by Max Mosley
The authorities asked for one of the team to assist getting the body out of the car and our chief mechanic, Pete Kerr, undertook the dreadful task. And that was the extent of any official involvement: the authorities did not appear to be interested in asking why the race was not stopped, why no one went to Purley’s aid or why it took so long to put out the fire. When I learned the full horror of what had happened, I was once again seriously tempted to walk away from motor racing. I went home asking myself yet again if this was really where I wanted to be – and more determined than ever to change the sport’s attitude to safety should I ever have the opportunity.
7
SOME PROGRESS
In 1973, we sold a Formula One car to Hesketh for Hunt to drive and his first race in the March was the Monaco Grand Prix. Hesketh was building his own car, but Hunt completed the season in the March (finishing second in the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen) and used it for the first two races of 1974 before the Hesketh car’s debut in South Africa.
The Hesketh team was a strange set-up. When they first started, I came round a corner in the Brands Hatch paddock at the non-championship Race of Champions to find Hesketh and his entourage sitting in a circle. This was before they bought a March and when they were running a Surtees. They said their only engine had blown up and they were asking ‘the great chicken in the sky’ to send them another. I told them the great chicken of Bicester could probably help and we lent them an engine. That was why, from then on, Hunt always called me Grand Poulet, a name that always puzzled the journalists. Hunt went very well during the season and the press fell in love with Hesketh. To them he was a fun-loving gentleman among all those hard-nosed Formula One professionals.
Our successful Formula Two season in 1973 earned us excellent sponsorship for the 1974 European Championship and we won it again. We had two top drivers: Hans-Joachim Stuck, backed by Jägermeister, and Patrick Depailler, who was supported by Elf. Hans was the son of the prewar driver Hans Stuck, a German hero. Jochen Neerpasch took me to see Stuck senior to help convince him that Hans-Joachim should drive for BMW in touring cars and for us in Formula Two and Formula One. It was a fascinating visit, and he still had his trophies from the great days of the prewar Auto Union team for which he drove so successfully.
We put Hans alongside Howden Ganley and Vittorio Brambilla in our Formula One team for 1974. The cars turned a wheel for the very first time at the start of practice at the Argentine Grand Prix, which is never the best way to begin a season. With Robin contractually bound to concentrate on our Formula Two cars for BMW, I had to become the race engineer. Fortunately, as well as being our driver, Howden was an experienced race car engineer and knew what to do at that first race in Buenos Aires to get an entirely new and untested car to work. For me it was an interesting new experience, and I soon discovered that Robin was right when he told me the problems of adjusting a car to a circuit would usually succumb to rational analysis, except when caused by some fundamental characteristic of the car. I was given the job because of Robin’s absence in Formula Two, but the knowledge I acquired was very useful in later life. I often looked back and thought: if only I had known all that when I was driving myself.
Roy James, the getaway driver in the Great Train Robbery, came to see me one day. He had just been released from prison and had been a very promising Formula Junior driver before he was locked up. He was doing the rounds of the teams, hoping to get back into the sport, but more than a decade in jail had taken its toll and we couldn’t help. He was a silversmith by trade, however, and Bernie Ecclestone commissioned one of the major Formula One trophies from him, which is still handed out at the FIA prize-giving each year.
Vittorio Brambilla drove for us again in 1975 and, with Robin back in Formula One, he started to be competitive. Lella Lombardi drove our second car. She was a well-known sports car driver and had backing from Count Zanon, a wealthy Italian enthusiast. The Spanish Grand Prix was at Montjuïc, a circuit in Barcelona that was spectacular but dangerous, made worse by the organisers’ failure to tighten the bolts on the Armco barriers lining the track. Understandably, the drivers were unhappy and went on strike, locking themselves in a large motor home belonging to Texaco. Brambilla did not join them, as he spoke almost no English. While the drivers were talking, the Formula One mechanics went round the circuit tightening the bolts. Practice started with only Brambilla and the Lotus of Jacky Ickx, but the sound of their engines eventually brought the other drivers out and a full practice session began.
