirit of the all motor racing, but it can stand particularly as the epitaph for the 1930s: never say die. Auto Union started to pack there and then, buying sufficient fuel (they hoped) to get them back to Germany. Their convoy moved out next morning. Mercedes had brought extra fuel with them and, because there were ugly rumours about Hungary, they headed up Yugoslavia to cross into Austria, now of course a part of Germany. What awful, potholed, dusty roads! They led through endless maize fields and went on and on. We had to keep miles away from the main convoy and could recognize it by the enormous dust clouds in the distance. After passing the black, white and yellow frontier posts we felt at home again.”

When they reached Vienna it was blacked out. Neubauer distributed enough of the fuel to get them all back home, and they dispersed. Lang remembered the ‘melancholy’ of realising that an era had suddenly ended and would never be coming back. Hitler was crushing Poland and, although ordinary people didn’t know it, he would turn west to crush Holland, Belgium and France, turn east again for the great prize, Stalin’s vast lair of the Soviet Union. Lang was right. Motor racing, which — distilled by the courage and skill of Bernd Rosemeyer — had been so wonderfully alive was one of the first deaths. There would be many, many more.

Notes 1. The League of Nations, set up in 1920 and headquartered in Geneva, was an early attempt at a body like the Unite d Nations — which in essence it later became. The League proved powerless in reality. 2. Alfa Romeo, Owen. WwW-

Grand Prix Driver, Lang. 4. When Nuvolari Raced, Moretti.

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. Racing the Silver Arrows, Nixon. . The Le Mans Story, Fraichard. . Amateur Racing Driver, Cholmondeley Tapper.

. Ibid. woe Vi Ona . Lang,

op. cit.

10. Ibid. 11. Rosemeyer!, Elly Rosemeyer and Nixon. 12. Complete History of Grand Prix Motor Racing, Cimarosti. 13. Racing the Silver Arrows, Nixon. 14. Moretti, op. cit.

15. Prince Birabongse of Thailand, known as ‘B. Bira.’ He was an enthusiastic and wealthy amateur driver of the 1930s, mainly competing in Britain.

16. Interview with author. V7: My Racing Life, Fangio. 18. The idea of retreating to Milan ten miles away for lunch is a wonderful one to the modern team, with its enormous motor homes which dispense excellent food at circuits even during qualifying. The fare at Grands Prix are even more impressive. Renault, for example, say: ‘About 2,000 meals are served every race weekend. The catering teams starts working in the kitchen at five in the morning — and everybody appreciates the quality of the service they provide. During the course of a Grand Prix meeting they provide 60kg of pasta, 200 chicken breasts, 7kg of salt and 15kg of sugar, among other things. A thousand bottles of water are consumed, while team guests enjoy up to 96 bottles of red wine and 72 bottles of white wine’ — Renault Fl Team Press Office. Perhaps Mrs Neubauer didn’t quite manage that.

19. Kampf um Meter Und Sekunden, von Brauchitsch. 20. Lang, op. cit. 21. Rosemeyer! op. cit. Karl Feureissen was Team Manager, Sebastian a mechanic. 22. Ibid. 23. Lang, op. cit. 24. Rosemeyer! op. cit. 25. Ibid. 26. Lang, op. cit. Paw Moretti, op. cit. 28. Owen, op. cit. 29. Silver Arrows, op. cit 30. Moretti, op. cit. 31. Lang, op. cit. 32. Ibid.

Hilton. 33. For a fuller description, see Hitler’s Grands Prix in England,

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34. Racing Mercedes (Bill Mason Films Ltd, David Weguelin Productions) 35. Owen, op. cit. 36. Omnibus of Speed, eds Beaumont and Nolan. BE Von Brauchitsch, op. cit. 38. Because this incident is so famous in motorsport history, some minutiae. Chris Nixon (Shooting Star: the life of Richard Seaman) has cast extreme doubt on whether all of these conversations happened and, if they did, on the

way they have usually been presented. Neubauer’s memoirs are unreliable (and sometimes outright invention) but have been used as a template by many. Nixon has studied film of the fire and concludes that although Neubauer did speak to von Brauchitsch, you can’t tell if von Brauchitsch said anything back. Neubauer did trot to Seaman and speak briefly to him but returned to von Brauchitsch as the fire broke out; then Seaman drove on to the track with Neubauer trying — and failing 39. At this distance, it is impossible to say if the Berlin race report the following morning deliberately but that Seaman is not mentioned in any headline and final paragraph. A MOVING

— to speak to him again. Tageblatt distorted its it remains suggestive only appears in the

GRAND

PRIX MERCEDES-BENZ AHEAD OF AUTO UNION HARD FIGHTS

UNEXPECTED INCIDENTS

The second race in the fight regarding the European Champi onship for car racing, the German Grand Prix, has been decided and after the first two races — France three weeks ago and Germany yesterday — it already now possible to have a basic view of who the victor will be: Mercedes-Benz. We did not expect a different outcome and yet many things were so interesting. There were so many incidents that one didn’t dare predict with any certainty, even one moment before the actual finish, what the outcome would be. Looking first of all at the vehicles and their success : in terms of their racing Car construction — the car came out in the spring and was adjudged a success — Mercedes-Benz were favourites. At the moment that vehicle cannot be beaten. The victories in Tripoli and Reims and now on the Nurburgring show this. The task of making a car according to the racing formula rules has succeeded. The racing tradit ion of the second Germany entry, Auto Union, is much more recent but one has to take into consideration the will to succeed of this firm. In January, just when the new construction was almost finished, Auto Union lost their best driver,

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Rosemeyer, and naturally it was he who drove the project forward on and off the track. Thus by his death the work certainly was handicapped. Nevertheless, Auto Union had their car so far advanced that they could

take the places behind Mercedes-Benz and showed, basically, they were far superior to their foreign competitors. The next meeting between MercedesBenz and Auto Union and hopefully the new Alfa Romeo will take place on 15 August in Pescara whilst Mercedes-Benz competes already eight

days before that in Livorno. The victory of Seaman on Mercedes-Benz, who also drove the fastest lap

of the day with an average speed of 134.8kmh, was completely and utterly deserved. The young Englishman, who has been under contract to the Unterttirkheim factory for some years, drove a considered and, from a technical point of view, extremely good race. After him came the second Mercedes-Benz with Lang.

40. Omnibus, op. cit. 41. Racing Driver's World, Caracciola. 42. Ibid. 43. Lang, op. cit. . Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. The German Grand Prix, Posthumus. 47. Caracciola, op. cit. 48. Ibid. 49. Lang. 50. Ibid.

Chapter 6

IN FANGIO’S TIME n 5 December 1940 — a raw, dark day — William Shirer, the resident evs radio commentator who had daily tried to tell Americans what was happening in Germany, left Berlin because censorship was making his work meaningless. Towards the end of the war, when the greatest slaughter the human race has known was bleeding its way to the end, he prepared to go back. By then the bombing of Britain had ended although there was still danger from the V2 rockets being fired from occupied France. They might strike anywhere in the greater London area, which put Hornsey, an anonymous northern suburb, as much at risk as anywhere else. That did not stop social life, which is how a ‘blond 16-year-old with a shadow of a moustache, in baggy sports coat and ever baggier 1940s trousers’ came to be dancing with a ‘slim, dark-haired girl in casual sweater.’! He had little or no money but fancied himself as a racing driver. That wasn’t his vocation, but he didn’t know that yet. Colin Chapman would marry the dark haired girl, Hazel, and start a business in a lock-up garage owned by her father, who charged 10s (50p) a week rent. He didn’t pay, of course. On 30 October 1945, Shirer returned to Berlin and, approa ching from the air, saw ‘the great city demolished almost beyond recogni tion.” Here, across the road from the Reich Chancellery, Hitler had inspected the Mercedes and Auto Unions while all around him stiff arm salutes cleaved the air and then became static. Alfred Neubau er did that. The drivers did that. The mechanics did that. Now the Chancellery was a broken tooth of a building, bombed, like whole swathe s of the city, into stumps of buildings standing deep in rubble. The hotel which faced the Chancellery, the Kaiserhof, where Neubauer stayed during the war while he supervised aircraft repair workshops, was badly mauled. Tom Wheatcroft, who'd been a spectator at Donington in 1938, served in the British Army and was passing Stuttgart. He went out of curiosity to see what had happened to the Mercedes factor y. He’d remember the extent of the wreckage so vividly that half a century later he could still

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visualise it. Stuttgart had been bombed to devastation — every German city had.’ Europe was a bleeding continent, ravaged and exhausted. If the 10 million dead of 1914-1918 are beyond imagining, the Soviet Union alone had lost more than 20 million and the international total was so monstrous that even nightmares can’t accommodate it. Some drivers joined the French Resistance, including Robert Benoist — who'd pay with his life, as we shall see — and ‘Williams’, another who paid the same price. Jean-Pierre Wimille survived. Dreyfus, who had developed close ties with the United States, joined the American Army (and discovered real breakfasts. Terrific, he thought). In May 1944, as Dreyfus subsequently learned, his wife — who’d remained in France during the war — divorced him. Dreyfus was Jewish, and she gave that as one of the reasons. Dreyfus reflected that in Nazi-occupied France it was reason enough.* Paris had been liberated in August 1944 after the German commander, General Dietrich von Cholitz, refused Hitler’s order to physically destroy the city. Parisians fell upon collaborators, especially the women who had slept with Germans. In one instance the luxuries these women had been given — nylons, perfume and so on, all beyond price in wartime — were brought out onto a street. The crowd did not steal them, they trampled

on them. Neubauer wrote of being put into a prison camp for a couple of weeks and on release finding, as Wheatcroft had found, the Mercedes factory in ruins. Dr Porsche did two years and emerged with ‘his health shattered.” Lang did ten months, according to Neubauer, although he does not mention this himself. It was a time of many silences. Lang wrote that ‘after the collapse [of Germany] one could not even talk of motorsport at a time when doctors had not enough fuel and tyres.’ Whole tracts of Europe were the equivalent of wasteland, the roads choked by the wretchedness of millions of refugees; and then there were the Death Camps and the Six Million who wouldn’t be coming back from them, the nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, the Soviet army now seizing everything up into the middle of Germany, swallowing on the way Czechoslovakia and the deadly, primitive Brno circuit. Hungary and that decorous Budapest circuit in public gardens which Nuvolari had graced, was a memory. a The political division of Germany, which endured until 1989, was Union Soviet the compromise: eastern Germany given to Poland, and France occupying part of middle Germany and the USA, Britain lines, same the along occupying the remainder. Berlin was divided

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although it fell within the Soviet Zone. To apply all this directly to motorsport, the AVUS circuit lay just inside the boundary of the US Sector with the Soviet Sector in Berlin, and was used as part of the autobahn system so that an ordinary motorist drove quite naturally along it, past grandstands, until he reached the eastern checkpoint beyond the other end of it where, soon enough, there would be wire fences, watchtowers and a death strip. Zwickau fell deep within the Soviet Zone. Some of the Auto Union racing cars were reportedly taken back to the Soviet Union and dismembered. Italy was riven between Fascists and Communists, and much of the north badly battered by the advancing and retreating armies. Enzo Ferrari spent the war ensuring his factory made machine tools (for, it seems, the Germans) — although the details are unclear — and making love to a gorgeous fair-haired woman who worked for him, Lina Lardi. She’d provide him with a son and heir, Dino. As the Germans retreated, Ferrari turned his thoughts to making cars and racing them. Italy would have to be rebuilt and that was an interesting thought to someone with a factory, although it had been hit by American bombers and would take some months to become operational again.’ Italian racing cars were ‘among the few which had been saved from the bombing’* because Alfa Romeo hid some and ‘numer ous private owners’ hid their Maseratis. In July 1945, Ferrari invited Gioachino Colom bo, a designer suspended by Alfa Romeo, for talks. Alfa Romeo was ‘crippled and in political disarray’. Colombo drove down to Moden a ‘over shell-pocked roads and through bombed-out villages in a prewar car fuelled by blackmarket gasoline. The day was steamy and humid .” The bridge over the River Po had been destroyed and the car crosse d on a barge. At Modena, Ferrari said it bluntly: ‘I want you to go back to making racing cars.’ When the shooting finally stopped, ordinary people felt a very deep desire for normality and, at the same time, escape from reality. To many that was represented by sport and even the most modest events drew immense crowds. Whether motor racing had ever represented normality is a subject for informed debate, but it certai nly offered escape. One man and his machine confronting other men and their machines was even more intoxicating now, and that is how on 9 September 1945, just eleven months after the liberation and five month s after all the shooting in Europe did stop, the other kind of noise Started again in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris." ‘It was a park like Hyde Park with a lake and they cornered in front of it. Fortunately the pits and everything were very close to a-tube Station,’

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Jabby Crombac, a leading French motor racing journalist, remembers. ‘I didn’t have a motor bike so I went by tube. It was like motor racing was for years: you could walk around the cars and mechanics and drivers. There was a big crowd — people were starved of attractions like that. What I remember most was the smell of racing fuel which was so pungent. The first race I’d ever seen was the 1936 Grand Prix at Montlhéry and I got exposed to this smell which was absolutely fantastic. I smelt it again now. I do remember also these engine were all very tired and old, didn’t have new piston rings or anything. They were bellowing smoke in the biggest possible way, which was wonderful." Hermann Lang turns a lovely general phrase for the rebirth which could apply anywhere and certainly applied here. ‘The spell was broken’ — the spell of five years of death and darkness. The circuit measured 1.7 miles and by definition the cars were those which had survived the war. The first race was called the Coupe Robert Benoist in memory of the driver who had won four of the five Grands Prix in 1927, been parachuted into France from England and executed in Buchenwald concentration camp. Seventeen cars started and Amédée Gordini in a Simca led throughout. He was presented with the winning cup by Benoist’s daughter. There were two other races, the Coupe de la Libération (The Liberation Cup) and the Coupe des Prisonniers (Prisoners’ Cup), the highlight. Of the 16 starters, many were well known: Wimille, Sommer, Maurice Trintignant, Etancelin and one who would become extremely notorious, Pierre Levegh. Wimille was still in the French Army and a certain amount of influence had been wielded by friends to get him here, although he didn’t arrive in time to practise and started down the grid. Here were the music-makers again, the Bugattis, Talbots, Delahayes, an Alfa Romeo and a Maserati. The race was over 43 laps, Wimille up to ninth on the first of them and working his way into the lead. He won it in just over an hour by more than a minute from Sommer, the rest spread far back. That was of no importance. What Wimille said was: ‘I have not lost my touch. I was rather afraid after such a long period of inactivity but after the first lap I knew all would be as before.’ He praised his Bugatti for several reasons — and ‘one must not forget it was Robert

Benoist who concealed it from the Germans.”” h In many profound ways nothing could be as it was before althoug in drivers The 1930s. the inevitably there was a sense of carry-over from buy cars the Bois de Boulogne were those who'd had enough money to the moment then and still had enough to race them now. Nobody knew,

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the Coupe Robert Benoist was launched, that motor racing had begun a long journey away from the power of privilege, or that Grand Prix racing would come to reflect very accurately the direction in which Western Europe flowed. It had to remain exclusive in the practical sense because at any given moment there were so few teams, cars and drivers, but entry would be on merit, not the size of your inheritance. Ken Tyrrell, a timber-merchant who’d spent the war in the RAE received ‘£25 and a new suit for five and a half years’ service. I set out to make my own way in life.’ That would lead him to his own team and a multiple World Champion, Jackie Stewart, who on the day of Tyrrell’s demob was a frisky little six-year-old in Dumbarton, Scotland. It was the beginning of meritocracy. Brooklands, of the right crowd and no crowding, had been requisitioned by the military, the banking partially dismantled to disguise it from enemy bombers. Now it was as much a memory as Budapest. Donington had been an enormous supply depot, Silverst one just another bomber base among so many lost in England’s green and pleasant land. Nobody dreamed of racing cars there. Thruxto n and Snetterton were air bases, too. By the end of 1945 ‘it was possible to see the immedi ate future of

motor racing. France was more than ready to organise events, the Italians had pre-war cars available, England had some cars available and

plans were being made to start on new designs.’¥ In February 1946 the international governing body was renamed the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FAI) and it drew up a new formula (1,500cc for supercharged engines, 4,500cc unsupe rcharged). For the first

time

the expression

‘Formula

1’ became

Currency.

Germany

was

not

allowed to join — or rather re-join — the new body for political reasons. In any case the sense of carry-over lingered becau se a new generation would take time to emerge. A race at Nice in April confirmed that. The entries included Chiron, Sommer, Etancelin and Villoresi, who won it in a Maserati. Piero Taruffi would write that ‘Gigi’s victory was hailed with tremendous enthusiasm in Italy, as an augur y that our cars and drivers might once again come to the top after five years of inactivity.’ Villoresi was part of the carry-over because he’d been racing since 1931. Nuvolari, who'd spent an unhappy war lodge d in a valley in the north of Italy — he disliked both what the war was and what it represented — competed whenever he could, 13 times in 1946. He drove a Maserati at Marseille three weeks after Nice and the entry was so big, reflecting the hunger for normality, that two heats had to be run to sort out the runners for the final. Nuvolari set fastes t lap in heat two but retired

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when a valve failed. Christian Kautz, who'd driven for Mercedes before the war, was a reserve driver. He was Swiss, and Switzerland had been neutral, so the German restriction did not apply. On 30 May 1946 Wimille won the Resistance Cup, again in the Bois de Boulogne. Nuvolari dropped out on lap five with a gearbox problem. On 9 June there was a sprint race at St Cloud, between Versailles and Paris. Two works Alfettas” were entered ‘exactly as they had been run prior to the war’’* but neither won — a Maserati did (Sommer). Alfa Romeo could not develop a new racing car because the production cars had absolute priority so they overhauled what they had and did that so well they dominated the Grand Prix des Nations at Geneva on 21 July. Taruffi competed in the Turin Grand Prix in September 1946, giving Cisitalia its debut.’? He went in against Nuvolari, Sommer, Farina and Chiron among others. After a few laps a hydraulic pipeline broke, leaving me completely without brakes as I was slowing for a right-hand corner. I whistled past Sommer on the right at about 60mph. [...] and plunged full tilt into the straw bales, sending flying a fireman who had stationed himself on top to get a good view. He sailed into the air, all arms and legs, and by a miracle came down unhurt. The car pulled up twenty yards or so further on against some more

straw bales, its wheels pointing outwards at a sad angle.”

Taruffi was another part of the carry-over because he’d begun competing in 1923. He describes how ‘Nuvolari sent the crowd into ecstasies by driving without a steering wheel. Or to be exact, he drove a couple of laps frantically waving his steering wheel at the crowd while he steered by means of a single fixed spoke forming part of the column.’ Nuvolari remained touched by rarest charisma and_ still communicated it, but his face was narrower now, bark on an old tree, and in April 1946 his second son, Alberto, died. Nuvolari kept on racing because, as he said, he knew about nothing else and there was nothing else he could do. The sense of carry-over lingered into the first post-war Grand Prix, the Swiss at Bremgarten in June 1947. The first six finishers were Wimille (Alfa Romeo), Varzi (Alfa Romeo), Trossi (Alfa Romeo), Sommer (Maserati), Sanesi (Alfa Romeo), Villoresi (Maserati). There’d be three further Grands Prix, at Spa (Wimille won), Milan (Trossi again) and

Lyon (Chiron). In the spring of 1948 Juan-Manuel Fangio, now in his late 30s, was still racing in Argentina although he thought he might be too old to have

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much of a future. The year before, the masterly Europeans — Varzi, who he’d remember as austere and monied, and Villoresi — had come to Argentina. Fangio watched and their ‘elegant simplicity’ of style surprised him. Now they came back, Wimille with them. Fangio raced them despite being ‘as nervous as I have ever been in my life’ and Wimille, regarded as the best driver in the world, quickly recognised how good Fangio was. In one race Fangio overtook him, which provoked widespread incredulity. Wimille said that if one day Fangio had a ‘car that is right for his temperament’ he’d ‘perform miracles.” He would. The first major Grand Prix since the war, Monaco, had 19 cars on the grid. Hight finished and Farina won it from pole. Nuvolari was on the sixth row of the grid but the engine failed after 16 laps although that might be a diplomatic nicety. He was ‘hardly recognisable and is weakening as the laps go by.’ He was ‘visibly’ unwell and his career at Monaco ‘ends in the most dramatic anonymity.” A young, strong, almost plump young Italian brought a Maserati home in fifth. Alberto Ascari was wracked by all manner of superstitions, as his father had been. He had already developed in three early races in 1948 ‘a religious horror of black cats’ — it started on 1 April when one got itself in front of his car on the Way to a race. At Monaco his Maserati retired after gearbox and oil pump problems. Deep into the race he took over Villoresi’s Maserati but smoke belched from that and it had only third gear. He nursed it to the finish three laps behind Farina. The Monaco measure: Farina, 100 laps, 3h 18m 26.9s, an average speed of 39.7mph; von Brauchitsch, 1937, 63.2mph. The measure of the decades: 1929, 49.8mph; 1937, 63.2mph; 1948, 59.7mph. Vehicles registered in Britain 3.7 million (1938, 2.9 million). A Ford Anglia cost £326 and a Briton earned on average £7.13 (in 1949). Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 45 weeks to buy one (1910, 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, 1 year 28 weeks; 1929, 41 weeks; 1938, 37 weeks uy The Argentine Auto Club found a way of getting Fangio to Europe, and he arrived on 25 May, eight days after Monaco. Soon enough he watched Ascari win a minor race at San Remo. On 1 July, in practice for the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten, Varzi was killed. Fangio remembered Varzi going out to try to beat the time set by Wimille, but Bremgarten was dangerous, everyb ody knew that.

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There was a descent, and a downward sloping zigzag. Because of the rain, the road surface was very slippery. They had put planking against the wire fence, but where the planks were was only an earth bank. Varzi’s car went into a spin, passed the planking and went into the earth. The car turned over rather slowly [...] and killed him.’”

Two weeks later, Fangio was at Reims driving in the French Grand Prix and a support race for small-capacity cars. In that he had a SimcaGordini and qualified on the front row with Sommer’s Ferrari but had to retire when he was sixth, the engine overheating. The Grand Prix was over 64 laps. Nuvolari had come for the practice and covered a few laps in Villoresi’s Maserati, a car they would share. Ascari qualified second, Fangio in a Maserati on the fifth row. Wimille, pole, led while Villoresi took his Maserati to lap 17 when, with only fourth gear left, he handed it over to Nuvolari. The old master sketched a final vignette matching the times Villoresi had set despite the gearbox and going through the corners faster than anybody except Wimille. On lap 28 he came in to hand it back. He clambered out and walked away from his Grand Prix career forever. Fangio went to lap 41 when the engine failed. He felt he’d betrayed the confidence of the Argentine Auto Club and ‘the next day’s newspapers ignored me.’ His brief European trip was over. Two races remained, the Italian at Turin — Wimille won there as he had won at Reims — and the British at Silverstone, used for racing since the year before although Grand Prix cars hadn’t been there. ‘Race day dawned sunny, and the spectacle-starved British public flocked [...] in their tens of thousands. Miles of traffic jams choked every approach as an enormous six-figure crowd assembled.” Chiron took pole but Villoresi won it in a new Maserati from Ascari in another. They’d started on the last row of the grid. The Maseratis indulged in some sliding at big speeds and once Villoresi went into the straw bales which were placed at strategic points round the circuit. The Alfa Romeos had been so successful that the announcement they wouldn’t contest the seven Grands Prix in 1949 came as a genuine shock. The year began badly. Wimille, practising for a race in Buenos Aires, was killed and Fangio remembered: ‘I can still see him, in clear blue overalls, getting into his Simca — also French racing blue — in the oblique rays of the sun filtering through the trees bordering the route.’ He’d remember a great noise in the distance, Wimille’s wife Christine holding a stopwatch and watching the last bend. Wimille never came through it.

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‘As Wimille drove along the tree-bordered circuit, a group of onlookers had edged too near the road. Seeing the danger, a mounted policeman spurred his horse towards them, forcing them back, but the horse’s hooves raised a bit of dust. Lifted by the early morning breeze, the dust was wafted towards the exact spot which the little blue car was approaching. No-one ever knew exactly what happened. More than likely, blinded for a second by the barred sunlight shining through trees, Jean-Pierre roughly slammed on his brakes. Certain witnesses told me that his car overturned spectacularly before crashing into a tree.’ It was a young tree but strong enough to fracture his skull and crush his chest against the steering wheel. Later, some of his Argentinian admirers took a knife and carved into it, in memoriam, three letters: J le WwW

Villoresi once said: ‘There are gentlemen in life who are not so ina race, but Wimille was a gentleman in a racing car also.’ Fangio returned to Europe and began to make a reputation in minor races although he said he wouldn’t be happy until he’d won a major Grand Prix. He had already shown in South America that his abilities were so rare and refined they remain difficult to quantify. He was poised, as it seemed, permanently on the threshold of middle age. Perhaps that allowed him to make brutal racing cars perform with delicacy and precision: when he charged he did so from a perspective of age and experience. Without the Alfa Romeos the Grand Prix season opened out: Emmanuel de Graffenried won Silverstone in a Maserati, Louis Rosier won Spa in a Lago-Talbot, Ascari won Bremgarten in a Ferrari, Chiron won Reims in a Lago-Talbot. Fangio drove a Maserati there but retired and then returned to Argentina. He’d won six races in Europe and although they were not of Grand Prix standing he received an astonishing welcome home from thousands and thousands of people. He was ushered onto a flag-draped balcony and they cheered him as if he’d won the World Championship. Ascari won Monza in the Ferrari, Peter Whitehead won Brno in a Ferrari.” Whitehead took 2h 48m 41.0s to complete the 20 laps, more than half a minute in front of Etancelin. A driver called Dobry ina BMW finished eleventh and last. How long he took to do this is unclear because we have times for only the first three, with the next five a lap down and

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the driver after that two laps down. The final two — Dobry and someone called Jaroslav Vicek, who came in tenth — have neither times nor laps. This, in all its anonymity, ended the whole first era of Grand Prix racing which had begun at Le Mans in 1906. The first World Championships for motorcycles were held in 1949, embracing

125cc,

250cc,

350cc,

500cc

and

sidecar

categories.

It was

something of a revolutionary idea. There was no World Championships in any major sport except football (from 1930) and wouldn’t be for many years: the cricket World Cup in 1973, athletics in 1983, Rugby Union in 1987. Some sports — golf, tennis, horse racing — had structures which did not lend themselves to competitors contesting a specific number of rounds to produce a champion. Motor car racing seemed like that, too, but in 1949, the FIA received a proposal from Count Antonio Brivio — the Automobile Club of Italy’s representative and former Grand Prix driver — that a number of defined Grands Prix should become the World Championship. The FIA, meeting in Paris, agreed and six Grands Prix were chosen for 1950: Britain, Monaco, Switzerland, Belgium, France and _ Italy. Argentina, Holland and Spain also wanted races but the FIA decided six would be enough with which to start. The American delegate, however, said that if you wanted a credible World Championship an American race, meaning the Indianapolis 500, would have to be included. This, too, was accepted because in theory, any American team or driver could be entered for the Grands Prix and any Grand Prix team or driver for the 500. Points were awarded: 8 for a win, 6 for second, 4 for third, 3 for fourth, 2 for fifth and 1 for the fastest lap. Of the seven rounds a driver could count only his four best finishes, a device to minimise the risk of a dominant driver and car paralysing the championship. This best-finishes was a device which became a legacy and, in different combinations, it applied to every season until 1990. Alfa Romeo came back and Fangio received a telegram from them... The modern era began on a Wednesday at Silverstone when the transporters came in. Nobody knew that, of course, or even whether a World Championship would be a success. We all breathed more freely when the big Alfa Romeo vans, ‘Alfa Romeo, Gomme, Pirelli’ on their flanks arrived with the four ‘158’ Alfa Romeos, for the first time on English soil, accompanied by their attendant Alfa Romeo lorry full of tyres and equipment. Even more imposing were the spotless and vast [...] Citroén vans, one They towing a covered two-wheeled trailer, each containing two Talbots.

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wore ‘Dunlop’ and the French flash and one had an identification lamp. Platé’s Bianchi lorry, laden with many jerry-cans and Shell tins, brought

the Maseratis; Etancelin drove up in a ‘203’ Peugeot saloon. The Italian drivers used an Alfa Romeo saloon with ‘Winner, 1000 Miglia, 1950’ on its back-panel, and the big Fargo van of Ecurie Belge, ‘Specialité Voitures Course et Sport,’ trundled into the pit-area.”*

Meanwhile, 125 loudspeakers and seven miles of wiring were being tested. With the Royal Family coming and making a tour, the police rehearsed. Motor Sport reported that ‘as well turned out as any of the Continental transports was Geoff Crossley’s Chevrolet van, bearing the slogan “Alta-Sport, Brightwell Baldwin, England.” Crossley, 29, was a racing enthusiast who competed occasionally. The British Grand Prix at Silverstone actually bore the title Grand Prix of Europe, an honorary thing and rarely used then. The Thursday was for practice and soon enough the big cars were wailing round with the Alfa Romeos clearly fast. They had four entries — Farina, Fagioli, Fangio, and Reg Parnell, the Derby man who'd competed before the war. Chiron drove a Maserati. Farina, Fagioli and Fangio: they read like a line of poetry but the men themselves looked middle aged, hair receding. Farina went fastest of all with a lap of 1m 50.8s and because nobody could improve on that next day the World Championship had its first pole position. The three other Alfa Romeos filled the front row of the grid (arranged 4—34-3-4-3). The 21 drivers who assembled on it represent a lost era: Leslie Johnson (ERA, fourth row); David Murray (Maserati, fifth row, an accountant who would form the Ecurie Ecosse racing team); Crossley the enthusiast; David Hampshire (Maserati, fifth row, a compan y director); Cuth Harrison (ERA, fifth row, an enthusiastic amateur ); Joe Fry (Maserati, sixth row, a hill-climb specialist); Joe Kelly (Alta, sixth row, a Dublin motor dealer). The Royal Family met the drivers, which Fangio considered his highlight of the day. ‘I remember the King wore a dark-g rey suit, and the Queen had a pleasant smile. The Princess Elizab eth showed lively Curiosity about the motor racing world.’ Lord Howe, who'd raced the Silver Arrows in a little ERA at Donington before the wai, sat with them explaining what was going on and the Grenadier Guards band played. As the flag fell Farina accelerated away and compl eted the opening lap in the lead becoming in the nature of it the first lap-leader of this modern era. As he crossed the line to do it, he was however, united with

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Vincenzo Lancia, who had led the first lap of all at Le Mans that morning in 1906.

On lap two Farina did 1m 50.60s (94mph). That remained the fastest lap of the race, and consequently the first of those. He was united with Paul Baras, who'd done the very first of them at Le Mans. The Alfa Romeos were simply too good to be challenged and, instead, staged a ‘mock battle’”” with the lead changing hands as the drivers decreed. Farina won it from Fagioli, and at that moment was united with Ferenc Szisz. Motor Sport was unimpressed. ‘The RAC Grand Prix de L’Europe, then, was no better than preceding races in the series, a sentiment with which we feel sure those who arrived late because of traffic congestion, those who spent four hours or so getting out of the car parks, those who received the wrong passes and those honorary club marshals who had to sleep the Friday night in old tents because RAC patrols had taken the beds in the huts, will readily concur.’ A week later they were in Monaco. Froilan Gonzalez, an Argentine known as ‘the Bull of the Pampas,’ had been in Europe the season before without much success. Now he made his Grand Prix debut in a Maserati. He was stout yet nimble enough to have played football in his youth. In a racing car he ignored finesse and punched it around the circuits, and that stood in odd contrast to his kindly nature. He was ten years younger than Fangio. Enzo Ferrari noticed. Ferrari had three cars at Monaco, for Sommer, Ascari and Villoresi. Their challenge to Alfa Romeo generated a context of its own: Alfa Romeo, a past Italian dynasty, pitted against a future Italian dynasty, Ferrari, who had been so intimate with them for so long. The race at Monaco had always created a precise, almost mythological, image of itself. Here’s an example. ‘In the miniature fairy-tale realm of Prince Rainier, busy little men attach colourful posters to the stone balustrades of the quay, then they put them up between the palms and nail them on the wooden walls of the temporary grandstands which are being erected everywhere. An army of Monegasque workmen cover the corners and bends of the streets [...] with thick straw bales, and kindly police calmly direct surprised visitors to the nearest diversion roads. Soon the racing machines thunder through the elegant streets, the noise of their engines and the screaming of the tyres resounding even in the luxurious foyer of the Hotel de Paris. The old ladies who spend the evening of their lives there withdraw, shocked, to their apartments.”

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Fangio took pole from Farina but a high wind brought the sea cascading over the harbour wall. On the opening lap Farina spun on it at Tabac Corner and hammered the wall. His Alfa Romeo straddled the course and Gonzalez ran full into it. The rest was like ‘Chinese firecrackers.” Fagioli brought his Alfa Romeo to a halt but across the course. Chiron found a way through but another car stopped and was rammed into Fagioli by a third. The firecrackers went off all over the place: ten cars out. Gonzalez pressed on but he didn’t know the fuel tank had been damaged, and his Maserati caught fire. Fangio pieced together what had happened afterwards. Gonzalez sprang out of the car while it was still moving, shirt on fire, and rolled over and over to douse the flames. Some spectators managed to get his shirt off and although he’d suffered burns he was alive. As Fangio came from the tunnel towards the multi-crash he saw waved yellow flags. He slowed but a marshal (‘he had evidently lost his head’) waved to go right: no way through there. ‘Reversing in a racing car is very difficult [and] would take too long.’ Fangio climbed out and ‘with my hands I began shoving on my rear tyres. The heat of the tyres penetrated my driving gloves but at last I managed to roll the car back a few yards, enough to manoeuvre and take the road again.’*° Officials poured on to the track to heave the wreckage out of the way. Seven or eight of them tugged at one car while the racers tip-toed round it. Fangio reached oil left by Gonzalez. A spectator — presumably not realising — threw a lighted cigarette butt into the oil and Fangio braced himself ‘for a wall of fire’ but the oil didn’t light. Fangio won it. The Monaco measure: Fangio, 100 laps, 3h 13m 18.7s, an average speed of 61.3mph: Farina, 1948, 59.7mph. The ultimate measure: at Bonneville in September 1947, John Cobb had pushed the Land Speed Record to 394mph. It would remain there until 1 960 and have only the most tenuous connection with Grand Prix racing after that — Donald Campbell, son of Malcolm, broke it in 1964. The days when any man could do both were gone, and so is its relevance to our story. Farina won the Swiss (Fangio had mechanical proble ms), Fangio won Belgium and France, Farina won Italy, giving him 30 points against

Fangio’s 27. So many aspects of Grand Prix racing are now so well documented but

Giuseppe Farina remains a comparative stranger. What he thought is lost in silence, and so is why he did what he did, which was driving so hard he crashed repeatedly.

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Born in Turin in 1908, his father was the oldest of brothers who’d founded a well-known coachbuilding business. ‘A very handsome young man in his early twenties, Nino Farina was a brilliant cavalry officer during his military service (and many times was mistaken for the Prince of Piedmont, then Crown Prince and later King Umberto of Italy!). He already drove at nine years of age and proved to be a good cyclist, a good soccer player and a track athlete but his real love was to be motor racing even if he was also for many years a first class skier as well.”»! He was unpredictable and even Enzo Ferrari fretted about that. Ferrari likened him to a ‘highstrung thoroughbred [...] capable of committing the most astonishing follies.’ To compound all this, he’d a doctorate in political economy (whatever that is) from Turin University. Fangio received another astonishing welcome when he returned to Argentina. President Juan Peron and his wife Eva embraced him at an official reception while thousands outside applauded. Someone had even written a song about him, and it was sung to triumphal music. In the background Enzo Ferrari prepared his full assault. Ascari finished fifth in the 1950 table and would soon be in a position to challenge Fangio directly, while Villoresi and Taruffi ran well. Ascari, however, wouldn’t be able to mount an immediate challenge because in a Formula 2 race at Genoa his car caught fire and, trying to get himself out of it, his foot caught in the steering wheel. ‘While the flames licked him’” Ascari, helped by two others, struggled free but his right forearm was badly burnt. The Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten was run in a rainstorm and Fangio, pole, reasoned that he had to make a clean, swift start and lead or he’d be lost in the others’ spray. It worked. A young Englishman, Stirling Moss, qualified sixth in a HWM” and surveying the circuit regarded it as a terrific challenge. The pain from Ascari’s arm was so severe he let Taruffi through to try to attack the Alfa Romeos. Taruffi ‘used goggles with a single curved glass in preference to the visors that most people wore. To keep the rain out I sealed the ventilation holes above the glass and enlarged the ones underneath and also put special anti-misting wax on the glass. This meant that I could close with other competitors and overtake without being blinded by spray.’” This worked, too. Moss ‘initially ran eleventh amongst the 21 starters...suddenly my aeroscreen shattered into a cloud of flying splinters. My face was blistered with flying glass, and wind and rain nearly ripped off my visor

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and helmet. I had to hold my helmet down against the wind for the next thirty laps.’” Fangio won.

Taruffi tracked Farina but even with the goggles found the spray difficult to penetrate, especially out in the wooded section. He caught and overtook him with one lap to go. Moss held seventh until ‘only 300 yards from the finish I ran out of fuel.’ Farina won Belgium from Ascari. Fangio led the French Grand Prix at Reims on a day so hot that breathing proved difficult and the tyres ‘burned’ through the corners sending choking, acrid smoke to the drivers. At one point, swerving to avoid another car, he spun completely round and his Alfa Romeo straddled the track. Rosier in a Talbot Lago braked frantically and stopped just short of him. It happened on a straight stretch of road with unprotected trees at regular intervals down both sides. Fangio executed a perfect three-point turn and continued on his way. He had magneto trouble, took over Fagioli’s car and won. Gonzalez took pole at Silverstone but waiting for the race to start became more and more tense. He wandered ‘in a daze,’ as he’d say, and some fellow Argentinians there as spectators tried to calm him. He didn’t hear them but he did hear his own voice talking to himself. A klaxon sounded — five minutes to go — and he fled to the toilet. Each further klaxon sound, at one-minute intervals, increased his tension. He got into his Ferrari and determined to keep it motionless to avoid a penalty for jumping the start. He felt his heart rate nearly out of control, he could barely breathe — and then he was off. The Alfa Romeos and Ferraris who filled the front row didn’t make a good start and, passing the pits first time round, Gonzdlez noticed both team Managers signalling — forget the plans, go for the lead! Gonzalez did that, took it and won from Fangio by 51 seconds. His wife and friends mobbed him and held him in such a strong embrace that years later he could still ‘feel their warmth and the moisture of their tears mingling with mine.’ He was presented to the Queen then taken towards the podium. ‘From all sides I heard cries I did not understa nd. I saw hands trying to reach me and heard words in many languages but none in my own. It was strange music but very pleasing to the spirit.’ On the rostrum, when the Argentine National Anthem began, the young country boy shed many more tears.** ‘I have forgotten many races,’ he’d say, ‘but always fresh in my mind is 14 July 1951 and the British Grand Prix.’ Ken Tyrrell established a small timber business in Surrey and played

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as a robust centre-half for the local football club. The club got up a coach party to go to Silverstone and he went, although he had never seen a motor race and knew nothing about it. They threw some beer in the back and set off. At Silverstone they found themselves in the crowd at Stowe Corner and he watched, enchanted and entranced, as a support race for 900cc cars surged by, the cars in a nervous shoal. As that race settled, the leader, Moss, provoked hilarity in the crowd by taking his hands off the steering wheel and pointing to an aeroplane overhead. Tyrrell noticed that one of the other drivers came from Guildford, not far away from the timber business. He’d go there and introduce himself to the driver because he, too, wanted to race. He was right about the enchantment and from 14 July 1951 it never left him. The dynastic victory of Gonzalez over the Alfa Romeos inspired Enzo Ferrari to some of his most ‘mawkish prose’ when he said he ‘cried for joy [...] I thought today I had killed my mother.’”” The night before the German Grand Prix at the Niirburgring Ascari asked the famous Italian journalist Giovanni Canestrini to tell him about Nuvolari’s 1935 victory and how you conquered such a circuit. Canestrini, who'd been there, explained the trick: keep your tyres fresh for the final lap. Ascari, leading, was unable to do that and with four laps left he passed the pits pointing to his rear tyres. It meant coming in next time round for new tyres. He did and kept the lead — the fresh tyres decisive. Fangio came second and the championship tilted towards him with 28 points, Ascari 17, Gonzalez 15, Farina 15. Italy and Spain remained. On the count-back four-finishes system (of the eight rounds) Fangio already dropped the point for fastest lap at Spa, Ascari and Gonzalez had only three finishes, Farina four so he’d be dropping the point for fastest lap at Silverstone. Fangio began to feel, that hot September, ‘some animosity due to national jealousy. I admit that, for weeks, I had been anxious to see the whole business come to an end.’* At Monza six Ferraris took on four Alfa Romeos. Fangio’s Alfa Romeo had pole but, the front row cars, four wide, jumped the start and Farina edged ahead. Fangio took him but Ascari’s Ferrari went past on lap three. Fangio pitted on lap 14 with a flat left front tyre and that cost him 48 seconds. Eventually his engine failed and Ascari won it with only the Gonzalez Ferrari on the same lap. The wide avenues of Pedralbes, on the outskirts of Barcelona, became the decider. The circuit measured 3.9 miles and had a long start-finish straight, named after the dictator Franco. Fangio’s state of mind was uneasy as he came to the grid next to Ascari, on pole. In qualifying the Ferraris gave ‘dazzling performances,’

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Fangio said, and Ascari remained ‘as dangerous as ever.’ After qualifying Ascari sought Fangio out and said a championship should not be a matter of life and death — the winner should buy his defeated rival dinner.” A cannon fired, five minutes to go. Farina was drinking water from a bottle over at the pits and sprinted towards his Alfa Romeo, clambered urgently in. Nineteen cars faced 70 laps and 274 miles. The drivers watched the red and yellow flag of Spain hoisted, watched it hover, descend. Franco’s avenue — baroque lamp standards down the left-hand side, a lot of men in uniforms on the right — stretched so broad and so far that an instant after the cars set off they were already spread. Ascari thrust his Ferrari fractionally ahead of Gonzalez, Farina and Fangio following. Lap one: Ascari just leading from Farina and Fangio, Gonzalez down to sixth. Lap three: Fangio overtook Farina who'd have been told not to impede his team-mate, anyway. Ascari just ahead went ‘like an arrow’. Fangio decided to stay with him but not challenge him, nursing the car. His main concern centred round losing time in the pits refuelling. By contrast, the Ferrari had extra tanks and could go further. That also meant the Ferraris were heavier, putting more pressure on their tyres. Fangio overtook Ascari and held that to lap six. The crowd shouted and pointed to Taruffi’s Ferrari as it limped towards the pits, nearside rear tyre in ribbons. Lap seven: Villoresi limped to the pits, offside rear tyre in ribbons. When Fangio followed Ascari a little piece of rubber flew back and hit him in the face, and Fangio wondered about that. Lap eight: Ascari signalled to the pits and next lap came in, tyres all but shredded. Ascari lost 32 seconds and never recovered. Fangio, imperious, continued to the end with Gonzalez some 54 seconds behind him and Fangio had his first World Championship. Somewhere amidst the presentations, the receptions and the speeches Juan-Manuel Fangio suddenly felt very tired. It was, he thought, a nervous reaction. He wouldn’t race again in 1951. Far in the background, the life of Manfred von Brauchitsch — last race Belgrade the day war broke out — was in typically self-imposed difficulties. He’d spent the war in a clerical position in Berlin because, after the beating his body had taken racing in the 1930s, he was in no state to do military service. When the war ended he tried to start motor bike racing in Germany (car racing was banned) and then, with the help of friends, set off for Argentina and a limitless future. After two months he hadn't found one, he’d upset a lot of people and returned embittered.

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In 1951 he started to visit the Soviet Zone - Communist East Germany — and the West Germans watched him as a spy. In 1952, Alfa Romeo withdrew from racing again. Fangio moved to Maserati and in one he crashed during a non-championship race at Monza, skidding across the track towards straw bales. He felt the car lift into shadows and trees, clung to the steering wheel but some sort of impact threw him forward and he thought now I know what it’s like to die in a racing car. In that instant he found both life and death banal, ‘almost derisive.’ He saw a branch shaped into a fork come at him, hiss past him. He struck the ground and realised his shoes had come off. He woke up in hospital with his neck injured so badly that he didn’t compete in the championship. That weakened it, and it was already weak enough: Alfa Romeo gone, the Lago-Talbot organisation declined, the Simca-Gordini partnership disintegrated. It left Ferrari. Ascari had one and it proved enough. He plundered the season with a mid-summer ripple of races and wins, Belgium, France, Britain, Germany, Holland and Italy — from seven races. He missed the first, the Swiss — Taruffi won — because he was at Indianapolis. That year the Monaco Grand Prix was restricted to sports cars. Of Ascari, Ferrari would judge that he had a ‘sure and precise style’” and, as a man, an ‘impelling need to get into the lead at the very beginning.’ If he did he was all but impossible to overtake. If he didn’t he lacked ‘the combative spirit’. This was for a strange reason. If he caught a driver in front and prepared to overtake he didn’t have an inferiority complex, or anything like that, but he did go into a state of nerves. This hadn’t been a factor in 1952: he led 35 of the 36 laps at Spa, all 76 in France, all 85 at Silverstone, all 18 in Germany, all 90 in Holland

and 44 of the 80 at Monza. A handsome young Englishman with straw-blond hair who sported a bow tie even when he drove and liked pretty ladies a great deal, qualified a Cooper-Bristol on the front row at Zandvoort. Mike Hawthorn had beaten Fangio in a race at the Goodwood circuit on the English south coast in 1952, a sensation, and knowing eyes were watching his progress, including Enzo Ferrari. Although he finished two laps down at Zandvoort he did finish. Enzo Ferrari noticed that. Now in 1953 another dynasty, Maserati, began a struggle for supremacy with Ferrari. The championship lay between them — over the whole of it only one other car, a Gordini, scored any points at all — and they had the best drivers, too. Ascari led his title defence for Ferrari, backed by Farina, Villoresi...and Hawthorn. Maserati put Fangio against them with Gonzalez as principal support.

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Ascari struck early, winning Argentina where Fangio in an old Maserati came back after his injury at Monza but did not rediscover the joy of racing — his phrase. It was, perhaps, a necessary understatement. A vast crowd had come to watch, so many that the whole circuit was overwhelmed. Hawthorn remembered the gathering atmosphere. Race day dawned hot and dry, and ordinary people who'd been ‘harangued for days about the motor race from loudspeakers in the streets and squares of the city’ streamed towards the Autodrome on the outskirts of Buenos Aires hours before the four o’clock start. So many people went that the Autodrome was full and those inside resented the crowds trying to get in. The police struggled to control the situation but their task was made extra difficult because people used wire-cutters on the boundary fences letting even more in. Peron was to attend and when he reached the Autodrome the police were jostling the people. Peron said, dangerously: My children, my children! Let them in! The Autodrome was called, after all, E/ Autodromo 17 de Octobre in honour of the day Peron took power in the name, he would certainly say, of the people. Their numbers rose like a tide as the police obeyed Peron’s order. To compound that, someone hooked a long section of the fencing to a lorry and hauled it down. That seems to have been like a damn releasing the tide completely: more and more poured through. Hawthorn claimed that they forced their way into the grandstand and forced the ticket-holders out by ‘sticking lighted cigarettes into them,’” The grid formed up but it resembled a gully between two walls of people. The organisers made reassuring noises — everything’s under control — and the race started only four minutes late. Ascari led. Farina ran down the field when, on lap 32, a spectator — some say a small boy — ran in front of his Ferrari. Farina swerved to miss him and slid helplessly into the wall of people. Many died as the Ferrari penetrated the crowd — the dead and dying were scatter ed all around. In the panic another child ran out and was killed. The race continued. Hawthorn claims that Farina was taken away in a ‘state of collapse’ and ‘as I passed, every lap, the pile of mutilated bodies grew as helpers got to work’. Ambulances set off the wrong way round the course and one of them lost control, killing two more spectators. A mounted policeman used a stock whip to try and drive the crowd off the circuit but, enraged and wild, they hauled him down and kicked him to death.” It is necessary to say in the context of our story that Ascari won and Fangio’s universal joint failed — as if any of that mattered.

