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Archive for the tag “Colin Chapman”

22 Sep 2013
8 Comments

“Where’s Clark…?”

THF110901_JimClark-DanGurney-Trenton200_09-22-1963Incredibly, amazingly, Jim Clark and Dan Gurney arrived at the venerable Trenton State Fairgrounds in New Jersey ready to qualify and to race.  They had slept for but a couple of hours at the nearby team motel;  Oulton Park already seemed an age away.  Both would drive their Indy and Milwaukee Lotus 29-Fords, although on this occasion the exhausts had been angled skywards in physical testimony to the sheer speed of the two rear-engined cars.  At both of the preceding races, the drivers of the higher, front-engined roadsters had complained about the fumes caused by the lower exhaust flows from the two little Lotus.  As it was by now clear that the older cars would inevitably be trailing the 29s, Colin Chapman (and designer Len Terry) agreed to re-angle the exhausts upwards.  The ungainly mod (which also, as it turned out, provided a performance boost!) would thereafter be a reminder of all that was achieved by Team Lotus in America in 1963.

For coverage of the Trenton 200 I can do no better than to hand over to that excellent American writer, John Hearst Jnr, and to (the sadly now defunct) Sports Car Digest:

“The two-lap qualifications proved to be almost as exciting as the race itself,” wrote Hearst. “Knowing voices said that AJ Foyt’s one-lap record of 106.635 mph could not be beaten, for conditions weren’t ‘right’.  Clouds polka-dotted the sky and outnumbered the sun.  The day was cold and brisk, and the long grass in the infield was beaten flat by a gusty wind.  The wind.  That would be the problem.

“And it was…for some.  Indy roasters and ‘spring cars’ made two laps apiece.  Each driver fought to stay in the blacker part of the grey asphalt ribbon: ‘the groove’.  Some were quick and skillfull while others worked with arms flailing and right foot stabbing in a furious exhibition of over/under oversteer.  A couple reached the point of no return as their mounts went into gut-wrenching, rubber-burning slides.

“Dan Gurney’ (whose engine now had the 48mm longitudinal Weber carburettors) “took his turn.  Dressed in plain overalls, with black helmet and leather face mask, first thoughts were, ‘He must have come to the wrong place!’ The little blue-and-white car sang its way around once, and then again.  Accelerating earlier, and backing-off earlier, Dan made it all look so easy as he averaged 109.024 mph.  AJ Foyt, 28 years old and twice USAC Champion, could manage no more than a shrug as his record fell.

“Minutes later, Jim Clark took his turn with a flourish, provided by promoter Sam Nunis.  A local bagpipe band huffed and wheezed at ‘Scotland, the Brave’ as Clark, in his green-and-yellow car, was pushed out before the cheering fans on the grandstand straight.  All work stopped.  Wrenches were laid aside and heads came out from beneath raised hoods.  Everyone knew what was going to happen.

“The crowd became silent.  The only sounds were the skirling pipes and the wind.  Then came the hum of the starter motor, followed by the high-pitched wail of the unmuffled, pushrod Ford V8.  The young Scot was given a shove to engage first, and he was away.

“The air held one sound:  a note that worked itself higher and higher up the scale.  The car seemed to float around the track others had made appear so bumpy.  Green flag, white flag and then the checker.  It was over, and everyone knew – but by how much?

“Clark had just lowered Gurney’s newly-set record by 0.332 mph when he turned the mile over in 33.02 seconds, and was over 3 mph faster than Foyt’s old record.

“A weak smile was all that was offered in return as one roadster owner turned to his driver and cracked, ‘How do you spell ‘For Sale’?’

“Finally, the 26 starters were assembled, started and pushed away on the first of four warm-up laps.  On the pole was Clark and next to him was Gurney.  Both stifled yawns, for both had spent the night flying the Atlantic.  Both had won races at Oulton Park the previous day and Gurney the previous weekend had won at Bridgehampton, where he had been the first to drive an American car, the Shelby Cobra, to victory in a World Manufacturers’ Championship race.

“The green flag was waved furiously and a roar shook the earth as 26 cars accelerated as one.  Yet the sound of the Lotus-Fords was unmistakable, for they were two trumpets in an orchestra of tubas.  Appearing comparatively relaxed, Clark and Gurney, nose to tail, pulled away from the 24 others.  At first only a second, then two, then five, soon to be seven, ten, twelve, and more.

“Meanwhile others were having their problems.  On lap six, Rodger Ward saw his USAC Championship hopes fizzle when a fuel line burst, covering him with the volatile stuff.  Next to quit was Jim Hurtubise, whose fuel-laden car was bottoming through the turns.  When the seat pan started to wear away, Jim started getting a little warm.  Then his gas tank ruptured and Jim wisely gave up.  Speechmaker Eddie Sachs retired, to be joined five laps later by Indy winner Parnelli Jones, whose magneto went sour.

“By now, Clark led Gurney and 12 seconds, who in turn led Foyt by 10 seconds.  Clark had lapped every car in the field except Foyt.  That was lap 49.  On lap 50 everyone looked at everyone else and finally someone said it:  ‘Where’s Clark?’

“The young Scot had pulled into the pits.  A glance at his oil pressure gauge brought him in, and an ever-growing puddle of black under his car kept him in.  Through for the day, the primrose-yellow-overalled driver” (the Hinchmans!) “climbed atop a nearby truck and joined Rodger Ward as a spectator.  Englishman Colin Chapman, builder of the Lotus-Fords, stood by as the crew removed the engine cover, revealing a ruptured four-inch hose, used to join the chassis oil tube to the cast-aluminium ‘Fairlane’ engine.  Unceremoniously, the car was shoved into its van.

