TORTURED GENIUS
THE LEGENDARY GRAHAM ‘CASSIUS’ MCRAE — PART ONE
Where was the illusive Graham Mcrae, the missing and largely forgotten hero of 1970s New Zealand and international motor racing? This is the question I asked myself many times over the last 10 years. The last public sightings of Graham I had nailed down to around 2007–’8, when he was on deck with the F5000 Tasman Revival but nothing after that. No one seemed to know where he was, and the trail went cold on several of my attempts to track him down. Slowly, it grew into a sort of mystical quest: to try to find the man who was a semi-recluse and obtain the privilege of an audience with him.
The stories and great achievements of New Zealand’s other frontline international drivers of the ’60s and ’70s are well documented and revered, but this has not been the case with Mcrae. There are some valid reasons for this lack of information. Though it’s hard to understand why the Historic Racing Club, which races many of his 14 Mcrae GM1 cars in New Zealand, has not created some legacy (apart from the cars) to commemorate his contribution to the F5000 class. Just a thought — people in the know will probably quickly respond, saying that Graham didn’t always help himself or endear himself to people. It is acknowledged that he has had some personal problems (but who hasn’t?), but these factors don’t detract in any way from his supreme prowess as a driver and a car-building engineer.
I finally managed, through the kind help of a niece of Graham’s, to meet the man in person recently. It felt like being in the presence of royalty! Graham eyed me up, with what looked like some degree of suspicion. Can’t say I blame him — who was this random character who’d tracked him down? He asked me what I was intending to write about, and told me that he wasn’t really keen on having stories written about him. Thinking that I had better make this good, I pitched that I felt he had become a forgotten man in contrast to his peers in local Kiwi motor racing folklore. I wanted to send a message to awaken the troops to this man’s dominant victorious era — I like the term ‘The Enforcer’ when I think of Graham in his early ’70s prime. He didn’t disagree with me …
Early days in the capital
Confidence was something that was never lacking in Graham Peter Mcrae’s racing and car-building years. Though, as an adolescent at school, he claimed that he was timid and shy. In the fairly straight-jacketed New Zealand society of the 1960s and ’70s, this outspoken confidence was probably not embraced by the general populous or the media. Tall-poppy syndrome was even taller back then, unless you were a rugby player, though most of them were dour and monosyllabic. Graham disliked rugby, despite the fact that his father wanted him to be an All Black! All he saw was his schoolmates getting liquidly primed before a game and starting to scrap once on the field — “I hated that”, was his comment.
Maybe this was part of what set him on the path to becoming a determined loner? Graham was born in Petone, Wellington, on 5 March 1940. The family moved very soon to Breaker Bay, in the eastern suburbs on the coast, and Mcrae went on to attend Rongotai College and Wellington Technical College. As an adolescent, he had a passion for pursuits such as weightlifting, swimming, and even piano playing. He also had a deep admiration for beautiful things, such as the aesthetics and engineering of World War II fighter classics like the P-51 Mustang and the Spitfire. For a time, Graham harboured dreams of going to university and becoming a fighter pilot.
This master plan was unravelled by his father’s decision for him to leave school at age 15 and become an apprentice in his Miramar
( Wellington) engineering company. However, not long afterwards, he experienced the seismic moment that would change his life forever, when, at the age of 17, he attended his first motor race meeting.
“It was at Levin, my home circuit,” Graham recalls. “Ross Jensen was racing his Healey 100S and Tom Clark was in the Maserati 8CLT [both men would significantly help Graham a decade later in his climb up the motor racing tree], and Syd Jensen was in the Cooper 500, with David Mckay and Tom Sulman over from Australia in their Aston Martin DB3S.” Tom Clark’s Maserati and the Aston Martins made a profound impression on Mcrae and sowed the seed of his dreams to build or own something of such beauty.
The motor racing / car-building drug takes hold
It was the beginning of the ‘Masararri’, which Graham drew up on a design board while working as an apprentice for $5 a week. His friend Jack Patterson beat out a beautiful, handcrafted aluminium body, and the finish of the car was superb; far removed from the average backyard special of the time. With independent suspension, which he says was something similar to that of a Lotus 72, Graham described it as more beautiful than a Ferrari or Maserati! While it was his daily-driver, it was also his indoctrination to the race track. He ran three different engines in it, beginning with a modified A70 motor, which threw a rod. He replaced that with a Lycoming aircraft engine, which proved hard to start, before settling on the optimum unit with which he scored most of his success: a hot Humber 80 mill.
Strapped for cash like most young men learning a trade and earning a pittance, he dedicated himself to working long hours and learning his craft. He was determined to set up his own engineering shop, and this largely restricted his motor racing aspirations at the time to hill climbs and sprints.
Determination and the desire to make quality components were the driving forces
in Mcrae’s personality. While other men would have been seriously fazed by the odds, Graham just dug deeper. It was this streak in his make-up that was the catalyst to his emergence as a force on the local motor racing scene in the latter part of the 1960s. With the establishment of his business making racing manifolds and exhaust systems now on a firm footing, he was aware that if he wanted to have a serious go at racing, he needed to move quickly: “I wanted to go motor racing. It’s easy to settle down, get married, and raise a mortgage — everyone does that.”