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Holland was civilised and Ascari won. Spa was hot and dry and Ascari won. It gave him nine in succession which in the Grand Prix century

remained an absolute record, Michael Schumacher nearest with six at the end of 2000 and the beginning of 2001, and seven in 2004. The French Grand Prix went to Reims again and it brought this observation from Hawthorn: going down an ordinary French road three abreast at 160 miles an hour it’s a bit frightening when a hairpin corner’s coming at you and you see the snout of another car ready to dice for it. The geometry of the hairpin, Thillois, assumed a critical importance. The straight stretched like an enormous backbone to the whole circuit, the hairpin forming a sharp V at the end of it. Through this V the finishing line lay some third of a mile ahead. Ascari took pole, Fangio on the second row, Hawthorn on the third. A hot afternoon and cars overtook each other in profusion. At one stage Hawthorn went past Ascari who shrugged can’t go any faster! but by lap 29 of the 60 Fangio led, Hawthorn shadowing him. That formed the classic, eternal confrontation which only motor racing gives: two men in the most powerful racing cars measuring their courage, skill and willpower against each other. Hawthorn and Fangio were united with Szisz and Nazzaro at Dieppe so long ago, Nuvolari and Varzi at Monaco, Nuvolari

and von Brauchitsch at the Nurburgring. Fangio led but Hawthorn got past him and, accelerating out of the hairpin, thought he’d lost him. Fangio seemed to have missed a gear. Hawthorn slowed for a back-marker and there was Fangio again, full in his wing mirrors. That was lap 32 and Hawthorn held the brittle, temporal lead to lap 34 when Fangio retook him. Fangio led to lap 36 and a pattern emerged amid the sound and the fury. Fangio could hold this lead from the pits all the way round to the backbone, all the way down the backbone to the hairpin, then Hawthorn — crouched in the cockpit to

minimise wind resistance — would outbrake him. At one point they grinned at each other, the cars so close Hawthorn could clearly see the rev counter on Fangio’s dashboard. At another point Fangio braked earlier than Hawthorn anticipated at the hairpin and they bumped, kept on, flat out. Hawthorn led laps 42-44, Fangio 45-47, Hawthorn 48, Fangio 49-53 — although it changed so fast Hawthorn thought J can win this - Hawthorn 54, Fangio 55-56...

The crowd responded. Five laps to go and they came round with Fangio ahead by a fraction. Four laps to go and Hawthorn attacked, Fangio defended. Great drivers while think on two levels simultaneously, controlling the present

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examining the future. Hawthorn now made that separation. How can I cross the line first? It was a difficult dilemma and the V formed the pivot. If Fangio slipstreamed Hawthorn through getting a tow from the air pocket Hawthorn punched, he would power past on the run to the line. Fangio would be making separations in his own mind but he drove like a prisoner — of fading brakes. Hawthorn led laps 57 and 58. He had worked out his tactic, the only tactic. He had to get to the hairpin with enough of a lead to emerge from it and reach the line before Fangio could strike at him. The commentators were gabbling. As they went through the hairpin for the 59th time Hawthorn thought Fangio hasn't changed down into first gear, must be having trouble with the gearbox. Hawthorn had misread the situation because he didn’t know about Fangio’s brakes. They fled into the final lap abreast, fled through the sequence of elongated corners to the straight and the long, long lunge to the hairpin which was hemmed by straw bales and fencing, the crowd in shirt sleeves standing behind. They watched as Hawthorn positioned the Ferrari over to the left to turn in, watched as Fangio took the inside, the Maserati slewing slightly. He'd had to brake early and, worse, Hawthorn had braked late. Fangio thought he’ll never make it, he'll go off. Hawthorn slipped the Ferrari into first, shaved the apex of the hairpin, straightened the car and blasted the accelerator. The tyres gripped. He fled, alone now, towards the man in a jacket and hat holding the chequered flag. He reached him one second before Fangio, and the crowd watching here — behind garden fencing two or three deep, no bales at all — saw, suddenly and almost magically, Gonzal ez come from nowhere thrusting his Maserati towards Fangio — who held him by 0.4 of a second. Hawthorn was concerned he’d bumped Fangio but as they cruised round on the slowing down lap Fangio pulled alongside and gestured that it was OK, a racing matter, forgotten. Ascari won Silverstone from Fangio, Farin a won Germany from ; Fangio. That was 2 August. Nine days later Nuvol ari, who had been ill for a long time, died. His last event was a hill-climb three years before. He’d been taken to hospital in June, ‘knew he could not recover and told his friends that the man they had come to see was dead.’ He Was taken home and died of thrombosis in his own bed.

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Ascari made the championship safe in Switzerland where a man from memory, Hermann Lang, drove a Maserati because Gonzalez was ill. Farina led, Hawthorn second, Ascari third and the Ferrari pit signalled to these three drivers, as it traditionally did in such situations, hold station. Ascari responded by surging past Hawthorn and Farina to lead and win it by 13 seconds. Afterwards Farina sought Ascari out and heaped a torrent of abuse on him. The Ferrari management summoned Ascari and demanded to know why he had ignored the signal. No doubt putting on his best choirboy face, Ascari said the sun was so low it was in his eyes and he hadn’t seen it... Lang finished fifth. The Italian Grand Prix attracted 30 entrants, Ascari pole from Fangio, and a slipstreaming battle developed. Into Parabolica on the final lap Ascari and Farina ran abreast but Ascari spun. Farina twisted his Ferrari away on to the grass but Onofré Marim6n, an Argentinian in a Maserati, rammed Ascari’s car hard. Four men in shirtsleeves carried Ascari away, linking arms under his legs and shoulders. He looked concussed but talked to them as they went. Fangio went through for the win. That close season Fangio received ‘a very interesting proposition. Mercedes were perfecting a racing car which, judging by information leaking out of Germany, was something out of the ordinary.’ The Mercedes racing department, reformed in 1950, felt its way back cautiously under Neubauer. Their car, designated the W196, had been designed for new rules in 1954 — unsupercharged 2,500cc cars — but they’d picked a highly competitive season to make their return. Ferrari and Maserati waited for them. Lancia returned, too, but not until the

final race. ; Fangio won Argentina in a Maserati, then Spa. The Mercedes were ready and chose the French Grand Prix at Reims to launch their assault. No doubt by a complete coincidence Mercedes had chosen the French Grand Prix — at Montlhéry — to launch their previous assault, in 1934. Fangio tested the car there and found himself helplessly reaching for extravagant phrases: magnificently streamlined... sensational machine __.drivers dream about this all their lives...perfect. He confided to Hawthorn that the Mercedes was ‘quite fantastic’. Mercedes fielded three drivers, Fangio, Hans Herrmann and Karl Kling. Fangio took pole with 2m 29.4s from Kling (2m 30.3s). Within a hundred yards of the starting flag the Mercedes, running almost abreast, were fifty yards clear. This was instant power and a deeply powerful image. Although Ascari was able to get close (2m 30.5s) his Maserati

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failed after a lap of the race. Gonzalez spun on a corner, swerved onto grass where spectators and cameramen stood. He was able to stop the Ferrari before he reached them. The two leading Mercedes circled in splendid, and ominous, isolation. Hawthorn in the Ferrari went to lap ten when he felt something fail at the high-speed curve after the pits. He estimated his speed at 150mph. His engine had blown and the car flicked round on its own oil, went into the escape road. Somehow Hawthorn seems to have been able to spin the Ferrari so that it was travelling forward — but towards a pole across the road, put there to stop traffic coming in. Hawthorn knew he couldn't get under it because, coming to the circuit and presumably regarding it as a short cut,” he’d tried. He glimpsed spectators to one side and tried to twist the car into a field but the steering wouldn't respond. He was frightened. Just then the car spun and stopped just short of the pole. Fangio beat Kling by a tenth of a second (Herrmann’s engine failed), everybody else a lap and more behind. The Mercedes domination spread across the season — after Gonzale z won Silverstone in the Ferrari — and at the German Grand Prix they even entered a fourth car for Lang. Marimon, in a works Maserati, was ‘a lively young man, exubera nt, loving a joke, laughing all the time’*” who'd driven seven Grands Prix in the previous two years: In a very real sense Fangio regarde d him as a protégé. During practice Fangio followed some way behind and saw him handling the Maserati in a ‘clean, decided style.’ The Maserat i suddenly snapped out of control, moving in a ‘terrible series of skids, slamming against everything in the way, brutally bouncing off obstacle s.’ It burst through a hedge, went down a slope and into a tree. When Fangio and Gonzalez reached Marimon they could see his chest had been crushed and a priest recited a prayer in Latin. He had died instantl y. No death, Fangio subsequently wrote, moved him so deeply as this ‘bitter loss’. He’d attempt a rationalisation. This ‘cruel trick of fate’ had taken a young man full of life and with so much to live for. Perhaps, Fangio thought, his own feelings were those ‘we all feel when we lose someone who is young and dear to us; and in race driving, death is always waiting just around the next bend in the track, whether you are young or old.’# Fangio took pole, beating Lang’s record set in 1939 (Fangio 9m 50.1s, Lang 9m 52.2s), and won the race. Three weeks later he added the Swiss and that was the championship. For good measure he added the Italian at Monza and precious film clips of that, taken on one corner, offer a

picture in two distinct dimensions. Fangio’s Mercedes is broad, low, the

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bodywork smooth as rippling water. Ascari’s Lancia, tucked in behind him, is narrow, vertical, almost extinct. Hawthorn won the final race, the Spanish at Pedralbes, from Musso in a Maserati and Fangio. For once, the Mercedes suffered problems with brakes and a piston, and Fangio magnanimously said Hawthorn drove brilliantly. Mercedes signed Moss in November 1954. He happened to be in New York, was told by telephone and couldn’t sleep that night for excitement. He was right to be excited, despite a curious debut in Argentina. Sixteen driver substitutions were made during the race because of the great heat _ — ground temperatures reached 125°F — and at one point a Ferrari spent a lap in the pits because none of the five drivers was physically able to get in it. Moss, ‘staggered’ by the heat, went as far as lap 30 (of the 96) when an engine part failed. He got out ‘groggy’ although not in as bad a condition as the ambulancemen thought. They put him into the ambulance and he stayed there until an interpreter could be found. He walked to the pits, Neubauer signalled Herrmann to come in for Moss to take over. Moss finished fourth (or rather Herrmann/Kling/Moss finished fourth.) Fangio won, one of only two drivers who didn’t need a co-driver, and even he was exhausted and dehydrated as he sat in President Peron’s box afterwards. Monaco was also curious and for two reasons: no Grand Prix had been held there since 1950 (except 1952 for sports cars) and the Mercedes

showed fallibility. The sky was azure and so was the sea. The front row was multicoloured, the silver of Fangio on pole, the blood red of Ascari’s Lancia, the silver of Moss. Castellotti sat in his blood red Lancia on the second row ready to put it into a gap. As they accelerated from the grid they created their own heat haze and these four reached Gasworks together — Fangio fractionally ahead. Four cars: classical Monaco. Fangio took his Mercedes safely round Station hairpin, then just a promitory of pavement with a couple of trees set into it and a handful of people standing watching. Moss took the entry wide enough for Castellotti to put the Lancia inside. Again, classical Monaco. Completing the first lap Fangio led from Castellotti, Moss and Ascari. On lap five Moss went through and soon Ascari took Castellotti, too. Fangio and Moss had pulled away and were lapping the slower cars like scythes, swift and clinical in the hard sunlight of afternoon. nn The fallibility? André Simon (an independent, replacing Herrma lap to went injuries) internal who’d crashed in practice suffering severe Moss’s 25 when the engine failed; Fangio’s rear axle failed on lap 50, and

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engine failed on lap 81 and he came slowly to the pits, smoke wreathing the car. He parked the car near the line so that at the end he could push it over. His face was an extraordinary picture, darkened to black by the dirt except for the geometrical circle of the goggles, the skin there perfectly white. He look distracted, as if a Mercedes mechanical failure stretched credulity. He'd left oil on the track and Ascari approached the chicane on the harbour — and the oil. The brakes on Ascari’s Lancia may have been tired. The Lancia snapped away from him, struck kerbing, slithered on Moss’s oil and charged the straw bales protecting drivers from the drop into the sea. The Lancia burst through, passing between two iron mooring bits and somersaulted an estimated fifty yards through the air before it hit the water. It submerged. Divers prepared to go to it but just then a ‘blue helmet bobbed to the surface and Ascari’s streaked face was seen beneath it. Alberto tore off the helmet but still holding it he struck out with a strong overarm until drivers had reached him and pulled him aboard their rescue boat.’” Trintignant won in a Ferrari. Moss did push his Mercedes across the line, to be classified ninth. The Monaco measure: Trintignant, 100 laps, 2h 58m 9.8s, an average speed of 65.6mph; Fangio, 1950, 61.3mph. That was 22 May. Ascari, taken to hospital bruised and shaken, stayed a day and although the doctors wanted him to stay longer he discharged himself. On May’26 he went to Monza to watch Eugenio Castellotti —- ‘dashing, handsome, very fast but wild and erratic’ — doing some testing. After lunch Ascari asked to have a go himself, perhaps because as a racing driver he knew it was the best way to recover from a crash. Somewhere near the Vialone curve the rasping sound of stressed engine and gearchanging was replaced by a metallic churning and then silence. Those who sprinted there found Ascari lying unconscious in a pool of blood and the car the wrong way up some distance away, savaged. Nobody knew why it had happened. Nobody knows now. Hawthorn remembered him as ‘barrel-chested with a plump, round face’ and judged that. he was faster than Fangi o. Enzo Ferrari recalled how Ascari was one of the few drivers of his era who trained for the races and how although he was severe with his two children he always took them presents after a race. He explained the severity because he felt that one day he might not come back from a race and their suffering would be less.

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Lancia announced the disbanding of their team and for the Belgian Grand Prix Castellotti entered one privately. He was fast enough to take pole but the gearbox failed in the race. Fangio won, beating Moss by eight seconds, Farina a distant 2m 40s behind. Motor racing was a hard place and always had been, but whatever remained of its pre-war and post-war innocence perished a week later. Grand Prix drivers contested the Le Mans 24-hour sports car race quite normally and the drivers who had driven in Belgium — Hawthorn, Luigi Musso, Paul Frére, Trintignant, Fangio, Moss, Kling, Castellotti, Roberto Miéres and Cesare Perdisa — went there. Only three did not. The race developed into an intense struggle between Hawthorn’s Jaguar and Fangio’s Mercedes. Hawthorn was due to pit and approaching the pits pulled in front of an Austin-Healey which braked and spun. Fangio missed it but another Mercedes driver, Pierre Levegh — he’d competed at the Bois de Boulogne just after the war and nursed an obsession about winning Le Mans — did not. His car vaulted into the crowd. The engine and front axle, torn free, travelled like a monstrous scythe. More than 80 people died, Mercedes withdrew from the race and the future of motorsport came into open question. The French, German, Swiss and Spanish Grands Prix were cancelled but the Dutch was run a week after Le Mans, the Zandvoort circuit considered safe after some modifications. Hawthorn, now returned to Ferrari having driven the British Vanwall, seems to have had no qualms about competing although Fangio spoke of an atmosphere of depression. In practice eleven drivers beat the lap record. Fangio led from the line, Musso putting his Maserati in between him and Moss. Musso drove with spirit and managed to stay with the Mercedes for tracts of the race but Fangio won from Moss. He followed Fangio so closely that sand, a perennial hazard from the dunes circling those the circuit, blew back into Moss’s engine. As he has pointed out, in The sand days engines weren’t removed and dismantled after every race. had destroyed the engine. for spying. Von Brauchitsch was due to stand trial in West Germany a case was He’d been imprisoned for six months but released while but von June prepared against him. The trial was set for this distraught wife Brauchitsch fled to East Germany, ‘leaving behind his suicide the ted commit and a large unpaid tax demand.’ His wife following year. been questioned, In the wake of Le Mans the British Grand Prix had National horse Grand but it too was run, at Aintree, the home of the made his debut. He’d race. A 31-year-old Australian, Jack Brabham,

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come to England early that year, made friends with manufacturer John Cooper and drove one of those cars. Moss had pole from Fangio, Jean Behra in a Maserati completing the

front row. As they waited for the flag to drop Neubauer, by now very portly indeed and slightly formal in jacket and hat — on this hot day, people all around him wore shirt sleeves — stabbed a finger towards his stopwatch, counting down to the start, then rotated his right arm in great, urgent circles: Go! The race was essentially settled after ten laps of the 90 and would be won by either Fangio or Moss: they'd already pulled clear. George Eyston was there leaning on a straw bale resplendent on this summer's day in hat, collar and tie, jacket. He held a stopwat ch and

noted times on a piece of paper. Fangio and Moss circled together as they would

do so often this season that they were nicknamed The Train. Moss took the lead on lap 26 of the 90 and remembered making sure he put a back-marker between himself and Fangio approaching a corner so that he could pull away a little, which was all he could do: rememb ered Neubauer signalling Pl — [‘Piano’, meaning gently, not ‘positi on 1!’]. Moss ‘had to slow down. I still managed to slip in a quick 88th lap to break the record, but Fangio was now very close, and one lap later he was on my tail.’” Moss clung on and Fangio clung to him so that they crossed the line two-tenths of a second apart. Could Fangio have overtaken him on that rush to the line? Did he decide that a British driver ought to win the British Grand Prix and allowed that to happen? To this day, Stirling Moss does not know. All he and anybody else does know is that Fangio said the right man won on the day. Only the Italian Grand Prix remained. Fangi o won that and his third championship. Mercedes withdrew from racing at the end of that season, leaving Maserati and Ferrari to dominate 1956. The very public career of Alfred Neubauer ended with a theatrical gestu re when he drew a white sheet — a shroud — over the Mercedes racing cars and cried. He has repeatedly been described as the first great team manager although doubts about that linger. He was certainly a metic ulous organiser, plotting and charting movements and Material; he certainly worked the pit lane by making it a stage for his gestures. Here was Falstaff using the petrol churns and bit players as scenery and plot. He wore a black hat, buttoned up jacket straining to constrain the moun tainous stomach and wielded a flag: he gave stage directions with it and the film clips of him from the 1930s to here in 1955 are unanimous in their imagery. He was acting out

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a great role — there are momentary images of him using the flag to drive a photographer off, others directing cars here and there, others of him simply gesticulating with it. It may well be that engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut, of an English mother and a German father, ran it all backstage. Neubauer sorted out the train timetables, Uhlenhaut created and sorted out the cars — he was a competent driver who could tell the engineers what the cars were and were not doing, but regarded as too valuable to risk putting him into races. You see him in an opposite guise to Neubauer in the clips: no gestures, no emotion just talking, listening and orchestrating. Either way, it was gone. The drivers’ roundabout which, from this moment on, will become more and more of a familiar pre-season feature: Moss went to Maserati, Fangio to Ferrari where a young Englishman came to partner him. Like Hawthorn, Peter Collins was good looking and liked good-looking women. Hawthorn meanwhile could not agree terms with Ferrari and

went back to Vanwall then BRM. These three — Fangio, Moss, young Englishman Peter Collins — and Behra (Maserati), a tiger of a driver and heroic figure in France, shared the season: Fangio took Argentina, Moss took Monaco. In white helmet, white short-sleeved sweatshirt and hands working deftly, Moss wielded the Maserati with such precision that he led throughout. As he approached the line — on the harbour front — the Ferrari which Collins had handed to Fangio was 6.1 seconds away and not yet even in sight. Moss passed the man with the chequered flag and raised his right arm high, kept it there motionless as if he might have been saluting the

crowd for their kind attention to his work.

of The Monaco measure: Moss, 100 laps, 3h Om 32.9s, an average speed 64.9mph; Trintignant, 1955, 65.6mph. ly Paul Frére was an aspiring motoring journalist as well as resolute Prix this amateur driver and he’d decided not to compete in any Grands 1,000km a in arm an broke season, not even his home race at Spa. Musso Hawthorn to event at the Niirburgring and Ferrari thought they’d run hed Frére, replace him — but Maserati already had him. Ferrari approac days. He two for who declined. The Ferrari team then ‘bombarded’ him the first practice still said no and took care not to go near the circuit on began and practice as day, Thursday. On the Friday he arrived concentrated on writing a report about it. . Under pressure The Ferrari still had no driver and it looked forlorn Frére took it out car from friends and a desire to try the beautiful standing that this did towards the end of the session with the clear under

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not mean he'd drive it in the Grand Prix. As he lapped, the Ferrari worked its magic. Next day he did some serious laps but felt dismay that his best was only 4m 23.8s against the 4m 15.3s by Collins in the same car, never mind Fangio’s pole of 4m 9.8s although that had been done in good weather on the Thursday. Moss led initially in drizzle. From the flag he moved several car lengths ahead by the mouth of Eau Rouge and swept imperiously up the hill, Fangio fifth — he’d hesitated on the line — and further back Frére in a four-way struggle with two Vanwalls and a Maserati. A camera high up caught Moss into the S of Bau Rouge — left-right — as the race unfolded. He placed the Maserati far over to the pit lane wall so that he went through the S in almost a straight line, then soothing the car into the

curve up the hill.

Castellotti’s transmission failed and next lap — 11 —a rear wheel came off Moss’s car. Frére saw Moss running away from the Masera ti and now his pit signals were telling him he lay fourth. More than that each passing lap the signals told him that he was catchi ng Behra. He saw Behra between Stavelot and La Source, tracked him and when they reached round to Stavelot again, Behra barely a hundred yards ahead, Frere saw Fangio’s Ferrari parked, the transmission failed. Frére thought this is for second place. He came up to Behra and took him on the Burnenville curve. The track had dried and Frére concentrated on getting clear of Behra. Collins won it and Frére though t both he and Collins had driven the races of their lives. A month later Collins took France at Reims where Colin Chapman managed to get the third drive for Vanwall.** He Was a competent driver but during practice his brakes locked and he rammed team-mate Hawthorn. Chapman’s Grand Prix driving career began and ended all on the same day — in fact at that moment. Fangio took Britain and Hawthom drivi ng the BRM went to lap 24 when an oil seal broke. He parked the car, clambered out and sat on its rear. Brooks had a throttle stick open and crashed heavily, the car bursting into flames. It was doused in foam and then, using a rope, half a dozen men tried to pull it off the circui t onto grass. Fangio took Germany and when they reached the final race, the Italian, only Fangio or Collins could win the championship. A driver counted his best five finishes from the eight rounds and Fangio had 30 points from five, the lowest a coup le of third places each worth four points. It meant he had to win or come second to increase his total. Moss had 19 from five finishes, lowest one point for fastest lap. He couldn’t

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beat Fangio’s total. Collins had 22 from four and could keep whatever he got: a win and fastest lap put him on 31. Behra also had 22 but from five finishes, lowest third, so he couldn’t beat Fangio’s total. In simple terms it lay between Fangio and Collins and seemed decided when, on lap 19, Fangio pitted with the steering arm broken on his Ferrari. Moss led and Fangio watched, impotent, lap after lap. He was team leader and Luigi Musso, an Italian who Ferrari felt had the mark of greatness on him, got a pit signal to come in and hand Fangio his car. Musso ignored that and even when he pitted for tyres refused. Collins was signalled in for a tyre change and during it was asked if he would hand his car over — or, according to Fangio, ‘saw me stuck there and, without being asked, got out of his car and offered it to me to finish in. My anxiety and misery gave way to joy, so much so that I threw my arms around him.’” What Collins did has been described as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, acts of sportsmanship in motor racing history. Many accounts have described how Moss led and Fangio saw the championship slipping away — nonsense, of course, since Moss couldn’t win it and, more significantly, Collins was lost now. The moment Collins stepped out of his car Fangio became champion. It would be unthinkable today and was a major news item then. What moved Collins to do this? In an age of deference he was showing that to Fangio, but he also understood, at 25, he was having the time of his life and the obligations of a World Championship would interfere with that. He’d add that Fangio deserved the championship, anyway. Fangio called Collins ‘the gentleman driver.’ It was one gentleman speaking about another. The roundabout: Fangio left Ferrari for Maserati in 1957. ‘The clash between the two men was more a matter of personal style. On the one hand, Fangio expected the same brand of intense, unemotional professionalism that had been the hallmark of the Mercedes-Benz effort. Ferrari, on the other hand, sought the kind of hysteria and mindless loyalty in his drivers that Fangio was simply unable to provide.’ Fangio diplomatically said only that after considering all offers he was two ‘very pleased to be racing for Count Orsi and for his son Omar,” be compared great gentlemen whose correctness and courtesy could only Alfa Romeo with the invariably proper attitude of the Mercedes and for Enzo barb directors.’ It might, or it might not, have been a discreet Ferrari, who fielded Collins and Hawthorn. ts that his Vanwall tempted Moss and it must have been in his though with different best chance of beating Fangio was in an opposing team

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machinery. He’d be partnered by a quiet, pensive Englishman, Tony Brooks, who saw his motor racing career in its proper perspective and never equated it with the whole of life. Moss, however, began the season in Argentina in a Maserati but Fangio won — Moss beset by mechanical problems. An 1 1-year-old living in Sao Paulo saw film clips of Fangio, saw his ‘style of driving’ and that became a great motivation for his own driving career. Emerson Fittipaldi had wanted to race from the age of six or seven. In his time, he’d race. At Monaco in the Vanwall, Moss led from Fangio and Collins, but Collins rapidly overtook Fangio. On lap four Moss moved down the descent from the tunnel to the chicane and swears ‘there was a system failure. The team said they could find no problem later, but I am adamant the front brakes had gone when J hit that pedal.’ The car locked and ‘my only course was to go straight on, smashing through a poleand-sandbag barrier.’* Collins tried to avoid debris by swerving but crashed into the harbourside barrier. Fangio stole through. Brooks, braking, was hit by Hawthorn, whose Ferrari mounted that of Collins. Brooks was able to continue and finished second to Fangio. The Monaco measure: Fangio, 105 laps, 3h 10m 12.8s, an average speed of 64.7mph: Moss, 1956, 100 laps, 64.9mph. The Belgian and Dutch Grands Prix were cancel led because of financial disputes but Fangio won France before Moss struck back in Britain. He led but was halted again by a problem the team couldn’t find. He stood and watched the race. On lap 26 Brooks , who’d been badly knocked about in a crash at Le Mans and wasn’t fit enough to complete the Grand Prix, came in to hand Moss his car. Moss emerged ninth and, willed by the crowd, cut through the field. Retire ments here and there helped clear the path and his charge gathered a great impetus to itself. Behra led but on lap 69 of the 90 the clutch on his Maserati failed. Hawthorn, second, punctured on debris. Moss came round leading, the whole of Aintree on their feet and cheering. Fangio 25 points, Musso 13, Hawthorn 7, Moss 6. The German Grand Prix was the fifth of the seven rounds and everything before it, even Aintree’s emoti onal surrender, only a prelude. If Fangio won he had his fifth championship and as a step towards that he took pole from Hawthorn, Behra and Collins also on the front row. A hot day and, in an image which might have been plucked from the 1930s, the 24 cars lined up 4-3-4 on the broad grid radiating raw power as they waited for the signal. Hawthorn led from Collins, Fangio third but any race round The Ring might begin like this, cars and drivers settling. When he was ready Fangio pumped the Maserati past Collins

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and on the way down to Adenau pumped it past Hawthorn. He drew away but he knew he needed to do that because he’d be stopping for fuel and tyres, unlike the Ferraris. On lap three he led by five seconds and built on that to create a cushion when he did pit. That was lap 12, the cushion 31 seconds. He brought the Maserati in, a mechanic signalling him where to stop. Almost as the car drew to a halt he was preparing to get out

Hawthorn led Collins by a few yards and as they passed the pits they saw the crowd waving you're in the lead. Fangio must have stopped — but where? At 140mph neither Hawthorn nor Collins could see the Maserati in the bustling pitlane with mechanics, photographers and assorted other people gathered round it. As the two Ferraris disappeared Fangio stood impassive. The seconds melted. No one knows precisely how long the pit stop lasted because one source says 53.5 seconds, another 52.0, another 54.0 and a fourth 56.0. Fangio, doing mental arithmetic, worked out he’d lost the cushion and 48 seconds. There’s a haunting union between these seconds and this man standing within yards of where Nuvolari had stood 22 years before urging the mechanics to fill his Alfa Romeo while his seconds melted. Marcello Giambertone, ‘a wily agent’ and ‘general gadfly in the sport” was in the Maserati pit preparing to lay a trap. ‘Listen,’ he said to Fangio, ‘can you take it a bit easy for two laps and not go flat out until Guerino Bertocchi [the team manager] gives you a go-ahead signal?’ Giambertone remembered ‘the old racing fox Juan caught on and was about to smile. I tightened my grip on his arm and whispered “don’t smile. Look serious. Shake your head. You’re being watched’”’ — the Ferrari pit was close by, and the Ferrari people surveyed every Maserati movement. ‘Fangio played his part marvellously and behind his goggles

his eyes sparkled with joy.” Fangio clambered back in to the cockpit, left leg in first, and as he car. began to sit down two burly mechanics were already pushing the Collins and ahead, seconds 48 Fangio moved back out, the Ferraris that hammered the lap record with 9m 28.9s. By contrast, Fangio’s driving the clearly indicated something wrong with his car. While he settled, trouble Fangio’s sensed Ferraris’ lead went out to 51 seconds. The crowd the trap, and even one of the mechanics, who didn’t know about shouted oaths and danced in frustration. pace. Even Steady. Ferrari held out a signal to Collins and Hawthorn: Fangio is losing seconds. passed the On lap 14 the lead came down 48 seconds again. As Fangio nodded. He’d pits Bertocchi made a slight, discreet gesture and Fangio

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bedded in the fresh tyres, re-found his rhythm and the petrol load was beginning to come down. Juan-Manuel Fangio sat poised to bend the Nurburgring to his will. Hawthorn wondered whether Fangio had lost a gear or his engine was failing. He concluded that, regardless of what it was, one of the Ferraris would clearly win from the other. Hawthorn waved to Collins to draw up beside him and when Collins did Hawthorn jerked his thumb backwards indicating Fangio and downwards indicating he’s in trouble. Collins responded by a thumbs-up. Message understood. Then he raised one finger and pointed it towards Hawthorn, raised a second finger and

pointed towards himself. You win, I'll be second. A typically sporting gesture, Hawthorn thought. He wasn’t aware that across lap 15 Fangio had cut seven seconds from the Ferraris and on lap 16, as Hawthorn acknowledged Collins’s signal and eased ahead, the Ferrari pit were reduced to raw emotion. They held out a signal to both cars, faster. ‘I knew the Niirburgring very well,’ Fangio would say. ‘It’s one of those tracks where you lose touch with things. You think you're going fast and you're not going fast at all. I began to use higher gears for some of the faster curves — if you went in at the right angle you came out with

the engine revving at a faster rate on the straight. It wasn’t very

comfortable feeling the lack of grip as the car went round but I began to take nearly all the bends in a higher gear than I would normally have ‘ised? Hawthorn worked out that, with six laps left, Fangio still wouldn't be able to catch them. Lap 17: Fangio 9m 28.5s. The tannoy bayed ‘NEW RECORD!’ The gap:

25.5:

Brabham whose Cooper-Climax had broken down watched from the pits. ‘Fangio,’ he’d say almost breathlessly, ‘threw that Maserati round the Nurburgring like no-one I’ve seen before or since /# Lap 18: Fangio 9m 25.3s. ‘NEW RECORD!’ The gap: 20s. He’d averaged 90mph on the lap and no man had ever inflicted that on the brooding, forbidding Nurburgring before, either . Lap 19: A Ferrari mechanic held out a board with one word: Fiat. Maximum speed regardless. As Hawthorn and Collins moved into the curve beyond the pit straight Fangio cross ed the line: 9m 23.4s. ‘NEW

RECORD!’ The gap: 13.5s.

:

The crowd, seized and transported, roare d when they heard the time echoing from the loudspeakers, the anno uncer’s voice shaking with excitement. :

IN FANGIO’S TIME

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225

The Maserati pit signalled to Fangio a Ferrari not far ahead. He'd see ‘a red blur disappearing round a bend among the trees.’ He murmured to himself I’// catch that one and assumed it must be Collins. Hawthorn, Fangio reasoned, must be a long way up the road. On the descent to Adenau he glimpsed two red cars, one behind the other. Now he murmured to himself I’// catch them both. The crowd heard the wail of engines growing ever louder, heard the wail rising along the immense straight from Schwalbenschwanz, the right-left-left-right which fed the straight, heard it rising and rising as the three cars moved towards the pits and the grandstand. There was Hawthorn, there was Collins perhaps three cars’ length behind him, there was Fangio a hundred yards behind Collins. He came at them like a hound from hell, coming so fast that as the Ferraris passed the pits ‘I was tailing them.’ Lap 20: The loudspeakers echoed. ‘Achtung! Achtung! NEW RECORD! NEW RECORD!’ He’d done 9m 17.4s. The gap: 3.0s. The voice on the loudspeakers was lost as the crowd rose and roared again, flung a mass of hats in the air. It was probably the greatest lap ever driven. Fangio would say that this August day he finally managed to master The Ring. ‘It was as if I had screwed all the secrets out of it and got to know it once and for all. I was trying out new things during those last laps of the race, pushing myself further at many blind spots where I had never before had the courage to go to the limit. I was never a daredevil, never a spectacular driver. I would go just so fast and no faster. [...] Until that race I had demanded nothing more of myself or the cars.’ Now he was making such demands on himself that he wouldn’t be able to sleep for two days afterwards. He'd find himself shutting his eyes ‘as if I were in the race again, making those leaps in the dark on those curves where I had never before had the courage to

push things so far.’® Two laps left and as they headed towards the first curve Fangio drew full up to Collins, then alongside, went in a fraction too fast and was wide coming out. Collins retook him and positioned the Ferrari for the a next corner so that Fangio had to follow. At the Nordkehre, a bowl of wheels two hard left-left-left just behind the pits, Fangio went through, the on the grass and showering Collins with stones from the rim of track. One shattered Collins’ goggles. corner, Hawthorn watched in his mirrors, saw Collins drift into the . Hawthorn saw Fangio angle the Maserati to the outside and overtake y racing. inter-cit n thought yes, that's an old trick Fangio learnt in South America Collins tried to stay with him.

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Fangio remembered Hawthorn ‘directly in front of me going down into a right-hand bend.’ It was not the moment for the ultimate move. Fangio knew that. Fangio followed through corner after corner, Hatzenbach a mile out... .-. Hawthorn at the Ferrari’s absolute limit as they rushed through the endless tree-lined curves to the Hocheichen, a right-left two miles out, on to Quiddelbacher-Hohe, a straight two and a half miles out... then Flugplatz, a kinking right, Schwedenkreuz, a bending left three miles Outs

Fangio did mental arithmetic again, calculating how many passing places remained on the lap. A short straight ended in a leftright...Aremberg, three and a half miles out. On the straight Fangio watched Hawthorn position the Ferrari over to the right, lining it up for the racing line through the beginning of Aremberg. Fangio saw a fleeting gap on the inside. It was the moment, one of Fangio’s greatest and motor

racing’s greatest.

He put the Maserati

inside. ‘Hawthorn

must

have seen a blur to his left because he suddenly pulled over as if startled.’ Hawthorn remembered how sharply — decisively — it was done, how forcefully it was done, Hawthorn’s wheels on the grass and near the dirt beyond that. He remembered how Fangio, moving away, glanced back and might almost have been apologising. Hawthorn thought my turn now but as he prepared to attack they came upon a back-ma rker, the American Masten Gregory in a blue and white Maserati. Fangio went cleanly by but Hawthorn had to follow for precious instants. From the commentary point at Breidscheid three miles from Aremberg the commentator bayed ‘FANGIO LEADS! FANGIO LEADS! ’ Hawthorn gained on the uphill sections but, approa ching the immense start-finish straight — three miles of it — Fangio gunned the Maserati to its absolute maximum. ‘I made a point of getting away from him before we reached the straight because there he might have been able to take advantage of my slipstream and pass me.’ The two cars crossed the line to begin the last lap but Fangio had siphoned out a little lead, enough so that Hawth orn couldn’t get full up to him in the corners and position for overta king coming out. All Hawthorn could do was drive a brave lap and watch for any sembiance of a mistake. Fangio didn’t make one. Hawth orn gained a bit here, lost a bit there but it was too late. Fangio crossed the line after 3h 30m 38.35, Hawthorn 3.6s later. That was when the crowd saw it, there beneath the heavy crash helmet of the man in the Maserati: the smile on the face of the master.

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227,

Notes . Colin Chapman, Crombac. . End of a Berlin Diary, William Shirer (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1947).

. One of the few cities to escape the bombing and street fighting was the ancient town of Heidelberg, which became a favourite Formula 1 watering place during the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim just down the

autobahn. . My Two Lives, Dreyfus. . Speed was my Life, Neubauer. . Grand Prix Driver, Lang. . There’s > wu Na

a lovely anecdote about Harvey Postlethwaite’s time at Modena as

Ferrari designer. A barn was being renovated and some bullets from a

fighter plane were discovered in the roof. Ferrari summoned Postlethwaite and said in faltering English: ‘Yours, I believe, Mr Postlewhite!’ . When Nuvolari Raced, Moretti. . Enzo Ferrari, Yates. 10. If you know Paris, the Bois de Boulogne is to the immediate west of the

city, with the Boulevard Peripherique running along its edge. There’s a lake with a road looping round. The circuit followed that and continued to the Porte Dauphine before doubling back to the Porte de la Muette. 11. Interview with the author. 12. On the website http://8w.forix.com/bdb.html 13. The Racing Car, Batsford. 14, Works Driver, Taruffi. 15. The name Alfetta came, evidently, from the Alfa Romeo Tipo B 158’s nickname — and that was the car which took Farina to the World Championship in 1950. 16. Alfa Romeo, Owen. 17. Cisitalia (Consorzio Industriale Sportive Italia) had an extensive portfolio of interests, including banking, hotels and textiles. The man running it, Piero Dusio, drove as an amateur and decided to build racing cars for Grands Prix. www.carsfromitaly.com/others/cisitalia.html 18. Taruffi, op. cit. 19. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio. 20. Moretti, op. cit. 21. The Man with two Shadows, Desmond. 22. My Racing Life, Fangio. 23. The British Grand Prix 1926-1976, Nye. 24. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio.

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25. Emmanuel de Graffenried, a Swiss who had raced before the war; Louis Rosier, a Frenchman who had started by racing bikes and owned a garage; Peter Whitehead, a wealthy Yorkshireman. 26. Motor Sport. 27. The British Grand Prix, Hamilton. 28. Juan Manuel Fangio, Molter. 29. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio. 30. Ibid. 31. Great Racing Drivers, Hodges. 32. Desmond, op. cit. 33. HWM - the Hersham and Walton Motors Garage near London, which started building cars using bought-in parts. 34, Taruffi, op. cit. 35. My Cars, My career, Moss. 36. My Greatest Race, Ball (editor). 37. Yates, op. cit. 38. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio. 39. The following winter, Fangio journeyed to Milan to buy Ascari (and Villoresi) dinner. In the restaurant Ascari presented Fangio with a silver plate commemorating his 1951 World Championship. 40. The Enzo Ferrari Memoirs, Ferrari. 41. Challenge me the Race, Hawthorn. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid.

. Omnibus of Speed, Beaumont. 45, However hard it is to believe today, racing drivers someti mes drove their racing cars to the circuit. 46. Hawthorn, op. cit. 47. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio. 48. Ibid. 49, Desmond, op. cit. 50. The Grand Prix Who’s Who, Small. 51. Racing the Silver Arrows, Nixon. 52. Moss, op. cit. 53. My Greatest Race, Adrian Ball. 54. Vanwall — Vandervell Products Ltd. An indust rialist, Tony Vandervell, tried

to make a British Grand Prix car to beat the world, starting in 1954. By 1958 it was successful, but production ceased that year because of Vandervell’s ill health.

55. My Racing Life, Fangio. 56. Yates, op. cit.

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229

aT. In 1936 the Maserati brothers sold their company to an industrialist, Omar

Orsi, who took the business to Modena. The brothers remained for a decade and they went their own way. Eventually, Orsi began making Grand Touring cars as well as racers — much as Ferrari did. www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId= 101037 58. Moss, op. cit. 59. Yates, op. cit. 60. My Twenty Years of Racing, Fangio. 61. My Racing Life, Fangio. 62. When the Flag Drops, Brabham. 63. My Racing Life, Fangio.

Chapter 7

IN CLARK’S TIME month after the Nurburgring, a shy 21-year-old farmer from the Scottish Borders took the Sunbeam Talbot which his father had given him to Charterhall, a two-mile circuit on a former airbase not far from where he lived. Jim Clark entered it for a sports car race, finished eighth and the era to follow Fangio began, however modestly. Eras in motor sport begin like that, and perhaps in everything else. Two races remained in 1957, Pescara — a 15-mile triangular circuit on the Italian coast - and Monza. Moss won both. Fangio drove a couple of Grands Prix in 1958 and went back to Argentina, his legend safe forever. With Fangio gone Moss ought finally to have won a championship. He and Brooks, who had now qualified as a medical student, drove Vanwalls, Hawthorn and Collins stayed at Ferrari. Maserati withdrew for financial reasons. The CSI — Commission Sportive Internationale, sporting subdivision of the FIA — permitted ‘commercial petrol’ and that led to the use of an aviation fuel, ‘Avgas’. This created problems for some of the cars which had been designed for petrol. For Moss it looked promising because he won Argentina (in a CooperClimax for this one race), Hawthorn third but only ten cars started because the trip was expensive. Moss felt the rear-engined Cooper was so small people took it ‘as a bit of a joke’ until qualifying. It wouldn’t be a joke for long and Formula 1 would have to change to accommodate it. The second race, Monaco, was a drawing together of different strands. Two Englishmen, Roy Salvadori and Stuart Lewis-Evans, had been racing in New Zealand with Connaught cars! owned by Bernar d Charles Ecclestone, a lively motor dealer from south London feeling his way into racing. He’d already done some racing himself on bikes but, Salvadori says, was a ‘born dealer’ who'd ‘buy and sell almost anything.’ Ecclestone did not yet know that these skills were to be much more important to motor racing than anything he could do holding the handlebars of a bike or the steering wheel of a racing car. Salvadori remembered that Ecclestone bought the Connaughts to resell them, and New Zealand as good a place as any to do that. Ecclestone

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instructed Lewis-Evans, who ‘was certainly no businessman,’ to handle the sale but, Salvadori says, ‘buyers seemed few and far between.’ LewisEvans was ‘delighted when he negotiated a deal with a foreigner who offered a stamp collection in exchange. I urged Stuart to do nothing until he had spoken to Bernie on the telephone and, of course, as soon as Bernie heard about it he scotched the deal. The cars were shipped back to England...” Monaco teemed with entries, thirty of them including the same Bernard Charles Ecclestone in one of the Connaughts — and, for the first time, cars called Lotuses. Colin Chapman entered Grand Prix racing witha design which looked like a Vanwall derivative. He had two drivers, Cliff Allison, an experienced north countryman, and Graham Hill, a former Lotus mechanic without money but with so much determination that that

didn’t matter. Hill remembered driving down with his wife Bette in their Austin A35 and covering the distance between Calais and Monaco in 13 hours, a time he estimated as ‘pretty good’ in a small car like that.* Hawthorn remembered that Collins and Louise were living on their boat at Monaco. He wired and they met him at Nice airport. Louise allowed him to drive her little Vespa 400cc car and he delighted in ‘throwing’ it round the corners on the way back. Two specific strands interwove in a curious similarity. Ecclestone failed to qualify the Connaught (and never tried again) and Louis Chiron failed to qualify a Maserati. He was 59 and had first competed in the Monaco Grand Prix in 1930. He’d prolonged his driving career after the war, taking part in various Grands Prix and now here was the end of it. Chiron had been born in 1899, Ecclestone would lead Grand Prix racing into the 2000s. Between them they spanned virtually the whole of

motoring. Another strand from qualifying: an Italian, Maria-Teresa de Filippis, had had a promising career in sports cars and finished fifth in the nonchampionship Formula 1 race at Syracuse in April. No woman had qualified for a Grand Prix in the World Championship and she tried, also in a Maserati. On the Friday she went ‘quite well’ but on the Saturday the car ‘blew up and deposited oil on the circuit, causing several cars to

do waltzing acts.’ She did not qualify. Brooks took pole but Salvadori made a tremendous start then went wide at Gasworks and created chaos behind. Trintignant drove a Cooper for Rob Walker and took the lead on lap 46 when Hawthorn’s fuel pump the expired. Walking back Hawthorn espied a pretty girl leaning out of

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window of one of the houses. He asked if she could give him a glass of water and she invited him in. As Moss says, there were pretty girls all over the place — he used to wave to one on the way to Mirabeau — and if you did stop it was natural for people to give you some sort or refreshment. Mind you, Moss adds, ‘I bet Hawthorn chatted that girl up.’ Untypically, Rob Walker — a sanguine gentleman who, as he said, was supposed to be timekeeping — got so nervous with Trintignant leading and so far to go that he hid under the pit counter. Musso came fast and Walker’s chief mechanic, Alf Francis, held out a yellow pit board: +28 MUS

Trintignant saw that and accelerated, Musso accelerated, too, and in the end Trintignant won it by 20 seconds. The Monaco measure: Trintignant, 100 laps, 2h 52m 27.9s, an average speed of 67.9mph; Fangio, 1957, 64.7mph. The measure of the decades: 1929, 49.8mph; 1937, 63.2mph; 1948, 59. 7mph. Vehicles registered in Britain 8.0 million (1948, 3.7 million 1% A Ford Popular (in 1959) cost £494 and a Briton earned on average £13.55 a week. Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 26 weeks to buy one (1910, 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, 1 year 28 weeks; 1929, 41 weeks; 1938, 37 weeks; 1949, 45 weeks). Trintignant drove a privately entered Cooper-Climax, of course. ‘The Cooper designers had always been advocates of positioning the engine behind the driver, but in front of the rear axle.’ During this season, the Cooper was ‘being watched by a number of designers but as yet no-one was taking it too seriously because Coventry-Climax® were only producing an engine of 2.2 litres with a little over 220bhp, not sufficient to challenge the Vanwalls or Ferraris on all occasions.’ On the same day as Monaco, Clark drove a Jaguar and a Porsche at Spa, his first foreign races. He’d say later that if he’d known what Spa was like he’d never have gone near the place. Jack Fairman , a veteran driver, took Clark round ina Volkswagen and ‘kindly’ pointed out.among other things where, down the years, drivers had been killed. It made Clark feel miserable.’ He drove the Jaguar in the ‘Grand Prix’, for cars over 1,500cc, and the Porsche in the Grand Touring event. It started at 4pm and by then Clark had a ‘good dose of the shakes.’ They were about to get a great deal worse. Archie Scott-Brown, a fellow Scot, another veteran and

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233

something of a hero — his right arm was deformed — had won a host of national races in his career (although he only drove in one Grand Prix, the British, 1956.) Clark regarded him with something approaching awe and could scarcely believe he was on the same grid. In the race, ScottBrown lost control of his Lister car’ on a damp section of the track while, evidently, he diced with Masten Gregory. The car went into a field, caught fire and Scott-Brown died the following day. Now Clark hated Spa, and always would. A bitter season had begun. Moss won Holland, Brooks won Belgium from Hawthorn, but three other aspects of that: Miss Filippis did qualify, with a time of 4m 31.0s (Hawthorn, pole, 3m 57.1s) and young Graham Hill, another newcomer to Spa, found approximately what Clark had found. Along one of the straights, which allowed the Lotus to go up to its maximum speed, he had the impression that the car was moving ‘faster and faster,’ the track becoming ‘narrower and narrower.’ It frightened him. He came in to the pits questioning whether he wanted to continue a career in this and briefly decided he didn’t. When he reached the pits ‘I decided I wasn’t cut out to be a Grand Prix driver after all. I was pretty dejected about the whole thing.’ He dug deep into his doggedness, went back out and soon found the speeds quite normal.’ Five laps into the race a tyre on Musso’s Ferrari burst at 160mph at Stavelot. The car crashed and was wrecked, Musso unhurt. The bitter season had threatened to take Musso but released him — for three weeks. Miss Filippis got the Maserati to the end, tenth and two laps behind the winner, Brooks. In France — Reims — Hawthorn won from Moss, and Fangio drove a Grand Prix a final time. Hawthorn led from Collins and Musso, a lovely symmetry for the red cars before Collins took to an escape road. On lap ten Musso ran close behind Hawthorn on the long straight. Past the pits Hawthorn glanced in his mirrors to monitor if he’d pulled way from Musso but instead saw him slew across the track and spin, travelling

backwards, saw a dust cloud. The Ferrari somersaulted across a ditch in a cornfield, killing Musso instantly. Next lap Hawthorn saw the medical helicopter — it carried a stretcher strapped to its outside — in the air. He saw see precisely where Musso left the track but the cornfield concealed the Ferrari.” The last front-ranking Italian Grand Prix driver was gone. Collins won the British Grand Prix from Hawthorn — Moss's engine n blew. Four races remained and the championship lay between Hawthor

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and Moss. Of the eleven rounds drivers could count their six best finishes. Hawthorn had 30 points from six (lowest 1 for Monaco fastest lap) and Moss 23 from only three. Hawthorn took pole at the Niirburgring. A 21-year-old New Zealander, over in Europe on a racing scholarship, put his Formula 2 Cooper-Climax on the fourth row. The year before, to plump out the entry, Formula 2 cars had been allowed to enter although they competed for separate prizes. McLaren had ‘set his heart’ on getting into it. - Bruce’s entry had been placed as first reserve since the German organisers were probably not sure who he was, but John Cooper assured him that

someone was bound to crash during practice so that his place at the head of the reserve

list was

as good

as a guaranteed

start.

He

borrowed

passenger cars to try and form the horrors of ‘The Ring’ into some sort of order."

