Brian Redman
Total 911’s Tony Mcguiness sits down with the former Porsche factory driver Brian Redman for part three of an extended series looking back at Brian’s remarkable life and career
Iturned professional in 1967 for about $50 a week guaranteed for a year. At the end of that year, in about October, David Piper asked if I would like to drive his 250 LM Ferrari at the Montlhery 1,000km in Paris with Richard Attwood. The race itself was run in pouring rain but we won our class.
After the race, this tall, rather distinguished gentleman came up to me and said, “I’m David Yorke, team manager for John Wyer Automotive Engineering. Would you like to drive with Jacky Ickx at the Kyalami 9-Hour race in November?” Well, Jacky and I won that race and I signed a contract that day to drive for John Wyer in 1968. Wyer’s entries for ’68 were Ford GT40S in what became the most iconic team colours ever, Gulf Oil cerulean blue with a broad orange stripe.
At the same time, because I knew the Kyalami race track very well, I got a call from John Cooper asking me if I would like to drive in selected Grand Prix races in Formula One for them, with the first race being at Kyalami in January of 1968. The Cooper had a Maserati V12 engine that pumped oil out of every orifice. Cooper said, “Try and do five laps, we need the starting money.” I did five laps and came in as requested.
The next Grand Prix was in May at the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama. I finished 3rd behind Graham Hill and Denny Hulme. In the meantime, Jacky Ickx and I had won the Brands Hatch 6-Hour race and the Spa 1,000km race. Just the week before the Grand Prix at Spa, I finished 2nd to Jochen Rindt at Crystal Palace in a Formula 2 Lola.
A couple of hours before the 1968 Grand Prix at Spa, I got a message that Colin Chapman wanted to speak with me. He asked me how long my contract was with Cooper. After I let him know it was five more races, he said to come and see him when it was over.
Seven laps into the Spa race, the suspension broke, causing me to have an enormous accident. As the car rolled over the barrier, my right arm got caught between the car and the barrier, causing a very bad compound fracture of the right forearm. I was fortunate I had not lost my arm.
I went right into a corner worker’s post. Three wheels came off the Cooper, one of which hit a corner worker, severely injuring him before the car burst into flames. It was probably four hours later before they got me to the operating table at the University de Liege teaching hospital. I was placed under care of Professor Ferdinand Orban, who was the head of surgery. He had been an aide to Winston Churchill in the Second World War. He looked down at me and said, “Monsieur Redman, it may not be possible to save your arm.” I smiled and thanked him. Perplexed, he asked why I was so pleased, to which I replied, “Because I’m here.”
Because the bones had come out, it was not just that the arm had been broken, it was crushed as well. The arm had swelled terribly, and the bones had gone past each other. He somehow had to drag the ulna and radius bones back into place.
On Monday morning John Cooper came to me and said, “What happened my boy?” I said to him,
“Something broke in the suspension, John.” He just said, “You’ll be okay.” But on Thursday, the Motoring
News journal came out with a story that said, “Redman claimed the suspension broke.”
The editor got a call from John Cooper saying, “I want a complete retraction. It was driver error.” The publication’s editor, Michael Tee, replied, “Mr. Cooper, I suggest you look at tomorrow’s Autosport.” There was a photograph taken by a new photographer, having his first ever race. He took a photograph of my car head on just before I hit the barrier. It clearly showed the bottom-right front wish bone broken. I had been vindicated by the photo. Then followed an awfully long period of enforced retirement with my arm in a cast to my shoulder.
In October that year I had one X-ray taken at Burnley Victoria hospital. They declared my arm okay. So, I called fellow Lancastrian Derek Bennett. Derek was a genius. He owned, designed, and built the Chevrons. Derek asked me if I wanted to do the Springbok series in South Africa.
Jumping at the opportunity, off I went with mechanic Paul Owens, travelling all over Africa with a 2.0-litre Chevron BMW engine B8 on an open trailer driving a borrowed truck from the BMW dealer in Johannesburg. We raced the Kyalami 9 Hours, the Cape Town 3 Hours, then raced in Mozambique. We were going back through Johannesburg when my arm started to give me some pain. I rang Alex Blignaut, the organiser of the South African Grand Prix, to ask him if he could recommend me a doctor in Johannesburg.
I saw a specialist named Dr. David Roux who took 20 X-rays, and then he said, “Sit down Brian, I have two bits of bad news for you. The first is you don’t have any union of either bone in the forearm.” I said, “What? Well what’s the second bit of bad news?” The doctor replied, “There is an experimental procedure, but I am going on holiday tomorrow.”
I told Dr. Roux that I had just signed a contract with Porsche for 1969 and I needed to be at Daytona for the 24-Hour race in six weeks. He kindly postponed his holiday and said, “I will try a procedure that may work or may not.”
He opened my arm up from my wrist to my elbow, cleaned off the broken ends of the radius and ulna bones and took bone out of my hip and glued it in place. He put it in a sling instead of a cast and told me not to use my arm unless it was necessary.
Six weeks later I arrived in Daytona. I took the sling off and didn’t tell anyone of course. This was the first race Porsche at last had a chance to win the World Manufacturers’ Championship, the International Championship of Makes. Porsche entered five cars and ten drivers at Daytona for the 24-Hour race in 1969.
All the Porsche teams had 908LH Long Tail Coupes. I was paired with ‘Quick Vic’ Elford, another former Total 911 guest columnist, so my times had to be good. Earlier in the race, Vic and I were nearly rendered unconscious by an exhaust leak.
I was driving with one hand, my left hand. At Daytona, I would need both arms. I rested my right hand on top of the steering wheel just in case. I managed to fake my way through practice but I was worried that I wouldn’t last 24 hours of racing.
At about 8:00pm in the evening, the first of the five factory cars came into the pits with the engine misfiring. The engineers examined it and they said, “Ve are finished, Zay vill all break!” Vic and I were out by midnight just past the halfway point. One by one, all five of the factory Porsches were out.
On the Monday morning after Daytona, Rico Steinemann, the Porsche team manager, came to me and said, “Brian, do you wish to be Number 1 in your own car and you choose your co-driver, or will you go as Number 2 to Jo Siffert? Next month I will reveal which decision I chose and why…