Bruce McLaren

McLaren is tweeting pictures for the 44th anniversary of Bruce McLaren’s death testing the CanAm car at Goodwood. He was an engaging man, generous with his time from the moment I met him in 1964, ironically at Goodwood when I accompanied Jackie Stewart to one of the famous test sessions with Ken Tyrrell in the Cooper BMC. Car no 5 was at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, a practice picture just before La Source hairpin a short walk from the paddock. Race day was dry and the M7A doesn’t have the small spoiler used in the race. Bruce won the grand prix; a little luckily perhaps after Denny Hulme in the other McLaren went out battling for the lead with Jackie Stewart’s Matra-Ford. Stewart had led most of the way but ran out of fuel with a lap to go. Pedro Rodriguez (BRM) challenged
the McLaren on the last lap but it, too, was spluttering through empty tanks and finished second. Spa was a good result for McLaren, which had only just started using Ford-Cosworth DFV engines. On the grid at Silverstone (right) with the McLaren BRM, never very competitive, McLaren in the cockpit with Tyler Alexander. Car No 4 (below) looks like practice day for the BRDC International Trophy race on March 30, 1969. Wings were growing taller as their effect on cornering speeds was becoming apparent and engineers were sure that their downforce had to be exerted directly into the hub carriers on the wheels. The following week collapsing wings on Graham Hill’s and Jochen Rindt’s Lotuses at Montjuich led to accidents, which outlawed wings on stalks like this. McLaren was 6th in the International Trophy, a lap down on Brabham, who won with wings bearing down on both front and rear wheels.

Goodwood 1914

Goodwood had a 1914 French Grand Prix Mércèdes at Bonhams in Bond Street in the run-up to the Festival of Speed. A hundred years ago WO Bentley purloined one of the works team cars in an obscure piece of espionage worthy of Hannay in The Thirty-Nine steps. The great racer had shown such speed and stamina over a 23 mile course near Lyon, that Bentley believed its secrets should be revealed. The race took place on July 4th 1914, a bare six days after the fatal shots that began the Great War had been fired at Sarajevo.
By the outbreak of war Bentley was effectively out of work. His family firm had been selling cars but trading soon ceased. Cars still had to be serviced but with his business in ruins for as long, it seemed, as the war lasted, WO wanted to make the most of his great secret scoop. He had been one of the first to adopt aluminium pistons in the DFP in which he set ftd for his class at the Aston Clinton hill-climb. He set a ten-lap record at Brooklands for a 2 litre car at 66.8mph (107.5kph) and a year later, with L8 aluminium pistons, raised it to 81.9mph (131.9kph).
He now wanted to put this breakthrough at the disposal of the nation. It would be just the thing, he was sure, for high performance aircraft engines. He sought out Commander Wilfrid Briggs, head of the Air Engine Section, which liased between the Admiralty and the engine industry. Briggs operated from a small wooden office on top of Admiralty Arch and captured WO’s attention at once. “The only officer in the navy as clever as Briggs was the man who appointed him,” wrote WO, recounted in The Complete Bentley.
By June 13 1915, less than a year after the grand prix, Briggs had WO Bentley gazetted as a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), an elite bunch of civilian volunteers who obtained quick promotion for wartime officers into the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Briggs sent WO to Derby, where Rolls-Royce was making air-cooled Renault aero engines, to meet Ernest W Hives (later Lord Hives) with whom WO formed a friendship that lasted 20 years. Engineer Hives soon had Rolls-Royce’s new 200hp water-cooled Eagle engines equipped with aluminium pistons.
Henry Royce was adept at meticulous improvement rather than radical innovation. WO was determined he should get to know more of his adversary’s engineering. WO recalled that in 1915: “…a friend of mine tipped me off that one of the Mércèdes racing cars, which had swept the board at the 1914 French Grand Prix, had got stuck in England at the beginning of the war and still rested at the Mércèdes showroom in Long Acre. I thought it ought to be investigated. So I told Briggs about it and together we went along, representing the British Crown so to speak, with a ‘search warrant’. The place was in a fine old mess, but down in the basement lay a 4½ litre Grand Prix Mércèdes. We had it dug out, and soon it was being taken to pieces by Rolls-Royce at Derby.”
There was no search warrant of course and accounts of the legitimate wartime larceny differ. In one WO towed the Mércèdes to Derby behind Briggs’s Rolls-Royce. In another he recruited his old school friend Roy Fedden, later a distinguished engineer at Bristol Aircraft, and the pair raced along empty wartime roads from London to Derby, before towing the 1914 racer into the Rolls-Royce factory.
The precocious young Lieutenant also recommended that Rolls-Royce examine the contemporary double overhead camshaft Peugeot racing engine.
Lord March promoting the world's best motoring garden party

