MOTOR SPORT FLASHBACK
The Lightning Envoyette
This is a story of a racing car that was built some 57 years ago and spent over two decades on a roof, only to be rediscovered and eventually returned to the track. If that’s all there was, then there’s a shred of a story but it turns out that the Lightning Envoyette was pretty good.
This one-off Formula Junior has just been in New Zealand and won every race it started, so how could it have spent so long in obscurity?
Designed in England in 1962 by
Les Redmond, the car was meant to succeed the Envoy Mk2 FJ, but the project folded and the improbably named Alex Lightning took it on. After a testing crash in 1963, the car was rebuilt but never again saw the light of day. Lightning stored it on the roof of his garage until it was spotted by British Formula 3 driver Steve Bradley, who recommissioned it, and together they won the British Formula Junior championships in 1992 and 1993 — a lay-off of a mere 30 years.
The Lightning Envoyette then moved north of the border and won the Scottish Historic Championship in 2000. After a crash in a Formula Junior race at Oulton Park
in 2001 and a business move, the car was not raced again until sold to current owner Alex Morton — who did all the winning in New Zealand — and was then raced frequently by son Pete Morton in the UK and on the Continent. The car has a recent FIA HTP — essentially, a car’s technical passport — as juniors do not have to have international race history from the past.
So, the car was built, sold, crashed, stored, found, rebuilt, and is now just the ticket against the cars of the day, such as the Lotus 22 and 27, Brabham BT2 and BT6, Cooper T65/T67, and Lola Mk5 — all big names, all winners in the period.
The only big thing about the Lightning Envoyette was the length of its name — but it has re-emerged and left motor racing historians wondering many things, not the least how could it have been overlooked. And how many world-beaters are there that, for one reason or another, never saw the light of day?
The patron of the international celebration of 60 years since the birth of Formula Junior is our own Howden Ganley, who described the Lightning Envoyette as “a pretty trick device
A GAGGLE OF FORMULA JUNIORS HAS RECENTLY BEEN RACING IN NEW ZEALAND, AND THIS FLASHBACK-STARTS WITH THE TALE OF A REMARKABLE CAR FROM THAT GROUP
with lots of clever features”. It was also unique as the only car in Europe with disc brakes up front and drums at the rear. So, after a rather difficult toddler period followed by years in hibernation, the Envoyette has blossomed as it approaches its 60th birthday.
Ticket to ride
At the end of May 1965, when The Beatles’ Ticket to Ride was number one on the
US hit parade, a rear-engined car won the Indianapolis 500 for the first time. As it turned out, Jim Clark’s victory wasn’t the only significant event that year at the Brickyard. Eleven rookies made the field of 33, three of whom would not only be future winners but would also have long and relatively safe careers. Al Unser, who would go on to win Indy four times, was on the back row and finished ninth. Gordon Johncock was in an old Offenhauser-powered roadster that he brought home fifth. It was the last time a front-engined car finished that high. He’d win in 1973 and 1982, but neither was in contention for Rookie of the Year when compared with the performance of Mario Andretti. He qualified fourth and finished third, only six seconds adrift of Parnelli Jones. The 25-year-old Italian-born American seemed destined for many, many victories at the famed speedway in the years to come.
Andretti was on pole for 1966 but lost the lead as early as lap 17. He had pole again for ’67 but was gone just after quarter distance. Any thoughts of not being on pole helping his chances were scuppered in 1968, when he was out after a mere two laps. Fifty years ago, he was down to drive the all-new four-wheel-drive Lotus. At the end of 1968, he’d made his Formula 1 (F1) debut for Lotus at Watkins Glen in upstate New York and promptly stuck it on pole. Clearly he had transferable skills, which he’d already indicated with his win in the 1967 Daytona 500.
At Daytona, Andretti proved that the wedge-shaped Lotus was fast but, after smearing it against the wall in practice, he was forced to switch to the Ford-powered Hawk that he’d put on pole in 1967. He qualified it between AJ Foyt and Bobby Unser on the front row, the former having already won three times that decade, while the older Unser had won the year before.
Andretti led from the start, but the Texan was soon back where he wanted to be. Just after half distance, Andretti was again leading in the Stp-sponsored car and went on to win at his fifth attempt. It was also the first win for his team boss, Andy Granatelli, who planted a big wet kiss on Mario’s cheek in pit lane.
The Indy curse
Back at Indy, and over the next quarter of a century, there would be more front-row starts for Andretti — and pole position as late as 1987 as a 47-year-old — and many laps led. Indeed, in 1981, the organizers stripped Bobby Unser of his win the morning after the race and gave it to Andretti, who was more than a bit miffed to have missed out on all the hoopla in victory lane. Four-and-a-half months
later, the decision was reversed and Unser was given back the win — his third at Indy — accompanied by a US$40K fine.
More than a decade had passed since Andretti’s solitary win. Since then, he’d won the 1978 world championship — including a dozen F1 Grand Prix (GP) — and the Indycar world series, but the Indy 500 continued to end in misery. Andretti was frequently one of the first retirements, and ‘the Andretti curse’ at Indy became part of the pre-race chat.
