PEBBLE BEACH 1952
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ABOVE and RIGHT Bill Pollack in Tom Carstens’ famous jet-black Allard-
Cadillac – with its signature white-wall tires – was one hell of a rival round Pebble Beach. That thing had so much grunt out of the turns and along the straights it was hard to catch, even harder to pass and Bill was very well wired up as a race-car driver – very highly respected. In those early years he was the man to beat.
75
ABOVE Arnold Stubbs settled into my new Ferrari 212 Export on the startline at Pebble Beach before the 48-lap Del Monte Trophy feature race. He’s taking a firm grip on that thin wood-rimmed Nardi steering wheel and certainly looks all business in this shot – fired-up and ready to go. I must confess I was pretty fearful for my investment, but Stubbs drove well and finished second. That’s Dick Scott’s MG TD just beyond him. Race No 88, right behind the Ferrari, is John Edgar’s sleek-bodied supercharged MG Special, to be driven by Jack McAfee, another fine driver of the period. That’s him in the red race suit, and it looks as if he’s talking with his unrelated namesake, Ernie McAfee – sadly to die here at Pebble Beach in 1956 when he crashed in Bill Doheny’s Ferrari 121LM. And that would also be the end of racing at Pebble Beach. LEFT Revving my new V12 and just about ready to go, Arnold Stubbs in the
MONTEREY USA
1952
Ferrari was lined up on the grid beside Jim Seeley’s primitive-looking, but quick Cannon Special, built by his friend Ted Cannon who owned a machine shop in North Hollywood. While Stubbs would finish second in the Del Monte Trophy race, behind Bill Pollack’s winning Allard J2, Jim Seeley – who I think was a firefighter in his day job – would place eighth overall.
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LEFT Heavy metal – and the reigning World Champion Driver. At ‘Casa Ferrari’ in the Le Mans pit row I found this mouth-watering line-up of their latest Pinin Farina-bodied 375 Mille Miglia Berlinettas.
1953
Alberto Ascari seemed every bit as friendly and approachable as he looks right here. He would share No 12 with his great friend and mentor ‘Gigi’ Villoresi – No 15 would become the Scuderia’s only finisher, in fifth place, crewed by the racing brothers Giannino and Paolo Marzotto – while No 14 for Mike Hawthorn/’Nino’ Farina would take an early bath after only 12 laps, when it was disqualified because the team topped up the car’s brake fluid too early.
BRITISH GRAND PRIX 1953
253
ABOVE David Murray’s Edinburgh-based Ecurie Ecosse team became the most successful private operation in world sports-car racing, outdoing Cunningham by eventually winning back-to-back Le Mans 24-Hour races in 1956-57. At this stage they were running C-Type Jaguars, all finished in this very attractive ‘Flag Metallic Blue’ livery. RIGHT The ‘sergeant’ No 7 here would be driven by Ninian Sanderson. No 8 without any nose bar is the humble PFC for Sir James Scott Douglas, and the ‘corporal’ No 9 was for Jimmy Stewart. His young kid brother would have been out in the paddock hunting autographs from famous racing drivers. His name was Jackie Stewart. Out of the picture was the (unrelated) Ian Stewart’s single nose-stripe No 6 – the ‘lance-corporal’. In the race, he and Jimmy would finish fifth and sixth – Sanderson struggled home 11th, while Scott Douglas retired. Incidentally, the Silverstone signwriter clearly had a bit of trouble spelling ‘Kieft’ – the name of the small Welsh sports-car constructor.
SILVERSTONE UK
1953
295
BUENOS AIRES 1,000KMS 1954
304
ABOVE Carroll Shelby was sharing Roy Cherryhomes’s Cad-Allard with Masten Gregory’s brother-in-law Dale Duncan. During the race the carburetor caught fire, and with no extinguishers in sight, a quick-thinking Dale pulled over, jumped out and peed on it to put it out right in front of everyone. They would finish 10th – in the ‘Old Turd’ as Carroll called it – in the 106-lap, 1000Kilometer race, and fourth in class.
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ABOVE Wheel change for the Shelby/Duncan Allard. What many race fans who have never got to grips with one of those old-style spoked wheels don’t know is just how heavy they could be. Throwing these things about against the clock demanded not just strength, but also technique. Many of the casual helpers that private owners often used in this period possessed neither. These guys just look better than most. LEFT Carroll Shelby remounts and returns to the battle. We had many great
BUENOS AIRES ARGENTINA
1954
races between us through the 1950s. Never for one moment did I picture myself ever driving for him ‌ But with the Shelby Cobra team of the 1960s that time would come.