In the race the two Ferraris took each other off, fortunately without injury. However, another car, driven by Rolf Stommelen, lost its rear wing and crashed, killing four spectators and seriously injuring Stommelen. The race was stopped. Lella was sixth in our car and became the first, and so far only, woman to score a point – strictly half a point, as the race was stopped early – in a World Championship race. Stommelen died in 1983 when another rear-wing failure caused him to crash at 190 mph at Riverside in California.
Later in 1975, we were economising and Robin, although back in Formula One, didn’t come to the Austrian Grand Prix, leaving me once again in charge of car set-up as the so-called performance engineer. Apart from our own car, Roger Penske’s team was there with Mark Donohue driving. They had just bought a March 751 from us because the Penske Formula One car had problems. Mark went off during practice and sustained a blow on the head. He did not appear to be seriously hurt, although a marshal was killed during the incident. However, he developed a headache and was flown to a hospital in Graz. He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died the following day. Mark was an outstanding engineer and great company. He used to joke that the reason successful drivers at Indianapolis were much older than in Formula One was you needed to be old and react slowly if the car got out of shape. A quick correction, he said, would put you in the wall.
The race was in the wet and, although the rain was supposed to stop, I decided to gamble on full wet settings. We had little to lose if it dried up, but with such extreme settings I knew we might do exceptionally well if by any chance it didn’t. We were eighth on the grid and everyone else was on dry settings. The weather forecast turned out to be wrong, the rain got steadily worse and Brambilla took the lead. Denny Hulme (1967 world champion) was there as an adviser to the officials and effectively in charge. Encouraged by Bernie, he came down the pit lane to ask if he should stop the race for safety reasons. I said yes, anxious to quit while ahead. It had indeed become very dangerous and I knew Brambilla might go off the road at any moment. Vittorio saw the chequered flag and put both arms in the air in delight at winning. Having let go of the steering wheel in appalling conditions he crashed just after the finish line. Luckily he didn’t hurt himself and the damage to the car was slight. We had won our first Grand Prix since 1970.
At the first race the following season, Peterson came up in the paddock and told me he was not happy at Lotus. We had remained good friends and started discussing the possibility of him coming back to March. Lella’s backer, Count Zanon, was a Peterson fan, so over dinner I told him Ronnie would like to leave Lotus and drive for us. Provided Colin Chapman agreed to let him go, the only problem was his retainer. Zanon immediately offered to pay it.
With Ronnie keen to join us, the next task was to negotiate a deal with Lotus. Colin Chapman agreed to swap Ronnie for Gunnar Nilsson, a very promising Formula Three driver who was under contract to March. Gunnar was the 1975 British Formula Three champion and clearly destined to be a top Formula One driver (sadly, he died of cancer before his career really got going). Chapman was very unhappy when he found we had got Ronnie, now released from his Lotus contract, but he hadn’t actually got Nilsson. He did not give the negotiation his full attention and left most of it to an underling. In his mind, it was a straight swap: Ronnie for Gunnar. Once Ronnie had signed, I explained that we could only release Gunnar; we couldn’t actually force him to drive for Lotus. Colin ended up having to pay him more than he had planned and it
took him a good two years to forgive me.
Robin stayed in touch with Gunnar, who told him that Lotus seemed to have made some sort of technical breakthrough and that his car felt really good. Gunnar had been told that this was due to a special kind of bearing they were now using. Then everyone in the paddock started to wonder about the Lotus and a rumour spread that it had a revolutionary new differential. This gained further credence when Bob Dance, a senior Lotus mechanic, was seen in the paddock with something carefully wrapped in a cloth that looked as though it might well be a differential – it was the right size and shape and clearly very secret. Apparently, it was really a teapot but the ruse worked. Everyone had been thrown off the scent.
