August 2014 issue of Motor Sport Magazine

NIGEL ROEBUCK ‘MY FIRST INDY 500 FOR 21 YEARS’

first car, first driver, first test track JAGUAR D-TYPE AT 60 Reunited: www.motorsportmagazine.com

90TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR

AMERICA’S CUP

Sir Ben Ainslie courts Newey and Prodrive for sailing race

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

THE MAN WITH THE KEYS TO F1

But does Jean Todt have the power to change the sport?

Mark Hughes finds out • J OH N SIR JACK BRABHAM A personal tribute by SWinning URTwith Ferrari…

EES GOLDEN DAYS

his friend Doug Nye AUGUST 2014

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before it turned sour •

£4.99

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THE MOTOR SPORT MONTH

IN PICTURES

JUNE 15, 2014

Audi takes number 13 LE MANS, FRANCE

AUDI

With increased pressure, as Porsche returned to its natural hunting ground to challenge Toyota and Audi, the 2014 Le Mans 24 Hours became a classic nail-biter, ripe with twists and turns. The result was familiar, though, André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer taking their third win in four years – and Audi’s 13th in 16.

Roll on 2015...

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F1 FRONTLINE with

Mark Hughes

“It’s absurd to spend

so much money” Formula 1 excess? It aggravates Jean Todt as much as it winds up the wider world, but how do you address it when teams won’t change their ways? Just one of the topics the FIA president addressed in Motor Sport’s exclusive interview. Will he stand again? Did Max Mosley do a good job? Read on...

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F1 FRONTLINE with

Mark Hughes GRAND PRIX NOTEBOOK

MONACO, CANADA & AUSTRIA 1 NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 2 LEWIS HAMILTON Mercedes W05 3 DANIEL RICCIARDO Red Bull RB10

1hr 49min 27.661sec 1hr 49min 36.871sec 1hr 49min 37.275sec

F A S T E S T L A P KIMI RÄIKKÖNEN Ferrari F14 T 1min 18.479sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 78 laps, 161.879 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 1min 15.989sec

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Rd 7 M O NT RÉA L , J UNE 8 2 0 1 4 1 DANIEL RICCIARDO Red Bull RB10 2 NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 3 SEBASTIAN VETTEL Red Bull RB10

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1 NICO ROSBERG 2 LEWIS HAMILTON 3 VALTTERI BOTTAS

1hr 39min 12.830sec 1hr 39min 17.066sec 1hr 39min 18.077sec

F A S T E S T L A P FELIPE MASSA Williams FW36 1min 18.504sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 70 laps, 189.686 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N NICO ROSBERG Mercedes W05 1min 14.874sec

N THE EXCLUSIVELY MERCEDES DRIVER FIGHT for the world championship, the three-race sequence from Monaco to Austria turned things decisively in Nico Rosberg’s favour and away from Lewis Hamilton. The latter came to Monaco narrowly leading the points table as his fourth consecutive victory in Spain had finally overcome the disadvantage incurred by his retirement in the first race. But after Monaco, Canada and Austria played out he was even more distant than he had been in Australia, when he’d retired and Rosberg won. In the middle of this sequence, in Montréal, we had a double breakthrough – the first non-Mercedes victory of the year as Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo took his first F1 victory.

With two front-rank drivers in the only car capable of winning the title, things were always going to get tense in the Mercedes garages. It had started in Bahrain when Rosberg, in his late efforts at trying to pass his team-mate, had used a more aggressive engine map than Hamilton had been allowed. Hamilton had retaliated by doing the same as he fended off Rosberg in Barcelona. But the tension was increased immeasurably in Monaco by Nico’s off at Mirabeau during his final qualifying run. The yellow flags obliged the following Hamilton to back off, denying him the chance of bettering Rosberg’s first-run time. With

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Rd 8 S P IELBERG, JU N E 22 2 01 4 Mercedes W05 Mercedes W05 Williams FW36

1hr 27min 54.976sec 1hr 27min 56.908sec 1hr 28min 03.148sec

F A S T E S T L A P SERGIO PÉREZ Force India VJM07 1min 12.142sec R A C E D I S T A N C E 71 laps, 190.773 miles P O L E P O S I T I O N FELIPE MASSA Williams FW36 1min 08.759sec

Rosberg’s off having apparently secured him pole – particularly vital around the streets of Monte Carlo – there was lively debate about whether it had been simply an over-commitment or a deliberate foul.