MODENA ITALY
Ferrari Testing
“A
LLEN GUIBERSON HAD COME UP WITH THE REMARKABLE notion that Richie and I should take his Monza over to Europe and barnstorm it around the road races there, with Richie as mechanic and myself as the driver … We jumped at the chance, and sailed from New Orleans on the SS Frederick Lykes, bound for Genoa in Italy via Barcelona, with Guiberson’s 750 Monza in the hold.
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“During a brief stop at Gibraltar we heard news that some great racing driver had been killed in some European race – about a day later the radio operator found that it had been Ascari. I’d been on nodding terms … because he was a friend of a fellow Milanese guy, Pino Lela, who was a salesman at International Motors. We were still on the ship when the radio operator came to us again, this time with a telegram addressed to me. It read: ‘Disembark Barcelona instead of Genoa. Come direct to Modena. Ferrari’. This was undeniably exciting. “I’d first met Mr Ferrari the previous year at Maranello – the ill-fated Reims trip. Now, Richie and I disembarked at Barcelona, and rode the train to Turin. It stopped every damn place, but here I was soaking it all up, while Richie really irritated me by just sleeping through it all. I guess I irritated him by constantly waking him up to look at something he had no interest in seeing …
“DISEMBARK BARCELONA … COME DIRECT TO MODENA. FERRARI.” “We finally ended up in Turin and then caught a bus to Modena. When I’d visited there the year before … we’d been given the treatment, left cooling our heels in the Old Man’s famous waiting rooms, just like the king of Belgium. But this time I was ushered into his office and he said, ‘How would you like to drive on my team at Le Mans?’. I said, ‘Of course, that would be great Mr Ferrari’.”
RIGHT I guess Richie would have taken this shot in the pits at the Modena Aerautodromo, using my Leica. While he had, of course, kept us waiting a long time before calling me into his office, Mr Ferrari was very gracious and friendly during our time together. He performed his wine-tasting operetta for us with a restaurateur friend, which came as less of a surprise this time since I’d seen it before in ’53. I’m a happy guy here. He had just invited me to join his works team for Le Mans!
MODENA ITALY
1955
347
ADAC 1,000KMS 1956
415
LEFT Denis Jenkinson had a great theory about how many horsepower one
man could lift. His standard measure was the single-cylinder Norton 500 aircooled engine. A really good one gave around 50-horsepower, and one man could lift it. Quite what he made of these Maserati mechanics lifting a spare 4-cylinder twin-cam engine out of their truck I’m not sure. If it gave 200horsepower one thing’s for sure – he would have approved. These guys are in the old paddock at the Nürburgring, the Fahrerlager – ‘the drivers’ locker’ or ‘drivers’ field’. It was lined on all four sides by these large gray lock-ups with the roller-shutter doors. And every few minutes you’d be deafened by a crackle from the loudspeaker system and a metallically strident official’s voice bawling ‘Achtung Fahrerlager! Achtung Fahrerlager!’ – ‘Attention paddock!’. It was like all those old PoW movies come to life, it really was …”
NÜRBURGRING GERMANY
1956
ABOVE And then the next engine out of the truck was this Maserati 6-cylinder – which plainly required five men to shift it. Five guys, 50-horsepower each, 250bhp. Sounds about right for a 300S.
LEFT One of the lady drivers, I think the little Belgian Gilberte Thirion in her
red helmet, is just getting away from the start in No 62 here, while most of the field are already away, up and running and shifting up through the ’box’ towards the distant Curva Grande. The striped green No 30 there is English privateer David Piper in his Lotus 11, shared with Mark Lund, while No 24 is the Scuderia Centro Sud-entered Maserati A6GCS, shared by Giuseppe Musso – brother of the better-known (and faster) Luigi – and Franco Ribaldi. The American-liveried white and blue No 41 is William J. Buff ’s Porsche 550, which he shared with the German Wolfgang Seidel. They finished fourth in the 1500 class. BELOW Despite their good win here, with Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn sharing the Touring-bodied Ferrari 500 Testa Rossa, Maranello’s 2-liter products
MONZA ITALY
1956
did quite poorly in that market against their not always friendly rivals from downtown Modena – Maserati. The standard 500 Mondial was just too heavy for the rather modest power produced by most customer engines. No 60 here at speed past the pits was quite a quick one, co-driven by Gerino Gerini/ ’Madero’. If you had good contacts at the Maranello factory – which ‘Mimmo’ Dei of Centro Sud certainly did – you might get a few more horsepower than the next guy in line. But it didn’t do their entry much good here at Monza. Result – DNF.
