Nurburgring, August 1, 1965.German GP Very quickly, the F1 calendar brought an end to the Ingliston Interlude and the Scots R&R that came with it: the German GP was scheduled to take place at the Nurburgring the following weekend. The press billed it as a “Championship decider” but in truth it was Jim Clark’s first opportunity to clinch his second World Title. A win at the ‘Ring would secure it. Should he fail to do so, then there was always Monza, or Watkins Glen…
For Jim, this was a big race for another reason: he had never won at the ‘Ring. He’d always been quick, both in sports cars and F1, but always there had been problems. Now he had the almost-perfect car (the Lotus 33B, fitted with a larger-capacity oil tank in the wake of the Silverstone near-miss) and the almost-perfect engine (the 32-valve Climax V8, now running tapered valves to curb excessive oil consumption). All he needed was a trouble-free weekend.
This he had. It wasn’t easy, because he backed-off a fraction late when the car was airborne in the early laps, buzzing the Climax up to 11,200 rpm; and, late in the race, when light rain began to fall, the engine lost its sharpness due to a broken exhaust. Jackie Stewart, though, had problems with the BRM, leaving Graham Hill as Jim’s only real threat, while Dan Gurney’s 16-valve Brabham-Climax was very slow in a straight line.
So Jim secured the 1965 Championship on the world’s most demanding circuit. He started from the pole; he was never headed for two hours, 10min; and he set fastest lap. It was a fitting result, you might say. Afterwards, with the garland, he was joined for the long celebratory lap in an open sports car by a beaming Graham and Dan (in neat, light blue Goodyear jacket). Win No 28
Images: LAT Photographic
Courtesy of AP, here are the Movietone News race highlights that hit the cinemas within a few days of Jim’s momentous win:
As if it’s not enough to live without a French GP we’ve also had to survive this year minus a race in Germany. I suppose you could argue that France isn’t exactly a strong force in F1 at the moment – but no-one can deny the global allure of Mercedes, Sebastian Vettel and the Nicos Rosberg and Hulkenberg.True, Hockenheim is back on the calendar for 2016, but, in this of all (Mercedes) years, it does seem odd (to say the least) that we haven’t had the chance to see F1’s German stars performing in front of their home crowds…doing something, in the context of the history of our sport, that they’ve been doing since the 1920s.
In the absence of a 2015 German GP, therefore, and courtesy of AP, here are some brief reminders of what it used to like when F1 came to Germany…
And so the greatest of all driver/constructors has passed on: Sir Jack Brabham not only won two successive World Championships as a professional racing driver (1959/60, with Cooper) but also the 1966 World Championship as a driver/constructor. I doubt we shall see his like again. A self-starter, a racer who enjoyed tinkering with damper rebound as much as he enjoyed flying his own aircraft and racing anything on wheels (from F1 cars to sports cars to touring cars to Indy cars), Sir Jack at heart was just a straightforward Aussie who loved motor racing first and the glamour and the publicity just about last. I count myself lucky to have seen him race on several occasions, most notably at Warwick Farm in 1963, when I was 10. It was sweltering, Jack started from the back of the grid – but through the field he drove in that turquoise new Brabham-Climax of his. I was a fan for life. Many will be the words written about Sir Jack but no-one is better-placed to comment than Dan Gurney, the winner of the first race for Brabham (1964 French GP). This is what he said earlier today:
“It is with great sadness that I received the news that my former Formula boss and team mate, the three-time F 1 World Champion, Sir Jack Brabham, passed away in Australia over the weekend. A motor racing giant has left our planet whose combined achievements of F 1 World Championship driver and car constructor in all likelihood will never be equaled. Dark-haired “Black Jack” was a fierce competitor, an outstanding engineer, a tiger of a driver, an excellent politician and a hands-on creator and visionary; he opened the rear-engine door at Indianapolis and raced there. He was a doer, a true Aussie pioneer!
“Jack and I go far back in history together. We raced against each other on the F 1 circuit from 1959, driving Coopers, Ferraris, BRMs and Porsches. In 1963 he hired me as his team-mate for his newly-established Brabham F I team and during the next three years we really got to know each other. We discovered we shared similar traits. We were not only interested in driving racing cars but in building them, improving them, searching for every tiny bit of technical advantage we could find. I see both of us sitting in garages all over the world bent over engines, talking to each other and to our team: Ron Tauraunac, Phil Kerr, Roy Billington, Tim Wall, Nick Gooze and Denis Hulme.
