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Archive for the category “Days Past”

24 Jul 2013
15 Comments

Australian interlude

As some of you will know, I  was raised in Sydney, Australia, where, looking back now, the sun usually shone, the air was scented by eucalyptus and Warwick Farm was the heart and the soul of motor racing in all its forms.  I grew up in the knowledge that, every summer, I would see a bunch of F1 drivers competing in the International 100 and that, in between times, I would see five national race meetings of extraordinary quality.  Drivers like Frank Matich, Leo and Ian Geoghegan, Greg Cusack, Kevin Bartlett, Niel Allen, Bib Stillwell, Johnny Harvey, Spencer Martin, Max Stewart, Brian Foley, Peter Manton, Norm Beechey, Allan Moffatt and Bob Jane were my “national” heroes;  Sports Car World, Modern Motor and Racing Car News were my regular fare.

Then there were the F1 drivers in their Tasman-engined F1 cars. 

I still find it hard to capture accurately what motor racing was like back then.  Was it the way the Warwick Farm paddock was laid out, by the lake, with the marshalling area opposite the huge grandstands?  Was it the colour- and word-perfect attention to detail of the Australian Automobile Racing Club (AARC)?  Was it the relatively safe circuit layout, designed by the immaculate Geoff Sykes?  I know not the answers, even now.  All I know is that it was motor racing.  Nothing, since, has compared. Not even Monaco on a good day.  Not even a packed Brands Hatch.  When I was at The Farm, first as a young kid, smuggled into the paddock area in the boot of a car owned by a marshal who worked with my Dad, then as a marshal myself and finally as Press Officer, I was at one with the world.  Flags would flutter in the breeze.  Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart, sun-tanned and shirtless, would laugh their famous laughs.  Then the sun would set, the beer cans would pour and, over the PA, they would play The Long and Winding Road.

I have lots of photos from that era.  Some I took with a black-and-white Kodak Box Brownie.  Then, in 1967, I bought a half-frame Fujica. The quality from both was not great, but for me that didn’t matter.  I had captured the moment, cut a slice from time. That was all I needed.  I had been there, seen it happen.07-16-2013_0

Kevin Bartlett, in blue Nomex, sits on the front wheel of Alex Mildren’s 2.5 litre Tasman Brabham-Climax.

The Mildren team was a mid-1960s staple at The Farm.  The cars were always painted yellow; Glenn Abbey, the team’s Chief Mechanic, was a master.  Kevin’s car control was superb.  To this day I’d put him up there with Le Mans winners and GP2 front-runners. He could balance an Alfa GTA on the outer extremities of opposite lock through Paddock Bend and then in the next race glide the Tasman Brabham through Homestead with fingertip precision.  That’s actually the Mildren Alfa GTZ behind the Brabham;  and there, in the background, smiling, is Fred Gibson, whose yellow lightweight Elan (shown here, not Mildren yellow) was both gorgeous and very fast.07-16-2013_11 I don’t recall its inside front wheel touching the road very often.  I know you think the cars in the background have not been parked with FOM-like precision but that’s what I liked about The Farm: it was neat but natural and retained lots of grass.  Note the Mini Cooper S and the two Holdens. You were in one of two sectors back then:  the Mini brigade or The Rest.

And here’s a shot of said Alfa GTZ lined up and ready to go.  The genius that is Frank Matich is on the pole in one of his first races with the big Elfin sports car he developed in 1966;  Alan Hamilton, who always seemed to have access to exotica, is in the middle of the front row in his Porsche Spyder; and KB is there in the Alfa.07-16-2013_4 Two lovely, white Lotus 23Bs fill the second row (I think driven by Frank Demuth and Niel Allen) and on the outside of the third row you can see David McKay’s famous Ferrari 250LM, driven by Spencer Martin. From memory, Hamilton jumped this start by a mile and was leading by about 100 yards when the flag dropped!  This is a typical Warwick Farm scene:  packed grandstands, perfect weather, stunning collection of cars and drivers.