REIMS 12-HOURS 1956
442
ABOVE American in Europe, William Buff ran his US-liveried Porsche 550 here at Reims, fresh from the Supercortemaggiore, co-driven by the German Wolfgang Seidel. They were out of luck and didn’t make it to the finish. But then neither did Moss and I in the ‘Bobtail’ Cooper. What the two designs had in common, of course, was the rear-engine location. The air-cooled flat-4 Porsche was more centralized, I guess, since it was only two cylinders long, while the water-cooled Climax in-line 4-cylinder needed more space. But both cars were stepping stones towards what would become Grand Prix racing’s rearengined revolution, 1957-1960. And in many respects it would still be CooperClimax and Porsche who led the way, with Ferrari being dragged along behind, kicking and screaming against any change from its front-engined tradition … RIGHT Maserati had pretty much established a stranglehold on the 2-liter class of sports-car racing. This was very important in Italy, both in the sporting sense, and commercially, which made Mr Ferrari distinctly jealous of ‘that other’ Modena race-car constructor. He had no compunction about luring away their engineers, like Vittorio Bellentani and Alberto Massimino. In fact, those guys were not unusual within the Modena race-car scene in working for Maserati for a spell, then Ferrari, then Maserati again. Ferrari’s 2-liter fourcylinder designs had struggled against the Maserati ‘sixes’, which were agile as well as powerful. But Maserati also built cars for the up-to-1500cc class. Here’s one, entered in the small-capacity Reims 12-Hour race for Michel and Berger. It wouldn’t last the distance …
REIMS-GUEUX FRANCE
1956
443
BAHAMAS SPEED WEEK 1956
477
ABOVE Nassau’s glass-clear light made for fantastic photography, with
one exception – the intense shadows you see here. This is the John Edgar Ferrari team’s area of the airfield paddock. No 88 is his big 4-cylinder 857S for Richie Ginther, and beyond that is No 98 – the even bigger 4.9 Ferrari 410 Sport which Carroll Shelby would drive to wins in both the 20lap Governor’s Trophy and the five-lap preliminary Heat before it. Richie finished sixth. LEFT Getting to park and prepare your race car on blacktop was a
NASSAU THE BAHAMAS
1956
bonus in the Bahamas. Here on the crushed-coral sand which made the circuit so darned slippery, No 106 isn’t the Jaguar D-Type upon which it was modeled; instead it’s a special called the TXP-C4 and driven by Bruce Townsend. The dark-blue Porsche 69 is a much more serious small-class contender – Ed Crawford’s Porsche 550 Rennsport Spyder in which he would finish sixth in the main 60-lap Nassau Trophy.
