DEREK BELL

The Legend

Much has been made of the number of Grands Prix to be held in 2023. It doesn’t have an impact on my life, but I have noticed that quite a few drivers have complained about the amount of travelling involved getting to races, not to mention time spent testing or performing promotional duties It all adds up Adding more rounds compounds their misery I can see where they are coming from to a point, and obviously more time away does have an impact on engineers, mechanics, truck drivers, and so on, many of whom have families

Without wishing for this to descend into a ‘they don’t know they’re born’ laundry list of grumbles, I remember when I was racing full-time and I tried to fill in as many weekends racing as possible This was because I loved it. I wanted to compete as often as I could Which got me to thinking about how we used to compete during the winter The idea of an off-season was lost on me, and I remember being elated when my dear friend Chris Amon invited me to join him to do the Tasman series at the start of 1969

It seems incredible now, but my Scuderia Ferrari team-mate persuaded the team to let us borrow a couple of F2 cars to race in New Zealand and Australia over a seven-week period I drove my Transit van to Maranello, armed with a two-car trailer that I had borrowed from David Piper, before heading back to Pagham Seeing them in our home workshop was quite something, believe me. From there we drove them to the docks in London before the cars were shipped to Auckland.

I have touched on the Tasman before in this column, but it’s worth recalling that the racing was fantastic and the organiser Ron Frost did a great job each year. It was a series for 2.5-litre cars, and our little Dinos always had a horsepower deficit compared with the Lotus 49s with their ‘small-displacement’ DFVs, and so on. Even so, we put on a show. That was the thing, we were welcomed with open arms. The world was a much smallerplacebackthen,andpeoplewouldtravelfromall over just to see drivers they had only ever read about: guys like Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt and Piers Courage.

Then there was Chris who, being a Kiwi, was racing royalty. We did four races in New Zealand and three in Australia and I loved every second of it. Of course, the facilities were a bit basic – to put it mildly. The Lady

Wigram Trophy event, for example, was staged at Wigram Airfield which was active during the week As such, all the infrastructure – if you can call it that – had to be installed on the eve of the races That mostly comprised adding wooden benches, not forgetting trenches for people to relieve themselves a Lotus 7, two World Sportscar Championships (1985 and 1986), the 24 Hours of Daytona three times (in 1986, ’87 and ’89), and Le Mans five times (in 1975, ’81, ’82, ’86 and ’87)

Perhaps inevitably, used sump oil would be deposited there, too, and this was at a time when a lot of people smoked Well, you can guess the rest. While the racing was challenging and hard-fought, what I took away from it was the camaraderie among drivers I had raced against some of the ‘names’ before but certainly didn’t know them Here I spent time with Graham, Jochen, and so on, whether it was visiting the beach, water-skiing, or dining together. There were also all manner of civic functions, or we would be visiting a children’s hospital, and so on.

It was one big goodwill tour, and I have never forgotten that. We were ambassadors for our chosen sport and there’s a lot to be said for that. The Tasman series wasn’t the only racing going on during the winter, either. There was the Temporada championship in Argentina, which attracted some big names and star drivers. Ferrari also did that, with Andrea de Adamich winning the title in his F2 Dino. I remember being amazed when I heard how well he and his team-mate ‘Tino’ Brambilla had gone against serious works opposition from other big teams.

So much so, I was full of optimism when my 1969 season in Europe kicked off at Thruxton in April of that year. It was the first round of the F2 series and I had high hopes, as did Clay Regazzoni and Brambilla in the sister cars. The pace just wasn’t there, which led me – and others, I might add – to conclude that the engines used in the South American campaign may have been ‘massaged’ a little. We certainly never came close to winning, let alone dominating, to the point that our bid stopped altogether halfway through the year. But I digress. The point is that we raced and we raced and then we raced some more. It was brilliant. I certainly didn’t want to be competing less, that’s for sure.

That was me, and it was then. I won’t pass judgement on the current crop of aces and their schedules. I just know that I had a wonderful time racing all year round, thesortofexperiencesthatwereatreasurebeyondprice. I wouldn’t have missed them for anything.