CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  The next year some genius conceived the idea of moving the circuit closer to the grandstand, or vice versa. This was done, bringing lap distance to 2.9 miles, which is what it is today, lap times being just over 100 miles per hour. This improvement meant that at last a spectator could actually see the cars go by without a telescope, and this was wildly applauded by all.

  By 1950, the British had their circuit (Silverstone), and they had their youngsters coming up (the Grand Prix had been preceded by a 500cc race in which Stirling Moss, 20, and Peter Collins, 19, were nipped at the finish by an R.A.F. officer). All that was needed to put the sport on a firm basis was to win the notice and approval of royalty. And now, in 1950, this was arranged. The British Grand Prix was designated the Grand Prix of Europe, a royal box was built at Silverstone (actually, there were several royal boxes in various places so that the royal couple could publicly "approve" of the sport in sight of everyone), and the King and Queen and Princess Margaret agreed to attend.

  For the occasion, Silverstone looked a little better than ever before. Gay bunting, potted plants, flags, and streamers had been strategically placed; 125 loudspeakers had been erected from which blared the music of the Grenadier Guards band; and 150,000 people milled excitedly about.

  The BRM did three tours of the circuit before the race, all at moderate speed, because high speed would have burst the engine or cooked the driver, or both. This car, representing the hopes and dreams and money of so many thousands of Englishmen, excelled only at acceleration, so it was shown now coming out of a few corners, then coasting into the next ones; all Englishmen took heart from this, supposing that British victories were just around the corner. The B.R.M., which in fact faced nine more seasons of abject, dismal failure, thus contributed to the "perfection" (a strange word when used in connection with Silverstone) of the 1950 Grand Prix. Of course, the royal party was the main show, for the British take immense pleasure in merely staring at their kings and queens, which is rather hard for an American to understand.

  This day it was reported that the King and Queen took luncheon at the track, then did a lap of honor, then passed into the paddock where they were introduced to the drivers and where the King showed special interest in the BRM, which was enthroned in a regal pavilion and was spoken of in the same muted, respectful whispers as the King himself.

  The next year there was no royalty at Silverstone (though a much better race, the pugnacious Gonzalez humiliating Fangio), and the crowd was cut almost in half.

  In 1954, less than 10 years after the rain of buzz bombs on England, the Germans came back to attempt to win another British Grand Prix. In weight and thoroughness, this year's assault could not match that of 1938, although the dozens of technicians and mechanics, the trucks and trailers, the mountains of tires and gear, made it look somewhat the same, for a while. This time there was only one team, Mercedes, and only two cars, for Fangio and Karl King. These were the streamlined, full-bodied, big, flat cars that had just won at Reims, and everyone was awed by them, remembering the fabulous silver cars of pre-war days.

  There had been half a dozen great German drivers in 1938; there were none now. Kling was never better than second rate. Of the pre-war names, Caracciola had tried a comeback and crashed; von Brauchitsch was mouthing Communist propaganda in East Germany; Lang quit after a brief, halfhearted effort; and no one seemed to know what had happened to Muller and Hasse.

  So Mercedes was back for the first time, and its only competent driver was an Argentinian who had never liked Silverstone, and who liked it even less in a heavy, streamlined car whose wraparound body impeded his vision. In addition, it was raining torrentially.

  The burly, crouching Gonzalez loved the circuit, loved his Ferrari, loved the pouring rain, loved fighting and correcting his way around corners. Fangio, miserable and unsure of himself, slewed about sending up sheets of water at every turn. For a while he challenged Gonzalez, sliding this way and that, knocking bales and drums flying, bashing his own bodywork in a dozen places. Then he lost heart for the task and dropped back to fourth place, where he finished. It was the first time the Germans had ever lost anything in Britain, other than a war. A certain faction of the British audience was delighted to see the German team whipped. But a faction equally as large was sympathetic. The British are a strange race.