“Gurney calmly kept his mount in first place.  Foyt, however, closed the gap to seven seconds as three Offy types put Dan in a neat little box for some five laps. When they became committed to a line in a turn, he changed his, and eventually picked them off, one at a time.  The Lotus held the upper hand.

“Mounting elation suddenly turned to depression for on lap 147 Gurney was followed down the main straight by a large cloud of white smoke.  Dan backed off and cars he had just lapped, some for the fifth and sixth time, came streaming by him.  Silently, with engine cut, he pulled into pit lane as Foyt, with a quick glance to the left, accepted the lead.  Gurney’s acute disappointment was mirrored in the faces of his crew.  And for many of the fans, the race was over, for they had come to ‘…See the Fabulous Lotus-Fords!  See Jim Clark! See Dan Gurney!’

“An oil seal on an accessory drive on the front of the block had let go, causing Dan’s retirement.  This was the reason given by one Ford representative (of almost 50 present) after almost an hour of searching by Chapman and crew.

“Foyt led for the remaining 53 laps.  He not only won the race but the USAC Championship for the third time in his career.  Over a lap behind, and finishing second and third, were Bud Tinglestad and Troy Ruttman, who brought the remaining crowd to their fee with some hearty dicing.  It was a good race and an exciting race but for many it was over back on lap 147.

“Only ten cars finished.  Foyt’s share of the $42,210 purse was nearly $12,000, which might just b e enough for a down-payment on a Lotus-Ford.  Chapman said (and a Ford PR man verified it) that he will build cars for private owners after he fulfils his primary commitment to Ford.   He refused, at present to state a price.  And, according to a Dunlop tyre man who was present, the R6s the cars were shod with showed very little wear at Trenton and ‘…may be the answer to a no-change Indy’.

“When a Ford man was asked if these cars would run again next year at Indy, the answer was ‘No!’. When asked why, he answered, ‘…’cause we’re going to build new ones.’  The 1963 cars will be used for display and research and development.

“The capper of the day came when one railbird remarked that he didn’t think the Lotus-Ford were really that amazing after all.  ‘Hell,’ he explained, ‘a guy in track shoes can beat a guy in combat boots any day of the week.”

Thanks again to Sports Car Digest for John’s reporting in the way of the classic, 1960s US sportswriter.

Additional notes:  Dan would have at least been cheered by Troy Ruttman’s third place because he still rates Troy as one of the great, hidden-away American talents.  (Ruttman won the 1952 Indy 500 at the age of 22 and showed his versatility with a strong Maserati 250F drive in the 1958 French GP at Reims.)  With Jim’s hectic schedule precluding any sort of consistent commitment to a 1963-64 US test programme, young Bobby Marshman was duly hired by Team Lotus (financed by Lindsey Hopkins) to carry out development work on the new double overhead-cam engines. There was also talk after Trenton that the two Lotus failures had been indirectly caused by incidents during the shipping of parts.  This was later rescinded when it was discovered that on Dan’s car a piston had fractured and thus damaged the oil line – but this does give a flavour of the sort of differences that quickly grew between Ford and Lotus (and between the Americans and the British).  Hearst’s report, indeed, is remarkable for its objectivity. In most contemporary American publications, and particularly over at Car and Driver, the emphasis was very much on the Ford-Lotus cars, with Lotus, in the main, considered to be lucky, and slightly unworthy, partners.  Sports Car Digest, by contrast, was a brilliant mix of Americana and Bernard Cahier. Need I say more.

So ended Jim’s 1963 American oval racing season.  A win and a second.  He would return to Trenton – and Indy, of course – in 1964.

“It had been hard work and a great deal of travelling for just three races,” he would write later in Jim Clark at the Wheel, “but it was worth it in the results we gained and the impact we made.  I now have an ambition to drive the Lotus 29 on a road circuit but I suppose that dream will have to wait.”

Jim would, of course, drive the 1965 Lotus 38 Indy car up the Ste Ursanne hill-climb, as we have described elsewhere on these pages, but in 1963, after the US and Mexican GPs, there were American sports car races still to pursue.  From New Jersey, meanwhile, the new World Champion took a 707 back to England for a different kind of race:  the Snetterton Three Hours with the Normand Racing Lotus 23B.

Personal trainer?  Gym?  Nutritionist?  “Racing keeps me fit,” said Jim.  “Racing and getting to races.  There’s no time for anything else.”22259.tif

Captions (from top):  looking slightly less elegant thanks to its angled exhausts, the Lotus 29-Fords nonetheless set the pace at Trenton.  Jim, wearing his regular, peakless Bell Magnum but on this occasion (as per the USAC regularions) a shoulder harness, was leading easily before an oil leak forced his retirement; Dan then took over in the blue-and-white car – but retired with a broken piston.  Note that they are running the same Dunlop-Halibrand wheel combination as Milwaukee; Dan Gurney, on board a 707, gives some idea of what it was like in 1963, when trans-Atlantic crossings were for drivers like Dan and Jim Clark as frequent as trips to the local market.  Economy class was a little more spacious back then; the seat backs included a serious reading light; and everyone dressed for the occasion, regardless of the route or the timings Photographs: Ford Motor Company and LAT Photographic

It was initially difficult to find images from the 1963 Trenton 200.  I wrote to most of the leading US journalists for leads;  I contacted local, New Jersey, newspapers and agencies.  No luck.  Then, the day after the above report was published, I received this bundle (below) from the Ford Motor Company.  To say I’m delighted is massively to under-state.  Finally, we can gain a picture of what it was like back then on the track that is no longer.  Look at the old grandstand; look at Jim Endruweit and the Lotus mechanics, all neat in green.  Look at the sandy infield;  look at the Fairground in the background.  Look at the 29s out there in the groove.  That’s the rear-engined Kurtis-Offy of the  Canadian, Ed Kostenuk, that Jim is lapping.  That looks like the nose of Parnelli’s Watson on the right as Jim’s 29 is pushed backwards down the pit lane – and that’s Roger McCluskey’s Vita Fresh Orange Juice Special behind Jim’s car at bottom.  Again, many thanks to FoMoCo.