London Grand Prix

Hope springs eternal. With all the talk of closing public roads for rallies or races there is speculation once again about a London Grand Prix. I floated the idea in Sunday Magazine in 1981 with WHY NOT A CITY CENTRE GRAND PRIX. In 2012 Bernie inevitably encouraged the idea of one round the Olympic Stadium. I had only been reviving a 1930s proposal with Innes Ireland, who had come to lunch and drew up a Hyde Park course with racing cars tearing down Park Lane at 180mph, braking hard for a sharp right hander at the Hilton and going flat-out in fifth past the Serpentine.
Grand Prix cars only had five gears then and were racing round some unlikely places, like the Caesar’s Palace car park in Las Vegas, and inaugurating street courses in Montreal, Long Beach and Detroit. Lunch with Innes was always entertaining.
Whitehall, Birdcage Walk and The Mall are being talked about. Hyde Park was probably practical; Grosvenor House and The Dorchester would have been good viewing points. Decent breakfast and all-day bar. The Parliament Square picture was a product of artist Geoff Hunt’s imagination.
Nothing’s new really.

Divina Galica and Susie Wolff

Divina Galica and Susie Wolff illustrate the difference between quick and competitive lap times. Quite a lot of drivers can manage decent back-of-the-grid laps in a well set-up racing car. I have done it myself. And inside the five laps which, they say, shows you could go faster.
Reaching the middle of the grid is harder. A front row time requires not only native skill, visual acuity, lots of experience or whatever it is that makes a good racing driver. You have to be brave. Professional drivers deny bravery in public but in private they have told me they have caught themselves literally holding their breath trying for a fast lap. Sure there are the Jim Clarks and Sebastian Vettels, who have some magic ingredient that always makes them point something of a second a lap faster – or the Michael Schumachers who take risks on skis.

When it gets to actual racing wheel-to-wheel a driver needs an unusual degree of self-confidence, or maybe lack of imagination. It must get the adrenalin-flow that makes them face danger if not with equanimity at least with resolve. At that point it doesn’t much matter which sex you are.

Divina Mary Galica MBE held the British women's downhill skiing speed record at 125 mph so she could cope with speed. She took part in her first Olympic games at Innsbruck in 1964 aged 19, competing in downhill skiing and slalom. She was in the next two winter Olympics, at Grenoble in 1968 and Sapporo in 1972, both times captain of the British Women’s Olympic Ski Team, finishing in the top ten of the Giant Slalom. Aside from Olympic competition, Divina achieved two World Cup podium finishes downhill, taking third place at both Badgastein and Chamonix in 1968. She even returned to skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympics, representing Great Britain in speed skiing.
Divina drove so well in a 1970s celebrity motor race that she embarked on a new career. She raced karts before Formula 2, finding success in sports cars and later in the rough and tumble of truck racing. She drove in Formula Renault and Formula Vauxhall Lotus and publicity and sponsorship opportunities led to Formula 1. There was more single-seater racing before she switched to Thundersports S2000 sports cars, eventually becoming a racing instructor with Skip Barber Racing Schools. She rose to senior vice president of Skip Barber Racing, managing both its driving school and racing series. In 2005, at the Mont-Tremblant weekend of the Skip Barber Race Series, Galica announced she was leaving Skip Barber to work for iRacing.com as a director in the company.