1957
“I
T WAS WITH NEW-FOUND CONFIDENCE THAT I APPROACHed the 1957 season. Ferrari had lost Fangio’s services to Maserati … In Fangio’s place, Mike Hawthorn returned … joining his great friend Peter Collins, Castellotti, Musso, Trintignant, Gendebien, de Portago, von Trips … and me …”
18
Having turned down Ferrari team manager Eraldo Sculati’s suggestion of a Formula 1 drive in the 1956 German Grand Prix, Phil was concerned to get no call to go to Argentina for the 1957 World Championship openers, not even the sports-car race. But he was assured that Ferrari would need him for Sebring, where he would be driving a 4-cam 290MM V12. Instead, he began that year by driving private Ferraris for Johnny von Neumann at Pomona, and George Tilp in the Cuban Grand Prix at Havana. Three weeks later, poor Castellotti crashed fatally while testing a Formula 1 Lancia-Ferrari at Modena. Phil told how, at Sebring: “Ferrari teamed me with ‘Taffy’ von Trips who was a good driver, trying hard to shake off a reputation as a crasher. But he was quick, and a friendly, pleasant guy. That didn’t prevent us from eyeing each other carefully – and both trying our darndest to beat the other’s best time. Our 290MM’s brakes were as heavy as expected, but we had worse problems with its battery not charging. In a pit stop just after half-distance it hadn’t enough juice to restart the engine, so that was us done. At best we had run sixth, I think.” At Santa Barbara, Phil drove for John Edgar, then a 750 Monza at Lisbon, Portugal. While the car’s gearbox broke there, his countryman Masten Gregory finished second in a Ferrari 860 Monza. Phil: “I must confess that Masten’s progress was getting to me a little. He’d even got himself a Grand Prix ride in a Maserati 250F, and a few weeks before had finished third in the Monaco Grand Prix. That was something I’d have given my right arm to do …” Over in Italy, Ferrari then won the Mille Miglia with Piero Taruffi, but faced widespread condemnation for ‘Fon’ de Portago’s terrible fatal accident in the sister works 335S, which claimed the lives of several spectators’ lives in addition to that of ‘Fon’ himself and his intrepid navigator Ed Nelson. The calendar continued regardless. The Le Mans 24-Hour race then beckoned: “Here at last was my return to the big time. Ferrari paired me with Peter Collins
in one of their latest 4-liter 4-cam V12 335S cars. For me that spelt trouble. With his buddy Mike Hawthorn back in the team, the two breezy and extrovert Brits kind of ratcheted up one another on all kinds of matters. They both seemed to regard Le Mans as a chore to get out of the way as soon as possible. Maybe this was partly because Mike had already won it for Jaguar – been there, done that. I have no way of knowing, but Peter seemed to share that view – and he’d actually finished second to Mike in ’55, driving a works Aston Martin – so to that same extent he’d already experienced a great Le Mans finish. Well I hadn’t … “During practice I felt sure there was something wrong with our car’s engine, but couldn’t pin anything down. Before the start I’d said to him ‘Peter, you mustn’t press this car to the ultimate at all during the first half of our race. Because there’s something wrong you know – we aren’t sure what’s causing this problem’. He assured me: ‘OK, don’t worry, I won’t’. “But from the start he just shot off like gangbusters. He came by in a big lead and then just came coasting silently into the pits with the engine seized. When I’d seen him flash by in the lead I’d just thought ‘God, what are you doing?’ But afterwards – well, everything with those guys was a big joke, and he just laughed – ‘It was going to break anyway …’ It would have been nice at the very least to have given it a chance. That was a real frustration …” Three weeks later, Phil finished second in the Reims 12Hours, co-driving a Ferrari 250GT Berlinetta with Wolfgang Seidel – but that weekend, in which the 12-Hours was a build-up event to the French Grand Prix, also saw the prospect of a Formula 1 drive (tantalizingly) dangled before him … “During practice Amorotti suddenly asked me if I’d like to try one of the Lancia-Ferrari V8s, and I jumped at the chance. I have no idea why, but as I came round after two laps they were signaling me back into the pits. Maybe I was trying too hard and looked wild, though how they would have seen me I haven’t a clue. I was just filled with dismay. I felt I’d done something bad, but couldn’t imagine what. I wasn’t given another chance that year. And this lack of even a chance to drive a Grand Prix car was beginning to gnaw at me …” Though deeply upset, Phil then rode the death of his friend ‘Mac’ Fraser in the following Reims Formula 2 race with a harden-
Phil and Carroll Shelby shared a long racing history. There was great mutual respect between them – even when Phil opted for that shirt, while ‘Ole Shel’ seems almost at his most suave.
