The first column… 1 January 1967
PERHAPS IT'S JUST a sign of the times that the new hip-high-to-a-hare Lotus 47 has the Lotus plaque on its flank reading ‘Indianapolis Winners 1965’ with no mention of the fact that the good Jamie [Jim Clark] also won the World Championship in the Lotus-Climax Formula 1 car that year.
I wonder if the man in the street really knows more about Indy than he does about Formula 1 racing? There is certainly more money at stake for the race around The Brickyard, and it’s usually money and excess thereof that waters the mouth of the above-mentioned man in the street.
I hear that Mario Andretti, fastest of the Indy fliers, who had ‘Think Charge’ taped across the steering wheel of his Lola T70 at Nassau, was offered a quarter of a million dollars (near enough to £90,000) if he would switch his personal racing contract from Firestone to Goodyear.
And that – in case you’re still counting the noughts – is an awful lot of money to pay one man for doing anything.
HAVING WON THE World Championship for both drivers and constructors last year, it looks as though Jack Brabham may be thinking about building a team for Indy in 1968.
Denny Hulme (who still hasn’t signed his 1967 Formula 1 contract with Brabham although he says he intends to when he gets a minute) is driving a brand new Indy Eagle for the George Bryant racing team and he will have as his technical advisers for the race a Mr Brabham and a Mr Tauranac!
Denny will run on Goodyear, while number two man in the all-Kiwi team will be Chris Amon in one of the ex-BRP monocoques running on Firestones, which would seem to complicate the issue.
Hulme, who seems to take most things in his stride in a rather disarming matter-of-fact way, says that Indy was different but the main thing he found he had to concentrate on was the fact that the Eagle’s clutch pedal was mounted up above the steering column out of the way, and the brake pedal was on the left. The Eagle, being a two-speed machine with ‘low’ to get started and ‘high’ for everything else, didn’t require more than a couple of stabs at the clutch, so for the economy of cockpit room the clutch pedal was tucked upstairs.
This also meant a change in driving style to go-kart fashion with the right foot for ‘go’ and the left foot for ‘stop’. I remember reading that Alf Francis switched Stirling Moss’s 250F Maserati accelerator pedal from the traditional Italian central position between the clutch and the brake, to the ‘normal’ position on the right of the brake pedal, so that Stirling wouldn’t outfumble himself in an emergency.
You wouldn’t credit how much your reflexes take over on no-hope occasions. I drove the ex-Rubery Owen 250F Maserati on my first – and briefest – track test in New Zealand a few years ago, and by an injudicious prod on the central accelerator in a rather low gear (I think it was first!) while feeling my way down the straight on the first lap, managed to involve a tail-slide in a straight line. Being wholly unaccustomed to such violent displays of out-of-control horsepower while proceeding backwards off the road, I stabbed at the brake (which of course was the central accelerator) and simply aided my hurricane progress into the undergrowth!
Fortunately we all managed to regain the track unharmed save for a few trailing lupins from the sand dunes that surround Teretonga – the southernmost circuit in the world – and drove gingerly back to the pits to explain the sudden disappearance of the car and the minor sandstorm.
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Very sad
I used to thoroughly look forward to his column with the tales from the Barley Mow mob.
A fascinating man with astounding historical automotive knowledge, who endured terrible tragedy during his lifetime.
Another good man gone!
Rest in peace Eoin