BRUNCH WITH: HOWDEN GANLEY — PART 2
IN PART TWO OF MICHAEL CLARK’S CHAT WITH HOWDEN GANLEY, WE LEARN THAT BEING THE FIRST PERSON TO LAP BRANDS HATCH AT AN AVERAGE OF MORE THAN 160KPH IN A FORMULA 3 CAR CERTAINLY BROUGHT HOWDEN SOME ATTENTION
Bruce Mclaren called to say he wanted to test me and [Swede] Reine Wisell; Lotus asked me to test their F3 [Formula 3] car; Chevron made contact; and Jochen Rindt called to imply that if
I took the Lotus drive, I would almost certainly end up in their F2 [Formula 2] team. The Mclaren test went quite well; I was pleasantly surprised at how well an F1 [Formula 1] car handled and how smooth the [Cosworth] DFV was,” Howden tells me.
“Unfortunately the oil-pressure light came on during my final run and I thought another chance had slipped away but Bruce was positive. A few days later he told me that he planned to retire at the end of 1970 and that he wanted me to be his protégé. It was also obvious he wanted me to do a season of Formula 5000 [F5000]. I wasn’t sure about this at first because F2 seemed to be the logical path but I worked on the basis that ‘If Bruce says it’s the right thing to do, then it is the right thing to do.’”
Bruce’s neighbour Barry Newman had a passion for motor racing and he became Howden’s patron. A Mclaren M10B was prepared and finished in dark green with a silver stripe as a works entry but first there was an offer to test another Grand Prix (GP) car.
“March were entering F1 and I was asked to run their brand-new car,” Howden recalls. “Bruce didn’t mind and so I got further mileage with genuine horsepower. This would be Chris’ [Amon] car for 1970. He drove the following day and got under the lap record.”
Winning his way to F2
Howden was involved in some great battles during 1970 with eventual champion
Peter Gethin and Graham Mcrae, both also in M10BS, but is in no doubt as to the highlight: “The Oulton Park Gold Cup was a combined F1 and F5000 race, and I figured I needed to make a good show. I won the F5000 section behind John Surtees, Jochen, and Jackie Oliver.”
Howden’s recollection of 2 June is crystal clear: “I was sitting at my desk in the workshop when the phone rang. Barry was almost incoherent but managed to blurt out that he was calling from Goodwood and that Bruce had just been killed. Of all the people in racing, almost the last I ever expected to be killed was Bruce.”
Howden mentions that after Oulton Park he “carefully accumulated points with a series of podiums. Gethin became back-to-back champion and I was runner-up.”
He also got to run in F2: “Bruce had reluctantly agreed, on the proviso it had to be secondary to F5000.”
Howden’s mount was a Brabham BT30 and he discovered how long one of those takes to stop when a tyre deflates at high speed.
“I was buzzing along the Mistral straight at Paul Ricard, probably doing about 150mph [240kph],” he remembers, “when the car suddenly turned right into the barrier. It took about half a mile for the car to finally come to rest. The tyre had deflated and, probably with a crosswind, the car just took over.” Ultimately, Howden decided F2 was a distraction from the F5000 championship but he wasn’t quite done with crashing F2 cars.
“I did a day of tyre testing for March at Thruxton, and late in the day they asked if I could do one more run,” he says. “When I was at the bottom end of the track, a band of rain passed the top end. All of a sudden I was on a soaking wet track and all adhesion had gone. I cleared a ditch but hit an earth bank at high speed. The wreckage then fell into the ditch with me in it. It took a long time to wriggle free and, had it caught fire, I wouldn’t have escaped.”
F1
As far as Howden using his F5000 results to graduate to F1 was concerned, it was apparent that Barry Newman had very much taken on a managerial role.
“Barry contacted Louis Stanley at BRM [British Racing Motors] while I talked to March but, following a test at Silverstone, BRM signed me as their No. 3 driver for 1971 behind Pedro Rodríguez and Jo Siffert.”
Initially, Howden was given a year-old P153, which was “a lovely car that suited most circuits”, but after Rodríguez’s death in a sports car race, a P160 was available for the Austrian GP.
