August 2013 issue of Motor Sport magazine

nigel roebuck The great Lorenzo Bandini

brundle vs senna

Martin relives the F3 duel that changed his life “Without it I’d have been a car salesman in Norfolk” www.motorsportmagazine.com

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lunch with

win percy

“They said I’d never walk again.

I wasn’t having that”

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exclusive

Coulthard drives

Clark’s Lotus 25 50 years on from Jim’s first title:

“It made me feel like a real racing driver!”

1963: diary of a legend F1, sports cars, saloons – and his first crack at Indy. Phew!

From MotoGP to Aussie V8s

Casey Stoner’s new four-wheel adventure august 2013

£4.99

‘Amazing’ Mansell

How he conquered America JImClarkCover/sa/ds/gc.indd 1

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the motor sport month

in pictures

june 9, 2013

Canadian Grand Prix MONTRéal, canada

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Huge crowd, wonderful atmosphere – and a driver out on his own, in peak form. Tyre-wear concerns simply weren’t an issue in Canada and Sebastian Vettel had no need to rein in his commitment as he guided his Red Bull RB9 to a third Formula 1 victory of the season, extending his championship advantage in the process

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Nigel Roebuck Reflections

Nigel Roebuck

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f the recent form of Nico Rosberg has caused many to re-evaluate a driver long considered something of an enigma in Formula 1, so it has also inevitably put Michael Schumacher’s ‘second career’ into fresh perspective. It may have fallen short of the expectations of some, but – even into his 40s – Michael was sometimes a match for the man now showing well against Lewis Hamilton.

According to those who had worked with Schumacher first time around, one of his problems in coming to terms with a very different F1 from the one he had known was the fact that in-season testing was now banned.

For Michael, it had literally been a way of life in his Ferrari days, as Ross Brawn told me years ago: “You say to him, ‘Have a couple of weeks off’, between the races, and you’ll get a phone call after a few days: ‘How’s testing going? Any chance of trying it?’ And he’ll be down!”

In-season testing looks set to return, on a limited basis, in 2014, but is for now banned, of course, so it was therefore no more than inevitable that conversation in the Montréal paddock should have been dominated by the controversial three-day test conducted by Pirelli and Mercedes immediately after the Spanish Grand Prix. Other teams, notably Red Bull, howled in outrage that Mercedes should face sanctions from the sport’s governing body.

The deadlines of Motor Sport are such that this, I know, is a remarkably stupid time to be talking about a topic that, for many, has become the bore of the age. It is Monday, June 17, as I write, and in three days an FIA International Tribunal will convene in Paris to discuss the matter, and to decide what, if any, sanctions are to go the way of Mercedes. By the time this is read, therefore, the decisions of the tribunal will be known. However…

Beyond dispute is that the test came at the request of Pirelli, who booked the circuit, and paid for it. Beyond dispute, too, is that Mercedes used current cars, and that the drivers – wearing unmarked

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helmets – were Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Rather less defined is the precise reason for the test: originally the suggestion was that it had been conducted primarily to help Pirelli resolve the delamination problems that have recently occurred (and was therefore a matter of safety), but the company then stressed that the emphasis had been on developing tyres for 2014, when the new ‘turbo age’ begins.

Whatever, many Mercedes rivals were not impressed. “I don’t know which tyres they used,” said Sebastian Vettel, “but when you’re on the track you always learn...”

In Montréal Mercedes folk appeared quietly confident that their explanations would satisfy the FIA tribunal. From the outset Ross Brawn has said that the team sought, and got, clearance from the governing body to conduct the test, and the fact that it was conducted at a circuit like Barcelona, rather than somewhere like the hinterland of Yeongam, rather militates against suggestions that it was all very covert – how on earth could it ever have been kept secret? Long before the test was over, a photograph of one of the cars appeared on Twitter, and Mercedes and Pirelli must have known that their test would become public knowledge. The mystery is that news of it broke in the F1 community only in the Monaco paddock, more than a week later.

Meantime the whole question of the dumbing down of F1 continues to rage, some suggesting that Pirelli’s brief to manufacture ‘deliberately inefficient’ tyres is a contrivance that has no place in anything calling itself Grand Prix racing, others that anything is preferable to processions.

