SIR STIRLING’S SEVEN DECADES OF RACING
THE LATE ‘60S AND EARLY ‘70S OFFERED HEADY HIGHLIGHTS TO MOTOR SPORT FANS; SIR STIRLING CLOCKS UP 90 YEARS — STILL WINNING
Close finishes
Talking over lunch recently, Bill Gavin highlighted what was always taken for granted when discussing Bruce Mclaren: “such a careful driver”.
I was thinking about that as I thumbed through a recently acquired copy of Motor Racing Year that covers the 1969 international season. It was a strange season in a lot of ways. Grid numbers were light, Ferrari typically ran a single car, and four-wheel drive made a fleeting visit to the Grand Prix (GP) paddock. With a change of fuel-cell regulations due to be enforced in 1970, most teams ran upgraded versions of their 1968 cars: the year wings that were introduced. Terms like ‘downforce’ were still in the early stages of discovery. At the 1969 Spanish GP, the tall wings on both Team Lotus cars broke and, in a flash, were banned from the following race around the streets of Monaco.
An exception to the ‘upgraded ’68 car’ option came from an organization for which motor racing was an ‘add on’ activity to its core business: the manufacture of missiles, arms, and aerospace technology. ‘Mécanique Aviation Traction’ was eventually abbreviated to ‘Matra’, and, very soon after being established in the early 1960s, it emphasized that it was not about compromise. Wins in Formula 3 (F3) led to Formula 2 (F2). More success followed, and, by late 1967, it was obvious that Matra was ready for the ultimate step. To give itself the best chance of glory, it joined forces with Englishman Ken Tyrrell, who had run Matras successfully in F2. Tyrrell had an ace up his sleeve in the form of Jackie Stewart on his F2 team, and the Scot had pretty decent connections at Ford, which just happened to have badged the magnificent Cosworth V8 that had been doing most of the winning in the back of Jim Clark’s Lotus in 1967.
Heavy artillery
Matra’s no-compromise approach led to it building a car, the MS80, that would be redundant at the end of 1969. The Tyrrell-run, Stewart-driven Matra of 1968
had been nearly good enough for the title. They went to the final race in a three-way battle with eventual champion Graham Hill, in a Lotus, and Denny Hulme, whose Mclaren had got stronger as the year went on. Matra’s investment seemed limitless. In addition to the new MS80, Matra also had its own V12 engine, and, like Mclaren and Lotus, also entered the blind alley (for Formula 1 [F1]) of four-wheel drive.
No-nonsense pragmatists like Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac had a feeling that four-wheel drive was a road to nowhere - a description that also applied to ‘our Bruce’? In a radio interview in the mid ’90s, I asked Mclaren team manager Phil Kerr why a new company like Mclaren, already heavily into Can-am, together with the newly created Formula 5000 and F1, would have bothered with this level of investment.
He replied, “I was dead against it. We couldn’t afford it, even if it worked, but Bruce was an engineer at heart and he just couldn’t help himself from wanting to find out … We knew Lotus were building one and the competitor in Bruce just wanted to beat whatever [Colin] Chapman came up with.”
Ugly cars don’t win races
Mclaren’s four-wheel drive, the M9A, appeared just once. It was as unattractive as its more conventional sister was handsome. Its performance supported the theory that ugly racing cars generally don’t achieve much. As Phil Kerr recalls of the car’s only race, the 1969 British GP: “We had Derek Bell driving it. He really went up in my estimation that weekend and did his best in what was a bad motor car.”
There were more four-wheel-drive cars in that race than for any other GP — in fact, four — and they occupied the final two rows. Bell was second quickest of this subgroup, but, after the suspension collapsed after six laps, the whole thing was quickly forgotten. The M9A languished for decades in the Donington museum, a papaya-hued example of mechanical misadventure, and a rare Mclaren dud.
As an aside, the 1969 British GP also marked another last-seen. After yet another retirement, Ferrari and its number-one driver Chris Amon decided to park the V12 and focus on the new flat-12 for the Italian GP seven weeks hence. That meant skipping Germany, where only 13 F1 cars faced the start.
So to Monza. In 1972, chicanes were introduced to what had previously been the fastest track on the calendar. That meant slipstreaming was the order of the day, with close finishes a regular outcome. The big question for 1969 was what to do with the wings. Matra and Lotus ditched theirs, but they were retained on the Mclarens and Brabhams. The seven-car battle for the lead early on became a five-car blur with five laps remaining, but that became four when Hill dropped out. In contention in this high-speed, high-drama thriller were champion-elect Stewart, Matra teammate Jean-pierre Beltoise, the still-winless Austrian Jochen Rindt, and the Mclaren of Bruce. Average lap speeds were nudging 243kph, and, indeed, the winning average speed was 236.52kph. This was not for the fainthearted; it was the time when motor racing was at its most dangerous. Circuit safety, tyre technology, and chassis construction had not kept pace with increased engine power and traction.
A finish for the ages
Despite there being no Ferraris in contention, the massive crowd was treated to a finish for the ages. Rindt, who’d started from pole, was possibly the most desperate, and he went around Stewart on the last lap. Then Beltoise took them both in a no-margin-for-error out-braking effort. In the vanguard of this rapid train was Bruce. Stewart and Rindt retook Beltoise as they headed for the flag. The crowd was going nuts as Stewart won by 0.08s, with Beltoise 0.09s behind Rindt,
while Bruce was a mere 0.02s behind the Frenchman. What a race and what a finish! Caution? Chucked to the wind, mate.
