READERS’ WRITES
Lockdown has brought out old magazines for rereading and in the July 2019 issue (No. 343) Michael Clark comments on the 100 years of Castrol in NZ.
In 1977 I was working at Wolf Racing when the enclosed photo of me topping up the oil in WR1 was taken at the British Grand Prix. After this photo appeared in a magazine, Peter Warr called me into his office and asked why I was using a Texaco pourer because, as from the Spanish GP, Castrol had come on board as a sponsor! I replied that it was the only one we had and that Castrol hadn’t supplied any. A call to Castrol HQ at Pangbourne, about 20 minutes up the Thames, soon sorted that problem out.
However, that was a minor part of the story. When Castrol came on board nobody in the team had any experience with the product as we were using Duckhams and were happy with it so it was decided to decant the Castrol and to put Duckhams in until the next time we went testing! Yes, I know you couldn’t do that now but we wanted to stick with what we knew. So it was Duckhams in a Texaco pourer!
No oil would have saved us in the race. At the start of the season Harvey Postlethwaite decided to get rid of the oil gauge and just have a warning light, which was set to come on at 30psi or less. During practice Jody [Scheckter] commented that the oil light was flickering going through Woodcote. We were, “Wow, how did you have time to see that?!” We took the light out and refitted a gauge so he could monitor that — no further problems.
Ten laps from the end Jody was lying third but as he came out of Woodcote past the pits there was a BBRRRRRRDD sound. The engine had blown. When the engine was taken out the dry sump tank was removed for cleaning. The tank was a coffin-shaped unit installed between the engine and the monocoque where the oil that was pumped out of the engine went after passing through the oil cooler in the nose of the car. The tank had a 125mm tube down where the oil was spun to remove air from it then this section had holes in it to let the oil into the rest of the tank. On inspection it was found that the holes had never been drilled so the engine was only using about 40 per cent of its available oil! The oil light was correct, as it reacted to the pressure drop straightaway whereas a gauge is ponderous at best.
WR1 had won Monaco, Argentina, led Long Beach until near the end but ended third, plus came second in South Africa. Amazing how one corner defeated her. She recovered well, winning in Canada.