The crowd had plenty to cheer about. Bandini’s Ferrari had just won the 1964 Austrian GP and John Surtees took victory before their eyes on the way to his and the Scuderia’s 1964 World Championships. Italian Grand Prix, Monza September 6 1964…
In a thrilling race with slipstreaming battles down the field for which the circuit was famous, Surtees won in his Ferrari 158 from Bruce Mclaren’s Cooper T73 Climax and Bandini’s 158.
(unattributed)
John Surtees and Dan Gurney diced for much of the race until the Climax engine in his Brabham BT7 cried enough. Gurney had a few of these occasions when on the cusp of a win during his Brabham years.
(The Cahier Archive)
The business end of Lorenzo Bandini’s Ferrari 158 during practice.
It’s not what you know that gets ya, it’s what you don’t know.
I thought I’d done a nice piece on Ferrari’s 156 variants, that is, the cars which bridged the gap between the 1961 World Championship winning 156 Sharknose and 1964 158, victorious in the hands of Phil Hill and John Surtees respectively.
Then Doug Nye posted the photograph above on an internet forum. It’s Lorenzo Bandini at the Nurburgring during the 1962 German GP weekend in a Ferrari 156/62P. The prototype was designed by Mauro Forghieri in 1962 as the young engineer explored smaller, lighter-tubed spaceframes of the type built by the British manufacturers.
He sought to bridge the performance gap which had widened even more after Jim Clark debuted the first modern monocoque Lotus 25 Climax at Zandvoort that May.
Oopsie, missed that car, hmmm, back to the drawing board I thought. Sure enough, there are a few photographs of the 156/62P, which raced only at the Nurburgring and Monza 1962 if you look closely.
(MotorSport)
Forghieri’s learnings with this model were then applied to his 1963 spaceframe 156/63, a GP winner on the Nurburgring in Surtees’ hands that year. The shot above shows Il Grande John hard at it through the Dutch dunes at Zandvoort in June 1963.
So, do check out this article, Ferrari 156/62P, 156/63 and 156 Aero… | primotipo… I’ve re-written it and doubled the number of photographs. Hopefully it’s now a decent record of the 1.5-litre V6 engined 1962-1964 Ferrari 156/62P, 156/63 and 156 Aero…
(MotorSport)
The final variant of the 156 was the 156 Aero, here Lorenzo Bandini is on the way to his – and the 156 Aero’s only championship GP victory – at Zeltweg, Austria in August 1964.
This model was created to contest the 1963 Italian GP. When the Tipo 158’s engine was running late the venerable V6 was skilfully adapted to fit the new Aero chassis. The car was still competitive in 1964 too, Bandini raced them for a while as Surtees and Forghieri got the 158 up to snuff.
Credits…
MotorSport Images
Tailpiece…
(MotorSport)
“We could have a party in here Colin! It’s so roomy and comfy.”
Jim Clark trying Bandini’s new Ferrari 156/62P for size at the Nurburgring in 1962. “Our car may be a bit snug Jimmy but it’s 48 seconds a lap quicker than that little clunker”, may well have been Chapman’s retort.
Ferrari were way off the pace in 1962 but won a nip-and-tuck world title in 1964. As much as anything else it was text book stuff about having depth in the team when the 1961-62 Winter of Ferrari Discontent resulted in eight senior employees leaving the Scuderia. In the overall scheme of things they barely missed a beat, ahem, 1962 aside…
Grand Prix cars; Ferrari 156/63 F1 1963, red Lotus Climax FPF, at left a Lotus 18 Climax FPF and Lotus 33 Climax FWMV (M Bisset)
The Ferrari 156/63 holds centre-stage at the Musee National de l’Automobile, Mulhouse, France in July 2019…
When I saw it I didn’t recognise the car at all.
The 156 went from 1961 World Champ to 1962 World Chump. Then, to me, along came Ferrari’s ‘Aero-framed’ semi-monocoque 1.5-litre V8 engined 158 with which John Surtees won the 1964 championship in a great battle with Jim Clark’s Lotus 15/33 Climax and Graham Hill’s BRM P261.