Apart from a couple of notable battles, racing the Masararri against Englishman Geoff Richardson’s Ferrari Berlinetta in the sports car races at the January 1963 Levin International meeting (Mcrae and Richardson each won a race), Graham’s name was unknown on the national scene in the mid ’60s. Following the Levin event, he transferred the much-modified Humber 80 engine out of the Masararri when he sold it in ’63, into — you guessed it — a Humber 80! In his hands, the car blitzed the local hill-climb scene, and, on the one occasion when he lined up to circuit race it at Levin, he qualified on pole ahead of Ernie Sprague and Kerry Grant. Sadly, mechanical trouble sidelined him before the gun.
But the truth was that he hated saloon racing. The compromise was just too much compared with pure racing cars. In an Aussie interview, he expressed his view on saloon car drivers: “They’re all wankers! I suppose they’re good for the crowd — but put a good open-wheeler driver into a saloon car and he’s so much better”.
Following the departure of the Humber, Graham had occasional competitive forays with an Austin-healey 100-6, an MGA, and an automatic Zephyr. He had enjoyed a sequence of thoroughbred road machinery throughout this period, including 3.4-litre and 3.8-litre Jaguar saloons; a 3.8-litre E-type; and, later, a Shelby Mustang, though he put none of these through their paces on the track.
With the red Mcrae Ford Twin Cam, Graham had arrived like a thunderbolt on the national scene. He grabbed the, 1968–69 National Formula Championship by the scruff of the neck and hammered home his superiority over the opposition
Graham bit the bullet in 1967 and bought the ex–john Weston 1.5-litre Brabham BT2. It was not exactly the latest model off the assembly line even then. The car was also rumoured to have connections with Charlie ‘The Great Train Robber’ Wilson, though this has never been totally substantiated.
Once he launched forth with his plan to go single-seater racing, with the bit firmly between his teeth, Graham spared nothing to achieve his ambitions.
It is worth mentioning at this point that it is not the intention of this story to outline a comprehensive account of his race results; it is more to give an insight into how a man with an iron resolve and gifted talents, without a major family business or extensive backing in the early days, was able to fight his way to the forefront of New Zealand motor racing. In my view, an extraordinary combination of dedication, supreme driving skill, and wonderful design and engineering ability brought about this result.
Graham quickly made his mark with the Brabham at Paritutu (New Plymouth) in October 1967, scoring a second and third in the two open-wheeler races on debut. He got to grips with the Brabham as the 1967–’68 season progressed, his results improving further once he had replaced the narrow tyres that had been fitted on the car when he acquired it for wider versions. Highlights were a win and 1.5-litre lap record at the final round of the New Zealand National Formula Championship at Levin in March 1968. He also continued his love affair with the local hill-climb scene, winning with the Brabham at Alexander Road and Palmer Head.
Self-built racer and sublime driving skills vanquish the opposition
It was clear to Graham, though, at season end that the Brabham’s competitive days were definitely on the wane. He couldn’t afford to buy a newer model, so, in his exacting fashion, he set about designing and building a lighter, slimmer, and faster beautifully sculptured new car under his own name, with the stunning aluminium bodywork created by Steve Robert.
With the red Mcrae Ford Twin Cam, Graham arrived like a thunderbolt on the national scene. He grabbed the, 1968–’69 National Formula Championship by the scruff of its neck and hammered home his superiority over the opposition. He won commandingly six of the 10 rounds, finishing with 63 points, more than 20 points clear of David Oxton in second. But the absolute highlight would have been his mercurial performance in the Levin Tasman Championship race in January 1969. In Graham’s words, “I was 160hp [119kw] down on power to the Gold Leaf Lotus 49’s Cosworth V8s, and I qualified only 1.8 seconds slower than [ Jochen] Rindt and almost equalled the time of Graham Hill!”
On race day, he savaged the tails of the international drivers and, at one point, was running ahead of all the resident Australian and Kiwi drivers. Eventually, Leo Geoghegan, in his Lotus 39 Repco V8, and Graeme Lawrence, in his Mclaren M4A FVA, managed to get past, but Mcrae held on to finish a stunning sixth outright and gain his first Tasman point. Graham was to establish himself as the master of Levin, his recipe for success, “not taking your foot off the gas”.
An interesting sideline following the race, winner Chris Amon (in a Ferrari Dino V6) was so taken with the pretty little red Mcrae Twin Cam that he offered Graham a set of
genuine Ferrari wheels for it. Mcrae elected not to take up the offer. “I declined because I wanted it to be a Mcrae and nothing else,” he says. His response, if nothing else, was indicative of his conviction in the purity of concept of the beautiful little car he had created. First taste of international competition Graham’s blinding ascent from zero to local hero did not go unnoticed by the motor sport New Zealand administration elite. He got the nod, being bestowed the New Zealand Driver to Europe Award for 1969, which entailed a £1000 prize. He sold the exquisite little Mcrae Twin Cam to Jack Oakley and bought the ex–frank Williams / Piers Courage Brabham BT23C with FVA motor that Laurence Brownlie had imported and run during the season. In hindsight, this probably wasn’t the best move, as this car never appeared to run that well.