From the flag Brooks forced his Vanwall into the lead but Moss went by, and soon enough Hawthorn and Collins went by, too. Moss retired (a magneto failure) and Brooks took on the Ferraris. That pushed the pace up and these three cars exchanged the lead. On lap 11 at the righthander after Pflanzgarten Hawthorn watched Collins go round in the usual, ordinary way but, Hawthorn realised, slightly wide. That sliding motion took a rear wheel into a foot-high bank, hoisting the car so that both rear wheels rode the bank. Hawthorn thought they'd crash. Instead, he saw Collins’ car turn over — like a whip — at ferocious speed and Collins flung from it. Hawthorn intended to drive one more lap and pit for news because if he pitted immediately Collins’ wife Louise would sense something dreadful must have happened. Hawthorn duly went past the pits and began the 12th lap but the clutch failed some three miles out into the country and about seven miles from where Collins crashed. By chance Hawthorn rolled to a halt beside a marshal’s post — on a circuit of such length they were placed at intervals. Hawthorn asked the marshals to phone for news. Hawthorn was hellishly hot and a German gave him orange juice. He was virtually ‘beside myself with anxiety’ and accepted cigarettes from English spectators there. The news on the marshals’ phone said Collins had bruising, nothing more. After the race Hawthorn got a lift back to the pits but the long way round and he asked the driver to stop at the scene of the accident. He found the Ferrari upside down on the circuit’s perimeter fence entangled in wire netting. Beside the car he found Collins’s crash helmet, a shoe

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235

and a glove. The helmet had been pierced but Hawthorn saw no blood on it and that increased his sense of mistaken relief.” Collins died in hospital. Louise, Hawthorn and others, including racing manager Romolo Tavoni, went there. Tavoni remembered that ‘the doctor pulled back the sheet and there was Peter, like he was asleep. Mike took one look, turned and went out into the corridor, where he leaned against the wall and slid down to the floor. He just sat there, saying nothing. I looked at Peter. There was a bruise on one arm and the skin at the back of his neck was red, but that was all.’” Hawthorn reached for the only consolation: he died doing what he wanted. He reached further. I will keep on doing it because that is what I want. McLaren won the Formula 2 race and finished fifth in the Grand Prix itself. This... more than any other race that season, made Bruce’s name and assured him of a Cooper drive the following season. [...] Although he might not have been aware of it at the time in the bustle to get back to England for a race at Brands Hatch the following day, he was on the threshold of a distinguished career as a Grand Prix driver and a racing car designer and

builder.”

Hawthorn drove in the Portuguese Grand Prix, on the street circuit of Oporto, three weeks later. Moss won that and, for reasons of chivalry and integrity, gave Hawthorn the championship without knowing it. Hawthorn had the only Ferrari entered and it circled almost a lap down. As Moss crossed the line to win Hawthorn was embarking on his final lap. Moss moved into his slowing-down lap and coming round noticed Hawthorn had stalled and was trying to push-start the car in the

direction of the track — uphill. Moss shouted out: ‘Push it downhill. You'll never start the bloody thing that way!’ Hawthorn did and finished second, but was subsequently disqualified for taking the car against the direction of the race. Moss appeared on his behalf, pointing out that because Hawthorn pushed the car downhill it had been on the pavement, and therefore not part of the circuit. Hawthorn got off and kept the six points for second plus one for fastest lap. At season’s end, these seven points were

decisive. At the Italian Grand Prix, Hawthorn and Moss duelled but Moss’s clutch began gearbox failed. Brooks hunted Hawthorn and the Ferrari’s laps to go to slip. Brooks took him in front of the grandstands with ten

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and now Hawthorn wondered if the car would last. Into the final lap Phil Hill in another Ferrari, came up to him and Hawthorn thought I wonder if he realises it’s me? Hawthorn signalled for Hill, who had no interest in the championship — it was his first Grand Prix in a Ferrari — to slow and follow. Hill did, and explained afterwards that he hadn’t realised it was Hawthorn until he saw the arm in its green overall come out. Then he knew. Hawthorn finished 24.4 seconds behind Brooks. Hawthorn had 43 points but from eight finishes so he had to discard three points; anything lower than second place would be useless at the final race, at the unlikely venue of Morocco and the unlikely setting of Casablanca. Moss had 32 points but from only five finishes so he’d keep whatever he got. He needed to win, set fastest lap and for Vanwall teammates Brooks or Lewis-Evans to hold Hawthorn in third place. Hawthorn doesn’t seem to have relished the prospect of Casablanca, perhaps because the year before there’d been a non-championship race and he’d endured a very uncomfortable flight down on Air France. He’d even remember the only food on board was cheese sandwiches. This time he flew down on a charter flight. Race numbers were allocated race-by-race and at dinner on the Thursday he discovered he’d been given 2. This distressed him because Musso and Collins had both had it when they were killed. Tavoni told him he could have the 6 of his team-mate, Olivier Gendebien, who wasn’t superstitious. The American Phil Hill, in a third Ferrari, carried 4. Hawthorn took pole from Moss and Lewis-Evans, Brooks on the third row. Moss led from Phil Hill, who made a mistake and took to an escape road, letting Hawthorn and Jo Bonnier (BRM) through. Hill returned at speed, passed Bonnier and Hawthorn waved him through to attack Moss. Order: Moss, Hill, Hawthorn, Bonnier. Brooks was coming. On lap 12 he took Bonnier and on lap 19 took Hawthorn, breaking the championship open because Moss set fastest lap on lap 21. Hawthorn responded by attacking Brooks because he had to. Order: Moss, Hill, Brooks, Hawthorn. They swopped places several times and Hawthorn noticed some smoke from the Vanwall’s engine. That proved initially deceptiv e because it was just a little oil. Brooks ran to lap 30, when the engine blew. Hill ran comfortably behind Moss some thirty seconds ahead of Hawthorn. A pit signal instructed him to slow and Hawthorn moved past him into the championship-winning place. The bitter season was not over. With 12 of the 53 laps to go, Lewis-Evans crashed when his Vanwall’s engine blew and as the car ran off into the sand it caught fire. Lewis-

IN CLARK’S TIME

237

Evans managed to get out but his clothing was in flames and he had been so badly burned that he died six days later in England. Moss won the Moroccan Grand Prix, Hawthorn 1m 24.7s behind. It was enough. The bitter season was still not over. Three months later, on the Guildford by-pass, Hawthorn raced Rob Walker’s Mercedes but his Jaguar went off the road and struck a tree. Walker found Hawthorn sitting in the back seat, dead. Tony Vandervell suffered a heart-attack, perhaps induced by the death of Lewis-Evans, and withdrew from racing. The Vanwall team, which had carried the hopes of a nation, ceased to exist. Maserati had

gone, too. And the bitter season was over. In November Clark was due to be best man at a wedding near London. Chapman was running a test session the day before at Brands Hatch in Kent, no real distance away, and Clark and his friend Ian Scott Watson went there: Scott Watson thought he might buy a Lotus. Peter Warr, who would one day run Lotus, attended and so did Keith Greene, who'd run teams at Le Mans, Graham Hill, Cliff Allison, Innes Ireland and Alan Stacey. They’d be doing some serious driving in, presumably, the Lotus Formula 1 car. The understanding was that others, like Clark, might have five-lap stints in the Formula 2 car. Clark went last and he didn’t feel comfortable in the cockpit. Approaching Paddock Hill Bend — the adverse-camber first corner — he couldn’t even find the brakes and went off on to the grass. Instantaneously he thought what if I destroy the car? He settled and, lap

after lap, went faster. Chapman and Scott Watson stood together in what was virtually a hole in the ground near Paddock, positioned so drivers could see signals. Scott Watson clicked his stopwatch each time Clark went past, Chapman clicked, too, and soon Chapman realised Clark was going faster than Hill, faster than Allison (who'd driven the whole Grand Prix season in a Lotus), faster than Ireland (a very promising driver) and Stacey (who’d been driving for three years and made his debut at the 1958 British

Grand Prix). Chapman said to Scott Watson: ‘God, but this bloke’s quick.’ Scott Watson said: ‘Yes, not bad for someone who’s never been in a single-seater before and never been to Brands Hatch, either!’ Chapman said: ‘Bring him in, for God’s sake, he’ll kill himself!’ Jim Clark would drive in 72 Grands Prix, winning 25 of them and two World Championships. He’d never drive for anyone but Chapman.

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That didn’t begin for two years. The more immediate future belonged to the rear-engined Cooper in the hands of Jack Brabham. He’d say that ‘to the bystander — and those very brave photographers who line the track — the back end breaking away in a Grand Prix car can be a very frightening sight. A lot of Grand Prix machinery just would not stand this sort of treatment. But a Cooper will.’” The taciturn, almost monosyllabic Brabham, known as Black Jack because he was reputed to practice dark arts in the races, set about winning the 1959 championship partnered by McLaren. Moss had Rob Walker’s privateer Cooper and took pole at the first race, Monaco, but the rear axle failed in the race and Brabham won it from Brooks in the Ferrari. The Monaco measure: Brabham, 100 laps, 2h 55m 51.3s, an average speed of 66.6mph: Trintignant, 1958, 67.9mph. It was an open season, Bonnier (BRM) winning Holland on 31 May. Far away on the Isle of Man, the motorcycling world prepared for its annual TT meeting, then the most important in the world. An entry had been received from a Japanese company, Honda, for the 125cc race. The little Japanese party consisted of a cook bringing their own rice and cooking equipment,’* an American team-manager, Bill Hunt, and four Japanese riders. They were due, evidently, to sleep on mattresses northsouth to observe their Shinto religion and folklore insists that Hunt, who rode as well, led whenever they went out on the circuit because, for reasons of honour, the Japanese riders would not overtake him. This was good, clean fun in terms of publicity and the presence of the J apanese, measuring themselves for the first time at a major event, was received with condescending good humour. Soichiro Honda understood the value of racing and loved racing for itself, anyway. He knew, whatever anybody else thought, that the Isle of Man in June 1959 was a beginning. Brooks won France on an extremely hot day while Moss lost the clutch on his BRM, stopped out in the country, took his helmet off and a spectator emptied a bottle of water over his head. He looked delighte d — and refreshed. Brabham won Britain, Brooks won Germany — although that was on the banked AVUS circuit in Berlin and in a sports car race there Jean Behra was killed — Moss won Portugal and Italy. The United States Grand Prix at Sebring remained and mental arithmetic was needed again. A driver could count his five best finishes of the nine rounds and Brabham had five: 31 points, lowest 4, Brooks 23 from three, Moss 25.5

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but from five, lowest 1. For Moss here was the Casablanca conundrum again. He needed to win, set fastest lap and Brabham be no higher than third. Brooks remained an outside bet. Caracciola died of a bone disease. He’d long resided in Lugano and drove after the war, even trying to qualify for the Indy 500 in 1946. He crashed. Neubauer insisted that of all the great drivers he had known, from Nuvolari to Fangio and Moss, Caracciola was the greatest. Another link to the 1930s was broken. Sebring was flat, uneven, in the middle of nowhere in central Florida and the wrong place to launch Grand Prix racing in the United States, a problem which would recur. Brabham found it ‘dull for spectators and drivers and had the appearance of being set up for a driving test in a rally.” Moss’s team indulged in a little psychology on him. When he arrived they stuck a picture of Brabham on his rear view mirror, Brabham coming at him fast... Moss took pole, Brabham next to him. Brabham intended to ask Masten Gregory, a wealthy man from Kansas and also in a CooperClimax, to go out and plunder fastest lap regardless of consequences so that, even if Gregory blew up afterwards, Moss could never dare risk going fast enough to take the fastest lap himself. Gregory; however, hurt himself before the Italian Grand Prix and wasn’t driving at Sebring. Brabham did have McLaren there to help but didn’t ask him to make the sacrifice. Just before the race Harry Schell, who’d done the third best time in qualifying to be on the front row (three cars wide), was informed he’d been relegated to the second because the timekeepers didn’t believe the time he’d done. Schell was an extrovert, a character and American. He was enraged, the timekeepers unrepentant. Autosport reported that ‘it looked exactly like a free-fight in a Glasgow dockside pub — only noisier. Then the majorettes started up, the band and the girls stamped their shapely legs. As if by magic the jostling and shouting ceased. Both Moss and Brabham were trying unsuccessfully to

keep their faces straight.’ The start-finish straight was wide enough for a front row of nine cars so that the three on it — Moss, Brabham and Schell — looked lonely. On the far side, a roofless grandstand was half full; beyond that stretched the car park and some low buildings then, across the rim of the horizon, trees. Brabham led but Moss came past him ‘like a rocket.’ Brabham thought like a champion: let Moss go, his car will never stand that speed for a race. Moss

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travelled hard towards the precious fastest lap and built a lead but just into lap six his gearbox failed. Had Moss overdone it? He’d say no. Brabham came past where Moss spun and next time noted that Moss’s car was still there. Brabham needed only a safe run home but after an incident early on Brooks launched a great attack. He could not sustain it and settled into fifth. Anyway, Brabham — leading — had McLaren as a shield behind him. Into the last lap Brabham nodded to John Cooper in the pits: situation under full control, we're going to do it. About a mile from the finishing line the engine began to make choking noises. He was running out of fuel, he coasted and McLaren drew alongside, he signalled McLaren to press on. Brabham came to a halt about 500 yards from the line and wondered savagely why must finishing straights be uphill? He got out, took his helmet and goggles off and began to push. He’d remember Brooks going past and thinking he’s second in the championship, not Stirling. As he pushed, his head down, all he could see was the track passing slowly beneath him. He was so exhausted he didn’t know the crowd were in a frenzy or that motor bike policemen held them at bay. He worked his way slowly under the pedestrian bridge about a hundred yards from the line and the man with the chequered flag waved it to encourage him. Still Brabham worked his way forward and when he reached the line he collapsed by the side of the car. He’d remember drinking Coca-Cola handed to him by John Cooper and how it revived him. He’d remember shaking hands with people as he lay. He was helped to an official caravan and lay down for a quarter of an hour. Then, quite suddenly, he thought hey I’m World Champion. He’d remember the rest as a ‘bedlam’ of Pressmen firing questions, newsreel men filming, photographers snapping, and when he got back to his hotel and sank into a warm bath the phone rang constantly. He didn’t answer it although he did speak to his wife Betty, at home in Dorking, Surrey. She’d been there with some friends and a News of the World reporter, who'd been ringing one of the London press agencies for the latest news. These came in the form of ‘snaps’ at regular intervals, cabled from the reporter at the circuit to the newsroom in London. There

was no other way to find out and the last ‘snap’ had been three laps before the end. He told Betty how it had finished. For 1960 the point for fastest lap was dropped and the first six finishers in a Grand Prix were awarded points on the descending scale

8—6-4-3-2-].

Chapman designed a rear-engined Lotus and Ferrari flirted with one but Cooper, retaining Brabham and McLaren, remain ed the team to beat

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despite an alarm at the first Grand Prix, Argentina. John Cooper remembered how quick Chapman was, how Chapman understood that you'd only be able to win races with engines at the rear. Cooper went to Buenos Aires with the previous year’s cars but Chapman took an entirely new one, the Lotus 18, light and sophisticated. Not that it was so simple. The boat bringing the Coopers from England was late and the Customs intervened when it did dock. The drivers waited impatiently at the circuit and Cooper decided to phone the Argentinian Automobile Club to see what was going on. A telephone, mounted on a wall, was so old it had a handle to wind it up. Cooper got through but he didn’t speak Spanish and they didn’t speak English. It culminated in Cooper, angry beyond endurance, tearing the whole thing from the wall and, as Brabham remembered, ‘springs, bells and all kinds of bits and pieces’ flying everywhere. In the Lotus Innes Ireland qualified second (to Moss in a CooperClimax) and led. From the grid Brabham made a tremendous start and went down the inside but found a photographer standing in his path. The photographer did not move and Brabham, braking furiously, thought he brushed his trouser leg. Next lap, Ireland still leading, Brabham noticed the photographer lying on his stomach on the rim of the track holding the camera out onto the track itself. Ireland spun on oil — and later suffered mechanical problems — the photographer retreated. McLaren won Argentina (Brabham’s gearbox failed). Ireland, Cooper said, nearly ‘blew us away.’ On the flight back Cooper, Brabham and McLaren said we need a new car this season. Brabham would describe it as Cooper’s first ‘really good’ Grand Prix car. Six weeks later, to the north in Brazil a wealthy Sao Paulo farmer and businessman had a son. He’d be christened using a combination of his father and mother’s names: Ayrton Senna da Silva. There was no history of motorsport in the family. Moss, in privateer Walker’s Lotus, won Monaco from pole. Moss found the Lotus a ‘more delicate instrument’ than the Cooper, and it ‘demanded precision.’”* The car was a ‘curious mixture of simplicity and sophistication which brought me quite a lot of success when it wasn’t trying to kill me!’ This was the first Grand Prix victory by a Lotus. A strong-willed south Londoner made his debut, qualifying a Lotus on the fifth row but the transmission failed on lap 18. John Surtees understood all the undercurrents of speed and racing, because he’d been motorcycle World Champion at 500cc in 1956, 350cc and 500cc in 1958 and 1959, and would do it again this season of 1960, in between the Grand Prix car races.

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He found Monaco something of an experience because he’d only run a few street races in the whole of his motor bike career. He’d capture the spirit of the times, about the absence of testing because Grand Prix teams lacked the sort of budgets you need for that. At the races, where Lotus fielded three cars there’d only be one spare engine between them.” Stacey only qualified 13th and retired with an engine mounting problem after 24 laps.

The Monaco measure: Moss, 100 laps, 2h 53m 45.5s, an average speed of 67.4mph: Brabham, 1959, 66.6mph. Brabham won Holland, where Clark made his debut in a Lotus, but the gearbox failed when he was fifth. At Spa, Stacey was evidently in the wrong frame of mind — afraid that if he didn’t qualify fast Chapman would take the car off him and give it to Surtees. Perhaps Stacey was unused to moods like that because he seemed to be a very cheery, optimistic man. He needed to be. As Innes Ireland has pointed out, he had a metal leg but with a motorcycle twist-grip on the gear lever of his car he could do the equivalent of heeling-and-toeing, which he couldn’t do in the orthodox way because the metal foot had no sensitivity. The drivers devised ruses to get him through medical checks before the races (if the leg had been discovered he’d have been out). For example, the reflex test where you put one leg over the other and the doctor taps the knee. His good leg done, one of the other drivers would knock over a chair or kick something. The doctor diverted, Stacey would cross his legs again making sure the real one stayed uppermost — and the doctor, having forgotten which knee he’d tapped, tapped the real one again. Ireland insists this never failed. During Saturday morning practice Moss went into a long downhill sweeping corner when: I struck the hump in the middle of the curve and my car’s left-rear wheel came off as the axle shaft broke. All I knew at that instant was that the car had suddenly develop ed the most violent oversteer I had ever experienced. I hadn’t a clue what had happened. I piled on full opposite lock and jammed on the brakes to scrub off speed — fast! The car spun like a top, at which moment I saw the wheel bounding away on its own. I realised I was going to hit the steep left-side bank backwards, at around 90mph. I braced myself betwee n wheel and seatback — which fortunately spread the load as we did hit backwards — and then I can just remember my head being violently jerked back...

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I next remember coming round, realising I was out of the car, crouching on my hands and knees, gasping for breath. The car was lying right-side up [...] and debris laid across the road. I felt terribly alone. I simply could not breathe. I remembered passing Bruce McLaren earlier on that lap and I couldn’t think why he was taking so long to arrive. In fact, he stopped immediately, and ran to me. I begged him to give me artificial respiration, but he rightly refused in case I had broken ribs. Other drivers arrived, parked their cars, switched off and came to help. Then eventually marshals

and an ambulance appeared. The sun was blazing down so they held a blanket over me for shade. I had to fight for every breath. My nose was crushed. I knew my legs had

suffered too. Somebody cut the elastic cuffs of my overalls and removed my watch. I could hear them speaking but my sight had gone — everything

was blurred and dark. I was terrified I was going blind, and that a broken rib might puncture a lung — if it had not already. Then came some relief as I remembered

that wheel bounding away. At least the accident had not

been my fault...”°

Meanwhile, news filtered in that Mike Taylor had gone off in another Lotus. The car hadn’t taken a right-hander but gone straight on at big speed over a ditch uprooting a tree. Taylor sustained light injures but was taken to hospital and when Innes Ireland went to visit him there Taylor said the steering had broken. A check on their steering revealed that two of the three remaining Lotuses had cracks... On lap 19 of the 36 young Londoner Chris Bristow lost control of his Cooper at Burnenville, the great carving right curve not far from where Moss crashed, went into catch fencing and was decapitated; a lap later Stacey, who'd been at Brands Hatch the day Clark first drove the Lotus Formula 2 car, was struck in the face by a bird. His Lotus hit a bank, throwing him to his death. Spa remained a murderous place. Ireland spun out, walked back to the pits and Chapman asked him to go and find out what had happened to Stacey. Ireland walked to the circuit medical room and watched an ambulance arrive, a priest shaking his head. Ireland had never seen a dead man before. He turned and ran and years later wouldn’t remember where he ran to. He went back and saw, now, Stacey lying with a winner’s laurel wreath lain over him. Ireland broke down. Brabham won. A new generation was coming which would no longer accept this. Its articulator was then a 21-year-old Scot, dyslexic, trying to qualify for the

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British Olympic clay pigeon team and hadn’t driven a racing car in his life. Brabham won France, Britain and Portugal for his second championship and, in his taciturn way, said: ‘1960 was a good year for Coopers and for myself as a driver. It was much more satisfying than the previous. year because we won more races and the car was much improved.’ Phil Hill won Monza in a Ferrari. The race was run over the combined 10km road and banked circuit and the British teams boycotted it — regarding the banking as uneven and unsafe — which let Hill in for the win. The Olympic Games were going on in Rome. Jackie Stewart, the 21year-old Scotsman, narrowly failed to make the British team. He’d describe it as the biggest disappointment of his life. There was motor racing in the family — he’d often accompanied his brother Jimmy to hill-climbs. Moss won the United States Grand Prix from Ireland. A new formula was introduced in 1961 limiting engine capacity to 1,500cc, introducing minimum weights for the car and stipulating that commercial fuel be used. The British teams protested and were confiden t the new formula wouldn’t be introduced but, cannily, Ferrari thought they might. The scoring was revised with a win becoming worth nine points, the descending order after that unchanged at 6—4—3-2-1. ‘While the turbulence in his private life showed no signs of subsidi ng (nor did he want it to), Ferrari was at least able to look forward to the return of a modicum of stability on the Formula 1 front.’ The technical team were ‘making great strides with the new Tipo 156 Grand Prix car. It would finally be a rear-engined machine.” The British had started late, Porsche had come in with a car which carried too much Weight and too little power, but the new Ferraris ‘were breathtaking. Their rakish bodywork featured a daring, twin-nostril front end and Ferrari's single refusal to part with tradition: Borrani wire wheels.’ The roundabout: Ferrari's campaign spearheaded by Phil Hill, Richie Ginther — another American — and Germany’s popul ar Taffy von Trips; Graham Hill and Brooks with BRM; Brabham and McLaren with Cooper; Moss, Ireland and Clark with Lotus. It opened on a warm, hazy day at Monaco. Clark, who hadn’t driven the circuit before, learnt all about how much precision it demanded. In first practice he lost control at Ste Devote and clouted the barrier hard enough to throw the Lotus back full across the track. The car needed such extensive repairs it wasn’t seen again until the race, and by then

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Moss had pole in a year-old Lotus - Chapman wasn’t about to let Rob Walker have the latest version. Before the crash Clark had done a time good enough for the front row, Ginther on it too and led from Clark and Moss as the cars jostled into Gasworks. Clark pitted with a fuel pump problem and Moss chased Ginther, towing Bonnier with him. Moss was poised to drive what he considers the greatest race of his life. Through Casino Square, round the verdant, semi-tropical traffic island, he forced the Lotus up to the Ferrari. Moss understood pressure, understood the nuances of driver psychology and Moss knew his way round Monaco. On lap 14 he got past Ginther and moved away but a shark-pack of Ferraris were after him, Phil Hill, Ginther, von Trips. Their Ferraris had 20hp more. Hill surged into second place and Ginther followed into third, using the Ferrari’s power to cut and carve into Moss’s lead. At half distance it was less than ten seconds. Deep into the race, with the sharks close enough for Moss to see their jaws, he danced the little Lotus round Monaco at its limit, used all his race-craft to steal seconds lapping back markers — and still the Ferraris were there. One time into the Station hairpin he took an exquisite racing line, tightening as he went in, running tight round the lip of the pavement, easily on to the power — but as he began turning in, there they were looming into sight at Mirabeau. With 31 laps left Moss led by five seconds. Ginther was signalled to move up past Phil Hill for a supreme attack on Moss. If Moss glanced back halfway up the hill to Casino he saw Ginther taking Hill, the attack already under way. In the last laps Moss ascended to a level nearing perfection, countering the attack by keeping his composure, keeping his lines clean and keeping control. At Station hairpin Trintignant, many laps down, ceded rites of passage and as Moss went inside him he raised a gloved hand in thanks, the calm gesture of a gentleman. Ginther hauled the gap down to three seconds, Moss forced it back to five with four laps left and perhaps that was the decisive

moment. In the end Moss won it from Ginther by 3.6 seconds. Just this once the unemotional man became emotional as the National Anthem played. Louis Chiron presented him with the trophy and he — Chiron — promptly strode off with it so he could present it to the next year’s winner. The Monaco measure: Moss, 100 laps, 2h 45m 50.1s, an average speed of 70.7mph: Moss, 1960, 67.4mph. Across the season the strength of the Ferrari became an irresistible force. At Zandvoort, von Trips led Hill home. At Spa, where it was overcast but for once didn’t rain, Phil Hill led four Ferraris home, Surtees

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in a Cooper, fifth. Reims was hot as the pavestones in hell and a crowd in summer dresses and shirt sleeves grouped all down the long, undulating straight as the red Ferraris seized the race. Moss had a brake problem and emerged from the car with sweat making his shirt cling to his back. He got back in after a long delay and by then the tarmac began to melt. That caught Phil Hill out in a corner and his Ferrari slewed, stopped. Moss could do nothing but ram him. Moss continued. Hill was stationary in the middle of the road and in short, taut gestures he waved his hands at each oncoming car. Miss me! Miss me! Then Hill got out and because the road sloped tried to push-start the car. He did that but it took two laps. Giancarlo Baghetti, a Milanese making his debut, kept cool for 2h 14m 17.50 seconds to win from Gurney’s Porsche by 0.1 of a second. No man before, and no man since, has ever won his first Grand Prix. It did rain at Aintree for the British — von Trips won from Phil Hill — and it showered at the Niirburgring where Moss won from von Trips. Thereby hangs a tale. Dunlop had ‘green spot’ rain tyres — painted with this spot to identify them — which could chew up on a dry track and Moss decided to take the risk for the race but to conceal what they were up to from prying eyes the team painted the green spots black in the pits... This was the opposite of Monaco and, in theory, the more powerful Ferraris ought to have been able to hunt him down because the Nurburgring was about power. Graham Hill went off on the second lap trying to overtake Hans Herrmann, who closed the door. Hill braked, skittered into Dan Gurney’s Porsche — trying to sneak by on the other side of the road — and rode up a steep bank. He flew over a photographer’s bag and, the car still travelling fast, plunged into long grass just missing one person while another tried to out-run the BRM and narrowly succeeded. Moss waltzed the little Lotus round and towards the end, when the rain tyres had worn on the dry surface, it rained. The tyres appreciated that and he had the race by more than 20 seconds. As Rob Walker said, nobody could touch Stirling in the rain. Walker added he’d never forget that among the 300,000 German spectators were some members of the British Army in the grandstand and when the Nation al Anthem played they held up a Union Jack. Patriotism was not someth ing the British felt they had to hide then. The championship could be decided at Monza . Of the eight rounds (the eighth, United States Grand Prix at Watki ns Glen, still to come), a driver’s five best finishes counted. Von Trips had 33 from five and needed at least third place to increase his total. Phil Hill had 29, again from five, and needed second to increase his total.

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Hill ‘got along fine with von Trips. He was happy-go-lucky, I didn’t find him sort of serious enough. Maybe he was, but not in my way of being serious. Perhaps it was just a matter of degree although I did feel he was a little bit too light-hearted about everything. We were different, you know.’ Von Trips took pole from the Mexican Ricardo Rodriguez, Phil Hill and Ginther on the second row. Monza was dry and very hot. Hill led the opening lap from Ginther, Clark fourth, von Trips fifth. Towards the end of the next lap von Trips got past Brabham and Clark, and now came hard into the Parabolica horseshoe. His Ferrari and the Lotus of Clark touched — it seems von Trips lost control. The Ferrari flipped, rotated three times in the air and, thrashing wildly, reared against some fencing, throwing von Trips out and killing 13 spectators. From there it rotated back on to the track. Graham Hill, coming up hard, confronted a vast dust cloud and drove through blind, just missing the wrecked Ferrari. Clark remembered nothing except helping pull the wrecked Ferrari off the track, seeing von Trip’s body and feeling ‘sick through and through.’ Phil Hill had the championship now. He came past the wrecked Ferrari but didn’t know which one it was, and saw the Lotus, too. ‘Any racing driver wants to get on, wants to pay attention to the things he is supposed to be paying attention to.’ He won the race from Gurney and by then the Italian police actively sought Clark, who was nowhere to be seen. One report suggests he’d been spirited from Italy in Chapman’s Piper Comanche, another implies he was in his hotel room until he could get on a commercial flight. Phil Hill found himself in a strange situation, a championship gained, a team-mate lost. ‘I had a feeling the world would recover from it but I felt a prisoner of the propriety of the whole thing.’ He behaved

with dignity. A Scotsman with a rasping voice and firm views, Innes Ireland, won the final race at Watkins Glen for Lotus. It became a strange story. Ireland crashed at Monaco allowing a driver called Trevor Taylor, six years younger, to replace him in Holland. At the end of the season Chapman decided to keep Taylor and fired Ireland but did not give a reason, and Ireland went to his grave four decades later still

wondering why. One of these 1961 days a customer and family Stewart family garage. He owned a Marcos sports wee Jackie do a couple of speed trials in it if he’d pigeon career was over and he cared to. His mother

friend came into the car and offered to let care to. Jackie’s clay had already suffered

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agonies over brother Jimmy’s racing so Jackie competed under the name A. N. Other. Throughout his career motor racing wasn’t discussed at home and his mother didn’t accept he was a driver even when his name rang round the world. Phil Hill ‘never received a word of thanks, much less formal acknowledgement of his achievement from Enzo Ferrari.’ Meanwhile at the factory a great ‘blow up’ raged between Ferrari and, ranged against him, Tavoni, chief designer Carlo Chiti, financial man Ermano Della Casa and Federico Giberti, a long-time employee who'd done various jobs. ‘The blow up was, in typically Italian fashion, loud, profane and grandly operatic in scale. The dissidents met with Ferrari to pose a series of demands, with the threat of quitting employment as a lever. [...] Ferrari would not budge in the face of the billowing rhetoric [...] Finally the dissidents had no choice but to walk out.’?’ In 1962, the Ferrari cars were not to be a force. Instead, Graham Hill (BRM), Clark and McLaren (still with Cooper) took the championship to the final race. Before the season began Moss competed in a race at Goodwood. Nobody knows what happened, least of all Moss himself. His Lotus went off the circuit and smashed against banking, Moss badly battered, unconscious for one month and paralysed down his left side for six. His career as a serious, professional racing driver was over. Reflecting on his career he’ll say that ‘it was more gentlemanly, because the consequences of doing silly things were so horrific. There was a lot of cut and thrust but it was still a sport, even though some people were paid to do it. People had sporting attitudes, much more than now. I mean, the last race at Monaco [2004] there is no doubt that what both the Schumachers did was appalling” but it’s accepted. And they just stepped out of their cars. In the 1950s you might well not have stepped out. ‘Then it was dangerous, and danger to me is an important ingredient of racing. If you make racing totally safe it’s not the same as it was before it was safe although I don’t think it could survive people getting hurt. We had three or four fatalities a year. Modern life would not allow that. ‘Before everybody spoke English, we did have a language barrier: You might be able to exchange a few words with a driver like Farina. It was by the way you drove that you got the respec t of other people. That might have been the respect of being fast, or the respect of being pretty dirty — as Farina was — or the respect of being slow. I remember a driver called Volonterio.”” If you went really quickl y you could go round the Nurburgring twice before he’d done one lap.

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‘These things were accepted. It was a relatively small band of people actually, whole teams were quite small. It started to change late ’60s, I’d say, it certainly had changed by the time slick tyres came in.* ‘The safety side started to try and come in when I was racing, too. I remember the GPDA’s [Grand Prix Drivers’ Association] first meeting. We said: “The safety of the drivers is up to the drivers. The one thing we have got to be careful of is marshals and spectators. Therefore we must be sure they are adequately protected. Drivers don’t really matter.” In other words, it’s up to you. That was changed, mainly I think by Graham Hill and the Swiss Jo Bonnier — they were the first to really challenge that. I thought it was up to me to look after myself and that’s what the others thought, too. ‘Crash helmets didn’t become mandatory until the early 1950s. When I started you didn’t have to have one. The only reason I wore one was because my father said: “You must do it.” I remember saying to him: “Dad, that’s a bit cissy. None of the fast drivers — Sommer, Nuvolari — wear them.”’ Stirling Moss was no cissy. None of them were. Unusually, the 1962 championship started amid the dunes of Zandvoort, where Surtees (Lola-Climax) took pole but Graham Hill hustled the BRM home for his first victory. The car went ‘beautifully’ and the pace of progress was demonstrated in practice: the new formula cars, with 90 horsepower less than the cars of 1960, were already as fast. Hill remembered that there was a ‘tremendous party’ at the hotel where the drivers stayed. ‘There is a lot of fun in the lounge and the bar and there’s always a pretty good cabaret. I remember the hotel owners getting a bit upset when two or three drivers had a race to climb the columns in the lounge, which were about two storeys high.” It was the way it was, serious and sometimes deadly on the track, informal and slightly beery off it. Graham Hill looked forward to Monaco because he’d never had a car before which might actually win it. Clark took pole but the start was messy and when it settled McLaren led from Hill, who got past but eventually had an oil pressure problem. McLaren won it from Phil Hill. The Monaco measure: McLaren, 100 laps, 2h 46m 29.7s, an average speed of

70.4mph: Moss, 1961, 70.7mph. Clark could only qualify on the fifth row at Spa but, on a warm, sunny On lap afternoon, completed the opening lap fourth. Graham Hill led. ) (Ferrari e Mairess nine Clark was in the lead. Trevor Taylor and Willi in culminated locked into an intense struggle behind Clark — which h neither Althoug flames. in i them touching and going off, the Ferrar

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driver was hurt, Clark described it as a ‘nasty moment and again I had those Spa qualms.’ He won and was in such command that, rounding La Source, he took a hand off the wheel to wave to a photographer.” The French Grand Prix went back to Rouen for the first time since 1957, graphically underlining the pace of progress. Clark did a lap of 2m 14.8s for pole, Musso had done 2m 22.7s in a Ferrari. Gurney won - Clark had a front suspension problem — but Clark won the British at Aintree. Before it, he sat in the cockpit wearing a heavy, dark crash-hat — it looked like a military helmet — his face young as a choirboy. Chapman, very correct in jacket, collar and tie, looks young, too. He dipped his head towards Clark and spoke, Clark listened. He drove a beautiful race round Aintree’s open spaces and beat Surtees by 49 seconds. Graham Hill won round the Niirburgring. Surtees in the Lola was second there, as he had been at Aintree two weeks before. Cumulatively it showed how open the season was: the first six rounds produced four winners.

In practice at the Nurburgring Carel de Beaufort, a Dutchman and the last amateur to be a regular Grand Prix driver, was fast ina Porsche and, with a 16mm cine camera mounted on the rear of the car, doing some filming for a German television company. He reached Foxhole [Fuchsrohre], a downhill section which zigzagged. The camera broke from its mounting and was flung onto the track. Hill was travelling at around 140mph and suddenly he saw a ‘rather large black object’ in front of him — the camera. Helple ssly he ran over it and it tore off his oil cooler. The oil hit the rear Wheels and the BRM snapped round, went down into a ditch ‘like a giant mole,’ ripping the car apart. When it came to rest Hill was sitting breathless on a bare chassis.?! Tony Maggs, a consistent South African in a Cooper , came rushing onto the oil and spun fiercely before charging a hedge and bouncing all over it. The Cooper was destroyed, Maggs unhurt . Hill saw Trintignant approaching in a Lotus and rushed down the track waving to warn him. It worked. In 1961, Phil Hill had taken a Ferrari under the nine-minute barrier (8m 55.2s) but now the first four did it. Grah am Hill won a wet race and the following month added the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Clark led but the transmission failed after 13 laps and Hill found the long run for home comfortable. Clark, however, reass erted the pressure by winning Watkins Glen from Hill. Something momentous happened there , but in the background. Professor Sid Watkins has recounted” how, working as a neurosurgeon

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at a hospital in Syracuse about 60 miles from Watkins Glen, he was asked to join the medical team at the United States Grand Prix. ‘I thought “well if I’m going there and I’ve got some sort of responsibility, I’m not going to do it unprotected.” So I took an anaesthetist with me, and an orthopaedic surgeon, and we went as a team. That was the concept and it had been foreign until that point. Until 1969 [when Hill broke both legs] that was the way I functioned at the Glen. We had a very primitive hut there — we used to have to sweep the flies out, and spray disinfectant around, to make it smell a bit clinical! And we took all of our own equipment.’ The racers went to East London, South Africa on 29 December for the decisive race. Again, the five best results of the nine rounds counted and Hill had 33 points from seven (lowest 1 and 3) so he needed to finish third or higher. Clark had 30 from only four. Hill’s theoretical maximum was 42, if he won and Clark didn’t finish. If Hill didn’t finish, Clark need only be third. The best-finish device may have kept the seasons alive but there was something particularly, perhaps damnably, artificial about it. Clark found the long wait from Watkins Glen on 7 October ‘terrible’ because wherever he went people pestered him about how he thought he’d do. He had only one wish, to settle it once and for all. Porsche and

Ferrari didn’t go. The circuit butted on to the Indian Ocean and winds battered against the cars moving them around in the two fast corners past the pits. Practice began on Boxing Day (traditionally, as Hill pointed out, a day of hangovers) and Clark was immediately so quick Hill thought he’d be powerless against him. Hill applied his doggedness and although Clark took pole he was alongside only 0.3 of a second slower. Hill also remembered how enthusiastic the crowd was and, although segregated into black and white, the blacks saw the whites ‘busy patting us on the back and thought they’d do the same. They don’t often get a chance to

pat a white man on the back.’” ~ Clark led from Hill and, although they were within a second of each other after the opening lap, Clark drew away. Hill did what he was always going to do, wringing whatever he could out of the BRM. He no knew he couldn’t win unless something happened to Clark but a thing surrender. Clark’s ability remains enigmatic, impossible to dissect, circuit, the car, the of aspect of perfect, intuitive balance; of taking every the conditions and smoothing them into purity and harmony. end After 20 laps he’d drawn ten seconds from Hill but towards the smoke blue 82, the smoke ebbed from his car. He noticed it on lap 59 of

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as he’d remember. He drove on for a couple of laps and pitted. He watched Hill go by into the lead and Hill relaxed because he could afford to retire himself and still be champion — but Hill did it properly winning the race from McLaren. The world was a different place. Bette Hill, who'd only missed two races during the season, stayed at home in London — cost had to be considered in the days before drivers earned millions — and the only way she could find out what had happened was to telephone the Reuters news agency, who got the regular updates. That’s how she learnt she was now the wife of the World Champion. She threw a party. Betty Brabham

would understand.

There’s no account of what Graham did in East London and we don’t need that. He must have thrown a party, a hell of a party. Clark bestrode 1963, although Monaco eluded him again. Villoresi , a man of studious dignity confirmed by receding snow-white hair, was an interested spectator, examining the cars and talking quietly about them. He, Etancelin, Chiron and Taruffi would take part in the parade of honour, Chiron waving a white hat vigorously to the crowd. Clark had pole but Hill led. Clark caught him, pressured him and overtook him on braking into Gasworks. He set a new lap record but the gearbox failed just round Gasworks. His first thought was that Hill, running second, would steam into his abandoned Lotus and he ran back to try and warn him. Hill won. The Monaco measure: Graham Hill, 100 laps, 2h 41m 49.7s, an average speed of 72.4mph; McLaren, 1962, 70.4mph. Four days later Clark was second at the Indianapolis 500. Belgium was wet and Clark drove well within his limits — his phrase. The limits existed within the harmony, of course, and were not the same as for other people.* Clark led immediately, Hill trailin g, the rest shed on the opening lap. The gearbox problem struck again, this time the lever snapping out of top. This disturbed the harmo ny, and it was necessary to re-establish that. He had Hill coming up to press him and a completely unpredictable gearbox, which can only have been frightening on narrow, cambered ordinary roads. At the Masta kink, a left-right on the long straight in the country, Clark decided for reasons of prudence that he’d ease off by some 300 revs going through, altho ugh that still left his speed at around 150mph. Clark faced two probl ems approaching the kink at Masta: the gearbox, and the behaviour of the Lotus which drifted across the track in the kink. Clark restored the harmony by holding the gear lever rigid with his right hand — so it couldn’t jump anywhere — while positioning his left hand at the bottom of the steering wheel so he had plenty of play to correct the slide. He did this to the end of the race.

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At around half distance a storm broke over the circuit. Hill’s gearbox seized and several cars spun off, including Belgian Lucien Bianchi. Clark came upon Bianchi standing in the middle of the track near Masta and ‘groups of Belgians running about.’ Clark missed them all then reduced his speed so drastically that from a fastest lap of 3m 58s he did 6m 41s. It allowed McLaren, running behind him, to unlap himself and Clark chose not to contest that. He won by more than five minutes, McLaren the only car on the same lap and Spa measured 8.7 miles. Clark took pole at Zandvoort and lapped everybody in the race; pole at Reims and won by Im 4s; pole at Silverstone and beat Surtees in the Ferrari by almost half a minute. This was a great driver at the height of his powers, every race at his mercy. A famous and fabled bike rider, Mike Hailwood, made his debut in a Lotus at Silverstone and finished eighth. He imagined that racing cars would be a natural and effortless transition. Instead, financing himself, he found only expensive frustration. He seemed to himself to have become two people, the successful biker thoroughly enjoying life, the unsuccessful car driver going nowhere and ‘miserable as sin.’ He liked the matey, basic, unvarnished bike racing community, where he could get drunk, seduce women and nobody minded. (He was once glimpsed in flagranto in the back of a car before one of his races, and nobody thought that unusual. Just Mike, you know). He actively disliked the hangers-on at motor races who thought they were giving their lives importance by being close to the drivers. Hailwood lingered a season or two, went back to the world he knew and, much later, came back to this world he didn’t know. Clark took pole at the Niirburgring but the engine kept cutting out on one cylinder so, to re-establish the harmony, he altered his style to seven cylinders and finished behind Surtees. Clark went to Monza to win the championship but the Ferrari was much quicker, he was sure he couldn’t hold Surtees and he felt ‘dismal’. A slip-streaming battle developed but the Ferrari’s engine failed on lap 17 and Clark won from Ginther (BRM). As the celebrations gathered about the pace he was told the Italian police wanted to interview him a von Trips crash the year before. The police said he had to sign morning. following document guaranteeing he’d appear in court the the address Eventually, he was allowed to leave provided he gave them of an Italian lawyer to act for him. te Clark’s What ought to have been a party at the hotel to celebra of it he’d championship became very subdued and the only aspect remember was a bun fight, Lotus versus Cooper.

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A late-season ripple of races: Hill took pole at Watkins Glen and won, Clark third; Clark took pole in Mexico City and won from Brabham; Clark took pole and won South Africa. He’d won seven of the ten rounds with seven poles for 73 points (54 counting), Ginther (34, 29 counting) and Graham Hill (29) sharing second place. Jackie Stewart had been club racing in England and winning consistently. Tyrrell was in Formula 3 and one of his drivers, American Tim Mayer, had been killed in a race in Tasmania at the end of February. Tyrrell needed a replacement and someone recommended Stewart. Tyrrell rang him at home in Dumbuck and invited him down to Goodwood for a test. Stewart, reflecting, says that represented a big door opening. He was immediately so fast that Tyrrell called him in and lectured him about dangerous driving. Stewart went out again and went faster... Surtees, a man of trenchant opinions and self-assurance to a degree unusual even in a racing driver, ought to have treasured 1964 because he achieved something no man had done before, winning the World Championship to add to his seven motorcycle champio nships. He’d remember, however,” this year as more suitable for forgett ing because so much which should have gone right went wrong, and it all could have been avoided. Surtees felt deep frustration. Enzo Ferrari was strong-willed, John Surtees was strong-willed and Surtees insisted that the company was over-stretch ing itself by racing Grands Prix and sports cars. Surtees raised this with Enzo Ferrari in a frank discussion of views early on and was assure d all would be well, but he soon found a preoccupation with the sports cars. When, finally, he did get into the new Formula 1 car, for the non-c hampionship Syracuse Grand Prix, which he won. That convinced Ferrari they had a winning car and the necessary development, Surtees claime d, simply wasn’t done. Clark took pole at Monaco and led but the roll bar broke from its mounting and the pit stop to repair that pushe d him far back. Graham Hill (BRM) won it from Ginther in another BRM, Clark fourth, Hailwood in a Lotus, sixth. The Monaco measure: Graham Hill, 100 laps, 2h 41m 19.5s, an average speed of 72.6mph: Graham Hill, 1963, 72.4mph. Unreliability pursued Surtees, although he finished second to Clark at Zandvoort: his engine failed on lap four at Spa (Clark won again), the engine failed on lap seven at Rouen (Gurney in the Brabham won, Graham Hill second); he was third at Bran ds Hatch (Clark won, Graham Hill second again). That was halfway through the season and Clark had 30 points, Graham Hill 26 and Surtees only 10.

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At the Nurburgring Surtees took pole from Clark with a lap of 98.43mph, just a breath or two away from the 100mph barrier. Further down the pit lane a small group of men and an inexperienced Californian were about to broaden Grand Prix racing and, in time, energise and exasperate the very same John Surtees. Honda had come. They'd hired Ronnie Bucknum, who looked like a US marine, to drive their tentative Formula 1 car with a V12 engine which produced something like 220bhp at 12,000 revs. Honda’s original venture into bike racing at the Isle of Man grew into ‘absolute superiority’ which ‘in 1961 electrified and stunned the European racing world.’* Of the 22 bike Grands Prix 125cc and 250cc races that season they won all but four. Cars, however, were the big future and racing them held many advantages, not least in testing the personnel at race meetings; but the Niirburgring was a hell of a place to begin. They had to ‘grapple with braking, handling and overheating troubles, culminating in an engine breakage on Saturday which meant a change to their only spare unit.”’ The race organisers put on a brief extra qualifying session to accommodate this engine change, and that allowed the Honda to do the necessary five laps to get into the race. At one point the scrutineers pointed out that the car lacked an oil wastage system so Honda bored

holes in a Coco-Cola can and used that. The same day de Beaufort crashed heavily at Bergwerk, the righthander about halfway round the circuit, while forcing his old Porsche to qualify. He had serious spinal injuries and died in hospital two days later. Lorenzo Bandini, Surtees’s team-mate, briefly led the race before Clark took him, Surtees close behind. It developed into a struggle between Clark and Surtees, passing and re-passing, but Clark suffered gearbox problems and fell away, leaving Gurney (Brabham) to come up and attack. Surtees described this as a ‘really fine wheel-to-wheel battle’ and during it Gurney forged ahead twice but Surtees sensed that he could find enough from the Ferrari to handle this. Both broke the lap record and Surtees broke it twice again, Gurney falling away because some newspaper blew into the Brabham’s radiator. Surtees beat Graham Hill by more than a minute and a quarter. In between that and the Austrian Grand Prix at Zeltweg, Hill did some getting testing at Smetterton and crashed heavily into banking, he’d found analysis whiplash. He was taken to hospital in Norwich and agonising. chipped a small neck bone. Any journey in any car became am-BRM Brabh a in debut his A gangling Austrian prepared to make ‘very looked Of him, Jackie Stewart would say that at this time he

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young, like a schoolboy, lost and somewhat out of place. His helmet doesn’t seem to fit him...’ At the airport local photographers tried to set up pictures of the young man, Jochen Rindt, shaking hands with the famous drivers like Clark and Hill, but Rindt ‘was determined to avoid being obtrusive; he didn’t yet feel like master in his own home, but more like a guest in his own country.’ Zeltweg — nothing to do with the modern circuit there — was a military base’s perimeter road and very bumpy. Hill said the ‘surface had a bad ripple’ and for someone with an injury like his, Zeltweg became a torture chamber. In practice he covered a couple of laps and the pain proved too much for him. He pitted and took codeine tablets, waited until they worked — taking the sharp edge off the pain — then went out again. He was not seeking Clark’s harmony, just a way of being able to cope with the car: in corners he’d use one hand to support his head, taking the weight from the neck, and use the other hand to hold the steering wheel. Hill took pole, the only driver under 1m 10s...2° Rindt qualified 13th. Clark, Surtees and Hill didn’t finish the race (and neither did Rindt, a steering problem). Bandini won it. The week before Monza Surtees crashed in a race at Goodwood, was knocked unconscious and suffered whiplash. When he reached Monza to practice, BRM protested his fitness on the grounds that he might be a danger to others and he was allowed to compete only after further checks. Typically, he won the Grand Prix. Clark’s engine failed and the championship tightened (six best finishes of the ten): Graham Hill 32 from six so he was now dropping points, Clark 30 from four, Surtees 28 from four. The tightening became complexity at Watkins Glen, where Hill won from Surtees — Clark fastest lap, the lead, fuel inject ion problems. Only Mexico remained and, although the permutatio ns were many, Surtees knew that if he won the race he’d done it. Clark took pole, Surtees on the second row, Hill on the third in what he descri bed as a very tight, contorting circuit decorated by ‘lots of funny little bends in the middle.’ On the grid Hill’s goggles fell onto his lap — a problem with the elastic. He struggled to put them back as the race Started and got away tenth. The engine of Surtees’s Ferrari cut and the grid surged past, including Hill, then the engine fired again. Completing the opening lap Clark clearly led, Hill still tenth and Surtees 13th. As the race unfolded Hill worked his way up to third, Bandini’s Ferrari behind him, Surtees fifth. This was enough to give Hill the championship but Bandini launched a series of challenges, making some ‘wild attempts’ at overtaking into the hairpin. They collided.

