Legendary team boss answers readers’ questions
Matt James puts the Motorsport News readers’ questions to the West Surrey Racing guru and national racing treasure who has created some of racing’s finest champions
There isn’t enough space, within these four pages, to write down all the drivers that West Surrey Racing boss Dick Bennetts has worked with. From Niki Lauda and Ayrton Senna to British Touring Car Championship king Colin Turkington, the roll call reads like a who’s who of motor racing stardom.
The analytical Kiwi, known for his meticulous attention to detail, has been at the forefront for four decades and has been a multiple title winner in single-seaters and in tin-tops too. From a grounding with Ron Dennis at Mclaren to landing the British Formula 3 crown with Senna, Bennetts has experienced the highest highs that the sport has to offer.
He took time out of the flat-out Team BMW BTCC preparations for the hectic 2020 season, which will blast off with four rounds in five weekends in August, to ponder the Motorsport News readers’ questions. As is to be expected, he answers each one comprehensively.
Question: “How did you first become involved in motorsport?”
Richard Smith
Via Twitter
MN: Also, what was the journey that brought you to the UK?
Dick Bennetts: “I was working for a company in Auckland in New Zealand called Performance Developments Ltd. I had moved up from my home town of Dunedin because there was not much motorsport where I came from. I really enjoyed it in Auckland, and then I met this chap David Oxton. He was the Formula Ford champion and his prize for winning the title was a trip to England to take part in the Formula Ford World Cup in 1972, which was at Brands Hatch on the Grand Prix track. We came over six months earlier to check out which would be the best chassis to use. We went around all the other circuits to scope out the opposition and work out how the other drivers raced. We worked out who you could trust and who you couldn’t trust. We had a bit to learn about the set-up too, because in
New Zealand, Formula Ford cars were racing on slick tyres but over here they were on Firestone Torino tyres. I had done a little bit of work with David on his engine back home and he offered me the chance to come and help him. My original plan was for a two-year working holiday and I am still here…
“We arrived here a week before the 1972 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. We said we must go and see the grand prix. We knew a lot of people at Mclaren, and they told us that we would never get in and we were wasting our time. Oxo and I headed off down to Brands, found a back way into the circuit, climbed up a hoarding and watched the race from there.
“My first job in the UK was with Racing Services Engines in Strawberry Vale in Twickenham. We often used to have to go home in the winter because the
Thames would rise and flood out the workshop. Then I went to the March works Formula 2 team in 1975. After that, I linked up with Fred Opert to run the
BMW Formula 2 car and I managed cars in what was the Tasman series then, so I got to go home. I carried on working with Fred Opert and we won the Tasman title twice with Keke Rosberg driving. There were five consecutive weekends with two races each – it is a bit like the TRS [Toyota Racing Series] is now. That was what they called Formula Atlantic in America, but it was known as Formula Pacific in Australia and New Zealand.” MN: What was Keke Rosberg like to work with?
DB: “He was fun, although he could be a pain at times too. In the left-front corner of my toolbox, I had to have his packet of cigarettes for him. As soon as he got out of the car, he was straight on the smokes.
“I liked Fred Opert a lot but I was just doing too much. I was doing all the organising of the European Formula 2 programme, plus Fred learnt I could do race engines and so he flew me to
New Jersey to rebuild all of his Atlantic engines. I told him I could only do so much. Ron Dennis then approached me and I moved to Project Four
Racing for 1978 and I accepted that job.”
Question: “What was it like working with Ron Dennis?”
John Charles
Via email
DB: “I ran the Formula 2 cars for him in 1978, and then in 1979, we assembled the 24 BMW M1 Procars. That was all done down in Woking. We had just finished building them all and Ron said that he wanted one more. I said no, I’d had enough because I had been working stupid hours a day. He persuaded me to make one more, and he said that we were going to run it but he was very secretive about who the driver was. He wouldn’t tell me. We did virtually an all-nighter to finish the car. We went to Silverstone to test it and this helicopter comes in and out pops Niki Lauda. Then I realised that all of the work had been worth it. We won it with him, and I was the team manager and engineer.
“In 1980, we started with the BMW M1 Procar again, but with Hans Stuck driving, but we stopped halfway through
the year because of finance. Then Ron switched me over to the Formula 3 team but I had done about six weeks with the team designing the first carbonfibretubbed Formula 1 car, the MP4/1, the John Barnard-designed one in the meantime. It was all brand new stuff.” MN: And Ron? What was he like?
DB: “I worked with him for three years, and I never had any problems with him at all, although I know some people did. He could be hard work, but he had the same targets as me: he knew the cars had to look good and they had to be reliable, the workshop had to be tidy, etc. I was of a very similar mould to him which is probably why we got on so well. The problem was the guys in the workshop – they kept forgetting that Ron was so busy setting up the Formula 1 team. He didn’t have the time to spend with everybody, but I appreciated that. The guys wouldn’t go and see him and they always used to send me, because they thought I was his mate. I wasn’t his mate, but I wasn’t afraid to tell him how it was and get any answers from him we needed.