The stewards ruled in favour of the former, but there were plenty convinced otherwise – Hamilton predictably among their number.

Whatever the truth, that incident was probably even more significant than just paving the way for Rosberg’s second consecutive Monaco victory. It was difficult not to ponder if the Monaco outcome had disturbed Hamilton’s competitive state of mind, as he over-drove during his final qualifying runs in both Canada and Austria.

Errors in all four of Hamilton’s Q3 runs in those two races essentially lost him a likely pole position on each occasion. As he then sought to use a more aggressive energy setting in his efforts at closing in on Rosberg around the stops at Montréal, so it caused him to suffer a terminal mechanical problem – no brakes – that forced his retirement.

Rosberg brilliantly managed a similar problem to take second to Ricciardo and thereby put himself a long way clear of Hamilton on points, which almost certainly triggered Hamilton into over-striving even further in Austria. As Rosberg continued to apply himself without error, so he took another crucial victory, this time at the re-invented Austrian venue once known as the Österreichring.

LAT

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RED BULL

Daniel Ricciardo has become only the fourth Australian to win an F1 Grand Prix, after Brabham, Jones and Webber

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Tribute Sir Jack Brabham

Guv’nor The

Reflections on the only man to win Formula 1 titles as both driver and constructor, by a Motor Sport contributor who knew him well writer

DOUG NYE

GETTY

N HEARING OF SIR JACK Brabham’s recent death – at the age of 88 – Australian enthusiast Alec Hawkins sat down at a computer keyboard and submitted the following to one of the internet motor racing forums. I believe his words speak for a generation of contemporary racing tifosi.

“As an Aussie who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, to me Sir Jack Brabham represented everything that I thought was good about Australians. To me we were a modest, quietly capable people, determined and reliable with a natural reserve verging on shyness, a thoroughly decent, peaceful people but with an inner steel that made formidable opponents in ‘battle’. Maybe my schoolboy patriotism was somewhat idealistic, but make no mistake. Sir Jack personified all of those qualities by the bucketload.”

He continued: “I have felt surprisingly sad all day – it feels as though part of my youth left me today. Not only has motor racing lost a genuine legend, but Australia has lost a fine ambassador for what was so good about this country…”

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HE DARK GREEN prototype has been lapping the handling circuit at the Motor Industry Research Association proving ground for a while now, the distinctive bark of its 3.4-litre straight-six motor bouncing off the steep walls of the banked track that encircles this place. You can see the precision of its line through the corners, the crispness of each gearchange and you want it to go on. But it can’t: time is pressing and rain clouds are gathering, so reluctantly we call the car back to

Track test D-type prototype

the apron where we’ve all been waiting.

The driver cuts the engine a few feet short of us and lets the car coast to a halt. He sits there quietly for a few seconds, seemingly lost in the moment. Then he raises his head to reveal a quiet, thoughtful smile. “You know,” says 93-year-old Norman Dewis. “It’s good to be back in her. And good to be back here.”

The ‘here’ we know about; the ‘her’ is the original prototype Jaguar D-type, chassis number XKC401, registration OVC 501. A barely believable 60 years ago, he, her and here came together to commence a programme that would result in the most beloved and revered sports racing car ever to emanate from these shores.

I’ve always pondered that part. For a car that as a full and proper works entry only ever won a single round of the World Sports Car Championship, and that only after the

withdrawal of a rival team that was leading the race by two clear laps, the Jaguar D-type occupies an astonishing place in our hearts. Even if you add private entries, the count rises to just four wins. Chuck in two non-championship victories in the Reims 12 Hours and you can say that, in the five years the D-type can be said to have been a contemporary racing car, it won just six important races. And yet there in our hearts it lies, and my question, which I’m hoping Norman will help me answer, is how it got that way.

It is interesting to note in this modern era, where Porsche announced its return to Le Mans fully three years before the actual race, Norman first got his hands on a functioning D-type

Norman’s conquest The D-type didn’t win many races in period, but fared spectacularly well in those that most mattered.