“It wasn’t a happy start and I was demoted back to the old P153 for the non-championship Gold Cup at Oulton Park, where I’d won the F5000 division a year before,” he recollects. “I now had my old sparring partner Peter Gethin as a teammate and he was in a 160. We were both on the front row for heat one of a two-part race. As he did in 1970, John Surtees won and this time I was second. That seemed enough to get me back into a P160 for the Italian GP at Monza. I got some terrific tows and at one point was looking like I might be on pole. When the official times came out I was fourth, and told team manager Tim Parnell to protest. He told me I was better off on row two, and he was right: Chris [Amon] was on the front row in the Matra, alongside Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari. I may have misjudged the start because I started to overtake the front row, but my saviour came in the form of Clay Regazzoni in another Ferrari; he came through from the fourth row to overtake us all. Clay in a Ferrari at Monza was never going to be penalized, so I was safe.”
Late braking with no rear brakes
I remind Howden that this was the last Italian GP before chicanes were introduced to Monza, bringing an end to the slipstreaming, but he needs no reminding.
“Jo [Siffert] and I worked together to tow ourselves up to the leaders but then he dropped away with gearbox problems. Now I just had to stay there. Eventually we were a group of five: Ronnie Peterson, Chris, Mike Hailwood, François Cevert, and me. With all the slipstreaming, the positions changed several times a lap. I figured it was going to be a big out-braking job at the end and then a sprint for the finish. I tried a couple of late-braking runs into the Parabolica and discovered I had no rear brakes. I nearly collided first with Chris and then with François. As he towed past me, nearing the end, Chris suddenly slowed dramatically — his visor had come adrift — and so we were four. I was mulling over my brake problem when I spotted a BRM a long way back. Initially, I thought it was Jo and that I could help getting up to our group, although I dared not do anything to risk losing my tow. Within a few laps I discovered it wasn’t Jo, it was Peter [Gethin], who drifted up and ended up winning. I was fifth in what is still the closest finish of five cars, all of us
covered by six-tenths of a second.”
I suggest to Howden that that race was something of a turning point because of the results that followed.
Best F1 finish
He replies, “In the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen I had a race-long battle with my mate Mike Hailwood and, after a few dramas, I finished fourth, my best-ever result in a world championship F1 race, but even better was the final round of 1971 Can-am championship at Riverside. I’d tested Mclaren and March Can-am cars, but the BRM P167 was the most responsive and easiest to drive of the three. I found myself in third — first non–works Mclaren — and despite very low oil pressure I ended up on the podium with Denny [Hulme] and Peter Revson, for whom I had spannered five years before. It was another dream come true, and photos of me on the podium show I am a little overawed, but it was very special to be up there with Denny.”
Howden’s next drive was in South Africa as a work driver for the Chevron sports car team for the Nine Hours of Kyalami.
“We finished third overall behind the three-litre Ferraris and won the two-litre class by some margin,” he tells me.
A month later, Howden was back in New Zealand, almost a decade after he’d left, to join the BRM team for 1972.
“Bruce asked some questions about my mechanical knowledge and seemed satisfied with my answers. I was to start the following Monday at the workshop occupied by Eoin, Wally Willmott, and Tyler Alexander”
Ferrari watchlist
“There was a man from the Ferrari hierarchy talking to me at each race since Silverstone and he gave me the impression I was on their ‘watch list’ — but then so, I expect, were a lot of guys — and apparently my last couple of GPS, and the Can-am race, had alerted Mclaren to the fact that I was no longer ‘just the mechanic going racing’. My BRM contract had been sent to the Mclaren lawyers, who were of the opinion that it would be difficult to break, so I stayed with BRM,” he says.
The new season showed just how quickly things progress in F1.
“After being accustomed to running near
the front, and getting into the points at the end of 1971, the first race of 1972 in Argentina provided a rude awakening, with the other teams having improved cars while ours seemed rather old-spec,” he tells me.
BRM’S hopes were pinned on the P180, but as Howden explains, the team was trying to run too many cars on the resources it had: “It was making slow progress at best. I was entrusted with it at Monaco and managed to get it going pretty well until I hit Mike’s [Hailwood] oil.”
While the F1 season was proving frustrating, I suggest that Le Mans was Howden’s 1972 highlight.
“Absolutely,” he agrees. “I’d been approached late in 1971 to see if I’d be interested in joining Matra in what was described as a ‘supreme effort to win’ with three Frenchmen, each partnered by a ‘foreign’ F1 driver, who turned out to be Graham Hill, Chris, and me. I’d been dreaming about racing at Le Mans since my schooldays and now here was my chance — and what better team to drive for?” Matra’s level of seriousness was highlighted by the team’s preparation.
