RUSH

Disappointing that Guy Edwards is never given his due in Rush, the movie on James Hunt and Niki Lauda. In 1976 Edwards helped pull Lauda out of his burning Ferrari, earning him a Queen’s Gallantry Medal. The omission is one of the flaws in a good film. The drama is well caught, and while it is almost creepy to watch people you knew quite well recreated in a feature film, some of the detail should have been better researched.
James’s Guild of Motoring Writers’ Driver of the Year Award seems to have taken place in a seedy night club full of girls, rather than the RAC in Pall Mall. He won the title twice and the film portrays the trophy as a little silver cup, which it isn’t. Scorning formal attire while the rest of us sat applauding in black ties, he made a witty speech. Demoting the occasion to a night club missed the point. By turning up at the RAC in open-necked shirt and plimsolls he was telling us someting.
A real Guild Driver of the Year Trophy. Jim Clark's of 1963.
Still, the portrayals of James (Chris Hemsworth) (left above) and Niki (Daniel Brühl) are absolutely spot-on. Voices and mannerisms are completely authentic even if the script is careless. Alexander Hesketh’s sudden arrival and departure from Formula 1 was nothing like that, and the idea of “champers in the pits” as the extent of the team’s high living was nothing like that either. The most permissive censor would have blanched at the truth. Alexander was much noisier and heartier than his screen counterpart.
Louis Stanley was far more pompous and self-important, called everybody by surname. He even called Jackie “Stewart” in the ambulance after his accident at Spa. Yet the actor failed to catch “Big Lou’s” essential humanity. The film somehow misses Teddy Meyer’s excitement in Japan, holding his fingers up to tell a disbelieving James he was world champion.
However I can vouch for the veracity of James’s airliner experiences, portrayed graphically in the film. I sat with him in a Tristar on an overnight flight to the Middle East. Tristars had a tiny lift to the galley, with what was euphemistically referred to as a lounge area for off-duty stewardesses, below the passenger deck. At least twice (while I dozed I may say) James caught the lift. I never knew if it was two stewardesses or the same one twice. Or two at the same time.
Hard to believe Guy Richard Goronwy Edwards QGM is 70. After a glancing blow to Lauda’s crashing Ferrari, togther with Brett Lunger, Arturo Merzario and Harald Ertl, Guy stopped and went back to the burning car. In 1998 he told Autosport: “I could see him. I had time to run back and save him. It was very difficult. Petrol fires are awful and this was a big one. The heat and noise were incredible. I was running and thinking - do I really want to do this? The honest answer was No Way. But what could I do? Stop and walk back? The flames were so thick, I couldn't see the bastard. It was hot and there was choking dust everywhere. I knew it was now or never and with a desperate sense or urgency, and help from other drivers, feeling quite desperate, we were banging against each other, pulling, cursing and just struggling. His shoulder straps came away in my hands and it was incredibly frustrating, the heat was just so physical. I got hold of an arm and a good grip on his body and the little sod came out with all of us falling in a heap. We pulled him out like a cork from a bottle.”
Niki’s worst burns were the result of catch fencing he had run into, knocking his helmet off. The track was blocked and the race restarted. Lunger’s and Ertl’s cars were too damaged to resume but Merzario and Edwards lined up on the depleted grid. Merzario lasted 3 laps, Edwards finished 15th in the old Hesketh, sponsored by Penthouse, painted up with a girl on the front. I was covering the race as a journalist and stayed up half the night writing Niki’s obituary.
Best line in the film? James to Niki: “You’re the only person I know who could get his face burned off and come out better looking.” Sums it up really.