Not so fast. Between the 156 and 158 were the T56, 156, 156/62P, 156/63, 156 F1-63 and Aero 156 depending upon your source as to model names, the 156/63 is one of those cars.
Ferrari raced on with the 156 largely unchanged in 1962 given their sudden paucity of team leaders. Mr Ferrari had a mass-departure of top executives, including 156 designer, Carlo Chiti, that winter. Their exodus to Automobili Turismo e Sport (ATS) was an unmitigated disaster, that story is here; ‘Automobili Turismo e Sport’ : A.T.S. F1… | primotipo…
But Ferrari had depth in the ranks, young engineer, Mauro Forghieri set to work on a series of cars more akin to British chassis design orthodoxy, and ultimate success in 1964.
Forghieri (born 13 January 1935) joined Ferrari in 1960 after completing an engineering degree at Bologna University the year before.
The key team which took the Scuderia forward included engineers Rocchi, assisted by Bellei – with oversight provided by Vittorio Jano – on the new V8 (1964). Ing Salvarini looked after gearboxes and suspension with Bussi doing dyno engine testing and development.
The Flat-12 (1964-65) design was Forghieri’s, as was the at circuit role and liasion between the race-team and technical group. In short, he was team-leader.
John Surtees, Ferrari 156/63, 1963 US GP at Watkins Glen. Grid three and DNF valve failure was his haul that weekend (MotorSport)
With time short that winter, there was little time to develop the existing 156s. Before Chiti left, V6 developments included a two-valver with twin-plugs, a two-valver with three-plugs, a three-valver with two-plugs and a four-valver with one-plug (!), for which 210bhp @ 10,000rpm was claimed.
Chassis changes involved a move towards a lower polar moment of inertia which was achieved by moving the masses within the a wheelbase. A new 6-speed gearbox was also available. It could be mounted conventionally, overhung behind the rear axle, or within the wheelbase, albeit the former was preferred.
That year Forghieri tried wide track 156s, but lost top-speed wasn’t exceeded by greater cornering ability. In effect, Ferrari had a stand-still year as Forghieri developed a more competitive ’63 car and established the foundations for mid-term success.
Mauro’s early cars, the spaceframe 1962 156/62P and 1963 156/63, and semi-monocoque 156 Aero, were still powered by the trusty Tipo 178 1.5-litre, twelve-valve V6, by then Bosch direct fuel injected.
This engine was well trumped by the British Coventry Climax FWMV and BRM P56 V8s in 1962, but Forghieri’s chassis’ were much nicer modern affairs than the 1961 156. Gradually Ferrari bridged the opposition’s gap in 1962-63 setting up its driver and manufacturer titles in 1964.
Lorenzo Bandini in Forghieri’s new Ferrari 156/62P #0008 during the German GP, Nurburgring August 1962 (MotorSport)
Ferrari 156/62P…
Ferrari had built nine 156s by the end of 1961, they built another three in 1962; #0007, #0008 and #0009. #0007 was a new 156 of evolved design as mentioned above, while #0008 and #0009 were Forghieri’s new 156/62P experimental machines.
These two cars were smaller, neater small-tube spaceframes with rear suspension practice and geometry akin to the British opposition, albeit the archaic, heavy, and beautiful Borrani wire wheels were retained.
Bandini’s 156/62P in the Nurburgring paddock. Behind him are Phil Hill’s #1, and Giancarlo Baghetti’s #2 normale 156s (MotorSport)
Forghieri’s 156/62P #0008 was finally ready and raced by Lorenzo Bandini in the German GP that August, he qualified 18th but was out after an accident on lap five.
Mauro Forghieri was further empowered late season when John Surtees joined the Scuderia. His engineering knowledge and interest, and fierce determination to effectively use Ferrari’s vast resources ensured significant progress was made that winter and into 1963.
Willy Mairesse at Monza during the 1962 Italian GP weekend in 156/62P #0008. He did well, fourth place. Note the changes to the rear bodywork in the shot below compared with the car as appeared at the Nurburgring a month earlier
Willy Mairesse was given the car at Monza. He qualified 10th, finished fourth and was the best placed of the 156 Dinos on the grid and in terms of race results. Clearly progress was being made.