Ancien Mécanicien
“I arrived for the first test session at Ricard straight after winning the 300km Pokal at Nürburgring. After all the introductions, they told me that I had a nickname,” Howden remembers. “‘Already?’ I said, ‘But I’ve just got here.’ The nickname was ‘Ancien Mécanicien’, as a result of an incident in practice for the 1971 Canadian Grand Prix where I passed Chris, who then roared into the Matra pits shouting, ‘I’ve just been overtaken by my old mechanic’, which was probably the most insulting thing that ever happened to him. The Matra mechanics thought this was hugely amusing.
“We did three 24-hour tests at Ricard, each a week apart. These were run exactly like a race but with six drivers to the one car.”
Le Mans
“Ultimately, I was partnered with François Cevert, a great guy and an excellent driver,” he continues. “We set a pace and kept to it. The MS670 was a nice, well-balanced car, and we had the long-tailed version. François and I were using the least fuel and a lot fewer brake pads, meaning that we should win by over a lap, but unfortunately it began to rain after 19 hours and our car developed a misfire. We lost our lead but, once it was fixed, I caught Graham [Hill] and attempted to pass but he was having none of it. After a couple of moments, he nudged me onto the grass. By now it was raining quite heavily and, as we came past the pits, I was getting the message to drop back.
“Soon after, we both drove straight into a cloudburst, but he was on full wets whereas I was on intermediates. I was really aquaplaning and, while I was worrying about running into Graham, I got hit by a Corvette driven by Marie-claude Beaumont. I discovered years later that she broke three ribs in the crash. I was OK but the Matra was worse for wear. When it finally stopped, I pulled away the shattered bodywork and could see that, while all the suspension links were either bent or broken, the wheel was roughly in place and, crucially, the driveshaft was intact.”
Howden nursed the car back to the pits.
“It seemed to take all day but by the time I arrived, everything was ready to get the car back into the race. We had lost nine laps or almost 40 minutes. We regained a lap but had to settle for second. So near, yet so far.”
“After being accustomed to running near the front, and getting into the points at the end of 1971, the first race of 1972 in Argentina provided a rude awakening, with the other teams having improved cars while ours seemed rather old-spec”
Secret workshop
If Howden had loved everything about his time with Matra, his relationship with BRM
had soured to the point at which an offer from Frank Williams looked attractive.
“BRM offered me No. 1 status but by then I was awake to all their stories about the latest horsepower being shown on the dynos so I signed with Frank for 1973,” he recalls.
For a variety of reasons, the season did not go as hoped, with frustration following frustration right through to the Canadian GP in late September. It got to the point at which Howden set about building a replacement chassis to help solve the team’s problems.
“I had a ‘secret’ workshop with the car that I had designed and partially built. I felt it addressed all the Williams’ weaknesses and proposed to our sponsor Marlboro that if they reimbursed me for my costs, I would simply hand it over to Frank. Unfortunately, Frank got the idea I was trying to take over his team, which was definitely not the case.”
The 1973 Canadian GP was run in wet-dry conditions and was also the first time a pace car was used in an F1 race. For the first time, Howden found himself leading a GP: “When the pace car came out, it was made clear that I was leading. We trolled around behind it for a few laps before it finally pulled off and I took off, but I could see the Tyrrell of Jackie Stewart starting to edge up on me. Eventually he caught up but it took him some laps to get past.”
Challenges from Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda, and Peter Revson followed before the chequered flag was waved — “apparently at me! There was great excitement when I arrived back in the pits but while I was delighted at the thought of ‘my win’, I had my reservations.”
Recounting the laps
Lap charts were compared and eventually Revson was declared the winner. In the September 2003 issue of New Zealand Classic Car (No. 153), Howden’s wife Judy was interviewed on the subject.
“Judy was one of the best lap charters I ever encountered,” Howden says. “In the days after the race we pored over the charts, both official and unofficial, and concluded I could only have been first or third.”
The history books show he finished sixth. After completing the chapter on his time with Williams for his autobiography, Howden sent it to Frank to see if he wanted to make any changes.
“He didn’t ask for any alterations but did say he was embarrassed to be reminded of ‘all the awful things we did to you’. We remain on very friendly terms,” says Howden.
We will continue with Howden’s story in next month’s issue.