THF110896_JimClark-Trenton200_09-22-1963THF110898_JimClark-ChuckRogee-Trenton200_09-22-1963THF110899_JimClark-DanGurney-Trenton200_09-22-1963THF110900_JimClark-Trenton200_09-22-1963THF110902_JimClark-Trenton200_09-22-1963

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
21 Sep 2013
5 Comments

Clark’s Gold Cup

21594.tifJim’s hectic schedule was a blessing:  he had little time to dwell upon the post-Monza traumas.  After the Chapman party, Jim returned to Edington Mains for a couple of days, there at last to savour the feeling of securing the World Championship. There were interviews to handle; and the concept of an autobiography was quickly gathering strength. Too quickly, though, it was time to drive down to Tarporley in his new, prototype Lotus Elan for the Daily Express-sponsored Gold Cup meeting at Oulton Park. Although this was a two-day meeting, with practice on Friday and racing on Saturday, Jim was additionally required to drive the 25 in a filming session for Esso. Unusually, movie cameras were mounted on a specially-made, triangulated section behind the driver and in the footwell area.  Everyone remembered Graham Hill’s scare at the Nurburgring the year before, when he had clouted a camera that had fallen off another car, but this session, at least, would take place with no other cars on the circuit.

Cedric Selzer recalls Colin Chapman’s reaction to the filming in his superb new autobiography, “Jim Clark”:  “The camera on top was operated by a battery pack – basically a wooden box containing a number of batteries.  No-one had thought of how this box was going to be mounted.  It was too big to go on the driver’s lap.  While we were dithering over what to do, Colin Chapman came over, slightly irate, as he wanted to get away as soon as filming was over.

“He put the box on top of the two rear tailpipes and bound it on with tank tape.  We all looked at each other, knowing what the outcome would be.  Jim went out in the car and on the second lap he came in with the battery box missing. We were not surprised. The camera crew went around the circuit to collect it. They came back with the battery pack completely wrecked. Fortunately for them, they had a spare. Chapman played no further part in remounting the battery box.   The mechanics took over, did it their way, and there was no further trouble! Jim never went over 7,000rpm as he was worried about the battery box going missing again but he drove as if he was driving at full speed.”

Many of you will have seen this on-board lap already on YouTube – but I am pleased to show here the entire film made by Esso, beginning with the Esso caravan’s departure (with Joe and Lofty!) from the Fulham oil dump by Wandsworth Bridge, London. It also includes some nice shots from the British GP and the Oulton Park Gold Cup. Watch for Cedric Selzer in the closing sequence, fingering the Cup itself!

Jim was scheduled to drive three different cars at Oulton – the 25 in the F1 Gold Cup; the Normand Lotus 23B; and, finally, now that it had been homologated, the brand new Lotus-Cortina.  He indeed raced the 25, and won with ease from the pole.  His new lap record established him as the first driver officially to lap Oulton at over 100mph; and top speeds in the F1 race, recorded for the first time over one-tenth of a mile on the back straight, underlined Jim’s feelings about the superior power of the BRMs.  Richie Ginther broke the trap at 139mph, Innes Ireland at 138.4 mph and Graham Hill 137.8 mph. Jim was the quickest Climax runner at 136 mph.  After this race, Selzer also wrote: “There have been many stories about the tyres on Jim Clark’s car lasting four races.  This is true, but also the brake pads lasted three times longer than those any other driver.  Derek Wild used to say that you could put all the gearboxes on the bench in front of him in random order and he could tell which gearbox came out of Jim’s car as it showed less signs of wear.   The point is that the standard of preparation was no different between Jim’s car and the number two car.  It was just that the man was very ‘soft’ on his car and so he tended to last the race distance as a result.”1963 International Gold Cup.1963 International Gold Cup.

The remainder of Jim’s Oulton racecard was more complicated.  Having taken the lead from the front row of the sports car race – the first event of the day – Jim amazingly spun on the opening lap and dropped to eighth.  Frank Gardner, who had driven beautifully in practice to take the pole with the little works Brabham, crashed heavily in avoidance and was very lucky to escape serious injury. Despite all this, Jim sliced his way back through the field to win his class and to finish second overall behind Roy Salvadori’s venerable Tommy Atkins Cooper Monaco. 21580.tifJim practised the Lotus Cortina but stood aside to let Jack Sears race it: Ford of America enjoyed a relationship with Willment that extended far beyond motor racing and specially requested that Jack be allowed to debut the car officially. (Without in any way detracting either from Jack or Willment, it seems odd that Ford considered this to be more significant than having Jim Clark, Indy-Ford driver and new World Champion, in the car.  Such, though, were the times.) Jim watched happily with Colin as Trevor Taylor, now recovered from his Enna shunt, jumped straight into the other Cortina to qualify only a shade slower than Jack. 21605.tifTrevor sat on Jack’s bumper for the duration of the race – and in addition qualified fourth for the Gold Cup, in the 25, 0.6 slower than Jim.  Again, though, he DNF’d with more transmission problems.  Mike Beckwith, Jim’s Normand team-mate, made his F1 debut in the Gold Cup, driving Jim Hall’s BRP Lotus 24-BRM, but Mike remembers it as an unhappy time:  “We never got the thing sorted and it all ended when the gearbox seized going into Old Hall.  I hit the bank hard.”  Mike, like Frank Gardner, was fortunately able to return to the pits on foot.