That weekend Willy also tested #0009, it had only just been completed with its beautiful hand formed aluminium body still unpainted (below)
Apart from differences in the nose of the car compared with its 156/62P sibling #0008, the rear suspension of this car is completely different. Gone is the top link and wide-based lower wishbone, in its place is a multi-link set up more akin to contemporary British practice, viz; single top link, inverted lower wishbone and two radius rods, adjustable roll bar and coil spring/Koni dampers.
Big Ferrari news for 1963 was Surtees recruitment, latterly of the Bowmaker Lola Team. During this period of change, Surtees tested at Modena, including a drive of what appears to be 156/62P #0009, above.
The photograph is dated November 26, 1962 (Getty Images’ dating of shots is often wrong). Note that the rear suspension of the car at this time is different to that over the Italian GP weekend when Mairesse tested it.
Ludovico Scarfiotti, Ferrari 156/63 at Zandvoort, 1963 Dutch Grand Prix. The young Italian was sixth in his first championship GP (MotorSport)
Ferrari 156/63…
Forghieri worked over the winter on the 156/63, another neat multi-tubular spaceframe car of small gauge tubes. An evolution of the existing V6 was bolted to a new six-speed gearbox with lightweight, magnesium alloy Campagnolo wheels part of an attractive package. As stated Mauro was greatly empowered by Surtees arrival, progress was enhanced.
Ferrari 156/63 cutaway, technical specifications as per text (Vic Berris)
Willy Mairesse displaying the beautiful lines of his new Ferrari 156/63 at Monte Carlo in May (MotorSport)
Business end of a 156/63 (MotorSport)
In 1963 spec the two-valve, fuel injected DOHC V6 gave a claimed 205/210bhp. Michael May adapted Bosch direct fuel injection to the motor.
Noteworthy is that by the end of 1963 F1-was-fuel-injected by Lucas and Bosch. There were still downdraft Webers to be seen on customer V8s, but up at front fuel injection was the go.
The gearbox had six speeds, front suspension the usual outboard fare of upper and lower wishbones and coil spring/shocks. At the rear the regime was again period typical, single upper link, a lower inverted wishbone and twin radius rods with coil spring/Koni shocks and adjustable roll bars front and rear. Steering was rack and pinion with Campagnolo magnesium alloy wheels finally replacing the Borrani wires. Brakes were Dunlop disc, inboard at the rear.
Three 156/63 machines were built; chassis #0001, #0002 and #0003, the team missed early season non-championship races to focus on testing at Modena and Monza.
Surtees started the season strongly in Monaco, qualifying third and finishing fourth, Mairesse was Q7 and DNF with a final drive failure. Up front Graham Hill won for BRM.
At Spa Mairesse qualified third at home but failed to finish with fuel injection problems. Surtees qualified 10th, he too had fuel injection problems, a faulty pipe. Jim Clark won and commenced an amazing run in his Lotus 25 Climax which saw him take his first World Championship.
At Zandvoort Surtees was a great third from Q5, and Scarfiotti sixth from Q11. At Reims John was out with a split fuel pipe failure from Q4, a good effort after fuel injection problems in practice which were sorted by Bosch technicians. Scarfiotti didn’t start after a practice crash.
At Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, Surtees qualified fifth and finished in the same spot while Scarfiotti wasn’t entered. Up front, it was Clark’s Lotus all the way.
(MotorSport)
On that most challenging of tracks, the Nurburgring, the teams hard work was vindicated with a dominant win from Surtees from grid two (above), while Willy Mairesse was out with an accident.
A fortnight after the German GP, Ferrari contested the non-championship GP del Mediterraneo at Enna where Surtees took a pole to flag victory.
Then, tails-up, it was off to Monza in September where the Tifosi were ecstatic with anticipation after Surtees plonked his new 156 Aero on pole, sadly he was out with engine failure during the race. Bandini started sixth in a 156/63 but was outted with gearbox failure, Clark’s Lotus 25 won again.
Let’s deal with the specifications of the 156 Aero – an interim model put together with great attention to detail due to the 158’s V8 engine running late – in a little bit.
