CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

Your view, if you are watching from the main grandstand, is better than at almost any other circuit. You have two hairpin turns right in front of you. You see the cars race up the long straight, pass the pits and rocket into the first hairpin. From there they come right back still parallel to the stands, top a rise, and slide down an unevenly surfaced hill into a second hairpin. You can see them skitter around this, and watch them halfway up another hill before they disappear; then you wait a minute or so before they come back again. A minute seems just long enough to me to imagine all sorts of horrible things that might be happening to your favorite, yet not so long that you risk losing the tension completely (as at the Nurburgring, for instance). Also, when the cars come over that rise and drop down into the second hairpin, you are dose enough to watch how the car skitters and slides, watch the driver frantically correcting, really working hard. And then perhaps for the first time you understand what it is like to drive right on the limit of adhesion, to drive on glass. You understand what instantaneous reactions are demanded, reactions to something that is sensed, rather than felt. You understand what corrections must be made if a man is to go on living.

  The first race at Zandvoort was for the British only. It was in 1948 and the place was rented out to a British club. For a long time it retained quite a British flavor, major races being preceded by 500cc races of British boys in tiny British cars. Stirling Moss used to drive a Kieft there; it was relatively so slow that he could hold it full bore all the way round. Once he almost killed a mechanic with it; the man jumped or stumbled into his way and was batted high in the air. Stirling was 19 at the time, and he completed the lap convinced he had killed a man. The burden of this knowledge was overwhelming; he imagined trying to explain to the man's wife, and children. All the joy had gone out of motor racing; he vowed that if the man was dead he, Stirling, would never race again. He pulled into the pits, was slapped on the back, assured that the mechanic was not even unconscious, and hustled back into the race, which he won. But he still wonders sometimes: suppose he had killed the fellow. Perhaps he would truly have felt constrained to abandon racing. What then would have become of Stirling Moss?

  A very young Peter Collins also raced often at Zandvoort. Once he lost a race when a wheel snapped off and cannonaded into a dune. Recounting this story, Collins said with a grin:

  "Nothing extraordinary about that. I lost wheels seven times that season." He shook his head, "The cars I used to drive in those days."

  Peter Collins was a brash, smug young man, 5 feet 6 inches tall. Listening to him I could not help thinking: But now he drives only for Ferrari, and keeps his yacht in Monte Carlo.

  That was at the 1958 Dutch Grand Prix. Collins, at 27, had money, a pretty wife and 10 weeks to live.

  There is a certain poetic justice in the fact that the British Racing Motors (BRM) won its first championship race, after years of frustration, at Zandvoort.

  Once upon a time, England had a dream, but no race cars. The dream was to "show the flag" at all the great Continental races, to smash Continental supremacy. But a car was needed to do all this, so in 1947 an organization came into being called BRM. Its sponsor was the public itself. Thousands of pounds were chipped in by racing enthusiasts, millionaires, small boys, and probably even nice little old ladies.

  By 1949 the first BRM was ready. It was low, sleek, green, beautiful, noisier than any race car anyone had ever heard, and was completely, lethally uncontrollable. From the beginning the BRM was a prima donna, so temperamental she refused to start at all on the day of her announced maiden test run, and her test driver, Raymond Mays, was burning up with fever (from anxiety and nervousness, it was said) by the time he finally coaxed some life into the car.

  It was hoped that in 1950 the BRM at last would shatter foreign domination of Grand Prix racing, that "God Save the Queen" would ring out over loudspeakers all over the world.

  The British Grand Prix came round. No BRM. It simply was not safe to drive. It had power, acceleration, and noise in abundance. It also wandered all over the road, skidded out from under on corners, and trembled violently at high speed. One car did turn up for the race, did three demonstration laps at "relaxed" speed before the race started, then passed the afternoon in a kind of royal pavilion in the paddock. People were beginning to make bad jokes about the maddening succession of bugs that haunted the car.

  Some months later the BRM was again advertised, this time for the Silverstone Grand Prix. The British press ran polls and contests about the car, which at last was "ready." Millions of persons chose to believe in the noise and the dream. The car was returned an overwhelming favorite. It would win in a breeze, or so the papers and their readers decided.

