A record-breaking (seventh) win
It seems strange now but in 1963 it was part of motor racing tradition: Christmas and New Year meant South African sunshine. Read more…
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Archive for the category “Jim Clark’s 1963 season”
More hectic than racing
Continuing our year-long diary of Jim Clark’s epic 1963 season. When we last reported, Jim had flown straight to Indianapolis from Mexico in order to test the new four-cam Ford V8 Lotus 29B. Read more…
Four cams…and telemetry
It was the 1960s…but the schedules – and the demands – were no less than today’s.
Immediately after winning the Mexican Grand Prix, Jim Clark, Dan Gurney and Colin Chapman flew to Indianapolis via Chicago. From the warmth of the Gulf to the chill of the mid-west. From a 1.5 litre Coventry Climax-engined Lotus 25 (or, in Dan’s case, Brabham BT7) to the new four-cam Indy Lotus 29-Ford. To an empty, echo-ey Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the bitter winter winds were already whistling around corners in Gasoline Alley. To a full-on engine and tyre test in company with the Ford top brass and engineers from Goodyear, Firestone and Dunlop. Read more…
Mexican scrapbook – 1963
Thanks to David Friedman Collection and The Henry Ford (www.henryford.org) I am delighted to be able to publish an additional collection of images from the historic 1963 Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City. Many of these are being shown for the first time; and, collectively, I think they paint an almost ethereal picture of that country’s first World Championship Grand Prix: there was the ever-present army. There was the daunting Peraltada corner, which in 1962 had taken the life of Ricardo Rodriguez. There was Pedro, Ricardo’s elder brother, having his second F1 race in a third works Lotus 25-Climax. There was the rain on Saturday. And, on Sunday, after the arduous, two-hour, nine-minute race, there were the laughs in victory circle. Jim Clark, the new World Champion, had won his sixth Grand Prix of the season. I’m delighted, in addition, to show here a little-seen Solana family 35mm film shot over the weekend of the 1963 Mexican GP. Moises Solana, who had practised but not raced a Bowmaker Cooper in Mexico in 1962, had no worries about racing the following year with Number 13 on his Centro Sud BRM. Here we see it being loaded onto the Solana trailer behind a Chrysler Valiant and then in action at the circuit. This film includes lots of rare images from the weekend, including shots of Jim and the Lotus 25s, so I’d also like to say a very big thankyou to Cesar Galindo and the Solana family for the sights and the memories.
Captions, from top: wide-angle view of the banked hairpin; Saturday scene in the rain, looking away from the Peraltada towards the modern pit/garage complex; Tony Maggs and Richie Ginther within the Peraltada, showing new, two-tier outer Armco and half-tyres on the inside; the army stand guard over the Team Lotus entries prior to first practice; Team Lotus drivers Pedro Rodriguez, Jim Clark and Trevor Taylor prepare for that first practice session; Jim and Colin Chapman confer with the now-retired Stirling Moss while a dusky Mexican fan feigns disinterest; another view of the drivers’ briefing shown in the recent race report post (“Jim Clark in Mexico: 66 per cent at 7,000ft”): a flash convertible serves as a useful dias as, from foreground, anti-clockwise, Chris Amon, Trevor Taylor (in natty shirt), Giancarlo Baghetti, Tony Maggs (in ski jumper), Hap Sharp, Masten Gregory, Jim Hall, Pedro, Count Godin de Beaufort (in jacket and tie), Jim, Moises Solana, Dan Gurney, Jo Siffert, Jo Bonnier, Graham Hill, Rob Walker, Richie Ginther and Bruce McLaren listen in; Cedric Selzer and Jim Endruweit push Jim’s 25 onto the starting grid whilst BRM’s Chief Mechanic, Cyril Atkins, sits comfortably on the right front Dunlop of Graham Hill’s car; Michael Tee (left), father of LAT’s Stephen Tee, shares a pre-drivers’ parade joke with (from left), Jim, John Surtees, Godin de Beaufort and Colin Chapman; a lovely, low-line shot of Jim in the 25, pushing hard through the esses. Jim Hall is in the background with his BRP Lotus 24; Jim has his arms fully-crossed in the hairpin; Colin and Jim Endruweit are the first to congratulate Jim as he drives in towards the victory arena; Cedric Selzer (left) joins in the fun as the first three line-up with the race queen; and here are the first three – Jim, Jack Brabham and Richie – posing for the photographers; Colin’s gesture says it all Images: http://www.thehenryford.org