Surtees shows the massive 1963 Monza crowd his new Ferrari 156 Aero in September 1963, the ultimate expression of the 156 type, or family of cars first tested throughout 1960 (MotorSport)
Beautiful 156 Aero at Monza, key elements as per text but note entirely paradigm rear suspension, injected V6, inboard brakes and long-overhang 6-speed transaxle (MotorSport)
Butt-shot of Surtees’ 156/63 at Watkins Glen (MotorSport)
At Watkins Glen, Surtees qualified a strong third aboard a 156/63 on the fast, challenging Watkins Glen course but had valve failure in the race. Bandini started ninth and finished fifth. In Mexico Surtees 156 Aero was disqualified after receiving outside assistance from grid two, while Bandini had engine failure from seventh on the grid.
John Surtees’ consistently strong performances yielded 22 points, placing him fourth in the 1963 drivers championship behind Clark’s Lotus 25 Climax, then Hill G and Richie Ginther aboard BRM P57s. The Surtees/Scuderia Ferrari combination approached 1964 with plenty of optimism and two new cars, the 158 and 1512.
Bandini on the way to victory on the Zeltweg Airfield circuit, Austrian GP, Ferrari 156 Aero in August 1964. He is passing Trevor Taylor’s abandoned BRP Mk1 BRM, broken suspension. It was the only GP win for the Italian and the 156 Aero Ferrari (MotorSport)
Ferrari 156 Aero…
Despite the arrival of the Aero semi-monocoque chassis 158 and 1512 the venerable 156 still played an important role in 1964.
As we have seen, with development of the new V8 behind schedule, a 120-degree V6 was adapted to Forghieri’s new Type 579 chassis to allow its debut at Monza in September 1963.
The chassis was based on a simple un-triangulated tubular internal frame to which were riveted stress bearing aluminium skins. This hybrid monocoque was unlike that pioneered by Len Terry and Colin Chapman at Lotus, but served Ferrari very well for nearly two decades.
“Two parallel fuel tank pontoons, each of which was fabricated and riveted aircraft style over a sketchy framework of two tube longerons staggered slightly in the vertical plane” wrote Doug Nye.
“These tubes doubled as water and oil feeds between engine and coolers. The completed pontoons were then united laterally throughout their length by a stressed floor panel with angle stiffening plates, and at each end were riveted to transverse bulkheads.”
“That at the front was doubled to sandwich inboard coil spring damper units operated by top rocker arms like Lotus’s, while the entire hybrid monocoque terminated behind the cockpit in a hefty fabricated rear bulkhead.”
Look carefully at Surtees’ 156 Aero chassis at Monza in 1963. You can see the rivet lines where the aluminium skin is attached to the tubes underneath. Visible also is the boom extension to the tub on this side to support the engine, it also carried the V8 which was never a fully stressed part of the chassis as Forghieri originally intended. Note the the twin-plugs and Bosch injection with the metering unit between the Vee, also the inboard Dunlop calipers rotor/disc, and six-speed transaxle (MotorSport)
Ferrari 156 Aero cutaway. It’s not so easy to quickly pick the spaceframe 156 from the semi-monocoque Aero. The most obvious difference in addition to the chassis, is top rocker front suspension on this car as against the wishbones of the earlier 156/63 (James Allington) 156 Aero front detail at Monza in 1963. Top rocker and hat of coil spring/Koni, note the bulkheads on which the rocker pivots, water radiator/cap and oil tank behind, master cylinders for brakes times two, and clutch. Under these is the steering rack and arm attached to a cast magnesium upright.
The design of the V8 and Flat-12 engines was radical in that their blocks were cast to allow them to form stress bearing components of the car, rather than the engine being attached to pontoons or an A-frame in the more traditional manner. That is, the motors bolted to the rear chassis bulkhead and accepted suspension loads.
Using the engine structurally then was rare. Vittorio Jano designed his 2.5-litre, quad-cam V8 as a stress bearing member of his front-engined Lancia D50 in 1954. BRM achieved it with Big-Bertha, the 1966 BRM P83 H16, so too did the similarly engined Lotus 43.