Also in the Oulton saloon car event:  Dan Gurney, driving “Jim’s” Alan Brown Ford Galaxie.  Dan, who had retired from the Gold Cup with a blown engine in his Brabham, arrived very late on the grid amidst frantic PA-calls for his presence.  He then calmly peeled open a packet of chewing gum, climbed into the car…and won from the pole.21611.tif  Graham Hill replaced Sears in the Willment Galaxy and duly finished second – and Phil Middlehurst, father of Andy, was again right in the midst of it with his Cooper S.  About the first thing Andy remembers, as a baby in a pram at Oulton, is staring at the rear light cluster of a factory Lotus–Cortina.  Last weekend, at Goodwood, Andy, still obsessed with mid-1960s Lotus, debuted his stunning rebuild of Jim’s 1966 US GP-winning Lotus 43-BRM.

60,000 people watched the racing at Oulton:  it was another of those classic, brilliant, British motor racing days at one of the all-time great circuits. Old Hall, crammed with spectators, was cambered, quick and very conducive to four-wheel-drifts. Or you watched from further down the hill, on the approach to Cascades, where you could see the cars plunge into the left-hander – or accelerate away over in the background, down the straight, noses dipping as they flicked through the gears. The mist rose in the early mornings at Oulton; the light flecked through the trees. The aroma of high-octane fuel mixed perfectly with the gentle flavour of English parkland. The drivers gathered around the Esso caravan in the paddock for cups of tea and a sandwich. The team transporters were parked in natural but logical random. Flags flew.  And, In a field nearby, the makeshift runway ran diagonally, giving maximum length for take-off.

Jim, Colin and Dan flew from it in Colin’s Piper Aztec, narrowly missing the trees as the engine thrashed away.  From Heathrow, they flew on to Toronto, where they transferred to a Ford company plane for the ongoing flight to Newark.  The following day, Sunday, despite the full programme of Oulton, despite the trans-Atlantic flight and all the connections, Jim and Dan would be racing Lotus 29-Fords in the Trenton 200.

Captions, from top:  Jim glides the 25 through the Esso Hairpin at Oulton Park.  He won the Gold Cup with impunity; the full version of the Esso film made before, and during, the Gold Cup meeting;  photographer Max Le Grand peers down at Jim as the Lotus 25 prepares to exit the Esso Hairpin; the nose dips as Jim squeezes the brakes between the autumn leaves; Jim exits Lodge Corner in the Normand Lotus 23B.  On this occasion he wore his Bell Magnum, creating a very different look from the April meeting at Oulton; Jack Sears and Trevor Taylor stunned the crowd with their new Ford Lotus-Cortinas; Dan Gurney won the saloon car race overall with “Jim’s” Alan Brown’s Ford Galaxie Photographs: LAT Photographic, Peter Windsor Collection

With grateful thanks to Cedric Selzer, whose new autobiography contains many Jim Clark gems. Cedric has published the book himself, with proceeds going to the Marie Cure Cancer Care Charity. It can be ordered on-line or via good bookshopsS2740001

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
15 Sep 2013
4 Comments

The Jim Clark Victory Parade…at Brands

831_41.tifAt Goodwood over the weekend we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Jim Clark’s first World Championship with probably the greatest collection of Clark cars ever seen on one patch of motor racing turf. On Saturday, September 14, 1963, there was a similar, if slightly more muted, Jim Clark parade to toast the same championship win. Jim, Colin Chapman and the Team Lotus mechanics were the impromptu toast of a relatively small crowd at Brands Hatch, where a BRSCC international meeting had the week before been billed only as the Anglo-European Trophy for Formula Juniors.  Jim changed into his Dunlop overalls in order to drive the Lotus 25 around the Grand Prix circuit, waving to the crowd and carrying Colin Chapman piggy-back behind the rollover bar;  and all the Team Lotus mechanics were present, sharing the fun and chatting to the crowds. Behind the 25 ran the Ron Harris Lotus 27s of Peter Arundell and Mike Spence (who were racing that day and would finish one-four in the final) plus the spare 27, an Elite, an Elan, a Seven and a Cortina.  831_43.tifJim would have enjoyed watching the two FJ heats early in the afternoon (won by Timmy Mayer and Denny Hulme) and would have been delighted by Sir John Whitmore’s class win with the factory Austin Cooper S. Bob Olthoff would have revived recent happy memories by winning overall with his Galaxie; and Jack Sears would also have brought a smile to Jim’s face with his class win with his Willment Cortina GT. (The Cortina-Lotus would soon be homologated but not for this weekend). That done, Jim then donned his Bell Magnum and string-backed Leston gloves to set about some serious lappery with the 25.  Despite running the wrong dampers for Brands, and nursing a slight mis-fire, he completed four flying laps, smashing Bruce McLaren’s 2.5 litre record by 0.6sec. (The first Championship F1 race at Brands, the British and European GP, was scheduled for July, 1964.)831_44.tifThat night, with the less pleasant aspects of Monza now beginning to fade, Colin Chapman hosted a huge party in his house in Hadley Wood, near Elstree aerodrome in north London.  Most of Jim’s peers were present, in addition to many key motoring and motor racing figures.  I asked Sally (Stokes) if she remembered much about it.  “I think it was the first time I saw Jim in a kilt,” she replied.  “There were lots of ‘do they/don’t they?’ jokes which Jim thought were very funny.  Apart from that I don’t remember too much about it. Probably we were having too good a time!”