Graham raced the car in two races in New Zealand, winning both of them (features at Levin and Pukekohe), after which he shipped it to Europe. Graham remembers: “The Driver to Europe thing was a once-only payment for the return airfare; when you got there, you were on your own.” In Europe, it was a steep learning curve. He recalls that not all FVA Formula 2 (F2) engines were created equal, among other things. The high point of his season was fourth at Zolder in Belgium, behind Rindt, Jacky Ickx, and Courage in works F2 cars. Graham reckons he was within .3 of Rindt’s lap record, but timekeepers refused to recognize it, thinking that it was a mistake as he was an unknown.
Graham willingly admits that, in that one year on the continent, he lost a lot of money,
Graham pulled off a tremendous win in the deep south to remain in contention for the 1970 Tasman title. He led all the way, bar the first lap, from pole position
and, if he’d allowed it, he would have lost a good chunk of confidence, too. He says that he got taken for a ride on occasion by unscrupulous operators, and he claimed that the experience wised him up and made him a tougher person.
Into the heavy artillery of V8 singleseaters, 1969–’70
He returned to New Zealand in October 1969, and it’s here that the planets suddenly swung into alignment and his international career really began to take off. They say that being in the right place at the right time is often the key ingredient to a breakthrough. Not long back from Europe, Graham visited the Wellington International Trade Fair, where, on display, there was a Mclaren M10A F5000 car on loan. By chance, ex–racing driver Ross Jensen was also in attendance. As Graham stood admiring the sleek racer, a discussion arose, the outcome of which was Jensen stating, “We need to get you into this car”, and he knew someone who could buy it. Mcrae remembers, “Ross Jensen talked Tom Clark, owner of Crown Lynn Potteries (New Lynn, Auckland), into buying the Mclaren.”
Graham had started building a new Mk2 Mcrae Ford Twin Cam before this sensational opportunity with the Mclaren M10A arose, so he was in for a busy 1969–’70 season, running the two cars locally (and, occasionally, the original Begg F5000) and in the full 1970 Tasman Series. The Mclaren initially required a lot of work to get it race ready, as it was missing some bits, the result of it being a display car. It did come equipped with a good Traco-built Chevy engine, though. Mcrae does remember that, “Clark was pretty mad at Bruce Mclaren for selling us the M10A when the M10B was rolling off the production line”. Mcrae says that he only met Mclaren once — “That was later on at Brands Hatch in 1970, just after the fuel pump on my new Mclaren M10B packed up. I told him a few faults I thought his car had … He told me it was a pity that it packed up; it had been going like a bomb.”
Graham also recalls that “Tom Clark was like a bull; he was loud, rough, and ready, but he stayed out of the way and had hardly anything to do with being around the car, and rarely turned up at race meetings.” Murray Charles was Graham’s mechanic, and, between them, they set to with race prepping the M10A. The car was very quick, but there were annoying little problems that caused retirements up to and including the early Tasman races. There were some wins in Gold Star races and Tasman preliminaries, but it wasn’t till the Teretonga Tasman race that they got it all together. Graham pulled off a tremendous win in the deep south to remain in contention for the 1970 Tasman title. He led all the way, bar the first lap, from pole position.
Graham also won the New Zealand singleseater Gold Star Championship that season using three cars: the new Mcrae Twin Cam, the Mclaren, and George Begg’s FM2 Begg F5000. He clinched the title at Timaru with the Begg overheating but managing to get it home in first place for the marque’s first win.
‘Cassius’
It was this season that he famously acquired his legendary nickname ‘Cassius’. It was bestowed on him by John Hilton, US driver Ron Grable’s pit manager. Apparently, Grable had been boasting about his practice times for a race earlier that season. Graham’s response was “I got a bit upset because he was dead slow, and I said that I’ll beat him by four seconds”. Hilton laughed and said, “Sure, Cassius.” “The fact that I did what I said didn’t matter — I was stuck with the name.”
It wasn’t all bad — as they say, publicity is a bonus and shows that people haven’t forgotten about you. It was worse in Australia; at times he was referred to as, “loud mouth”, “the big head”, “the swollen tonsil”, “the big bad bastard of the Tasman Series”, among other descriptions, which seems a bit rich coming from the brash, self-promoting Aussie sporting slagging culture. But, despite their aggro attitudes towards him at times, Graham found that embracing the name caused the Ockers to back off, and even Frank Matich reverted to calling him by his proper name. In Europe and the US, they adopted the nickname as well, but Graham remembers that they used it more affectionately.
Don’t miss the second part of Graham’s scintillating career as he enters the golden years of F5000, and his later decline in fortunes in the last years of his driving career.