Portraits of F1

In 1967 the BRDC’s “May” Silverstone was on April 29th. A muddle on the international calendar had brought Monaco uncomfortably close, so there weren’t enough Formula 1 cars for a non-championship race at Silverstone. May was traditional for the Daily Express Trophy at a time when newspapers could afford to sponsor a Formula 1 race.
So there were no works Cooper-Maseratis or Anglo-American Eagles, and BRM, Lotus, and Ferrari could manage only one car apiece. The field was further depleted on the Wednesday before first practice, when the JA Pearce Racing Organisation transporter mysteriously caught fire. It had been parked infield on the Club Circuit with two Pearce-Martins and a Cooper-Ferrari aboard, all of which were destroyed. Tony Lanfranchi, Earl Jones and Robin Darlington were left without drives, however Pearce emerged almost unscathed. Apparently he had the lot insured for £100,000.
I was photographing drivers on the grid with my big Rollieflex, a twin lens reflex with beautiful optics. When you got everything right it took superb pictures but getting everything right meant an exposure meter and, well, it wasn’t handy. Heavy and clumsy, it used expensive 120 film, so if you weren’t getting paid a lot for pictures it was not very commercial.
Mike Parkes (above) was driving a 1966 long-chassis Ferrari, a stretched one that suited his 6ft 4in. Ferrari was trying out various cylinder heads on its V12 in 1966-1967, quad-cams, two-valve, three-valve and Parkes had a new one in which the inlet and exhaust arrangements were reversed, so instead of exhaust pipes draped over the sides like spaghetti in the slipstream, they were bundled up in the middle.
Son of Alvis’s chairman, Mike had joined Ferrari in 1963, more as a development engineer than a driver, working up the 330GTC road car, but he quickly became a leading member of the sports car team. In 1961 he had been second at Le Mans with Willy Mairesse in a 250 Testa Rossa, and was successful driving Maranello Concessionaires’ Ferraris. In 1964 he won the Sebring 12 Hours, in 1965 the Spa 500Km and the Monza 100Km, gaining his place in Formula 1 when John Surtees departed Ferrari in a huff.
Parkes drove in four grands prix in 1966, coming second at Rheims on his debut (and only his second grand prix), had two dnfs, and then was second again in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. It was an astonishing start to what looked like a promising career. At Silverstone BRM had one H16 for Jackie Stewart, who matched Parkes in practice, and two V8s for Mike Spence and Chris Irwin. Lotus had a 2litre BRM V8 in Graham Hill’s car, a token entry while it was developing the Ford-Cosworth V8, which would make its sensational debut for Clark and Hill at Zandvoort a month later.
Parkes led almost the entire 52 laps to win the International Trophy, pursued by Jack Brabham (Brabham-Repco) and Jo Siffert in Rob Walker’s Cooper-Maserati. Stewart had kept up with him in the early stages until the BRM’s universal joint bolts sheared.
TOP Mike Parkes (1931-1977) with Tommy Wisdom (1907-1972) motoring journalist and veteran driver in 11 Le Mans races, Mille Miglia, Targa Florio and multiple Alpine and Monte Carlo rallies. In June Parkes’ grand prix career was cut short on lap 1 of the Belgian Grand Prix, when he crashed breaking both legs. He returned to sports cars, engineered the Lancia Stratos, and died in a collision on the road.
RIGHT Bruce McLaren (1937-1970) at the wheel of his McLaren-BRM V8, in which he finished 5th in the Daily Express International Trophy. Founder of McLaren Racing, he died at Goodwood in a freak accident with a Can-Am car.
BELOW Mike Spence (1936-1968) Already a veteran of four seasons’ grand prix racing, likeable talented Spence finished 6th in his BRM at Silverstone. A month after Jim Clark’s fatal accident at Hockenheim a year later, Spence took over Clark’s entry at Indianapolis and was killed in a practice accident.

Home from Hume

Mastermind question. What have a world champion racing driver, an 18th century philosopher, and Munich 1938 in common with two Lincolnshire hostelries? Clue – the Scottish Borders. The pubs are the Hume Arms in Torksey and at South Kyme in the fens near Sleaford.

(Neville Chamberlain)

Lord Dunglass was a young parliamentary private secretary when he accompanied Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to Munich on his mission to avert war in 1938. The piece of paper Chamberlain waved to crowds on his return proclaimed that Hitler had no more territorial ambitions in Europe. Alas, it did no more than buy another year’s preparations for the war which, even then, was inevitable. It gave a year’s grace, time to build government so-called “shadow” factories in which Rolls-Royce would build Merlin aero engines, and Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires.