Forghieri and Ferrari team did so in 1964 with their Flat-12 Ferrari 1512. They didn’t persevered long enough with the V8 crankcase/block design to achieve the feat with the 158. Jano was retained by Ferrari as a consultant during this period, this path was perhaps a suggestion he made to Forghieri and the design team?
The new V8 was running late in its development, so, as related, the V6 was adapted to allow testing and racing the Aero chassis.
Support trusses were added to its rear to carry the V6, which had not of course been designed to be a stressed member. Mind you, some references have it as “partially stressed”. The Aero’s front and rear suspension was contemporary standard British design practice.
Lorenzo Bandini aboard his 156 Aero in the Brands Hatch paddock during the 1964 British GP weekend. Note the different wheels to ’63. #1 is Jim Clark’s winning Lotus 25 Climax, #24 is Peter Revson’s Lotus 24 BRM (MotorSport)
The 156 Aero raced into 1964 in Bandini’s hands as the definitive 158 was made competitive and reliable by Surtees and Forghieri. Until then the 156 was reasonably kind to him.
While ‘Il Grande John’ won the German GP in a 158, Bandini popped a 156 Aero on the outside of the front row and finished third. He went two better at Zeltweg winning the race run on the rough-as-guts broken concrete airfield surface as other cars, including Surtees’ 158, were shaken to bits!
It was the last win for a V6 engine in F1 until the turbo-charged Renault V6s a decade or so hence. It was rather a nice last hurrah for engines which had delivered so much for so long since 1957.
Not that it was over yet for this family of Ferrari engines. An engine adapted for the 3-litre F1 Formula, the 246 raced in Bandini’s hands in 1966. Not to forget the 246 Tasman Formula engines for Chris Amon, Derek Bell and Graeme Lawrence fitted in multiple different specifications to 246T chassis from 1968 to 1971…
Chassis numbers…
Doug Nye provided the following explanation of the chassis numbers attributed to the 156/62P, 156/63 and 156 Aero.
“According to the hand-written chassis allocation record which Mr Ferrari’s Lieutenant Dr Franco Gozzi sent me in 1978 when I was compiling the ‘Dino book’ the chassis numbers are as follows.”
“1962 German GP – Bandini – chassis ‘0008’ – which was a number identifying the prototype ‘Sharknose’ chassis in which Baghetti had won at Syracuse and Naples in 1961, then crashed by him in the British GP and quite badly damaged. It was then – by inference – rebuilt into the ‘P’ form (156/62P) in time to reappear at the Nurburgring in 1962.”
“1962 Italian GP – Bandini drove chassis ‘0006’ – which was another 1961-series ‘Sharknose’ serial first identifying the car which Ricard Rodriguez drove in the ’61 Italian GP. Into 1962 it became Willy Mairesse’s Brussels GP winning chassis, then Bandini placed it fifth at Pau and second at Naples. Ricardo Rodriguez was then sixth in the German GP before Lorenzo raced it at Monza…There, ‘Wild Willy’ drove the rebuilt ‘0008’ – or at least a car entered under that identity. Remember this is as prepared from the Ferrari records supplied to me back in ’78.”
“Incidentally, the ‘0008’ serial derives from the preceding front-engined Dino 246 F1/156 F2 family of chassis IDs. They ran from ‘0001’ to ‘0007’ front-engined, with the rear-engined 246MP (‘Motore Posteriore‘) given its sole F1 outing by Ginther at Monaco in 1960, then being converted to 156 F2 form to be raced by Trips, winning the 1960 Solitude GP before finishing fifth overall and as F2 winner in the dual-class 1960 Italian GP at Monza.”
“I believe it is highly likely that the ‘0008’ prototype F1 which ran at the Nurburgring 1962 was a different and brand-new entity probably exploiting the team’s existing old Customs carnet so far as the serial ID is concerned.”
“The 1963 cars launched a whole new chassis number sequence, three 156/63s being built serialled ‘0001’-2-3 (surprisingly enough). The prototype 156/63 ‘Aero’ was given the same-series chassis ID ‘0004’ promptly qualifying on pole at Monza.”
“For the US GP Ferrari works records indicate that Surtees raced ‘0004’. Without checking further I don’t think that’s right. A wishbone mount pulled out of the chassis in practice and John raced the spaceframe car instead (Doug’s conclusion is consistent with race photographs). This was perhaps ‘0003’ rebuilt after Willy’s Ring crash, or entirely replaced under the same serial.”
