GRAND PRIX GREATS
NIGEL ROEBECK'S
Nigel Roebuck remembers the Ferrari legend Lorenzo Bandini
IN THE 1958 WORLD
championship decider, at Casablanca, Phil Hill did as bidden by Ferrari, relinquishing second place to Mike Hawthorn in the late laps, thus giving him the points needed to take the title. Six years later, in Mexico City, events played out exactly the same way, with Lorenzo Bandini making way for John Surtees.
On this occasion, though, there was some controversy. Three British drivers were in championship contention at this last race of 1964, and while Jim Clark had his engine seize with a couple of laps to go, Graham Hill’s hopes evaporated when Bandini ran into the back of his BRM. Imagine, if you will, the endless recriminations that would follow such a scenari in the Formula 1 of today.
Time was, though, when style – and humour – had their place. No one, Hill included, believed the move had been other than inadvertent, and anyway everyone loved Lorenzo: at Christmas Graham sent him an LP of advanced driving lessons…
“I remember him with great fondness,” Surtees said. “He was always friendly, and as a team-mate completely apolitical. A good lad.”
“So many people with his sort of looks behave like strutting peacocks – you know the type,” said Chris Amon, Bandini’s last team mate, “but Lorenzo wasn’t like that at all – he was utterly charming, one of the nicest people I ever met.”
If no one, as Amon suggested, ever looked more like an Italian racing driver, so none more than Bandini bore the weight of his country’s expectations. Unlike some who had gone before – Eugenio Castellotti, Luigi Musso – he came from no patrician background. At 15 he became an apprentice mechanic at the Milan garage of one Signor Freddi, whose daughter Margherita he would eventually marry. Lent cars by his employer, he began to compete in local hillclimbs.
After the death of Musso in 1958, Italy was without a world-class driver, and Formula Junior was conceived to put that right. Bandini became one of its stars, and by 1961 had occasional F1 drives with Scuderia Centro-sud. The car, a Cooper-maserati, was old and tired, but it was a start; more significantly, the team entered a Ferrari in the world championship sports car race at Pescara, and this Lorenzo won. Up the road in Maranello they took note, offering a contract for 1962, which included F1.
After dominating F1 the season before, however, Ferrari were now off the pace, and at the end of the year there was a seismic upheaval, with many engineers leaving. For 1963 the Old Man unfathomably went for the erratic Willy Mairesse as team-mate to Surtees, although Bandini was retained for the sports car team, and won Le Mans, partnered by Ludovico Scarfiotti.
As for F1, once more Centro-sud came to Lorenzo’s aid, having acquired a BRM, and painted it red. At the Nürburgring he stunned everyone by qualifying third – several seconds faster than the newer works cars – and when Mairesse was seriously hurt in the race, Enzo took the logical step. “Lorenzo,” said Surtees, “became my natural team-mate at Ferrari.”
In all respects, 1964 was an excellent year for the team, with Surtees taking the world championship, and Bandini winning the Austrian Grand Prix and finishing well elsewhere. The following season, though, there were no F1 victories for Ferrari, Lorenzo’s best day coming at the Targa Florio, which he won with Nino Vaccarella.
In 1966 Bandini was second at Monaco, then third at Spa – and in the build-up to Le Mans unexpectedly found himself team leader for Surtees, after a row with team manager Eugenio Dragoni, opted to leave forthwith. While John went off to Cooper, Lorenzo became Ferrari’s main man, and if that were something to relish, so also it brought overwhelming pressure. Not since Alberto Ascari had there been an Italian number one at Ferrari.
Bandini rose to the challenge. At the next race, Reims, he started from pole, leading comfortably until his throttle cable broke, and at Watkins Glen, too, was in front when the engine let go. Greatly pleased by the arrival of Amon, he looked to 1967 with optimism.
The partnership began well with victory in the Daytona 24 Hours, after which they also won the Monza 1000Kms. In Ferrari’s first F1 race of the season, the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, Bandini finished a close second to Dan Gurney, and ahead now was Monaco, always his favourite race. As it was, he died there, and he died hard.
Back then Monaco was 100 laps, and with 18 to go Bandini, chasing leader Denny
Hulme, hit the straw bales at the exit of the harbour front chicane, then a dauntingly fast left-right flick. The Ferrari somersaulted, coming to rest upside down, then exploding. With only pathetically ill-equipped marshals on hand, Lorenzo never had a chance. While the race continued – in those days they were never stopped – more than five minutes passed before he was clumsily manhandled from the car.
Amon never doubted that exhaustion had led to the accident. “I was probably stronger than Lorenzo, and I was never more tired at the end of a race than that day. It was hot as hell, and the Ferrari was a heavy car to drive – no power steering then, of course. Three or four times I went past the fire, assuming he’d got out of it. It wasn’t until after the race that I found out he hadn’t…”
The friends had been due to fly the next day to Indianapolis, where both were down to drive in the 500. Chris sorrowfully made the trip alone, and it was at the Speedway that they told him Lorenzo had succumbed to his appalling burns.
A year on guardrail had replaced straw bales at the exit of the Monaco chicane, and when Johnny Servoz-gavin hit it, after making the same mistake as Bandini, he carried on to the pits, and climbed out.