“FOR THE SECOND … YEAR I’D SHARED THE WINNING FERRARI IN A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP-CLINCHING RACE. WE WERE THRILLED. AND WE WERE ASSURED … MR FERRARI WAS TOO.” He and Peter Collins then finished second with a works Ferrari 335S in the Swedish 1,000Kms race at Kristianstad – before a class Land Speed Record program with MG and Stirling Moss and others on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Driving that MG EX181 record-breaker left Phil with vivid memories, not least of the cockpit filling with asphyxiating nitrobenzene fumes when he backed off the throttle at the end of a run: “The MG guys were very sympathetic and a hole was cut in a radiator duct which fed fresh air around my head. After that I took the car out again for several more, trouble-free, runs. When Moss arrived, he took over and raised the Class F World Record at almost 246mph. The commentary on MG’s
promotional movie covering the runs shows me briefly driving the car and says something like ‘The American test driver then hands over to Stirling for the serious work’.” Phil then dominated the Road America ‘500’ to win singlehanded at Elkhart Lake, in Gene Greenspun’s ex-works Ferrari 315S. Phil told how the car was delivered late to the circuit and how: “When it finally arrived on the Saturday morning, I took it out immediately. It was well prepared and race-ready, but I found I’d have to nurse the drum brakes (again) for them to last the full 500 miles. And because I’ d missed official practice I was given a 45second start penalty.” After Shelby’s Maserati and Walt Hansgen’s Cunningham team D-Type led away, Phil was able to pass 35 cars in the first 10 laps and slot into second place behind Shelby on lap 11. “The 4-cam Ferrari was just superior and I took the lead on lap 27, then maintained it until the finish of the full 125-lap distance. It was a satisfying single-handed win over such a distance, and it was always good to win at Elkhart – America’s finest race circuit …” Drives in the Tour de France Automobile and – for George Tilp – at Bridgehampton, Long Island, preceded the FIA Sports Car World Championship deciding round at Caracas, Venezuela. Phil recalled: “Peter and I won … and for the second consecutive year I’ d shared the winning Ferrari in a World Championshipclinching race. We were thrilled. And we were assured that, back home in Modena, Mr Ferrari was too …” After the Bahamas Speed Week: “… my racing year of 1957 was over … and Ferrari had confirmed that my services were required for 1958, so at least I had that considerable comfort blanket. But to me, if you weren’t regularly driving Grand Prix machinery then you couldn’t think of yourself as being a real top-line racing driver. And in simple terms, that is just what I wanted to be. I began to feel there was something inside me that meant I would never quite be up to that mark. Many drivers who did well in sports cars just didn’t cut it at Grand Prix level. I was beginning to fear that maybe I’d just be one of them. “Inside my head, I was burning to find out …”
1957
One of the rarest of the many fascinating artefacts that Phil preserved in his memorabilia collection is this fragile card lapel pass for the Hawaiian Sports Car Speed Week – a memento of what should have been an enjoyable racing weekend, sadly marred by tragedy.
ed attitude: “It wasn’t callous. It was more like the old wartime thing of remember the good times, bury the bad … Within four months Castellotti, de Portago and ‘Mac’ Fraser had all gone. None of us would forget them, but we would ignore what happened to them. And there’s the difference. There’d soon be another race – and we’d all be up for it …” Phil and Joakim Bonnier, who had been racing around Europe with ‘Mac’ for the past season and a half, clubbed together and bought a marker stone for their friend’s French grave. But early in 1959 Phil would tell Diana Bartley of ‘Esquire’ magazine: “Take this business of being ‘p roperly sorrowful’. If someone you like or admire or respect is killed, like ‘Fon’ … or Mackay Fraser – who was my best friend – you feel terrible. Just awful. But if someone you didn’t know or didn’t like is killed you have to act just as sorry. The pressure of how you ‘ought’ to feel is so strong that you actually feel guilty if you’re not really so sorry. When people die it doesn’t change what they were …” Phil really was unusual within the motor racing world – perhaps too deep thinking, and within his own mind just too argumentative, ever to be truly at peace.
19
FERRARI TESTING 1957
LEFT Testing always involves at least as much time standing around talking,
trying to brainstorm some problem or a fresh idea, as it does actually running the car. Here the Maserati guys are doing just that with their new baby, in lengthening afternoon shadows. The Autodromo is quiet – you could just hear the hum of traffic on the city streets outside – and the sun beats down … LEFT BELOW I have always liked this shot for the way my Leica has captured the hammered texture of the 250F prototype’s typically Italian, hand-made body paneling. Those artisan craftsmen working for Fantuzzi or Scaglietti were something else. The techniques they used would have been familiar to their medieval forebears hand-hammering armour for the Medicis, the Borgias or the Colonnas. Watching on the left there, gray suit, no necktie, is Maserati’s chief engineer Giulio Alfieri – the Formula 1 V12 was his new baby. When Maserati ran it on their downtown test bed, it could be heard clear across the city – and I was told by some of the locals who lived close to the factory that at peak revs the V12 produced so many sparks that their TV reception would be shot to blazes. RIGHT I always found any Grand Prix Ferrari darned attractive – especially since The Old Man was so slow in asking me to drive one – but the really classic, romantic, perfectly proportioned, front-engined Formula 1 car is surely the Maserati 250F, in all its versions. Here that doubled-up exhaust run with the out-turned megaphones announces the new V12 engine.