The reason for the performance gain was something quite different. A year later at Zolder, the Lotus was exceptionally fast in the wet, which made us think they must have found a way to generate more downforce. Then, on our way out of the paddock, we saw a Lotus being brought back to the garages after stopping out on the circuit. The underneath of the car was very shaped and smooth. It was the first real ground-effect car designed by Peter Wright, the ultimate version of the trend he had started with the March side pods back in 1970. Robin realised immediately what they had done, but there was no way we could attempt to replicate it at that point in the season. It would have meant a completely new car, something for which we had neither the time nor the money.
Peterson took pole at the 1976 Dutch Grand Prix but our car had a problem. Robin’s unconventional nose worked well and the car was fast in qualifying, but its shape reduced the airflow to the front tyres and they tended to overheat in the race. At the Italian Grand Prix, however, there was a slight rain shower during the race which gave the tyres a rest and Ronnie won, with Regazzoni’s Ferrari close behind. Winning the Italian Grand Prix made Count Zanon feel that everything he had done had been worthwhile. For us, a clear win, with none of the special circumstances of the previous year’s Austrian Grand Prix, was a triumph.
Robin and I divided the work of setting up the cars, with him looking after Brambilla, who was not as quick as Ronnie but gave excellent feedback, and me looking after Ronnie but with the advantage of the set-up worked out by Robin and Vittorio. We would get to a point in practice where there was nothing more we could do to solve whatever problems Ronnie was having. Then he would go out, drive round them and invariably put the car somewhere near the front of the grid. What an absolutely extraordinary talent he was.
Niki Lauda had a very serious accident at the Nürburgring in his Ferrari and, as is well known, was given the last rites. He came back too soon and was still bleeding from the burns to his head at that Italian Grand Prix, but nevertheless finished fourth. By the last race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix, Niki was leading the World Championship by three points from James Hunt. On race day, heavy rain and minimal visibility caused the start to be repeatedly delayed in the hope that the rain would ease. There was a huge television audience waiting to see whether Niki or James would win the title and the light was beginning to fade. Although it was undoubtedly extremely dangerous, the majority of the drivers agreed to start. On the second lap Niki pulled into the pits and stopped.
By the time the race had finished it was almost dark and there was real confusion in the pit lane. Hunt was third, which made him world champion, one point ahead of Niki, but neither James nor his team could quite believe it was true. Although the rain had stopped, everything was wet. Hunt walked down the road behind the garages, stopping everyone he knew and asking them to confirm the result to him.
Amid the puddles by the Fuji garages with nothing more to do, the full gloom of my situation descended on me. It was the end of the season, all three of our cars had retired in the race for very minor and unnecessary reasons, March had no sponsors yet for 1977 and, with the possible exception of Stuck, no drivers. The depressing effect of a disastrous race is always increased by the celebrations of the successful teams and here Lotus were the delighted party after an unexpected win for Mario Andretti. By contrast, McLaren, strangely enough, were muted – they still did not quite believe what they had done and that their man James really was world champion.
I needed a lift back to the hotel but couldn’t face going with one of the joyful teams, so I wandered down to the Ferrari garage. They were in an even worse state than me, having just watched their driver lose the World Championship – stopping because of the conditions, only to see the track dry, the sun come out and the race develop in a way that would have enabled Lauda to retain the title. Daniele Audetto, the Ferrari team manager, and I squeezed into the front seat of a Rolls-Royce that the Japanese Ferrari importer had provided. Daniele’s wife was in the back with Clay Regazzoni and another of their team personnel. Niki had long gone by helicopter to the airport.
We drove back to the hotel in almost complete silence, with me suffering cramp as Daniele is very tall and the seat was not big enough for two. Every now and then Daniele would say: ‘I cannot understand – I cannot understand.’ Clay said nothing and I muttered something about not knowing what it was like unless one was actually in one of the cars. When the Ferrari team is unhappy, the pall is so great that it affects anyone in contact with them. I felt very sorry for Daniele, especially as he was rumoured to be leaving the team. I had the consolation that our disastrous race was the fault of the team and thus ultimately my fault and Robin’s. Daniele, however, had contributed nothing to his misfortune.
