Brian Redman
Great Britain’s Brian Redman is unquestionably one of the greatest drivers of his generation. The former Porsche factory driver continues his sit down with Total 911’s Tony Mcguiness for part 15, the penultimate, in an extended series looking back at Brian’s remarkable life and career
In my career I always had good chemistry with my co-drivers. I’d say especially so with Jo Siffert and Jacky Ickx. They both were a bit smaller than me, so I got used to driving in different positions which weren’t necessarily the most comfortable for me. You work as a team and that was the way it was. At the end of 1969 Porsche engineer, Helmuth Bott, said to me, “Brian, you are our favourite driver!” When he said that, I recalled in my mind there were ten factory Porsche drivers, so I felt quite impressed. I replied, “Thank you Herr Bott!”, thinking he would say, you are so fast, you are so careful with the car or something similar. However, he didn’t say any of those things. He said, “Brian, you are the only one who never complains!”
In 1975 I was approached by BMW to be a driver. I knew the team manager Jochen Neerpasch. He had driven mostly Porsches, but after a violent accident he decided to switch over to the management side of racing. In 1975, Jochen thought I would be a good part of the team, so BMW hired me, and I was paired with the late Ronnie Peterson in a 3.0 CSL (pictured above). The CSL was certainly very fast but fragile.
At the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1975, Ronnie was unable to participate due to a conflict. However, if you look at photos from that race, his name was on the BMW car door along with mine. Instead of Ronnie, my real co-driver was Aussie, Allan Moffat. In our sister BMW, Hans Stuck and Sam Posey were that car’s pilots. Before the race, Jochen Neerpasch got us all together and said, “Hans, I vish you to go out und break ze Porsches. Brian, I vish you to take care and vin us ze race.” And that is exactly what happened.
After the Hans Stuck and Sam Posey BMW car had broken, the leading Porsche of Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood also broke. Now there was only our BMW. I had done seven of the 12 hours including the final stint, but Hans did a session in our car and so did Sam Posey. So, four drivers ended up as the winners. In my book, Daring Drivers, Deadly Tracks, there is a great photograph of us all standing on the car after the race. This was a historic victory for BMW Motorsport North America, as the 1975 12
Hours of Sebring was their first major victory at an international endurance race.
In 1977 I was nearly killed at a disastrous race in St. Jovite, Canada. I’ll reveal what happened that fateful day shortly. Because of that near fatal accident in June 1977, I didn’t race the rest of that year.
My first race back after the accident was at the 1978 12 Hours of Sebring driving Dick Barbour’s second Porsche 935 partnered with Bob Garretson (who prepared Dick’s cars) and Charlie Mendez (the Sebring promoter). As part of the deal with Dick, Bob got to race one of the cars, which was always the second car. Dick would hire the best drivers he could to drive with him, so the second car was essentially a rental car. By racing at Sebring, I only really wanted to find out if I could drive as I wanted to after coming back from my horrendous crash in ’77.
Amazingly, I won the 1978 12 Hours of Sebring. It was a very unlikely win. We surprised everyone, including ourselves, by winning. We vanquished all the favourites and even our own team’s number one car.
Revisiting the enormous accident in June 1977 in the Formula 5000 car in Montreal… The first new age Can-am race was run in June at Quebec’s challenging 2.65-mile St. Jovite circuit, south of the skiing town Mont-tremblant. The track was built in 1964 with an additional mile tacked on the following year to provide a long and wickedly fast straight.
Unfortunately, the terrain chosen for the new straight included a complicated rise known as The Hump that created mischief with the faster cars. While the hump wasn’t a full tyres-off-the-ground jump for us, the transition did make our cars very light on their wheels and momentarily unstable; in 1966 two cars were launched into the air and flipped.
The Haas/hall Lola car I had was a brand-new car and I had never driven it before. I knew that prepared by Chaparral it would be good. It was oversteering a bit too much, so I decided to reduce the downforce on the front a little bit. So, when I came in after 15 or 20 minutes of the first practice session, Jim Hall said, “How is it?”, I said, “It’s good!” Jim then asked, “What do you want?” My reply was, “Drop the front wing a quarter of an inch.” Which he did.
I returned to the circuit and, after a warm-up lap, entered St. Jovite’s long straight at maximum speed of 160mph. As I crested The Hump, the car’s nose lifted slightly, presenting a tiny portion of its underside to the wind, causing a cascade of unfortunate consequences. The car flew 30 feet in the air, turning over in a backward somersault before it and I landed violently upside down. The roll bar collapsed, and my helmet went down on the roadside. It was still travelling at considerable speed with the asphalt grinding away my helmet as it continued to slide. If my helmet had grinded away, it would have been my head next. Just before the car stopped, it rolled off the road. The road was higher than the surrounding land and fortunately it landed on its wheels. I’d been knocked unconscious and my heart had stopped.
Fortunately for me, the track doctor in attendance was a heart specialist and he got my heart running again. They put me in the back of an ambulance and raced me off to a nearby hospital. However, the drama wasn’t over… On the way to the hospital, the ambulance blew a tyre, requiring the medics to make an emergency tyre change while I remained strapped to the stretcher. By that afternoon, the presses were rolling and the headlines in Montreal’s papers read, ‘Redman est Mort’, Redman is Dead. Those were the headlines my wife Marion saw upon her arrival into Montreal the next day.
Next month will be my 16th and final column for Total 911. I will discuss my recovery and give some final thoughts on my career during one of the most dangerous eras in the history of motor racing.