Despite starting on the front row, Mclaren teammate Denny Hulme had lost touch early on after his brakes went, but at least he was out there. For Amon, there was nothing. The new flat-12 had blown during private testing at Modena, and, with the old car so uncompetitive, he sat it out. Sadly, as it turned out, the British GP had been Chris’ last GP for Ferrari. He’d run out of patience and decided that he needed a Cosworth behind him. After all, they seemed to be just the ticket in the back of Lotuses, Brabhams, Matras, and Mclarens.
Sir Stirling hits 90
On 17 September, arguably the most famous name in the history of motor racing will turn 90. What can be written about the living legend that is Stirling Craufurd Moss that hasn’t already been said over the past 72 years — for it was in early March 1947 that Stirling made his competition debut in his father’s BMW 328? It was a trial, and this form of the sport around England’s south coast comprised the sum total of Stirling’s outings in the year he turned 18. A 500cc Jap-powered Cooper followed in 1948. Stirling’s hill-climbing prowess led to his first race meeting in early July, where he, auspiciously, won three from three. With 1949 came a new Cooper and a one-litre V-twin JAP. The 500cc JAP would be used for F3 races and then whipped out to fit the double-banger for Libre events and hill climbs. The V-twin was fitted for the Madgwick Cup at Goodwood on Stirling’s 20th birthday, and, despite being beaten at the start, he won — as was becoming increasingly common. By then, he’d already had a couple of class wins in Italy, but his first outright international victory came on the last day of July, when he won the 500cc race at the Dutch seaside circuit Zandvoort. It was a day that would have a profound effect on him, as he told me over dinner in September 2008: “I’d never seen [Nino] Farina drive before, but he was so stylish with nearly straight arms. None of this hunched-over-the-wheel stuff. It made me decide to model my style on his.”
On the day before his 21st birthday, young Moss was in Belfast armed with a Jaguar XK120 for the RAC Tourist Trophy at Dundrod. The conditions were pretty awful for most of the three hours, but he did more than just win: he came to the
The big question for 1969 was what to do with the wings. Matra and Lotus ditched theirs, but they were retained on the Mclarens and Brabhams
attention of Sir William Lyons and, on the strength of this drive, was offered a works Jaguar contract. He won at Dundrod again in 1951 and then, a few days after turning 22, was back with the two-litre F2 HWM in Northern Italy. The following year would be busier still; unusually, Stirling had two weeks between the Italian GP and the Madgwick Cup in which to celebrate his 23rd birthday. There was no rest in 1953, and, two days after turning 24, he did four races in a day at Crystal Palace for two wins and a second; a day later, he put two different cars up the hill at Prescott.
A star in every one of them
Moss had his own Maserati 250F GP car for 1954, when he really hit the big time, but was still battling away in the motorcycle-engined F3 cars. The weekend after his 25th birthday, he did four races at Goodwood for a pair of seconds — one in the F3 — while the 250F gave him a win and a third. It was nothing for ‘the boy’ to jump into at least three different cockpits over the course of a day and star in every one of them.
The year 1955, when he was a Mercedes driver, was easily his most significant to that point. On 1 May came the legendary victory on the mad Mille Miglia, while in July at Aintree, near Liverpool, in front of his home crowd, he won his first F1 GP. That didn’t stop him from competing, and finishing second, a month later in a Standard 10 at Oulton Park.
Birthday number 26 was spent winning the Tourist Trophy back in Northern Ireland, while number 27 was spent on day one of the six-day Tour de France, where he was aboard a gull-wing Mercedes, finishing second after developing a misfire. He was back in his 300 SL for the same event a year later and was fourth. The year he came closest to winning the title for Vanwall was 1958: he was runnerup four times. Four days before Stirling turned 29, he and Tony Brooks, aboard the gorgeous Aston Martin DBR1, shared victory in the Tourist Trophy at Goodwood.
The month when Stirling turned 30 was especially rewarding. It started with another win for Aston Martin in the Tourist Trophy, followed by victory in Rob Walker’s Cooper in the Italian GP, and then, rounding off the month, Oulton Park’s Gold Cup in the same Cooper. Turning 30 didn’t slow him down. The countries visited and the variety of cars on offer seemed limitless.
Stirling started 1960 in South Africa, then flew to New Zealand to win the first heat at Ardmore. It was then off to Argentina for the start of the F1 season, followed by Cuba, where he won in a ‘birdcage’ Maserati, then an F2 Porsche in Italy, both an Austin-healey Sprite and the Maser in Florida, next Belgium, and then home to England in mid April.
A massive accident on a horrendous day for motor racing at Spa in June kept Stirling out of racing for nearly two months, but he was soon winning again, including in Austria the day after turning 31. Two of his best wins came in 1961, both in GPS. However, there was a unique victory a few days after he turned 32, when, for the only time, a four-wheel-drive car won an F1 race at Oulton Park. And the driver who was able to adjust to the unique driving style required? The one and only!
Happy 90th birthday, Sir Stirling — you’ve lived every one of your nine lives to the fullest.