Dunglass’s title was a courtesy one. He was not entitled yet to sit in the House of Lords, but was able to stand for the Commons. The family had a long record of public service; his great grandfather was under-secretary at the Foreign Office in Wellington’s 1828-1830 government and Dunglass seemed destined for something the same until his parliamentary career was unexpectedly interrupted. When he volunteered for army service at the outbreak of war a medical examination revealed spinal tuberculosis. This consigned him to two years’ treatment, a lot of it spent in a plaster cast. His return to the Commons as MP for Lanark, and later Perth and Kinross, led to distinctions that included acting as Foreign Secretary during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.

(Douglas-Home)

Renouncing his family Earldom, Dunglass become plain Sir Alec Douglas-Home and in December 1963, following Harold Macmillan’s resignation, succeeded him as prime minister. Taunted by Labour leader Harold Wilson for being an aristocrat and the 14th Earl of Home, Douglas-Home dismissed the inverted snobbery with “I suppose Mr Wilson, when you come to think of it, is the 14th Mr Wilson.” Describing Wilson as “a slick salesman of synthetic science”, Douglas-Home derided Labour as, “the only relic of class consciousness in Britain”. His opponents retreated, saying that, “The Labour Party is not interested in the fact that the new Prime Minister inherited a fourteenth Earldom – he cannot help his antecedents any more than the rest of us.”

(the 14th Mr Wilson)

Alexander "Alec" Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel (2 July 1903 – 9 October 1995) died at the family seat near Coldstream in the Scottish borders, not far from Chirnside, near Berwick-on-Tweed. It was here that the Scottish philosopher, historian economist and essayist David Hume (1711-1776) had grown up.

(David Hume)

Hume was important in the period known as the Scottish Enlightenment. His father Joseph Home, an Edinburgh lawyer was a scion of the same Home and Douglas-Home dynasties that held six Baronetcies dating back to 1638. In 1734 David altered the spelling of his name and from the family home of Ninewells, Chirnside between 1754 and 1762 embarked on a writing career that included a 6-volume History of England, “From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688”. A wide-ranging work inspired by Voltaire, it covered more than kings, parliaments and battles and included a study of literature and science, noting the work of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. It contended that England had achieved “the most entire system of liberty that was ever known amongst mankind.”

At heart a Royalist, David Hume thought revolutions quite unnecessary, which led to his History being regarded as essentially Tory, emphasising religious differences more than constitutional issues. He was anti-Presbyterian, anti-Puritan, anti-Whig, and his portrait feature on the gable of the Hume Arms in Torksey is probably a cameo profile from an engraving in one of his major works.

(It could be mistaken for Adam Smith (1723-1790), (below) another notable figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, moral philosopher and political economist.)

That David Hume was not, however, directly connected to Torksey. This was more correctly Sir Abraham Hume, whose grandfather Robert Hume (1662-1732) of North Berwick in Scotland was yet another scion of the Home-Hume-Douglas dynasty. There were two Sir Abraham Humes, one 1703-1772, the second 1748-1838, and their property in Lincolnshire included Torksey, a manor belonging to Sir Jermyn Davers until disposed of to The Duke of Newcastle who, in turn sold it to Sir Abraham in 1748.

Enter John Cust (1779-1853), 2nd Baron and (from 1815) 1st Earl Brownlow. In 1810 he married Sophia, daughter and co-heir of the second Sir Abraham Hume. This brought Cust not only Torksey and South Kyme, where there is the other Hume Arms, but also under the will of her uncle the 7th Earl of Bridgewater, a lot of the Ellesmere estate in Shropshire, the Ashridge estate in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, and properties in County Durham and the North Riding of Yorkshire.

So, it seems, the arms of the Hume family were spread wide. The world champion racing driver? The connection is Chirnside (pop 1300), 9 miles west of Berwick-upon-Tweed and 6 miles east of Duns. Its name was said to be derived from a cairn on nearby Harelaw Hill. South of the Lammermuirs and north of the Cheviots it was the home of Jim Clark (1936-1968), who won the world drivers’ championship in 1963 and 1965. Born at Kilmany in the Kingdom of Fife, the Clark family moved to Edington Mains farm at Chirnside in 1942 when Jim was six.