My last picture today is one I’ve always treasured.  I watched the 1965 International 100 from the spectator bank at Creek Corner.  Jim Clark won the race in his green and yellow Lotus 32B-Climax, with Frank Matich a brilliant third in the Total Team Brabham.   All was right with the world.  Then came The Moment:  as one, the crowd jumped the wooden fences and swarmed onto the track, there to greet the winner on his parade lap.  I remember standing there, hot and sweaty, so nervous that I could barely breathe.  I was going to see Jim Clark!  He was going to be driven right past me, mere feet away!

The white Sprite shimmered into view.  I could pick out the light blue overalls of the winner, black hair glistening in the afternoon sun.  Who was that next to him, though, in  the red-and-white checked shirt?  I was mystified.  I didn’t know whether to line up the camera or to keep peering at the slowly-approaching car, trying to identify The Other Guy.  Then suddenly it hit me:  Mike Spence!  Mike Spence!  Jim Clark’s F1 team-mate.  He hadn’t raced at The Farm that day. I didn’t even know he was in Australia.  In a panic, I raised my camera and fired.  The result wasn’t very pretty.

It was, though, The Moment.07-16-2013_40

Posted in Circuits, Days Past, F1, My neg scans and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
14 Jul 2013
27 Comments

When Fiats were also works of art

It was nice to walk into a Sainsbury’s car park this morning and see….this.  photoFiat

Fiat 850 Coupes are these days rare by any standards; and this red one, it turns out, is used regularly in and around London by a cool guy who bought it for just £300 over 20 years ago.  It took me straight back to my past, of course. I learned to drive in my Mum’s dark blue Fiat 850 Coupe (ERE 710) and celebrated passing my test on my 17th birthday by half-spinning the 850 down the fast esses of New South Head Road, near my old school. 8-24-2010 18-26-11_202The 850 was gorgeous in every dimension and ours was rock-solid reliable. There was no rust, either – although we did clean it regularly due to the salt in the air from the nearby Pacific Ocean.  It was joined later by my Dad’s dark blue 124 Coupe (AJJ 949).08-26-2010_13

Is it me or is it real?  Were cars genuinely more beautiful back then? And why – the 500 aside – is the Fiat range today so relatively mundane?  What is today’s Fiat equivalent of the 124 Coupe?

Posted in Days Past and tagged , ,
16 Jun 2013
8 Comments

When smiling came naturally

Here’s the Gitanes Ligier team de-brief at Imola in 1981.  The excellent Jacques-Henri Laffite is having a laugh, as ever, and that’s his team-mate and brother-in-law, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, stepping out of the “motorhome”.  Jean-Pierre was very into Supertramp, as I recall.  And I think that’s the team’s sponsorship/PR manager, Danny Hindenock, with his feet up on the chair.  Danny I believe was the first guy to wear Timberland deck shoes in F1.  Quite a breakthrough in the style department.  That may be the F3 comingman, Philippe Alliot, having a drink, and the gorgeous item on the left is Rene Arnoux’s girl-friend, Pascale.  Not sure what she was doing there with the wrong team, but I’m sure Jacques Laffite had everything under control. Just for good measure, here’s another picture (lower, below) of Pascale, this time (1983) where she should be – having lunch with Rene and Mauro Forghieri under the Ferrari truck awning.  Note Patrick Tambay’s helmet on the right of the picture and the Timberland sneaker on the left…06-15-2013_806-15-2013_18

Posted in Days Past, My neg scans and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
23 May 2013
4 Comments

Weekend of a Champion: F1 in the raw

S2550025There have been very few F1 films like Weekend of a Champion – films in which one of the world’s best directors has been invited inside our sport to do with it what he wills.  Roman Polanski played the role of that director at Monaco, 1971.  He met Jackie Stewart socially, he became captivated by the man’s aura…and so he made a film about him.  At Monaco.  Over a race weekend.

The result, in my view, was brilliant.  We see Jackie and Helen Stewart in their hotel suite, chatting about Jackie’s shaving or his lack of appetite.  We see the always-cool Editor of l’Equipe, Edouard Seidler, walking down the famous Monaco hill with Jackie and Helen, pulling at his ever-present Gitanes.  We see Francois Cevert, wide-eyed and barritone, asking Jackie about gear-change points and ratios.  We see Yardley BRM stickers on the toolboxes of the Tyrrell mechanics.  We see Jackie talking about that famous gear lever knob with the ever-dour Roger Hill.  We see all the details that the TV feeds then – as now – never show(ed).

