Drawing as he speaks as he thinks…
…the very talented Enrique Scalabroni details the curiously-shaped deflectors on the rear suspension of the 2014 F1 McLaren MP4-29. A four-video series
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…chance doesn't exist; there's always a cause and a reason for everything – Elahi
Archive for the month “February, 2014”
Chatting with Paddy
It’s always a pleasure to sit down and talk motor racing with Patrick “Paddy” Lowe. We first met at Williams in about 1990 and I’ve been a fan ever since….ever since the day he pointed to the much-moaned-about cooling towers hard by the Williams Didcot factory and said, “I have a lot of respect for those towers. Did you know that they are a part of the most efficient coal-to-electricity station in England? I find them very inspiring…” Anyone who is that grounded deserves to win F1 races, let alone run a major engineering team – and so it proved with Paddy. First that brilliant FW14B-Renault at Williams, then wins and championships at McLaren. Now, if you please, he starts 2014 as the new Executive Director (Technical) of the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team. We chatted recently between test days at Jerez.
The day he changed the world
Paddy Hopkirk’s win in the Monte-Carlo Rally 50 years ago was more than just another stat for the history books. It was a ground-breaker, a medium for cultural change. For one thing, the Monte back then was really big – the biggest rally of the year and one of the most widely-covered international sporting events of western Europe’s new year. For another, he won in a Mini – in a Morris Cooper S, to be precise – and minis, at the point, were the thing, whether you were talking Mary Quant or Sir Alec Issigonis. The talk, before the Monte, was of the big Ford Falcon Sprints prepared by Holman and Moody in Charlotte, North Carolina (two of which were to be driven by Graham Hill and Bo Ljungfeldt) – and of the other rally-tuned classics: the Ford (Dagenham) Cortina GTs of Vic Elford and Henry Taylor and of course Eric Carlsson’s Saab. It was Paddy, though, who on on handicap. He didn’t know he was close until he got to Monte-Carlo, where Bernard Cahier gave him the nod. Then it was a matter of completing that final stage without incident. He did, complete with white shirt and tie – and thus he changed the world. He received telegrams from the Prime Minister and from the Beatles. His name would live on for longer than anyone could imagine.
I spoke to Paddy recently about that Monte win and what it meant to him – then and now.
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