REIMS GRAND PRIX 1957
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ABOVE The Reims weekend saw the Formula 1 Grand Prix supported by the 12-Hour sports-car race and the Coupe de Vitesse for 1½-liter Formula 2 cars. These single-seaters had to burn pump gasoline instead of the methanol brews allowed in 2½-liter Formula 1. Six months later, such brews were going to be banned, and Formula 1 would be limited to aviation gasoline, or ‘AvGas’ for 1958-60. Mr Ferrari always had an eye on long-term development, and he had a new 1½-liter V6 ready for 1957 F2 to gain gasoline experience, and upon which the 1958 F1 engine could be based. The prototype car won the Reims Coupe de Vitesse, driven by Maurice Trintignant. This is its 4-cam V6 engine – plug box standing by – just before it scored Ferrari’s first-ever V6-powered race win. At this stage in its development the engine wore ‘Ferrari’ lettered cam-boxes, not the ‘Dino’ lettering which would follow.
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ABOVE Maurice won after a tremendous early battle with the rear-engined F2 Cooper-Climaxes of Jack Brabham and Roy Salvadori. Jack’s broke a valve, and as Maurice and Roy lapped my friend ‘Mac’ Fraser’s stripped sports Lotus 11, he latched onto their slipstream and was towed up through the field. But he then lost control in the very fast Gueux Curve after the pits. He somersaulted into a cornfield and was killed. That was very sad indeed – really upsetting. Only the previous weekend he’d driven his first Grand Prix, for BRM at Rouen, and he’d been sensational, dicing with Mike Hawthorn’s Ferrari and Stuart Lewis-Evans’ Vanwall until his BRM – inevitably – failed. Now he was dead.
REIMS-GUEUX FRANCE
1957
LEFT Lancia-Ferrari’s section of the Reims paddock. We had a lot of cars there that year, and these are two of the old-style 1956 Lancia-Ferrari models with the merged-in side panniers between the front and rear wheels. The 1957 cars were being saved for the serious World Championship business of the British Grand Prix at Aintree the following weekend. Luigi Musso would actually win the race in No 2 here. He was Ferrari’s sole survivor and won only after beating strong opposition from Maserati and Vanwall. No 4 was Peter Collins’ car which dropped out with engine trouble after only two laps.
GERMAN GRAND PRIX 1957 RIGHT Another of the privateers, Bruce Halford in his Maserati 250F, leading Roy Salvadori’s red-nosed works Formula 2 Cooper-Climax. Halford was another nice guy trying to make his racing pay its way. His family ran a seaside hotel at Torquay on England’s Devon coast. BELOW Luigi Musso again – in the works Lancia-Ferrari with its distinctive white-nose recognition band – flickering down through the shadows in the Eifel forest …
1957
NÜRBURGRING GERMANY
MONACO GRAND PRIX 1958
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ABOVE Here’s Mike Hawthorn rounding the old Gasworks Hairpin during Monaco GP practice. While I probably got much closer to Peter Collins, I always had great respect for Mike’s driving. I thought he was a little bit better than Peter. He could pull a little more out of the hat if he was having a good day, and being really pushed. On song he was tremendous, really unbelievably fast. This 1958 season would see him and Stirling Moss head-to-head for the World Championship in succession to Fangio, now effectively retired. Moss had it over Mike on consistency except that Stirling wasn’t often satisfied with his car – he wasn’t satisfied sufficiently frequently to be able to do it the easy way. He didn’t seem to realize that his package of Moss and almost any car was probably enough to do any job. We all knew he was really special, but on his day Mike also had that little extra …
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MONACO
1958
ABOVE And here’s Peter in his car, at more or less the same spot in the Gasworks Hairpin, but on a different line to Mike, and driving in a different style. See how much steering lock Mike’s got on, the understeer with which he felt comfortable, although the effect wouldn’t have been so positive in this 30mph hairpin as it would have been up around 140-150mph at Spa or Reims. Here Peter is tucking his head down, while I found that I could never trust myself to make a good judgment if I held my head like that. I felt better driving upright, eyeline above my arms’ leverage point. Peter wasn’t just a good-looking guy, he was a good-looking driver – he looked like he was comfortable and knew what he was doing, and he always looked confident. When Mike was unhappy, it was obvious from the trackside. They were so different, but they got along real well as a pair of Brits abroad. And they sure did enjoy life …