Divina was cross with me for downplaying her chances in Formula 1 although I tried not to buy into the idea that her reputation on snow and her looks engaged the sponsors. Yet even the staid old Guardian took any opportunity to carry her picture. She certainly had the right stuff and really was only a few fractions of a second off the pace.
Susie Stoddart, now Susie Wolff will drive a Williams.

Divina Galica, the former Olympic skier, is to try and qualify for the John Player British Grand Prix on July 18. She could be the first British girl to drive in a world championship Grand Prix should she lap the Brands Hatch Grand Prix track in around lmin.23sec in the Surtees TS 16, with which she broke five British speed records last week.
John Surtees is trying to complete a new TS 19 car for her to take part in the biggest test of her two-year-old career at the wheel, but she will probably still use the car in which she lies fourth in the Shellsports 5000 European Championships,
The chances of Divina reaching the starting grid in the Grand Prix are slim. There are 30 entries, 26 places on the grid, and it will only be if some cars fail to turn up, or have trouble during practice, that she is likely to take part in the Grand Prix - round nine in the 1976 World Championships.
Two years ago Lella Lombardi, the Italian girl driver who subsequently took part in a full season’s Formula One, was entered for the same race and managed a lap at 1min. 23.3sec. Although there were five cars slower, she failed to qualify for the race by a full second. Recent alterations to the track have slowed it slightly, and James Hunt’s pole position for the Race of Champions in March was 1min. 20.4sec., so Divina will need to aim for something between 1min. 23sec. and 1min. 23.sec., to reach even the back row of the grid.
Yesterday I asked what her best time in private practice had been round the undulating 2.61miles, but she confessed she had not yet driven the full course. Her longest race so far has been only three quarters of an hour, to the two gruelling hours a Grand Prix would take.
Imperial Tobacco Ltd will take their cigarette brand insignia off the cars they have entered in the Grand Prix, which means the John Player Lotuses will appear in plain black and gold, without the J.P.S. logo. This follows an undertaking given to Dr David Owen, Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Security last November.
Throughout their two cigarette manufacturing units, John Player and Sons and W. D. & H. O. Wills, Imperial Tobacco are one of the largest sponsors of motor racing in the country. No similar undertaking has so far been given by Phillip Morris, the American company who sponsor the Marlboro World Championship team.
Davina crashes
Divina Galica had a narrow escape from injury when she crashed her Hesketh on the first day of unofficial practice for Sunday’s Argentina Grand Prix. She went off on one of the fastest parts of the course, a 150 m.p.h. bend, and wrecked one side of her car against the safety barrier.
“I was trying out some suspension modifications,” she said later. “The car just turned round on me. It was very quick, and there’s really no explanation. We are getting the spare car ready for practice tomorrow.” Miss Galica had been having trouble getting down to a competitive practice time, and her accident might make it difficult for her. She needs to improve by seven or eight seconds - a big margin - to reach a qualifying speed.
She has been in Buenos Aires for several days, and so far has not posted a lap speed that would qualify her for the race. Mario Andretti (John Player Lotus), James Hunt (McLaren), and Niki Lauda (Brabham Alfa Romeo) were among the fastest drivers yesterday in good conditions, with a light breeze taking a little of the heat out of the strong sun.
Miss Galica was not the only driver who went off the road. Didier Pironi, the new member of the Tyrrell team, collected some catch fences on the right hand corner at the end of the pits, but damage was superficial.
Practice proper starts today with 24 starting places at stake for the 28 cars entered. It is already apparent that the winners will be those who pace themselves best on Sunday. Driving on the limit in this heat would, mean cars would be unlikely to survive two hours’ racing, even if the drivers did.
Tyres have gone soggy within a few laps, not so much from the influence of the hot asphalt, as the absence of the usual stream of cool air to keep their working temperature correct
Lap times until now must be treated with caution, because yesterday’s tests were more in the nature of a shake-down. Brake pads must be bedded-in, the gloss abraded off new tyres water and oil run through engines to make sure things are done up, but already there are signs to show who will be fast and which teams have tpo worry about starting places.
The military remains the biggest worry to the Grand Prix Circus. Like many other things in Argentina. The track officials take second place to the masses of heavily armed soldiery who stand about, taking on roles usually the preserve of police at European tracks, or as in Britain, volunteer marshals.