“I remember that the old Formula 2 engines in those days were a bit fragile. With two races in a day, you had to do engine changes quickly if a motor let go. I looked at the cars and the water system on it and worked out that if we could alter it and bolt it on the back of the chassis, it would take 20 minutes off the length of time it took to change an engine. I went to Ron, brought him down to the workshop and showed him what we wanted to do, and he just said ‘do it’. He was very straightforward in that way. I think he spent about one minute looking at it! He was very easy to work with.
“When he went into Formula 1, he asked me to be the manager of the test team. I said no. I used to share a flat with some guys from Mclaren so I knew: the guys who are on the test team put in more hours than anyone in the race team. They are rebuilding and developing the car all the time, and then the race team will come and nick the car if one of theirs got damaged. I said ‘thanks, but no thanks’. Ron asked me what I was going to do, but I honestly had no idea at that time.”
MN: It was quite a big step to start your own team then?
DB: “We had been running Stefan Johansson. Project Four Racing had won the title in 1979 with a March, but for 1980, even though we started with a March, I thought a Ralt chassis was worth looking at. I had seen what Rob Wilson was doing with one and so I figured it was a pretty good car. We jumped in Ron’s Porsche and went to the Ralt place in Byfleet. Ron came out and told me I had got what I wanted, which was the Ralt – I was a bit taken aback. I had only suggested we went to look at it, not actually do a deal there and then!
“It was embarrassing to begin with. We were down at Goodwood with the March and the Ralt doing testing. We couldn’t get the Ralt RT3 going quicker than the March. Stefan and I would have a laugh about who was going to go and tell Ron that we couldn’t get the new chassis to work.
“I got fed up one day running it with the Ralt set-up and we made some massive changes. We stiffened it right up. It was a proper ground-effect car. In the end, we got it working and Stefan won the title. At the end of the season, Ron told me to sell the car and Jonathan Palmer, and his mentor Mike Cox of West Surrey Engineering, got in touch. We took it to Goodwood and Stefan did a benchmark time, and then Jonathan, who had never driven an F3 car before, got in and was as fast as Stefan. He did a great job. Mike Cox bought the car, but they had only ever run a Formula Ford 1600. Jonathan Palmer rang me a few weeks later and said that they had lost their way with it a bit. They had lost some pace. I got them to bring the car back to Project Four, and I gave them a list of things to do and things not to do. I reset the car up with them and I went down to Goodwood. JP actually went quicker than we had ever been before, and I knew he was good. I took Mike Cox to one side and I told him, although it wasn’t my problem, he had already spent quite a bit of money on the car and he needed to get someone who knew what they were doing to run it otherwise they had wasted their money.
They had already engineered it backwards in term of set-up.
“He asked me what I was doing and asked me if I would be interested. I said I was committed to go back to New Zealand and run David Oxton over the winter, so I want to do that. I was coming back mid-february, and then I went straight to West Surrey Engineering. We set it up from 12,000 miles away – the workshop close to Shepperton, the trucks, everything.”
MN: How did it come about that you took the West Surrey Racing name then?
DB: “For the first year, we ran under the West Surrey Engineering banner. We then changed it to West Surrey Racing the year after. I ran the show, but others looked after all of the finances for me. In 1981, Mike Cox promoted West Surrey Engineering on the car with Palmer, but when we ran Enrique Mansilla in 1982, we had a full sponsor so the West Surrey name came off and it was at that point we changed the name. Cox stayed as a silent partner up until 1991. Then I took over the whole show. We moved to Lower
Sunbury and then did things slightly differently from then on.”
Question: “Why did you switch from Formula 3 to the British Touring Car Championship in the mid 1990s. Also, how did you end up with the works
Ford contract for 1996?”
Adam Stokes
Via Facebook
DB: “I was getting a bit bored with Formula 3, because all of our five champions were in Ralt cars. We switched to Reynard because [Ralt boss] Ron Tauranac had sold out and the 1992 Ralt RT36 was an Andy Thorby-designed car. It was very trick, it looked like a Formula 1 car and it would have been very difficult to work on. I had a hunch that it would not be competitive, and it wasn’t. We did a deal with Reynard and ran that, and then the all-conquering Dallara came in and we could see the writing on the wall. It changed the whole game. Luckily we had Marlboro on board as a sponsor and they paid for us to switch to a Dallara too.
“The Dallara was such a good car out of the box – usually I could always find bits on the Ralt and make it faster, that challenge was gone with the Dallara.
The engineering challenge was gone.
You could go to Dallara, get one within 24 hours and be out on the race track winning. All the information they gave you about the aerodynamic balance and all sorts was a whole new level. It took some of the joy out of it for me.