Weekend of a Champion was this week re-screened at Cannes (where it won an award in 1972) because it has been re-mastered and added-to.  We reach what we think is the end…but instead we see Jackie (now Sir Jackie) and Roman, in the same Hotel de Paris suite, 42 years on.  They talk about Jackie’s sideburns in the film, and about Jackie’s fear, that day back in 1971, that race day would be wet.  “The Goodyears were just so much slower than the Firestones in the wet around there,” says Sir Jackie, reminding you that not once in the original film does he speak badly of Goodyear, despite the frustrations.  They talk about the terrible death-rates of the time and Roman, quite rightly, highlights the “success” of Stewart’s campaign for safety.

Mostly, though, they have a laugh.  And this is what is so memorable about Weekend of a Champion.  Stewart, in what he now looks back as a “very trendy” time, comes over in situ as the lithe, nimble, athlete-superstar that he was.  “That is why I made that film,” Polanski told me last night.  “I made it because Jackie was this amazing driver who was also so articulate, so lucid.  He is the film.”

And so you watched the reactions of some of the guests.  I sat behind Damon Hill, who was seeing the extensive footage of his father for the first time.   “It was a bit scary seeing my Dad in that form but I loved the film.  Just loved it,” he said afterwards.  Alain Prost, too, was captivated.  “Just amazing.  It reminded me of my early days in F1, when things were also changing so quickly.”  Allan McNish, too:  “You can see why Jackie is who he is.  Even then, he was so much more than just a racing driver…”

I cornered Jackie afterwards and pursued some details:

“Nice to see that NAZA race suit again.  And the lovely Westover shoes…”

“Och no.  They weren’t Westovers.  Everyone thought they were.  You know what they were?  Hush Puppies.  I needed a bit of extra sole support because I always walked on my toes and I was beginning to have problems.  Everyone at the time said you had to have very thin-soled shoes for maximum feel but it was like the gloves:  I started to wear gauntlet gloves with much thicker palms with flame resistance.  Didn’t change my feel at all….”

“Why were you so on edge that weekend?” asked McNish at the star-bedecked post-film party.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a blood imbalance that would become a duodenal ulcer in 1972.  I wasn’t sleeping well.  I was tetchy.  You can see it when I get annoyed with that photographer before the start.  That shouldn’t have happened. It was a sign that things weren’t right.”

We had a laugh about the famous scene in which Jackie and Roman, on the inside of the entry to Casino Square, watch F3 practice.  “Now he’s got it all wrong,” says Jackie, pointing to John Bisignano (who sportingly would say a few years later, “that was the end of my racing career!”).  “But he’s ok.  And so is he.  He knows doing…”

“Do you remember who that was?” I asked.

“No.  Who?”

“ Looked like James Hunt.”

This is the film’s most prominent feature – its exposure of the warts as well as the laughs.  It is a reminder that F1 was, and is, a never-ending movie, a 24-hour, 365-day TV show in which all the players must, and should, co-operate.  Certainly this was Stewart’s philosophy of the time.  I loved, too, the post-race Gala.  Jackie and Helen are there with Princess Grace (looking much more like Grace Kelly than the podium photos ever allowed), with the Prince, with Ringo Starr and others – but so, too, are many of the other drivers of the day – the guys who hadn’t won in the afternoon.  Pedro Rodriguez.  Jo Siffert.  Graham Hill.  Jacky Ickx.  Ronnie Peterson.

“When I see that film, I just think of the romance of it all,” said Allan McNish, walking back in a late-night drizzle to fetch his car.  “They were all at the post-race party.  That was lovely to see.”

Weekend of a Champion will be re-released soon in France by Pathe and in other regions thereafter.  This latest version was Co-Produced by Mark Stewart Productions. 

Posted in Days Past, F1 and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
11 May 2013
7 Comments

High Fives for Clark at Silverstone

moremsportshistoryFirst, though, the build-up to that May 11, 1963, 15th International Trophy Race:

Indianapolis became a steep learning-curve as the month of May gathered pace.  As well as embracing the ways of the idiosyncratic Speedway, and all that comes with it, Team Lotus faced the additional problems of being newcomers amongst the old guard, of initiating the winds of profound technical change and of trying many all-new components thus related.  Like big, aluminium, 4.2 litre Ford Fairlane V8 engines.  And Firestone tyres.  And Halibrand wheels.  And asymmetric suspension.  And seat belts.  And, yes, Bell Magnum helmets.