  Practice days passed. No BRM. The morning of the race, while England was swept with rumors that the car had been scratched after nearly killing a test driver, one BRM was flown in by freight plane, unloaded, and permitted to do three test laps. Again its tremendous noise won back the crowd. Nearly 100,000 persons were there, all prepared to believe in their idol. The stage was set for the dramatic, the glorious triumph of the long and eagerly awaited car of the British people.

  The starter raised his flag, the seconds ticked off: ten, nine, eight. . . four, three . . . one . . . they're off! All except the BRM, which spurted forward seven feet and stopped, the engine roaring as loud as ever, but not loud enough to drown out the laborious overriding clanking of its broken gearbox. After seven feet of the 200-mile race, the BRM was cooked.

  Nonetheless, certain men persevered, knowing that patriotic Britishers could always be found to drive the car. Two were signed on for the 1951 British Grand Prix, were badly gassed and burned by its frightful cockpit construction, but did finish the race. Whereupon the car was withdrawn and tested some more. Tests only pointed up its irritating habit of blowing pistons and throwing rods through the block.

  "Nineteen fifty-two will be a BRM year," manager Raymond Mays announced. But no one believed him and membership in the BRM club, now only half what it once was, kept dwindling.

  For 1952, Fangio and Gonzalez were signed as contract drivers. In their first race at Albi they broke the circuit record, they ran away from all opposition, and then both engines exploded. A week later, the two cars with new engines raced in Ireland, the drivers being Fangio and Moss. Both cars stalled on the starting line. Push-started, Moss's clutch burned out and he straggled along after Fangio, who lost control of the thing in a blind turn just as Moss was coming round it. For a moment the two cars were running parallel at equal speeds, one pointed forward, the other backward. Britain nearly split it sides laughing.

  The years began to pass, with no notable improvement in the fortunes of the BRM The private backers dwindled to nothing at all, and the car was taken over by the Owen Organization, a collection of semi-autonomous engineering and mechanical firms. More money and new ideas were poured into it, and it almost killed more and more drivers.

  A universal joint froze, threw Mike Hawthorn into a violent skid, then flipped the car. Hawthorn was thrown out and was unhurt.

  A few days later, with Hawthorn again driving, the bonnet flew off, whipped back, and nearly decapitated him. His visor and helmet were smashed and his face cut. Barely conscious, he managed to stop the car without crashing.

  Tony Brooks lost control of a BRM during the British Grand Prix: "If you made the slightest mistake in a BRM in those days, you lost it." The car flipped over and bounded down the road, burning. It burned until nothing was left. Brooks, thrown out en route, survived with only a broken jaw.

  In 1958, Jean Behra had a brake lock up at Goodwood. He crashed into a concrete chicane, splitting a great block of concrete, but survived somehow.

  A few weeks later, Behra's car began shedding oil at 150 miles an hour in Belgium. Some splashed onto his rear wheels and he went into a harrowing skid at that speed, which lasted hundreds of yards. The car stopped without hitting anything.

  And even at the beginning of 1959, Stirling Moss had a brake g
o at Silverstone. Unable to stop, he threw the car into a broadside skid, smashed into a bank, and walked away from it.

  In all this time—13 seasons, from conception to mid-1959—the BRM had never won an important race, and had only once come dose: finishing second and third at Zandvoort in 1958. Discouragement, despair, were there in abundance in the BRM camp. Nonetheless, one more great effort was to be made. Perhaps the Zandvoort circuit suited the car somehow; it was nearly the only place where both cars had ever finished. After 13 years it was no longer possible for the BRM to win glory for Britain. Glory for Britain had already been won on the race circuits of the world by Jaguar, Vanwall, Cooper, Aston Martin, and other latecomers; and by now British triumphs were expected. After 13 years of dismal, disheartening failure, there was nothing left for BRM to win except the race itself. The other prizes had already been taken.

  For the 1959 Dutch Grand Prix there were two BRMs, driven by Harry Schell, a 38-year-old Franco-American, and Joakim Bonnier, a 29-year-old bearded Swede.

  Neither had ever won a major race in the BRM or any other car.