“We shared the camaraderie of a closely-knit team pursuing a common purpose; the racing tragedies and the glory days of the 1960s bonded us for life.
“Since we retired from driving, both in the fall of 1970, we have stayed in touch. I last spoke to Jack a few months ago on the phone. We were looking forward to the golden anniversary of the first World Championship F 1 victory for the Brabham marque: The French Grand Prix at Rouen, June 28, 1964, which I won for the team 50 years ago this summer.
“In 1966 we both went our separate ways. I followed the trail he had blazed by trying to build, race and win with my own F I cars. I have been told that only three men in the history of motor racing have managed to do that. Bruce McLaren and I won races but Sir Jack Brabham won World Championships. He will be forever in a class by himself.
“I will miss you Jack! You showed the way!”
Alan Brinton was an excellent British journalist with whom Jack always had a great rapport. Alan ghosted Jack’s regular column in Motor Racing magazine – and often interviewed him at a time when “interviews” were not really fashionable. When I first came to England, in 1972, I complimented Alan on his work and very kindly he gave me a bundle of tapes he had made over the years. Amongst them was a conversation he had had with Sir Jack just prior to his last Grand Prix, in Mexico, 1970. You can listen to it now (below). And by means of a postscript to this interview, I once had a long chat with Jack in his office near Chessington, during which he took up the story of what happened after his retirement: “Well, I retired, just like the family wanted,” he said in that way of his, “and then blow me if a year later the kids all wanted to come back to England to go motor racing! By then it was too late. Ron had sold the team” (for £750,000!) “and nothing was the same.” I always felt that the sport missed a huge opportunity when Jack wasn’t welcomed more into the post-1971 world of F1. He should have been at the front end of the Brabham team – the team he created – for at least the next couple of decades. And he would have been a brilliant ambassador for the sport, too. Jack took his disappointments well, however – as is clear in the interview here. He was a man of cast-iron strength.
Besides, his achievements will forever tell the story. For those that really know F1, and love F1 – like Dan Gurney – Jack was, and will always remain, a titan.
I used to love the Spanish Grands Prix at Montjuic, on the hill overlooking Barcelona. It was as if the whole city engulfed the race – embraced the danger, swallowed the pain. And then there was the sound of an over-rich DFV on over-run, crackling early in the morning, echoing between the trees, or a Matra V12, pushed to its screaming limit on the ultra-fast uphill sweepers. We’d sit in the shade in the paddock area as if it was just another race. Drivers sipped Cokes. Team owners looked fretful. Mechanics lit another gasper.
It wasn’t normal, though; this wasn’t just another venue. This was Montjuic.
I’ve always wanted to use this title, if only because it was coined Pete Lyons, one of the great motor racing writers, for an Autosport article he once wrote about turbocharging (in the CanAm series, of which he was a specialist). Anyway, thanks to Renault Sport, we’ve got a chance here to understand a little more of what the 2014 turbocharged V6, ERS-H, ERS-K (phew!) F1 “power units” are all about. A big thanks also to my colleague, Craig Scarborough, for the explanations we’ve been able to add to these amazingly clear graphics.
Fifty years ago – on Saturday, January 11, 1964 – Bruce McLaren not only won his home Grand Prix at Pukekohe, near Auckland, New Zealand, but also opened the single-seater account for his brand new team – Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. Driving his creatively-engineered lightweight Cooper-Climax, Bruce recovered tenaciously from a slowish start, passed Jack Brabham to take the lead and then parlayed a late-race shower into the victory margin he needed. To commemorate this historic win, I’ve voiced-over a hithertoo silent piece of footage from the race:
Nurburgring, August 1, 1965. German GP Very quickly, the F1 calendar brought an end to the Ingliston Interlude and the Scots R&R that came with it: the German GP was scheduled to take place at the Nurburgring the following weekend. The press billed it as a “Championship decider” but in truth it was Jim Clark’s first opportunity to clinch his second World Title. A win at the ‘Ring would secure it. Should he fail to do so, then there was always Monza, or Watkins Glen…
peterwindsor.com 