For most of the month of May, Jim, Colin Chapman and David Phipps, the talented photo-journalist, stayed in the house of Rodger Ward, the 1959 and 1962 Indy winner.   The days were relaxed by European racing standards, beginning with early morning tests, lunch work, more afternoon laps and then late-ish nights with the mechanics after early evening meals.   The issues were many:  the Dunlop D12s were quicker (Dan Gurney had lapped his Lotus 29 at 150mph while Jim was racing in Europe) but the Firestones were more durable.  With one pit stop to the roadsters’ two or three, Lotus could enjoy a big advantage even before the race was underway.  To achieve that, however, they needed to run the less grippy Firestones.

This, in turn, caused a furore.  Firestone built special tyres for Lotus around 15in wheels but then quickly found themselves under pressure from the Americans, who also expected the same, larger, footprint tyres for their roadsters (which normally ran 18in wheels).  AJ Foyt in particular took umbrage.  Expecting Firestone to be swamped, he approached Goodyear about using their stock car (NASCAR) tyres.  They agreed.  And, with that, the great Akron company began its single-seater racing history.

The switch to Firestones had additional implications for Jim.  Until now, he had worn at Indy his regular, light blue, two-piece Dunlop overalls, complete with Esso and BRDC badges.  With Ford’s engine supply now requiring the Lotus 29s to use Pure fuel and lubricants, those overalls were obviously redundant.  What to do?  Dan introduced Jim to Lew Hinchman, the local owner of a large garment and uniform factory.  Lew, whose father, JB,  built fire-retardant overalls for many of the American drivers, was in the process of making a dark blue, Ford-logo’d one-piece suit for Dan.  Why not make one for Jim, too?  Jim was measured up in the sweaty Team Lotus garage one lunch break (air-conditioning units were forbidden by the Speedway Safety Police due to the WWII-spec wiring in the garages!) and Jim was told that the overalls would be ready for the first week of qualifying.  Dan also pointed Jim in the direction of the Bell Helmets race rep.  Dan had been using a leather-edged McHal for a couple of years, and loved it.  Even so, he was impressed with the new Magnum. And so here was a chance for Jim to put his trusty Everoak out to pasture.  Jim examined the new silver helmet and decided to try it in the build-up to qualifying.  For Silverstone, next weekend, he would nonetheless race with the Everoak – for the last time, as it turned out.

Between runs in this leisurely week at Indy, Jim also had time to shape-up his travel schedule for the following weeks.  It would go something like this:

Tue, May 7: return to England (via Chicago). Pick up Lotus-Cortina at Heathrow. Drive to Silverstone. Check in to Green Man hotel. Thur-Fri-Sat: International Trophy F1 race, Silverstone. Sat, May 11: immediately after the race, fly with Colin and Dan Gurney to Heathrow in Colin’s Miles Messenger. Take flight to Chicago via New York. Change at Chicago for Indy. Check in to Speedway Motel. Begin testing Monday morning. Sat, May 18: Indy qualifying.  Leave Sunday, May 19, for London. Stay with Sir John Whitmore in Belgravia. Two days at the factory at Cheshunt. Wed, May 22 : fly to Nice from Heathrow. Check in to La Bananerie at Eze sur Mer. Thur, May 23-Sun May 26:  Monaco GP. Mon, May 27:  leave at 4:00am for London. Take flight to Chicago and then on to Indy. Thur, May 30: Indy 500. Fri, May 31: fly to Toronto and then drive on to Mosport. Sat, June 1: Players’ 200 sports car race (with Al Pease’s Lotus 23). Drive afterwards to Toronto. Take evening flight to London. Mon, June 3: Whitmonday Crystal Palace sports car race (Normand Lotus 23B). Wed, June 5: Leave London with Colin for Spa (Belgian GP).

In other words:  phew!  There was of course no internet back then; transatlantic phone calls were both a novelty and expensive.  Communications with the UK were via telexes and telegrams. Flight bookings were handled by Andrew Ferguson’s office in Cheshunt but re-arranged in the US by David Phipps.  And the tickets, of course, were big, carbon-copied wads of coupons. Jim’s black leather briefcase was literally jammed to the hilt.