  For the first seven laps, Masten Gregory's Cooper appeared to be running away with the race. Far behind him, Schell's BRM was already a straggler, the pace too hot for it. But Bonnier was hanging grimly in there, and when Gregory faltered, Bonnier moved into the lead.

  A BRM in first place! This was so unusual, even with 67 laps still to go, that the BRM pit crew began jumping around gleefully.

  But 15 minutes later the glee withered and died. Jack Brabham's Cooper was gaining fast. Heartsick, the BRM crew watched it nip by Bonnier on the inside. To them it was an old, old story, and they were miserable.

  But Bonnier hung on for five laps, about 13 miles, found that his car could hold the Cooper on the windy Zandvoort curves, and then zoomed by into the lead again.

  A mighty cheer went up.

  It was one BRM against the field, against four Ferraris, five Coopers, two Aston Martins. The field was bunched tight against Bonnier's tailpipe, not taking him very seriously, waiting for the inexperienced Swede to blunder, or the car to blow up.

  On the 50th lap, Stirling Moss began to move up. Everyone knew that he was the best driver in the race, and now he began undercutting Bonnier's lap times. Under Moss' relentless pressure, the lap record fell. Closer and closer he crept toward Bonnier, rode in his slipstream a while, then, on the 59th of 75 laps, slipped by into the lead.

  At the BRM pits, Schell and the crew stood behind Schell's broken car, and watched Moss, followed by Bonnier, race by. They were glum. The BRM, it appeared, had failed again.

  Only Bonnier had not given up. "I decided to ride behind Moss for a while," he said later. "I found I could hold him fairly easily."

  Now Bonnier let himself be towed along in Moss' slipstream. Moss, with the BRM tucked in behind him, began to hurry, shifting gears roughly, sliding corners he had been smoothly driving around earlier.

  Bonnier was just a few feet behind when, on the 62nd lap, Moss' roughly handled gearbox packed up. Bonnier's BRM led once more.

  The BRM crew began jumping and cheering again. Perhaps—was it possible that-Only 13 laps to go. . . 10. . . 5. . .

  Bonnier was babying the car, his heart thumping madly, more nervous than he had ever been. Behind him Brabham and Gregory crept closer and closer.

  Falter once and the race is lost, Bonnier told himself. He was so excited he could scarcely breathe. He was coasting round the turns, driving normally now only on the straight. Four laps to go. Only 10 more miles to end the thirst of 13 years.

  Could he do it? Would the car, after so terribly many failures, hold up? At each corner Bonnier slowed to a crawl, driving slowly around like a motorist inching through a blizzard. Brabham had cut Bonnier's lead to 15 seconds and was still gaining.

  Three laps to go. Two.

  Bonnier was completely exhausted. His last lap was the slowest yet. He imagined he heard strange noises from his engine, his gearbox. Was the car going to pack up now, a mile from the finish line?

  Brabham and Gregory poured on the coal. Closer and closer they sped toward the BRM.

  The BRM pit crew suffered agony during those final moments. They could not see the car; it was off on the other side of the circuit, hidden by the towering dunes. The seconds passed. What was happening? Where was Bonnier? The car ought to be in sight by now. Where was the BRM?

  They imagined they heard the roar of its engine—not the colossal snarl of those early BRMs, but normal race-car roar coming from its engine, which now was like any other.

  They imagined they heard it, and then they saw it far down the straight, coming fast.

  Then they saw Brabham's Cooper, too.

  Bonnier, babying the car around the circuit, turned at last onto the final straight and pushed the pedal into the floor. There was nothing more he could do. It was up to the car now. He had feared every corner for 40 miles, for he was driving a BRM in the lead in the world-championship Dutch Grand Prix, and if he had lost it in a turn and slid off into a sand dune, he could never have faced all those people whose hopes and disappointments he carried on his back. He could not, after 13 years of work and heartache, lose control now.

  And so he made it to the final straight, sighed with relief, and put his foot down, and the dark green BRM built itself up to peak revs and rocketed down the road toward the finish line at close to 170 miles an hour.

  And Bonnier, exhausted but exultant, thought: If she blows up now we can coast home and still win the race.

  A few seconds later he shot across the line, threw his right fist triumphantly into the air, and took the checkered flag.