LE MANS 24-HOURS 1958
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RIGHT Well – I guess you can imagine just how happy I was feeling when Denise McCluggage took this shot with my Leica, right after Gendebien and I had won at Le Mans. I’m just unfastening my waterproof – actually Briggs Cunningham’s wet-weather gear from his yacht. Olivier – as stylish as always in that sweater – has his hand on my shoulder. At such a moment the bond between team-mates and co-drivers is just as strong an emotion as it ever gets to be. The adrenaline of competition and the stress of endurance racing has all dispersed. You both know you’ve done the job expected of you, and on a selfish level you think ‘Hey – so this is what it’s like’. Winning such an important race is special – it is different from any win in a lesser event. The guy smiling to my left is the British journalist Gordon Wilkins who had worked for ‘The Motor’ magazine from as early as 1933 and then for ‘Autocar’ postwar. He’d also raced at Le Mans, starting with a Singer in 1939 and then postwar with a Jowett Jupiter and a Healey. At that time he was helping Mike Hawthorn write his book, and he later lived with his wife Joyce at Contessa Maggi’s castle, near Brescia – Count Maggi having been prime mover behind the Mille Miglia.
LEFT After I’d parked the Dino in Heat One, I offered to take over the big V12 car if Musso needed some relief again. Mike was very content for me to do so. Here I am trying the big car for size, with Chiti in his suit sweating in the sun – and Bazzi to the right there in his brown overalls. I ended up taking over the car from Musso for the last 40 laps of Heat Two, and then from Hawthorn for the last 35 laps of Heat Three. The car used a very much-modified 375-style chassis with bodywork reminiscent of the side-tanked Super Squalo. They used the 4.1-liter 4-cam V12 motor from de Portago’s 335S wrecked in the Mille Miglia the previous year. They hadn’t built many of those 4-cam engines, and I guess this one had just been available in store. They claimed over 440 horsepower from it, against 400 or so from the 4.2-liter Offy 4-cylinder engines in the Indy roadsters. Practicing with the 3-liter Dino up on the banking had felt fine – it was underpowered and you didn’t really get to worry about it. But when I had the chance to drive the 4.1 there, it was a different world! You couldn’t take it flat out around that banking – it just had too much power. RIGHT Luigi Musso settling himself into the big 4.1 special. He really
drove very well that day, very brave, and we all admired him for it. He used his three-speed gearbox at the start to lead by a hundred yards into the first turn. Once the Offies had wound up to full pace, Eddie Sachs took the lead, but Musso got back past him. He certainly made the Indy guys think that these European road racers weren’t the pussycats they’d previously thought. But after 26 laps Musso had to stop. They said he’d been overcome by the alcohol exhaust fumes from the Offies all around him, and he was taken off to the track hospital. Sure, the fumes might have got to him but I think it was more a case of being overcome by the heat of that big V12 engine in the confined single-seater bodywork. Most of its heat was coming out around Musso, through the cockpit opening. Then Mike was put into the car and he absolutely hated it.
MONZA ITALY
1958
RIGHT Here I am, adjusting the mirror on the 3-liter Dino ‘special’ on the startline for the first Heat. The car’s V6 had started to seize during practice. It felt like one giant hand had reached out and pulled on the back of the car. I declutched just in time, and coasted into the pits where, sure enough, they found a piston had picked up. They cranked it over and it freed a bit so they put a magic compound in it, a household cleaning powder named ‘Bon Ami’ – stuff with a little chicken emblem on the package. You can often save an engine that’s started to seize if it’s been caught in time and the more you run it the more free it gets. I remember Marchetti looking in the cylinder with a magnifying glass, seeking molten metal on the spark plugs, then saying ‘Here it is’. So we knew we weren’t going to be able to run it for long, but they were on a shoestring and needed the starting money, so I started the race in a compromised car. They told me to stop on the ninth lap over on the back stretch with ‘magneto failure’ and get the hell back to the pits quick.