  The next year the race was held at Aintree for the first time. Mercedes came loaded for elephant in the pre-1939 manner, and won the race one, two, three, four. The opposition was not puny. Mercedes merely made it look puny, smothering Maserati, Ferrari, Gordini, and Vanwall teams under a great gob of that Teutonic thoroughness and efficiency, which some Britons have always so admired.

  Stirling Moss won the race, beating Fangio by inches, the outcome prearranged in advance by the Mercedes board of directors, possibly so as not to enrage the biggest European market for their cars outside of Germany itself. Personally, I do not think they needed to bother. There does not seem to be much anti-German feeling in England, certainly none of the bitterness one finds in France. Moss himself seems never to have hesitated when offered a place on the Mercedes team, although he had refused both Ferrari and Maserati in previous years, preferring to drive British cars. No voice in England was raised loudly against him. And now, in 1955, the swift, silver Mercedes turned the British Grand Prix into a rout.

  When Moss won the event again two years later, it was at the wheel of a bright green Vanwall. For the first time a British driver had won the British Grand Prix in a British car. This seemed the moment the island's fans had been waiting for since eternity, certain that it could never happen during their lifetime. Moss, having done it, was terribly impressed with himself. He was filled with pride. An all-British victory. But had he known what the future held, he might have been a bit more blasé. Looking back from this vantage point, one begins to wonder if the race will ever again be won by a. foreign driver in a. foreign car.

  As this is written, Stirling Moss is 30 years old and has been driving race cars since he was 18. He is, without any doubt, the fastest driver active today, and if he survives five more seasons it is possible he will be recognized as the greatest driver of all time. The last time I talked to him he sat on a bed in his hotel room, the night before the Portuguese Grand Prix. Pieces of luggage lay about, and on the bureau was a tape recorder. It was open. Stirling had been working on his latest book.

  "It's an attempt to say everything I know and feel and think about motor racing," he said intensely. "It's an attempt to explain why one driver can get more tire adhesion around a certain corner than another. What, in other words, makes a great driver? I've been working on it two years now. The trouble is, I can only work on it when I've had a good race or a good practice, provided I have time then, and the tape recorder with me."

  This will be the fifth of his books on racing. The first of these (Stirling Moss' Book of Motor Sport) sold more than 100,000 copies and has been translated into Italian, German, Danish, and several other languages. All these books were written via a tape recorder, In the Track of Speed, his autobiography, taking just under three and a half days to "write." An article published in Esquire was done the same way.

  Moss almost never is relaxed. Other business interests include a snack bar and a garage in London, property in the Bahamas, and endorsements. He endorses BP fuel, Ferodo brakes, Lodge spark plugs, and Dunlop tires. The BP contract is of 10 years' duration and brings in an estimated $28,000 a year.

  Most drivers race, say, 20 times a year, earning perhaps $20,000. Only Moss has crowded every imaginable moneymaking gimmick into his career. Only Moss has made motor racing really pay off. His income is reported to be between $80,000 and $140,000 a year.

  "If it weren't for the tax setup I'd be glad to admit how much money I make," Moss said that night in Portugal. "But the tax setup being what it is, I would spoil things not only for myself, but for the others too. But you can say that I have a manager, and I pay him a good salary. I have a secretary. I have an offic
e in London on which I pay rent. I also have about fifty chinchillas that my father and I imported from Canada, and now can't get rid of-in case you know anyone who wants them."

  Moss earns so much partly because he races more. While others race 20 times a year, he travels all over the world and jams 42 or more races into 52 weekends, including races in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Some of these races are inconsequential, but each adds a little to the Moss bank account, and, as he is quick to point out, helps the sale of his books in other countries, ups his starting money, and makes his endorsements worth more.

  In Britain, Moss is better known than any other sporting figure. "All I have to do is spit," he remarks ruefully, "and it gets in the papers." This is almost literally true. The newspapers play up big his speeding tickets, his public appearances, his chinchilla farm. But notoriety is salable, and Moss knows it and willingly parts with his privacy. Many of his critics insist that all he cares about is making money.