Sixty years on from the car’s first test, Motor Sport joins Jaguar development driver Norman Dewis at the helm writer ANDREW FRANKEL photographer HOWARD SIMMONS

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Trading places Ainslie and Prodrive

Instructor Turner was impressed

by Ainslie’s grasp of racing lines.

Right, the 2013 America’s Cup – Sir Ben’s natural habitat

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IR BEN AINSLIE LOOKS AS though he’s just been released from a tumble dryer. He might be the most successful sailor in Olympic history, but he emerges wide-eyed after a few laps with two-time Le Mans class winner Darren Turner in an Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4. A large intake of breath signals that it’s his turn to take the wheel around the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit.

Ainslie is hardly a newcomer to high velocity, of course. America’s Cup boats fly along at 55mph, above the water, and can travel at three times the wind’s speed. That doesn’t seem rational, but the introduction of a new design has made it possible. The latest sails are rigid, rather than traditional cloth, and use the same aerodynamic technology as aircraft. To give you an idea of scale, the catamaran’s rigid sails are the same size as the wing of a Boeing 747…

Why is sailing’s popularity rising so? “Well,” he says, “as a country we’ve done OK in the Olympics and there have been other real stars, such as Ellen MacArthur [who broke the world record for fastest solo circumnavigation of the

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WIND OF globe in 2005].” And this from a man who has won four gold medals and a silver at the Olympics, as well as eight sailing world championships. Not to mention his efforts in the 2013 America’s Cup race, between Oracle Team USA and Team New Zealand. The latter won four of the first five races, at which point Oracle made the decision to modify its boat and bring in Ainslie, as tactician. They promptly slumped to an eight-one deficit before recovering to win nine-eight – one of the finest comebacks in the history of sport.

Ainslie has been credited as the man who made the difference on the American boat.

Now he has ambitions to win the cup – one of the oldest competitions in international sport – at the helm of a British entry. That would be a notable first and the crowning achievement of the sailor’s incredible career.

Adrian Newey’s long-professed interest in the America’s Cup and his impending divorce from Formula 1 has led to an approach from Ainslie.

But the motor sport connection could stretch beyond the involvement of the aerodynamicist.

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Prodrive, the globally respected motor sport engineering specialist, also has an interest in the project thanks to its founder and Aston Martin chairman David Richards, who was inspired by the America’s Cup spectacle last year.

“I’ve known Ben for years,” says the sailing fanatic as we stand outside The Wing. “His family comes from near where we have a house and hotel in Cornwall, so I met him through mutual friends down there.” Richards is learning to sail “in a very amateurish way” and suggested to Ainslie that he should make his

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writer

track debut in an Aston racer. “One thing led to another – and here he is.”

While Ainslie – who’s kitted out in Marcus Grönholm’s plain white race overalls – hasn’t previously been on a circuit, he did spend an evening at Darren Turner’s Base Performance Simulators business. “That was great,” says Ainslie during a short break between stints.

“I think it made a huge difference. It would have been very hard without that.

“It’s interesting, though, because there is actually a bit of crossover from sailing to racing

ED FOSTER

in terms of steering the car and balancing it.

It’s the same with a boat – if you use too much rudder you can stall it, which is similar to losing grip in a car.”

Conversation soon turns to Chris Hoy – an Olympian who hopes he’s on the road to the Le Mans 24 Hours with Nissan – but despite Ainslie enjoying his day in the Aston, he’s not planning to switch careers any time soon.

“I doubt I’ll be the next Olympian to forge a career in motor sport,” he says with a smile.

“You’ll have to ask Darren.”

GETTY

CHANGE

Can motor sport help Olympic legend Sir Ben Ainslie win the America’s Cup for Britain?

He swaps the high seas for race track to find out more with Prodrive at Silverstone

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John Surtees My Incredible Life

“Imagine being

protested by your own team…”

In an extract from John Surtees’ new book, we look back at the 1963 and ’64 seasons. The Englishman might have become the first racer to take world titles on two wheels and four, but it wasn’t all plain sailing

ALL IMAGES LAT

A picture that expresses perfectly my relations with team manager Eugenio Dragoni (right). Like the Italians, I’m using the hands and plenty of emotion to make my point.