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Subsequently people accused Bandini of reckless driving to take Hill out and open the way for Surtees. Surtees refuted the notion absolutely and Hill certainly didn’t think Bandini had done it deliberately. Hill’s exhaust was damaged and he retreated to the pits, resumed at the back of the field. Clark still led, Gurney second while Bandini, undamaged, overtook Surtees for third. Seven laps remained and Clark began to lose oil. His engine seized going into the final lap. Race order: Gurney, Bandini, Surtees. At that instant, Hill thought, I’ve won the championship again — the four points for third place gave Surtees 38 and Hill had 39. In the turmoil Hill must have forgotten that he’d be shedding two points because he’d finished seven races — working total 37. On that last lap Surtees overtook Bandini and later insisted Bandini had not been told to back off, although Autosport reported the Ferrari pit gave Bandini ‘very agitated signals.’ Hill, running two laps down, didn’t know Surtees was past Bandini but when he pulled into the BRM pits at the end the pit crew’s expression told him everything. That evening at the prize giving the President of Mexico presented Surtees with a gold Longines watch. Big John would always remember two things about that. British customs seized it and held it for a couple of months when he got home — and the watch was worth more than he got from the FIA for winning the championship. That was a diploma,

and nowt else. During this year, Milton da Silva gave son Ayrton a go-kart with a little engine to play around in. They lived in suburban Sao Paulo in a house on a hill and Ayrton went up and down that hill just as if it was a racetrack. The whole 1965 season can be told in two words. Clark, Lotus. He took pole and won South Africa from Surtees; Jackie Stewart, making his debut in a BRM was sixth a couple of laps down. Stewart partnered Graham Hill and, despite his inexperience at Grand Prix level, often went quicker. Here was the classical racing situation, bringing all its inevitable tensions: a new generation, young and eager, challenging the accepted order and, whether consciously or not, intending to overthrow it. olis Clark did not compete at Monaco — he prepared for the Indianap ve 500 the day after — and that let Graham Hill in for his third successi win there although Stewart led for five laps. of The Monaco measure: Hill, 100 laps, 2h 37m 39.6s, an average speed

74.3mph: Hill, 1964, 72.4mph.

tion and Coventry Climax announced that they were ceasing produc came as This not going in to the new 3-litre formula, scheduled for 1966.

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a particular shock to Colin Chapman who'd ‘built up something of a special relationship’ with the company. Chapman approached Keith Duckworth, a former Lotus employee and co-founder of the Cosworth engineering firm, and asked if he could produce a new Grand Prix engine. Cosworth had been created by Mike Costin, engineer and successful racing driver, and Duckworth. They'd rise from being a smalltime engineering concern working out of a workshop they didn’t own to being, as one historian puts it, ‘the outstanding race engine manufacturers of their day.’ Chapman told Duckworth he’d find the finance and they agreed on a budget of £100,000. Eventually Chapman approached Walter Hayes of Ford. Hayes... had got to know Colin well by this time, and I sometimes used to go round to Colin’s house in Hadley Wood, for dinner and a chat. On one occasion he said to me ‘this is getting serious, I don’t suppose you would do an engine, would you?’ Now, every time I saw Colin, he would have nine or ten ideas to discuss, he wanted to work on all of them at once. So, at that point I only needed to say: ‘Well, it’s funny you should be saying that because I rather think that I would like to do an engine now. I think we’ve earned our spurs at the lower level of the sport. I’ve been thinking about ways that we might go further, but I’ve been uncertain as to which Way to go.’ In those days I was even considering trying to do a GP engine ‘in house’, but that would have been vastly expensive, and anyway at that time I didn’t know that you needed a special kind of expertise to do a racing engine. Colin then said to me that he thought Keith could do it. I knew enough about Keith by then — the only ability I’ve ever really had was to be able to pick people.”

In great secrecy, Cosworth began to work on the design of the engine. It wouldn’t appear for two full years but when it did proved more than a sensation: it became the backbone of Grand Prix racing, its workhorse and its saviour. Hill took pole at Spa from Clark and Stewa rt by two seconds, which surprised even him. The race was run in heavy rain and Clark won his fourth successive victory at the circuit he disliked so much, from Stewart by 44 seconds. At Clermont-Ferrand — the 13th staging post for the French Grand Prix — Clark took pole and gave a demonstratio n of car control. The circuit was sinuous and through an uphill curving left-right he seemed to caress the Lotus through constantly correcting tiny slides. He led throughout and

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won it from Stewart and Surtees; Clark took pole at Silverstone, led and towards the end, had a problem with his engine — and his oil pressure was falling. Clark re-established the harmony by switching the engine off at certain corners. Even so he beat Hill by three seconds. Hill took pole in Holland but Clark led throughout, winning it from Stewart. Zandvoort, however, remains notorious because at one point a Dutch policeman, clearing the grid, didn’t see that Colin Chapman wore his official armband on his belt and, assuming he had no right to be there, hustled him away. Chapman gave him a left hook and put him down. After the race a large number of Dutch policemen arrived at the Lotus pit to arrest Chapman. They grabbed him, he said: ‘Come on, lads’ to the mechanics and an international tug-o’-war began: the Dutch police pulling heads and arms, the mechanics pulling feet, while Hazel Chapman held a policeman by the hair. Chapman was eventually marched off to spend a night in a cell. The Lotus team went to the police station and sang dirty songs outside to raise Chapman’s spirits. They needn’t have bothered. He was designing a new car on the back of the writ he’d been served.” Clark could win the championship at the Nurburgring with three races to spare. He took pole and in practice all the first four — he, Stewart, Hill and Surtees — went through the 100mph barrier. Clark led the opening lap and, from a standing start, completed it two full seconds faster than Surtees’s 1964 record, set on lap 11. In this mood Clark was not to be caught and won from Hill by 15.9s. Stewart's astonishing progress in his debut season climaxed at Monza where Clark had a fuel pump problem, leaving Stewart to hold off Hill. Stewart described it as ‘a tremendous thing’ to have done that but in his canny, perceptive Scot’s way rationalised that: Monza did not demand great finesse from a driver and consequently youngsters could be expected to do well there. Without the chicanes, which would be added in 1972 and 1976, Monza represented a straightforward, high-speed

blast virtually all the way round. One incident troubled Stewart. With a couple of laps to go he and Hill at — team-mates at BRM of course — duelled and Hill ran a fraction wide as the one point. It cost him the race and troubled Stewart that, wasn’t he Stewart newcomer, he might be seen as culpable. Hill assured the race was and it was confirmed when, at a party in Milan that night, ally wide. re-run on television and everyone could see Hill going fraction Stewart found Hill’s integrity touching. had been Hill won Watkins Glen but in the background Honda Ginther, Richie an, Americ r making steady progress. They’d hired anothe

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to partner Bucknum which reflected a growing sense of confidence. A small, neat Californian, Ginther had been in Grand Prix racing since 1960 and his career was nearer the end than the beginning. At Mexico, the final race, several drivers got lost on the Way to the circuit, including Innes Ireland, who was driving for the Parnell team. Ireland was dismissed and his car given to Bob Bondurant. Ginther found the Honda ‘just flat plain better’ and led throughout. To make a Grand Prix car function reliably and faster than the others is a delicate, maddeningly frustrating activity. Engine manufacturer Brian Hart says: ‘Most of the time it was very difficult to get the engine to run on 12 cylinders. It had these massive long exhaust pipes and it was tuned like 12 motor bikes. I mean, 12 exhaust pipes is very unusual. And the noise, the noise the thing made! Nobody had ever revved engines to 11,000 or 11,500 or 12,000rpm. When Ginther won in Mexico, he was running 12,500. The other engines were running about 10,500.’ Hill described Ginther’s victory as ‘a tremendous shock to the establishment.’ It was also a tremendous delight to Honda as a company, and senior executive Nobuhiko Kawamoto said it ‘gave us the necessary punch to forge ahead and continue to invest in the automob ile industry.’ Mexico City, on the warm and sunny afternoon of 24 October 1965, was the end of the 1.5-litre Formula. From 1966, as we have seen, that would become 3-litres. Hill pointed out the 1.5-litre Formula would be unlamented and he even mused aloud about: why it had ever been introduced. The bigger sports cars were by now lapping faster than Grand Prix cars. They wouldn’t be, any minute now. That month, to end persistent rumours, Ford annou nced they were engaged in a joint project with Cosworth: the engine . The future was coming fast.

Notes 1. Connaught Engineering was an English company founded by Kenneth McAlpine, a member of the construction family , in 1950. They started making racing cars in 1951. . Racing Driver, Salvadori. . Life at the Limit, Hill. - Autosport.

. The Racing Car, Batsford. - Founded in 1903 as engine specialists, uw a PWN they achieved fame ‘for supplying motors for the tractor used by Sir Ernes t Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition

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in 1914.’ Their first racing engine was made in 1954, they were successful in Formula 2 and went into Formula 1 powering Cooper cars. http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/eng-coven.html

. Jim Clark at the Wheel, Clark. . Lister, an English engineering company. In 1954 Brian Lister, the founder’s grandson, decided to make racing cars. . Hill, op. cit. 10. Champion Year, Hawthorn. ll. Bruce McLaren, Young.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Hawthorn, op. cit. Mon Ami Mate, Nixon. Young, op. cit.

Jack Brabham’s Motor Racing Book, Brabham. The Story of Honda Motor Cycles, Carrick.

.

When the Flag Drops, Brabham. My Cars, My Career, Moss.

19.

World Champion, Surtees.

20. 21. 22. 23.

Moss, op. cit.

When the Flag Drops, Brabham. Enzo Ferrari, Yates.

Baghetti is the only man to win his first Grand Prix, and more than that he won his first two non-championship Formula 1 races as well, making a unique hat-trick. In terms of the World Championship, inevitably ‘firsts’ were set in the initial race at Silverstone in 1950 so in the strict sense,

Farina won his first, too. 24. Interview with the Author. 25. Yates, op. cit. 26. At Monaco in 2004, Ralf Schumacher was accused of ignoring blue flags and Fernando Alonso claimed he ‘pushed me wide’ at the tunnel. Michael crashed into Juan Pablo Montoya’s Williams. 27. Ottorino Volonterio, a Swiss lawyer, has been described as ‘usually slow or hopelessly slow’ (Grand Prix Who's Who, Small.). He drove in three Grands

Prix meetings but only qualified for one race. 28. Slick tyres were ungrooved, and aimed to get as much rubber in contact with the track surface as possible. The super sticky slicks used in qualifying in the 1980s — made to last one flying lap — gave astonishing to adhesion. Today’s grooved tyres in Grand Prix racing were designed theory in — ng challengi slow the cars and make braking for corners more leading to overtaking chances for a car following. 29. Hill, op. cit. 30. Clark, op. cit.

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31. Hill, op. cit. 32. Watkins interview with Nigel Roebuck, Autosport, 10 February 2005. 33. Hill, op. cit. 34. Brian Hart tells a revealing story about Clark. They were in a wet Formula 2 race and Clark came to up lap him. Hart thought right, I'll follow him and see how it’s done. ‘He vanished into the distance! Clearly his limit in the wet

was completely different to mine. If I had followed him Id have gone off.’ 35. Surtees, op. cit. 36. Carrick, op. cit. Sirf The German Grand Prix, Posthumus. 38. Jochen Rindt, Priiller. 39. Hill, op. cit. 40. Cosworth, Robson. 41. History of the Grand Prix Car 1966-1991, Nye. 42. Robson, op. cit. 43. Colin Chapman, Crombac. - Reg Parnell, who drove Grands Prix between 1950 and 1954, set up his own team but died suddenly in 1964. His son Tim, also a Grand Prix driver, had to take over. He became team manager of BRM.

Chapter 8

SAFETY FIRST he dark green car, sleek and slightly prehensile, travelled towards the Masta kink on the opening lap of the Belgian Grand Prix. Rain had fallen. The driver, Stewart, was careful by nature, logical, precise but as he approached the Masta all that was plucked from him. His BRM ran full into water and aquaplaned out of control. It battered metal fencing and, bent and brutalised, came to rest in a ditch. Stewart sat semiconscious and trapped. These fleeting moments, etched in the grey rain of a drowning, dripping afternoon, were defining in the life of Stewart and Grand Prix racing. Nothing would ever be the same again. The 1966 season promised something altogether different. The new 3litre Formula, announced three years before, ought to have been a smooth transition — especially with so much warning — but the withdrawal of Coventry-Climax meant that British teams ‘had to look elsewhere for engine supply with a very limited amount of time available.’ As a result, ‘solutions were many and varied indeed.” Tyres were now becoming a factor, and although this is a very technical aspect of the sport — and to the layman slightly mystifying — it had direct consequences on the racing. For many years Dunlop enjoyed something approaching a monopoly but Goodyear came in and when Ginther won Mexico he did so on Goodyears. Synthetic compounds allowed wider tyres, and smooth (‘slick’) and grooved tyres were available for dry or wet conditions. In 1966 Firestone came in against Goodyear and Dunlop, and a phrase was coined which would resonate down the years, Tyre Wars. In all an activity like Formula 1, if you have superior tyres they can negate fortunes sorts of technical advantages your opponents might have spent on, and that led to another resonating phrase, there’s time in the tyres. Initially: Lotus (Clark, Spence) had a modified 1965 Climax engine.

BRM (Stewart, Hill) made their own engines. Ferrari (Surtees, Bandini) made their own, too. . Cooper (Rindt, Ginther, Bonnier, Ligier) had Maserati engines . Eagle (Gurney), an American team, had a Climax engine

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Honda (Ginther, Bucknum) didn’t appear until the Italian Grand Prix, with their own engine. Brabham fielded four cars on the grid at the first race, Monaco: an Australian Repco engine for himself, Climax engines for Hulme and Londoner Bob Anderson, a Maserati engine for Bonnier. Surtees was lucky to be there. He’d had a major crash practising for a race in Canada at the tail end of 1965. The car hit a barrier, somersaulted and came down on top of him. He spent the winter getting fit again and when he went back to the factory for the first time, on crutches, some of the mechanics were so moved they cried.? He was fit for the pre-season races before Monaco but when he told a couple of team members about the ‘gutless’ V12 engine in the Grand Prix car they fell silent. Surtees approached Enzo Ferrari and said he wanted to take the previous year’s car to Monaco but Ferrari shrugged that off. You'll win it, Ferrari said. Surtees gave a trenchant and entirely honest answer, I can probably lead for a few laps but then the bloody gearbox will break because I'll have to drive the car so hard to hold that lead.’ Clark took pole at Monaco, establishing continuity between the old Formula and the new, Surtees next to him. At the start, Clark’s Lotus wouldn’t come out of first gear and Surtees led from Stewart to lap 14 when he heard the ominous noise from the gearbox which he’d predicted. Stewart won it from Bandini, Hill third. Jack Brabham felt distinctly unwell — perhaps something he ate — and when his car’s gearbox failed he decided to return to his hotel immediately. He walked up to the main street and caught a bus becaus e, as he’d say, Monaco’s so crowded it’s the most efficient Way to do it. The Monaco measure: Stewart, 100 laps, 2h 33m 10.5s, an average speed of 76.5mph; Graham Hill, 1965, 74.3mph. Surtees took pole at Spa, Stewart on the front row, Clark on the fourth after mechanical problems. As the 15 cars waited on the grid under dark, leaden cloud an announcement in the Press Box told the journalists rain fell at Stavelot, the corner on the far side of the circuit. One journalist wondered if the drivers knew and concl uded they didn’t. At the Masta kink, about a mile from Stavelot, a farmer called Paul Dewalque prepared to watch the race from his front room because the farm butted on to the road. ‘Every year I invited friends to come and watch with me. We’d stay inside the house for the first couple of laps because when the cars were racing close together it was too dangerous to go outside. Only when the cars were strung out did we do that.’ The 15 set off quite normally, the circuit perfectly dry down into Eay Rouge. Surtees got there first, Rind t and Brabham close behind. They

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moved into the country, the road rising and then angling down towards the long, carving right of Burnenville. As they travelled towards this Surtees saw spots of rain and thought clinically, round Burnenville stay off the racing line because tyre rubber will have been laid there during practice and it'll be very, very slippery. Brabham remembered about halfway down the hill to Burnenville the drivers realised the conditions had changed absolutely. From nowhere he was in to ‘a terrific slide’ going sideways towards a house. As the car reached the rim of the road the slide stopped — he had no idea why — but he didn’t hit the ‘straw bales and concrete posts’ there.* Stewart just missed Brabham. ‘I got through by a miracle. I remember giving a slight sigh of relief that I was clear.” Hill remembered how quickly the rain began because one moment he was handling the BRM in the dry quite normally, the next he was on a drenched track, visibility gone. He had a ghostly vision of cars spinning, seemingly everywhere. Bonnier’s Cooper straddled a stone wall with a big drop the other side. Siffert and Spence crashed, too. Hill picked a path through. At Malmédy, a right-hander a little further on, two cars touched and

went off. Bonnier, Siffert and Spence watched the race from there.

took refuge in a barn doorway

and

The survivors moved along the straight to Masta, the left-right where farmer Dewalque and friends waited safe inside the solid farmhouse. In these impossible conditions, Jochen Rindt overtook Brabham. Water flowed across the road at the kink and, although Surtees negotiated it safely, Brabham watched helplessly as Rindt lost control going in, described three complete rotations and continued straight

ahead. Stewart went headlong into a river of water flowing across the road and that’s when he aquaplaned. Hill, slightly further back, felt something didn’t look right about the kink and, next instant, was on the river which had borne Stewart away. Hill spun wildly, too, and went backwards down the road fast. The car bale came to a stop at the side of the road with a rear wheel against a straw he saw and the engine dead. As Hill fiddled for a gear to try to re-start it. in sitting there's a car down in that ditch and thought bugger me, Jackie's and found Stewart was in pain, looking ‘terribly helpless.’ Hill went d. The deforme BRM the of him trapped by the steering wheel, the side Hill turned fuel tank had split, soaking Stewart in petrol. Immediately pump and looked off the control switches in the cockpit to stop the fuel

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round urgently for anything that might cause a spark. One spark could make the whole thing a bonfire. He saw the fuel was burning Stewart and he knew it could strip the skin off. He tried to lift Stewart out but couldn’t because the steering wheel had jammed against Stewart’s leg. Bob Bondurant, an American in a BRM arrived at a canter. He’d crashed on the far side of the road and his car lay upturned there. Stewart noticed Bondurant bleeding from the lips and wondered why he ‘looked so sorry for himself.’ After all, I’m the one who’s had the crash. Stewart didn’t know Bondurant had crashed, too. Hill sprinted off to find a marshal with a toolbox so the steering wheel could be removed. He couldn’t find one but came across a spectator who had a car anda set of spanners in it. Hill sprinted back with them and got the steering wheel off, then he and Bondurant lifted Stewart and carried him to Dewalque’s barn. Of the 15 cars eight completed the first lap. Stewart asked Hill to take off the overalls and Hill did that because they were soaked with fuel. Then Hill set off to teleph one for an ambulance because one still hadn’t appeared. While Hill was away, three nurses — nuns — ventured into the barn. Stewart , semi-delirious, wondered if they were real. When Hill returned, the ambulance — a converted bus — was arriving. He noticed that the nuns, seeing Stewart naked, had covered him up again with his petrol-soake d overalls and a lively discussion developed because Hill felt the nuns were more concerned about their embarrassment than Stewart 's condition. Jackie’s wife Helen and Louis Stanley, the BRM chief, sat in the ambulance. They laid Stewart on the floor and he’d remember saying Helen, this is very good experience for you. He’d reme mber wondering how to address Stanley, who he habitually called Mr Stanley to his face and Big Lou in his absence. Stewart settled on Louis, to which Stanley said: ‘Stewart! If you insist on calling me by my first name, call me Louie.’ The ambulance, heading for the town of Verviers and the hospital there, got lost. Soon enough, the two men in the ambu lance — patrician Stanley, perceptive Stewart — realised that this sort of thing could not go on. They’d do something about it. Surtees won the race although Rindt had deep-grooved Dunlop allweather tyres and Surtees contented himself following Rindt’s wheel tracks which, of course, cut nicely thro ugh the rain and brushed it aside. That advantage was negated for Surte es because, in Rindt’s spray, he drove blind and kept thinking don’t make a mistake, Rindt, don’t make a mistake.

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After the race team manager Eugenio Dragoni — ‘wealthy, headstrong, whose real business was perfume manufacturing in Milan’* — told Surtees he’d spent too long behind Rindt and Big John didn’t appreciate that. Eleven days after Spa, Keith Duckworth finally signed a contract with Ford for the engine although work on it had long been progressing, of course. Hayes thought Duckworth had never signed any contract before. Surtees sensed something wrong when he received no congratulations from the Ferrari team management for winning Spa. They went to Le Mans testing for the 24-hour sports car race and Surtees fell into dispute with Dragoni, ostensibly over the running order within the team. Surtees felt he was the fastest of the three Ferrari drivers and found himself ‘tired of being constantly sabotaged in my efforts to win by decisions that made no sense.” By the French Grand Prix, at Reims, he was no longer a Ferrari driver. He had a Cooper-Maserati instead. Giuseppe Farina drove his Lotus Cortina from Italy towards Reims to watch the race but on slippery road at Chambery on the French side of the Alps he lost control, crashed and was killed. His place in history would always be secure as the first World Champion in 1950, although feelings about the man himself remained ambivalent. His courage had never been doubted but his temperament had. He was arguably the first

of the modern drivers to exhibit naked ruthlessness. During practice Clark hit a bird at speed and injured an eye so badly he didn’t race. Bandini took pole from Surtees but both suffered mechanical problems and Jack Brabham won it. This was the first time a Grand Prix had been won in a car bearing the driver’s own name. As Stewart recovered — he only missed Reims — he began to work on plans to make Grand Prix racing safer. This was the re-energising of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association,’ a body giving drivers a direct say. Initially some people viewed all this as cowardice and told Stewart so. He’d have to live with nonsense like that, and did. Louis Stanley set up year the International Grand Prix Medical Service the following races featuring a mobile hospital and ambulance unit which went to the with the capability of treating drivers immediately. In time, a leading it... driver evaluated the mobile hospital as ‘fantastic’ and added that ation has marvellous equipment, a wonderful operating theatre, resuscit won't they it facilities, everything. But some organisers are so jealous of of things centre the from away far so it park allow it at their circuit, or they upset get s hospital and that it is nearly useless. It seems the local doctors

268

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anyone

should

think

they

are

not

adequate

to cope

with

an

accident...’

Ferrari stayed away from the British, at Brands Hatch, which Brabham won comfortably to lead the championship and, irked that the Press were calling him an old man at 40, he got his wife to buy him a false beard for the Dutch at Zandvoort. He appeared on the grid wearing it and using a jack handle as a walking stick. After a provocati ve performance like that, he felt he had to win it, and did. At the Nurburgring, the Belgian son of a famous motor racing journalist put a Formula 2 Matra-Ford onto the fifth row of the grid. Jacky Ickx had been outstanding in motorcycle trials and now Ken Tyrrell saw his potential. The race was wet and on the opening lap someone crashe d into the Brabham of Leicester driver John Taylor. Taylor spun off and the Brabham burst into flames. Ickx went off trying to avoid this, and retired. It developed into a battle between Brabham and Surtees. For once Brabham revealed his feelings in an uninhibited way. The race, he said, was ‘shocking’ and ‘very dangerous.’ The length of the Niirburgring, like Spa, meant that track conditions might not be unifo rm all round it and Brabham said they changed all the time: one lap this part dry, next lap wet. Without warning, you’d be into water flowin g across or onto mud. He was sliding, Surtees was sliding. Brabham judged this victory the most satisf ying of his career. Taylor died of his burns in a Koblenz hospital a month later. Brabham had now won four consecutive races and that made him all but unbeatable in the championship. Alth ough he didn’t get a point at Monza — an oil leak halted him — of the chase rs only Rindt in the CooperMaserati scored any points. Rindt finished fourth but a lap behind the winner, Ludovico Scarfiotti in a Ferrari. It made Brabham champion for the third time. Honda finally had their new car read y for Monza but it proved too heavy. Ginther qualified it on the third row and got it up to second by lap 17 but the left rear tyre threw its tread and the car went into trees. It was destroyed, Ginther unhurt. Clark won Watkins Glen, and Surtees won Mexico City. There, Yoshio Nakamura, running the Honda Gran d Prix programme, approached him and explained that they were almost certainly withdrawing from racing but they'd stay if Surtees drove and ran the car ‘on their behalf.” Honda, in other words, offered him a sort of franchise.

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Bucknum, who had driven the Honda that first time in Germany 1964, found Mexico ‘bitter-sweet, because we knew we [he and Ginther] were leaving. I remember I was sitting on the pit lane wall and Surtees coming over to have a little chat. He spent a while in our pit having a look at the car.’ As the 1967 season began, the Cosworth engine was still very much in the background. Word of it leaked to the Daily Mail at a motor show on the Continent but that was all. Chapman designed a new Lotus to take it and Hayes came into ‘a bit of conflict’ with him because Ford were paying for the engine and Hayes insisted Chapman... took on Graham Hill. With other teams, I had already observed that they had No. 1 drivers and No. 4 drivers, with nothing in between. I felt that this really meant that they produced one absolutely gorgeous car, and another that really was a lot less than gorgeous. I thought that if I could insist on two demanding drivers my engine could be in two first class cars. [...] Well of course there was conflict as to who actually was the No. 1

diver s7

The Cosworth wouldn’t be ready until the third Grand Prix of the season, the Dutch at Zandvoort. Pedro Rodriguez, a Mexican, won South Africa in a Cooper- Maserati, Surtees third in the Honda, Hulme in the Brabham-Repco fourth. Jack Brabham started Monaco from pole but something wasn’t right with the car and Bandini led, Hulme chasing him. Brabham struggled back to the pits and retired — engine — having unwittingly left a trail of oil all the way round the circuit. Marshals laid cement dust to soak up the oil and on lap two the cars churned the dust into clouds, causing confusion at the harbour chicane. Clark got through by going down the led escape road and had to push the Lotus back, rejoining last. Hulme laps 15 after retired from Stewart, Stewart led from Hulme but Stewart At half (crownwheel and pinion) and Bandini set off after Hulme. but distance he had cut Hulme’s lead to nine seconds and kept coming, Hulme responded. , rolling On lap 82 Bandini ran into the wooden barrier at the chicane Hill bales. the among fire on the Ferrari which landed upside down and motor in seen remembered the crash as one of the worst things he’d ever t tell if couldn' you so fire the of ty racing, remembered the intensi after lap lap driving Bandini was still in the car or not, remembered Express photographer through the smoke and foam.” Experienced Daily

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Vic Blackman took a picture — a morass of smoke and flames eating the carcass of the car — and immediately dashed to Nice where he could wire the picture to London. He had no idea Bandini was still alive. Bandini, trapped for a long time, died three days later in hospital of burns. Hulme won the race. The Monaco measure: Hulme, 100 laps, 2h 34m 34.3s, an average speed of 75.8mph; Stewart, 1966, 76.5mph. At Zandvoort, a month after Monaco, the Cosworth DFV (Double Four Valve) engine came. Duckworth had been... quite determined to control every aspect of the design. At one time he came dangerously close to damaging his health, and it was only a serious, though temporary, problem with his eyesight which caused him to back off a little. Perhaps Walter Hayes’ memory has taken on a touch of hyperbole over the years, but he insists that: ‘I think that obsessiv e is a dangerous word to use, because I think the last word I would apply to Keith is “obsessive”, but the fact is that at one time the pressure on him caused him not to leave his drawing board for nearly ten days and nights. But I could see why he did this — it was his engine, and it was a masterpiece. It was really a piece of unique sculpture.’”

Before Zandvoort, Hill tested the Lotus and engine for a few laps at Snetterton and was impressed. The other car, for Clark, hadn’t turned a wheel until it reached Zandvoort. There, Hill put his car on pole 4.2 seconds faster than the lap record and Clark, exploring the car, put his on the third row. Hill led the race for ten laps from Brabham, Clark up to third. Hill’s engine cut out — a camshaft problem - and he coasted to the pits. Brabham led five laps but now Clark was ready. He went past and controlled the race tightly, moving away from Brabham and winning by 23 seconds. Hayes remembered ‘almost at once I began to think that we might destroy the sport. I realised that we had to widen the market for the DFV engine so that other teams could have access to it.’ The only question for the rest of 1967 was whether the engine would be reliable. Both Lotuses had problems at Spa wher e Gurney won in the EagleWeslake. Neither finished the French Gran d Prix on the Bugatti circuit at Le Mans using part of the 24-hour sports car circuit and a contorti ng section through car parks. N obody liked it much and it wouldn’t be used again. Jack Brabham won from Hulme; Clark won Silverstone from

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Hulme by 12 seconds; neither finished at the Niirburgring where Hulme, a large, strong often gruff man, won from Jack Brabham. Hulme 37 points, Jack Brabham 25, Clark 19. Surtees came fourth in the Honda a long, long way off the pace. The push was on to design and build an entirely new car for the Italian Grand Prix five weeks away. Directly after the Nurburgring Nakamura flew to Japan to supervise that end of the push, taking with him the differential as hand luggage so there’d be no delay. Surtees remained at Slough, goading and forcing the thing through. He’d decreed ‘we have got to save some weight, we have got to have a car which is more sensible than this one’ because: we were carrying something like 300lb more than anybody else — not 50lb but 300. We agreed to undertake a joint venture with Eric Broadley, a good friend of mine with Lola. Honda sent over two young engineers and in our little factory in Slough we made that joint effort. Broadley designed the chassis

and

the Japanese

engineers

produced

what

you might

call a

compromise car — we didn’t look at it as the car we would be using during the next season, it was just for the interim. It was done to prove to Japan that the car could go very much quicker if more effort was put into it. This was the way, also, for Nakamura to show Japan that given the tools we could do the job. So we got the engine

modified in Tokyo and it had better fuel injection. We started work using, as a basis, an Indianapolis chassis. We made parts in Slough and they made parts in

Japan. We put it all together in the factory and we finished

it just about in time to get it on the truck for Monza."

Honda missed Canada where Clark didn’t finish and Hill was two laps down after a spin and a clutch problem. Brabham won from Hulme, keeping the championship alive. At the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Clark (of course) took pole, Surtees on the fourth row although grid positions were largely irrelevant where cars slip-streamed each other in packs and it was commonplace to have a host of leaders during a race: this year there’d

be six. With two laps to go Clark, leading, had a fuel pump problem. This was the culmination of an astonishing drive even by his standards because he’d led initially, had a puncture and lost a lap. At Monza, where finding time was considered almost impossible — the nature of the circuit allowed everybody to do big speeds — Clark regained the lap and regained the lead. Now that was over.

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Surtees led, Jack Brabham hard on him and they were in the last lap approaching Parabolica — where Hill’s Lotus had dumped oil ten laps before. Surtees: watched any car directly behind because all at once they'd pull out of your slipstream and nip away — especially on the final lap. I knew all about the oil going into the Parabolica. The normal place to position the car was on that very inside. It blocked anyone behind. That let you take the apex of the corner. That stopped anyone stealing the corner. Jack was there on my tail and we were coming up to the oil fast. I knew what he was thinking, ‘Surtees will go to the inside and block me.’ But there was no way I was going to take a chance on that oil. Obviously he was going to try and outbrake me because Jack was the last of the demon brakers. I took the

orthodox line partially over to the left but not too much. If he did go inside me he’d have to put two wheels on the oil.”

Surtees never doubted that Brabham would go inside, risking everything to take the apex of the corner and the race. Surtees would brake as late as possible. Bluff, counter-bluff? Brabham ‘knew’ Surtees would ‘g0 outside because of the oil but I decided Id take the risk.’ Surtees positioned the Honda to the left. Brabham saw him go left and ‘I swerved to the inside.’ Surtees could not allow Brabham to follow him round the Paraboli ca. Brabham would get a tow then ‘out-accelerate me once we'd come out and were going for the line. I had to rely on Jack having a go on the inside. And when I’d moved over he did see the option. Here he was alongside me and he’d hit the oil.’ Brabham knew that, if he could hold the inside, Surtees would ‘never have been able to go all the way round the outside of me’ but Brabham felt the car ‘fishtailing’ on the oil. He’d drawn level. At the end of the oil I was three metres in front of him but I’d started to drift. The oil didn’t stop soon enough...’ Brabham slewed across the Honda and now the inside of the Parabolica opened to Surtees. He had the Honda in third gear. As he came out of the Parabolica he left it in third for the surge to the line, Brabham coming back at him. Surtees ‘didn’t dare try and change up. I let the revs go all the way to 12,000. I could see Jack had recovered. I knew that the time it would take me to snick up to fourth would be long enough for him to get past me.’ They fled towards the line and Brabham was coming, Brabham was coming. Surtees held the Honda in third and they crossed the line 0.2 of

Jack Brabham in a heat of the non-championship 1960 Brussels Grand Prix, driving a Cooper — the crowd was terrifyingly close. (courtesy BARC)

The start of the 1962 French Grand Prix at Rouen — the grid was incredibly narrow. Dan Gurney won in a Porsche. (courtesy BARC)

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Maestro. Jim Clark, in absolute control, drives a Lotus 49 to win the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix from Jack Brabham. (courtesy Ford)

Lotus supremo Colin Chapman and Jim Clark formed one of the most successful partnerships Formula I has ever known. (LAT)

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New worlds. Honda launched its Grand Prix team at the 1964 German Grand Prix, with American Ronnie Bucknum behind the wheel. There was much to discuss with

chief engineer Yoshio Nakamura. (LAT)

team Bruce McLaren, the youngest ever driver to win a Grand Prix, started his own Grand Prix Tyler Kerr, Phil Hulme, Denny left) (from to talking is he 1969, in Here, 20s. while in his Alexander and Teddy Mayer. (Ludvigsen Library)

Left: The spirit ofthe 1960s, Jackie Stewart, with trendy haircut and three World Championships. (LAT) Stewart would change Grand Prix racing by campaigning for safety after he crashed (right) at Spa during the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix (Eric della Faille photo — Alexis Callier collection). He was carried to a barn, which stood where this one (below) stands now. (Author)

Below: The fantastic finish at the 1971 Italian Grand Prix. Peter Gethin (18, BRM) won from Ronnie Peterson (25, March) by 0.01 of a second, Francois Cevert (2, Tyrrell) by 0.09 and Mike Hailwood (9, Surtees) by 0.18 — Jo Bonnier (28, McLaren) is four laps down! (LAT)

OAs

GRAND

PRIX CENTURY

DAT

Above left: Savage season. After a near riot Hunt won Brands Hatch, 1976, from Niki Lauda and was promptly disqualified. (LAT)

Below left: Lauda almost died at the 1976 German Grand Prix when his Ferrari crashed and caught fire on the treacherous Niirburgring. This is what the car looked like when they brought it back; Lauda, trapped in the burning wreckage, suffered terrible facial scarring. (LAT)

Above: James Hunt rode the storm at Fuji, Japan, on his way to the 1976 world title — and didn't realise he had clinched it. (LAT)

Right: Enzo Ferrari who, along with Bernie Ecclestone, was the most powerful and influential figure in all Grand Prix racing. (LAT)

Masters of their time: (from left, top) John Surtees added the four-wheel World Championship to his bike titles; Graham Hill and a fed-up looking Damon; (above) Jack Brabham, who usually didn’t say much; Jochen Rindt, the only posthumous champion; (below ) Emerson Fittipaldi, who smiled a lot; and Mario Andretti, the quiet American. (all LAT)

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a second apart. The crowd mobbed Big John, carried him shoulder high. Honda, clearly would win a lot more races — and been astounded if anybody had said the first of them wouldn’t be for 17 years, driven by a Finn who, this summer of 1967, was a karter in his late teens yet to do his military service. Clark won the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen from Hill, Hulme third a lap down, Siffert fourth two laps down. The Cosworth delivered that much power. It left Mexico City where Brabham had to win and Hulme finish no higher than fifth. Clark won it from Brabham but Hulme safely in third, albeit — again — a lap down. Somehow the style of this championship suited the man, undemonstrative, understated but effective. Part of the prize-giving involved some of the drivers going to a bullring and fighting the bulls. There are sketchy reports of how good a matador Denny Hulme proved to be, although in that growl of a voice he insisted the bulls were calves, really, and probably more frightened of him than he was of them. Ken Tyrrell, enticed by the possibilities of the Cosworth engine and having worked his team up through the junior formulae, felt ready for Grand Prix racing and he signed Stewart for 1968. That opened one era just as another was about to close forever. Tyrrell said ‘why don’t you come and drive for me?’ and Stewart riposted ‘I’d love to, but Ken, you don’t have a car!’ To which Tyrrell riposted ‘what if I did have one...?’ When he did, a Matra, Stewart said yes — a decision which surprised Tyrrell (who never asked him why he’d leave a big team like BRM for him.) The season began in South Africa as anyone might have anticipated, Clark pole, fastest lap and victory over Hill by 25 seconds. That was 1 January. He flew to New Zealand and Australia for eight races, the last on 4 March. On 31 March he drove in a Formula 2 race at Barcelona where a young driver, Jacky Ickx, tried to overtake, braked too late and hit him. Icky apologised and Clark said ‘OK, you're sorry, and that’s OK one time — but not two times.’ Clark was now living in Paris as a tax exile and flew from there to Hockenheim for another Formula 2 race before flying on to Zandvoort for some Formula 1 testing. The Formula 2 race had little meaning and, anyway, both Clark and Hill might have been driving at Brands Hatch in a sports car event instead. Whether there was a mix-up with the Brands if entries, or the authorities at Hockenheim said they'd fine the drivers they failed to show up, is not clear but Clark and Hill went to at St Hockenheim. Chapman did not — he was on a family skiing holiday Sims Moritz — but chief mechanic Jim Endruweit and mechanic Dave did, Sims looking after Clark’s car.

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It was a dark, dank weekend and Clark thought he had a misfire. He even told Derek Bell, then a slightly star-struck beginner, to take care when he was lapping him because, with the misfire, the Lotus would be so slow. The race was over two heats and in the first, on a wet track, Clark ran seventh, drifting back. Into lap five out in the country he almost certainly had a puncture at about 140mph. The car snaked, Clark catching it once, catching it again, losing it. The car went into trees at terrible speed. Endruweit stood in the pits. ‘Jimmy didn’t come round and you thought “God, he’s gone missing.” Next thing there is a kerfuffle — an ambulance moving from the paddock area. You knew something had happened. There were a couple of young German ladies who had attached themselves to us for the weekend’ — Endruweit used one as an interpreter. ‘We went along to the organisers’ place and I said: “What the hell’s happened to Jimmy?” And they were very loath to say, they wouldn’t say.’ Meanwhile Sims waited in the pits and ‘you didn’t have the communications then that you have now as soon as someone goes missing. No monitor, no radio, nothing. Then a Porsche came by —a road car, might have been the pace car. The guy in it said: “Come on, there’s been an accident.” “What’s the problem?” “A Lotus has gone off, Jim Clark.” ‘They didn’t stop the race and we went out onto the track in this Porsche, a bit scary in among all the racing cars, and I remember it was a bit dark. The racing cars didn’t slow — no yellow flags. When we reached the scene there was nothing. So I asked myself what's happened here? Then I did see an ambulance parked in the shrubbe ry. You must remember I was fairly young then, 25.’ Sims asked where is Clark, where is the car? Someone said he was in the ambulance and Sims asked is he having a checkup? A voice said: ‘I am afraid he is clinically dead.’ Sims imagined that this man, whoever he was, had ‘got his German and English mixed up. Then I saw where the car was and I asked where the rest of it was, the engine and gearbox weren’ t there. “What have you done with them, what has happened here?” I could see the monocoque and it had gone a sort of banana shape when it hit the tree, but the force of hitting the tree ripped the engine and gearb ox out. They went on in to the woods and sat there, 50 or 60 yards away. Then I started to realise. This man said: “I have to tell you again he is clinically dead but we are flying him to Mannheim.” I didn’t look in the ambulance. They had closed the doors.’

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Someone pointed out where Clark’s head had struck the tree 15 feet up. ‘At that point I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t got a phone, people were coming through the woods — spectators — people were picking up pieces. I said “first of all, don’t let anybody touch anything, for goodness sake stop people pinching stuff. Get on to your people in the pits and tell them to give Graham the arrow to come in. You'd better get me back to the pits fast to speak to Graham to find out what we do now.” The girl interpreter had found out where Clark was being taken. She and Endruweit got into her car, left everything and headed for Mannheim. Sims was in shock by the time he got back to the pits. ‘It’s my fault the number one, the greatest driver has just been killed. What do I do? Run away? What do I do? Where is the chief mechanic, where is the Old Man? We got Graham in and I said “look, Jimmy is dead, they want somebody to go with him to Mannheim, what do I do?”’ Hill remembered hearing the words but not understanding what they meant. ‘Without Graham,’ Sims says, ‘I don’t know what would have happened, he was an absolute, unbelievable pillar of strength. He went and saw the organisers and told them we were going to take our truck out there and pick everything up.’ They did that. Endruweit reached the hospital and ‘I kept saying what’s happened, what’s happened? and they wouldn’t tell me. Eventually, after a considerable time, they said: “Sit down, Mr Endruweit, have a drink” and J thought hello, this is not good news. Only then did they tell me that Jimmy had been killed. The only thing we’d assumed was that he’d been seriously injured and they were doing something fierce to him in the hospital. They asked me if I’d make a formal identification so we trolled off down and I did that. Jimmy wasn’t marked. In essence he’d hit this modest tree, you know, four inch diameter, that sort of size, a young tree, and it had taken the rear suspension off. It was explained to me, in the hospital I think, that he had gone sideways into the tree and had a lower cranium fracture. In other words, the base of his skull — about the base of his crash hat — had taken the impact against the tree. And that was it.’

By now the truck had been driven back to the hotel. Endruweit needed a phone ‘and they took me to some vast room where there was one. I rang Chapman because I knew where he was. I He’d left me a contact number at the something-hotel in the morning. and ” got through and I said: “Look, I need to speak to Colin Chapman

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they said he’d gone out for a walk. I snapped: “For Christ’s sake go out and find him.” They actually did go out and find him. I absolutely had to speak to Jimmy’s father because it was the right thing to do, and by then obviously it was known about. This news, which I had been given quarter of an hour previously, had become common knowledge back in Britain. I broke it to his father with great difficulty. How do you do that? His dad took it in his dour Scots fashion, I suppose. I couldn’t tell you whether he knew or not by the time I phoned him. All I was able to say was he'd been killed instantly, he wasn’t damaged and things like that. Colin rang.’ Hazel Chapman remembered Chapman repeating everything Endruweit said. Chapman got into his car and set off for Hockenheim fast. He arrived about one o’clock in the morning, looked at Sims and asked what the hell he’d done. Sims said he hadn’t done anything. Chapman asked: ‘What happened, what on earth happened? I can’t believe this is going on.’ Sims said none of them could. Chapman said ‘Right, I want that truck out of here right now, get it to England now.’ Sims pointed out that the police had sealed it, left instructions not to move it and were returning at eight in the morning. Chapma n said: ‘You have got to go, but don’t go through any borders whatever. Get out and do it and that is an order’ As they walked to the truck Chapman asked again what had happened and concluded that ‘something must have gone wrong with the car.’ : Sims set off in the truck up the autobahn but ‘we decided to get off that when we were up near Belgium and the Ardenn es. We had a map and we found a track. It had a border post with just a swinging gate, nobody there. We went through and must have been across before 8 o'clock, before the police reached the hotel in Speyer . We drove through little villages and once we were on a farmer ’s track. Eventually we reached the main road and headed for Zeebrugge.’ A customs officer there proved difficult and wanted to take photographs of the car — or the truck didn’t get on a ferry. Sims had to say yes. ‘At this point we hadn’t even got Jimmy’s racing shoes out of the car, they were pinned behind the pedals. I mean, Jimmy’s Rolex watch was still jammed beneath the master cylind er. We'd left Hockenheim so fast we hadn’t had time to extract all that stuff.’ When they docked in Britain the polic e were waiting for them and escorted the truck to the Lotus factory but would not allow it to be taken inside for two days."

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By then, the motor racing world was beginning to understand that they would never see Clark’s balletic car control ever again, never hear his soft voice, never wonder at his shyness, never ponder his harmonies. The motor racing world was beginning to understand, too, that if it could happen to Clark it could happen to anybody. On 7 May an Englishman, Mike Spence, practised for the Indianapolis 500 in a Lotus. He’d driven for Lotus in Grands Prix in 1964 and 1965 but was now with BRM although Chapman took him to Indianapolis as a replacement for Clark. He struck a wall and the right front wheel swung back hitting his crash helmet. He died four and a half hours later. Chapman was a hard man but there seems no doubt that these deaths, particularly Clark’s, made him ask himself fundamental questions. He decided to continue but never allowed himself to get, or want to be, so close to any driver ever again. He certainly couldn’t face going to the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama, thus missing a revolution he had created and which would change Grand Prix racing even more than the Cosworth engine. Esso had been a major sponsor but, unhappy that tyre manufacturers were being given more importance as sponsors, withdrew. The Commission Sportive Internationale feared other sponsors might follow and ended their restrictions on commercial sponsorship — cars ran with small, discreet logos or no logos at all. With the way clear Andrew Ferguson of Lotus — who'd had Esso — drew up a list of Britain’s most important 200 companies and contacted them. As it happened a Lotus employee was looking for a sponsor for a couple of sports cars and came upon Imperial Tobacco. They, it transpired, were ready to spend lavishly to promote their Gold Leaf cigarettes. In Spain the Lotus of Hill did not so much carry the Gold Leaf logo, it was Gold Leaf, red, white and gold livery replacing forever the old green and gold of Lotus. This antagonised traditionalists who watched helpless as brash man Chapman vulgarised their corner of the world. Peter Warr, who worked for Chapman and later ran the team himself, once explained that Chapman’s genius lay in seeing simple, original solutions to complex problems which nobody else had seen. These reshaped whole aspects of how Grand Prix racing worked. Soon enough the other teams followed

Chapman and grids resembled advertising hoardings. The big money had come. Before Spain the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association said they were unhappy about aspects of safety at the Jarama circuit and wouldn’t race n an unless something was done about them. The GDPA was by definitio

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organisation of awkward, ego-propelled people who were solitary in what they did — the actual driving — and bred to fend for themselves. They performed cohesively only in times of communal danger and Jarama was that. The drivers didn’t like the height of the guardrails, didn’t like the loose gravel on the edge of the track and didn’t like the rubber marker cones. The organisers worked hard to rectify this and the drivers drove. In a feat of outstanding courage Hill won from Hulme. It proved that Lotus could survive the death of Clark, and Hill confirmed it by taking pole and winning at Monaco. The Monaco measure: Hill, 80 laps, 2h 0m 32.3s, an average speed of 77.8mph; Hulme, 1967, 77.8mph. The measure of the decades: 1929, 49.8mph; 1937, 63.2mph; 1948, 59.7mph; 1958, 67.9mph; 1968, 77.8mph.