  A BRM had won the Dutch Grand Prix. Its crew went berserk; greasy and dirty, weak from worry, men who had had nothing to cheer about for 13 years jumped and danced and hugged and kissed each other with quite un-British lack of restraint.

  Bonnier too was kissed and pummeled and hugged. Dazed, he sat atop the headrest of the winning BRM, head and shoulders above the hundred or so well-wishers who clustered around him, too tired and happy to talk.

  Then the loudspeakers began to blare the Swedish National Anthem—the first time over Grand Prix circuit, and Bonnier stood up, misty-eyed, until it was over.

  Now at last "God Save the Queen" rang out for the dark green BRM, which had just won the Dutch Grand Prix. When the anthem ended, the cheer of the car's crew split the air once more, and everybody laughed, hugged, and punched each other.

  Chapter 6.

  Through the Ardennes Forest

  DEEP IN THE Ardennes Forest of western Belgium all is peace and soundlessness. The woods are dark, and in the valleys the meadows spread wide and pale in the sun. Shocks of hay stand drying, dairy herds graze quietly, and, near stone farmhouses a century or more old, peasants move about their chores. The country is rolling and there is a jagged edge of fir trees across the skyline.

  It is a totally unexpected place to come upon the banshee wail and frightening agility of the fastest race cars in the world.

  From the pits the cars plunge downhill, cross a narrow bridge, and scramble up a hill opposite that looks as steep as a wall. They scramble up it, turning to the right all the time and, from the pits opposite, seem to be racing straight up toward the sky. Their speed is perhaps 100 miles an hour and they seem to claw their way up the hill, the noise trapped and reverberating in the narrow valley, their colors, blood red and empire green against the jet-black road, resplendent in the sun. One thrills to the sight, and is awed by it, because one has never thought of race cars as agile before. The sight of the cars climbing the hill opposite the pits during the Grand Prix of Belgium is, to me, breathtaking, incomparable, worth the journey from anywhere.

  The circuit is shaped like a great battered triangle, offering about 30 curves per nine-mile lap. Excepting one freak (the Avus in Berlin) it is the fastest in Europe, the best drivers going round in four minutes at over 130 miles an hour. The roads are public, back-country roads, but race mone
y has smoothed them, widened them, and eased the curves until now they are deceptively, murderously fast.

  The nearest village is Francorchamps. The nearest town is Spa. At the corners of the Grand Prix circuit stand villages that have been fought over by whole armies: Stavelot, Malmedy. There are cemeteries, too, row upon row of young men blown to bits during one of the summers when there was no Grand Prix.

  Other somber stones dot the circuit, which has slaughtered its share of illustrious drivers. These stones, too, represent young men dead in their prime, but there is less horror about them. Partly this is a question of numbers; rows of stones in a military cemetery, each one like the other, move one to tears. But mostly it is a question of choice. Those drivers who died chose to race; the soldiers were merely assigned. The drivers steered toward their doom. The soldiers could only wait and watch doom coming. It is the difference between Greek tragedy, where the hero is destroyed as a result of free choices he has willed, and those horrible dramas where the hero is crushed by circumstances, never able for a moment to alter Fate.

  The circuit is dangerous because it is very, very fast. The word "fast" can mean several things. It can mean great long straights where cars race along for minutes at a time at 170 or more miles an hour, hairpin turns at the ends of the straights knocking average speeds down to, say, 120. Or it can mean, as in the Ardennes, a succession of curves that can be taken at between 130 and 140 miles per hour. The Belgian circuit almost never straightens out, but the curves all are slight. To win, a driver must take these curves at maximum speed, and this is very difficult to do. To hold the foot down on a straight is neither dangerous nor difficult, relatively speaking. To get round a hairpin turn at maximum speed is easy, too; the driver simply accelerates until the car starts to slide, then makes corrections, knowing that the speed is low and that he won't get hurt even if the car spins out.

  It is thus the very fast curves that are the most difficult and the most dangerous. The car is going so fast that the driver cannot risk leaving the road. So he must decide what the theoretical limit of the curve is, then accelerate as close to it as he dares. And once he gets close he must memorize the way it felt going round that one time, and do it exactly the same way the next time, and the next and the next, until the race is over.