“In 1995, a Kiwi contact of mine, Paul
Rasidich, was driving a Ford Mondeo in the British Touring Car Championship for Andy Rouse. He rang me and told me they were falling behind. Rouse wasn’t into all the computer-aided design that was coming into the BTCC at that time. He said come to Brands and have a look and he introduced me to the main guys at Ford. We got chatting and they rang me and asked me if I would like to be involved. There was a hiccup though: for year one, we were just supposed to run the car. Reynard had been supposed to build them but Ford left the decision so long that Reynard said no, they couldn’t do it in time for 1996 but they could do it for 1997. We were stuck: we had a works Ford deal but no cars! We flew out to Germany and we got two Mondeos from Schubel Motorsport. They had been running a different drivetrain, and we had to make them front-wheel drive. It was a dreadful car and it was so unreliable. We were sat in the workshop in the early hours of the morning and I was thinking: ‘I left Formula 3 for this!?’ Then in 1997, the Reynard car was not much better. It used a lot of high-tech stuff, but it kept breaking down. They had never built a touring car before so they must have done a good sales pitch to Ford, but we were the ones who were left trying to make it work on the track. Then, behind closed doors, we got the nod to build a new car for 1998 ourselves. We got our shells from Belgium and we started building up our own car but then the deal went to Prodrive. They did the dirty on us, and we were left high and dry.
But my old friend Ron Tauranac put us in touch with Honda, which had been run by Prodrive, and we took over that programme.”
Question: “If you were to change anything about WSR, what would it be?”
Sharon Milburn
Via Facebook
DB: “I would work hard on getting more commercial sponsors on board. I have always traded on the fact that getting results on track would be enough to get us sponsors – but it doesn’t always work that way. If we change one thing, it would be that.”
MN: It has been heart-breaking for you, because when you won the title in 2009, you lost your headline sponsor in RAC. Then, when you won it in 2014, you again lost your main backer, ebay Motors… DB: “I joke with Colin Turkington, we never carry number one on the car because every time we’ve won it we couldn’t keep him on.”
Question: “What is your most memorable moment in BTCC?”
Sharon Milburn
Via Facebook
DB: “There are so many, there is not one that stands out. Probably the first championship, which we took back in 2009, was the most special. Colin Turkington won that in a truly epic race in the finale at Brands Hatch. I have a photo of that in my office. Some people have said that we can only win when you have got Colin, but Andrew Jordan was only a few points away last season despite not scoring at all at Donington Park, and Sam Tordoff missed out by two points in 2016 too. It is not all about Colin.”
MN: What would be your most memorable moment in Formula 3, too? DB: “Probably the first Macau Grand Prix win with Ayrton Senna in 1983. That was the first time that everyone had been to Macau in Formula 3, which had taken over from Formula Atlantic as the main category. All the leading French, British, Italian and German teams were there. It was a strong field.
“Ayrton, the poor bugger, had been testing a Formula 1 car at Paul Ricard while everyone else had been out to Macau a week earlier getting used to the humidity and walking the track to try and learn it. Ayrton didn’t arrive in Hong Kong until the Wednesday night, and the first practice was on Thursday. He was knackered. He had never seen the track. To win that one, both heats, was a real highlight. And we won it two years later with Mauricio Gugelmin in 1985. Mauricio was a fabulous driver: he didn’t have the outright pace of Ayrton, but as a test driver, he was incredible.”
Question: “If you weren’t in motorsport what would your second choice of career be?”
Sharon Milburn
Via Facebook
DB: “I actually, when I was young, I looked at being an architect. I love drawing and sketching things. I actually applied for a job as an architect, but because I was a lazy at school and always reading motorsport magazines rather than studying, I didn’t get it. I was sitting in classes like French and thinking
‘why do I need to learn French? I am 12000 miles away!’ I narrowly failed my exams. A lot of my mates failed and went back to school to do it again, but my parents said I had to go out and earn a living. I applied to the architect and they were impressed with my drawings, but they said they couldn’t take me on because I didn’t have my exams. I came out of there and three doors down from the architect place, I saw I sign for an automotive engineer wanted. I knocked on the door and got the job. Engineering was my second choice of career.”
Question: “Was there a driver who you thought would be an F1 world champion, who had all the attributes, but never got the breaks?”
The Hard Compound
Via Twitter
DB: “Maybe Allan Mcnish, I rated him. We should have won the championship with him in 1989 but we lost it in a court case after what was a tumultuous year. We won the protest, but lost the championship – it was a very complicated situation.”
Question: “Has running sportscars ever appealed to you?”
Chris Philips
Via email
DB: “A little bit but not a lot because
endurance racing, to me, is not of interest. If they were 30-minute races or an hour, then maybe. When we were running the MG Sport and Racing programme in the British Touring Car Championship, I went to Le Mans in 2001 as a guest. It was a beautifullooking Lola. It was quite good to have a few drinks and walk around. But the money people were spending to win that one race was amazing, but it seemed to me that it was all about the reliability of the cars. OK, they all have professional drivers but the luck factor seemed to override the engineering skills. A 30-minute race to me is fine.”
Question: “What is your favourite race track in the world?”
Emma Facey
Via email
DB: “I’d say Macau. It is such a unique circuit with a real engineering challenge behind it. It has a long straight so can’t run too much downforce, but then you want the downforce for the twisty sections up the top.”
Question: “Will there be a Dick Bennetts book?”
Chris Phillips
Via Twitter
DB: “I have people ask me, and one recently. But who would read it? I am just a bloke who works away and does my job. There probably will be a book – there are some funny things that have happened but I am not sure all of them should go into print!”