There was little time, though, as one Indy issue followed another, to wonder if it would all be feasible.  If Jim didn’t qualify on the first weekend, for example – what would happen?  Would he miss Monaco or would he foresake Indy?  Given the powers behind the Indy effort – Ford, Firestone, etc – probably it would be Monaco.  For now, though, it was heads-down:  there was not a moment to spare – or even to think about the bigger problem.

In the midst of all this, Silverstone turned out to be a golden Saturday to be forever savoured. Thursday and Friday, by contrast, were best forgotten.  Dunlop were pushing R6 development to new frontiers;  Jim, as at Snetterton, found the Lotus 25 to be all over the place on the new tyres.  On a cold and windy Thursday, jet lag or no, he couldn’t find anything approaching a sweet spot with the car – and this was with exactly the chassis (R5) in which he’d been so quick at Aintree (on R5s).  He was only fifth that Thursday, focusing as he was on trying to make the car work just through Stowe and Club.   If he could find a balance there, he reasoned, then he could probably make up for deficiencies over the rest of the lap.

The mechanics – Jim Endruweit, Cedric Selzer Dick Scammell, Derek Wilde and the boys – worked through to six o’clock on Friday morning, rebuilding Jim’s car with yet another set-up change.   Perhaps, in addition, the rebuild might uncover a more fundamental chassis fault…

To no avail.  Saturday was cold and wet;  as all-weather as the new Dunlops undoubtedly were, little could be learned about a dry-weather balance.  The grid therefore being defined by Thursday’s times, Jim tried team-mate Trevor Taylor’s car for a few laps.  A spin at Copse capped an unremarkable day.  Innes Ireland, what’s more, would start from the pole in the BRP Lotus 24-BRM – a chassis that Jim had always liked.  Graham Hill was second in his trusty 1961/62 BRM, Bruce McLaren third in the new works Cooper and Jack Brabham fourth in his BT3, his engine down on power after a rushed rebuild.  Poor Dan Gurney had flown over with Jim from Indy but for him there would be no F1 debut with Brabham:  there was a dire shortage of Climax engines in this build up to the season proper, highlighted by Jack’s frequent runs up and down to Coventry.  Jack was more than ready to let Dan race the one and only BT3 at Silverstone but a short test at Goodwood confirmed that Dan was much too tall for Jack’s cockpit.  He would have to wait until Monaco to drive his tailor-made car.

This race was also notable for the appearance of the new 1963 Ferraris driven by John Surtees and Willy Mairesse.  Powered by regular V6 engines (with V8s rumoured to be on the way), the new cars showed glimpses of promise amidst predictable teething troubles.  This would be Surtees’ first F1 race for the Scuderia (and his first F1 race of the season;  the beautiful Lola GT, a forerunner of the 1964 Ford GT and a car with which Surtees had been closely involved form the outset, also had its maiden appearance this Silverstone weekend.  In a portent of the drama that was to explode three years later, Big John practiced the Lola on Thursday but was then forbidden by Ferrari from racing it on Saturday, even though the Sports Car Race was the last event of the day.  John appointed Tony Maggs in his place;  the South African started from the back of the grid and finished an excellent ninth.)

After Thursday’s all-nighter, and given the slight repairs that needed to be made to Trevor’s car after Jim’s spin, Colin decreed late on Friday afternoon that the boys should not overdo it.  “Just put everything back to standard on both cars.  Try to finish by nine. Get an early night.”