  This is not fair, for he also loves motor racing as few men have ever loved it. Many British journalists write that Moss will retire once he wins the world championship.

  Moss snorts: "The ones who write that don't know me. I'll never retire. I love motor racing. I love everything about it. I love the competition. I love the bull-throwing that goes with it. For instance, Masten Gregory comes up to me and says: 'I notice you're going flat out through such and such a corner.' And I say: "You may be going flat out, Masten.' Now he doesn't know whether I'm going flat out or not, and I'm not going to tell him."

  Moss is such a hero in Britain that he receives more than 10,000 letters a year. He answers them all. He makes hundreds of talks a year to service clubs, hospitals, prisons, etc. When BP (or any of his sponsors) is making a sales push, Moss will visit hundreds of service stations where he stands around chatting with people, leaving them eager to buy BP (and also eager to pay to watch Stirling Moss race). Sometimes he will use a helicopter and make five such appearances in a day.

  He was the most successful postwar British professional driver, and now, Collins and Hawthorn being dead, he is the last of the original big three. He has won more races by far than any other active driver, and if he has not yet won the world championship it is because he seems to lack that delicate feel for machinery that some drivers have that keeps them from overstressing the car. Moss himself claims he is easier on cars than anyone, and some who admire him support him on this. Moss will say, for instance, "I was going as slowly as I dared to go," of a race in which he broke down while increasing his lead. In the 1959 Grand Prix de Monaco he had an insurmountable lead with only a few laps to go, when the car broke. "I was coasting," said Moss. "If I had gone any slower [to try to conserve the car] I would have been a menace out there. Also it would have been dangerous for me because I would have lost my concentration. That's how accidents happen."

  But Brabham, the 1959 and 1960 world champion, remarks: "Moss murders his cars." And Phil Hill declares:

  "There ought to be someone who can build a car capable of taking all he can give it."

  Just as Moss answers every letter, he overlooks no racing detail either. He practices Le Mans-type starts, although in a 24-hour race the seconds saved can hardly make a difference. "It pays off," he insists. "Once by getting away first I avoided a pile-up behind me that might have knocked me out of the race."

  He even forced himself to learn creditable Italian and French, although some of his compatriots (Hawthorn was one) struggle along on English alone. But French and Italian are the languages of racing, so Moss learned them.

  He is 5 feet 7 inches tall and muscularly built. He is separated from his wife. There are no children. He is not afraid to talk about death. "You don't go into motor racing," he remarks, "expecting that people are going to weep if you get killed. You know the risk you're taking. Oh, I suppose one or two people would weep if I should happen to get killed, but most would just shrug and say, 'He was asking for it.'"

  "If you stay within your limit you have only three things to worry about: oil on the road, mechanical failure, driver error. It was driver error that killed Behra, Musso, Collins. Mechanical failure almost always gives warning. Oil on the road you watch out for at all times. Fatal accidents almost always come as a surprise. Collins for instance. I don't believe he was exceeding his limit. He just made a mistake. I would have been very surprised if Hawthorn had been killed racing. Musso, I expected. I expect Masten Gregory to get killed any day. I tell him this to his face. I've said to him, 'Masten, you're going to kill yourself.' He acts as if he doesn't even hear me."

  Moss is not sure that a man with children should race professionally. For him the question at present is academic. But if he had children he would have to decide between amateur or professional racing--because he cannot conceive of giving up motor racing altogether.

  The difference between amateur and professional?

  "In amateur racing," he says, "if you have a stomach ache or the car doesn't handle properly, you ease off.

  "But if you're a professional, as I am, you have obligations so you go flat out, no matter what."

  He is absolutely dedicated to cars, and is almost always deadly serious when talking about them, working with them, or driving them. It makes him seem humorless to some. He is always correct when dealing with others, from kids seeking autographs to journalists seeking interviews. He answers questions articulately. He is punctual for appointments, and expects you to be. He is a serious man.

