I had written to Williams and heard nothing. I had written to McLaren with precisely the same response. I tried Tyrrell. No reply. I rang Williams and asked if my letter had arrived. Their receptionist advised me to send another letter. A replacement was in the first post the following morning. Two weeks went by. So did four. Nothing. Onyx? Benetton? Lotus? Not a sausage. Patience. It’s all about being patient. Someone out there wants me to work for them, they just don’t know it yet. If you really want something and are prepared to work for it… I telephoned McLaren and a girl told me that they didn’t need anybody at the moment. I asked her if I could talk to the team manager. She hesitated for a moment and then she told me that he wasn’t there, and that I should write instead. I told her that I had written. She told me that I would be hearing from someone soon. She didn’t venture as to exactly whom I would be hearing from soon. The line disconnected. I sighed.
A week later I rang Benetton. The receptionist advised that it would be prudent to write to the chief mechanic. I informed her that I had written, but that I had addressed my application to the team manager. She said that in that case I should be hearing from someone soon. I asked for the name of the chief mechanic. She said ‘Nigel Stepney’. I wrote to Brabham. I didn’t really expect a reply but I wrote all the same. I heard nothing.
Then a letter arrived for me. One morning, on the carpet, was a standard, white business envelope. Now there’s nothing very outstanding in that fact alone. Every day millions of these standard white business envelopes are in constant circulation around the planet; the peoples of the world telling each other that they might have won the latest state-of-the-art cheese-grater made from high-impact resistant injection-moulded plastic. Or that the lucky recipient of the letter has been especially chosen to receive the honour of having the pigment of their credit card changed from blue to gold. So, in the normal course of events, I wouldn’t have been so intrigued to be receiving such an envelope, but this envelope was different. The green print indicated that it was from Onyx Grand Prix. A team had finally written back. I was excited!
The letter was from the team manager of Onyx. He said that he had read my CV and that he would be delighted if I could attend his office for an interview. He asked if I could call him and arrange a mutually convenient time. It was a curious feeling, thinking that at last someone had taken my application seriously. Seriously enough to write and invite me to see the inside of their secretive Grand Prix headquarters. Me! Steve Matchett, road car mechanic, already in pre-interview discussions with a real life Formula One team manager!
As I sat in my mother’s tiny upstairs office, staring at the phone, it seemed most unlikely. Had it really happened? I looked at the scrap of paper on which I had scribbled some vague directions and a time. That seemed real enough. Three-thirty, next Wednesday afternoon. The house was silent. My God, what am I thinking of? I don’t know the first thing about Formula One cars. What do I say to him? What will he ask me? What questions do I ask him without sounding utterly stupid? I could see the interview happening before me; imagining the questions he would ask. It was terrifying:
‘Ah, Mr Matchett, there you are! I didn’t think you were coming! The hour of your arrival allows for a whole new set of parameters to be applied to the word late. Anyway, come in, come in. Please, take a seat; let’s get started. Now, you don’t mention it here in your letter, at least I don’t think you do – it took some time for us to decipher the spider-like scrawl – but you do, of course, have previous Fl experience?’
‘Err, well to be perfectly honest, no. I really must apologize for my lateness.’
‘No matter, no matter. Well, you have at least worked on single-seater race cars before – F3000, or F3s?’
‘No. I’m sorry, no, I haven’t.’
‘Any form of racing?’
‘No; err, no, not as such, no, sorry.’
‘I see. How about carbon fibre? Ever worked with that? Chassis, brakes, that sort of thing?’
‘Err, no. I mean, not actually carbon fibre, no. Glass-fibre I’ve used a bit; but not really the carbon type of fibre, no.’
‘I see, I see. So, let me sum up what we have so far: never worked in Fl; never worked in single-seaters, nor, indeed, in any form of motor racing at all, and never worked with carbon before either. Is that about it?’
‘Yes; I think that about covers it. I’m sorry. I have set the Weber carbs up on a 308. Oh, and I’ve changed the cam belts on 512 Boxer and the gearbox and clutch on a 5 Series BM!’
‘Goodbye, Mr Matchett. Will you see yourself out, there’s a good chap?’
‘Engine rebuild on a Testarossa?’
‘Goodbye Mr Matchett, and please don’t slam the door when you leave.’
Despite my fears of appearing completely inadequate, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The trip to the Onyx factory was a wonderful experience. I had decided that I would go through with the interview the following week. At least I’d get the chance to look around the factory, perhaps even a glance at the race cars. The factory was on the south coast at Arundel, a stone’s throw from Brighton and her famous pier. I would make a day of it: a trip to the seaside, a tour round Onyx, a walk on the prom, a beer in a quayside pub. Why not?