This they attempted.  After packing the 25s back into the transporter and driving it to their regular garage on the outskirts of Towcester, they race-prepared the cars to standard spec before repairing to their hotel, the Brave Old Oak, in time for a half-past-nine drink at the bar.   A “quick drink” then evolved into an all-nighter of a different kind – the liquid kind.  Come Saturday morning, as the bleary-eyed Team Lotus crew hustled their transporter through the early-race traffic, all the talk was of the blonde girl who worked behind the bar…Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden attended the 1963 International Trophy;  and the weather doffed its cap. A warm spring sun quickly replaced early cloud.  One hundred thousand spectators poured through Silverstone’s gates, filling the grandstands and the grass banks right around the circuit.  The British Grand Prix may have been but a couple of months in the future – here, at Silverstone – but the fans could not get enough.  A clear example of how less is definitely not more – providing the product is right. In the Team Lotus transporter, between laughs, Jim Clark reflected on the good news:  today they would forget the R6s.  They’d race R5s.  Dunlop wouldn’t like it but there you go.  A race is a race.A masterpiece of a race.  Jim started on the second row but was quickly up to second place, trailing his friend Bruce McLaren for a couple of laps before slicing past and pulling away.   Suddenly he had a Lotus 25 around him.  Suddenly he had balance and feel when on Thursday he been obliged to drive mainly on reflex, dumbing the understeer with induced flick oversteer.  Now he was four-wheel-drifting the 25 through Copse, Becketts, Stowe and Club.  Now he was using every inch of road through Woodcote and again past the pits, making the art of ten-tenths driving look sublimely simple.

18609.tifHe won it – and he won it with ease.  It was a Clark Classic on the old R5s in Lotus 25/R5.  Bruce finished second and Trevor drove well to make it a Team Lotus one-three.  Innes, quick all weekend, finished fourth – but not before recovering from a big spin at Woodcote, the thick tyre smoke of which effectively ushered-in a new era – the era of the soft-compound Dunlop R6.  Never before had rubber been so burnable – or so sticky.   Innes revolved the 24 at high speed – probably on oil dropped by the Surtees Ferrari, which eventually retired – but kept the car on the Ireland.  A few years before, the odds of that happening would have been too small even to contemplate.   Now, if we can combine those new grip levels with more compliant sidewalls, thought Jim and Colin, then we’ll definitely have a race tyre…

It was a fun day, too.  Sir John Whitmore was again magnificent in the Cooper S;  Mike Beckwith won his class with the Normand Lotus 23B;  Jack Sears scored the first of his many wins with the big Ford Galaxie – a car that Jim had driven over at Indy, when he was filling in some time one quiet day at the Speedway; Jim in Galaxy '62Graham Hill won the GT race in John Coombs’ lightweight E-Type; and Denny Hulme again won the Formula Junior race in the factory Brabham, just beating David Hobbs and Paul Hawkins.  Earlier that week, Jack himself had driven the FJ car, helping Denny with set-up and with a few circuit pointers.  Then there was the business with the Miles Messenger.  Racing over, Jim and Dan piled into the cramped four-seat cockpit; bags were stuffed into the small luggage compartment (no room for the trophy!); Colin fired up the DeHaviland Gipsy engine, opened the throttle…and nothing happened.  The old four-seater remained bogged in the Stowe mud, its wheels intransigent.   Out jumped an amused Silverstone winner and his buddy, Dan  – and off, in a lighter Miles, set Colin.  Even as the little aeroplane was gathering speed, Jim and Dan were scambling aboard.

Four connections and 4,000 miles later, the two Team Lotus friends were at Indy, ready to test on a warm Monday morning.

Captions from top:  Dan Gurney, in new Hinchmans, Colin Chapman and Jim Clark, still in Dunlop blues, talk wheels and tyres early in the Indy month of May;  Jim fingertips 25/R5 out of Becketts en route to victory; late in ’62 Jim had fun at the Speedway with a road-going Mercury Monterey.  Images: LAT Photographic, Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For more on Hinchman overalls: http://hinchmanracewear.com

Posted in Days Past, F1, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
21 Apr 2013
2 Comments

Flat out at Imola

S2280010The beautiful spring weather continued as Jim and Trevor made their way to Imola via Bologna.  For both drivers, this race was a first.  Imola – running through the vineyards and orchards of beautiful, undulating countryside – was in 1963 better-known as a motor-cycle track that had seen some sports car racing in the 1950s.  There was no “Ferrari” element to it back then:  the circuit had actually been developed by the Italian Olympic Committee, based on public roads.