  His dedication, his concentration, is awesome, even when he is presumably relaxing. He likes to carve model cars, boats, and planes.

  After his terrible crash at Spa before the 1960 Grand Prix, he was written off for the season by doctors, journalists, and rival drivers. But he grimly attacked the physical-rehabilitation program his doctors gave him. His broken ribs and nose he ignored. His broken legs he walked on, exercised and strengthened every day. Six weeks later he won a race in Sweden. He did not limp, he showed no sign of pain. He was back in action. Back making money, back driving race cars.

  Chapter 10.

  Uncomfortable in Portugal

  IT WAS LATE afternoon the Friday before the 1959 Grand Prix of Portugal. The sun was a half-inflated balloon squatting gorgeously atop the westernmost hills of Lisbon. Practice was nearly over and Phil Hill climbed out of his Ferrari and removed his helmet. His hair was damp with sweat and matted from the helmet and he said tiredly, "If one of us doesn't kill himself on this course, it will be a miracle."

  It was a statement calculated to horrify a listener, particularly one who cared about what happened to Phil Hill. But it did not horrify Hill himself, who was merely commenting on what he considered the inordinate hazards of the Lisbon circuit.

  For Grand Prix drivers are not easily horrified. They know about death and are, in a sense, prepared for it in a way most of us will never be.

  If we wonder why a motor racer can continue to race, knowing that death is so very nearly certain if he goes on long enough, tries hard enough, drives fast enough, the answer is that he has thought about death so much, and seen it so often, that it no longer has much significance for him. Once the horror and shock are gone, he does not think about it in the way that you and I do, at all. We think of it physically. We have an emotional reaction. He can think of it only intellectually: If he enters such and such a corner too fast he will probably kill himself.

  Some of them even reach a point where they have to keep reminding themselves consciously of what death is, in order to avoid it. "The essence of motor racing," Dan Gurney said once, "is to go as fast as you can without killing yourself. I think about that all the time."

  They are afraid only during those seconds when they have actually lost control of a car and must sit there, waiting for whatever they are going to hit. The reaction then is emotional. But it is a reaction they have had so often that it fades soon, if not immediately afterward. Once, when I rode with Phil Hill, he got into a skid, corrected, observed my face,
and remarked: "That kind of thing doesn't even tickle my tummy anymore."

  When a driver dies, those who are left are sobered, no more than that. They are a strange lot, Grand Prix drivers. They usually are without close friends. Partly, this is circumstantial. A man can be intimate only with equals, but a Grand Prix driver has only 14 or 15 equals in the entire world. All the rest are hangers-on. The nomadic life he leads prohibits mingling with others who also risk their lives, such as mountaineers or bullfighters.

  Of those 14 or 15 equals, some do not speak his language; others have families and he does not; others are more successful than himself, or less, or very much older or younger. Moreover, motor racing seems to appeal to men who are basically sufficient unto themselves. Phil Hill, for instance, is a loner; everybody likes him, but nobody knows him. "You know, of course, that Phil Hill is afraid of people," a journalist said to me once. I consider that a very astute observation of Phil Hill.

  If Hill has no close friends among the drivers, neither does Moss, the dedicated bundle of energy; nor the accident-prone Masten Gregory; nor Trintignant, the 42-year-old mayor of Vergeze, France; nor the determined dentist, Tony Brooks; nor Olivier Gendebien, the Belgian aristocrat; nor did Harry Schell, who never won but was nearly always laughing or making others laugh. Mostly these men like each other very much. But they are not intimates.

  Occasionally there are intimacies. Gigi Villoresi was the mentor of Alberto Ascari; theirs was almost a father-son relationship and much the same thing exists today between world champion Jack Brabham, age 34, and little Bruce McLaren, age 23. But these are exceptions.

  The drivers came to Lisbon in 1959 for the Grand Prix of Portugal and all were nervous; some did not drive very fast on race day because they had no confidence in the circuit, or in their cars on it.