A feature of the Indy 500 from 1946 until 2006 was the resonant voice of commentator Tom Carnegie. Along with Carnegie’s catchphrases, such as “he’s on it” when a driver was looking really quick, and “it’s a new lap record!”, came one that Mario’s legions of fans came to dread: “and Andretti is slowing down”. Often, this came while Andretti was in the lead, or at least in contention. It was a line that Carnegie would unfortunately continue with after Mario’s last season in 1994, by which time he’d run 29 consecutive Indys — second only to Foyt’s 35. Son Michael never managed a single win at the Brickyard as a driver either despite being in contention often. In 1991 and ’92, he led the most laps both times.
Mario’s ticket to ride lasted longer with greater success and diversity, than that of virtually anyone else in history but, when he won the Indy 500 half a century ago this month, no one would have guessed that this would be the only victory for someone who, at 53, had led the most laps in the world’s most famous race.
Trio at the top
What else was happening in May 1969? In addition to F1, Bruce Mclaren and Denny Hulme were testing their new Can-am car, the Mclaren M8B. Chris Amon was wishing Ferrari was as organized as his compatriots with its challenger to the supremacy of the papaya-coloured sports cars in North America. Ferrari, in a bit of financial strife at the time, was racing in five different categories. In addition to core business — F1 and long-distance sports cars — Chris had already won the Tasman Championship, plus they were contesting the European Formula 2 series as well as Can-am.
In F1, the month started with the Spanish GP and ended with the Monaco GP. Bruce was second in Spain and Denny fourth. “When the ‘great Amon drives that should have resulted in victory’ are discussed,” opined Eion Young, “the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix generally ranks behind all those in 1968, the 1970 Belgium Grand Prix, Monza in ’71, and the ’72 French Grand Prix, but it is arguably the best of them all given the hardware at his disposal.”
It was, in some respects, a race of lasts — the last time the high suspension-mounted wings would be seen in F1, and the last time that Chris would lead a race in a Ferrari. For 1969, the Spanish GP moved to the Montjuïc circuit, some 5km from the centre of Barcelona in Spain’s north-east. Roughly translating to ‘hill of the Jews’, the challenging 3.791km Montjuïc street circuit was not only exacting, but there was also nowhere to relax. Chris put it on the shortlist of his favourite tracks.
After the pitiful performance of the V12 at the season’s opener in South Africa, Chris
got his way with ‘The Commendatore’ and got back the high-revving engine he needed to combat the more powerful, and lighter, Cosworth-powered cars. Not only did the Ferrari sound good around the dangerous hillside circuit, but the superb handling also helped Chris overcome other shortcomings. He was quick right from the start of practice, setting the pace and expecting even more when a new engine was fitted for the final qualifying session. A 1min 26.2s looked sensational until Jochen Rindt went half a second quicker. Graham Hill, in the other works Lotus, completed the front row of the grid, while Jackie Stewart, debuting the new Matra, was 1.2 seconds slower than the pole time.
Although the sun shone brightly after a cloudy morning, there was a cool breeze — ideal for the 90 laps that lay ahead. The warm-up showed Stewart’s Matra had a misfire. The mechanics changed the electrics and crossed their fingers. Rindt led from Amon, Jo Siffert, Hill and the rest after lap one, but the lead Lotus started building a gap. The sole Ferrari, in turn, got clear of Hill, but the Englishman was soon to retire in the most dramatic style. Lotus always ran the tallest wings and, on lap nine, the high suspension-mounted aid on Hill’s car fractured, sending the reigning world champion into the Armco barrier. Thankfully, Hill was unhurt and the barrier prevented the car from being launched into the crowd.
Ten laps later, at the exact same spot, the rear wing on Rindt’s car also failed. Again the car went out of control and then hit the barrier, only this time it also hit Hill’s stricken car. The Austrian wasn’t as fortunate as his teammate. The Lotus finished upside down on the road, the driver having suffered a broken nose and some hairline fractures of the skull.
The Ferrari now led from Siffert and Stewart. Chris was 32 seconds ahead on lap 30. Siffert was gone a lap later. Stewart was now second but the Ferrari was some 40 seconds up the road. At half distance, Chris led Stewart from Brabham and Jacky Ickx. He still had over half a minute on the field when Brabham fell out on lap 52.
It was like the Canadian GP the previous September — a big lead, a total grip on the race, all bases covered... And again, the Ferrari failed. A highly annoyed young Kiwi traipsed back to the pits. Stewart, who’d been well beaten, inherited the lead and reeled off the final 34 laps to win by two clear laps from Bruce. At Monaco, Chris remembers starting the race on the front row with 249 litres of fuel; the V12 needed considerably more than the more compact Cosworth V8–powered cars.
“They had to build a special tank over my knees. They’d really lost the plot by then,” he said.
Chris was running second when the diff broke. All the points went to Cosworth-powered cars, Bruce and Denny being fifth and sixth. Chris started thinking about 1970…