SICILY
ITALY
Targa Florio
“T
HE TARGA FLORIO … TURNED INTO A REAL DRAMA. IN essence, Trips and Richie shared their Sebring Dino V6, while Gendebien and I were given a brand-new one. Dragoni and Tavoni told us that if our new car should break … we’d be transferred to the other … Olivier appreciated that if our new car broke in its first stint – which he normally drove – he’d be stranded in the wilds, while I’d be left in the pits to take over from Richie and Trips. He’d lose his chance of a handy win … “So immediately before the start, while I was relaxed, not expecting the call for another couple of hours, Olivier suddenly announced he did not feel up to taking the start, and that I should take it instead. I hadn’t had a chance to soak my hands in the anti-blister solution I normally used. I didn’t even have my own goggles, so had to borrow a pair. It was all a frantic rush. And it lit my fuse. As the starter flagged me away I was more pumped up than I could ever remember, just incandescent … and I drove like an idiot … “I caught Trips on that opening lap – without him realizing it. I had no patience, and when he didn’t make room for me I began shunting him in the tail – once, twice, three times. Too hard, and in a hairpin turn I spun us both … He was shocked …
“I WAS MORE PUMPED THAN I COULD EVER REMEMBER … INCANDESCENT.” 396
“We both got our cars turned around and tore off. Now Trips … gave me space and I tore by. I was still enraged, and inevitably I lost it … ending up with my car caved in, my race over … Failing even to complete the opening lap was not the mark of a professional driver. “Olivier took over the other car from Trips – and won. I didn’t sleep comfortably for a few nights. But neither did Olivier … on his way back to Palermo airport he rolled his Fiat hire car and needed stitches in his scalp. I struggled to feel sympathetic.” RIGHT Bearded Jenks of ‘Motor Sport’ magazine joined us up in the hills with his Porsche 356. He’d seen more Targas than any of us and probably knew as much about the Piccolo Madonie circuit as
we did. He told us he remembered doing a practice lap with Moss in the factory Mercedes, in which they’d won the Mille Miglia in 1955. Coming out of one corner up here in the hills they’d seen an umbrella lying on the road. Stirling instantly slammed on the brakes and started to back up – it was a free umbrella, right – forgetting they were being followed by Peter Collins’ sister car. Just at that moment Peter came hurtling out of the corner to find them in the middle of the road. He only just missed them – Stirling got his umbrella – and nobody had to explain a really embarrassing accident to team manager Neubauer. That was typical Targa Florio …
SICILY ITALY
1961
397
MONACO GRAND PRIX 1961
416
LEFT While Moss genuinely drove a brilliant race to hold us all off to the
finish in his basically year-old Lotus, you could characterize Monaco 1961, with all its twists and turns, as being an unequal race between Moss’s whippet and our Ferrari racehorses. Richie had actually led our pursuit of Moss early in the race, before I got by to have a go at him. I managed to close the gap, but around three-quarter distance my engine began to choke up with carburetor trouble and I’ d really caned the brakes. Richie was right on my tail again – that’s him following me into the Gasworks turn here – so I thought he’s got more car left than me, and waved him by. Stirling had qualified on pole with a 1m 39s lap. In those closing race laps both he and Richie were lapping below 1m 37s … Still Stirling hung on to win, with Richie second, me third and Trips – who’ d been delayed by throttle and battery problems – fourth. The ‘Sharknoses’ had been beaten, OK, but only by an exceptional driver on a course which favored his car. BELOW The Surtees/McLaren battle continues, with Bruce McLaren in the latest,
more compact works Cooper leading John Surtees in the older design, blueand-red Bowmaker Team machine. Bruce would finish sixth, while John was classified 11th after a late retirement when his car’s fuel pump gave up.
MONACO
1961
417
FRENCH GRAND PRIX 1962
456
RIGHT Still in that first flush of excitement, Dan has just won his first World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix, while long-time race leader Graham Hill has finished right out of the points. These two had been team-mates at BRM in 1960 and I guess Graham had come up to congratulate Dan on his win. Not sure I would have enjoyed having my neck crushed like this, but you can appreciate Dan was just pretty ecstatic. Bernard Cahier is right behind him – as he always was in so many race-winners’ pictures – and that’s British journalist Max Le Grand to the right. Four years later we’d both find ourselves with bit-part roles in John Frankenheimer’s movie ‘Grand Prix’ … it sure is funny how life turns out …
1962
ROUEN-LES-ESSARTS FRANCE