Captions, from top: Jim talks to the Brands crowd. Colin listens and the excellent Anthony Marsh oversees; Jim’s 25 leads the Brands victory parade; rear view of the same.  Images: LAT Photographic  

Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , ,
28 Jul 2013
11 Comments

Even in Solitude he was stunning

20583Solitude.  The name is enough to suggest that this was more than just another circuit – and indeed it was.  The Solitude Grand Prix, held on a sweeping, undulating and therefore very demanding road course under the shadow of the Schlosse Solitude, near Stuttgart, Germany, was in reality the Grand Prix of the German Motor Industry.  Massive crowds flocked to the circuit when it opened pre-war – and continued to do so in the 1950s and 1960s, when over 350,000 people attended the July F1 races.  It was bigger than the Nurburgring;  only Indianapolis, on a global scale, attracted a larger race crowd than Solitude.  Mercedes did their share of winning, as did Porsche. Bosch was based at Stuttgart, too.  Motor-cycle races were a huge success at Solitude; and the post-war F1 non-chamionship Grands Prix, and also Formula 2 races, held at a time when Porsche were on the ascendant, were no less spectacular.

The drivers and key team people stayed at the nearby Eis hotel;  it still exists today.  Legend has it that Innes Ireland once shot a loaded pistol there at a post-race party.  It’s probably true, because Innes in later years became quite irritated when anyone mentioned it.  Baron Fritz Huschke von Hanstein, the wonderful Porsche Team Manager, was the early 1960s Solitude Grand Prix in much the same way that Geoff Sykes would be Warwick Farm, or Mrs Topham ruled Aintree.  It was Huschke’s home race.  He hosted parties at both the Porsche factory and at his residence – often for 400 people at a time, including royalty.  He was everybody’s friend back then – and he was a friend to me, too, in the very early 1970s, when I was starting my F1 journalistic life.  I met Huschke through the indefatigable Bernard Cahier, who described Huschke thus in his magnificent two-volume autobiography (entitled, appropriately, F-Stops, Pit Stops, Laugher & Tears):  “Huschke had been a very talented driver before the war and as a result of his racing successes he’d become an honorary officer in the SS.  This was all well and good before the war but when conflict broke out his status became official.  Huschke wanted nothing to do with the war or the SS and for a time took refuge in Budapest, where he hobnobbed in high society while living with a beautiful Hungarian countess who was part-Jewish.  He was eventually caught and sent to prison in Spandau, where he found himself in real trouble.  Luckily, he had connections everwhere.  It didn’t take long for him to pull some strings and get himself released.  He contacted one of his old girl-friends whose father held an influential position in the German army, who in turn told the authorities that Huschke was going to marry his daughter!  He was very lucky because, a short time later, the plot to kill Hitler was uncovered and there were wholesale executions in which Huschke might very well have been swept up.

“When he was released from prison, Huschke was assigned the job of driving an armored vehicle to the Russian front.  He was happy to do this as it gave him the opportunity to meander around the country and visit all his friends.  He started working for Porsche in the early 1950s as a salesman and, being an avid racer, he was the person most responsible for pointing Porsche in the direction of motor racing.”1961 German Grand Prix.

Huschke operated from “Factory Two” within the Porsche Stuttgart compound and employed an attractive assistant named Evi Butz.  It was in 1962, by which time Dan Gurney had won Porsche’s first Grand Prix victory, that Huschke asked Dan if he would give Evi a lift home, after a long day in the office, in Dan’s “Unsafe At Any Speed” light blue Chevvy Corvair.  Dan naturally obliged and got to know young Evi in the course of a 45min traffic jam that clogged downtown Stuttgart.   For their 25th wedding anniversary, Evi gave Dan another Corvair…1961 Solitude Grand Prix

Dan won the Solitude Grand Prix that year, heading a Porsche one-two, and would never forget his victory lap, in an open Carrera, when thousands of caps and hats filled the air like leaves in an autumn wind;  in 1963, though, with Porsche out of it, he didn’t race.  Instead, he flew straight back to Indianapolis after the British GP in order to drive Frank Arciero’s Lotus 19 at the Hoosier Grand Prix at Indianapolis Raceway Park.  He won – and then flew to Germany for the next round of the Championship at the Nurburgring. Such were the schedules of F1’s front-runners in 1963.

Brabham were thus represented in the 1963 Solitude Grand Prix only by Black Jack.  Team Lotus, by contrast, entered three cars, enticed no doubt by copious starting money.  Jim Clark was in his regular Lotus 25 (prior to racing it the following weekend at the Nurburgring);  Trevor Taylor drove the second car – and Peter Arundell, the FJ star, would finally be having his first race in a Lotus 25 (having briefly practiced at Reims.)  A full grid of 29 cars started this 13th Solitude Grand Prix, with Jim on the pole from Jack Brabham and Jo Bonnier (a former Solitude winner, now driving Rob Walker’s ageing Cooper-Climax).  The two other Lotus drivers filled the second row, Peter ahead.