Vehicles registered in Britain 14.4 million (1958, 8.0 million i: A Ford Escort Deluxe cost £635 and a Briton earned on average £25.40 a week. Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 25 weeks to buy one (1910, 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, 1 year 28 weeks; 1929, 41 weeks; 1938, 37 weeks; 1949, 45 weeks; 1959, 26 weeks). Stewart won Holland and confirmed the Tyrrell team had brought enormous potential with it. Ickx won the French Grand Prix at Rouen in a Ferrari, Surtees in the Honda second but the race and its background remain like a spectre. Surtees worked out of the Slough factory developing a Honda numbered RA301. ‘Suddenly’ a ‘new engine and car, the RA302, appeare d at Slough without any advance warning. All the Honda engineers began to shake their heads apologetically.’ Surtees tested it at Silverstone and concluded it was so bad ‘there was no point in even talking about racing it.’ It was stowed at the factory. ‘Then one morning we arrived and it was gone. The previous night, representatives of Honda France had arrived and taken it away.’ The next time Surtees saw it was in the pit lane at Rouen, to be driven by Frenchman Jo Schlesser. Soichiro Honda was on a trade mission in France and it may be that for the most under standable of reasons he wanted to see the new car in the French Grand Prix with a Frenchman driving it. On a wet track during the third lap of the race Schlesser hit a bank, the Honda turning over and bursting into flames. The fire raged with such intensity that it covered the track and some spectators were lightly burnt. Schlesser lay dead. Shortly afterwards Stewart pitted for new tyres and someone told him what had happened to Schlesser, the last thing to tell a racing driver about to go back out. Ken Tyrrell reacted with fury and virtually had the

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person thrown out of the pits. Stewart had never seen Tyrrell so ‘wild’. Ickx won — from Surtees. Siffert, driving a Lotus-Ford for Rob Walker, won the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. For the Nurburgring Stewart flew up from Geneva in Graham Hill’s Piper Aztec in the company of Bette Hill, Bonnier and Siffert. Rain began to fall as they unpacked their baggage and it never really stopped. The circuit was so shrouded in mist and rain that practice had to be extended to a session on Sunday morning. As Hill pointed out, because of the circuit’s elevations they drove in mist and fog a lot of the time. You'd start from the pits in that but as the circuit descended you’d emerge and find the circuit only wet then climb back towards it again.” That Sunday practice session Stewart judged the conditions to be so bad he’d stay in the pits. Tyrrell, for the only time in his life, ordered a driver — Stewart — to go out because it was the only way to find where the mud lay on the track, where and how deep the rivulets of water flowed across it. Stewart found the visibility so bad he was sure the flag marshals couldn’t see each other. The start was delayed, the grid reshaped from the traditional 4-3-4 to 3-2-3 to reduce the risk of cars banging into each other. The GPDA met, but with 250,000 spectators waiting there wasn’t much option but to race. Ickx had pole, Stewart on the third row and convinced the idea of racing in this visibility was ‘ill-advised’. That must be a mild choice of words. In the mounting uncertainty the signal to race was given only after the cars had been rewving their engines for five minutes. Stewart saw engines boiling all round him and his own temperature gauge reached 100°C. From the start it resembled a ‘powerboat race’* — rain falling, the mist lying like a shroud, roosters of spray behind each car, visibility a hundred yards. Into the first corner Hill led from Amon and

Stewart who in the spray could see nothing. Stewart moved up. On the run to Adenau he overtook Amon. Stewart was suddenly relieved to shed Amon’s spray. In it, he had been more frightened than ever before in a racing car. Mid-way round the opening lap he ran second to Hill, overtook him at the Schwalbenschwanz after telling himself I must get past before the straight, I must have no spray on the straight. He crossed the line with a nine-second lead and increased that to 34 by the end of lap two. Tyrrell kept him informed by pit signals and he the drove as fast as he could as slowly as he could. With three laps left the car rain fell even harder and in an S bend he was into standing water, way, one moved who flicking from him. He headed towards a marshal hit him, moved the other and then froze in terror. Stewart was sure he’d

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but just before he did the tyres gripped. He beat Hill by four minutes. Hulme won Monza and, there, two American drivers — Mario Andretti and Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Unser — ought to have made their Grand Prix debuts and even practiced. They were due to fly back to America for a race there the following day and return but this violated a CSI ruling about competing 24 hours before a Grand Prix and they were disqualified. Andretti, an immigrant from Trieste — an Italian city which became part of Yugoslavia, and therefore communist, after the war — arrived in the United States with his family when he was 15. He didn’t look back. Hulme won Canada and Stewart won the United States where Andretti did make his debut in a Lotus, putting it on pole. In the race the clutch failed. The championship turned on Mexico. Hill went with 39 points, Stewart 36 and Hulme 33. It meant that if Stewart won and Hill came second they’d both have 45 but Stewart would get it on the most wins tie-break, 43. Hill decided on the direct tactics to cut through the permutations by winning the race himself. Stewart did the same. Hill led but cars jostled and Stewart went through on lap five, thinking this is going to be an epic. On lap ten Hulme struck a guardrail, eliminating himself from the championship. Hill toyed with Stewart, pulling to one side threatening an overtaking move, pulling to the other side. Hill could see Stewart constantly glancing in his mirrors, reasoned Stewart must be thinking where's the bugger now? Stewart made a small mistake and Hill had him on the inside. Stewart’s engine wouldn’t pull properly at top speed and this became worse to the point where it cut out in corners. On one lap Stewart estimated he’d lost six or seven seconds and Hill ‘just disappeared into the distance.’ So did the championship, Sometime during this season a dark-haired little lad had his first race in a kart. He was eight and ought to have waited until he was 13 but people in a hurry don’t. The grid was decided by drawing lots and he drew 1, giving him the first pole of his career. The other racers were naturally bigger and stronger — presumably they were at least 13 — but their weight slowed them against his lightn ess. With three laps to go another kart nudged him off. Years later, all this made Ayrton Senna smile his wan, slow smile as if the memories amused him. That’s worth recording because from this moment on not Winning races wouldn’t amuse him at all — as Jackie Stewart, no less, would find out. Honda finally withdrew from Grand Prix racing. Nakamura, visibly saddened, said quietly to Surtees, ‘John-san, it is the end.’

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On 3 January 1969 a house builder and his homely wife who lived in an anonymous German town had a son. As he grew, he’d have a dream to play in goal for Cologne because his namesake, Toni Schumacher, was doing that. About Grand Prix racing he never thought at all. Rindt joined Hill at Lotus but Stewart, Tyrrell and their Matra car bestrode the season. It happens. Stewart led all 80 laps at Kyalami and that set the tone. He won in Spain at Montjuich Park although by now the use of giant mounted aerofoils was causing concern. The ones fitted to the Lotuses were so large that the downforce they generated snapped their supports. Hill’s snapped out of control at the first corner hairpin after the pits just beyond a hump which put maximum pressure on the aerofoil. The car battered the metal guardrails at both sides of the track and left a long trail of debris. Stewart, passing, saw Hill was all right and tried to signal that to the Lotus pit as he passed.” Hill cleared the debris as best he could, putting it near the guardrail, examined his car and concluded the aerofoil had failed. Chapman sent Hill’s mechanic, Dave, to see what had happened. Rindt saw Hill and, each time he passed, tried to signal to him am I in danger? Hill doesn’t seem to have seen these signals although he did watch Rindt intently and noticed a ‘crease’ appearing in the wing. Hill despatched Dave back to the pits to tell Chapman signal Rindt in, looks like the same thing’s happening to him. Hill then set off towards the hairpin because he reasoned the cars were going slowly enough through it for Rindt to see Hill gesticulating danger. Dave, it seems, lacked enough time to reach the pits. Hill watched Rindt approaching, watched as the aerofoil collapsed, ‘just folded in half.’ The Lotus behaved as Rindt feared it would if an aerofoil failed: the whole rear of the car rose — for an instant threatened to go across the guardrail. The guardrail was just high enough to prevent it. Rindt had insisted some weeks before that the guardrails be raised.” The Lotus screamed down the guardrail into Hill’s car, rode up and

flipped. Some of the crowd standing behind the guardrail vaulted over and with Hill organising them turned the car the right way up but getting Rindt out proved difficult. He was conscious although his face bled. He contented himself with an obscenity. Petrol ran everywhere — including down the gutters — and any cigarette end thrown carelessly by any member of the crowd would create an inferno. Hill stood on the car and hauled at the it steering wheel, which had been forced down onto Rindt’s lap. He prised up enough for Rindt to be lifted out and placed on a stretcher.

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Stewart of course had seen the aftermath of Hill’s crash, seen Hill examining his Lotus. Stewart had seen the aftermath of Rindt’s crash, Rindt trapped but at least moving. Stewart couldn’t know if Hill was still examining his car when Rindt hammered into it. Now, as Stewart passed again, a marshal draw a finger across his throat. Why the marshal did this nobody knows, but Stewart drove the remainder of the race convinced Hill had been killed. In hospital Rindt announced he’d finished with racing. He then asked Bernie Ecclestone, managing him: ‘Did you get my start money?’ and that gave Jackie Stewart his first laugh of the day.” The next day noted Austrian journalist Heinz Priiller interviewed Rindt who could remember the crash in precise detail and explained that ‘at the moment of impact one doesn’t do anything.” You become detached, you become a spectator at your own misfortune. Rindt added that he’d always wondered what Jim Clark thought at that moment at Hockenheim and now he thought he knew. ‘Nothing.’” Rindt missed Monaco, where the aerofoils were banned. The car would now have more orthodox rear wings. Hill won for the fifth time, an absolute record until the little lad on the kart in Sao Paulo came along a generation later. An Englishman, Vic Elford, drove a Cooper but by now the company was troubled. They failed to find a big sponsor and didn’t take part in another Grand Prix. The Monaco measure: Hill, 80 laps, 1h 56m 39.4s, an average speed of

80.1mph; Hill, 1968, 77.8mph.

There’s another measure, which is of a different kind of time. The 1960s live on as a self-contained era of great freedom the like of which ordinary people — suddenly with disposable incomes in their pocket — had never imagined before but motor racing moved along untouched by this. It did not reflect society, it reflected itself, the Way it had always done. It continued from the 1950s to the 1970s on its own terms and at its own paces, existing constantly on the edge of change while being habitually resistant to change. Perhaps all life is so. It is true that girls in mini-skirts came to the races but they were everywhere, and hippy dressing, flower power, the first intoxication of the freedom did not reach to the drivers in hard hats searching out their own destinies. The big change to democratic values was coming but not quite yet. Spa ought to have been next but the organ isers and the GPDA could not agree on safety improvements, including a flexible start time in case of the usual bad weather. Stewart point ed out that apart from resurfacing and the elimination of one corne r the circuit was the same as it had been in the 1930s. The Belgian gove rnment sealed the fate of the

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race when they insisted on unlimited cover for spectators at every sports event in the country and the insurers wouldn’t touch the Grand Prix. A mid-season ripple of races: Stewart won Holland, France and Britain, Ickx in a Brabham won Germany but with points counting from nine of the 11 rounds Stewart was virtually uncatchable. He’d been second at Nurburgring. Stewart 51, Ickx 22, McLaren 21. Stewart settled it at Monza and had only one moment of alarm when he ran over a hare and wondered if it had punctured a tyre. He kept an eye on the tyres for any sign of them changing shape. They didn’t. In a great slip-streaming finish he got across the line 0.08 of a second before Rindt, 0.17 before Jean-Pierre Beltoise (Matra) and 0.19 before McLaren. The crowd came onto the track and invaded the pits. Stewart took refuge in a toilet and while the crowd hammered on its walls he sneaked out of the window at the back. On the podium his smile stretched so wide it might have been visible from Dumbuck. There, Stewart’s mother still refused to accept Jackie was a racing driver. Brother Jimmy said to her isn't that fantastic? but she deflected that by asking what the weather was like. Ickx won Canada and Rindt won Watkins Glen where Hill crashed, breaking both his legs. Professor Watkins, who’d joined the medical team there in 1962, of course, remembers™ that Hill was taken to Montour Falls hospital nearby and it was shut! He had to be taken to another one 40 or 50 miles away. Watkins recounted this as a graphic illustration of how far medical facilities have been improved since those days. It’s a subject we shall be coming back to. Hulme won Mexico City to round off the season.

Stewart thinking, wholesale whatever beginning

was a very modern man in dress, appearance, presence and the first of the technocrats. He saw with clarity that the driver slaughter of the 1960s was no longer acceptable anybody thought. He saw, too, that motor racing was to draw to itself real money and the driver of yesterday might

need to be the businessman of today. As a dyslexic he’d an astonishing spoken ability to distill situations into their simplicities after he’d ‘thought them through. He understood there was serious money to be made from motor racing and joined IMG, an American company which promoted sportspeople. He understood the mechanisms of giving value for money to sponsors and was meticulous in preparation and delivery. He had this to such a degree that even as an individual he seemed to radiate his own corporate identity.

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He was already firmly of the modern era in the sense that he offered himself for what he was, and it was done without guile. After all the mute people of the 1920s and ’30s and the good chaps of the ‘50s and the subservient drivers of the early 60s, the articulator had come. Some would dismiss his message, some reject it but the logic demanded ultimate acceptance. Chapman took the amateurism out of financing and running a team, Ecclestone would — soon enough — be taking the amateurism out of running the sport, Stewart was taking the amateurism out of being a driver. Clark was an expression of romance in the Gallic soul, Stewart the perfect expression of Gallic pragmatism. Small wonder they were such close friends. Opposites attract. The 1970 season belonged only to Jochen Rindt. Matra and Tyrrell parted and Tyrrell went to a young British company, March, for a chassis. March had been founded the year before by among others Max Mosley, trained as a lawyer, and Robin Herd, who had designed cars at McLaren. Herd remembered ‘we were full of the arrogance and naiveté of 25-year-olds and 29-year-olds, and had we not had that arrogance and naiveté — not knowing really what it’s all about — we'd never have done it. It’s actually a great advantage to have that.’ Mosley pointed out that in 1969 sometimes there’d only been 13 cars on the grid. ‘If you had a car which was a Formula 1 car you could turn up and race. I mean, they’d pay you a little bit of money and you could have a go. There were only about six or seven even vaguely competitive cars. That all changed in 1970 when March came along and made so many cars.’ He estimated that the company’s first year budget was £113,000, and you'd have to multiply that by a factor of 200 to get a modern equivalent. (Note: the 1969 Ford Escort 1100 de Luxe cost £635, so the March budget was still a considerable amount of money.) March became popular very quickly and five of their cars lined up on the grid at the first race. The other main teams and main drivers: Surtees (McLaren-Ford) — Surtees, Bell. Ferrari — Ickx, Regazzoni. Lotus (Lotus-Ford) — Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi. Walker (Lotus-Ford) — Hill.

McLaren (McLaren-Ford) — McLaren, Hulme. Brabham (Brabham-Ford) — Brabham, Stomm elen. March (March-Ford) — Amon, Siffert.

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There were others. Mario Andretti, looking astonishingly like The Fonz in the TV programme Happy Days, was in a March-Ford in the STP Corporation team.” Piers Courage, a wealthy Englishman, had a de Tomaso” run by Frank Williams, although the extent of Courage’s wealth is open to question. For years, Williams had been a small-time operator surviving in the lesser formulae but became a ‘presentable business’ in the winter of 1967-68 when he ‘found a small workshop, with a flat overhead, situated between a bingo hall and a pub at 361 Bath Road, Cippenham, near Slough.” He and Courage went back a long way and now they'd go into Grand Prix racing. And then there was Rindt. After the aerofoil collapse in Spain, he’d written to Chapman saying, in effect, he judged the Lotus unsafe and was losing confidence. Chapman thought his four-wheel-drive car was the way to go, and Rindt didn’t. Approaching 1970, Rindt: had his choices. Brabham wanted him back, and Rindt was keen to return. Then there was March, in the process of being born. Jochen was in Robin

Herd’s mind from the start of the project, and at first was to be the team’s only driver.

When

the new

organisation

showed

signs

of becoming

unwieldy, however, he lost interest. And at the same time relations with Lotus began, by and by, to pick up. At the Nurburgring, Chapman and

Rindt had a heart-to-heart, their first, and Colin promised Jochen a new

two-wheel-drive car for 1970.”

Jack Brabham won South Africa, and Rindt had an engine failure. Stewart won Spain, and Rindt had an ignition problem. Rindt qualified on the fourth row at Monaco where a young, Swede, Ronnie Peterson, made his debut in a March. The received wisdom is that you can’t win Monaco from row four and Rindt told his wife Nina he had no chance. She said: ‘Don’t be silly, you always have a chance’ and Ecclestone, his manager, told him he had to keep going. ‘Whatever you do, don’t come into the pits — except on foot!’” In the crowd sat a 15-year-old and his father, a furniture maker from a little-known town in central France. The Prosts were on a family holiday and this was just part of it, savouring what was available. Neither had any particular interest in motor racing beyond that and the teenager fully intended to become a footballer with St Etienne, his local big team. In the real world he’d probably follow his father and make

furniture. Stewart led from pole led to lap 27, Rindt by then sixth. Stewart's car suddenly started misfiring letting Brabham into the lead. Within a few

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laps Brabham estimated that lead as ‘reasonable. I didn’t really feel I had any problems after that.’ Rindt was a man of moods, and nobody could predict which mood governed him at any given moment. Somewhere around half distance his mood changed and he launched a ferocious assault on Monaco. He hunted down Frenchman Henri Pescarolo (Matra-Simca), probed and prodded, and on lap 35 spectacularly outbraked him at the Gasworks hairpin. Hulme was four seconds ahead, the gearbox on Hulme’s McLaren misbehaving to the point where he had to hold first gear in. Rindt swept by on lap 40. Amon was 13 seconds ahead but fast and in twenty laps Rindt could only taken a couple of seconds out of him. Then Amon’s suspension failed. Brabham was 13 seconds ahead but felt with 29 laps left he had the situation under control. At lap 70 of the 80 he still led by 11 seconds and at the rate they were going Rindt wouldn’t catch him. Rindt left his ‘braking even later; the wheels locked; the front tyres smoked and screeched like they do in a touring car race.’” Rindt felt he’d never driven better and only once as fast. With five laps to go he had the gap down to nine seconds and Brabham had a ‘shocking run’ of back-markers: he did lap 77 in lm 29.3s, Rindt lm 24.7s. Brabham came upon Siffert in the middle of the track after Ste Devote zigzagging the March because he’d run out of petrol and was trying to flush the dregs into re-starting the engine. Brabham had to wait until Siffert saw him. ‘The flag marshals were going mad.’ Brabham rode the pavement to go by.! Into the last lap the gap was slightly. over one second but even that should have been enough for Brabham. His shocking run went on. At the Tobacconist’s corner he found three back-markers amblin g forward and realised that in getting through them he’d be clearin g the track for Rindt to get through them, too. The third of those back markers was Courage and Brabham reached him approaching the Gasworks hairpin. For an instant Brabham asked himself take him on the inside or take him on the outside? The instant took him beyond his braking point and with a little sand on the circuit he skated into the straw bales. The Clerk of the Course, waiting on the finishing line out of sight, was so astonished to see Rindt coming and not Brabh am that he forgot to drop the flag... The Prosts had had a memorable day out, nothi ng more. Now Rindt is holding the winner’s silver bow] so slackly that it nestles limp against his waist. A vast garland encircles his neck and trails.down so far

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that its fronds partially camouflage the bowl. Prince Rainier, a man of considerable and studious dignity, is positioned next to Rindt having just presented him with the bowl. Rainier’s right hand clasps the tiny paw of a sweet five-year-old girl wearing a navy blue jacket all buttoned up and a pleated white skirt, her left hand is clasped by her mother, Princess Grace, who has simultaneously arranged herself to face the cameras. Always there would be cameras,

particularly at moments

like this. She had spent a

lifetime knowing it and knowing how to arrange herself for them. The temporal smile remains immortally beautiful. And bless the little girl, she yawned.

She would grow inevitably into a celebrity in her own right, a

singer of pop songs, a model of fashions, a leggy creature of the Euroculture of the born-rich trying to find themselves — members of the ancient House of Grimaldi would never do that, sing pop songs.”

She was called Stephanie and she would come to know Alain Prost well. The Monaco measure: Rindt, 80 laps, 1h 54m 36.6s, an average speed of 81.8mph; Hill, 1969, 80.1mph. On 2 June, Bruce McLaren was killed testing a Can-Am car at Goodwood. Any death in motor racing is shocking but this more so because of his renown as a safe driver. His legacy would be his name. The team which bore it did not contest the next race, the Belgian at Spa, out of respect, but returned at Holland and from then on began a growth which across three decades made them more successful even than Lotus. Spa had been altered with Armco added at strategic points and a chicane at Malmédy to slow the cars. Rodriguez in a BRM won it from Amon by 1.1 seconds. Tyrrell had a vacancy because Servoz-Gavin retired after Monaco where he didn’t qualify and didn’t seem to want to qualify. Elf, sponsoring Tyrrell, said they'd like another French driver and suggested Francois Cevert. Tyrrell knew a little about him and said he’d watch him in a Formula 2 race at Crystal Palace. After it they met and Tyrrell said he’d be in touch. Cevert waited in his Paris flat day after day for the call and didn’t venture out in case he missed it. He happened to be in the bath when the phone rang so his beautiful girlfriend answered. She knew nothing about motorsport and said it was someone called ‘Tearelle’. Cevert sprang out of the bath and stark naked grabbed the receiver. He drove in the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. On lap 23 of that race Courage crashed his de Tomaso in a 140mph corner. It scythed down 300 yards of wire fence, went into a sand dune which cut its speed from 130 to 25mph in three feet” and exploded in a

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fireball. Courage died immediately. Rindt won the race and found no comfort in that. Stewart, second, realised the death hit Frank Williams very, very hard and made sure Williams stayed with him ‘all the time’. Rindt stood sombre on the podium, the garland round his neck, hands down by his sides and his craggy, hewn face dipped downwards. Rindt won France at Clermont-Ferrand — some twisting sections protected by Armco, the rest a pastoral and unprotected run through the countryside — and won the British at Brands Hatch. There a Brazilian, Emerson Fittipaldi, made his debut. Fittipaldi had been testing a lot of Lotuses for the Components division of the company — not the Formula 1] cars, of course — at the Hethel test track which Chapman could see from his office. Evidently Chapman always carried a stopwatch, secretly timed Fittipaldi and invited him to test the Formula | car at Silverstone. When Fittipaldi came in after a fast lap he saw Chapman smiling and he knew. Frank Williams approached him but Fittipaldi felt his career needed Lotus and he signed a contract. He went to Brands Hatch fully aware of all the things he did not know. He qualified on the last row and during the race ‘had quite a good dice’ with Cevert before finishing eighth nursing a gearbox problem. Rindt won the German Grand Prix, run for the first time at Hockenheim because the drivers demanded certain safety improvements to the Nurburgring and the organisers wouldn’t make them. Hockenheim was flat, it was a corridor through the tall, dark trees, it was a contorting complex before the pits, it was a saucer of stone-cla d grandstands — and very, very fast despite the addition of two chicanes. It was clad in Armco, which it hadn’t been when Clark crashed in 1968. Rindt averaged 124mph. Chapman didn’t throw his cap in the air to celebrate — for once he wasn’t wearing one — but as Rindt approach ed the line he raised both arms and threw his whole body in the air instead still waving his right hand, landed and still waved his arm, fist tightened — yes! Yes! Yes! Ickx in the Ferrari was 0.7 of a second behind. Rindt’s engine failed in Austria and Ickx won it. He went to Monza with 45 points and four races left. Brabham had 25, Ickx 19. Rindt could take the championship. here and his mind was on that as a means of raising money to start a business. On the Friday he ran the Lotus without its triple rear wing and found it much faster, no downforce dragging him back, although when the wings were taken off the number 2 driver’s car (John Miles) he found it twitching ‘all over the place’ and asked for them to be re-fitted. The Lotus team had dinner on the Friday night and Warr remembered ‘Jochen was telling everybody about his plans for using: his name to

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build up a sports clothes company.’ The conversation, however, kept coming back to the car and the question of wings. On the Saturday, Rindt went out without the wings again. He moved into his fifth lap and Hulme, following, saw the Lotus snake in the braking area for the Parabolica then corkscrew hard left into the crash barrier. The car hit that with massive ferocity, ran down it, lifted the barrier out of the ground and went under it. The right wheel struck a substantial post. Warr said this post carried... a public address loudspeaker, and [was] therefore somewhat stronger and

heavier than the others. As a result, this tore the front bulkhead off the car, together with the suspension and the steering. The steering wheel itself was prised through the instrument panel and it was this that had torn the front bulkhead out of the car. Because he refused to wear the crotch straps of his seat harness, Jochen was forced down into the cockpit with his feet tangled up with the pedals and, in the process, his throat was cut by the harness. My own feeling is that, considering the no-downforce configuration, he started to go quickly much too soon. Denny Hulme, who was actually behind him when the accident happened, said he couldn’t believe it when he went past him. I believe that he was caught out because the tyres had not warmed up and the aerodynamic and brake balance was miles out due to having no rear wing. On the previous day they had been very slow to warm up. Also the Monza circuit then consisted almost entirely of right-

hand comers, so the left-hand tyres would be the first to warm up. I think that the first time he hit the brakes really hard the car became totally out of balance and that was when the accident happened.*

Hulme went past his own pit and stopped at Lotus to tell Chapman and Ecclestone. Ecclestone set off running and when he reached the scene Rindt had been taken out of the car. Ecclestone picked up the white helmet, a shoe and, across at the far side of the track, a wheel. People were trying to comfort Nina Rindt, assure her Jochen only had a broken foot. A priest came from the ambulance and murmured: ‘Courage, Mrs Rindt.’ There was nothing else to say. Lotus withdrew. There was an Italian Grand Prix and the Swiss Clay Rekaered won it in a Ferrari, Stewart second. Ickx won Canada and, with the United States and Mexico left, could take the championship from Rindt. He needed to finish second at Watkins Glen but the Ferrari developed an oil leak and the pit stop for repairs lasted a long time. Ickx felt great relief. He’d not be taking the championship from a dead man.

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Fittipaldi won in the Lotus — only his fourth Grand Prix — and when Ickx won Mexico two weeks later it didn’t matter a damn. Stewart, now at the summit of his powers, plundered 1971. Andretti won South Africa in a Ferrari but Stewart took Spain. He had pole at Monaco although in a wet qualifying Andretti didn’t get into the race. Stewart led every lap, set fastest lap, beat Peterson (March) by 25.6 seconds. The Monaco measure: Stewart, 80 laps, 1h 52m 21.3s, an average speed of 83.4mph; Rindt, 1970, 81.8mph. Ickx took Holland, a wet race where Stewart was hampered by tyres, but Stewart took France at Paul Ricard — the 14th staging post — from pole. He led all 55 laps and set fastest lap along the Way. Ricard, lost in the hills in the hinterland behind Marseille and Toulon, became a permanent home for the race and that lasted 14 years. It was a curious place, bleached by the Mediterranean sun, inaccessible because the approach roads were so narrow and tortuous yet not unpopular. Built by the drinks magnate whose name it bore it was modern in concept and facilities and featured a long straight called the Mistral after the wind which blows down the Rhéne Valley. On the Mistral, Grand Prix cars were able to attain their absolute maximum speed. Because of the benevolent weather the circuit also became a stalwart for testing. Ricard was significant for another reason. Slick tyres — ungrooved and giving enormous adhesion — were introduced for the first time. A week after Ricard, Rodriguez was killed in a sports car race in

Germany.

A mid-season ripple of races: Stewart won Britain and Germany although Siffert had pole from him in Austria. A toothy young local of good breeding and completely crazy about motor racing sneaked a March-Ford onto the last row. Niki Lauda thoroughly enjoyed his schooldays because he took particular care ‘not to let education get in the way [.. .] particularly once I reached twelve or so and started taking a real interest in cars.’® Siffert won from Fittipaldi (Stewart had a mechanical failure). Peter Gethin, a perceptive and forceful Englishman , won the ultimate slip-streaming finish at Monza, Hailwood came back to car racing with the Surtees team and Stewart's engine failed. The Monza result is worth setting out because nothing like it was ever seen again anywhere.

SAFETY FIRST

Gethin

lh 18m 12.60s

Peterson

@ 0.01

Cevert

@ 0.09

Hailwood

@ 0.18

Ganley*

@ 0.61

299

Canada was wet and Stewart won it from Peterson after a long, tense duel which ended after thirty laps when a back-marker ‘pushed’ Peterson off the track. ‘The engine in the March stopped and it took 14 seconds as long as hours before it started again. The car had also got a smashed nose in the hard contact with mother earth and wouldn't go straight forward.’®’ Cevert won Watkins Glen, and it was described* as ‘ringing out in France like a thunderclap. A bridge is thrown across time. Never, since Maurice Trintignant, victorious at Monaco in 1958, has a French driver ‘lifted’ a Grand Prix in the World Championship.’ Cevert, of the angelic looks and captivating personality, seemed to be the future. Stewart thought so and groomed him for it. Stewart would remember particularly Cevert’s light blue eyes and how deep they seemed, how he reminded Stewart of a fighting cock. That winter Bernie Ecclestone bought the Brabham team. Whatever attention it attracted at the time, and beyond the Grand Prix racing fraternity and the specialist press, that may not have been much, it was arguably the most significant development in the sport since the war. By 1972 sponsorship came in like a tide, Lotus in black and gold John Player Special livery, BRM in Marlboro red and white, and so on. The driver line-up remained essentially the same. Argentina came back to the calendar after twelve years and a cattle rancher’s son prepared to stun the Grand Prix community. Carlos Reutemann had been racing for seven years, mostly in saloon cars before sponsorship took him to Europe where he’d done well in Formula 2. Now with a quarter of an hour of practice left he took a Brabham-Ford round the 2.07 miles in 1m 12.46s to pole, a whisker faster than Stewart (1m 12.68s). Stewart led but Reutemann pressured him for seven laps before falling back and Stewart won it from Hulme. Maybe it was going to be another of those seasons, especially when Stewart took pole in South Africa but his gearbox failed and Hulme won it from Fittipaldi. Something stirred in the background during South Africa. FICA [the Formula 1 Constructors’ Association] had for years done ‘little more of transportation costs, particularly to than oversee the co-ordination

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transcontinental Grands Prix. It was a benign, low-key and loosely grouped organisation of no serious political intent.” Ecclestone, as owner of Brabham, had become a member. F1CA met at Kyalami and Ecclestone said how much money he could save on transportation. The teams, living in relative penury despite the sponsorship, agreed immediately. As payment for organising this Ecclestone would receive 2 per cent of the prize money — and he’d negotiate that prize money with the circuit organisers, something done race by race. In those days, when prize money wasn’t great, 2 per cent may not have seemed much and, anyway, if Ecclestone negotiated bigger sums he was welcome to 2 per cent of them. The team owners were racing people who thought about racing and mostly only racing. The last thing they wanted was cutting deals about transportation or tackling circuit negotiations. A central position was vacant and Ecclestone moved himself into it for two reasons: nobody else saw its enormous potential and, even if they had, nobody else wanted it. Ecclestone took the first step towards rationalising and modernising Grand Prix racing, and making himself one of the richest men in Britain. When the European season began in Spain two months after Kyalami , Fittipaldi opened everything up. Ickx took pole but Hulme led a wet race from Stewart, Regazzoni third, Ickx fourth, Fittipaldi fifth. Hulme had a gearbox problem so that on lap five Stewart went through, Fittipaldi fourth. Next lap Hulme drifted back and Fittipaldi overtook Ickx. Now he was power-sliding the Lotus and on lap nine took a lead he didn’t lose. He beat Ickx by more than 18 seconds. Monaco measured the changes already in motion. A boycott was threatened when ‘the organisers attempted to wriggle out of moving the pit area which had been one of the most dangerous parts of any race track in the world, openly inviting an accident which would have wiped out most of the Grand Prix entrants, team Manage rs, mechanics, technicians, press and hangers-on. It was eventu ally moved from the narrow strip of road before the Gasworks hairpin to after the tunnel, which in turn meant moving the equally notorious chicane further down the road on the harbour front.’ A further measure involved the number of cars in the race and it became a confrontation. In hindsight this was always going to be inevitable because FICA challenged aspects of the CS/’s control. The year before, 18 cars started. Now the organ isers, the Automobile Club de Monaco, cut that to 16. Ecclestone and Max Mosley had met the newlyappointed president of the Club, Michel Boeri, during the Spanish Grand

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Prix and he said he couldn’t see any reason why 26 shouldn’t start rather than 16. The teams travelled to Monaco on that assumption but when they arrived they discovered the ACM, probably encouraged by the CSI, had arbitrarily cut the 26 to 22, a ‘political salvo’. The teams met and issued an ultimatum, 26 cars or no cars. The ACM responded by having the gates of the underground car park where the cars were, securely locked — the mechanics working on them didn’t take that well — and patrolled by policemen. The teams responded by saying they wouldn’t take part in the practice session, due to start immediately, even if the cars were released. Boeri tried to be diplomatic, saying it could all be resolved after the session, but Ecclestone wasn’t having any of that and a firm agreement was reached: 26 (in fact 25, the full entry). The psychological impact of this clear victory for Ecclestone and the teams began a process of changing the power structure. It would last a decade and culminate in open civil war. On race day at Monaco it rained and typically Hailwood (SurteesFord) said he might as well not bother going out. Smiling his broad smile he explained, almost giggling, that he was ‘hopeless’ in the wet and the best crasher there was. Beltoise in a BRM seized his moment from the second row leading up the hill to Casino although round Ste Devote the whole car twitched. He rode the storm perfectly and at one point, lapping a slower car as Station hairpin was blocked and simply nudged the car — a Surtees — out of the way. Those in Beltoise’s wake saw only ghostly outlines of cars around them in the rolling, dense spray. They floundered to such an extent that Ickx, renowned in the wet, finished 38 seconds behind him. Fittipaldi, third — he’d been up the escape road a time or two — disliked the whole thing so intensely that he wouldn’t even speak to his biographer about it and kept changing the subject.” The Monaco measure: Beltoise, 80 laps, 2h 26m 54.7s, an average speed of 63.8mph — but very wet; Stewart, 1971, 83.4mph. Fittipaldi won the Belgian at Nivelles — a straightforward, ‘flat and unpopular replacement for Spa, now considered too fast and dangerous — from pole. A week later Bonnier, safety campaigner and president of the GPDA, was killed at Le Mans. His car vaulted a barrier and went in to trees. He died in a helicopter on the way to hospital. He’d been competing for 24 years and decided to retire at the end of the season to avoid further danger. ‘Few people really came to know the remote, authoritative figure of Jo Bonnier, almost aristocratic with his military bearing and imposing beard. Those few who he elected to befriend found him utterly charming.”

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Stewart, who’d had an ulcer, won France at Clermont-Ferrand, Fittipaldi 27 seconds behind him. The Dutch Grand Prix had been cancelled because of safety concerns and Clermont-Ferrand only got their race because they'd installed double guardrails round virtually all the circuit. Fittipaldi 34 points, Stewart 21, Hulme 19 and Ickx 16 — a driver’s ten best finishes of the 12 rounds counted. Ickx took pole at Brands Hatch but the Lotus felt so strong on full tanks that Fittipaldi didn’t mind. In fact the Ferrari was nimble and fast round the undulations of the circuit and Ickx led while Fittipaldi missed a gear, letting Stewart pounce; and Stewart missed a gear, letting Fittipaldi pounce. Hill crashed while he was being lapped and said laconically: ‘From a gentleman to a twit in a tenth of a second.’ Ickx dropped out with an oil leak, Fittipaldi held on and won it by four seconds. The Nurburgring disturbed the balance. Ickx led again and Fittipaldi needed five laps to get into second place. As he passed the pits he saw a commotion going on but he didn’t know it was for him. Just round the South Loop, where the circuit moved out into the country, he glanced in his mirror and noticed that the Lotus was on fire. Fittipaldi emerged from it fast and he had a consolation because Regazzoni drifted wide in a corner, he and Stewart were side-by-side and Stewart slid into a guardrail. He finished a lap down and out of the points. Austria, which Fittipaldi won from Hulme — Stewart seventh, with oversteer — set up Monza as the decider. Fittipaldi had 52 points, Stewart 27 and in real terms if Stewart didn’t win there he’d lost the championship. Monza had been slowed by two chicanes to break up the slipstreaming, the first just after the pits, the second by the Curva del Vialone, although they’d been constructed on the existing track simply narrowing it through the chicanes. Fittipaldi found them ‘too narrow, stupid. I don’t know why they did it that way.’ Even so he preferred it to the slip-streaming. The chicanes did provide a sort of excitement on the Friday as the drivers tried to learn them. Fittipaldi got a tow behind Ickx, watched his braking points and in general assessed what the Ferrari was doing. Stewart went quickest but next day Ickx took pole from Amon (MatraSimca), Stewart on the second row, Fittipaldi on the third. The handling wasn’t right and Fittipaldi hadn’t improved his Friday time. It rained on the Sunday, dried. Fittipaldi was out-dragged by both Ferraris at the start but Stewart’s Tyrrell had a clutch failure, the

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championship quite suddenly over. It happens. Fittipaldi chased Ickx and with 20 laps to go began to catch him. He had no need to do that but decided to become champion as a champion would by winning the race. He nursed his tyres for a final effort, estimating that they’d be good for four or five laps. He drew up and Ickx suddenly raised his arm. The Ferrari’s electrics had failed. It happens, too. At 25 years, 8 months and 29 days Fittipaldi was the youngest champion of all — so young that, when he’d been a karter in S40 Paulo, Ickx was his hero and he’d even painted the name on one of his kart engines. As he crossed the line Chapman had a cap, circled his right arm three times building up momentum and then launched it into orbit. The celebrations and duties done, at 1 o’clock next morning Fittipaldi drove his Mercedes back to his home in Switzerland. He had a shower then he and his wife put cushions all over the telephone so he’d get some sleep when it started ringing early that same morning, as it would. He didn’t take it off the hook for the simplest of reasons, as he explained himself. If you do that in Switzerland, they ‘cut you off completely.’ Racing drivers notice details like that. Stewart won Canada and Watkins Glen, Cevert second there. ‘It was an excellent augury for the future. And of the podium at Watkins Glen, a marvellous image would remain: Helen and Jackie Stewart, Ken Tyrrell, Francois Cevert smiling hugely. Certainly, the garland which Stewart wore wasn’t that of World Champion. But the Scot is a man with his mind at ease: he knows that a new stage in the progression of Cevert has begun.” At Watkins Glen a very self-confident young South Africa, Jody Scheckter, made his debut in a McLaren. He’d raced karts, motor bikes and a home-built Renault before arriving in England in 1971. He found it ‘old, cold and grey’ but now here he was at a Grand Prix, and he’d describe it with particular eloquence. He... spent a lot of time just wandering round, soaking up the atmosphere. Hardly anybody knew who I was, so I could just put on my anorak and join the crowds without any of the hassle that most of the other drivers were

getting. Denny [Hulme] kept a pretty close watch on me, introducing me to all his chums, and warning me all the time against talking to the Press,

which seemed to be a particular phobia of his at the time. My first five laps of practice very nearly convinced me that I should have

stayed in Formula 2. At one stage, Francois Cevert passed me in his Tyrrell, and I remember thinking as he disappeared into the distance ‘Christ, this is just no good for me — I’m definitely out of my depth in this game.’ I went

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back to the pits and just sat in the car for a while, trying to think it all through and mentally adjust to what I had to do before trying another ten or twelve laps. I then reached the point where I could take the Esses flat out, and when I talked it over with Denny, I discovered that he was still

lifting off slightly at that spot, although his lap times were about a second

and a half quicker than mine. I think that really gave me the confidence I needed to have another go at cutting my times and after about thirty laps I found that it was suddenly becoming more comfortable.*’

Scheckter qualified on the third row and ran third but rain fell. He spun, and finished a lap down. Ecclestone negotiated agreements with individual organisers and in 1973, for the first time, the calendar had 15 races. More than that, from Belgium onwards, the cars retained the same numbers for all the races, and from here on the defending champion carried number 1. It was assuming its modern shape. The roundabout: Peterson came to Lotus to join Fittipaldi; Scheckter would do five races with McLaren. With some backing from Marlboro Frank Williams entered cars under the name Iso“ Marlboro for Ganley, Pescarolo and Italian Nanni Galli. Williams understood struggle because he had known virtually nothing else and the struggle continued. Financially deprived, the team managed only two points. Fittipaldi began his championship defence at Argentina and on his own estimation ten thousand Brazilians travelled down to Buenos Aires to watch. That created pressure. The weather, steaming hot, created another. Rumours that a driver would be kidnapped by ‘political gangsters’ and the attendant security created a third. Cevert made a thrusting start to lead and Fittipaldi began a frustrating struggle to overtake Stewart for second place. Fittipaldi selected the hairpin just after a fast right-hander to despatc h Stewart and planned to slipstream Stewart into the right-hander and go past, making Stewart follow him through the hairpin. The Lotus became unstable whenever he got close to Stewart and lap after lap he followed him, sometimes brandishing a fist to say you're holding me up! He did get through on lap 76 when he decided to brake as late as humanl y possible in the right-hander. Once past Stewart he set off towards Cevert and, working the Lotus very hard, caught him but couldn’t get past at the same place because someone had dropped oil, forcing all the cars to take an inside line. For ten laps Cevert resisted but into the hairpin Fittipaldi drew up, forced the Lotus alongside — two wheels on the grass — and went through. He won by 4.69 seconds and judged because the front-

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running cars were so evenly matched that this was the most difficult race of his career.” The Brazilian Grand Prix came on to the calendar and was run at Interlagos, Sao Paulo. On one of the practice days, Fittipald i remembered, ‘a boy is brought to see me by his father, a young Brazilian, and it is Ayrton.’ Race day was hot and sections of the large crowd used the fire engines and firemen as target practice for bottle throwing, and a fire engine turned its hose full on them. They adored the shower. Bare from the midriff up, the young men in the crowd danced up and down, waved their arms to the hoses drench us again, it’s beautiful! Other sections began throwing bottles. Hey come and hose us down, too! Fittipaldi won again from Stewart. That gave him 18 points, Stewart 10 and implied a twopronged championship. Chapman only sent the black cap into low orbit. When Fittipaldi emerged from the car Chapman embraced him and said ‘great!’ Someone behind Fittipaldi tried to put a cap with a brand name on Fittipaldi’s head. No way, Chapman said, and whipped it off him. The age of protecting your sponsor’s image had come. In South Africa three weeks after that, Regazzoni’s BRM was involved in a multiple-crash on the third lap and burst into flames, Regazzoni trapped. Hailwood’s Surtees was also on fire. Hailwood remembered that Dave Charlton, a South African, ‘lost it on the first corner and I hit him. Consequently I spun and stalled in the middle of the track. Regazzoni came round, hit my car and the whole thing burst into flames. We disappeared to the edge of the track. I pressed my fire extinguisher and put my fire out, got out of my car and looked. Regga was unconscious in the car.’ Hailwood went over, plunged his hands down and undid the seat belts. Hailwood tried to haul him out through the flames but it took five marshals to do that. Hailwood returned to the pits, said to his wife Pauline ‘We're off’ and they rode back to a friend’s house on a motor bike. Pauline could see from his face that something had happened but he didn’t say anything. She learnt about it when she saw the newspapers next morning. Stewart won, Fittipaldi third. When Fittipaldi took Spain from Cevert (Stewart's brakes failed) the championship looked to be tilting. Fittipaldi 31, Stewart 19. Warr felt that Fittipaldi, defending champion, was: now assuming the attitude consistent with that high office. He was no longer the ‘tiger’ he had been when he first joined the team. Ronnie, on the other hand, was every man’s dream of a ‘racer.’ He just breathed, walked

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and talked motor racing the whole time. He was a marvellous guy to work

with, the only difficulty being that he was so good he was able to ‘drive around’ any problems which arose with the car! We very quickly ran into a problem of a different sort when everywhere we

went

Emerson.

Ronnie

demonstrated

that

he was

basically

quicker

than

In some places he was staggeringly quicker, like at Barcelona

where he was 1.7 sec faster in practice than anybody else in the field, and 1.9 sec faster than his team-mate!”

Peterson’s problem was that his car kept breaking down and Fittipaldi’s didn’t. Peterson took pole at Zolder but had a crash during the race and Stewart won it from Cevert, Fittipaldi third. By now a great question had been born: what happens when Peterson’s car goes the distance? Monaco had been modified, the new tunnel in use. Stewart took pole from Peterson (1m 27.5s against 1m 27.7s) while a blond, gangling expublic schoolboy put a Hesketh on the ninth row. James Hunt ought to have been a medical student in the ordinary middle class way but chose to race cars — who needs money? — instead. He was hired by Lord Alexander Hesketh who'd formed a racing team to occupy the weekends and concluded that rather than run at the back of Formula 2 grids it would be much more fun to run at the back of Formula 1 grids. The ensemble conformed to what a British pre-war team looked like, almost a caricature of itself — the co-founder nicknamed Anthony ‘Bubbles’ Horsley and everyone else had a nickname, too. They called Hunt ‘Superstar’ and the designer, Dr Harvey Postlethwaite, ‘the Doc.’ Hesketh’s mother, one eye in a patch, sold memorabilia from a stall at Monaco quite naturally. You had to look hard underneath the bubbles to see serious men at work, but they were. Peterson finished third behind Stewart and Fittipaldi, Hunt running sixth when, with five laps to go, the engine failed. The Monaco measure: Stewart, 78 laps, 1h 57m 44.3s, an average speed of 80.9mph; Beltoise, 1972, 63.8mph — wet. Peterson’s moment seemed to have come at Anderstorp, the flat Swedish circuit being used for the first time. From pole, and despite feeling nervous, he led 78 of the 80 laps but a slow puncture let Hulme by. In France — Paul Ricard — the Lotus did hold together although on the last lap Peterson ‘heard the most peculiar noises from the engine and the gearbox and for a while I thought the whole thing would fall apart.’ Hunt, sixth, had his first Grand Prix point. Scheckter qualified on the third row for the British Grand. Prix at Silverstone and a soft-spoken, shy Ulsterman, John Watson, put a

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Brabham-Ford on the ninth. It was the era of ‘trendy’ long hair. Stewart sat contemplating the race, his hair cascading down to his shoulders. Fittipaldi might have been wearing a thatch as he joked with Chapman on the grid — Chapman’s hair a thicket of descending curls. Graham Hill stood like a Roman emperor, his face framed by his hair. Hunt’s looked like a haystack after a storm. Somehow, in a process of unconscious and inexplicable osmosis, this suited the cars with their high airboxes set on curving, conical bodywork behind the driver. They were not unlike periscopes. Scheckter was ‘trying to make up places’ when the race began, Stewart slicing past Peterson at Becketts for the lead. At Club Corner Stewart still led, his Tyrrell nicely balanced, Peterson chasing him. Approaching Woodcote Corner at 150mph Scheckter, now up to fourth, felt the McLaren get ‘out of shape and run wide.’ He ‘couldn’t avoid getting onto the grass on the outside of the corner, which spun the McLaren round and shot it back across the track into the pit wall, right in front of the bulk of the field.’ The McLaren came from the pit wall backwards. One car went by, another as it came. A piece of bodywork was flung from the McLaren. Two more cars went by and the McLaren came to rest mid-track and across the track, Scheckter waving his arm, miss me, miss me. A gaggle of cars approached, some spearing round to one side of him, some to the other but one struck him a terrible blow. Like a bomb burst, nine cars crashed and thrashed all across the track. Marshals and helpers ran frantically into the debris — scattered everywhere — but only one driver suffered real injury, breaking his ankle At the restart Peterson led again but American Peter Revson (McLaren) went through on lap 39 and won it. On the podium he quaffed champagne and shook the remainder all over the crowd. He wore an anorak, collar turned up, and a cap so you couldn’t quite see his hair descending into kiss-curls at the back — but they were there... Peterson was now driving the Lotus very, very fast. He took pole at Zandvoort and led but on lap eight the March of Roger Williamson, an affable and popular man from Leicester, went into the guardrail at a high speed corner — maybe puncture, maybe suspension failure. The guardrail bent backwards and that launched the car. It ran along the guardrail and was flung back across the track where it landed upside down on fire. David Purley, another Englishman, an adventurer and close friend of Williamson, stopped his car and ran to help. A nightmare began. Purley tried to right the March but lacked the strength and marshals and firemen concentrated on pulling him away several times rather than helping Williamson. At this point the fire was

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small. Purley was quoted as saying he had to ‘hit’ one man holding a fire-extinguisher in order to get hold of it to try to do something himself. Because the race was being televised live many millions of people saw this. Spectators tried to help but police with dogs drove them back and all at once fire consumed the car. Drivers passing the start-finish line signalled wildly for officials to stop the race and at one point Hulme drove close to the pit wall shaking his fist at them. The race continued and the millions on television watched incredulous as racing cars passed the inferno. The fire finally extinguished, the car was righted and a simple sheet laid over it, Williamson still inside. Lauda was distressed that, afterwards, people who’d watched said he — Lauda — was ‘ruthless’, indifferent to the fate of a fellow driver. Lauda would explain that from a passing cockpit it looked as if the driver — Williamson — was trying to put out the fire. You simply couldn’t tell, going past at speed, it was Purley trying to save Williamson. Lauda added that for the rest of his life he’d remember the ‘crumpled figure’ of Tom Wheatcroft — Donington owner, friend and backer of Williamson — ‘tears streaming down his cheeks.’ Lauda described how many factors merged to create what had happened and he hammered out a list of them: ‘woefully inadequate track marshals, cowardice, confusion, incompetent race administration, and drivers who totally misinterpreted the evidence of their own eyes.’” Stewart won the race from Cevert, Hunt third. A mid-season

ripple of races:

Stewart won

Germany,

Peterson won

Austria but with Stewart second. Stewart 66, Fittipaldi 42, Peterson 34. There were internal strains at Lotus and they were about to tear at the fabric of the team. Because Fittipaldi had made such a strong start to the season Peterson would defer to him in order to secure the championship. In Austria Peterson gave the lead to him but Fittipaldi broke down. At Monza Stewart had a puncture early on —a nail through the tyre — and the pit stop made him 20th. Classically he worked a path back through the field so that by lap 49 he ran fourth but by now Lotus had to make a decision. Peterson, pole, led with Fittipaldi behind him. As Warr explained to Chapman, if Peterson — still in with a remote chance of the championship himself — had given this race to Fittipaldi he’d then have to give him the last two, Canada and the United States, to catch Stewart. On top of that, there’d been an original agreement about their national Grands Prix, Fittipaldi to win Brazil (Peterson helping him) and Peterson to win Sweden (Fittipaldi helping him). By

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the end of Watkins Glen, Peterson would have ‘gifted’ Fittipaldi a third of the whole calendar. Chapman let the race unfold by itself. Peterson would say: Colin had asked me before the start if I would let Emerson past and I said yes. When I saw the signs from the pits that Jackie had come up to a fourth place after his run into the pits I just sat and waited for a sign to let Emerson past, but it never came. I thought that Emerson had lost the fight, but I had made a little miscalculation. There was still a chance for him lecell but nothing happened so we just drove and drove.*

Stewart, fourth, had his third championship and Fittipaldi was so angry he decided to leave Lotus. Ferrari had had a terrible season. That autumn, Enzo Ferrari invited Lauda to test the car at the company’s Fiorano track and give his impressions of it. Because Lauda did not then speak Italian Ferrari’s son Piero translated. Ferrari asked Lauda what he thought of the car. A disaster, Lauda said. Piero: ‘You can’t say that.’ Lauda: ‘Why not? The car understeers and doesn’t corner worth a damn. It’s undriveable.’ Piero: ‘No, you can’t say that either.’” Ferrari challenged Lauda to come back in a week and make the car go a second faster, which Lauda did... In Canada, Scheckter and Cevert crashed, Cevert so incensed that he made for Scheckter and indulged in a boxing match before officials separated them. Because a breakdown truck went to the scene, for the first time a pace car came out and was supposed to position itself in front of the leader, the others forming an orderly queue behind — but there’d been a host of pit stops, and who was in the lead? More pit stops followed, the pace car pulled off and even when the race finished nobody was sure. Somebody suggested it should be given to Hunt — Hesketh would throw the best party... The result wasn’t announced until late in the evening, Revson from Fittipaldi. The weather was fine at Watkins Glen for Saturday morning practice. Helen Stewart took her place with her stopwatch and towards the end of the session Cevert, preparing to go out again — he’d already set fourth fastest time — blew her a kiss before flipping his visor down. He went out. In the ferociously fast uphill Esses before the straight the Tyrrell

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swerved into the guardrail seemingly without reason and was flung across to the guardrail on the other side. Several drivers stopped including Stewart. Cevert had not been taken from the car because, as Stewart remembered, he was so obviously dead. Word reached the pits. Warr of Lotus went urgently towards Chapman saying ‘Cevert’. Chapman asked how bad it was. ‘Very bad,’ Warr said. Chapman turned towards the Tyrrell pits and murmured to himself ‘bloody hell.’ A camera tracked him but now he turned from that and walked along the pit lane. Suddenly he exhaled: a long, deep, profound sound which was for Cevert and all of them down these long, deadly years. John Watson, an Ulsterman, was in his second Grand Prix, driving for Brabham. Bernie entered three cars and I was in the third. In practice Cevert was

killed — a very unpleasant high speed accident, car just fell apart and he as...mutilated, let’s put it that way. Jody Scheckter saw it all and that affected Jody a great deal, it made a seminal moment in his life. Suddenly there was this silence — the death silence — and you're into respect for a colleague. Francois was a very nice man. I knew him a little

bit and talked to him. He was just one of those people who was a lovely guy. And suddenly he’s dead. Anyway after a couple of hours the circuit was cleared up, the barriers replaced and the session continued. I was sitting there and Bernie said: ‘What are you doing?’ I'm already in the race and it’s not right to go out, is it? He said: ‘Let me tell you something. What's happened has happened, it’s history now, Frangois is not with us, he’s dead. Up until that milli milli second when he had his accident he was doing the thing he wanted more than anything else and enjoying it at a level which only you guys understand. So don’t feel you have to sit here out of respect for him. It’s got nothing to do with that. You're a racing driver, he’s a racing driver, he’s dead, that’s sad, go out and do your job.’ I used that for the rest of my career and still do in a motor racing context. If you wanted to call it a mantra, it was my mantra.*

Tyrrell withdrew and that night in the hotel Stewart told Helen his career had ended. Shortly after that he announced it publicly. He’d been

planning to do it anyway, pass the mantle on to Cevert. Ten days after Watkins Glen the Arab oil states announced a 70 per

cent increase in prices and a reduction in output as a direct protest against the United States for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Egypt and Syria. The decision on oil provoked panic, not least in

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Europe where 80 per cent of the supplies were threatened. Motorsport was obviously vulnerable to the charge of squandering it while ordinary people held ration cards. To reinforce this, the Monte Carlo Rally was cancelled and Dutch people cycled on Sundays, keeping the day petrol free. As Stewart’s era ended it seemed for a perilous month or two that something much bigger might be ending, too.