“In the following 1963 Mexican GP both John and Bandini drove ‘Aero’-chassised cars, with John listed by the works as having been in ‘0003’ and Bandini in ‘0001’. I would lay good money on them having simply used the old spaceframe-series chassis numbers – and Carnets – for those cars, and for this having been dutifully entered in the factory records by the pen-pusher responsible.”
Etcetera: 1963 Ferrari 156/63…
Giulio Borsari tops up the Ferrari 156/63 125-litre fuel tank, with a dose of Shell’s finest Avgas at Monaco in 1963. Oh to have a pair of those overalls!
It looks like Surtees’ car, #21, he was fourth in the race won by Graham Hill’s BRM P57. Note the leather bound steering wheel and chassis cockpit bracing tubes. What sort of Dunlop in 1963, R5 perhaps?
(G Goddard/GP Library)
Graham Hill chasing John Surtees at Monaco in 1963 aboard a Ferrari 156/63 and BRM P57 or P578 depending upon your preference. Graham won from Richie Ginther in the other Owen Racing Organisation entry from Bruce McLaren’s Cooper T66 Climax, then Surtees.
They are such pretty little cars these 1.5-litre GP machines, mighty fast of course.
(unattributed)
Surtees’ 156/63 failed to finish with an inert fuel-pump, perhaps he is seeking to diagnose or rectify the problem, concentration not so easy on this high speed part of Reims.
Clark won from Tony Maggs and Graham Hill aboard Lotus 25 Climax, Cooper T66 Climax and BRM P61.
(LAT)
At first glance I thought it was Surtees at the Nürburgring in 1963. But it’s 1964, he’s aboard a Ferrari 158, he won the German GP in both years. It’s a Cooper T73 Climax behind, either Bruce McLaren or Phil Hill. Surtees won from pole ahead of Graham Hill’s BRM P261, with Lorenzo Bandini’s Ferrari 156 Aero a splendid third. See here for a short piece on the Ferrari 158; N.A.R.T. Ferrari 158’s… | primotipo…
Photo and reference credits…
Getty Images, Sutton Images, GP Library, LAT, Bernard Cahier, Ferrari website, grandprix.com, racing-reference.info, James Allington, ‘The History of The Grand Prix Car’ Doug Nye – special thanks to Doug for his note on the chassis number details
Tailpiece…
(unattributed)
Pretty as a picture at Silverstone, British GP 1963. The driver looks to sit quite far forward, or is it an optical trick?
Surtees’ 156/63 among the Silverstone fields with perhaps not quite the mumbo to really challenge Clark’s winning Lotus 25 Climax. The BRM duo of Graham Hill and Richie Ginther completed John’s V8 sandwich, in P56 V8 engined P57s.
Jack Brabham awaits the start of one of the ‘Wills Trophy’ heats at Silverstone on 27 March 1967…
Is that John Cooper saying gedday before the off?
Jack is aboard BT23 chassis number 1- the very first in a long line of successful F2 and Tasman Formula cars- let’s not forget the BT23 spawned Ron Tauranac’s F1 Championship winning BT24 Repco design too.
Denny Hulme’s Brabham BT24 Repco during the 1967 US GP at Watkins Glen- he was 3rd behind the Clark/Hill Lotus 49 Ford duo (LAT)
Weren’t British enthusiasts blessed with championship F2 choice over Easter 1967?
They could have watched Jochen Rindt win at Snetterton on Good Friday and see him do it all again at Silverstone 180 Km away on Easter Monday aboard the same BT23-5 he used throughout a dominant 1967.
In a small tangent of Australian motor racing history this chassis is the one Denny Hulme raced in the 1968 Tasman Series- he boofed it at Pukekohe in a terrible accident involving Lawrence Brownlie’s Brabham and replaced it with BT23-2 in time for the Lady Wigram Trophy two weeks later.