As it happened – as it frequently happens in Championship Years – Jim went nowhere in this race that didn’t count.  Team Lotus tried a new drive-shaft design which promptly failed as Jim dropped the clutch at the start.  His race prospects may have been over; still there were over 300,000 spectators at Solitude, crammed into the natural grandstands around the circuit, all hoping to see the maestro at work.  Jim’s 25 was pushed back into the pits and re-fitted with the older-type drive-shafts.  Jim waited patiently, helping the mechanics with pit signals to Trevor and Peter (who were running second and third behind Brabham).  Then, donning his Les Leston gloves and lowering his goggles back around his peakless Bell, Jim climbed back into R4 for a few demonstration laps of high-speed precision motoring.

Amazing all who saw it, Jim smashed the lap record with a time of 3min 49.1sec – a full 1.1sec faster than even he had managed in qualifying.  Solitude was as dangerous as you could make it, with its exposed trees and walls;  it was very fast, particularly on the 3.5-mile serpentine return stretch;  and Jim was so far in arrears that he wasn’t even classified as a finisher.  And yet he drove those laps at 100 per cent.  Ten-tenths.  Flat out.  His fastest lap, when the tanks were at their lightest, was but one of 17 that were similarly on the limit.

Black Jack, who had had nothing but mechanical problems from the start of the year, meanwhile breezed home without a worry to win his first F1 race at the wheel of a car bearing his own name.  (Jack won the ’63 Australian Grand Prix in a similar car fitted with a 2.7 litre Climax engine).   Peter Arundell drove beautifully to finish second ahead of Innes Ireland (and also to win the Formula Junior race that morning from Denny Hulme and Frank Gardner); Trevor retired with a broken crown-wheel-and-pinion; and Lorenzo Bandini, the young Italian pushing hard for a genuine chance at Ferrari, finished a spectacular fourth in the two-year-old Centro Sud BRM.  I should also make mention of Chaparral founder, Jim Hall, who again drove well with his Lotus 24, qualifying on the fourth row and finishing sixth on Sunday.  Jo Bonnier won the big-bore support GT race with his Porsche; and Teddy Pilette, son of Andre and future F5000 winner, headed the smaller GT race with his Abarth.

From Solitude it was but a short autobahn blast to the Nurburgring, for the August 4 German GP.  Jim had never won at the ‘Ring but had been phenomenally quick there in 1962 (in both the Lotus 25 and the little Lotus 23 sports car).  An enjoyable, if frustrating, Solitude weekend now over, Jim’s thoughts turned to making it five World Championship Grand Prix wins in a row. 20560

Captions, from top: Lotus 25 re-fitted with standard drive-shafts, Jim Clark lights up Solitude with a lonely but record-breaking display of precision driving; Huschke von Hanstein in his element – organizing a group photograph at the 1961 German GP.  From left to right – Jim Clark, John Cooper, Innes Ireland, Jack Brabham, Stirling Moss, Graham Hill, Huschke (in glasses), Jo Bonnier, Dick Jeffrey (Dunlop), Prince Metternich, Bruce McLaren and Dan Gurney;  the 1961 von Hanstein-created “tractor pull” at Solitude – Jo Bonnier does the driving for Dan Gurney, Colin Chapman, Peter and Wolfgang Porsche (sons of Ferry), Huscke and Jim.  That’s Julius Weitmann, the excellent photographer, running up alongside with the long-lens Leica.  The “flag” was actually made from Huschke’s race passes and for years stood in his house as a form of welcome to guests;  Jim is all smiles after taking the pole at Solitude in 25/R4  Images: LAT Photographic

Posted in Circuits, Days Past, F1, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
27 Apr 2013
7 Comments

Clark brilliant at Aintree

18303.tifJim Clark’s 1963 racing schedule now begins to gather real pace.  The back-to-back early-season European non-championship F1 races behind him, Jim returns to the farm for a couple of days before driving the 225 miles down to Liverpool for his third non-title F1 race of the season, the Aintree 200. (Jim will drive approximately 40,000 road miles in 1963.)  At Edington Mains there is always farm work with which to keep abreast but in addition there is plenty of racing-related admin, the relevant papers of which he files in his red leather desk folder.  A good example of Jim’s meticulous attention to detail can be seen in his correspondence with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Although the Team Lotus entries and surrounding paperwork are handled by Andrew Ferguson and – for Indy, 1963, also by David Phipps, the tall photo-journalist who had become a close friend of Colin Chapman – Jim receives a personal letter from the Speedway’s Henry Banks, inviting him to take part in an upcoming race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Bearing in mind that the FIA inter-change between drivers licenced to different sanctioning bodies was a brand new thing in America, Henry’s letter to Jim, detailing an “all-comers’” race on April 28, in retrospect seems logical.  The exact description of the event – “a 300-mile race for American-manufactured cars in the improved touring category (or what would later be known as NASCAR’s Yankee 300!)” – obviously catches Jim’s attention because his written reply is as follows: “Unfortunately, like Dan Gurney and Jack Brabham, I am flying back and forth between Europe and America at the moment and on that particular date we are scheduled to race at Aintree here in Britain…”