Notes . Grand Prix!, Lang.

- World Champion, Surtees. . Ibid. . When the Flag Drops, Brabham. . The Day I Died, Kahn. . Enzo Ferrari, Yates. SPOLINLCES LOD Cite

. The GPDA mentioned by Moss in the previous chapter. . Flying on the Ground, Fittipaldi. MPDULCCES OD acl —_ Ooo —-— ON PWN AW = . Cosworth,

Robson. . Life at the Limit, Hill. . Robson, op. cit.

. Conquest of Formula 1, Hilton.

. Ibid. . This a PF wv Aa WN

reconstruction of Clark’s death is taken from Champions by Hilton and

Blunsden. 17s Hill, op. cit. 18. Lang, op. cit. 19. Faster!, Stewart. 20. Daily Express photographer Vic Blackman was covering the race and worked out that a certain hump was where the action was most likely to be. He was looking completely the wrong way and never did get Hill’s crash as it was happening. Blackman then thought that the odds against another

crash happening at this same place were remote and left — missing Rindt. 21. Jochen Rindt, Priiller. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Watkins interview with Nigel Roebuck, Autosport, 10 February 2005. 25. American company Studebaker Test Products (STP) made racing boats and cars. Their STP Oil Treatment became popular and Indianapolis 500 cars used it. The Grand Prix effort seemed logical after that.

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SNYs

26. In 1959, Alejandro de Tomaso set up a car company near Modena. He

made racing cars for a wide variety of formulae. 27. Frank Williams, Hamilton. 28. Grand Prix Greats, Roebuck. 29. Priller. 30. Ibid. 31. Brabham, op. cit. 32. Alain Prost, Hilton. 33. Priiller. 34. Colin Chapman, Crombac. 35. To Hell And Back, Lauda. 36. Howden Ganley, a New Zealander who’d come to England with little money to become a racing driver, worked as a mechanic and eventually drove in 35 Grands Prix. SMI The Viking Drivers, Petersens. 38. Francois Cevert, Jean-Claude Hallé. 39. Bernie’s Game, Lovell. 40. Autocourse. 4l. Lovell, op. cit. 42. Fittipaldi, op. cit. 43. Grand Prix Data Book, Hayhoe. . Autocourse.

45. Fittipaldi, op. cit. 46. Hallé, op. cit. 47. My Autobiography, Scheckter. 48. An Italian company that had concentrated on mini-cars in the 1950s, moved to luxury Grand Tourers and then went racing. 49. My Greatest Race, Adrian Ball. 50. Crombac, op. cit. 51. Petersens, op. cit. 52. Scheckter, op. cit. 53. Lauda, op. cit. 54. Petersens, op. cit. plop Lauda, op. cit. 56. Interview with author.

Chapter 9

MONEY MEN y 1974 Philip Morris had been in Formula One for three years. They’d started with a budget of between $115,000 and $150,000, but it soon rose to $1.5 million and then $3 million. Their brand name, Marlboro, had been on the BRM in 1973 but in essence the company was just another sponsor. They decided to form a super team with much more direct involvement, chose McLaren, picked Fittipaldi as lead driver and paid him $250,000. Only a year before, Marlboro BRM drivers were

getting $10,000." The revolution which Chapman started now altered the way Formula 1 regarded itself and conducted itself. John Watson says: In 1974, my first full season, a team’s total complement at a race was

around 12 people. By the time of my last full season, 1983, that had risen perhaps three-fold. By then you had turbo engines, which wasn’t like running Cosworths. The engine manufacturers were sending their own people to races, so were the electronics people, so were the fuel people, and the PR side was expanding to reflect that.’

The cars on the grid in 1974 had had sponsors’ logos and liveries all over them for years and this gradually impacted on everything because the more successful a team became the more attractive they were to major sponsors, and the money from that bought the best people and the best equipment, which brought more success, which brought more sponsorship. From here on, with rare exceptions, only a handful of teams achieved this and they formed a shifting, largely self-perpetuating hierarchy. This restricted drivers’ opportunities to get a winning car and eventually forced the leading teams to pay fortunes for drivers who could win — and often enough for drivers who couldn’t. In 1974, however, the scale was

still small by comparison. The petrol situation calmed, largely because the whole sport acted a together in pointing out how little fuel was actually consumed over season.

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Tyrrell signed Scheckter and Frenchman Patrick Depailler. Scheckter, who counted the whole workforce and found it was 32 — a leading team today would be well over 200 and counting — knew that: when I took the decision to join Elf Team Tyrrell at the beginning of 1974, _ a lot of people felt that I was making life unnecessarily hard for myself by following after Jackie Stewart and exposing myself to the natural comparisons that would be made between us. On the other hand, there were people who felt that I was in need of a good tight rein in Formula 1, and that Ken Tyrrell was just the man to control it. I suppose both views had some merit, but I had been influenced only by my wish to have a regular Grand Prix drive with a competitive team, where I could get down

to doing something about my lousy finishing record.’

Ickx joined Lotus, partnering Peterson. Reutemann and Carlos Pace were at Brabham, Hunt stayed at Hesketh increasing the mythology day by day, Hulme partnered Fittipaldi at Marlboro Texaco McLaren — yes, that’s what the world looked like now - and Frank Williams fielded four drivers. One of them, Arturo Merzario, was ‘excitable and unpredictable’,* as he proved by over-revving two engines in Argentina during the first Grand Prix meeting. This ‘sheer exhibitionism’ came at a time when Williams couldn’t afford his engines destroyed. Lauda joined Ferrari, partnering Regazzoni. | Reutemann ought to have won Argentina but a variety of mechanical problems, culminating in the engine cutting out, slowed him at the end and Hulme went by, Lauda second. Fittipaldi won Brazil from Regazzoni. In testing for the South African Grand Prix, Revson — who’d joined the Shadow team’ — may have had a suspension failure. The car struck a guardrail and killed him. Reutemann won the race from Beltoise (BRM) so that, before the European season began in Spain, the three opening races produced three different winners and three differen t men in second place. The championship was going to be tight, right to the end, the hierarchy of the new money not yet established. Lauda had other things on his mind, coming to terms with the mechanisms and demands of a leading team. That involved a learning process around losing in a car which should have won as distinct from ‘ordinary losing’ where you finish back down the field in an uncompetitive car. The unordinary losing was, he judged, the hardest kind and he pointed to South Africa where he’d taken the first pole of

his career, led the race before the Ferrari broke down.°

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Lauda took pole at Jarama and beat Regazzoni by 35 seconds, the first win of his career, so he was learning that as well. Thirty-two entries came to Nivelles for the Belgian Grand Prix with the only stipulation that in qualifying they had to be within 110 per cent of the three fastest, and 31 were. The driver who wasn’t should not be denied his footnote in history. Leo Kinnunen from Finland — he had to be aged 31, didn’t he? and was — did 1m 28.77s; Lauda 1m 11.04 as third fastest. This astonishing number of cars formed up two by two in the grid, stretching back 16 rows towards the German border a hundred kilometres away. Regazzoni and Scheckter formed the front row although whether Regazzoni really had taken pole became a subject of debate and disbelief. Even the Ferrari team felt he’d gone two seconds slower than the official timing, but the organisers wouldn't have it and Regazzoni had it. The 31 set off, so many that they produced a motorway queuing effect at the first corner when the leaders braked and the cars at the back virtually halted. Fittipaldi won from Lauda. Lauda dominated practice at Monaco but Regazzoni led from the flag up the hill to Casino Square. Monaco ought to be processional and often can be, but Monaco’s constrictions can, and often do, create highly dramatic situations from nowhere — as we have seen so often. On the opening lap up towards Casino Square eight cars resembled ‘crashing surf in all directions.’ Seven were out immediately.’ Peterson thought it a ‘miracle’ he got through the wreckage and survived a spin. He was candid enough to say it was good luck, not skill.* By lap 11 another five cars crashed, leaving only 13 in motion. Regazzoni spun, too, and Lauda led but the ignition failed on lap 33. Peterson won it from Scheckter. The Monaco measure: Peterson, 78 laps, 1h 58m 3.7s, an average speed of

80.7mph; Stewart, 1973, 80.9mph. Scheckter took Sweden, Peterson out with a drive-shaft failure. It angered him so much that when he got back to the pits he threw his crash helmet onto the ground. Still the season felt for its true shape. A mid-season ripple of races: Lauda and Regazzoni dominated Holland, Peterson won France at Dijon — the race’s 15th staging post — from Lauda, Scheckter won Britain from Fittipaldi, Regazzoni fourth,

Lauda fifth. Lauda 38 points, Fittipaldi 37, Scheckter and Regazzoni 35, Peterson 19.

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Reflecting, Lauda felt that his learning season continued and he came to understand ‘it is a curious fact that a lot of little things can add up to a great big zero.’ He cited the Niirburgring where, before the start, the right-front tyre had been damaged and changed. He held pole from Regazzoni, Fittipaldi and Scheckter on the next row. Ken Tyrrell checked with a local military base and they assured him the race day weather would be benign. Instead, light rain began as the cars set off on their lap round to the grid. Lauda’s new tyre wasn’t run in and he had a problem with the shock absorbers. Should they be changed? These decisions could only be distracting. The German flag was hoisted, hung in the air for a time, cleaved the air and the two Ferraris moved in unison — but Regazzoni edged ahead and as they passed the pits Scheckter drew alongside Lauda, pulled in front. First mistake, Lauda remembered, bad start. Second mistake, too impatient, can’t let Regazzoni get away. They moved round the loop at the end of the pit straight, came back behind the pits and now the Ferrari’s power brought Lauda alongside Scheckter Third mistake, must take Scheckter now. Lauda tried to do it by late braking and went into Scheckter, taking himself out. It was, Lauda judged, a combination of all the mistake s and that was the great big zero.’ On lap 13 Hailwood crashed in the McLaren-Ford, hitting the guardrail at 100mph at the Pflanzgarten. He’d say it happened where the cars are airborne and you have to land straight. He didn’t. He felt he might have been tired but, in his customary honest way, dismissed notions of car failure. He put it down to his own brain fade. His leg and foot were badly damaged — his Grand Prix career over. Regazzoni won the race, leading from start to finish. Reutemann confused everything by taking Austria from Hulme, Hunt third. Peterson, who couldn’t win the championship, confused it further by taking Monza although Fittipaldi came second . Drivers could count their 13 best finishes of the 15 rounds but, by a curiosity, approaching the North American finale, the top four — Regazzoni (46 points), Scheckter (45), Fittipaldi (43) and Lauda (38) — had all failed to finish enough times that they’d keep whatever they got. Fittipaldi took pole at Mosport and won from Regazzoni. They went to Watkins Glen on 52 points apiece, Schec kter still in there on 45. Reutemann became the spoiler, taking pole from Hunt, Scheckter on the third row, Fittipaldi directly behind him on the fourth, Regazzoni on the fifth but in the other column.

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Reutemann got away first when a cannon sounded, Hunt behind him, Scheckter, Fittipaldi and Regazzoni running 5—6—7. Regazzoni however found the handling of his Ferrari so bad he drifted back. Helmuth Koinigg, a Viennese in his second Grand Prix, inexplicably went off on lap ten. The Surtees car penetrated three layers of catch fencing and struck a guardrail head on with such force it killed Koinigg instantly. Pace kept a steady third place but Lauda dropped out, his Ferrari handling badly, too. Scheckter was fourth, Fittipaldi fifth. With 15 laps left Scheckter’s engine cut, the fuel pipe broken. Fittipaldi had his second championship and after a season like that he’d earned his $250,000.

A mini-rotation of the roundabout: Hulme retired and Jochen Mass, a strong German with a twinkling sense of humour, replaced him at Marlboro McLaren for 1975 but all the other leading drivers stayed where they were. It made no difference. The year belonged to Lauda and his Ferrari, and so comprehensively that they ‘held the entire racing world in our grasp.’ Again it was a combination, but this time a successful one: best, most modern car, enough testing — as much, Lauda said, as all the other teams put together. Lauda won five of the 14 rounds, took nine poles, dominated the mid-season absolutely and overall Ferrari set entirely new standards for the sport.” Lauda started comparatively slowly, Fittipaldi winning Argentina, Pace winning Brazil, Scheckter winning South Africa and Lauda taking no more than five points from these races. He got nothing from Spain either — a shambles of a meeting at Montjuich Park. On the Friday the drivers went on strike because guardrails were not properly secured and in some cases lacked bolts. This, they felt, was intolerable and they could cite immediate precedents. Koinigg’s car, it seems, hit the guardrail at Watkins Glen at a point where it wasn’t properly secured. Revson, it seems, had been a victim of guardrail failure at Kyalami, because the bottom rail came off and the top rail rammed his head and chest. Cevert was ‘cut to pieces along with his car when the guardrail structure came apart and became so many knife edges’” at Watkins Glen. The drivers

were having no more of it. On the Saturday, despite overnight work, they remained unconvinced and only a threat by the organisers to impound the cars forced the team managers to send them out. ‘It was not necessary to look around the paddock: at the oval stadium with its high walls and its pair of wellwhat gated openings. The organisers had the entirety of Formula 1 at could be literally gunpoint within seconds.’”

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Lauda took pole and Fittipaldi went home to Switzerland, saying the circuit was still unsafe. A rugged Australian, Alan Jones, made his debut in a Hesketh, putting it towards the rear of the grid. He was, in his own words, a ‘new boy’ and ‘tradition dictates that you snub new boys.’” Not everyone did that — Fittipaldi polite, Mass nice, Reutemann friendly — while others simply walked past him. He didn’t blame them. He wasn’t looking for favours or social graces, he was intent on his own career. Lauda crashed on the opening lap, Fittipaldi’s brother Wilson withdrew after one lap in a symbolic protest against the state of the circuit and more and more cars crashed so that on lap 25 of 75 only 11 still raced. On lap 26, the rear wing on the Embassy Lola of Rolf Stommelen broke. He was doing about 150mph and the car snapped out of control. It hammered into the guardrail on the left and bounded back, causing Pace — just behind — to swerve into the guardrail himself. Stommelen’s car mounted the guardrail, went along it and over it, killing three officials and a photographer. Stommelen emerged hurt, but alive. The race wasn’t stopped for four laps, and then half points were awarded giving Mass in the McLaren, the winner, 4.5. Lella Lombardi (March-Ford), a 32-year-old from near Alessandria, finished sixth — the only woman to score a World Championship point (or rather half a point). Lauda spread his domination now. He won Monaco, leading every lap from pole — the grid was staggered for the first time to try and minimise crashing and bashing into Ste Devote. Jones just qualified the Hesketh and the team told him, respecting Monaco’s constrictions which he hadn’t encountered before, to drive the race like an old woman. Graham Hill didn’t qualify his Embassy-Lola” and the great career drew to an end. The Monaco measure: Lauda, 75 laps, 2h Im 21.3s, an average speed of 75.5mph: Peterson, 1974, 80.7mph. Lauda won Belgium, Sweden and was second to Hunt in Holland. Lauda pressured Hunt in the closing stages and Hunt handled it philosophically (or fatalistically): what will be will be — 1 ‘ll drive as fast as I can. If the Ferrari is faster on the straight and gets by, that’s my tough luck. As Hunt won it, arms outstretched, Hesketh stood on the edge of the track, an ample man, his hands raised in supplication before the fact. The legend of Hunt and the mythology of Hesketh fused heavily into that moment. Lauda won the French at Paul Ricard and Fittip aldi the British at Silverstone after heavy, misty showers caugh t out a dozen drivers who speared off in all directions, stopping the race. Here, Graham Hill announced his retirement. He’d concentrate on running the Embassy

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team he’d set up in 1973 and had a young Englishman, Tony Brise, to drive the car. Hill thought of him as a future World Champion. Reutemann won Germany, Frenchman Jacques Laffite in a Williams second, Lauda third. During practice for the Austrian Grand Prix, American Mark Donohue, who’d trained as an engineer, had, as it seems, a puncture and his March-Ford” went wild. It pitched into catch fencing, spun, wrenched down 50 yards of fencing and the wire bunched under the car. That lifted it as it travelled, and it went over a guardrail, killing one marshal and injuring another. Donohue sat in what remained of the car unconscious. When he was extricated he came round and spoke lucidly, although he couldn’t remember the accident at all. He was taken to hospital and had internal haemorrhaging. He died two days later. Vittorio Brambilla (March), a fearless bear of a man, won the race in the wet, his only victory. Hunt came second — making him fourth in the championship — Lauda came sixth. Lauda’s third place at Monza confirmed the championship (Regazzoni won the race), and Lauda rounded the season off by adding Watkins Glen. A month later, Hill was flying his own plane back from a test session at Paul Ricard. In fog, approaching the little airport at Elstree, he hit a tree over a golf course and the plane crashed, killing Hill, Brise and four other team members. There would always be divided opinions about Hill, who was renowned as an ambassador for the sport (and inevitably called Mr Monaco) but he had sharp and sometimes unattractive edges. However, there would never be doubt about his courage or the sheer willpower which enabled him both to overcome limited natural ability and sustain a career from the distant days of 1958 with two World Championships along the way. If 1975 was straightforward, 1976 stretched like a minefield, each of

the 16 rounds a detonation. Hunt joined Marlboro McLaren, Mario Andretti joined Lotus and, spicing the whole thing, Tyrrell built a six-wheeler which provoked amazement, hilarity, incredulity and two questions, will it work? and what if it does? The car first appeared at the Spanish Grand Prix, the seventh detonation of the 16.” 2m Brazil, 25 January. Hunt took pole from Lauda (2m 32.50s against very 32.52s) and that was interesting because Hunt regarded Lauda driver highly but, more than that, had so far in his career been the only to te team-ma no at Hesketh (apart, briefly, from Jones) and so had a terrific car measure himself against. He couldn’t know if Hesketh had

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and he was an average driver. The pole became the measure. Lauda won the race, Hunt had a freak accident. Part of the fuel injection fell and jammed the throttle open, sending him into the catch fencing. Lauda 9 points, Hunt 0.

South Africa, 6 March. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association was essentially disbanded, or rather incorporated into the F1CA — whatever good work it had done, it could not overcome the drivers’ natural habitat: loners with egos. Hunt took pole from Lauda (1m 16.10s against Im 16.20s) but Lauda seized the lead with a decisive, powerful thrust from the line and held it throughout the race, Hunt tracking him and towards the end pressuring him. Lauda won it by 1.3 of a second. Lauda 18, Hunt 6.

United States West, 28 March. Long Beach, outside Los Angeles, was a street circuit, tight and bumpy. Before it Ferrari team manager Daniel Audetto suggested to Lauda that he allow Regazzoni to win. Lauda asked him if he’d gone mad and Audetto replied with a gesture which suggested the championship was over already in Lauda’s favour. Regazzoni did win Long Beach but only because Lauda flat-spotted’’ his front tyres. Hunt claimed Depailler in the Tyrrell ‘just moved over and pushed me off the track.’ That displeased Master James. Lauda 24, Hunt 6.

Spain, 2 May. After Long Beach, Lauda went home to Salzburg and, working on a bank beside his swimming pool, driving a tractor, turned it over and trapped himself. He’d broken his ribs, blood everywhere. Spain was two weeks away and the injuries needed six weeks to heal. Lauda spent his time lying very still trying to breathe ‘decently’ while Ferrari — the Old Man and the team — exploded in the customary hysteria. Part of that involved putting a young Italian, Maurizio Flammini — doing well in Formula 2 — into Lauda’s car in Spain. Lauda told a journalis t that ‘Italian drivers were good for nothing except driving round the church tower’ and when that reached Italy the hysteria overwhe lmed the hysteria already in place. ‘All Italy howled with rage, but I didn’t care. In my position I had to say something tough.’ When Luca di Montezemolo, head of racing activities, rang to talk about Flammini for Spain Lauda said sarcastically that if it didn’t ‘interfere’ with the team’s plans he’d quite like to take part in the Spanish practice and whether he could drive or not would be revealed. If it did ‘interfere with the team’s plans’, You can go and stuff yourselves.*

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Hunt took pole — from Lauda (1m 18.52s against 1m 18.84). Lauda led but Hunt went through on lap 32 and so did Mass in the other McLaren. Meanwhile Depailler gave the six-wheeled Tyrrell its debut and put it on the second row (the brakes failed during the race). Mass’s engine let go and Hunt crossed the line 30.97 seconds ahead of Lauda. Then the CSI, checking the McLaren, found it 18mm too wide. That evening, Hunt was told he’d been stripped of the win and McLaren lodged a protest the following day. Lauda 30 (33), Hunt 15 (6) pending the outcome.

Belgium, 16 May. row. Audetto again Regazzoni made instructing Lauda whatever pit board and double minus. finish, Regazzoni Hunt 15 (6).

Lauda took pole from Regazzoni, Hunt on the second suggested Regazzoni should be given the win — and if the better start a pit board would be held out to follow him. Lauda said Audetto could hang out suited him, yellow, green or red, with plus and minus He wouldn’t be looking at it. Lauda led from start to second, and Hunt's gearbox failed. Lauda (39) 42,

Monaco, 30 May. The circuit had been revised, with a chicane at Ste Devote and the corner at Rascasse tightened. Lauda took pole from Regazzoni, Hunt on the seventh row because the McLaren wasn’t handling well. Lauda won and Hunt's engine failed. He drew on the fatalistic philosophy: ifyou're going to have engine failures, better to have them when you're down the field. Lauda 48 (51), Hunt 15 (6). of The Monaco measure: Lauda 78 laps, 1h 59m 51.4s, an average speed 80.3mph; Lauda, 1975 (a wet-dry race), 75. 5mph.

Depailler Sweden, 13 June. Scheckter put the six-wheel Tyrrell on pole, The Tyrrells on the second row, Lauda on the third, Hunt on the fourth. threatened els six-whe ly finished first and second, and very sudden with tyre wear revolution. There was, however, an inherent problem side rotated because, by definition, the two small front wheels at either of the nature The much faster than the two large rear wheels. 52 Lauda Hunt fifth. Anderstorp circuit disguised this. Lauda came third, (55), Hunt 17 (8).

pole from Hunt (1m France, 4 July. Paul Ricard was hot. Lauda took felt ‘oil or water’ coming 48.17s against 1m 47.89s) and led, but Hunt have a problem at some from the Ferrari’s rear, meaning Lauda would pulled away, sometimes by ' point, perhaps soon. For seven laps Lauda s engine blew down the almost a second a lap but on lap nine Lauda’

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Mistral straight. The rear wheels locked and Lauda had an instant to hold the car. He did. Regazzoni, tracking Hunt from second place, went as far as lap 18 when his engine blew, too, pitching him backwards into catch-fencing. Hunt went safely to the win although he had an upset stomach and felt sick. Lauda 52 (55), Depailler 26, Hunt 26 (17). The day after Paul Ricard, McLaren were fined by the CSI over Spain but the points were restored. Hunt returned to the hunt: Lauda 52, Hunt 26.

Britain, 18 July. Pole was as tight as it gets, Lauda 1m 19.35s against Hunt’s 1m 19.41s. Brands Hatch boiled with passion, and soon enough boiled over. Lauda led into Paddock Hill Bend, Regazzoni up to him and trying to get the lead himself. Regazzoni touched Lauda and spun into the on-rush of cars. For an instant Hunt felt deep elation that both Ferraris were gone, taken themselves out. Next instant Hunt rode up over Regazzoni’s wheel and went into the air. Cars darted like a shoal of startled fish, some on the grass. Hunt limped forward but the McLaren’ s steering suffered serious damage. The race was stopped. Hunt and Regazzoni went to the grid for the restart in their spare cars although McLaren, sensing that switching to the spare at this point might mean trouble under the rules, worked on repairi ng the race car. Some teams protested and an announcement was made that only those cars which had completed the opening lap could take the restart. Hunt hadn’t completed that lap. Ferrari, McLaren (and Jacques Laffite, Ligier) said they would not withdraw their spare cars and the crowd did boil over. No-one had ever seen a motor racing crowd in Britain do this and for a moment or two it might have become ugly. In the midst of it, the mechanics completed repairs on Hunt’s race car and wheeled it to the grid, replacing the spare. Lauda led again with Hunt holding off Regazzoni and it developed like that. Halfway through the race Lauda’s gearbox began to fail and Hunt drew up. He knew he’d got him. It was done with thrust and precision on the inside during the run up to the Druids horseshoe. Hunt closed his eyes and went for it. The crowd boiled over again — with delight. Hunt won it from Lauda. Then Ferrari, Tyrrell and the Fittipaldi teams protested the decisio n to let Hunt take the restart. Ferrari persisted, their appeal was rejected and they took it to the CSI. Lauda 61 (58), Scheckter 30 (29), Depailler 26, Hunt 26 (35) pending the appeal.

Germany, 1 August. Niki Lauda started his career liking the Nurburgring, measuring himself again st it, seeking out perfection. As he matured, as he saw drivers being kille d, he judged the Nurburgring the

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most unsafe circuit. He based this on its length, which meant rescue teams — firefighters, ambulances — had to be spread out and might take too long to reach an accident. Hunt took pole from Lauda (7m 6.5s against 7m 7.4s) but, on an overcast, threatening day word filtered back that rain fell on parts of the circuit. Lauda went for wet weather tyres. Hunt wanted dries but looked around, saw the others on wets and went that way, too. Regazzoni led, Hunt third, Lauda ninth and, when Regazzoni spun, Peterson moved in to the lead, Hunt second. Hunt and Lauda both pitted for dry tyres — Mass in the other McLaren started on dries and now led comfortably into lap two, but Hunt calculated that he could catch him by the end of the race. Just before Bergwerk, a fast right-hander, something happened to Lauda’s Ferrari. It hit the concrete kerb, spun into catch-fencing, struck a bank and was catapulted back onto the track on fire. Three cars came hard-hard-hard at it. One missed it, the other two struck it glancing blows. A fourth car stopped and the drivers fought to lift Lauda from the flames. They got him out but he’d suffered cruel burns, his lungs damaged by inhaling toxic fumes. Fourteen cars completed lap two: the 14 who had been in front of Lauda. The rest had to halt just before the accident. The initial word was that Lauda had superficial injuries only. The race restarted and Hunt won it from Scheckter. News of Lauda’s real condition filtered through that evening and in Mannheim Hospital he fought for his life. Lauda 61

(58), Scheckter 36 (34), Hunt 35 (44).

Austria, 15 August. Lauda, given the Last Rites, remembered nothing out of of the crash. He lay in hospital with tubes going in to him and ‘my ood him, and he could hear people speaking to him. He underst ‘gave me a situation: accident, hospital, lungs.’ On the Thursday they size, it normal its times looking-glass. [...] My head is swollen to three hidden in the sits like a great melon on my shoulders. Neck and nose are of the wins in swelling.”” Enzo Ferrari, who felt he had been cheated Prix racing Spain and Brands Hatch, decided to withdraw from Grand been an attempt forever. This was widely disbelieved and may even have be bringing would ni to get the Austrian race cancelled — Regazzo cars would bring thousands of Swiss supporters, the presence of Ferrari Lauda’s absence. The more thousands from Italy, and all that on top of John Watson (Penske) race wasn’t cancelled and Hunt took pole from d the underside of the but could only finish fourth. A large stone damage car. Lauda 61 (58), Hunt 38 (47).

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Holland, 29 August. By now Lauda was recovering and people wrote to him offering their skin, even their ears — his had been burnt off. Lauda found the Ferrari reaction ‘partly moving and human, partly chaotic, and partly vile.’ Ferrari, of course, came back in Holland but with only a single car, for Regazzoni. Peterson took pole from Hunt but in the race Peterson suffered understeer and Hunt won it from Regazzoni. Lauda 61 (58), Hunt 47 (56). In between Holland the next Grand Prix, Italy, Hunt flew to Canada to take part in a celebrity Formula Atlantic” race at Trois-Riviéres, Quebec (for $10,000). Jones, Brambilla and Depailler were among the others. Hunt partnered a local boy blessed with innocence, bravado and skill. It is not at all clear if Hunt had heard of Gilles Villeneuve before he reached Canada but he and everybody else had by the time he left. Villeneuve won the race consummately and when Hunt got back to England he started telling people, McLaren people.

Italy, 12 September. Lauda reported to the Ferrari factory 38 days after the crash. He was, as is his way, clear-thinking about it, logical about it, deadpan about it. He’d describe the Ferrari reaction as all underha nd, like ‘water polo.’ Enzo Ferrari wouldn’t say to Lauda I do not want you to drive at Monza but, Lauda sensed, what Ferrari really wanted was to proclaim we lost the Championship with style, we are the moral victory — our man is lying helplessly in bed. And here was Lauda, face disfigur ed, body battered, wanting to race. He tested, covering forty laps of the test track at Fioran o. He could still drive, even though he needed foam rubber cushio ns so the helmet and the ear didn’t hurt too much. He was unimpressed by being able to do the forty laps. He knew how easy they were on a placid day, alone, on your own test track. It rained on the Friday at Monza, water on the track, and that frightened him. McLaren anticipated politics. After the Saturday session, fuel was taken to a laboratory for analysis and on Sunday morning announced to be above the maximum octane limit. Hunt would have to start from the back of the grid. Peterson won the race from Regazzoni, Hunt crashing and being jeered all the way back to the pits. Lauda’s fourth place remains barely believable. Lauda 64 (61), Hunt 47 (56).

Canada, 3 October. The CSI announced Ferrari’s appeal from Brands Hatch was upheld, and consequently Hunt lost the nine points while Lauda, retrospectively moving up from second place to first at Brands, gained three. Lauda 64, Hunt 47. ;

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Ferrari were vulnerable, despite that: Regazzoni fired — not enough testing done since Lauda’s accident (Lauda felt). At Mosport, Hunt took pole from Peterson, Lauda on the third row but in the race he had suspension problems and Hunt won it. A tourniquet had begun to tighten round Ferrari. Lauda 64, Hunt 56.

United States, 10 October. Hunt took pole from Scheckter, Lauda on the third row again. Scheckter led the race and after some ten laps Hunt told himself you're driving like an old grandmother. The McLaren oversteered and Hunt took another five laps to readjust his technique. Lauda was up to third and would remain there while, on lap 37 of the 59, Hunt drew up at the chicane before the long straight and, Scheckter slowed by a back-marker, powered through. Lauda 68, Hunt 65. We had, Lauda said, a ‘demoralised team’ who couldn’t come to terms with Hunt. Japan, 24 October. Mount Fuji, 3.05 in the afternoon. The arguments about whether the 25 drivers could — or would — start were over. The mist along the straight cleared, the torrential rain ceased although the track remained full of lurking dangers. Who really knew where the water lay or how deep? Hunt was on the front row with Andretti’s Lotus, pole, Lauda on the second row. Lauda had already seen on the warm-up lap that ‘you could hardly hold the car.’ When the start was given and the cars moved Lauda would travel slowly. He did not intend to die and he did intend to minimise the danger from the cars around him. Already Hunt outdragged Andretti for the lead. The vast crowd spread up the hillsides watched intently, mist shrouded Mount Fuji and Hunt had gone clear: no spray blinding him, this spray which forced the others to stay back from him. Completing lap one, Hunt led from Watson, Lauda eleventh. On lap two, Hunt’s McLaren wobbled alarmingly had hard coming Watson and aquaplaning — approaching the first turn place. to go up the escape road to miss it, moving Andretti to second on Lauda pulled gently into the pits. He’d been concentrating entirely is. race this stupid how g not being hit by any other car, he’d been thinkin pits team He'd felt an unbearable tension that he would be hit. In the Lauda d. happene what’d asked manager Forghieri leant down and i Forghier er replied that to drive represented madness. He'd rememb Lauda would saying quickly OK, but we'll pretend you've got engine trouble. gazing at pits the in stood have none of that. He’d tell it like it was. He did not reproach the track and after a while the rain began to stop. He Hunt now had to himself for his decision because he knew it was right. finish third for the championship.

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Burly Brambilla in a March forged his way through to Hunt, drew up alongside and spun off. On lap 14 of the 73, Hunt led from Andretti. Hunt drove a controlled race but, as the track dried, the wet-weather tyres became more and more overstressed. Could Hunt afford a pit stop? All the wet air was gone, the clouds had blown away from the circuit, some blue sky had appeared, and the lowering evening sun had begun to glow warmly over the scene. Mount Fuji began to loom through the clouds, showing hints of snow-covered slopes.”!

The tyres began to shed little chunks as they disintegrated. Hunt slowed and Depailler swept by, Andretti swept by. Andretti overtook Depailler and Hunt began to move up towards the Frenchman. At the end of lap 64 one of Depailler’s tyres finally let go and he had to limp the whole way round to the pits. Hunt’s tyres were getting worse each yard he covered. He kept asking the pits what do I do? He didn’t want to make the decision himself. The man running McLaren, Teddy Mayer, felt that Hunt should be the one making the decision because he could feel how good or bad the tyres were. On lap 62 the front left tyre shredded completel y but he was not yet at the entrance to the pit lane. If he’d been past that, he’d have had to do another lap. Instead, he angled into the pits and, when he stopped, the mechanics sprang onto the car but, with the tyre deflated, the chassis sank too low to get the jack underneath. A mechanic lifted the car with his bare hands while the jack was slipped into position. Hunt’s pit stop lasted 27 seconds and during it Regazzoni had gone though into second place behind Andretti, Jones (Theodore) third. Depailler with new tyres ran strongly, too. Hunt emerged with absolutely no idea where he was in the race but enraged by a terrible certainty: the championship had been taken from him because the team hadn’t called him in. He was in fact fifth. Five laps remained and he vowed to overtake any car he could reach. On lap 70 he was still fifth but Regazzoni fell back. Hunt went past him on the outside, kept that line and went past Jones on the outsid e. He forced the McLaren towards Depailler and got to within 20, perhap s 30, yards of him by the finish. He came to his pit still certain he had lost. He roared abuse on a grand and terrible scale. Mayer and many others grinning hugely held their hands up, three fingers splayed. Third! James, you were third! Lauda heard all this on his way to the airpor t, rang Enzo Ferrari and got a cold response. He would never forge t that and perhaps never forgive it.

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After such a season the realisationof the championship, Hunt would say, came to him slowly. Then he went off to get drunk on the same grand and terrible scale. For the first time since 1965, no Grand Prix driver had been killed in

any form of racing. In December, two months after Fuji, Renault announced that they would be entering Grand Prix racing. Lauda would win the 1977 championship in a Ferrari but, after Fuji, the relationship with the team was never the same. Reutemann replaced Regazzoni and the web of Ferrari politics was being spun in an attempt to make Lauda number two driver. Roberto Nosetto, a long-time Ferrari employee and, according to Lauda, superstitious to the point of absolute obsession, replaced Audetto. Nosetto had to wear and be surrounded by things green; he couldn’t ride in a car with the number 7 anywhere on it. If it was a hire car and had a 7 as part of its number-plate he covered it. To Lauda of the precise logic this did not bode well. Scheckter joined the new Walter Wolf team.” Peterson moved to Tyrrell, tired of constant quarrelling with Chapman and ‘afraid of the car which broke down every time we tested. If it wasn’t a wing working loose then it was a wheel. There was only one thing to do and that was to leave Lotus.” Andretti stayed at Lotus partnered by the young Swede Gunnar Nilsson, Regazzoni joined Ensign,“ Hunt and Mass stayed at McLaren. Scheckter won Argentina, Pace in the Brabham second. Forghieri had

instructed Lauda to watch how Reutemann drove and learn from it. Lauda qualified on the second row... Reutemann the fourth. Lauda retired with a mechanical problem and Reutemann finished third. Reutemann, however, won Brazil. Lauda decisively outqualified Reutemann at Kyalami and won the race from Scheckter, Reutemann eighth. On lap 23 quiet Welshman Tom Pryce, driving a Shadow came upon two fire marshals running across the Pryce track to reach a car which had stopped and briefly been alight. her. extinguis fire heavy a with struck one of the marshals, struggling head, Pryce’s The marshal was killed and the fire extinguisher struck continued killing him. The Shadow’s throttle jammed open and the car happened had what at full speed. Laffite (Ligier) reached it not knowing unhurt. and the rudderless Shadow took them both off. Laffite was the twin found and iving prize-g the Lauda only learnt about Pryce at hing ‘somet — g emotions — the misery of that and the joy of winnin indescribable.’

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Pace, in his sixth year of Grand Prix racing and his third with Brabham, finished South Africa 13th. He went back to Brazil where he died in a light plane crash. BRM had been taken over by Louis Stanley and now faded gently from Grand Prix racing. Andretti loved the Lotus 78 from the start although it had a higher than anticipated drag factor, which meant that although it cornered beautifully its straight line speed wasn’t competitive. By Long Beach, he had the car set up as he wanted it and put it on the front row, Lauda pole. At the start Reutemann was ‘coming up like he wasn’t stopping before he got to San Diego!’* and provoked a ‘chain-reaction shunt’ which Andretti wasn’t involved in. Andretti won from Lauda. In Spain during Saturday practice, Lauda felt a ‘devilish pain’ as if he was being sawn in half and heard a ‘cracking sound’ through one of the corners. He headed for the pits barely able to breathe. A rib, broken at the Nurburgring, had snapped. He could not contemplate racing. According to Lauda, Reutemann asked the mechanics what's the matter with Lauda now? Will he drive, won't he drive? Reutemann was told Lauda wouldn’t be driving. He walked to the transporter where Lauda lay, saw Lauda white and immobile, smiled and walked off. Lauda had no doubt that Reutemann was pleased. It didn’t trouble Lauda. In Grand Prix racing, Lauda would say, don’t expect to get ‘demonstrations of sympathy.’”° . Andretti won Spain from Reutemann. Watson took pole at Monaco but Scheckter won it from Lauda, so that Scheckter led the Championship with 32 points, Lauda 25, Reutemann 23, Andrett i 22. The Monaco measure: Scheckter, 76 laps, 1h 57m 52.7s, an average speed of 79.6mph; Lauda, 1976, 80.3mph. Nilsson won Belgium from Lauda. Andretti would say that: Gunnar was getting better with every race, and that win really meant the world to him. At that point, of course, we knew nothin g about his illness. But neither did he. It seems now that he knew something was a little wrong but figured he’d wait until the end of the season to have it investigated. There was no outward sign of any big problem, except that I used to think he got tired very easily for a guy of his age. Looking back on it now, I’m so glad that he won a Grand Prix. He got so much pleasure out of it.?’

Laffite won, Sweden (where before the start, Nosetto wanted to put a sprig of green in Lauda’s cockpit and Lauda wanted to hit him), Andretti

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won France. That was the mid-point in the season, Scheckter still on 32 but Lauda up to 33, Reutemann 28 and Andretti 22. Renault came to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix with a turbo engine* to be driven by Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jabouille. As a major manufacturer Renault were taking a distinct risk because they might be beaten by far smaller companies as turbo technology was an uncertain, awkward, unruly thing. Silverstone’s broad acres ought to have embraced turbo power but Jabouille could only qualify 22nd. The Renaults had Michelin radial-ply tyres, another glimpse of the future. Six rows above Jabouille on the grid sat Gilles Villeneuve in a McLaren, poised to impress knowing people. Purley driving his own LEC car,” crashed at Becketts when the throttle stuck open. The car hit the bank cutting its speed from 108mph to 0 in a foot and a half, reportedly generating 179.8g, the highest ever G-force survived by a human being. In the race, Jabouille’s turbocharger failed after 17 laps. Hunt, who’d been having a wretched season with crashes, won but significantly from Lauda who now felt he had finally cured the Ferrari’s handling problems. Lauda concluded immediately after Silverstone the World

Championship is in the bag. He put together a devastating run, winning Germany at Hockenheim and finishing second to Jones in Austria. In the week between that and Holland, Teddy Mayer went to Mosport where Villeneuve was driving in a Can-Am race. Essentially, Mayer told he got Villeneuve he wouldn’t be driving for McLaren again and if went e Villeneuv another Formula 1 offer for 1978 he should take it. few days the home depressed, with nothing on the horizon. Within a Modena from n gentlema a said phone rang and Villeneuve’s wife Joann with an Italian accent wanted to speak to a Signor Villeneuve... the day Lauda won Holland — Villeneuve arrived at the Ferrari factory single a needed Lauda after — and finished second to Andretti in Italy. s Glen where point for the championship and fourth did nicely at Watkin run three cars, to wanted Ferrari Hunt won. Scheckter took Canada where Villeneuve met even for Lauda, Reutemann and Villeneuve. Lauda hadn't n of him driving. and anyway, he had gastric ‘flu. There was no questio Peterson and in a ed follow Hunt won Fuji. During the race Villeneuve Tyrrell. The Ferrari right-hander struck the rear of his six-wheeled ng in a prohibited launched and cartwheeled to where people were standi who'd evidently been area. Two died instantly, one of them a marshal injured, seven seriously. trying to clear the area. Ten others were the people shouldn’t have Villeneuve did not feel responsible because been there, but he was badly shaken.

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In 1978, the drivers’ roundabout turned heavily. Peterson came back to Lotus, partnering Andretti, Nilsson joined Arrows. By then he knew he had cancer and he would never be well enough to drive the car. There is an almost unbearable pathos in a handsome man of 29, a competitive driver since the karting days and now a Grand Prix winner, being struck by this. He fought it all that summer, and he lost. Patrick Tambay, an urbane Frenchman, replaced Mass at McLaren while Hunt stayed for a third season. Lauda joined Watson at Brabham and Jones joined Saudia Williams. Frank Williams, his passion so strong for racing that he had survived all set-backs, was poised to become a serious player. He’d secured major sponsorship from Saudi Arabian Airlines and approached Jones at the end of 1977. Jones went to the factory and liked designer Patrick Head’s approach and Williams liked Jones because he was a proper, feisty, nononsense racer. Jones said yes to £40,000.” The Lotus 79 was one of the most aesthetically pleasing Formul a 1 cars of recent years and people spoke of an Andretti champi onship already. The car, nicknamed The Black Beauty — the JPS livery was black and gold, of course — used what quickly became known as ‘ground effects’. This was Chapman’s way of using the air rushing at the car to generate downforce. The underside of the car was shaped to exert suction and this ‘effectively reduced the air pressure under the car and consequently sucked it on to the ground.” To control the air flow two skirts were placed down the sides of the car and maintained contact with the road. The air was channelled between them and, in its most extreme form, clawed the car to the road. Andretti himself saw danger coming from Hunt, who'd finished 1977 so strongly, Lauda and Reutemann. Meanwhile Brabham’s designer Gordon Murray, a lean South African who thought in original ways, worked on a device to give Grand Prix racing one of its period ic convulsions. Renault, who’d done four races in 1977, prepa red to contest the whole season. Whether a turbo engine could be made to work reliably and whether problems like turbo lag” could be overcome remained unproven. Andretti took Argentina from Lauda, and took it so comprehensively it surprised even himself. Peterson took pole from Hunt in Brazil, Jones on the fourth row. He’d outqualified Lauda and Scheckter. Good year, supplying the team and ‘engaged in a fierce tyre war with Miche lin,’ decided that Williams must have the ‘softer and faster rubber’ whic h Lotus and McLaren enjoyed. After the long, lean years Williams found himself ‘speechless’ and had

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‘difficulty coping with the enormity of it.” Reutemann won Brazil, Lauda third, Andretti fourth. The Williams enormity grew in South Africa where Jones finished fourth. Peterson won, Andretti classified seventh — he’d run out of fuel. Chapman took three gallons out of the car before the start, assuring Andretti it wouldn’t be a problem, to which Andretti said: ‘If it does I’ll have your hide!’ Andretti was too much of a gentleman to say whether he ever did. A combative Finn, Keke Rosberg, qualified on the second last row in a Theodore car. He’d drive for two other teams this season, ATS and Wolf, and appeared to be the archetypal journeyman with a career decorated by initials: ret, dnpq, dnq, dns = did not pre-qualify, did not qualify, did not start. He wouldn’t even score a point until 1980. At Long Beach, Jones forced the Williams up to second before the nose wing began to collapse. Reutemann won it from Andretti, and when Depailler took Monaco from Lauda the season still had an open feel to it. Depailler 23 points, Reutemann and Andretti 18, Lauda 16, Peterson 14.

