Brian Redman

Total 911’s Tony Mcguiness sits down with the former Porsche factory driver Brian Redman to look back at his remarkable life and career…

In 1968, before I signed a contract as a Porsche factory driver, I was driving with Jacky Ickx at Brands Hatch in the six-hour race. I was just about to get in John Wyer’s Gulf Ford GT40 for my first stint, it was raining, and I was feeling nervous. A journalist made his way up to me and said, “Heard about Jimmy, mate? Killed at Hockenheim.” The great Jim Clark had been killed.

When my turn to drive came, I had to put everything out of my mind and focus on racing. Jacky and I won the race. The Brands Hatch Six Hours was my first victory in the International Championship of Makes. However, the death of my idol and mentor affected me. If it could happen to Jim, it could happen to anyone.

There were four or five drivers killed that year. Between 1966 and 1975, one in three top professional drivers died. I never got close to other drivers. You couldn’t possibly allow yourself to, because there was a very good chance one of you would get killed before the year was out.

When John Wyer and his company, JW Automotive Engineering, effectively became the official Porsche number-one team in 1970, Wyer had no idea that there would be competition from another factory outfit. That competition was Ferdinand Piëch and his mother’s team of Porsche Austria Salzburg.

When we arrived at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1970, John Wyer’s team was the official Porsche entry with full factory backing. Wyer was extremely surprised to see another factory 917K for Vic Elford and Kurt Ahrens entered by Porsche Konstruktionen – basically it was the Porsche factory development department. It appeared we would not only be battling Ferraris at Daytona, but also ourselves.

There were certainly rivalries between drivers. In 1969 when Ferdinand Piëch was in charge of Porsche Motorsport, there were six German drivers and three British drivers: Richard Attwood, Vic Elford and me in addition to one Swiss, Jo Siffert. Quite early on the German drivers were complaining. They kept saying, “Siffert und Redman get ze best car!” So, at the Nürburgring 1,000kms in 1969, they had two of the new 908/2 Flunder variants. They were called the Flunder because observers thought they resembled a flattened Atlantic Flounder. They were supposed to be aerodynamically better than the standard 908/02.

Both of the team’s Flunders crashed during practice. One was crashed by my co-driver Jo Siffert and the other by Vic Elford. So Siffert and I had to borrow a spare Porsche Austria car we had never driven before. Jo and I won the race.

Our win completely shut up the complaints! At the award ceremony, I was presented with an honour rarely given, one of the coveted Nürburgring rings. I returned to Sicily and the Targa Florio in 1970 as part of one of the most famous and successful sports car efforts in racing history: the Porsche factory team entered by JW Automotive and directed by John Wyer.

At one point I stopped racing and made the mistake of moving to South Africa to manage a BMW dealership. I will share more about that in an upcoming issue. The difficulty coming back to the UK was I didn’t have a drive any longer. Derek Bell had taken my place in the official John Wyer Porsche team. However, Derek had never done the Targa, so John Wyer rang me up and said, “Redman, would you like to do the Targa again and team up with Seppi?”

I had won the race in 1970, so I saw it as a chance to win again. Practice was uneventful until the very end when Siffert crashed the

908/3 heavily the day before the race. The entire front end was damaged including wheels, suspension, steering rack and body work. It was rebuilt overnight, meaning racing an untested car over a long and difficult course.

Very unusually, John Wyer said to me on race day, “Redman, we would like you to start the race.” Normally Jo Siffert started, so I said, “What for?” Wyer’s reply was, “Well, I don’t want Siffert and Rodriguez knocking each other off.” Wyer didn’t want a repeat of the drama at the 1970

Spa 1,000kms. He wanted to avoid a Siffert/ Rodriguez contest of egos.

I started the 1971 Targa Florio, but right from the start handling on the Porsche 908/03 wasn’t normal. I knew something was wrong with the steering. I got 22 miles around the 44-mile course when the steering broke.

I hit a stone kilometre post right in the fuel tank on the right-hand side. It exploded and I was soaked in fuel and on fire from head to foot. I was blinded by smoke and totally engulfed in flames.

I struggled to get out of the car. Once I managed to unbuckle myself and get away from the burning car, I realised I was lit up like a human torch. I threw myself to the ground and rolled down a slope to smother the fire.

I didn’t feel any pain during and immediately after the accident, but I remember hearing someone screaming in the distance. Then I realised it was the sound of my own voice. As the shock wore off, the pain set in. My face swelled so quickly I was blinded within moments.

The facial area around my eyes not covered by my balaclava was badly burned. That shape remains permanently on my face. I waited for more than 45 excruciating minutes for help as the pain agonisingly increased before a helicopter came to take me back to the pits. An ancient ambulance delivered me to the desolate hellhole clinic of Termini Imerese in the Sicilian hills. In next month’s column, I’ll share what happened next and my road to recovery to race again.