At Spa in 2005 Bernie Ecclestone told me he thought it essential that F1 should have a single tyre supplier: “I think if we don’t do it, we’re going to be in trouble. It’s important to reduce the necessity for so much testing – most of the teams are testing Christ knows how much, and that takes a big chunk out of their budgets…”

That much was undeniable – but going to a single supplier also, of course, made possible the doctoring of tyres to spice up The Show. Thus Michelin was ushered out of the sport to leave only Bridgestone, which itself quit at the end of 2010.

All images LAT

Analysing one Rosberg, reflecting upon another and fond memories of a chat with Ferrari’s first World Championship Grand Prix winner González, recently departed

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“rosberg’s recent form

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jim clark

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st world title

The year of Profumo, great train robbers, ‘loveable mop tops’ – and the grassy knoll. In its midst, a quiet Scottish hill farmer delivered on all the promise that had been so smack-inthe-face obvious to lovers of motor racing in the three seasons past. Fifty years ago, Jim Clark embarked on a run of success that would confirm him as the greatest racing driver in the world, perhaps the greatest we’d yet seen – or would ever see. These were indeed halcyon days. Silverstone Classic, the world’s largest historic race meeting, will celebrate Clark’s ’63 season on July 26-28. No wonder. In this unforgettable year, Clark and Team Lotus first headed west to take on the Indianapolis 500; back in Europe and armed with Colin Chapman’s

1963 •

by Paul Fearnley

groundbreaking monocoque Type 25, they won the first of five British Grands Prix; then between regular (and endless) continental sorties – perhaps in Chapman’s Piper Commanche or Jack Brabham’s Cessna – they claimed that historic first world title. The scope of Clark’s season would be unrecognisable, impractical and plain impossible to such as Sebastian Vettel.

So for the record, here it is: the breakdown of the days, weeks and months that made Jimmy the most cherished talent of his era. Then to offer a modern perspective, David Coulthard slides into his beloved countryman’s seat to discover what life was like before the days of downforce.

The answers, as you will read, left him whooping with joy.

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“I knew long before it began that 1963 was going to be a hectic, and probably an eventful, season. But I could never have dreamed that the climax of the year’s racing would be an afternoon on which I would rise to the heights of happiness and plunge to the depths of misery all within a few hours” Jim Clark at the Wheel, February 1964 Lotus boss Colin Chapman worked his star turn hard and Jim Clark was ultra-keen to please at this stage of his career. Though shy with strangers, he revelled in his public displays of virtuosity. Driving was how he expressed himself best. Time spent at his family’s Borders farm recharged the batteries, but he was most serene behind the wheel. It was where his doubts, worries and rivals fell away.

He could with apparent ease drive anything faster than anyone else could or cared to. This talent had broadened his horizons and he was eager for yet more new challenges: it was in 1963, with its added incentive of the Indianapolis 500 – a journey into the unknown – that he confirmed his greatness. august 2013

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A year to savour

Jim Clark’s diary

march 7th Clark samples the prototype Lotus Indycar at Snetterton. A lengthened, strengthened Type 25 F1 chassis, the Type 29 features (for now) ‘stack’ exhausts, symmetrical suspension and bolt-on wheels. Despite a

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april

15th Easter sunshine melts tar and the start is delayed so cement dust can be spread.

Wearing dark goggles against the glare and a plaster ‘moustache’ against the flying stones, he shares the lead with team-mate Trevor Taylor during a 100-lap ‘demo’ before winning by a nose.

19th Clark sets fastest time on the opening day of practice for the Imola GP, the first car race at the track since 1956.

20th Another pole: 2.5sec quicker than Taylor, who loses a heap of time because of gearbox woes.

21st Another sunny day, another Clark walkover. Only

Jo Siffert’s Lotus-BRM finishes on the same lap.

26th More sunshine, this time in Liverpool, and another pole, this time for the Aintree 200.

His advantage is eight-tenths.

27th Clark throws up a warning arm and the field swerves around him. His battery is flat and fitting a replacement costs almost two laps. Still the car isn’t right, so Chapman puts him in Taylor’s 25 and vice versa. Aboard a car on carbs rather than fuel injection, he drives brilliantly to finish third.