The Monaco measure: Depailler, 75 laps, 1h 55m 80.3mph; Scheckter, 1977, 79.6mph. The superiority of the Lotus began to assert Belgium — where an imp of a Frenchman, René in a Martini-Ford — and Spain from Peterson. In

14.6s, an average speed of

itself and Andretti took Arnoux, made his debut both races, the rest were

a long way behind. They went to Sweden. torp circuit That dry, warm June afternoon Lauda circled the Anders ng day, teamtrying hard not to take pole for the Grand Prix the followi 1m 22.058s, a of lap a mate Watson doing the same. Andretti had it with 37s) next and time set in the session the day before, Watson (1:22.7 Lauda (1:22.78s) on the second row. shing: a fan car. Gordon Murray had created something truly astoni and slow South Murray was an unusual man. With his unkempt hair and might, at ary vision African accent he looked part guru, part fine wine and basic rock moments, have passed for a hippie. He liked .’ music. He once said: ‘I’m not into boring people a particular problem. He and his assistant David North struggled with engine and how could you The Brabham used the wide, low Alfa Romeo They moved through the design a ground-effects car around that? mounting this engine in the permutations even, evidently, considering noticed that an extractor fan front. They examined the regulations and was not aerodynamic. The fan was legal provided its ‘primary function’

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was only supposed to cool the engine. If it also sucked up air from beneath the underbody, well, that was just coincidence... The fan was no easy thing. A thermodynamics consultant had to work out the number of fan blades and the rotational speed. Plastic fans disintegrated and fans filled with glass-fibre disintegrated as well. Magnesium was used. Lauda tested the car at Brands Hatch and found it ‘unpleasant to drive. It understeered massively, all the more so when you took your foot off the accelerator. The fan was powered by the engine, with the result that the suction effect fell off when the revs dropped.’ Watson, reflecting, says however: ‘The beauty of the fan was that it operated at engine speed. The Lotus ground effects were conditional on the road speed, the fan conditional on engine speed so for example where cars are always handfuls at low speeds — because there is little downforc e — the fan car was perfect. At 12,000rpm in first gear it produced the same amount of downforce as it did at 160mph in sixth gear.’ At Anderstorp the convulsions started on the Thursday morning at first practice. As the two cars were wheeled out, dustbi n lids covered the fans. After practice Andretti complained that, regardless of its legality the car would have to be banned on safety grounds. ‘I spent a couple of laps behind the Brabham and my visor was covered in muck. If it rains it would be impossible to get past. I don’t want anyone to get a bolt in the neck before anybody does anything about it. I think we have to stop this monster before it gets out of hand.’ Chapman, the startling innovator, Was so incensed he issued a long statement. He, Williams, Tyrrell and two other team principals lodged formal protests to the Swedish organisers before the race, but they were rejecte d. By Friday qualifying the Brabham ran fine. Watson says that ‘Anderstorp was a circuit which was good for it and Bernie didn’t want the two Brabhams sitting on the front of the grid by about five seconds and everybody getting cheesed off so we ran the car with quite a lot of fuel on board.’ Andretti took the lead immediately with Lauda behind him. Watson spun avoiding another car, Lauda track ed Andretti and got past him on lap 39. Andretti’s engine failed and young Riccardo Patrese in the Arrows finished second behind Lauda. The fan car was banned within days on safety grounds. This was the first race Professor Watkins attended as resident Formula 1 doctor. Bernie Ecclestone had met him, said there was a problem with medical facilities and would he take it Over ON a permanent basis? At

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Anderstorp Watkins understood the problem —- or rather the sort of problems — immediately. He had a caravan as the medical centre (room for one patient only) and a tent as an ‘overflow’. There was no helicopter except on race day because, Watkins was told, practice isn’t dangerous. During practice and the race itself he positioned himself at the foot of the control tower.” By now Goodyear produced a whole array of qualifying tyres designed for one hot lap. That demanded judgement from the driver on precisely when to make his run — traffic could destroy it - and how to handle the wear. To broaden this, race tyres were available in various compounds and it became almost an art form choosing the right ones. Sometimes drivers exploited different combinations, and sometimes they got that wrong... Andretti won France from Peterson, the ground effects devouring Paul Ricard. Andretti crossed the line and kept on at high speed towards where Chapman stood on the rim of the track. He’d already thrown his black hat into orbit and now saluted Andretti with both arms raised in a V. When Peterson passed him 2.93 seconds later he held just his right arm out, jerking the thumb up and down. Then he turned away and strode back towards the pit, the afternoon sun drawing a shadow from his chunky body. Lotus were big then. cars finished at Brands Hatch whereNeither of Chapman’s Reutemann won from Lauda. Andretti reasserted himself round Hockenheim from pole. A lean Brazilian with a face so young he might have been a teenager put an Ensign-Ford on the second last row of the grid. Nelson Souto Maior abandoned his studies to work in a garage and race karts. So his mother wouldn’t know, he raced under the name of Piquet. He’d competed in European Formula 3 the year before this debut which ended when the

engine failed. Andretti 54 points, Peterson 36. That closed in a wet Austria Grand Prix where Andretti claimed Reutemann moved over on him and he spun into the barrier. Peterson won it. n which Andretti rectified that in Holland winning from Peterso the take could from the others. Nobody else isolated them s’ and championship. Andretti evaluated the Dutch win as ‘preciou on.” questi added ‘I was getting edgy before it, no n on the third - Andretti took pole at Monza from Villeneuve, Peterso some work to do. row. That, in the theoretical world, meant Peterson had Jabouille in cantly, Signifi In reality it meant something else altogether. said the car ‘passed the Renault turbo was third quickest and Villeneuve

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me on the straight like you can’t believe. It must be 10kmh faster than anything else here.’ The signal to start was given while some at the back of the grid still trundled to their places. As Villeneuve’s Ferrari sprang to life and leapt, as Andretti got onto the power, as Lauda was trying to outdrag Andretti, the grid bunched — and the cars travelled at widely different speeds. Peterson made a bad start. Where the track narrowed into a funnel at the old banking, someone — later to be named as Patrese — touched Hunt’s McLaren and that in turn flung Peterson’s Lotus into the guardrail where it exploded in fire. Seven other cars thrashed and crashed, the track covered in debris. Peterson sat trapped and the fire marshals came up while Hunt and Regazzoni ran to the Lotus. Hunt hesitated for an instant then plunged into the flames to try to get Peterson out. Nearby Brambilla sat in his Surtees unconscious, probably knocked out by one of his own wheels. This accident, and its consequences, changed Grand Prix racing. Professor Watkins did not have a car to get to it and when he tried on foot the police, presumably having no idea who he was, barred the way. Watkins went to the medical centre and was there when Peterson was brought in. ‘He was quite conscious and rational. We put a splint in his legs, and we put a drip up. That was all done correctly. There was no crowd control, though. While I was working on him, a photographer pointed a camera between my legs to get a picture of Ronnie. I kicked him.’ Peterson had to be carried through the crowd to get to the helicopter. Peterson was flown to hospital in Milan and initial reports announced over the PA system at Monza said he’d broken both his legs but otherwise was fine. The race eventually restarted over 40 laps with 19 cars. Villeneuve and Andretti were both penalised a minute for jumping the start and Lauda won it from Watson. Peterson’s condition deteriorated overnight — marro w was entering the bloodstream — and when Andretti arrived at the hospital Swedish journalist Fredrik af Petersens took him to one side and said Peterson had just died. Andretti drove on down the road and stopped. Journalists and photographers hemmed him but he didn’t want to talk. He said only ‘unhappily, motor racing is also this.’ Watkins remembers how ‘appalled’ Ecclestone was and how Ecclestone said that together they must take responsibility for circuit rescue. In future Watkins would have a medic al car available to him that enabled him to follow the grid as it set off. During the race the car would be strategically placed for fast response. It meant that Watkins could be

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at any accident within a very short time and that might mean the difference between life and death.” Reutemann won Watkins Glen, Villeneuve won Canada. ‘Those last laps were torture. I could hear all kinds of noises in the car. And I didn’t like it because I was having to drive like an old woman, shifting at 10,000 and being careful not to break anything.’* Ends and beginnings, always ends and beginnings. Villeneuve’s victory, on 8 October, created ‘a sea of euphoria’ and was the beginning of a legend, no less. Gunnar Nilsson died peacefully in a London hospital

two weeks later. For the second time in 40 days Colin Chapman’s plane flew to Sweden with one of his drivers on it. Ends and beginnings: that same October a Frenchman self-cloaked in great dignity, Jean-Marie Balestre, was elected president of the CSI, and immediately demanded that its name be changed to the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, known as FISA Monsieur Balestre firmly intended to get hold of international motor sport and give it a shaking. That would involve getting hold of Mr Bernard Charles Ecclestone at FOCA. Mr Bernard Charles Ecclestone did not care for people getting hold of him, French or otherwise. Scheckter joined Ferrari and was adamant that whilst he fully intended to become World Champion such a thing did not particularly interest Villeneuve who felt that if it came along, well, it came along. Scheckter drove so consistently that by season’s end he’d scored in twelve of the 15 rounds. The season was run in two halves and a driver could count only his four best finishes in each, so Scheckter had to drop four. Villeneuve ended up dropping a couple but his results tended to

reflect his character: win or bust. The roundabout: Regazzoni joined Jones at Williams; Piquet joined Lauda Arnoux at Brabham; Reutemann joined Andretti at Lotus. Jabouille and . McLaren had the Renault turbos; and Watson departed Brabham for first race. Laffite won Argentina for Ligier, and Balestre arrived for his er Scheckt and Watson He made immediate attempts to impose himself. d. Professor collided on the first lap and five other cars were involve wouldn’t allow Watkins had been given a medical car but the organisers race restarted, him to use it trailing the grid on the first lap. When the an ambulance.” Watkins covered the initial part of the opening lap in matching shoes,’ and suit Balestre, ‘sartorially resplendent in white n was found guilty intervened over the crash. The Stewards met, Watso which, one report and fined 10,000 Swiss francs — a considerable sum Watson’s third place. suggests, equalled more than McLaren earned for

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In Brazil, Balestre said Watson would not be allowed to race unless he paid his fine. Ecclestone and Max Mosley met Balestre in a basement office at the Interlagos circuit and faced Balestre down. Watson raced (and finished eighth). Laffite won again, but these two victories proved a distraction because he’d only score points in one of the next seven races. Some weeks after this, FOCA met at Maranello and Ecclestone announced that the basics of Grand Prix racing — car specifications, safety, race regulations, discipline — would be overseen by a FOCA committee. Balestre countered that the FISA was the governing body. Battle had been joined. Villeneuve won South Africa and Long Beach from Scheckter but when Depailler (Ligier) won Spain the season opened up: Villeneuve and Depailler 20 points, Laffite and Reutemann 18, Scheckter 16, Andretti 12. Scheckter broke through in Belgium, winning from Laffite, and when he added Monaco to complete the first half of the season he had 30 points counting, Laffite 24, Villeneuve, Depailler and Reutemann 20. Hunt’s Wolf failed after four laps and as he stepped out, someone noted, he had the look of a man who wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t. The Monaco measure: Scheckter, 76 laps, Ih 55m 22.48, an average speed of 81.3mph; Depailler, 1978, 80.3mph. The measure of the decades: 1929, 49.8mph; 1937, 63.2mph; 1948, 59.7mph; 1958, 67.9mph; 1968, 77.8mph. Vehicles registered in Britain 18.6 million (1958, 14.4 million). A Ford Fiesta 957cc cost £1,856 and a Briton earned on average £89.60 a week. Saving all his money, the Briton would have taken 20 weeks to buy one (1910, 2 years 42 weeks; 1919, 1 year 28 weeks; 1929, 4] weeks; 1938, 37 weeks; 1949, 45 weeks; 1959, 36 weeks; 1969, 25 weeks ). Sweden was cancelled because of cash problems with sponsors. A Swedish oil company came forward at the last momen t to rescue it and Ecclestone announced this. Balestre pointe d out that such a reinstatement could not be a round of the World Championship or carry points unless it was approved by FISA, which couldn’t meet in time. The race didn’t happen. Jabouille won France, the first time a car with a turbo-charged engine had done this. The race, at Dijon, ought to be remembered for that but it isn’t. Instead, by lap 71 of the 80 Arnoux caught Villeneuve, second. They moved in among back-markers but with three laps left Amoux scrambled by. There was a mood of devilment on both men, an exquisite expression of physical and mental comba t, a distillation of everything pure racing cars could be made to do.

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The mood grew, with each move and counter-move, into a powerful impetus feeding off itself. In a right-hander they ran abreast, Arnoux on the inside. Into the right-left mini-complex Arnoux was through, the crowd on their feet: Renault 1-2. Arnoux crossed the line into the penultimate lap with Villeneuve directly behind him. Into the right-hander Villeneuve dived inside and locked his brakes, plumes of smoke from the Ferrari’s wheels. Now he had the inside line, Arnoux running abreast on the outside. They went through the mini-complex, Arnoux following Villeneuve across the line into the last lap. Now Arnoux probed over to the inside in the right-hander and Villeneuve twitched away from him, smoke from the wheels again. Villeneuve ran down the outside but ahead, and their wheels touched: no brake lights from either car. Into the next tight-right Villeneuve took Arnoux round the outside and they almost touched. Into the minicomplex they almost touched again and Arnoux slid wide, slid off. As he came back on the Renault swivelled to the other side of the track and

Villeneuve was through. They banged wheels. They banged wheels again in a right-hander, banged them so hard that the Renault was pitched semi-sideways. Arnoux caught the car by reflex — and the impact pushed the Ferrari wide. Arnoux was through, the Ferrari corkscrewing up the track behind him. They fled into another right. Villeneuve cut across the apex, Arnoux behind him. Arnoux crossed followed and — finally, without any sense of anti-climax — they the line in that order. Prix since Frank Williams had been competing in the British Grand who those to come 1969. He was about to prove that everything does the on Regazzoni wait. Jones took pole at Silverstone (from J abouille), pump failed, second row. Jones led the race to lap 38, when the water Jones could , passing the lead to Regazzoni who won it. Understandably r, would say: not bear to stay and Neil Oatley, Regazzoni’s enginee Frank is not one to show it was not as emotional as I thought it would be. public. I think, also, with his emotion, not even on a day like this. Not in put a bit of a dampener on Alan retiring and then leaving the circuit, that

things for Frank.”

any from Regazzoni, won A mid-season ripple of races: Jones won Germ Scheckter. Superficially that Austria from Villeneuve, won Holland from kter 44, Laffite 36, Jones 34, made the championship interesting — Schec dity of the scoring system Villeneuve 32 — but it wasn’t. Rather, the absur

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stood exposed because the instant Jones won Holland he lost all hope. Even if he won the final three races, by counting only his best four finishes in this second half he could total no more than 40. Scheckter settled it at Monza, anyway. Laffite’s engine failed on lap 42 of the 50, Scheckter leading and Villeneuve following. The only time I pushed the car after Laffite broke down was on the second last lap. I wanted to make sure that even if Gilles wanted to pass me he couldn’t. I waited, pushed as hard as I could to make sure I didn’t have to trust Gilles on the final lap. I couldn’t leave it to anybody else, I had to do it. Even if he’d wanted to pass I made sure he couldn’t.”

The tifosi, the emotional, unruly and passionate Italian supporte rs pouring their affection onto anything Ferrari, would not have believed anyone who dared to suggest that no other Ferrari driver would win the Championship until the year 2000, and the one who finally did would have no knowledge of, or great interest in, Ferrari’s history. A strange, low-key end of season: during practice in Canada Lauda suddenly decided to end his career. He got into the Brabham and suddenly it felt strange, boring, slow. He thought I don’t belong here anymore and walked away from it, as he thought, forever. Jones won from Villeneuve, and Villeneuve won a wet Watkins Glen. Jones bestrode 1980, creating, as he went, an uncom fortable legacy for all the Williams drivers to come after him. He spoke his mind if anything was wrong but otherwise just drove the car to its maximum, whatever condition it or he was in. Frank Williams liked and respected that. The roundabout: Alain Prost joined Watson at McLaren; an elegant and versatile Italian, Elio de Angelis, joined Lotus from Shadow. All grids were now staggered. Jones set the tone immediately, winning Argen tina from Piquet, now beginning his second full season. Pique t, sometimes languid and — sometimes fiery, carried natural speed with him. By 1980, he’d been competing for more than a decade, starting in karts at his hometown of Rio and in this championship he’d run Jones closer even than

Reutemann — but Arnoux won Brazil.

In February, between Brazil and South Africa, seven J apanese, a Swiss (Jabby Crombac) and a photographer (Bernard Cahier) sat in the Prince of Wales Hotel, Paris having lunch. Hond a were returning to racing and they wanted some advice. Crombac and Cahier had known them for a long time. They'd decided to develop an engine rather than build their own car, and decided it should be a Formula 2 engine. Crombac told

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them they’d better hurry because Formula 2 was ‘almost dead’ so they did hurry their engine to Jack Brabham, his designer Ron Tauranac and the RALT team. The turbos were becoming a factor, especially on fast tracks. That’s how Jabouille took pole again in South Africa, how Arnoux took the win again. At this point Arnoux led the Championship from Jones 18-13. Jones was unhappy at Kyalami because he’d been slipping back and the gearbox failed. Before he left the circuit Frank Williams sent him to the Leyland hospitality tent — Leyland a major sponsor — and Jones did the right thing, had a beer or two, chatted. A drunk came up and said something rude, then took a lunge at Jones, which was not the thing to do whatever mood Jones happened to be in. Jones ‘whacked’ him and

down he went.” In the background Prost explored Grand Prix racing in his own rational way, taking the McLaren to sixth in Argentina and fifth in Brazil but at Kyalami two car failures, one breaking his wrist, made him sceptical about the safety of the car. He missed Long Beach. Piquet led throughout from pole but on lap 51, approaching a hairpin on the 180mph straight, Regazzoni’s brakes failed on the Ensign and he went up the escape road at full speed, striking a Brabham which had broken down long before. The Ensign flipped over a barrier and the Regazzoni was trapped for 25 minutes. The crash was described at time as one of the most violent in Grand Prix history. Regazzoni never walked again. race in Didier Pironi (Ligier), a handsome Parisian, won his first Cheever, a Belgium, Jones behind him. Sometime during practice Eddie Ford and young American and resident of Italy, struggled with an Osellapit lane, the baulked Jones. When the session ended Jones came down like a peeled overall tops undone and hanging down from his waist explained and ground banana. He lifted Cheever — a strong man — off the the facts of life in the language of short, sharp words.” larger scale than By then Balestre and FOCA were at war on a much tried to say that it Jones and Cheever. After Regazzoni’s crash Balestre meant an ‘accelerated’ and others before it, including Prost’s, now as a whole, as it has programme to strengthen ‘cockpits plus the cars benefit of speed.’ This been sacrificed by certain constructors for the at McLaren who described provoked outrage, not least from Teddy Mayer nsidered and _possibly Balestre’s Press statement as ‘typically ill-co libellous.’ they discovered that In Belgium, FOCA took their revenge when race, drivers did not have to under supplementary regulations for the

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attend pre-race briefings - which would defy a ruling introduced by Balestre when he took office. The teams made sure the drivers didn’t go: Balestre fined each driver $2,000 and revoked their licences. Reutemann won Monaco from Laffite, Jones out with a blown gearbox although he disliked Monaco’s poseurs, yachts, constricted space and the ‘bloody procession’ of a race. The Monaco measure: Reutemann, 76 laps, 1h 55m 34.3s, an average speed of . 81.1mph; Scheckter, 1979, 81.3mph. In Spain the political war brought chaos. Ecclestone held a meeting with the constructors in the paddock and although, the driver fines were not discussed, the immediate reinstatement of their licences was. no reinstatement, no race. The teams divided into ‘loyalists’ — Ferrari, Renault, Alfa Romeo and Osella inclined towards FISA — and ‘rebels’ (the rest) towards FOCA. The Spanish organisers pointed out that they had a contract with FOCA and the race would go ahead. Balestre countered that a race involving unlicensed drivers could not be a round of the World Championship. Ferrari, Renault and Alfa Romeo withdrew, and Jones won the race which never was. No points were awarded, so the nine he lost were a bitter blow. Balestre was not about to interfere with the French Grand Prix and compromises were hammered out. Jones — in bellico se mood after the robbery in Spain — won it from Pironi. Standing on the podium he was surprised to see a horse being led up. The man leading it invited him to sit on it and he responded not on yer life, mate. Later, drinking a beer in the Williams motorhome, the same man came up and asked him where he wanted the horse put — Jones had no idea he had won it. (He shipped it back to Australia. ) This was the mid-point of the season. Ten best finishes out of the 14 rounds counted, five from each half. Jones 28 points, Piquet 25, Pironi and Amou x 23. Jones won Brands Hatch after the Ligie rs hit trouble and that launched him strongly into the second half, so strongly that eventually he’d have to drop his third place from the next race, Hockenheim, where Laffite won from Reutemann. An absen t friend there: Depailler had been killed testing at the circuit a week befor e. His Alfa Romeo snapped out of control in the looping, fast Ostkurve and struck the barrier. This will do nicely as an obituary: The archetypal wiry Frenchman, a cigar ette perpetually dangling from the corner of his mouth, Depailler was some thing of a free spirit — a throwback to an earlier age, who lived for the moment and raced accordingly.’

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In Austria, an Englishman made his debut at the very back of the grid. Nigel Mansell saw his whole career in terms of struggle and that continued here. Driving a third Lotus the car wasn’t right and he switched to that of de Angelis, and just made it. As the mechanics topped his car on the grid some petrol spilt and began burning him. Jones consolidated his championship position in the race by running second — the turbo power enabled Jabouille to get past him so easily it the seemed, as Jones said himself, as if he’d parked the Williams — while Mansell and 41 lap on petrol burnt Mansell mercilessly. The car failed

could barely walk away from it. as Six days later Alfred Neubauer, who'll always be remembered w withdre s Mercedes’ team manager, died. He'd retired when Mercede from racing at the end of 1955. d by Piquet struck back in Holland where Jones was openly irritate race, the finish people saying hello champ! Jones knew that if he didn’t or rather did and Piquet won it, everything changed. Jones didn’t finish, on the skirts the but three laps down after going off and damaging

Williams. the only time the Piquet maintained the pressure by winning Imola, 1981, it was the San Italian Grand Prix would be held there (from was satisfied. Marino Grand Prix) but Jones came in second and Canada and the races, Jones knew the combinations for the final two t immediately. Piquet took United States, but they became irrelevant almos

started they touched. pole, Jones alongside, in Canada, but as the race wall.’ Piquet’s elbow had ‘Alan,’ Piquet would say, ‘pushed me into the restart in the spare car. been badly bruised and he’d have to take the the engine blew. ‘One when He seized the lead and held it until lap 24 ’ Brabham realised that only minute it was perfect, the next it went bang. t’s championship alive by Pironi, running second, could keep Pique matter that Pironi, in a Ligier, catching and overtaking Jones. It didn’t hanging out a pit board to had nothing to do with it. Brabham began him with $ signs on it... i was penalised a minute for Just then an announcement said Piron removed him from the equation. jumping the start, and that of course sarily buy that on the strength of After such a season, Jones didn’t neces him. He raced on and only when the the pit signal Williams hung out to time — and he glimpsed Frank sign had been hung out for the third Williams nodding — did he relent. a man, and as the racer Williams Typically, he won Watkins Glen. As y race everywhere except, perhaps, treasured, that’s what you did, ever re World Champion. when you’ve had the nod that you'

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In 1981, Prost left McLaren and joined Renault, which meant breaking his contract. His confidence in the McLaren had finally been destroyed at Watkins Glen when the suspension failed. He was knocked out by the crash, withdrew from the race, packed his belongings and departed slamming the door behind him. He made clear to Mayer that if McLaren tried to hold him he’d leave the sport altogether. Andrea de Cesaris, an Italian known to be wild but with powerful sponsorship connections, replaced Prost. Something else was moving, and had been since around 1980. At the insistence of Marlboro, McLaren were to become a blending of the original team and ‘the ambitious, less experienced but highly talented Project Four team trio of Ron Dennis, Creighton Brown and engineer Barnard.’ Dennis, formerly a mechanic, was a gifted and meticulous organiser, John Barnard one of the greatest designers. Project Four served its apprenticeship in the lower formulae and was ready for something bigger. Mayer remained as joint managing director for a year. Barnard introduced carbon-fibre moulded monocoques to Grand Prix racing. That is a semi-technical way of saying that carbon composites — put together in layers to give a material which was light, flexible and stronger than steel — changed everything. Initiall y, John Watson entertained doubts about just how strong it would be in an accident, and he’d get proof in the most direct way at Monza where he survived a crash of enormous impact. Scheckter retired and Pironi replaced him at Ferrari . Like a theme moving sporadically from background to foreground the power struggle between Balestre and FOCA continued. Balestre threatened that FISA would take over start and prize money, and Ecclestone threatened to set up a World Federa tion of Motor Sports to run the whole thing. Colin Chapman even wrote the Technical Regulations and explained: Formula 1 should be the pinnacle of motor racing. It should have the minimum of parameters controlling perfo rmance. There are only four parameters which control a racing car; one is the power from the engine; the second is the aerodynamical downl oad it can produce; the third is the amount of grip which can be obtained by the tyres and the fourth is the weight. Then there should be some second category of regulations concerning the passive safety of the cars in the event of an accident. I think this should be controlled by some form of crash test rather than by myriads of little regulations which, in themselves , very rarely produce the objectives they were set up to achieve.”

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There was also a lively controversy over skirts. Balestre wanted them banned because they were making cars too fast for the circuits. The faster a car went, the more the air forced under it — directed by the skirts rather than dissipated — gave adhesion. An intrinsic problem was that if a skirt broke and adhesion was lost the car could be launched like an aeroplane. Drivers’ necks took tremendous strain in corners with the Gforces pulling the head; the G-forces were so extreme that drivers found their feet being forced away from the pedals. FOCA wanted skirts retained because the cars would have to be redesigned and, to achieve the same performance, fortunes would have to be spent on more powerful engines. Balestre wanted new rules increasing the minimum weight of the cars ~ which suited Renault, who already had a heavy car — but would compel the other teams to have turbos themselves requiring daunting, perhaps fatal, amounts of money. Far in the background, a thin, shy young man flew from Sao Paulo to London and then caught a train to Norwich station. He was met and taken for lunch at a hotel in the pleasant country town of Attleborough. There, Ayrton Senna da Silva talked terms with Ralph Firman, who ran van Diemen. They made 1,600cc cars, which was where youngsters began. For a karter who'd not yet even driven a racing car, da Silva drove a hard bargain. He’d been recommended to Firman by another Brazilian, for Chico Serra, and now he’d come. Firman and da Silva agreed a deal and the season and soon after Senna did get in a car. Firman watched thought there’s something about this young man. Firman was not wrong. February The championship ought to have opened at Kyalami in early won mann (Reute but only the FOCA teams went. They ran with skirts a | faced an from Piquet) and FISA wouldn't recognise the race. Formul

abyss. ening to withdraw The future was now very grim. Sponsors were threat hand to mouth, from their support and the smaller teams were living very existence was now in dependent on start money to pay wages. Their war and initiated talks jeopardy. Finally, FOCA realised they had lost the with FISA.

re was not in a very This was well-timed, because Jean-Marie Balest members were feeling the strong position either. He knew that the FOCA the first two or three GPs pinch and his strategy should have been to cancel out for mercy. However, it just so of the season and really have them crying (after the South African fiasco) happened that the first championship race

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was scheduled to be [...] Long Beach. The American market was, of course, very important to Renault [...] When they realised that the race at Long

Beach might not take place, Renault panicked and spread the word that, ‘with or without Balestre, we shall be in Long Beach.’

Only ten days before the race a ‘Concorde Agreement’ was hammered out to bring peace — but skirts were banned. The teams, who had already had to rebuild their cars when Chapman first introduced skirts, now faced having to do it again just two years later. The ban, too, was of crucial importance to Chapman who had a new Lotus, the 86, built and tested in absolute secrecy. It involved twin chassis, a simple idea, however complex in realisation: one chassis absorbed the shocks coming up off the track surface at high speed, leaving the other to cushion the driver. These had to be modified and the car was renumbered the 88. Ferrari became the second team to run turbo engines. This was the future and soon enough any team without a turbo faced a crippling disadvantage. The eleven best finishes of the 15 rounds counted and initially Williams looked very strong. Jones won Long Beach from Reutemann, while Chapman’s Lotus 88 was black flagged in practice — Frank Williams said he’d withdraw his cars if it was passed legal. Reutemann won Brazil from Jones. Between these two races, Mike Hailwood was killed in a car crash. He’d been taking his children to buy fish ‘n’ chips and a lorry did an illegal u-turn in front of him. He and his daughter died, his son survived. Like Gunnar Nilsson in another context, there is almost too much irony and pathos to bear. Chapman, incandescent at the Lotus 88 ban in Argentina — the third race in a row — departed even before practice leaving a savage statement about ‘cleaning up’ Formula 1 before the sport ended up ‘a quagmire of plagiarism, chicanery and petty rule interpretations forced by lobbies manipulated by people for whom the word sport has no meaning.’ The race prised the whole season open. Jones made one of the best starts of his career. Piquet, almost sublimely fast here, swept imperiously by and, to a great roar, Reutemann went past Jones into second place. Piquet won San Marino at Imola, the Lotus 88 was banned by the FIA Court of Appeal but so late that Chapman could not modify cars in time. The race provided an historical footnote as the first without a Lotus since 1958 when Graham Hill made his debut against such as Moss and Hawthorn at Monaco, and Ecclestone and Chiron hadn’t qualified . Brabham tested BMW turbos.

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On the Friday afternoon at Zolder,

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a mechanic with the Osella team

fell off the ledge along the pit wall just as Reutemann travelled slowly by. The mechanic was pitched against the wall and taken to hospital in critical condition. He died three days later. Reutemann, distraught, was able to compose himself enough to win the race from Laffite, and led the championship from Piquet 34—22, Jones third on 18. At Monaco Piquet led to lap 54 but crashed at Tabac, Jones led by 12 seconds with seven laps to go and Villeneuve circled, hungry, a long way

back. Then... on lap 67 Jones pulled into the pits, where fuel vaporization was diagnosed and he was sent out again with the problem unremedied. Gilles was now just six seconds behind him and began to lessen the interval, pushing ever harder and sending the attendant horde of Villeneuve fans into hysterics of screaming lungs, hooting air horns, wailing yacht sirens, and waving flags and banners. There was an explosion of joy as the Ferrari passed the Williams in front of the pits on lap 72 and an even greater one when Gilles acknowledged the chequered flag on the 76th lap.”

of The Monaco measure: Villeneuve, 76 laps, 1h 54m 23.38, an average speed 82.0mph; Reutemann, 1980, 81.1mph. that Jones led Spain but locked his brakes and went off, and from in front of a moment Villeneuve held the cumbersome, unwieldy Ferrari ve’s tyres Villeneu train of cars variously attacking him and each other. tly stabbed were going off. That made no difference. Reutemann constan came up into the Williams towards him. That made no difference. Laffite made no That second, thrust the Ligier alongside whenever he could. the circuit’s 16 difference. Villeneuve manipulated the Ferrari through lap, maintaining comers, squeezed its power on the straights lap after line, as he was composure and concentration. He followed the racing experienced observers perfectly entitled to do, and afterwards even that car. Crossing the mumbled in disbelief about controlling a race in finishing line: Villeneuve

lh 46m 35.1s

Laffite

@ 0.21s

Watson.

@ 0.578

Reutemann

@ 1.00

Prix at Dijon after 58 laps and A cloudburst stopped the French Grand t forced a path past him and when it restarted Prost led. Watson almos

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then Prost settled, hoping his slick tyres would survive the final 22 laps. They did. He became the fifth race winner of the season but, more . important, described this first career victory as a ‘passport to the future.” He explained in his precise, thoughtful way the psychology: how it’s a liberation from ‘all the inhibitions and complexes’ a driver must have on the way to it, how the instant you cross the line you’ve proved to yourself you’re the equal of the others. Chapman presented a revised version of the 88 at the British Grand Prix. The RAC Technical Commission, scrutineers for the race, earlier declared it legal. Balestre reacted by saying that, if it ran, the race would forfeit its championship status. The RAC reacted to that by saying it was running the Grand Prix. Balestre prevailed and Lotus had to run their 87 car. Watson won and years later would bask in the memory of the end when he could hear the vast crowd roaring their delight and suddenly realised it was for him. Piquet won Germany, Laffite won Austria watched by Niki Lauda, commenting on Austrian television. Since his retirement Lauda worked on establishing an airline and didn’t always watch races on his own television. If he did he felt nervous about crashes at the first corner. Like Caracciola so long ago in Monaco, coming back to the smells and sounds of racing exercised a powerful effect. Lauda felt a ‘tingling’ sensation and wasn’t even nervous watching the wolf pack get to the first corner. Afterwards he went to see fitness guru Willy Dungl, made vague noises about the racing, and went on a regime to get fit. Reutemann 45 points, Piquet 39, Laffite 34, Jones 27. Prost led Holland, Jones chasing him. It moved Prost to describe Jones as the ‘most fiery, the most powerful — I would even go so far as to say violent — driver that year.’ Prost felt Jones coming by on lap 23 but thought: the driver doing that often thinks he has damaged your morale. His concentration can be affected. Into the Tarzan horseshoe Prost drew alongside and retook Jones who, Prost felt, was so surprised he didn’t respond. It settled the race. Monza finished Prost-Jones, too, Ron Dennis, becoming dominant at McLaren, kept in touch with Lauda and they talked during this Italian Grand Prix. Lauda explained to Dennis that something was gnawing at him: Lauda did not want to know if he should make a comeback, he needed to know if he was capable of it. Three days later Lauda went to Donington for a secret test in the McLaren, Dennis supervising, Watson helping to set the car up. Much had changed, wings, ground effect, cornering speeds. Lauda was shocked that he couldn’t drive three laps together becaus e they required

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such extreme effort. Later in the day he did a couple of laps within a tenth of Watson and he knew the speed was still there. Lauda went to Marlboro and asked for more money than any driver had ever been paid before. It provoked a ‘deathly silence’ and then they said yes, albeit offering a contract with get-out clauses in case Lauda proved an embarrassing failure. Laffite won Canada from Watson. It made the finale, in a car park at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, a mathematical morass trapping Reutemann (49 points), Piquet (48) and Laffite (43). The possible point totals:

Reutemann

Ist

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

56

TDD

53

52

51

50

|S24

ST

30.

49

Piquet

S74

Laffite

5)

AO ne e47

TAGES:

6th

= 44

There was a possibility, however remote, that all three could finish on 52 and then Laffite won on the tie-break: he and Piquet would have the same number of wins but Laffite more second places. If Piquet didn’t score, and Reutemann and Laffite finished on 49, Laffite got it again, on most third places. Jones was eloquent about the circuit. ‘It’s like a goat track dragged pole from down from the mountains and flattened out.’ Reutemann took a crisp, Jones, Piquet on the second row, Laffite on the sixth. Jones made were They didn’t. decisive start but Reutemann didn’t and Piquet and took him. running fifth and seventh. Piquet caught Reutemann , jumping Nobody knew that the Williams was having a gearbox problem he hadn’t that or out of fourth as the car rode the bumps on the circuit, had time to bed in new brakes properly. exhausted. He was Piquet, neck sore after a practice crash, already felt anything like the 75 a slender, almost wan, man and looked too frail for but that only made him laps. With seven left Laffite got past Reutemann down, Piquet forcing seventh, Reutemann eighth. Both were a lap He had to be lifted from himself forward in fifth place. It was enough. the car and on the podium was close to tears. Reutemann. ‘Let's,’ Alan Jones, about to retire, did not like Carlos hatchet’ to which Jones Reutemann said after the race, ‘bury the responded ‘yes, in your back.’ and each of the 16 rounds Like 1976, the 1982 season was complicated

like a detonation. Williams of his decision to The roundabout: Jones informed Frank finding a top replacement for retire at Monza, so late in the season that

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1982 was now virtually impossible. Williams scanned the horizon and there glimpsed one Keijo Rosberg, a heavy-smoking Finn who'd driven 36 Grands Prix since 1978 for a variety of lowly teams and scored points only twice. To sign him might transport Williams back to the rent-adriver days but at this stage Williams had to take what he could get and he could certainly get Rosberg. The team tested him at Paul Ricard, got him in the car at eight one morning, shod it with qualifying tyres, didn’t warm it up and said now show us what you can do. He did. Patrese joined Piquet at Brabham. South Africa, 23 January. The turbos had come, Renault, BrabhamBMW, Ferrari and a young, small, homely team called Toleman running a Brian Hart engine. That wasn’t the story. FISA worded the drivers’ application for super-licences — which they had to have to compete — so that the driver was bound to his team. Lauda got his and saw all the dangers. He rang Pironi, President of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, and said the drivers should come together to resist it. For once Balestre and Ecclestone were on the same side. The drivers, Lauda saw, had a choice: accept or go to hell. They went on strike. Thursday: 30 drivers meet at the circuit entrance and board a coach to the Sunnyside Hotel, Johannesburg. ‘Drivers’ wives throw rolls and crockery at Balestre during dinner at the Kyalami Ranch,’” where the drivers usually stayed and would have been if they hadn’t gone to Johannesburg. Lauda remembered that the buoyant mood lasted through dinner at their hotel and then the manager was asked for a room big enough to take all the drivers. Lauda knew that if they had individual rooms the united front would be breached by morning. The drivers got a small suite used for banquets — a piano but no toilet. Sheets were laid on the floor. Lauda remembered, too, that Mo Nunn, who ran the Ensign team, cunningly brought Roberto Guerrero’s girlfriend. The love birds gazed at each other through the glass door, both crying. Lauda said: ‘OK, you can go out to talk to her — but I’m coming.’ The love birds whispered ‘sweet nothings’ and Guerrero said: ‘I’m not going back in.’ Lauda replied: ‘Oh yes you are — and she can come in as well.’ Villeneuve played the piano (many drivers were astonished that he could play it at all, never mind this well) and de Angeli s played it, too. There’s a brief film of him playing a piano — not here during the strike, but that doesn’t matter — and it seems to have come to him effortlessly. Lauda remembered the man running the Arrows team, Jackie Oliver, arriving with a heavy minder and the police in an attemp t to gain entry.

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Lauda understood that if there was any sort of brawling the police would legitimately be able to use force so a tug o’ war developed, with Oliver's army pushing one side of the door and Lauda’s lieutenants pushing the other. Master tactician Lauda then used the piano to block the door.” Friday: Negotiations go on from 8.30 in the morning. Teo Fabi of Toleman goes to the circuit prepared to drive. Jochen Mass (March), who hadn't joined the strike, does three laps and returns to the pits amid

great applause. Pironi rings Lauda from the circuit and Lauda tells the drivers ‘We've got what we wanted.’ Drivers return to circuit and practice begins — only, now, one session. The race was on next day, the Saturday. Arnoux took pole from Piquet but Prost won. He was leading but a tyre blew and he pitted, changed all four tyres, emerged eighth. The new tyres enabled him to drive so aggressively that 23 laps later he was in the lead again. He’d demonstrated, as he said himself, that if your pit crew was good enough and your car was good enough you could win from a pit stop — something Ecclestone and Murray at Brabham noticed.

Brazil, 21 March. Villeneuve led but under attack from Piquet went off into the guard-rail. Piquet won but was so exhausted he collapsed on the and podium, Rosberg — second — virtually holding him up. Ferrari minimum Renault protested the Brabham and Williams under the loose rly weight rule which gave rise to gamesmanship. Prost was particula cars ally theoretic — ploy’ incensed by what he called the ‘water-container water was carried water to cool the brakes. When a race began the after the race, emptied so the cars ran 30-40kg [66-88lb] lighter and, its pre-race to returned were allowed to top up the water, so the car and Rosberg weight. The protests were later upheld, disqualifying Piquet was at war sport ‘The it. about — and Mr Rosberg expressing bitterness again and I was disgusted.”

nly announced his United States West, 4 April. Reutemann sudde in for this one race. De retirement, and Williams brought Mario Andretti race but was baulked Cesaris (Alfa Romeo) took pole from Lauda, led the back marker and Lauda by a backmarker. De Cesaris shook his fist at this with that hand now. Lauda saw that, and thought he should be changing gear the last lap Lauda shouted went by, keeping well clear of de Cesaris. In f don’t be stupid, don’t got and whistled in his delight then said to himsel s away. into the wall. Rosberg came second 14 second

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San Marino, 25 April. Ten FOCA teams did not go to Imola because of Piquet and Rosberg’s disqualifications. Tyrrell did, joining 12 other cars. Arnoux led from pole but his engine failed after 44 laps of the 60. Villeneuve led, Pironi behind him and the Ferrari team held out a SLOW sign which traditionally meant hold station, run to the end in that order. Villeneuve and Pironi put on a demonstration — or at least Villeneuve imagined they were — using the Ferraris to entertain the Italian crowd because for the final few laps only five cars remained. They swopped the lead to and fro, to and fro and Villeneuve assumed Pironi would tuck in behind before the end. Villeneuve had been leading at the SLOW sign and led again. He slowed and Pironi chopped him, won it. Villeneuve never spoke to him again.

Belgium, 9 May. With some 15 minutes of second qualifying left the Ferrari pit signalled Villeneuve in. He’d done three quick laps and his tyres were finished. Some drivers might have backed off completely, coasted round. Villeneuve didn’t. He moved into the kink at a place called Terlamenbocht round at the back of the circuit. He came upon Jochen Mass travelling slowly. Mass saw Villeneuve and assumed he’d go by on the left. Mass shifted his March over to the right. In an instant he saw Villeneuve virtually on top of him. The Ferrari was pitched into the air and landed tearing itself to pieces in a series of savage cartwheels and impacts. Villeneuve, in his seat, was torn out and flung fifty yards. No man could have survived it and, for many people, Formula 1 would never be the same again. Villeneuve, open, almost naive, totally natural in a racing car once said that that was the only place where he felt truly alive. Arnoux led the race but Rosberg took him on lap five to lead a Grand Prix for the first time. Watson worked his Way up to second and Rosberg, tyres badly worn, tried to get past a backmarker to hold Watson off, went wide and Watson was through.

Monaco, 23 May. Towards the end drizzle fell. Prost led but with three laps to go the Renault suddenly flicked sideways into the guardrail, passing the lead to... Patrese who lost control and the Brabham stalled beside the Loews Hotel, passing the lead to... Pironi whose slick tyres glistening as they lapped at the wet track. Into the tunnel on the last lap the Ferrari slowed, stammered, stopped. Its electrics had failed, passing the lead to...

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De Cesaris but the Alfa Romeo stopped out of fuel and de Cesaris stood nearby tears coursing down his face. Through his tears he passed the lead to... Derek Daly in the second Williams who led but was stopping, crippled by a crash a couple of laps before, passing the lead back to... Patrese who'd had had a push, his car in a dangerous position, and now came round unaware — like the man with the flag and the crowd — that he was about to win. Even after the race it took some time for the

Brabham team to convince him he had. The Monaco measure: Patrese, 76 laps, 1h 54m 11.2s, an average speed of 82.1mph; Villeneuve, 1981, 82.0mph.

United States, 6 June. Detroit, the home of the US automotive industry, seemed a logical place to have a Grand Prix but the reality proved quite different, a geometrical 2.4-mile circuit of streets, perfect 90° corners, concrete blocks, bumps and manhole covers. Initially the track wasn’t ready and the drivers hung around bored until it was. Prost, lap who disliked the place, took pole from de Cesaris. Some crashing on up way his worked 13th, seven stopped it and from the restart Watson, patience, to the lead. It was a consummate display drawing together precision and the nerve to strike. Watson 26 points, Pironi 20, Prost 18, Rosberg 17.

sobbing. We all Canada, 13 June. Pironi took pole and broke down into Pironi stalled here. know, he said, who would have been on pole if he had been weaved past but at the start and the cars immediately behind o Paletti — in third accelerating at full bore the Osella of rookie Riccard Osella burst into gear, doing 120mph — ran full into the Ferrari. The did what they could. flames and many brave men, Pironi among them, ly pronounced official was It took 28 minutes to get Paletti out and he Piquet won a joyless dead in hospital from extensive internal injuries. victory from Patrese and Watson.

nt in practice when the Holland, 3 July. Arnoux had a terrifying mome braking for the Tarzan Renault’s left front wheel came off under r, riding up it. Arnoux was horseshoe and the car thumped a tyre barrie second and Rosberg third. unhurt. Pironi dominated the race, Piquet Watson 30, Pironi 29, Rosberg 21. rg and all the non-turbo runners Britain, 18 July. The problem for Rosbe s the turbos delivered too much had by now become plain: on fast track

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power. The non-turbos might hold them at a place like Brands Hatch and Rosberg took pole, the first of his career. He had a good feeling but the Williams wouldn’t start for the parade lap and when it did he took his place at the back of the grid. Brabham had been preparing the ‘Prost ploy’ from South Africa: would they bring Piquet in during the race for new tyres? Nobody found out because although he led a mechanical problem halted him and Lauda stroked the McLaren home, Pironi second and leading the championship. France, 25 July. The French Grand Prix was always the centre-piece of any French team’s efforts, especially for Renault — dispensing tax payer’s money — so when Arnoux took pole from Prost great joy consumed the land although Prost lay joint fifth in the championship (19 points) and Arnoux joint 16th (4). The team boss, Gérard Larrousse, said before the race that if Arnoux led he should move aside and give it to Prost in the interests of the championship. On lap 11 Mass and another car touched, Mass airborne across some catch fencing, a tyre wall and then through a further fence near the spectator area. Nobody was hurt. From lap 24 to the end, lap 54, Arnoux led with Prost behind him. The Renault team repeatedly signalled to Arnoux but he wasn’t having any of that. He’d say later that if it had been for the championship itself he might have considered helping Prost, and he might not. Arnoux won from Prost by 17 seconds. Prost has recounted how, driving home, he stopped to fill up the car and the attendant mistook him for Arnoux. The attendant congratulated him and said that Prost had it coming to him.* Germany, 8 August. In a wet Saturday morning untimed session as he approached the Stadium complex Pironi came up to Daly, who was catching Prost. Daly overtook Prost by moving to the right. Through the spray Pironi assumed Daly did this to allow him through. Pironi couldn't see Prost within the spray and struck the Renault, the Ferrari flung into the air. When it came to rest Pironi sat trapped inside it, one leg terribly damaged and his Grand Prix career over. Tambay won the race, although not before Piquet — who intended to adopt the ‘Prost ploy’ — crashed with a Colombian, Eliseo Salazar. Piquet sprang out, tried to kick Salazar in a very delicate place and then punched his face. Not a problem, Salazar would say, I had my crash helmet on and like that he can punch me all day Pironi 39,Watson 30, Rosberg 27, Prost 25, Lauda 24.

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Austria, 15 August. Everything up to the final five laps — Piquet’s pole, the three leaders who dropped out, Patrese finally using ‘Prost’s ploy’ (24 gallons and new tyres in 15.6 seconds stationary) — served as a prelude. Now round the immense loops and descents of the Osterreichring the black and gold Lotus of de Angelis held off the muscular Williams which Rosberg kept thrusting closer and closer to him. On the rush to the final corner, the carving downhill right, Rosberg mentally hesitated. Ordinarily he’d have gone to the inside, onto the kerbing, onto the grass but now he was thinking of the championship, and if de Angelis didn’t give him room... De Angelis went inside, forcing Rosberg to the outside — the long way round. Rosberg tucked in behind and now they rushed towards the line. Rosberg twisted the Williams out, gunning it as hard as it would go. He lost it by 0.050 of a second and there on the rim of the track stood Chapman and the black cap. It hadn’t been in orbit since Holland, 1978, would be in just a moment and never would be again. Pironi 39, Rosberg 33, Watson 30, Lauda 26. Switzerland, 29 August. Rosberg thought the Dijon circuit might suit a non-turbo car although the turbos dominated qualifying. In the race Rosberg hustled up to third but de Cesaris, a lap down, wouldn’t let him through for a long time. Rosberg came as near to losing control of himself in a race as he had ever done. At 170mph on the straight Rosberg ‘banged him with my front wheel on his sideboards.’ Eventually de Cesaris made a mistake, and Rosberg caught and overtook Arnoux. He moved on Prost and three laps from the end got him when Prost went wide. This was Rosberg’s first win but he didn’t care so much about that.

He had eager eyes on the championship. Rosberg 42, Pironi now out of it on 39, Prost 31, Watson and Lauda 30.

Italy, 12 September. Mario Andretti flew over to take the second Ferrari and put it on pole which lifted Monza to a magnificent frenzy, even by Monza’s own tradition of frenzies. Rosberg on the fourth row kept a wary eye on Prost directly in front of him, Lauda on the row behind him and Watson on the row behind that. A drivers’ eleven best finishes of the 16 rounds counted but by a curiosity that didn’t affect any of the front-runners. Monza was a turbo track so Watson, Lauda and Rosberg were looking for salvage — Rosberg predicted he’d be seventh. a Lauda suffered handling and brake problems and retired, Rosberg lost behind fourth wing and repairs meant he finished eighth. Watson came the turbos of Arnoux, Tambay and Andretti. He sat in the McLaren

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motorhome and said life wasn’t easy when the others had so many more horses. Rosberg 42, Watson 33, Prost 31, Lauda 30.

Caesars Palace Grand Prix, 25 September. Lauda, third at Zolder, was disqualified because the McLaren had a weight infringement but an appeal about that was due. If Lauda got the points back he’d be on 34. Rosberg needed to be fifth for the championship: that took him beyond Watson’s reach and, even with the points reinstated, Lauda couldn’t reach Rosberg either. Rosberg qualified sixth, Watson ninth, Lauda 13th. Ron Dennis asked Lauda to help Watson if possible, and Watson feels Lauda wasn’t impressed by that. Watson thrived on street circuits and by character was more comfortable coming up through the field. A phrase followed him around: burn from the stern. He burnt the car park and by lap 20 lay third, Rosberg sixth. Watson’s tyres had picked up rubber from the surface of the track and were going out of balance. Prost had the same problem and young Michele Alboreto in the Tyrrell went past him. Watson did, too. Rosberg was fifth... He brought the Williams round the loop onto the start-finish straight a last time and it flickered across the empty white bays of the grid. He took it out into the bleached, level, geometrical looping which went on and on — corners with numbers but no names. As he positioned it on the rim of the track to the right, poised to turn through the first loop, Alboreto approached the finishing line behind him. That didn’t matter. He turned through the next loop, a right, positioning the Williams close to red and white kerbing. Behind that three marshals in virgin white watched immobile. He ran alongside a low concrete wall, the car absolutely in his control. He ducked it over to another wall for the next loop, a left. Here and there the car skittered because the track surface wasn’t perfectly level, but that didn’t affect his control. He ran dwarfed by the backdrop, the cluster of skyscrapers and far beyond them low, barren mountains. Into the second to last loop his helmet buck-bounced, buck-bounced — the track surface again. Through the final loop he flickered over the empty bays again, a man waved the chequered flag as if he was a bullfighter with a cape — as theatrical as that — and both Rosberg’s arms were out of the cockpit, went back to the wheel fast to get the car through the first loop, then the right arm was out, fist brandished in triumph. Once the niceties were over, Rosberg concentrated his combative mind on capitalising on the World Championship. Forgiv e him. This time the year before, he’d been a nobody going nowhere.