Good piece by Beverley Turner in The Telegraph today

Hunt vs Lauda

Hunt and Lauda. What I wrote at the time. The Guardian 25 October, 1976.
No writer of fiction would have dared drag out the suspense of a world motor racing championship to the closing minutes of a year long, 16 race series. The final laps in the Grand Prix of Japan, when it looked as though Niki Lauda might keep the title as James Hunt’s McLaren suffered tyre trouble, contained the sort of drama only expected in a Frankenheimer movie.The blond hero did not win the race, but he won the cham-pionship, while the battle scarred Austrian, who had seemed unassailable in June, retired
because he couldn’t see through Fuji’s October fog. It was a brave decision. He returns to Europe for an operation to an eyelid which still does not close, a legacy of his Nürburgring injuries.
The season’s acrimony and protests will not be forgotten. The legal wrangles may have failed to get Lauda the drivers’ title, although they did gain Enzo Ferrari the constructors’ championship which, for the 78 year old Master of Maranello, is probably more important. His attachment to his cars is emotional and he remains the most powerful man in motor racing, Bernie Ecclestone and the Formula One constructors notwithstanding. They are no match for Ferrari, who directs events by remote control without ever leaving his shuttered industrial fortress on the plains of Lombardy.
Lauda’s courage will be remembered longer than his cavalier attitude towards the press, and the enthusiasts who tried to meet him or, pursue him for his autograph. The most they usually see is the closed door of his caravan,- or his helicopter as he flies back for more testing at Fiorano. Here, he hones his cars to perfection, and the moment he stops, as after his accident, their edge is lost.
James Hunt will be remembered for a calmness and maturity surprising to those who knew him in his early days. He is accessible, entertaining, and seems to drive racing cars because he enjoys it. No cool technician like Lauda, who may have his head and his heart in his driving, Hunt has his soul in it.
It is difficult not to draw a comparison between Hunt and Britain’s first world champion, Mike Hawthorn. Hunt has the same boyish good looks, the same easygoing manner, and the same sort of zest. You could never picture Jackie Stewart with a pint in his hand; there was never anything boisterous about Jack Brabham. Denny Hulme was positively monastic. Hunt’s talent is like Hawthorn’s, at its best against the odds and enjoying a challenge, and although occasionally inconsistent it stems from a natural athletic urge.
He is different from Jim Clark, who was shy and retiring. Clark’s talent amounted to genius, and he would take whatever car he was given and make it go faster than anyone else in the world; his sense of balance and accuracy of vision were so highly developed that he adjusted to the car not the other way round.
Jackie Stewart had natural talent too, but it was focused more on making the car suit him. His gift was precise communication with his engineers. He could describe how the car behaved and would have it constantly improved.
Graham Hill was a man of iron will, who won races with more courage and determination than inborn skill at the wheel. Like Lauda he recovered from a terrible accident, but Lauda added an understanding of the complex electronic test facilities Ferrari employs to match the car to each circuit before it reaches the start line.
Jack Brabham was a talented engineer, who knew his car’s theoretical limitations and would calmly experiment as he drove until he established what they were in practice. He almost invented the science of chassis tuning, adjusting ride height, spring rates and so on 17 years ago. John Surtees, champion in 1964 for Ferrari, was another practical driver, perhaps relying even more than Brabhani on how the car felt through the seat of his pants.
There will be no monasticism for the new world champion. He keeps in training, but by inclination, not stricture. He will be a successful ambassador for his country and for motor racing, with all the qualities of a classic schoolboy hero.
In an interview after the Japanese Grand Prix Lauda defended his decision to pull out of the race after two laps. “There is a limit in any profession or sport,” he said. “The cars are not suitable for driving through so much water. When logic tells you that things will not work right, to me it is the normal human reaction to draw the inevitable conclusion, not to say ‘I hope for a miracle’ - and a miracle it was, in my opinion, that there were no fatal accidents.”
FINAL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP POSITIONS. Hunt (GB) 69, Lauda (Austria) 68, Scheckter (S. Africa) 49, Depaillier (France) 39, Regazzoni (Switzerland) 31, Andretti (US) 22, Lafitte (France) 20, Watson (N. Ireland) 20, Mass (Germany 19, Nilsson (Sweden) 11, Peterson (Sweden (10) Pryce (GB) 10, Stuck (Germany) 8, Pace (Brazil) 7, Jones (Australia) 7; Reutemann (Argentina) 3. Amos (NZ) 2, Stommelen (Germany) 1, Brambilla (Italy) 1.