Jim Clark in Mexico: 66% at 7,000ft
The Team Lotus mechanics had been usefully employed at Ford’s Dearborn headquarters whilst Jim was racing at Riverside and Laguna, for the development Lotus 29-Ford was now scheduled to be tested at Indianapolis on the Tuesday and Wednesday (October 29/30) after the Mexican Grand Prix. As a group, though, they all re-assembled in Mexico City on Wednesday, October 23, for the first World Championship F1 race ever to be run on the futuristic autodrome. Following the sad death of Ricardo Rodriguez in the 1962 non-championship event, the last corner (Peraltada) had been re-modelled slightly but, otherwise, the circuit remained unchanged and a definite standard-setter. Over to Jim Clark’s mechanic, Cedric Selzer, for his description:
“The circuit was absolutely spectacular. The most amazing thing, so far as we were concerned, was that the garages were built into the back of the pits. Electricity, water and compressed air were laid on – and we had a work bench, too!”
The F1 cars all remained at The Glen for a week before being trucked across to Mexico on four huge semis – open-top semis! “As if this was not bad enough,” recalls Cedric, “the cars had been chained through the suspension wishbones. When they ran out of chain, they had then used bailing wire. This meant that some of the wishbones had to be changed as they were bent and no longer serviceable. Where the chrome plating had come off there was not a lot we could do about it. It was part of Team Lotus policy to keep the cars in Concours condition so we then spent a whole day just making the cars look the part. Then we set about making them reliable and quick…
“Coventry Climax and Lucas had designed a metering unit to compensate for Mexico’s 7,000ft altitude. This was not a five minute adjustment job because the metering unit was in the middle of the engine vee, under the throttle slides. It was impossible to get your hand in there so, being the smallest of the mechanics, I was required to remove the inlet trumpets and find my way through. Even so, the engines wouldn’t run very well during first practice. We then discovered a Vernier adjustment on the back of the revised metering unit. It was a simple question of pushing in a pin and rotating a little wheel.”
Bruce McLaren described the power loss in his Autosport column the week after the race: “The loss of power was generally accepted to be about 25 per cent. You gradually became accustomed to this during the practice sessions but it was the start of the race that really showed up the difference. I let out the clutch on my Cooper with the rev-counter showing the usual 7,000rpm and the engine nearly stalled, obliging me to slip the clutch a couple of times. Even so, I managed to pass three cars off the line (the two BRMs and Dan Gurney’s Brabham)!”
Jim received a bit of fright early on Friday’s four-hour practice session when a dog ran out in front of him. He narrowly avoided the stray but it would be a portent of the chaos that would typify the Mexican GP for several years thereafter. There were track invasions as the decade wore on; and, as late as 1991, I was stopped by the local police en route to the circuit for no obvious reason than that they wanted a couple of $100 bills; nor will anyone who was at that race forget Anthony Marsh’s hotel room in Mexico City being robbed in the dead of night…by one of the hotel security guards. Such was the Mexican GP. I guess it was all summed-up by the local Automobile Club being based in, um, a former house of disrepute. Everyone loved racing in Mexico…and will again love racing in Mexico…but you had to be ready for what you knew it was going to throw at you.