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In December Colin Chapman died of a heart attack. It’s always tempting to attach eras, or rather the end of them, to such moments. In this case a convincing case could be constructed, not just on grounds of longevity or success but in constant innovation which sometimes drove the whole sport forward at Chapman's pace. Amoux joined Ferrari for 1983, Cheever replacing him at Renault. The driver they’d have to catch was Piquet armed with Gordon Murray’s latest Brabham shaped like a dart. The design was so radical that at the first race — Brazil, at Rio — Murray wandered down the pit lane gazing at what the others had done and thought have I gone too far this time? Rosberg took pole and led, running on half tanks — he’d be pitting. During it there was a flash fire, Rosberg sprang out, the fire was extinguished, he sprang in and continued but the car had to be pushstarted. Piquet won it and Rosberg, second, disqualified for the push. At Long Beach, Watson qualified 22nd and Lauda 23rd almost four seconds from Tambay’s pole time. McLaren were having a nightmare trying to set the cars up properly. For the race Watson went for a compromise tyre choice, like he’d used at Detroit the year before; Lauda went for Michelin’s latest compound. The talk was not of that but Alan Jones, persuaded to drive an Arrows and now, so the rumour went, of such girth that they had to take the seat out and he sat on the chassis. The talk had also been of subsidence on the straight causing the cars to leave the ground. That was filled with quick-dry concrete overnight. The race unfolded in two dimensions: a lot of crashing and retiring at the front — by lap 30, ten cars out — and Watson and Lauda running competitive lap-times. Imperceptibly they worked their path up and by that lap 30 Lauda was third, Watson fourth. Three laps later Watson overtook Lauda with pace and precision. Ahead lay Laffite, leading, and Patrese trying to pressure him but Patrese missed a braking point and went off up an escape road. Watson didn’t see this and when he overtook Laffite was unaware he’d also taken the lead. Lauda finished second behind him. Prost won France from Piquet. Rolf Stommelen, who’d last driven a Grand Prix in 1978, continued his career in sports and GT cars. At Riverside, California he crashed fatally in an IMSA race.”® Patrese ought to have won Imola. On lap 52 of the 60 he went past Tambay’s Ferrari for the lead, something greeted by silence in the crowd, enslaved by the Ferrari legend. Patrese was experiencing the opposite reaction: an Italian, he was going to win a Grand Prix in Italy. It proved too emotional for him and he went off, which was not greeted by silence

in the crowd. Tambay won it from Prost.

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Rosberg was brilliant round Monaco, taking Prost for the lead on lap two and never losing it. The Monaco measure: Rosberg, 76 laps, 1h 56m 38.1s, an average speed of 80.4mph; Patrese, 1982, 82.lmph. After 13 years Grand Prix racing went back to Spa and Grand Prix racing got as emotional as it ever gets about that. The old Spa, the 8.7mile ribbon of unprotected road, had been unthinkable for a generation. Of the 17 drivers on the 1970 grid none was anywhere near still being a Grand Prix driver and Rindt, Ignazio Guinti, Rodriguez, Peterson, Siffert and Courage, now Stommelen were dead. The new Spa, 4.3 miles, kept the soul of the old, especially La Source hairpin and the majestic uphill sweep of Eau Rouge. Here, the drivers of 1983 were living again what their forefathers had known — the geography of challenge as well as the technology of it. Prost took pole from Tambay and won it — from Tambay. Tyrrell still ran the trusty Cosworth engines and Detroit still repaid that if you survived the concrete walls for 60 laps and 150 miles. Alboreto, an elfin man with a sun-kissed smile, did that, winning it from Rosberg and (inevitably) Watson. The Tyrrell team continued until 1998 and never won another race. From the forefront of Grand Prix racing in the late 1960s they had from about 1976 drifted into the shadows while remaining part of the fabric of the sport. Grand Prix racing was always as much about the cars at the back of the grid, in their comparative anonymity, as the front-runners because without the lowly there is no way to measure the mighty. Perhaps the Tyrrell team should be a symbol for the fabric itself, a symbol of all those — teams, drivers, everybody else — who loved and won, and then kept on loving when they were losing. Armoux dominated Canada. Prost 30 points, Piquet and Tambay 27, Rosberg 25, Arnoux 17. Amoux took pole at Silverstone while, on the seventh row, a new car and a new driver were introducing a new era. Honda had enjoyed consistent success in Formula 2 and now supplied a group of bright youngsters called Spirit, founded by John Wickham and Gordon Coppuck. Honda produced a Formula 1 turbo engine and Spirit took it into Grand Prix racing with the Swede Stefan J ohanss on driving it. The engine made, Johansson would say, a truly glorious sound. Two Ferraris on the front row, Prost next and he felt if he could push them hard their Goodyear tyres might not last but his Michelins would. The Ferraris led but Prost clung even as they waltzed so elegantly through the chicane before the pit lane straight. The Spirit broke, a fuel pump problem after five laps. Prost hunted down Amoux ‘and took him,

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slicing through on the inside at Copse; hunted down Tambay and took him, slicing down the inside at Copse. They called Prost The Professor and he habitually proved the’adage that thinking is the best way to travel. Amoux dominated Germany and Piquet ought to have been second but, with three laps to run, the car caught fire. He parked it on the grass and was already half way out when it rolled to a halt. Prost 42, Piquet 33, Tambay 31, Arnoux 28. Rosberg clung on with 25 but you had to have a turbo. Williams and his designer Patrick Head gazed carefully at Spirit and their Honda. The Williams team tested Ayrton Senna at Donington. He’d shown rarest, almost bewildering ability in Formula Ford 1600 and in Formula Ford 2000. Now in Formula 3 his head-to-head with the young Norfolk lad Martin Brundle reached a level of intensity attracting national attention. Senna hadn’t handled a Formula 1 car and Frank Williams was happy to give him the chance. Senna went so fast on the Club circuit that Williams thought he might have frightened himself a bit. What Frank Williams did not think was I must sign this man immediately Prost won Austria from Arnoux, Piquet third. Prost was looking like the first French World Champion but in Holland he made a mistake: such a rarity it became a collector’s piece. Piquet led and Prost knew his Renault could not stay with the Brabham on the straights but was more nimble in the corners. That made overtaking elusive and, Prost concluded, I have to catch him off-guard. Prost hustled, probing, feinting. Into the Tarzan horseshoe he went into clear space on the inside but the Renault twitched across into Piquet. Arnoux won it from Tambay. McLaren brought a new car and a TAG” turbo engine at Zandvoort for Lauda. It was by now the only thing to do. Prost went to the Italian Grand Prix with the two Ferraris directly behind him in the championship. Before it he received kidnap threats and Renault hired the French President’s bodyguards — men who looked like Alps — to protect him at Monza. When word of that leaked, the Tifosi hated Prost even more. Somehow for Prost the mood was wrong and the turbo failed after 26 laps, leaving the win to Piquet from Arnoux. Prost 51, Arnoux 49, Piquet 46, Tambay 40. De Angelis put the Lotus-Renault turbo on pole, Mansell third, for round 14, called the European Grand Prix, at Brands Hatch. They'd been team-mates since 1980, although by character and taste completely different men. When Chapman died Peter Warr came into an uneasy inheritance but was poised to sign a leading designer, Gérard Ducarouge,

and make Lotus front-runners again.

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Piquet won the race from Prost with Mansell third. Arnoux and Tambay both had problems. With only South Africa left, that took Tambay out of the championship and left Arnoux’s chances problematical. In one sense Piquet, Prost and Arnoux faced a simplicity, to win at Kyalami. The gathering began on Wednesday (a Saturday race, as usual). That day: Prost sat surrounded by Renault people locked into what was obviously deep conversation. He seemed vulnerable, still looked haunted. Only the day before he'd tried to relax by playing golf, a favourite pastime, but so many journalists and camera crews tracked him that he’d been forced to abandon it. Now he sat and Jean Sage [senior Renault team member] said: ‘Please don’t go near him. He bites people at the moment.’ Prost gazed through glazed eyes and murmured, ‘I’m OK.’ Pause. ‘I’m confident.’ He

looked anything but that. ‘I think we are quicker than they are on the twisty sections.’ End of interview. A couple of miles down the road at the Kyalami Ranch pretty girls frolicked round the swimming pool and a handful of drivers sunned themselves in deck chairs. Where was Piquet? ‘Up there,’ someone said, jerking a thumb towards the second floor of the hotel, ‘up there in his

bedroom, asleep.’ It was a contrast you couldn’t miss.

During qualifying Arnoux’s Ferrari stopped out on the circuit and he gesticulated for the marshals to push it to a safe place. As they did they pushed it over his foot. Arnoux would race. Tambay had pole from Piquet, Patrese and Amoux on the second row, Prost on the third. Williams now had the Honda engine and Rosberg put it next to Prost. Piquet, Murray and Brabham used ‘Prost’s ploy’ — Piquet started with a fuel load so small he ought to be able to annihilate the Opposition, pit and still lead handsomely. They put hard tyres on the car because Piquet would be punishing them. Piquet set off like a hare and on lap 28 pitted and rejoined still in the lead, an enormous thing because the others had yet to pit. Prost found the race ‘absolute torture’ and on lap 36 heard a sound from the engine which he recognised as a turbo failure. He pitted and watched helplessly as Piquet did not break down, gave Patrese the win and let de Cesaris through, too. He moved into the last lap, sunlight glinting on the car. He took it down the long undulation to Crowthorne Corner, he threaded through the sweeping loops behind the pits and paddock headin g out into the

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countryside and the climb to Wesbank Corner, he came poised and easy down the long, long incline back towards the elbow of a right-hander a hundred yards from the pits. A thicket of mechanics stood on the edge of the track, waiting. They watched Patrese go by, watched de Cesaris go by 21 seconds after Patrese, as Piquet reached them they spread across the track, brandishing their fists in triumph. He raised his left arm to acknowledge them. It was an act of communion in both directions. Piquet had his second championship. Senna won the Formula 3 Championship and tested for Toleman and Brabham. Other teams showed interest, but only Toleman made an offer. The Formula 1 roundabout: Renault fired Prost and he went to McLaren, replacing Watson whose career as a regular Grand Prix driver ended. Derek Warwick, Toleman’s yeoman driver from Formula 2 days, replaced Prost at Renault, Tambay partnering him. Alboreto joined Arnoux at Ferrari. Senna caught the roundabout at Toleman, replacing Warwick. Brundle joined Tyrrell. The man running Toleman, Alex Hawkridge, found negotiating with Senna disconcerting. Senna, Hawkridge began to realise, was uninterested in being another Grand Prix driver or even another Grand Prix winner. He intended to dominate it. As Hawkridge sat in his office behind a plain English high street in the plain London suburb of Brentwood, he may have wondered about that: a wan, slender, soft-spoken Brazilian who had yet to drive a single Grand Prix. He wouldn’t be wondering long. Neither would anybody else.

Notes . Bernie's Game, Lovell.

. Interview with Author.

. Jody An Autobiography, Scheckter. . Frank Williams, Hamilton. WV = PWN . A team founded by American entrepreneur Don Nicholls which graduated from North American racing to Formula 1. It competed from 1973 to 1980. . For the Record, Lauda. . Autocourse.

. The Viking Drivers, Petersens. . Lauda, wo a 2x

op. cit.

10. Ibid. 11. Autocourse.

12. Ibid. 13. Driving Ambition, Jones.

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14. Hill formed his own team in 1973 with Embassy the title sponsor. 15: Famed US businessman Roger Penske formed a team which was very

successful in North America but moved to England to take on Formula 1 in 1974. They raced until 1977. 16. The car had orthodox-sized rear wheels, and two much smaller wheels at

either side on the front. It was the brainchild of engineer Derek Gardner and based around a simple concept: if you reduced the lift at the front of the car you could corner quicker. 173 Flat spot: if you brake violently in a racing car, the wheels can lock and the

part of the tyre in contract with the track at that instant is burnt flat. It doesn’t make driving easy afterwards. 18. Lauda, op. cit. 19. Ibid. 20. Formula Atlantic was ‘the top category of single-seater racing in Canada’ — Donaldson. 21. Autosport. 22. Walter Wolf, a Canadian oil magnate, who came into Formula 1 and bought his way into the Williams team. The team raced under the Wolf name but he and Frank Williams parted company after a couple of years.

23. Petersens, op. cit. 24. Mo Nunn, a former driver and now important figure in North American racing, constructed Formula 3 cars before being asked by Rikky von Opel, a wealthy man from Liechtenstein, to make Formula 1 cars. They competed

from 1973 to 1982. 25. World Champion, Andretti. 26. Lauda, op. cit. Pgs Andretti, op. cit. 28. The turbocharger was ‘a turbine fed by exhaust gases, connected to a compressor via a shaft that compresses intake air into the engine. More air in the cylinder means more fuel can be burnt per power stroke, more burnt fuel means more hot gas, more hot gas Means more power — and more boost too.’ http:/Awww.turboclub.com/turbotech/TurboFun1.htm 29. LEC, a refrigeration business in southern England, set up by David Purley’s

father — History of the Grand Prix Car, Nye. 30. Hamilton, op. cit. 31. Grand Prix!, Lang. 32. Turbo lag was a disconcerting feature of the early turbo engines — the time between putting the power on and its delivery. 33: Hamilton, op. cit. 34. Watkins interview with Nigel Roebuck, Autosport, 10 Februar y 2005. 35. Andretti, op. cit.

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36. Watkins interview, op. cit. ois Ibid. 38. Villeneuve, Donaldson. 39. Watkins interview, op. cit. 40. Lovell, op. cit. 4l. Hamilton, op. cit. 42. Grand Prix Showdown, Hilton. 43. Jones, op. cit. . A tale recounted to the author with some relish by John MacDonald who ran the RAM Formula 1 team. 45. The Grand Prix Who's Who, Small. 46. Nye, op. cit. 47. In Crombac’s Colin Chapman. 48. Colin Chapman, Crombac. 49. Donaldson, op. cit. 50. Life in the Fast Lane, Prost. 51. Ibid. 52. To Hell and Back, Lauda. 53. Autosport. 54. keke, Rosberg. 55. Prost, op. cit. 56. IMSA, the International Motor Sports Association, organiser of series in North America. TAG, Techniques d'Avant Garde, a company which helped to ‘build and Dae promote’ McLaren’s Porsche engine. (McLaren: The Grand Prix, Can-Am and

Indy Cars by Doug Nye, Hazleton publishing, 1984). 58. Grand Prix Showdown, Hilton.

Chapter 10

IN SENNA’S TIME iki Lauda witnessed the arrival of Alain Prost at McLaren with a wary eye. When Prost said nice things about him, The Rat — as Lauda was known — wondered what the motive could be and watched closely. When Prost sought to establish a position within the team Lauda understood why but still watched closely. Lauda kept his antennae tuned for political intrigue and felt a sense of unease. It would take time for Lauda to realise that Prost was a straightforward fellow and, in a celebrated phrase, ‘a fast son-of-a-bitch.’ The tension assumed a specific importance because the season belonged to McLaren, and with emotional dimensions: Lauda back from the dead these many years and, by a ferocious irony, the second last race scheduled for the Nurburgring, albeit a truncated and neutered version of the old widow. To win the championship again would represent a special kind of immortality. For Prost, the championship meant a different kind of immortality. No matter that a Frenchman began the whole thing in France at 6am on Tuesday, 26 June 1906 when Fernand Gabriel headed his Lorraine-Dietrich down towards the turn into the first full leg of the giant Le Mans triangle; no matter that at Dieppe on 26 July 1912 Georges Boillot had used a tyre lever to repair the gearbox and other damage caused by a stone, then with only second and fourth gears nursed his Peugeot home to become the first French Grand Prix victor; no matter that France, the French automotive industry and generations of talented French drivers had been an essential part of the whole thing. No Frenchman had ever been champion. Lauda, an Austrian, distrusted nationalism and felt it a dangero us distraction. Prost didn’t necessarily share those sentiments. Any championship is a profound examination of how men respond to pressure, how they handle the unexpected, above all how they handle themselves, and when it devolves to two very different men in the same team all that is heightened, sometimes to an intolerable degree. At Rio, de Angelis took pole from Alboreto, Warwick third in the Renault, then Prost half a second quicker than Lauda. That was another

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dimension, although Lauda did not understand it yet. Lauda could not hope to live with Prost in qualifying and would have to adjust mentally to that, wield his race-craft to compensate. He did that in Rio, getting up into the lead in twelve laps but an electrical fault stopped him and Prost — driving cautiously, still exploring the McLaren (‘trying it for size, you might say’)' — won it from Rosberg. It put Lauda on the defensive. You know what they say about cornered rats. The turbo boost failed on Senna’s Toleman after eight laps so nobody knew yet what was coming. Lauda won South Africa from Prost, although again, he’d been outqualified while Senna slogged to sixth and was so exhausted and dehydrated he had to be helped from the car. The Toleman team concluded that he was not fit enough, and by definition strong enough, for Grand Prix racing. Senna didn’t need to be told twice. Alboreto took pole at Zolder and was untouchable in the race, winning it from Warwick. It did seem at this stage that Warwick was growing into a leading role in a leading team, second in the championship to Prost 15-10. Prost however won Imola from Arnoux, Warwick fourth. Lauda qualified ninth for the French Grand Prix at Dijon and felt he had to drive ‘brutally’ in case the leaders got away from him. Brutal? He added a second term, driving like a ‘madman’ and it carried him to third behind Tambay and Prost but Prost, approaching Pouas — the long, fast loop onto the straight — felt a shudder and felt a front wheel coming off. The car lurched about and he fought to control it, did that, got it to the pits. A pity anything like that happened, Lauda thought clinically, he had no chance against me today, anyway. Lauda did catch Tambay and laid pressure on him. Maybe he'll get nervous. Tambay, urbane, bilingual, handsome in a Hollywood way, didn’t — yet. Lauda attacked here, attacked there, his normal calm gone. Under it Tambay drifted fractionally wide in a corner, Lauda through on the inside. Something went wrong with the McLaren signalling for Lauda to pit for tyres and eventually he came in himself, emerged second to Tambay — and angry. Lauda chose a single word to describe his driving, like a maniac. He retook Tambay. Brundle crashed his Tyrrell heavily during qualifying for Monaco — he thought he knew where he was afterwards, and didn’t really — while Mansell put the Lotus on the front row next to Prost, pole. Race day was wet, dripping-sodden. Mansell led from Prost, and crashed. Senna started from the seventh row, which in the wet at Monaco — you can’t see, can’t afford any mistake — meant he had no chance. He saw only opportunities which he

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could take and the others couldn’t. During these laps the power base of Formula 1 began moving towards Senna. Lap one: ninth. Lap two: ninth. Lap three: eighth (overtaking Laffite). Lap four: eighth. Lap five: eighth. Lap six: eighth. Lap seven: seventh (overtaking Manfred Winkelhock). Lap eight: seventh. Lap nine: sixth (Alboreto spun). Lap ten: sixth. Lap eleven: sixth. Lap twelve: fifth (overtaking Rosberg). Lap 13: fifth. Lap 14: fourth (overtaking Arnoux). Lap 15: fourth. Lap 16: third (Mansell crashed).

Lap 17: third. Lap 18: third. Lap 19: second (overtaking Lauda).

Senna was now 34.35 seconds behind Prost, he had the turbo boost turned down because the Toleman was more responsive like that, and he went after Prost who hated driving in the wet. The power base was moving quickly now, every lap and measurably so. This was more even than that, it spread itself round sodden Monaco as an astonishing pursuit, one of the greatest. Lap

Prost

Senna

Gap

22

1:56.1

Lye.

34.2

23

EBA,

1:54.6

S12

24

1:56.8

1:54,.3

28.7

25

1:56.6

15516

PIAL

26

1:56.8

H5512

26.1

27.

1:59.6

15572

2,

28

2:00.1

1:56.6

18.1

29

1:59.4

1:56.6

15.3

30

2:02.5

1590

We7.

31

DIODE

1:59.4

7.44

The race was stopped, a controversial decision because the weather didn’t seem to have worsened — it hardly could — at the end of lap 32. Senna caught Prost so comprehensively that crossing the line he thought he’d won it. The final positions, however, were calculated from the end of the previous lap. This was Senna’s fifth Grand Prix (he hadn’t qualified at Imola, Toleman in dispute with their tyre supplier, Pirelli) and with a small, fledgling team it was a performance born of the braver y of youth, the ambition of youth, the self-confidence of youth and car control of a sensitivity far beyond most Formula 1 drivers. Ayrton Senna was not impressed by himself. Next morning at breakfast he happened to meet a Marlboro Press Relations man? who

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naturally congratulated him and said what a big future he had. Senna cried. Years later he’d outline his philosophy. I am not designed to finish second, third, fourth... More than that Stefan Bellof, who Ken Tyrrell felt would have been Germany’s first World Champion, finished third and he’d started last on the grid. If Senna looked like the future, so did Bellof. The Monaco measure: Prost, 31 laps, 1h 1m 7.7s, an average speed of 62.6mph; Rosberg, 1983, 80.4mph. A mid-season ripple of races: Piquet won Canada by a couple of seconds from Lauda, Prost third; Piquet won the United States East at Detroit from Brundle* who put together a wonderfully nimble, assured drive. He looked like the future, too. Two weeks later the United States Grand Prix at Dallas offered more concrete canyons like Detroit. These were arranged through a place called Fair Park, and Formula 1’s long journey to find a real home in America went on. Almost immediately it was an unhappy destination: lack of run-off areas, a bumpy surface and, when temperatures reached 150°, the track began to break up. Mansell took pole, Senna on the third row with Lauda. Senna made a run after the team-manager, Peter Gethin, forbade it. One way and another Senna would not be staying at Toleman beyond this season. Race moming warm-up was brought forward to 7am _ because, evidently, television schedules had decreed that the race start at llam. Laffite arrived in his pyjamas... Of the 25 starters only eight cars were classified after the 67 laps. Twelve of the others were hit wall and one spun off: Rosberg won from Arnoux, the first Honda turbo victory. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, senior executive and designer of the engine, was at Dallas. From the end of 1983 to 1984 was the hardest time for me. I thought we would never win, despite all our efforts. We had about 20 people in the

team, three times as many as we had had before, but still we could not win. That is why I was so happy to win at Dallas. I remember former President Carter sitting behind me during the race and me thinking we wouldn’t

win. After the race I flew to Honda America in Los Angeles and we had a party at a Japanese restaurant. I called Mr [Tadashi] Kume [head of R&D] in Japan but he had his answering machine on so I had to record the news

of our victory on it...’

All was not proceeding smoothly with the Honda engine, however, and within three races Rosberg would be talking graphically about that.

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Frank Williams took a decision from the beginning that whatever happened Japanese sensibilities would not be offended by the team blaming the engine. Honda had premises inside the Williams factory, although separate, and of the team only Frank himself and Patrick Head went in there. This was partly so that the Honda personnel wouldn’t be distracted, partly because Williams sensed they wanted their privacy. Lauda won the British at Brands Hatch, where Senna’s team-mate at Toleman, Johnny Cecotto, crashed during practice and injured his legs so badly his Grand Prix career was over. The championship tourniquet tightened. With half points awarded at Monaco, Prost had 34.5, Lauda 33. Lauda said that the rivalry between them was under control and even tip-toed towards friendship, which was just as well because de Angelis led in Germany until a turbo failure then Prost and Lauda went head-to-head for the rest of the race — maybe a test of will-powers would be more accurate. Prost won it, and now Lauda was in deep — and divisive — contract talks with Ron Dennis. This, according to Lauda‘ had reached the point where, just before the Austrian Grand Prix, Dennis said he’d sign Rosberg for 1985. Lauda’s riposte was typical. OK, you sign Rosberg. Meanwhile an Austrian with a boyish face was about to make his debut in an ATS. Gerhard Berger had started his career late — at 15, and unusually, not in karts — but he had believers in the Press and BMW, who were supplying ATS. And Rosberg had troubles of his own. Everything felt soft. The engine was soft, the car was soft and the power was like an on-off switch. When the power came in, it was terrible. When we went to Austria, I just couldn’t drive the car. It was impossible. I couldn’t keep it on the road. It would twist and jump and do things which were totally unexpected. I had to stop. It was the only time in my career when I had to give up during a race.’

Lauda won from Piquet but only after applying his logic, race-craft and native cunning. Towards the end — Prost gone, spun out on oil, Piquet’s tyres wearing — Lauda heard an explosion and the McLaren lost all power. Differential gone, he thought, and automatically held his hand up to warn approaching cars. He searched, equally automatically, for some grass to park the car on and then thought it’s a long walk back to the pits, found third gear and set off for the pits in that. He accelerated, changed to fourth — nothing — and, again automatically, into fifth. It worked. His mind moved incisively: continuing like this I’Il lose five seconds a lap but 1 might still get a point or two.

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it is Jap 44 of the 51 and from regular laps of 1m 34s, 1m 35s Lauda is now doing Im 42s. His eyes scan the pit board and it tells him Piquet is 17 seconds behind so Piquet will be up with him in three more laps, maybe four Next Jap Lauda does another 1m 42 — and so does Piquet. Piguet knows mé, ‘Sauda double-thought, knows I back off at the end to conserve the cat, don’t care by how little Iwin the races. Piquet will think: no point in flogging the tyres and getting up with Lauda, he'll only respond. Lauda coaxed the McLaren, Piquet ran at the same pace and in the last two laps backed off completely so that Lauda won it by 23 seconds. Prost won Holland — from Lauda. At this meeting Lotus announced they d signed Senna and would not be retaining Mansell. Toleman were incandescent, daiming that contractually Senna could not do this without informing them first and took the car off him at Monza, where Lauda won from Alboreto, Prost long gone with an engine failure. Lauda had prised the tourniquet open. Lauda 63, Prost 53.5. A drives could count his eleven best finishes of the 16 rounds but with only two \eft — the European at the Nirburgring, the Portuguese at Estoril — it didn’t touch either man because both had only eight finishes. Lauda was extremely phlegmatic about returning to the Nurburgring. ‘4, don’t really have any bad feelings when I go there. It’s over, really. I go there like S go to any other race.’ Although the old castle still brooded on the hill the new circuit was not in any practical sense even a distant relative of the roller-coaster which Nuvolari and Fangio rode and which reached out in deadly embrace to Lauda. Piguet took pole from Prost, Lauda 15th after a first day of endless problems and a second day trapped by rain. A win would give Lauda the championship whatever Prost did. Prost prepared to tighten the tourniquet again: he made a forceful start and Jed through the first corner, Into the race Lauda travelled up, selecting his moments, picking the other cars off in his own good time. By lap five he’d reached sixth and finished fourth, Prost leading throughout.

Lauda 66, Prost 62.5, Lauda, thrown on the defensive, accepted Prost was driving beautifully but consoled himself that second place at Estoril would be enough. The fact that no Grand Prix had been run there before spiced as its everything. Set amid bleached hills, Estoril had a long straight back. the backbone and uphill corners and curves round like a Qualifying went wrong, so wrong that Lauda described it as and he second-rate movie. He made mistakes, the car had niggling faults trated demons could go no faster than eleventh, Prost front row. Lauda

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his mental discipline. Everybody's nervous so I won't be. Do your best, ignore everything else because you can't affect that. The moment Lauda caught sight of Prost he saw Prost was definitely not relaxed. Prost said he hasn’t slept well and Lauda could see that, too. Prost had to win and hope Lauda wasn’t second. An interviewer suggested to Lauda that all he had to do was follow Prost and he said: ‘Yes, but first I have to catch him, that’s the problem,’ and grinned that toothy grin. Rosberg hustled into the lead from Mansell and Prost — Lauda 13th. Prost took Mansell on lap 2, Lauda up to eleventh. Prost reeled in Rosberg while The Rat applied stealth, picking up places as he could. By the time Prost took Rosberg on lap nine — drawing up on the long drag to turn one, ducking inside — Lauda was ninth. Lauda came up to Johansson in the second Toleman and thought he knows the TV cameras are on us, he’s putting on a show, I'd do the same. Johansson, meanwhile, had de Angelis in front of him and seemed more preoccupied with trying to get past him. Prost was 21 seconds up the road. Moment by moment the championship was ebbing away from Lauda, prisoner in seventh — the gap to Prost out to 29 seconds.

The race became a waltz, Lauda probing at Johansson down the drag but never close enough for a decisive strike, and they waltzed again while, so far away at the front, Mansell was long past Rosberg and trying to attack Prost. In swift succession Johansson made a mistake and Lauda was through, Alboreto seemed off the pace and Lauda steamed straight by. Fifth, he advanced on Rosberg, took him and advanced on Senna. They ran in that order for five laps before® Lauda dealt classically with him, fast onto the long drag, a tow, out from behind, inside through turn one. Lauda thought he’d just taken second place, didn’t realise that Mansell was up ahead. Lauda ran 18 laps in third and Mansell suddenly lost his brakes, drifted into the pits. The crowd were on their feet. Late afternoon sunlight fell on Lauda’s McLaren as he began the final lap, and this sunlight made geometrical shadows which licked the surface of the track. As the car wheeled and turned — through the right-hander at the end of the long start-finish straight, through the uphill loops out at the back — the shape of the shadow changed constantly. As he came round the long last loop Prost was already far down the start-fin ish straight 13 seconds ahead. McLaren mechanics were on the track saluting Lauda and Lauda responded as only Lauda could: he kept straight ahead because he had two cars immediately behind him, Piquet in one of them. He waited until they’d reached the first corner, gave Piquet room on the

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inside and as Piquet drew level Lauda inclined his head towards him, raised his right hand out of the cockpit — a little — and waved in taut, tight movements. Then he gave Piquet a good old fashioned thumbs up. Prost had the race, Lauda had the championship by half a point. Afterwards Prost was warm about Lauda and Lauda was warm about Prost and, more than that, on the podium Lauda whispered to Prost I’// help you win it next year. Niki Lauda did not whisper such things carelessly. In the close season Williams hired Mansell, although Rosberg said he didn’t want him as a team-mate. Prost launched his 1985 campaign immediately, winning Brazil — only he and Alboreto finished on the same lap — and summed it up neatly enough, no problems. Ferrari fired Arnoux and replaced him with the affable Johansson who took the call in his London apartment and beat the World Land Speed Record getting to Maranello to sign the contract. He had to recount this so many times that even he grew tired of the repetition but repeat it he did. Portugal was stormy wet, Senna caressing and smoothing the Lotus through two hours and 28 seconds of murk, mist and standing water. Seven drivers spun off, including Prost. This time only Senna and Alboreto finished on the same lap. The whole Lotus team danced with delight in the rain as Senna brought the Lotus back, led by Peter Warr, and designer Gérard Ducarouge described the moment Senna crossed the line as orgasmic. Were the great days back? They’d been a long time gone, de Angelis the last win before that in 1982, Andretti the last win before that in 1978. The rule that a car could only have 220 litres for a race punished Johansson at Imola, traditionally a thirsty track. Prost encapsulated that by explaining you used ‘rapid surges of acceleration and violent braking.’”? Senna took pole and was proving himself stunning at the quick lap, something which brought deep satisfaction to the team mingled with a sense of mystery about how he could actually do it. They reached a consensus: it comes from within himself. Senna led the race, de Angelis close to him, Prost hounding Alboreto , for third. Alboreto was muscular as he and Prost dealt with de Angelis, and in the background Johansson made a long surge from 15th on the grid. On lap 23 Prost ducked right and went past Alboreto. He caught Senna and here was a tantalising glimpse of the bitter future because whatever Prost tried Senna countered. Johansson was fourth then, taking de Angelis on the outside of a lefthander...third. Prost got a pit signal watch your fuel and backed off, saw

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Johansson sweep by. That convulsed Imola, and was only a prelude because Senna slowed, out of fuel, and now Johansson in the Ferrari led in front of immense numbers of Ferrari faithful. Imola became a fevered festival of flag brandishing all the way round the circuit and every flag had the Prancing Horse on it. Three laps to go and Johansson slowed, out of fuel, too. Prost won it and was disqualified, the McLaren two kilos under weight, elevating de Angelis in the Lotus to the victory. Were the great days really back? Prost, downcast, was clinical at Monaco where Senna took pole from Mansell, Alboreto on the second row, Prost on the third. Prost applied his mind to that, reasoning that what he must do is make sure he didn’t need to pit for new tyres. From the compression of the start Senna led, then Mansell, Alboreto and Prost. The Professor waited. The Professor was good at waiting. Alboreto went past Mansell and The Professor did, too. Senna’s engine failed and three laps later Patrese (Alfa Romeo) crashed into Piquet on the start-finish straight. Alboreto slid off and, while he recovered, The Professor stole through. De Angelis 20, Alboreto and Prost 18. The Monaco measure: Prost, 78 laps, Ih 51m 58.0s, an average speed of 86.0mph; Prost, 1984, 62.6mph — wet. Prost didn’t like the circuit at Montreal (‘ugly, congested, eminently forgettable’) and finished third behind Alboreto and Johansson; Prost didn’t like Detroit (nobody did) where Rosberg won. Since the previous Monza Honda had realised. their Formula 1 programme wasn't going anywhere and took it in hand, seeking to make the engine less brutal in its delivery of power. At Paul Ricard, Mansell crashed heavily in practice — a rear tyre exploded at 200mph — and flew home. The Williams was becoming a factor by this mid-summer, something confirmed along Ricard’s generous straights. Rosberg finished second to Piquet’s Brabham, holding Prost to third. Round Silverstone, in qualifying for the British Grand Prix, Rosberg produced a lap of 160.92mph (with a slow puncture at the end!) and nobody had been through that barrier before. In 1950 Farina took pole with 93.8mph and the remorseless rise began, reaching 138.10mph in 1973. The new chicane at Woodcote cut the speed to 120.01mph in 1975, the next time the race was held there, but the remorseless rise began again and it reached all the way to Rosberg. Subsequent circuit alterations — the new Woodcote Corner in 1987, the new Complex in 199] — left Rosberg’s time safe. Perhaps this and Monza (as we shall see) as well as Monaco can be regarded as representative of what was and had always been happening everywhere all the time.

In SENNA’S TIME

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Mansell was fit but the clutch failed while Prost and Senna duelled again. Senna lost power and Prost went by, Senna regained power and got Prost at Stowe — and Prost re-took Senna into Copse: the fuel injection electronics were failing on the Lotus. Prost won it from Alboreto by a full lap. Alboreto won Germany from Prost. A week later Manfred Winkelhock — who, in a RAM, retired from the German Grand Prix with an engine problem — drove a Porsche at Mosport, Canada and inexplicably crashed. He died from head injuries. A strong, open man, Winkelhock had had a difficult Grand Prix career across four seasons with ATS, Brabham and now RAM. From his 47 races he’d taken two points for a fifth place in Brazil in 1982. It is with small variations the story of so many drivers and in this case the man was much bigger than his career. Before Austria Lauda announced his retirement. Lauda told Ron Dennis some time before but Dennis asked him to delay any announcement because once it was made other teams would pressure their drivers to re-sign and Dennis wouldn’t be able to get any of them. He did get Rosberg and now Lauda made the announcement. (Typically, when he told the Marlboro PR lady that he wanted to call a press conference and she asked why, he said: ‘Maybe to tell them I’m pregnant...’) In the race morning warm-up Prost’s accelerator pedal jammed and the car almost flipped. After that, despite repairs, it never felt quite right but he won comfortably enough from Senna, Alboreto third. Alboreto and Prost 50, de Angelis 28. The Rat and The Professor: it ought to have been harmony now, The Rat leaving and as promised helping The Professor to the championship. Prost led Holland but Lauda, bullish, felt he could win from the fifth row. His car began to handle badly and the team tactics were that if he came in at this stage they'd fit soft tyres all round —- which was what he wanted. Double-think: he came in without having signalled the lap before to warn the pit crew, giving them no time for second thoughts about the four softs... As the others pitted Lauda led but, he’d claim the team gave him three softs and one hard, on the left rear — and Prost had four softs. Remorselessly Prost caught him and within the harmony Lauda should have moved courteously aside, graciously waved Prost through, blown him a kiss as he went by. The Rat didn’t: wrong mood. The Rat saw here a last chance to do well, the old soldier who in his first Grand Prix — 1971 — had found himself among Surtees, Stewart, Cevert, Peterson and was

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now going to fire a final salvo. Prost hustled him but Lauda wouldn’t let him through and it finished thus. Afterwards, grinning the toothy grin again, Lauda said Prost was too good a driver to need his help — but if he did he’d get it. Between Holland and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza Bellof took part in the 1,000km race at Spa and driving a Porsche tried an ambitious overtaking move on Jacky Ickx. Bellof crashed and was killed. It seemed the heart and soul was being physically torn out of German motorsport. He had driven only 20 Grands Prix, all for Tyrrell, and whenever Ken Tyrrell spoke of Monaco 1984 he insisted that if the race had been allowed to run another couple of laps Senna would have taken the lead from Prost and Bellof would have taken the lead from Senna. As an epitaph to a motor racing career, that'll do nicely. A mid-season ripple of races, proving Prost didn’t need help: he won Monza and Alboreto’s engine failed; Senna won Spa from Mansell — who'd never finished that high before’— Prost third and Alboreto’s clutch failed. Prost 69, Alboreto 53. At the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch Prost needed to only finish two points ahead of Alboreto. Senna took pole from Piquet, Mansell and Rosberg on the second row, Prost on the third, Alboreto on the eighth. Rosberg made a hesitant start, forcing Prost on to the grass. As Prost worked his way up Senna led and was very robust in keeping Rosberg behind him. They touched and Rosberg retreated to the pits with a puncture,

emerged just as Senna was

coming

along. Rosberg

decided to give Senna a demonstration of what robust looked and felt like, and blocked him -—- pitching Mansell into the lead. The championship was essentially decided when Alboreto’s engine caught fire and he toured to the pits, yellow flames licking the back of the car and smoke belching. Prost stroked the McLaren up to fourth, and that was enough. Mansell won and vindicated his own beliefs about himself in front of 75,000 Britons, who were as emotional as a British crowd gets. That reduced him to tears during the slowing down lap and by then his wife Rosanne, in the pit lane, was crying, too. Prost eased the McLaren through the adverse camber of Paddock Hill Bend a last time this autumn day under a blue sky and powder-puff clouds. He took it safely round the tree-fringed Druids horseshoe as precisely as he had done 74 times before, moved along Cooper Straight

behind the paddock, went out into the country, out into the gully between the tall trees there. He was alone, Rosberg too far ahead, de

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Angelis too far behind to keep him company. He came back round the loop onto the start-finish straight and he held the McLaren in mid-track, precisely there. As he crossed the line the McLaren team clasped each other and clapped with their hands above their heads. Prost said on this lap his eyes ‘misted over.’ As he crossed the line the long journey from Fernand Gabriel heading his Lorraine-Dietrich down towards the first turn at Le Mans triangle was finally over. France had her World Champion. Mansell took pole in South Africa and won it from Rosberg, the Williams-Honda very strong now. Senna took pole at Adelaide, Mansell alongside him. Grand Prix racing had not been to Australia before and was warmed by the sincerity of the welcome. That melted on the track when Senna rudely punted Mansell off and forced his way through an altogether wild afternoon, culminating in an engine failure. Rosberg won. Paradoxically, 1986 began with Mansell emerging after so many years of ‘paying his dues,’ as he put it. The apprenticeship had been long, although he’d only driven for major teams, Lotus and Williams. He’d be partnered by Piquet and together they’d push Prost hard. Senna was capable of pushing them all if the Lotus held together. This quartet made each race open, uncertain and that in turn made the championship a real tourniquet. The members of the quartet were so different that that made the championship multi-dimensional, too: Mansell seeing slights against himself everywhere, Piquet so laid back he liked nothing better than messing about on boats, Prost working everything out, Senna blessed with inexplicable talents and cursed by demons of obsession. Just to stir this, Piquet from Rio did not like Senna from Sao Paulo and called him a taxi driver. Just to stir this further, Piquet set out to needle Mansell immediately. When they tested in Japan he, Mansell and Frank Williams were on the Bullet train and Mansell was suffering from a couple of cracked ribs. Piquet repeatedly ‘prodded’” them, presumably, Mansell thought, to amuse Williams. Piquet only stopped when Mansell threatened to break a couple of his ribs. In March, Williams flew to Paul Ricard where pre-season testing was going on. He’d be flying home the same evening because he was due to run in a half-marathon at Portsmouth the following day. Williams kept himself very, very fit. He had a hire car and gave Peter Windsor, the team’s PR, a lift back to the airport. On the descent from Ricard, Williams lost control of the car and it went over a wall, landed upside down in a field. Williams was suspended by the seat-belts and in pain but thought it shouldn't be hurting this much. At that moment he began a

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long fight for his life. The half-marathon man would never take a single step again but, from a wheelchair, enable his team to make giant strides. The team was strong enough to survive, and so was the man who had

founded it.” The season began in Brazil two weeks later and, there, Formula 1 came together as it rarely does with the team principals and many others gathered round a banner DON’T WORRY FRANK WE ARE MINDING THE STORE

There stood Warr and Ducarouge of Lotus; Larrousse of Ligier and Ron Dennis on their knees so that they didn’t obstruct the message for the cameraman, Ken Tyrrell holding one end of it... Senna took pole from Piquet, Mansell next (Prost the fifth row). The Williams chassis was excellent but, Prost wondered, what about the Honda engine and the new 195 litres of fuel maximum for a race? Hondas could be thirsty. Prost also wondered about the position at Lotus, where Senna vetoed the team hiring Warwick: Renault’s Grand Prix team had been wound up but they were still supplying Lotus with engines. Senna reasoned that Lotus were not big enough to run two leading drivers. Prost questioned the wisdom of that decision. At the start Piquet was hesitant, Senna away and Mansell behind him. Out into the sweepers of the Jacarapagua circuit they travelled, Mansell directly behind Senna and aggressive. In a long left Mansell tried the inside and Senna would not cede. Mansell went off into the Armco. Mansell thought Senna’s tactic is intimidation and I will not be intimidated next time. On the third lap Piquet went past Senna for the lead — an instant in a civil war involving the whole country — and it finished like that. Prost’s engine failed. Spain distilled the truth that Mansell was not intimidated. Senna, pole (and Lotus’s 100th), led early but Mansell took him, needed to pit for new tyres and then hunted him down. From lap 65 of the 72, this was classical Formula 1, strong car against strong car, strong man against strong man. It lasted to the desperate lunge for the line and the second tightest finish of any race from Le Mans 1906 (Italy 1971 closer, 0.010s). The last four laps, Mansell coming hard at Senna:

IN SENNA’S TIME

BYS

Lap

Senna

Mansell

69

eoale3

1:32.4

at Pia)

70

1:30.0

1:28.1

Aye

val

LS 2ek

1:28.4

FL

72,

13 O07,

1E2OeT

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Ford unveiled their turbo engine at Imola where Jones, with the fledgling Haas team” drove it. There was no suggestion that it would do to Formula 1 what the DFV had done at Zandvoort in 1967, and it didn’t. Imola’s thirst and the 195-litre ration reduced the San Marino Grand Prix to farce. Towards the end Patrese and Rosberg both ran out of fuel and Prost, weaving the McLaren to scour the last drop in his tank, limped over the line and stopped. Piquet finished second and young Berger, now with Benetton, third. This win reinvigorated McLaren for Monaco and Prost won that clinically from pole, Rosberg bustling up to second, Senna third. The Monaco measure: Prost, 78 laps, 1h 55m 41.0s, an average speed of 83.6mph; Prost, 1985, 86.0mph. The week after that Elio de Angelis was killed testing the Brabham at Paul Ricard. The Brabham crashed at the fast S-bend beyond the pits and Prost, following, saw flames. The car somersaulted over the barrier and landed the wrong way up. There are dark stories of the lack of precautions, of drivers themselves trying to get de Angelis out, of a long delay until the helicopter came. He was pronounced dead in hospital and Grand Prix racing mourned the loss of a gentleman and friend. No driver had died in a Grand Prix car — Paletti, Montreal 1982 — for four years and none would again for eight; and it would never be a consolation. Belgium, soon after, proved a sombre race, de Angelis still actively mourned. Mansell won it from Senna. The quartet created their own tourniquet and each took turns at the tightening. Mansell added Canada from Prost, Piquet, Rosberg and Senna — but inevitably Senna was fleet round Detroit’s funnels and tunnels, winning the United States Grand Prix from Laffite and Prost. Senna 36 points, Prost 33, Mansell 29, Piquet 19, Rosberg 14. Mansell won France from Prost and Piquet so that only three points separated Prost, Mansell and Senna, Piquet still well within striking range. Frank Williams came to Brands Hatch for the British Grand Prix, his first since the accident, and his presence provoked such an intensity of media interest that he gave a Press Conference. ‘It was an emotional occasion, Frank struggling to articulate words due to his breathing

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difficulties. But his sheer determination shone through as he sat in his wheelchair, Mansell and Piquet on either side.’ By now Mansell’s sheer pugnacity as well as his driving ability made him the equal of Piquet, always an awkward situation within a team. The contracts stipulated Piquet was No. 1 and he was No. 2. Piquet took pole from Mansell and on race day a crowd of 120,000 made the circuit an amphitheatre. They saw Mansell make a confident start but almost immediately he had a driveshaft problem — it sounded like an explosion — and cruised, his race over already. He did not know that behind him the mid-grid had become something of a pin-ball machine, cars bouncing into each other culminating in Laffite ramming the barrier. The race was black flagged while Laffite was lifted from the Ligier, legs injured. Mansell was able to take the spare car for the restart but it had been set up for Piquet. Worse, Mansell had driven it briefly and didn’t rate it highly. Piquet led and Berger went past Mansell who, content to learn the car, wasn’t concerned. When Mansell was ready he moved past Berger and from then to the end it was classical Formula 1 again but with many subtle differences. If any championship is a profound examination of how men respond to pressure, how they handle the unexpected, above all how they handle themselves, so is every race and when it devolves to two very different men in the same team all that is heightened, too, sometimes to an intolerable degree. Here was a strong man against his own strong number 2, a strong car against his own strong spare car. Mansell got past Piquet, who missed a gear, on lap 23 of the 75 and it turned on the pit stops. They went perfectly and for the final 40 laps it became a raw, macho struggle, Piquet trying to break Mansell, Mansell refusing to be broken. At no stage did Williams apply team orders because, as Frank said himself, it’s wrong to stand on a man’s career and, more than that, it would have brought the sport into disrepute. In the end Piquet backed off and Mansell won it by more than five seconds. Mansell 47, Prost 43, Senna 36, Piquet 29. Piquet took Germany from Senna and Mansell. Prost ran out of fuel and attempted to push the McLaren over the line as if to make the point this fuel limit is absurd. The same had happened to Rosberg. Grand Prix racing, arguably the ultimate symbol of capitalist excess, now journeyed behind the Iron Curtain to the Hungaroring, a custombuilt circuit in the countryside outside Budapest. Hungary grasped at Grand Prix racing (and gasped) and loved it. Grand Prix racing went to Hungary open-minded and was won over very quickly: immense crowds

Jean-Pierre Jabouille won the 1979 French Grand Prix at Dijon but the race will always be remembered for the wheel-banging duel between second-placed Gilles Villeneuve and René Arnoux. (LAT) Moving towards the most amazing Monaco Grand Prix of all, in 1982, when even the victor, Riccardo Patrese, didn’t know he’d won. Here the Brabham driver leads Alain

Prost (Renault), Didier Pironi (Ferrari), Andrea de Cesaris (Alfa Romeo) and Michele Alboreto (Tyrrell). (LAT)

Above: Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, team-mates and bitter rivals. (LAT) Left: Prost as a young man, preparing to conquer his world. (LAT)

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Prost conquering, at the 1986 Australian Grand Prix, Adelaide, when he took the second of his four World Championships. (LAT) Ayrton Senna (left), with Prost at McLaren, intended to use his sublime gifts to destroy his team-mate. Here he wins his first world title in 1988. (LAT)

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Nigel Mansell, seen here at the 1992 British Grand Prix, achieved a unique double which may never be repeated, winning the Formula 1 World Championship with Williams in 1992, then taking the IndyCar Championship with Newman-Haas in 1993. (LAT) Passing dynasties. At the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Senna has only moments to live and, behind, young Benetton driver Michael Schumacher will suddenly have a tragic inheritance. (LAT)

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Controversial champion. Schumacher took the 1994 title in Adelaide after he’d crashed his Benetton into Damon Hill's Williams, raising a storm of protest about his tactics. It wouldn't be the last time his sportsmanship was questioned. (LAT) Quiet, pensive, almost shy, Mika Hakkinen took on and beat Michael Schumacher two seasons running. (LAT)

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Left: Master of all he surveys. Schumacher takes his astonishing seventh championship in Belgium, 2004. (LAT) The men with power at century’s end: (top left, clockwise) FIA President Max Mosley; Bernie Ecclestone, the ultimate entrepreneur; Frank Williams; Jean Todt of Ferrari; Ron Dennis of McLaren. (all LAT)

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