Nor were there any chicanes.  From what we know today as “Ravazza” – the left-hander that takes the circuit back towards the pits – Imola was basically flat-out all the way down to Tosa, the tight left-hander that leads uphill.  The road wasn’t straight, mind:  Tamborello was still a very fast left-hand kink back then and the right-hander that followed it was likewise right-on-the-edge.  There was no “Variante Alta” after Acqua Minerale – but in some ways the track gave back what it gained in fast corners by being incredibly bumpy, particularly on that climb to the top of the hill. I spoke to Brian Redman recently about his win at a pre-chicane Imola in a Gulf Porsche 917:  he reckoned that only Spa was more demanding.S2280014

The sun shone, the air was fresh – and, for Team Lotus, the opposition was again negligible.  Not even Ferrari sent cars to this Shell-sponsored race, which meant that young Italian stars like Lorenzo Bandini had to seek rides in old Centro Sud Cooper- Maseratis.   As at Pau, though, Jim’s dedication to the perfect lap – and then to the perfect race – remained undimmed.  Over two days of practice he focused on taking the kinks flat and the high-speed corners in beautifully-balanced drifts: the result was a lap in 1min 48.3 sec – an easy pole, given that Trevor lost a lot of time with gearbox trouble.

The race started relatively late on Sunday – at 4:00pm, after a Formula Junior race which featured such drivers as “Geki” (who would race for Team Lotus at Monza in 1965 and 1966) and the future Ferrari driver, Andrea de Adamich – which meant that the sun had already lost its sheen and the shadows were growing ever-longer as the tricolore fell.  Jim led from the line and was never headed – but still he found time to “play” for the crowd.  Trevor pulled into the pits at the end of the first lap, explaining again that the car was jumping out of fourth gear, and rejoined some 15 laps in arrears.  (One can understand Trevor’s nervousness about issues like this:  at Spa, the previous year, his Lotus 24 had jumped out of gear at Blanchimont, had spun sideways, and had been t-boned at high speed by Willy Mairesse’s Ferrari.  Both drivers had amazingly escaped uninjured, which I guess to some extent re-enforced the belief in the minds of most of their contemporaries, albeit in the short-term, that it was better not to be strapped into the cockpit by seat belts.  I mention this because, already, Jim had experienced the security of seat belts during Indy testing.  He wore them at Indy, and at other ovals, but never, throughout his career, would he wear belts in any European single-seater races.)

Towards the end of this Imola race, therefore, Jim waited for Trevor and “raced” him through to the flag.  Their pace, given that Jo Siffert was lying a very distant second in the Filipinetti Lotus 24-BRM, was breathtaking to watch.  Jim waved Trevor past – then shadowed him, pushing him as hard as he dared, bearing in mind that Trevor was driving now without fourth gear at all.  Taking this into account, it is amazing, I think, to note that Trevor eventually lapped in 1min 48.3sec – at Jim’s pole time (166.769kph).  So did Jim, of course – but that wasn’t the point.  The race, after all, had been fun.S2280012

Very fortunately, we have on this occasion some colour footage from this event, courtesy of Christopher Tate, the current Managing Director of Donington Park.  Chris’s father was closely associated with the Rob Walker F1 team in the early-to-mid 1960s and thus took a 35mm camera with him to many F1 races.  Christopher notes that “it was at Imola in 1963 that Rob really noticed Seppi Siffert and decided to sign him up for 1964”.  In confirmation, of course, Siffert would go on to win the non-championship F1 race at Syracuse the following Thursday (April  25).  I love the charm of this short video – the relaxed chat between Jim and Jo Bonnier before the start; the obvious enthusiasm of the Italian hosts; the oil-smeared mechanics’ white overalls; JoBo, driving his RRW Cooper in short-sleeved polo; the straw bales, the trackside trees; Trevor waiting patiently, watching the race, while they work on his car; the elegance of the dark green Lotus 25s; and Jim looking a little embarrassed as he stands on the podium, Dunlop overalls wet from sweat.  You catch a glimpse, too, of Bob Anderson beginning to make his name in his dark blue and white 1962 Lola – and of Jo Schlesser’s sky-blue FJ Brabham.  With thanks, then, to “A Gentleman’s Motor Racing Diary”, Copyright World Action Sports Productions, available on Amazon.co.uk/DVD/Motosport.  (See below.)

Thus Team Lotus’ pre-season European interlude comes to an end.  Next race: the Aintree 200.  Again – and good to see, too – it is on a Saturday.  Next Saturday. April 27.

Posted in Days Past, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , ,

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