Practice was inconclusive – and very hard work for Team Lotus. Pedro Rodriguez’ carburettor engine had blown at The Glen – and did so again in Mexico: a tiny piece of debris had remained lodged near the timing chain. Trevor Taylor’s Colotti-gearbox 25 stopped with a broken first gear – and Jim stopped practice early when his ZF car developed its familiar tendency to jump out of gear. Even so – and partly because Saturday practice was rained-off – Jim started from the pole. Such was his ability to put together The Quick Lap. The Team Lotus boys left the circuit at 4:00am on Sunday morning. “Not bad, if I do say so myself,” says Selzer, who typically (but totally falsely) blamed himself for the ongoing problems with Pedro’s engine. “The mechanics got down to the job of fixing Pedro’s car as though a World Championship depended on it,” remembers Jim Clark. “It was just like the old days. The boys managed to get some Reynolds bicycle chanin from a Mexico City cycle shop and then started to rebuild the engine.”
In his autobiography, Jim Clark, Cedric remembers arriving back at his hotel to find Phil Hill walking about in the gardens. “’What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘You should be in bed. You’re racing in under 12 hours.’ Phil replied that he couldn’t sleep and had decided to take a walk. I understood later that this was fairly common practice for him. For our part, we were back in the garages at 8.00am…”
The Mexicans put together an amazing programme on race day. On Sunday morning none other than “Fireball” Roberts won an exhibition stock car race; and then, to much fanfare, the F1 drivers were introduced to the Mexican President, Adolfo López Mateos. Jim anticipated a decidedly early flag-drop, allowed for the power loss, seized an immediate lead…and was never headed, despite a problem with fuel starvation late in the race. (As he would at the British GP in two year’s time, Jim magically adapted his driving to absorb the troughs of the engine. Over the long, 2hr 10min race, and despite that fuel problem, his lap time average was never further than two seconds away from his fastest lap. Thus, with style, Jim won his sixth GP of the year.
At a time when much is made of Sebastian Vettel’s amazing run this year, it’s worth recording that Jim in Mexico became the first driver since Alberto Ascari (1952) to win six races in a season and that his scoring rate for 1963 at this point was a stunning 66 per cent. Seb’s, post-India, is currently 55 per cent.
Captions (from top): Although he led the Mexican GP from start to finish, it was by no means an easy weekend for Jim Clark and Team Lotus. Gearbox problems delayed him in practice and in the closing stages of the race the Lotus 25 developed a fuel vaporisation issue. Here, very relieved, he receives the plaudits; Jim’s 25 looked a little spare in Mexico, lacking, as it did, the plastic Lotus badge normally mounted in the centre of the red-rimmed steering wheel; with Pedro Rodriguez on his right and Jo Siffert just behind him and to the left, Jim listens attentively to the drivers’ briefing. Dan Gurney stands in the background and Jo Bonnier to Jim’s left; Jim accelerates out of the Esses towards the Peraltada. Note the small deflector added to the front of the windscreen for this race ; below – one of the sadest photographs I know. As we remember 50 years since the first World Championship Mexican GP, here’s Ricardo Rodriguez at the non-championship 1962 race the year before, just prior to his fatal accident. Unfamiliar in Everoak space-type helmet, Ricardo kisses the hand of his father before setting out for another practice run with Rob Walker’s Lotus 24-Climax. His youngest brother, Alejandro (who died recently), looks on. Soon afterwards, the right-rear suspension broke on the Lotus, plunging Ricardo head-on into the Armco. Ricardo and Pedro were Mexican motor racing, and their world stood still when news of the tragedy broke. Pedro, just as gallant, just as brilliant, died in a minor sports car race in 1971. As we look forward to Mexico’s return to the F1 calendar in 2014, we’ll always remember los hermanos Rodriguez Images: LAT Photographic, Diego Merino/Luc Ghys
At last: the Arciero 19
Laguna Seca was Jim Clark’s next temporary home, for the LA Times and Pacific GPs were held over consecutive weekends. The entry for Laguna, then, was as enticing as it had been at Riverside – with one major exception: Jim Clark was now a major contender for overall victory. The Arciero Brothers had rebuilt the 2.7 litre Climax engine in their famous Lotus 19 and Jim was now all set to go. At one stage an Indy Lotus 29 development test had been planned for this weekend – new Dunlops to be tried, together with new engine ancillaries prior to the arrival of the overhead cam Ford V8 – but this test had now been postponed until after the October 27 Mexican GP. Good thing too. The Monterey coast was a nice place to be in late October – and the Arciero Lotus 19 was going to be a nice car to drive. Jim had until now never raced a 19 but he’d heard lots about the speed of Innes Ireland in the Rosebud 19 (now badly damaged following Innes’ serious accident at Kent, Washington, a few weeks earlier) and Stirling’s mastery, of course, of the BRP 19. It would be the one and only time he’d race a 19 in the States but he would win again with one at Oulton Park in 1964.