As he sits at his desk, Jim also takes stock of his upcoming schedule.  Hectic travel is of course not new to him:  early in 1961 he competed in three New Zealand internationals before embarking on his European season – and he had finished that year, and begun 1962, with four South African races, an outing at Daytona in a Lotus Elite and then a one-off race in a Lotus 21 in Sandown Park, Australia.  What now lay ahead, however, takes him into new territory.  Following Saturday’s Aintree 200, Jim and Colin will fly immediately back to Indy via Chicago (Jim’s third trip to the States since January).  There they will continue to run the Lotus 29s at the Speedway before returning on May 7, with Dan Gurney now joining the group, to race at Silverstone in the Daily Express Trophy meeting.   Then it will be back to Indy again, this time for qualifying, before flying back for the Monaco and European GP on May 26.  (Assuming Jim qualifies on the first weekend, that is:  if rain intervenes, or they run into problems, Jim would then have to miss Monaco in order to qualify at Indy on the second weekend.)  Following Monaco, he, Dan and Colin will then fly back to Indy for the race the following Thursday (Memorial Day).  Jim will then drive to Mosport to race in the Players 200 two days later, catch a Toronto flight to London that night and race at Crystal Palace, in the Normand Lotus 23B, on June 3 (Whitmonday).  Nor will there be a break after that, for the Belgian GP at Spa is scheduled for the weekend of June 7-8-9.

Jim takes all of this merely as part of his job.  Comets and Boeing 707s make flying more fun than it had been in the turbo-prop days – and economy seats are relatively wide and relatively long.  You can actually sleep on a trans-Atlantic flight – and the immediate necessity to have to drive a racing car does away with jet lag.  Beyond that, Jim’s parents had never wanted him to race.  Now, with this sort of schedule, and with reasonable chances ahead of him for some good results, he can at least justify racing as a profession from which he can earn a living.

Aintree is bathed in sunshine on Friday, April 26 – and Jim, running the Lucas fuel-injected Lotus 25, feels as good in the car as he had at Pau and Imola.  Compared with the carburettored 25 of 1962, the fuel-injected 25 provides a more useable power band, particularly at low revs. The new short-stroke Climax engine can also be revved higher, additionally enhancing torque and power. The biggest talking-point in the Team Lotus truck is actually of the ZF gearbox and the ongoing problem of the thing jumping out of gear (a subject Colin Chapman prefers his drivers not to mention to the press!).  The root cause of the issue is that the ZF was basically a four-speed gearbox adapted to take an extra cog. The welds, reduced to a minimum, habitually came away from the spline.Trevor Taylor’s car occasionally runs a strong, heavier Colotti five-speed gearbox but Chapman does not want to compromise weight on the number one Clark car. He continues to work away with pencil drawings whenever he has a spare moment but an ultimate fix will not achieved until new ZF gearboxes, with the selector mechanism on the side of the gearbox, are fitted for 1964.  For now, Jim spends so much time wondering if the 25 is going to jump out of top that he begins to develop a one-handed driving style, steering with the left hand and holding the car in gear with his right. Jim also has reservations about the new Dunlop R6s. He hadn’t liked them at Snetterton, where the 25 had felt more skittish than at any time in its life – and he had used last year’s R5s (based on the older D9 and D12 tyres) at Pau and Imola.  He would do so again at Aintree but Dunlop are keen to try a new version of the R6 at Silverstone in two weeks’ time.   (Talking about Snetterton, Jim is a little surprised to see Denis “Jenks” Jenkinson write in the latest edition of Motor Sport that Graham Hill had won in the wet there because “Jim Clark was out of practice, Hill having raced in Australia and New Zealand over the winter.”  So Jim’s endless testing of the Lotus 29 hadn’t counted?

Jim is easily fastest on Aintree Friday, loving the circuit on which he had won the British GP in 1962 – and the 1962 Aintree 200 (in the Lotus 24:  he had also been quick in the wet at Aintree in 1961, before the Lotus 21 blew an oil pipe.). Strangely, though, he looks unfamiliar in the Lotus 25 on Friday, wearing, as he is, the older, 1961-spec, smaller-eyepiece, goggles he’d last worn at Zandvoort in 1962.  For race day, Jim switches to his customary wide-lens Panoramas (with black tape across the top-third of the lens).  Still he wears his trusty, stone-nicked dark blue, peakless Everoak.1963 BARC 200.

Despite the unchanged R5s, Jim’s pole time had been 1.2 sec faster than his fastest practice lap at the British GP the previous July. Jack Brabham is second, 0.8 sec slower in his 1962 BT3, but non-starts when his Climax engine throws a piston late on Friday. (This failure has the knock-on effect of delaying the completion of Dan Gurney’s new Brabham for the Daily Express Trophy, ensuring that Dan will remain a frustrated spectator after the long flight over from Indy. It is probably because of some of these dramas, and because Dan had initiated the Lotus Indy programme in the first place, that Colin Chapman will have no compunction about lending Jack Brabham a Lotus 25 for the Monaco GP a few weeks later.)

Graham Hill, who at Aintree is still in his 1962-spec BRM, is 0.8 sec quicker than he’d been the previous July – but slower than Innes Ireland, who is very fast in the Goodwood-winning BRP Lotus 24-BRM. Ireland qualifies third, Hill fourth and Ritchie Ginther fifth, equaling his team-leader’s time in the second BRM. Trevor, again in gearbox trouble, will start from the inside of the third row in the carburettored Lotus 25.

What should have been a Clark walkover under leaden skies on Saturday turns out to be one of the best races of the 1963 season. The record crowd at the famous Grand National venue can hardly believe it when Jim Clark’s hand goes up at the start and the field swarms around him.  With the 25’s battery completely flat, Jim is totally helpless. Ted Woodley and the boys push the car over to the pits, fit a new battery – and the car starts perfectly.  Jim leaves the pits even as the field is well into its second lap.