I set off early on Wednesday morning since it was a long drive, nearly five hours. It was hot too, with bright, late summer sunshine all the way. During the journey to the coast I tried to recall all I knew about Onyx (it wasn’t much). They were a new young team, set up by a chap called Mike Earle. I hadn’t heard of him, to be honest. I later discovered that he was a big name from Formula 3000, who had finally made the giant leap up to Formula One; but as I’d never studied F3000, I didn’t know of him. The Onyx cars were pleasantly presented, painted a rich, deep blue, trimmed with pink and white. They were primarily sponsored with money from Marlboro and Moneytron, the latter a company owned by a huge and enigmatic Belgian, Jean-Pierre Van Rossem. At least I’d heard of him, even if I knew nothing of Mike Earle. Jean-Pierre was a financial wizard who had made millions on the stock market. A giant of a man, who by wearing his range of massive, flowing shirts and keeping his long hair in the same liberated style, simply refused to conform to the more traditional dress-codes associated with such wealthy businessmen. He sounded a fun sort of a chap.
I arrived in Arundel in plenty of time, a little after one o’clock. I managed somehow to scramble the directions to the Onyx factory by trying to hastily scribble notes while talking on the phone; I didn’t want to appear dim by asking the team manager to repeat everything while I wrote it all down. I thought I’d ask a local and so pulled into a small petrol station. I smiled amiably and enquired of the big, heavy man behind the counter, munching his Mars bar, if he had ever heard of a company called Onyx Grand Prix and if he might possibly have any idea where they were located. The attendant’s response rather took me by surprise. Slowly closing the magazine he was reading and calmly laying it on his small wooden desk cluttered with all sorts of papers and chocolate wrappers, he steadily fixed me with rapidly glazing eyes. He started to tremble slightly, his face already glowing a deep, ruby red with some mysterious, though obvious great annoyance. He looked ready to explode. ‘For God’s sake!’ he roared, bits of chocolate sprayed the air, some sticking to his shaggy beard on their way out. I took a step backwards, turning round to see what had given the chap such an odd turn, but could see nothing out of place. Placing both hands on the desk in front of him he breathed deeply, once and then again, raising his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Bloody hell!’ he bellowed again. ‘If I had a quid for every time I’ve been asked that, I’d be a sodding millionaire! Why don’t you lot learn to read a bloody map? I tell you what I’m going to do,’ he yelled, staring straight at me again, ‘I’m going to stick a map on the sodding door over there,’ he gestured with his head to where I had come in, ‘and put a big red circle with “you are here and this is Onyx over there” written on it in big, bright red sodding letters. That’s what I’m going to do!’
The chap was really rising to his subject now and had started to throw the clutter off his desk, presumably looking for his Ordnance Survey maps. I was a bit worried; his excited on-slaught had caught me off guard. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say in response either. I pondered the situation for about half a second and concluded that saying nothing would probably be the most prudent policy to adopt. I quietly backed away and slipped out of the door. Best to leave and let him get it all off his chest. I jumped into my old Escort and locked the door; he was still ranting to himself and shaking his head as I cautiously drove off his forecourt. The thing that still confuses me about the whole encounter was trying to figure out exactly who ‘you lot’ might be referring to.
A few hundred yards down the road the lights changed colour and I pulled up at a zebra-crossing. Two old ladies, both with hats and walking-sticks, were waiting to cross in front of me; one was offering her friend a little paper sweet bag. The green man was lit for them but they were obviously in no hurry to go anywhere. I lowered the window, thinking to ask for directions, but something made me chicken out at the last minute. I slowly put the window up again. The people from around here seemed a mite touchy for some reason, and besides, there were two of them this time. I came across the Onyx factory shortly after: a huge old manor house containing the offices, its outbuildings converted to accommodate the race team. Set in gardens and green lawns it was a most handsome-looking facility. From the car park I could already see the two brightly painted transporters waiting to be loaded for the next Grand Prix; four people, presumably the team’s truckies, were hard at work washing the trailers. What a sight! It was worth a five-hour drive just to see the building and the trucks. I walked towards reception with goose-bumps on my arms. Ten years later, recalling these memories and setting them down here, it seems odd, laughable even, that the sight of a couple of race trucks could have brought me out in such goose-bumps of excitement. But they did. I was absolutely thrilled to the core.
Greg Field, the Onyx team manager, collected me from reception and led me through the corridors to his office. A few years later Greg was to join me at Benetton in the role of race team co-ordinator (he had worked at Benetton prior to his Onyx days too). But, on that hot summer’s day in 1989, we were total strangers. He, a long-established member of the Formula One fraternity just getting through another day at work, with me being merely another interview for him to conduct. When Greg and I met again at Benetton I reminded him of our initial encounter at Onyx, but he couldn’t remember it, yet I can recall every nuance like it took place only yesterday.
The interview went fairly well, I thought. The team was looking to expand its sub-assembly operation, the department where the brakes, uprights and gearboxes, etc. are rebuilt before being handed over to the car crews for the final building on to the chassis. Greg had read my CV and thought that this sub-assembly work would be a good place for someone with no race experience but with a comprehensive background in mechanics to begin a career within Formula One. This made me feel far more at ease; at least there was a chance for someone from outside the world of motor racing to break into this somewhat closed world.