The restaurant at the hotel was ugly and brightly lit with neon lights. The entire McLaren team, including Teddy Mayer and Alastair Caldwell, were sitting at a table with James Hunt, all looking slightly shell-shocked. At the same time, they all appeared to be concentrating hard on not doing or saying something silly, despite the fact that they had already had plenty of champagne and felt so happy they could hardly contain themselves. I sat down at another table with Ronnie and Barbro Peterson, Carlos Pace and his wife. Carlos also had his mother-in-law there, who seemed very nice but her presence was quite incongruous. Towards the end of dinner, James came over, by this time in very good form on the champagne that Teddy was buying for all of us.
‘I’ve got this fantastic new trick with the telephone,’ he said. ‘You know how they say “mushi mushi” for “hello” – and they keep saying “hai hai”? Well, if you get a call, you pick the phone up and say “mushi mushi”. You then get a lot of Japanese and when it stops you simply say “hai hai”. Then more Japanese and you say “mushi mushi” again. You can keep them talking for ever like this.’
Through the champagne and the wine this struck everyone on our table as incredibly funny. We all went off to the telephone on the pay desk and took it in turns. Fortunately, the Japanese are far too polite to get as cross as one might have expected.
This was typical of James, who was always up for some fun and would liven up even the most boring sponsor’s party. On the way to one in Brazil we were sharing a car and he asked if I’d mind if we dropped in on a friend of his on the way. We arrived at a very grand modern apartment block and took the lift to the top floor. The flat had wonderful views over Rio. James’s friend produced a piece of polished stone and laid out three lines of white powder. Knowing I was a bit of a prude about such things, James turned to me and said: ‘You don’t want yours, do you, Max?’ I confirmed I didn’t and he had mine as well as his. It certainly put him in a good mood for the party. James was also said to be president of the São Paulo Divers’ Club. That kind of diving (as opposed to driving) was apparently one of his specialities, but is beyond the scope of this book.
On the plane home I decided to have my talk with Vittorio. He had asked in Canada whether we could offer him a drive in 1977 and I had said we were unsure. Prior to Japan, Robin and I had decided we could not go on with him because he had too many accidents, but we did not want to leave him in a difficult position. I asked him what his plans were and he said he had had an offer from Surtees and two other teams, one of which was Brabham. I knew there was no ch
ance that Bernie would take him, and I suspected that the other team he had in mind was Ferrari. I was sure he had no chance there, either. But Surtees was certainly a possibility and I had already been told that John was interested, so at least he had somewhere to go. Then he said that despite these offers he would be interested in staying at March under certain conditions, which were that he was to be clear number one – he thought that the pressure of Ronnie’s presence had contributed to his accident record – and that we put more effort into his car than we had in 1976. I did not really accept the first point – Grand Prix drivers are always under extreme pressure and their ability to cope with it is part of their basic mental equipment. And the second point I knew to be untrue – Vittorio had benefited from Robin’s full attention all season, while Ronnie had only had me.
His complaints gave me the opening to say that our ideas on the problems and their solutions were so far apart that I saw no possibility of reconciling them. It seemed best that we should simply part friends. We shook hands and wandered back to our seats from where we had been standing by the lavatories at the back of the plane.
We had been unable to persuade Ronnie to stay with us for another season and he went to Tyrrell for 1977. He had a very poor season with Tyrrell and in hindsight he should have stayed with us. Having lost both Brambilla (to Surtees) and Ronnie, we took on two paying drivers. One of them was Alex Ribeiro, a Brazilian who liked to have a ‘Jesus Saves’ sticker on his car. The mechanics put them all over the factory, each time with a Green Shield Stamps sticker underneath. While Alex was discussing a deal with me, my phone rang. It was Bernie, who asked if Ribeiro had told me he could have a deal with Brabham. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well,’ said Bernie, ‘he can’t. He’s got nowhere to go except you.’ That was helpful to me if a bit unfair on Alex.