Here he graduated from farm tractors to his father’s Sunbeam Mark III, started racing in his friend Ian Scott Watson’s Porsche and Lotus, before joining Team Lotus in Formula 1. One of the greatest drivers of all time, Clark set records in his eight year career that have only recently been broken by virtue of the proliferation of grands prix.

Gordon Wilkins Alan Brinton

Did Gordon Wilkins and Alan Brinton watch Fangio win the 1954 German Grand Prix? Bonhams’ picture advertising the sale of the Mercedes-Benz W196 Fangio drove shows them, I think, on the infield by the South Curve at the Nürburgring on 1 August 1954.
Brinton was motoring correspondent of the News Chronicle and chairman of the Guild of Motoring Writers in 1967. He wrote a few books, one ostensibly in collaboration with Jim Clark for a sponsor, but as he got older and commissions dwindled he grew embittered and standoffish. Gordon Wilkins (1912-2007) had a distinguished career of more than 70 years. On the way back from the 1939 Berlin motor show, he and a colleague attempted to achieve 100 miles in the hour in a Lagonda V12. “Sadly we couldn't quite make it, because Hitler hadn't made enough road. It was almost in the bag until right at the end we ran out of autobahn.” They achieved something over 98 miles in the hour.
Gordon went to the opening of the Volkswagen factory at Wolfsburg in 1938 and remained active as a motoring writer well into his 90s. During the war he joined the research department of the Bristol Aeroplane Company and in 1944 worked with Sir Roy Fedden on an ill-starred and difficult car with a rear-mounted sleeve-valve radial engine. The Fedden project foundered in 1947 and Gordon joined The Autocar, where he became technical editor. In 1949 he drove a Jowett Javelin in the Monte Carlo Rally, and in 1951 driving a works Jowett Jupiter (as below) finished tenth overall and second in its class. At Le Mans in 1952 Wilkins won his class in a lightweight Jupiter. Fluent in French and German Gordon left The Autocar in 1953 for a prolific career in Europe, notably as English editor of the authoritative Automobile Year.
His career as a racing driver included driving at Le Mans in 1953 a Special Test Car Austin-Healey NOJ 391 – chassis No SPL 224/B with Belgian Marcel Becquart. Just after scrutineering it was rammed by a truck, suffering damage impossible to repair in time, so its engine, brakes and all scrutineer-stamped components were transferred to spare Special Test Car, NOJ 393 - chassis SPL 226/B, which the Healeys brought to Le Mans “as insurance”. They finished 14th. Bonhams is selling its twin NOJ 392 in the same sale as the Mercedes-Benz.
Between 1964 and 1973 Gordon was a presenter on BBC2TV Wheelbase. I count writing voice-overs for him and colleagues Maxwell Boyd and Michael Frostick as a career highlight.
From 1980 to 1992 Wilkins and his wife, the formidable Joyce his professional partner, moved to rural France. Afterwards they lived in a palazzo in northern Italy, thanks to their friendship with an Italian count. The Guild of Motoring Writers honoured Gordon on his 90th birthday and was treated to a somewhat rambling speech, which is remembered with affection. Affable, urbane and with an engaging modesty Wilkins was a doyen of the profession.

Spitfire Monaco

Diamond heists at the Cannes film festival. Why didn’t the heisters try Monaco at Grand Prix time? When I covered the race in the 1970s I got to know a lot of ways round the circuit the most amateur footpad could have worked out. You could reach most of the corners by obscure little paths. There was even an underground passage from the Hotel de Paris that came out somewhere just above the exit from the tunnel. You could sprint to a little sloping garden there to photograph cars from above. It was necessary to get from place to place without hindrance during practice or race, so you had to know how to go from one side of the track to the other. Any self-respecting jewel thief planning to liberate a cache from some socialite’s bedroom in the Metropole would be able to make his way to the harbour front, while the gendarmerie and the commissaires were looking at the action on the track. They could have been on board a yacht and half way to Algiers before the rocks were missed. Raymond Baxter used to quip, during his commentaries at Le Mans or Rheims, how it was always a good day for French burglars when lines of white-gloved and belted gendarmes did their self-important sweeps of the pits or the starting grid.