He also asked if I had any ‘transverse’ gearbox experience, pointing out that this seemed to be the coming trend in transmission design and that mechanics with some practical knowledge of their design might prove useful to the team in the future. Basically, a transverse-designed box moves the shafts and the gear-cluster through 90 degrees, so that in the car they are mounted east-west, as opposed to north-south. The thinking behind this idea was to enable the mass of the ratios and shafts inside the gearbox to move further to the centre of the car. Some designers thought the transverse design was the next big step forward, others didn’t. Looking back now, having worked with both the transverse layout and the traditional in-line ‘longitudinal’ designs (at Benetton we went from longitudinal to transverse and back to longitudinal again), the bottom line is that both systems are good if they are working correctly, and both systems are bad if they aren’t. Now, some designers may argue with that brief summary of the merits of each system; but they’re wrong to do so. I have seen both systems win races and I have also seen both systems fail to get the car to the end of the pit-lane.
When Greg asked me if I had worked on transverse systems, I told him that Ferrari used transverse gearboxes on all of their rear-engine-mounted cars. However, I explained, Ferrari also used transverse engines too. Indeed, the Ferrari transverse engine/gearbox layout was the same in its basic principles to that of an Austin Mini. The only difference was that Austin-Morris had mounted its design in the front, while Ferrari had it fitted in the rear. Formula One designers, on the other hand, were planning to retain their longitudinally mounted V8s, 10s, and 12s, and couple them to a transverse box. This was very different to what I had worked with, requiring the use of two 45-degree bevel gears mating together, which would then allow the drive from the engine to turn through 90 degrees inside the gearbox. (In fact, the later generation of ‘mass-produced’ Ferrari road cars, such as the 348, did make use of this design, but they came along after my time.) Greg seemed impressed that even if I hadn’t worked on such systems, at least I seemed to understand their operation.
During our conversation that afternoon, Greg told me that before joining Onyx to become the team manager, he had spent many years with Benetton, a time which he had greatly enjoyed, and had only decided to leave because of the offer from Onyx. He had worked with Benetton as the travelling parts co-ordinator, an odd-sounding job title, which basically means issuing and restocking the race trucks with sufficient components to keep the cars in active service throughout a Grand Prix weekend. The job also involves keeping a tally of exactly how many kilometres the numerous components have covered each time they are assigned to a different chassis. Every part on the car has its own serial number, etched on to it if (and only if) it passes the stringent inspection checks after manufacture. This system is universal throughout Formula One. Woe betide any race mechanic who inadvertently fits a component without its own identification number. This means that it has either not yet been inspected or that it has, for whatever reason, failed inspection and shouldn’t under any circumstances be in the system. This process of continually tallying the cumulative distance that the individual parts have covered is known as ‘lifing’ (pronounced life-ing), and is done to ensure they can be removed from the system before they can possibly suffer fatigue failure. For example, if component X is calculated to have a useful life of one thousand kilometres, then it will be scrapped at around nine hundred. Actually, scrapped is not really the correct word; when the components are withdrawn from the race team’s use, the remaining kilometres are used up by the test team, and when the part is finally declared ‘dead’ it will be used to build one of the show cars displayed at annual motor shows and used for promotional work by sponsors.
After the interview I was given a guided tour of the factory. I was shown the race shop where the chassis and the myriad of individual components are finally assembled to become a complete car. Greg also showed me the gearbox shop (and although he was terribly careful not to point out anything specific I managed to see enough to realize that Onyx was already using a transverse gearbox!). I was even shown the layout of the tools and the equipment inside the trucks that the mechanics use when they travel away. I was awe-struck. It was like being a child again, let loose in Santa’s workshops. Wherever and whatever I looked at there was something else that grabbed my attention a little further on. I remember thinking how calm and matter-of-fact Greg appeared when he showed me one of the cars’ carbon floors leaning against a wall, worn and damaged in a previous race weekend. There was a fist-sized hole in one side. ‘Yeah, it’s knackered,’ he said when he saw me taking an interest in the damage, ‘something fell off one of the McLarens, Senna’s car. I think it was a skid, or whatever. Anyway, it did enough that it needed changing.’
It was fantastic! Here I was holding a p
iece of a Grand Prix car, a piece that had a hole in it, a hole made by a skid from Ayrton Senna’s McLaren. Ayrton Senna! I was holding a piece of Formula One history in my hand. Of course, when I was working in the pit-lane for a living, the magic of such moments was soon, sadly, lost to me, but at that precise moment, I felt like Carter holding and examining a newly discovered jewel from one of the lost tombs of Egypt.
Then Greg asked me if I knew why I had been invited for an interview. I said that I was delighted that I had been asked but admitted that I had no idea why he had short-listed me. It was the neat presentation of my letter and CV, he explained. Mine was the only one he had received which had been written with such care and then enclosed in a display folder. This, he said, had made me stand out from the rest. It was the only one I had sent out in such a fashion too; the plastic folder just happened to be lying around at home; I hadn’t given it a thought since I had posted it off several weeks before. I made a mental note of what he had said. He thanked me for coming and told me he’d be in touch (thanked me!).
I drove the few miles to the coast, walked a while and stood on the prom, thankful that the afternoon breeze carried away a little of the sun’s heat. I recalled the interview, what I had seen, the questions I had asked and been asked. I felt as though I’d glimpsed the secrets of another world. I watched gulls hanging above the waves.
Long time the manxome foe he sought,
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
The Mechanic’s Tale Page 3