It was no surprise that Jim adapted quickly to the car and to the new circuit. That Arciero 19 was loved by all who drove It – and a fair few drivers sat in the car. He knocked half a second off the lap record after only a few minutes of practice and would have started from the pole but for Bob Holbert’s pace in the much quicker, Cooper-based Shelby King Cobra; team-mate MacDonald, on this occasion, was way back on the grid after various problems necessitated an engine change.
I am delighted to publish more classic photographs from this Laguna meeting, courtesy of The Henry Ford – and to be able to catch a flavour of the event on the adjoining video. Poor Chris Ekonomaki is so excited about seeing AJ and Parnelli in the same race, let alone other heroes like Dan Gurney, Bob Holbert, Dave MacDonald, Pedro Rodriguez, Graham Hill and Jim Hall, that he plain forgets even to mention Jim Clark in his opening salvo.
Suddenly, though, after a slowish start, there he is, pushing Holbert hard and then taking the lead when the King Cobra’s engine begins to overheat: Holbert had nudged a back-marker whilst lapping it and had crumpled a radiator inlet.
Driving beautifully in the 19, sliding the rear in best Dave MacDonald tradition, Jim then looked set for victory.Then he, too, fell victim to the sort of incident that would never happen today. Slightly off-line whilst lapping Richie Ginther’s Porsche, Jim suddenly found a half-tyre marker right in his path; another car had flicked it up only a few seconds before. Rather than swerve to avoid it – and thus either hit Richie or risk a high-speed trip into the infield – Jim chose to run over it. There was a loud THWUMP and then smoke, lots of it, from a broken nose auxiliary oil cooler. Jim pulled off the track. Chris called it as an engine problem but Jim’s immediate examination of the front of the car tells the real story. He sees the oil and he knows his day is over.
Dave MacDonald eventually won this race, too, spearing his rebuilt King Cobra up through the field in another epic drive. AJ Foyt was second in the gorgeous Scarab, Jim Hall third in the curious Chaparral and “Corporal” Tim Mayer (for he had been in the army) an excellent sixth with his ex-Normand Lotus 23B. It’s also worth noting that a certain Ronnie Bucknum dominated one of the support races at Laguna with his MGB. Less than a year later he would be making his F1 debut at the Nurburgring at the wheel of the brand new Honda!
Thus ended Jim’s Californian interlude. Now it was time to re-jig and to fly to Mexico City, where Jim had won the year before in the non-championship F1 race, when he’d taken over Trevor’s 25 after being black-flagged for receiving a push-start. (As well as splitting the prize money, Jim had given Trevor his Breitling watch as a way of saying ‘thankyou’.) Ricardo Rodriguez had been killed in practice for that race in ‘62. Now, 12 months on, Ricardo’s brother, Pedro, would be Jim’s team-mate for the second time.
Captions, from top: Jim in typically relaxed pose in the Lotus 19. Note the ironed creases down the arms of his Dunlop blue overalls and – as ever – the absence of seat belts. The Pitt 19 Jim raced in ’64 was fitted with wire wheels rather than the Lotus wheels on this car; a Pacific breeze induced a pullover for Friday practice; Jim bites some more nail prior to qualifying; drivers briefing. Jim enjoys the fall sunshine. On his left – Richie Ginther, Walt Hansgen, a very young Peter Revson and Jim Hall. On his right – the driver he most admired in the late 1950s: Masten Gregory; below – Jim turns it on, MacDonald-style, as he exits the last corner of the Laguna lap Images: The Henry Ford http://www.thehenryford.org
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