Drove to Monaco in 1967 in this Triumph Spitfire with MLC of Motor Sport. Can’t remember how long it took before the days of the Autoroute, but we usually stopped overnight en route. Can’t remember much about the Spitfire either. It wasn’t a memorable car. I ran one for a while when I was on The Motor road test staff. It was still relatively new, having been introduced in 1962 on the Triumph Herald backbone mainframe, with somewhat agricultural high-pivot swing axle independent rear suspension. This would get up on tiptoe and operating on only the edges of the 5.20x13 tyres get quickly out of control. The one I took to Monaco was the newly introduced Mark 3 with a 1.3 75bhp engine and larger front calipers. It did 95mph but I never took to it, unlike its 1968 derivative the GT6 once its rear suspension had been fixed. A reversed bottom wishbone linkage and rubber doughnuts in the drive shafts transformed the handling. Everybody dubbed it a miniature E-type Jaguar, which it was with the emphasis on miniature. It really wasn’t a very big car yet I drove one to the Swedish Grand Prix at Karlskoga. We drove everywhere then. Never thought about a diamond heist.

Honda

Returning to Formula 1 in 2015 will be different from Honda's first shot in the 1960s. A splendid record in motorcycle racing prompted Denis Jenkinson of Motor Sport : “The 4-cylinder Honda motorcycle made a big impression and its production sports and mopeds continued its good name in racing. But we must not forget that Honda racing motorcycles started inconspicuously and progressed as the seasons went by. They did not appear on the scene and win immediately.” Above: Celebrating Honda in Formula 1 at Goodwood, below CDX 6 cylinder 1047cc

Jenkinson noted that Honda began on bikes by contesting classes where the opposition was weak, but this was not an option in Formula 1. Lotus, BRM, Brabham, Ferrari, and Coventry-Climax were well established. There was no weakness here and grand prix racing was full of team with recent world championships, such as Cooper. Even Porsche found it difficult to keep up, winning only once before pulling out at the end of 1965. Soichiro Honda radiated confidence in an interview with Günther Molter in 1962: “It is too early to talk of horsepower as the project is still at the development stage. Our grand prix car will have an engine performance unequalled by any of the others.”

Soichiro was up against V8s from BRM and Coventry-Climax, V6s, V8s, and flat12s from Ferrari, and an air-cooled flat8 from Porsche. Honda produced a radical little V12, with needle roller crankshaft bearings, revving to 11,500rpm. It was a jewel of an engine in a semi-monocoque chassis using suspension that owed something to Lotus and BRM, with tubular rear sub-frames and inboard springs. The transverse engine owed nothing to anybody however, and lived up to Soichiro's assurances with 20bhp (quite a big margin in 1962) more than any rivals, including the Ferrari flat12. The little V12 was a triumph for designer Tadashi Kume, a mechanical engineering graduate who had been assigned to racing motorcycle engines even though relatively inexperienced. 1966 RC149

“Nobody at Honda really expected the car to shatter the racing world at its first appearance but such was the publicity accrued from motorcycle racing that the grand prix car was preceded by almost fanatical expectations from Europe rather than Japan,” according to Jenkinson. The reason for established teams' apprehension was the proficiency Honda showed at high-revving engines with large numbers of small cylinders and four-valve heads. Ferrari was notably successful with V12s, and Coventry-Climax, also an acknowledged master of racing engines, had a 16-cylinder under development. Honda was half-expected to have a roller-bearing 16 of its own with prodigious power. John Surtees drive RA 300 at Goodwood.


Jenkinson's admiration for Honda was not shared throughout Europe. Italians complained that Kume's masterpiece resembled an engine designed by Giulio Alfieri for Maserati in 1961, test-bedded in 1963, but only made public in 1964 following the Honda. 1965 RA 262

Yet if the prevailing teams overestimated Honda's prospects, team manager Yoshio Nakamura probably underestimated. Honda's 1964 offensive lacked the refinement and style of its motorcycle racing department. The cars were a year late and never had the polished finish of a Lotus, nor the glamorous appearance of a Ferrari. It was 1965 before they gained a competitive edge, an achievement that had eluded Porsche, but given the expectations raised by the exquisite motorcycles, it was no less than expected.
1989 Brazil Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna McLaren Honda RA 109E