Laguna Seca 1989, Aston Martin recreated the Le Mans pits to celebrate the anniversary.
Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin Azerbaijan Grand Prix podium surprised everybody. Commentators maybe remembered a Formula 1 Aston Martin once upon a time, but it wasn’t on their crib sheets. And they had forgotten Jim Clark. He had been contracted in 1960 to drive the overweight and clumsy Aston DBR4/250 until Colin Chapman trixied him out of it. JIM CLARK, Tribute to a Champion
In 1959 Aston Martin had been first and second at Le Mans and won the sports car world championship. It had been developing a single seater on the DB3S for years and by the time it was a Maserati 250F lookalike, Roy Salvadori managed second place in the BRDC May Silverstone. Tubular-framed, De Dion axled, front-engined straight-six, its best grands prix were sixth at the British and Portuguese. A lighter DBR5 for 1960 managed by Reg Parnell was overtaken by the F1 mid-engined revolution.
Veteran driver from the 1930s with Maseratis and an ERA, Parnell drove for Alfa Romeo in the first world championship grand prix at Silverstone in 1950 and by the end of the decade was running Aston Martin’s entry into grand prix racing. His friend Border Reivers’ Jock McBain told him there was a great new Scottish driving talent. Jim Clark refused Parnell’s first offer of a test drive but knew he was either going to carry on racing as an amateur, or else turn professional. Clark’s father was complaining about the time and money spent on hobby motor racing, so when Parnell approached it was time to rearrange things at the family farm.
Parnell arranged a test session one wintry day at Goodwood. Clark went out in a DBR2 sports car with a 4.2litre engine, the most powerful car he had ever driven and the track was icy. Still, he thought it handled well. He was already familiar with the Reivers’ DBR1/300 in which, with Salvadori, he would finish third at Le Mans in June (below).
After a few laps of Goodwood in the DBR2 Clark tried the new big single seater. He soon realised his world was about to change. “I stared out at those enormous exposed wheels and tyres, and thought, `This is it’.” The handling was not unlike the Lister-Jaguar he had been racing for the Reivers, but the power was in a different league. He was gaining confidence yet remained apprehensive about an open-wheeler in race traffic.
Jim Clark went back to Goodwood for another test session. But now there was an interloper. Knowing offers from both Lotus and Aston Martin were now likely he had told Mike Costin (the Cos of Cosworth Enginering) that he was testing the Aston at Goodwood. Costin, third of the Elite trio at the crucial Boxing Day Brands Hatch of 1958 and still close to Chapman, turned up with a Formula Junior Lotus. An offer to drive that as well as the Aston could scarcely be refused and unsurprisingly it was a revelation. The contrast between a swift, small, exquisitely-balanced mid-engined Lotus and the big, now old-fashioned Aston Martin was profound.
Jim Clark racing a Formula Junior Lotus at Goodwood
Clark could scarcely believe any car could hold the road so tenaciously as the Lotus. He could go through St Mary’s, an off-camber left hander with a deep dip, faster than he believed possible: “The car seemed glued to the road.” He got round Goodwood in 1min 36sec, four full seconds quicker than any Junior had gone before.
It had been a convincing endorsement of Costin’s judgement and there was more to come. Chapman invited Clark to try the Lotus Formula 1 car, much like a Lotus 18 Junior with a 2.5litre Coventry-Climax engine. But Clark had given Parnell his word that he would be available if the Aston Martin came to the starting grid. This was still in doubt, yet Parnell was offering him £600 a year to be on call for driving it.
Colin Chapman and Jim Clark
Clark went back to Parnell: “Colin Chapman has offered me a drive in the Lotus. He says he will pay more than you will. What do you think?” He did not simply walk off towards the better offer. It was astonishingly naïve, yet entirely in Clark’s character. Parnell to his credit said, “I think that following the changes to regulations next year this car is probably not going to make it, and if you’ve got any sense you’ll go to Lotus. We will cancel our contract.” Chapman quickly took Clark on for Formula Junior and Formula 2, which was for 1½ litre unsupercharged cars just like the impending Formula 1.
Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin may be no more an Aston Martin in 1950s terms than Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes-Benz is a descendant of the W196s Fangio (left below) and Moss drove, engineered in Stuttgart-Unterturkheim, West Germany. The important difference for 2021 is that the engineering of both these Azerbaijani competitors is now carried on at Brackley-Northants, United Kingdom.