Dragoni was incompetent and a mistake for Ferrari, and I always thought that there were political reasons why he was there. Mr Ferrari himself never went to race meetings, and there was no TV coverage in those days, so he had to rely on the often-distorted reports from others. Mauro Forghieri is on the left of the picture.

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At Le Mans the Ferrari 330P that I shared with Lorenzo Bandini was capable of 190mph, and I put the car on pole with a lap at more than 135mph to counter the arrival of Ford’s new GT40. We were leading into the 12th hour until the pick-up pipe inside the fuel tank broke halfway up, which meant that we could only use half our fuel load.

We had to settle for third place – my best finish at Le Mans.

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HE OPTION OF GOING back to Italy had been hard to resist, but before this I took part in the six-race Tasman series, starting off the season well with two wins and a second place in the Lola Mk4, fitted for these races with a 2.7-litre version of the four-cylinder Climax engine. Then it was off to Maranello to lead Ferrari’s Formula 1 and sports car teams, and test and develop the cars.

The early-season programme at Ferrari was heavily focused on the new 3-litre sportsprototypes, as success at Le Mans was considered important for the sale of road cars. The disadvantage was that this limited the design and development time allocated to Formula 1.

I wasn’t the only new face. After Carlo Chiti, the previous chief engineer and race director, had departed just over a year earlier, taking a number of staff with him, Mauro Forghieri had become race engineer. Forghieri coordinated

development with the main design team, now headed by Franco Rocchi, and Eugenio Dragoni was drafted in as team manager.

There was a hectic programme to build and develop the 250P sports car in time for the Sebring 12 Hours, the first race, where there were entries for the American distributor, Luigi Chinetti, as well as the works cars. I was teamed with Lodovico Scarfiotti, who was about my size, so one of the cars I had tested at Modena was allocated to us. But when we arrived in Florida we found that Dragoni had offered it to Chinetti’s North American Racing Team (NART) and the car we were given was one that had scarcely been tested. Dragoni was no doubt trying to demonstrate his authority, and I was tempted to leave them to it. But after talking to Lodovico we decided to sort out the car as best we could in the time available and beat them with it.

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Primed for action: Boillot’s Peugeot at rest in the pits, in front of the charmingly complex Lyon scoreboard, Opposite page, the local hero

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PART 1 It’s a year of key anniversaries for the ‘original’ GP. Next month, Lyon 1924

These were unsettled times, with the Great War a matter of weeks from declaration, but political tension was no obstacle to one of the most gripping of all motor races.

A century has passed since Peugeot – or, rather, Georges Boillot – fought Mercedes in the French Grand Prix writer

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PAUL FEARNLEY

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The Record A moment in time

{ SPANISH GP • JARAMA, 1970 }

22 INTO 16 WON’T GO… People accuse F1 of being too political in the modern era, but distasteful spats are by no means a fresh invention writer

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SIMON ARRON illustrator GUY ALLEN

HE 1969 SPANISH GRAND Prix had been laced with controversy – Team Lotus’s collapsing wing pillars triggering a couple of massive accidents and, subsequently, a regulatory rethink. One year on, Formula 1 was flirting with a different strain of sinister.

There had been only 14 cars on the grid for Spain’s previous GP, at Montjuich Park, but now there were 22 drivers scrapping for just 16 available places at Jarama – as many as the promoter claimed its insurer permitted.

The selection policy was on the wayward side of odd: irrespective of practice times, it was announced that 10 grid positions would be pre-allocated, one each to a factory driver from Ferrari, Lotus, Brabham, BRM, McLaren, Matra and March, plus the three world champions plying their trade elsewhere – Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and Graham Hill. The rest would have to qualify for six spots, on the

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basis of practice times, but the organisers kept changing their minds about which sessions counted and which didn’t, sometimes announcing the fact retrospectively.

On the eve of the race, March director Max Mosley believed he’d forged a deal to get all 22 cars into the race, but that was just another thing that could – and would – be changed.

Four non-qualifiers – Jo Siffert, Andrea de Adamich, John Miles and Alex Soler-Roig – attempted to claim a place on the grid, but arguments descended into shoving matches and baton-wielding police became involved.