30th His Indycar arrives at

Heathrow three days late, mechanic Bob Dance completing its build in a cargo shed. Along with British photo-journo David Phipps, acting as ‘general coordinator’, Clark collects it from Weir Cook airport. No customs, no documentation, they hook it behind their Oldsmobile Starfire – Ford has not supplied courtesy cars – and tow it eight miles to Indy. Phipps spots Clark’s waving and speeds up. He was signalling him to slow down.

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recalcitrant 4.2-litre pushrod Ford V8, he beats easily his 2.5-litre F1 track record, and impresses when his report of an exhaust rattle unearths a spare bolt caught between tub and primaries.

14th With Chapman and the 29, now painted green, he flies to LA, meets Dan Gurney and his crew and travels with them to Ford’s five-mile banked oval at Kingman, Arizona.

17-18th He shares the testing with Gurney and laps at 165mph. The engine, however, remains a concern.

6th Clark leads a Lotus 23B sweep of the first four places in the British Empire Trophy sports car race at Oulton Park.

He is driving for Normand Racing.

12th A lift to Edinburgh, a ‘hop’ to London, and a flight to southwest France: Continental start money has overtaken plans to contest Goodwood’s Glover Trophy.

13th Despite being unhappy with his 25’s handling on Dunlop’s new R6, he is three seconds faster than the rest during an overcast afternoon practice for the Pau GP.

Clark prepares at a sodden Snetterton, tries out the Lotus 29 (left) and gallops home at Aintree (below)

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Part 1

23rd A modified V8 arrives at Indy minus several ancillaries, which are obtained from two rented Fairlane sedans. So much for Ford’s million-dollar attack!

24th Clark gives the 29 its first run at Indy, lapping at 140-144mph while assessing suspension and carburettor settings.

25th He laps at 146mph before being halted by wind and rain.

26th A washout.

27th More bad weather curtails hopes of a morning run, and he and Chapman return home to contest the Lombank Trophy.

30th Having put his 25 on pole at a sodden Snetterton – by 2.4sec! – Clark’s race develops into a lead dice with world champion Graham Hill’s BRM. Troubled by grabbing brakes, the Lotus man finishes second, 11.2sec in arrears.

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whooped “I actually

on Hangar Straight!

I’ve never done that

One Grand Prix winner snuggles into another as David Coulthard gets to grips with the Lotus 25, a car synonymous with his compatriot Jim Clark.

Within but a few laps of Silverstone, he’s completely smitten… writer

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go r do n c r u i c k s h a n k | p h o t o g r a p h e r m a t t h e w h ow e ll

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t before in a car…”

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Martin Brundle 30 years on

Back in the old routine

Three decades after tussling with Ayrton Senna for the British F3 title, Martin Brundle is reunited with the Ralt RT3 that played a pivotal role in his fledgling career writer

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s i m o n arr o n | p h o t o g r a p h e r j a k o b e br e y

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My souvenirs Jo Ramirez

Memories are made of this

During a long and rewarding career in Formula 1, Jo Ramirez amassed an incredible collection of personal mementoes – something he wants his family to preserve for the benefit of future generations.

Here are a few edited highlights

T

he 2013 Motor Sport Hall of Fame night at the Royal Opera House in London will be remembered by a great many of us for the auction in aid of the Grand Prix Mechanics Trust. And most notably for the sale of a pair of gloves.

These fetched £22,000, raising more money than Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull steering wheel. Why? Because they once belonged to Ayrton Senna, who wore them during his third world championship season in 1991. The red and white OMP gloves were donated by GPMT trustee and former McLaren F1 team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez, a close friend of the great Brazilian.

During an extraordinary career spanning five decades, Jo has been collecting memorabilia from the Grand Prix teams for whom he worked, first as a mechanic and latterly in team management. He retired in 2001, since when he has never revealed the sensational contents of his collection, now catalogued and preserved for future generations to relish.