Clark drives brilliantly in these early stages but clearly the car still isn’t right.  A fuel-injection-related mis-fire comes and goes.  Trevor, meanwhile, is running fifth and looking good.18316.tif

On lap 16 Colin Chapman thus makes the sort of decision that even the most hardened of Team Principals always dread:  he pulls in both of his drivers and instructs them to swap cars. (I spoke only a couple of days ago to Anita Taylor, Trevor’s sister, about this. “Trevor was only too ready to oblige,” she said. “Of course he wanted to win. He was also a friend of Jimmy’s, a colleague, a huge admirer. If Chapman thought it was best for the team, Trevor went along with it. He was that sort of man.”)

It is a beautifully-orchestrated manoeuvre.  Jim comes in first and is ready, waiting, as Trevor screams to a halt. Out jumps Trevor and quickly Ted Woodley swaps seats. In slides Jim. He has the rear Dunlops alight before Ted is even clear of the car.

So Jim Clark is now in Lotus 25 Number 4 and Trevor in Lotus 25 Number 3. Out in front, Ritchie Ginther gives best to Graham after taking an early lead; Innes is third, followed by Bruce McLaren in the new 1963 Cooper 66-Climax.

Jim Clark then produces a supreme display of class driving, perfectly-balancing the carburettored 25 through Aintree’s medium-speed corners, blipping the throttle on the slow ones to keep the revs in the useable band. He works his way back to an eventual third place.  His lap times are consistent to within tenths; his fastest lap – a staggering 1min 51.8sec – is 0.6 quicker than his pole time and a full 1.8sec quicker than his pole lap at the British GP in ’62.  This in a car with the 1962-spec, 175bhp engine.

Afterwards, Jim says simply this:  “I really enjoyed this race – even though I didn’t win it;  I enjoyed it more than a number of the Grand Prix events I was to drive during the season.”

Graham Hill wins Aintree (from Innes Ireland, Jim/Trevor, Ritchie, Bruce, Chris Amon in the Reg Parnell Lola and Trevor/Jim) – wins his second F1 race since clinching the championship only four months before; and Graham wins the Saloon Car race, too, again heading the Jaguar 3.8 battle featuring Roy Salvadori and Mike Salmon.  Jack Sears wins his class in a Ford Cortina GT;  Sir John Whitmore wins the Mini division;  Roy Salvadori leads home Innes Ireland in the big sports car event (Cooper Monaco, Lotus 19); our friend Mike Beckwith wins his class with the 1600 Normand Lotus 23B;  Pete Arundell and Paul Hawkins head the 1100 Lotus 23 class; and Denny Hulme, a new rising star from New Zealand, brilliantly wins a wet Formula Junior race in the new Brabham (from Frank Gardner, Pete Arundell and Mike Spence).

With no vested interest other than as a guy who loves motor racing, Bruce McLaren has this to say about Denny’s win:  “For a driver who professes not to be particularly good in the wet, I thought fellow-New Zealander, Denny Hulme’s win in the works Brabham FJ was very good.  For a couple of years he ran his own FJ Cooper as a privateer with very little outside assistance, and he did much better than anyone expected.  18297.tifHe is now being trained in the Brabham tradition by building, working on, and developing his own car.  He works in the Brabham racing shop under Jack’s watchful eye and his fine drive in the rain at Aintree was the result – his first really big win for some time, and a most convincing one at that.”   No surprise, really, that Bruce would sign Denny to his McLaren F1 team some five years later.

And, about Jim Clark’s performance at Aintree, Bruce is unequivocal: “It is interesting to note the way that Jim Clark is taking over the Moss role in motor racing.  After practice at Aintree on the Friday, a certain well-known driver said to me, ‘I’m very pleased with my car – very pleased indeed.  I’m only half a second slower than Clark’.  There was a time when the proud phrase ‘only just slower than…’ just had to refer to Stirling Moss.”

Note:  driver-swapping would continue through to 1964, when Jim took over Mike Spence’s Lotus 33 at the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.

Images:  LAT Photographic

Captions Top: Jim Clark dances with the throttle in Trevor Taylor’s carburettored 25. Middle: Jim in the early phase of the race in his own, fuel-injected 25. Bottom:  Denny Hulme made his name by winning the wet Aintree FJ race 1963aintree200   

Posted in F1, Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
11 Feb 2013
3 Comments

The Spoon Test

I was impressed by Enrique Scalabroni from the first day I met him – at Williams, in 1985.  He’d turn up every morning in a local cab and always leave late at night – also in a local cab.

“Enrique.  What’s with the cab?”

“I don’t drive.  I have too many things going on in my head to trust myself behind the wheel.  I’m always thinking about something.  I can’t help it…”

Enrique helped Patrick Head re-design the back end of the Williams FW10-Honda that cleaned up the final races of that 1985 season;  and he would go on to play an integral role in the success of the FW11/11B.  Moving to Ferrari in late 1989, he transformed the John Barnard car into a glorious pace-setter.

Enrique has one of the most fertile brains of any racing person I’ve ever met.  If he’s not designing a new electric road car, he’s re-visiting the hang-glider or designing windmills.

And he has the most wonderful touch.  His brother is a cartoonist for Disney – and you can see that family talent in Enrique’s hand.  I asked him to sketch as he spoke because I love to see creative expression like this – especially if it’s orientated towards Formula One.

http://youtu.be/WiNi5eyJEEo

http://youtu.be/DVHR8_B7bfg

 

 

Posted in F1, People and tagged , , , , , , , ,

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