The race eventually started with a field of 16, Stewart winning in Ken Tyrrell’s March 701, but DSJ hadn’t been terribly impressed. In the May 1970 edition of Motor Sport he wrote: “Never has a Grand Prix been so fraught with wrangles and complaints, a disease that used to affect sports car racing when Grand Prix racing was a good, clean sport. Since the introduction of big-business interests, Grand Prix racing has gone to the dogs.”

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‘Brode’ with rusty classics outside lunch venue – a contrast with the high standards of race car preparation he was known for

{ LUNCH WITH }

DAV I D BRODIE For much of his 50 years in British racing he was a serial winner, and he rubbed shoulders with the Formula 1 crowd as well

writer

SIMON TAYLOR | photographer JAMES MITCHELL

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S WE KNOW, FORMULA 1 has pretty much taken over the motor sporting world. It gets almost all of the media coverage, almost all of the money and virtually all of the glory.

A whole new generation of people who think of themselves as motor racing fans – even though their only sight of racing comes through a television set – don’t seem to understand that F1, impressive and exciting though it may be, is only one part of motor sport, involving just 22 drivers on 19 weekends of the year.

They don’t realise that there is so much more wonderful stuff going on, from endurance racing to rallying, from touring cars to historics, from true club racing to hill climbing, autocross and trials. In most cases they can’t watch it on TV, but what they can do is go and watch it in real life, and get involved in the experience. And, if they’ve got a remotely suitable set of wheels,

they can even put on a helmet and take part.

Apart from those 22 F1 superheroes with their multi-million dollar deals, and a worthy array of professional racers making a good living in other forms of international racing, there are literally tens of thousands of competition licence holders who pursue their hobby on a shoestring, coming home from a hard day’s work to prepare their cars far into the night, and then setting off at dawn with battered tow car and trailer for a weekend’s excitement and fun.

Sometimes they may have considerable ability; more often they probably haven’t.

But in any case they too are racing drivers, and they are the true backbone of motor sport.

Over more than three decades I served my time covering Formula 1, and feel very privileged to have done so. But I have also spent nearly 50 years following, writing about, talking about and occasionally ineptly participating in the lower levels of motor sport.

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Jack Brabham catches up with Colin Chapman. The Australian, British GP winner at Brands in ’66, was this time driving a Ford Escort in a celebrity event on the support bill

Ronnie Peterson planted his Lotus 79 on pole, ahead of team-mate Mario Andretti, but neither finished. Peterson retired with a fuel leak, the American after engine failure

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PRIVATE VIEW

A ‘YOU WERE THERE’ SPECIAL Looking back, Bryan Watson describes the 1978 British GP as “magical, a privileged opportunity to experience another world...”

F Not one of James Hunt’s better races – the local hero spun off on lap eight.

Top, Brabham drivers Niki Lauda (pictured) and John Watson joined winner Carlos Reutemann (Ferrari) on the podium

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OR A FIRST TRIP TO BRANDS HATCH, THE OCCASION could scarcely have been more appropriate. Bryan Watson was used to working trackside in his native America – and the 1978 British Grand Prix coincided with a visit to UK-based relatives (his mother hailed from Southampton).

He called on a few connections – including Indy 500 chief steward Tom Binford – to help secure accreditation for the race. Photo bib 142 was duly assigned and the consequences – shot on Kodak transparency film, with a Pentax MX and a few relatively short prime lenses – can be seen here.

“It all seemed very open and friendly,” Bryan says. “I felt completely at one with the event and the access was amazing. I don’t recall any drivers being particularly aloof or evasive, or for that matter overly cooperative. If you had an orange bib, you could just walk up, take a shot and nobody objected.

“I saw George Harrison and he seemed like a great guy. He allowed me time to compose my shot, but I only took one – I didn’t have the emotional stability to wind the film on! All the while I had a feeling that somebody was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘OK you, let’s go – back to where you belong’.

I could not believe I was having this experience and wondered when I was going to wake up. I also recall Gunnar Nilsson being at the track – the first time I’d seen him and a reminder of life’s potential fragility. It was a stark contrast to the exciting stuff going on all around.

“I just wish Formula 1 could go back to Brands…”

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