“I will never sell anything, not even one piece,” he tells me, surrounded by helmets from Senna and Prost, a stunning array of steering wheels, Senna’s competition licence, driving boots and overalls, and – his most prized possession – a model of a McLaren-Honda MP4/6 made entirely from silver. “I did not

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collect these things to make money, I wanted them as memories of my career, and they give me great pleasure whenever I look at them. I gave the gloves to the auction because I have been a trustee of the GPMT for 10 years and during that time I haven’t made a big contribution. So when Jackie [Stewart] approached me I said yes, because it was a good

cause. Mechanics are well paid now, many with good benefits and pensions, but that certainly was not the case in the old days when I started out.”

Now he is retired, Jo misses the cut and thrust of F1. He goes to the odd race and keeps in touch with old friends at Woking, but now he has a chance to reflect on a long and hugely successful career.

“Yes, I have nothing to look forward to,” he says, rather ruefully, “but I am writing about each Grand Prix for a serious Mexican newspaper called The Reforma. Obviously they have a huge interest in Sergio Pérez at McLaren and Esteban Gutiérrez at Sauber, after all those years without a Mexican in F1. I was involved in Carlos Slim’s ‘Scuderia Telmex’ academy for young drivers and seeing Sergio in the McLaren is just so exciting for us, a dream come true. I’ve also done some ‘punditry’ for TV and this year I have podcasts to do as well. I would watch the races anyway, so writing about them is a real pleasure.”

Jo is the keeper of a truly sensational collection of motor racing memories. In the future, however, he hopes that his family will preserve them for generations to come. Last year he came close to winning the retro revival Carrera Panamericana road race in Mexico, but thwarted by mechanical trouble right at the end took the second step on the podium. Perhaps his speed was down to the red driving boots he used. They once belonged to some very famous Brazilian feet. august 2013

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Ricardo RODRIGUEZ HELMET In the beginning Jo was a childhood friend of fellow Mexicans Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez, following them to Europe and helping them in their early careers. “Yes, we grew up together in Mexico and shared a passion for speed and fast cars. I have one of Ricardo’s famous yellow helmets, complete with his goggles and driving gloves.

When you look at modern helmets you are reminded of how little protection the drivers had in the 1950s and ’60s.

And the gloves are string-backed, like you might have had for driving a road car. I also have a poster, using an image of me as the only Mexican in F1 at that time, of a film that was going to be made about Pedro. Maybe it will be made now that we have two Mexicans in Formula 1 and the possibility of a Grand Prix there again.”

Ayrton Senna’s gloves “It was weird, but when the GPMT auction bidding was going up and up, I was thinking about how finickety Ayrton was about his gloves. He was very particular about everything he wore, his overalls, his shoes, his helmet and his gloves. He always insisted that the stitching was on the outside of the gloves – most are done on the inside – because he didn’t want any unnecessary friction on his hands. The padding had to be thicker in the right hand for changing gears and he didn’t want any padding on the back of the gloves to give his hands more room in the cockpit.

“He didn’t like long gloves up his arms, unlike Prost who preferred them to cover his forearms. With helmets, Ayrton hated anyone touching them or moving them around, so we had a ‘show’ helmet in the truck if anyone wanted photographs. Nowadays the drivers change their helmets all the time and use four or five different ones in a season.”

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Two to four Casey Stoner

Different strokes

Casey Stoner has left the arena that made him famous, but a competitive spark burns brightly still.

He’s facing a fresh challenge on four wheels – and former F1 engineer John Russell is his guiding light J e ss i c a d a n e

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writer

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Jaguar XJS Win winning: sharing and Hans with Tom Walkinshaw Hours glory Heyer to 1984 Spa 24

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{ lunch with }

win percy

He was already 31 when his career began in earnest, but a late start was no impediment for one of racing’s true gents writer

simon taylor | photographer Charles best

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nalyse the human make-up of successful racing drivers, and you uncover fascinating variety. There’ll always be a powerful will to win, of course, although this may manifest itself in differing ways. Plus you’d expect aggression: maybe openly on display, maybe carefully hidden when out of the cockpit. And there’s bound to be deep selfbelief, a crucial ingredient driving the racer on.

Less often nowadays do you find a quality that, I suggest, is becoming rarer throughout all 21st century sport: an innate sense of decency.

You find that in Win Percy.