Following the film RUSH and the Motor Sport retro video the BBC repeated its splendid Hunt/Lauda documentary last night with Simon Taylor, one of the stars of the film, who said “This is indeed a completely new documentary. It includes fresh interviews with Daniele Audetto, Alistair Caldwell, Niki himself, even James’ sister (who has never appeared talking about her brother before, apparently). I have only been allowed to see snatches, but they were enough to indicate that the researchers have managed to find some remarkable footage from 1976 that was new, as well as the old familiar stuff.”
I was motor racing correspondent of The Guardian at the time. Italian newspapers took up what they perceived as criticism of Enzo Ferrari, and he basked in the view of himself as influential as Bernie Ecclestone. He responded personally to me the following year. I framed the letter.

Cosworth engine technology

“To go faster you just have to keep making the bore bigger, the stroke shorter and sort out your valves...” Cosworth technical director Bruce Wood’s turn of phrase is worthy of Keith Duckworth. Race Engine Technology reports on the first Formula One engine to reach 20,000rpm, the Cosworth CA of 2006 and it seems unlikely anybody went faster before rev-limiting. The naturally-aspirated 2.4-litre V8 CA is now in the Marussia, disputing the back of the grid with Renault-engined Caterham. RET editor Ian Bamsey recalls that since 1906 grand prix engine speeds rose from less than 2000rpm to 20,000rpm until progress was halted with a 19,000rpm rev limit for 2007. This was reduced to a (relatively) stifling 18,000rpm, together with a moratorium on development but evolution is back for 2014. In deference to greenies its goal will be fuel efficiency, rather than outright power.

Speed and horsepower climbed with the 3.0-litre V10s, before the switch to V8s for 2006. BMW probably reached 19,000rpm first in 2002 but engines had to do bigger mileages in 2004 and 2005. The top 2005 V10 was the Toyota, which ran to 19,200rpm and produced 930bhp. All the 2005 V10s exceeded 900bhp, probably not more than 950bhp except possibly the Honda.

Bamsey describes the astonishing performance of a Formula 1 engine. At 20,000rpm, the CA's piston acceleration was 10,616 g, while the load on each crankpin by piston and conrod reached 5937kg. Ballistic missiles can only manage 100g, while 5937kg is about two and a half times the weight of a Rolls Royce Wraith.

Race Engine Technology's full report of the Cosworth CA, in issue 73, spans 27 pages and can be bought from www.highpowermedia.com, or by calling Chris Perry on +44 (0)1934 713957.
Cosworth CA (top) and its great predecessor the Ford-Cosworth DFV (right)