Win’s start in life was humble, as the farm labourer son of a farm labourer. His start in racing was humble, too: in an old Ford Anglia on his local stock car track. Yet he went on to become one of the most successful racing drivers in his category in the world, a multiple champion in touring cars and a frontrunner in Group C. Having escaped unhurt from a terrifying 200mph Le Mans crash, his 28-year career as a professional racer was only ended,

with dreadful irony, by a tragic medical error after he put his back out in the garden. He was told he would never walk again, but he has met this new challenge with extraordinary courage and determination, and success. He and his wife Rosemary now live in southern Spain, but he also keeps an apartment in Prince Charles’s model village of Poundbury, on the Dorset coast. From there we drive to the Wise Man at West Stafford, a proper village pub that greets us with home-made steak and kidney pie and an honest glass of red.

Winston Walter Frederick Lawrence Percy is a West Countryman. He was born in 1943 in Tolpuddle, and his voice has never lost its gentle Dorset burr. “My parents were very poor: Dad was a farm worker and we lived in a farm cottage. At school my form master, Mr Stanley, said, ‘Winston, I have to be honest. You’re a waste of space here. I don’t know what you’re going to do with your life, but I’m doing you no good at all.’ So I left school at 14 and started on the farm, driving a tractor. With the agricultural machinery I was in my element, because I could fix things, and I was quite happy. I got hold of an old motorbike, an www.motorsportmagazine.com 95

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Retrospective Lorenzo Bandini

Austria 1964: Bandini passes Trevor Taylor’s abandoned BRP en route to his only Formula 1 World Championship victory

❖ Born in December 1935, Bandini was obsessed with cars in childhood, and at 15 became an apprentice mechanic in the Milan garage of one Signor Freddi. A good move, this, for his employer not only helped get his racing career underway, lending him cars to drive in local events, but also had a pretty daughter, Margherita, whom Lorenzo eventually married.

In the late 1950s, following the deaths – within three years – of Alberto Ascari, august 2013

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L

orenzo Bandini…

Such a mellifluous name for a racing driver, it always seemed to me, like Clay Regazzoni or Johnny Servoz-Gavin. And they all looked the part, too.

Bandini was a hero of mine. This was the mid-sixties, a time in motor racing infinitely more romantic – and perilous – than now, when commercial sponsorship had yet to arrive, British cars were green and French blue, little was known about aerodynamics, rewards were modest and risks high.

I thought Bandini a perfect fit for his era.

Here was the Italian racing driver from Central Casting, destined from birth to be synonymous with Ferrari. And, as well as that, everyone loved him. “Many people with his looks are like strutting peacocks,” says Chris Amon, “but Lorenzo wasn’t. An utterly charming guy – in fact, one of the nicest people I ever met...”

He comes back to many a mind, inevitably, when Monte Carlo rolls around each year, and most of all if one is near the chicane. These days it is torturously slow, mostly defined by kerbing, apparently designed to create contentious accidents, but the Monaco chicane was once anything but an overtaking spot: as cars blasted out of the tunnel, what next they encountered was a terrifying, blink-of-the-eye, left-right flick between substantial barriers, rather than little kerbs.

When John Frankenheimer was filming Grand Prix in 1966, he had in mind to shoot a major accident at Monaco. He asked several drivers for their opinions as to where such a thing was most likely to happen. To a man they went for the chicane, and among them was Bandini, who would crash there a year later, sustaining burns to which he succumbed three days later. In motor racing’s entire history, probably no driver died harder.

Brown-eyed handsome man He was blessed with looks, charisma and speed – and rivals thought the world of him.

He won but a single World Championship Grand Prix, but there was more to Lorenzo Bandini than such simple statistics imply writer

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Nigel Mansell Conquering America

Straight out of

Hollywood When Paul Newman lured F1 champion Nigel Mansell to IndyCar 20 years ago, he promised an adventure. The resulting story was a scriptwriter’s dream writer

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gordon kirby

uring the 1990s CART’s IndyCar World Series was booming, attracting big fields and a worldwide following with enough prestige to lure defending Formula 1 champion Nigel Mansell.

While the Englishman had been bickering with Frank Williams about an F1 contract for 1993, Carl Haas jumped into the game and offered Mansell a deal to compete in America with Newman/Haas Racing, alongside Mario Andretti. The idea appealed, and in those days money wasn’t a problem.

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