Feo Stanton and Alec Mildren bought the remains less suspension and sent them off to Rennmax Engineering in Sydney for Bob Britton to built a jig and a run of new cars, the ‘Rorstan’ for Feo and ‘Mildren’ for Alec. Numerous cars really, the Rorstan, Mildren and Rennmax BN3’s all owe their lives to Jochen’s dead BT23-5.
Jochen blasts off at the start of heat 1- wheel on the right is Rees. Stewart’s Matra MS5 behind his Austrian buddy, Brabham’s BT23 #1- behind Brabham is Gardner, BT23 and alongside him in the red helmet is Widdows’ similar car with the red/orange tipped nose to the right on the same grid row, Mike Spence Parnell ex-F1 Lotus 33 FVA (Getty)
The Snetterton ‘Guards 100’ was the first championship race for the new 1.6 litre Formula 2 which commenced on 1 January that year, the category was enormously popular and successful even if, from the off it was ‘Formula FVA’, with special mentions for the Ferrari Dino V6 and BMW M11 in-line four.
Rindt came into 1967 as the acknowledged F2 King and left it with his crown polished ever more brightly, a quick perusal of ‘F2 Index’ results suggests he won all of the rounds in which he started and finished- Snetterton, Silverstone, the Nurburgring and Tulln-Langelbarn.
He had a DNF, a puncture at Jarama, that race was won by Clark’s Lotus 48- whilst he was occupied elsewhere the other race wins were taken by Stewart at Enna, Gardner at Hockenheim and 1967 European Series Champion, Jacky Ickx in a Ken Tyrrell Matra MS5 FVA was victorious at Zandvoort and Vallelunga.
McLaren and Surtees, McLaren M4A and Lola T100 (V Blackman)
Surtees in Lola T100 ‘SL/100/4’ given I am bandying chassis numbers around. Surtees primary programs that year were leading Honda’s F1 campaign and his Team Surtees Can-Am Lola program in the US- busy boy. That’s Ickx’ Matra MS5 behind and Mike Spence, Lotus 33 further back
As a ‘Graded Driver’ Jochen was ineligible for F2 Championship points, so Ickx won in 1967 from Gardner’s works BT23 and Jean-Pierre Beltoise’ works Matra MS5, Piers Courage in John Coombs McLaren M4A, Alan Rees in the other Roy Winkelmann BT23 and Chris Irwin’s works Lola T100 FVA and T102 BMW.
Creation of a new category brings forth a wonderful commercial opportunity with Cosworth Engineering flogging heaps of FVA’s (putting aside the derivatives of the motor which followed and the DFV proof of cylinder head design concept Duckworth’s FVA in part represented), Hewland Engineering dozens of FT200’s and of course availed the chassis manufacturers a great opportunity too.
Jack’s new BT23-1 and new Hewland FT200- in front of that 5 speed transaxle is a Ford Cortina blocked, Cosworth four-valve, Lucas injected 1.6 litre circa 210 bhp powerhouse. Tauranac’s typically simple combo of spaceframe chassis and outboard suspension provided a phenomenally fast, chuckable, robust, winning combination year after year. I don’t think he ever built a dog- Brabham or Ralt?
Bruce McLaren is aboard chassis number 1 too. M4A-1 was the first car designed by the McLaren/Robin Herd combo
The class of 1967 included the monocoque Lotus 48, Matra MS5/MS7, Lola T100 and McLaren M4A but arguably the car of the year, even putting aside Rindt’s dominance as a driver, was the spaceframe Brabham BT23- bias hereby declared by the way! Perhaps the BT23/23C are the ‘winningest cars’ of that 1967-1971 1.6 F2 period?
I really should prove that assertion statistically I guess, when and if I can be bothered. ‘Nicer cars’ in my book are the Lotus 59 and 69, Matra MS5/MS7 and Ferrari Dino, but more successful, I’m not so sure.
Whatever the case, in this immediate pre-wing year these cars were and are a mouth watering, very fast selection of single-seater racing cars.
Jackie Stewart above and below in one of the two Tyrrell Racing Organisation Matra MS5’s-Ickx in the other car.
Another year of the GP BRM H16 in 1967 was one too many for Jackie, and so it was that Ken Tyrrell stitched together a winning F1 combination of Matra, the Ford Cosworth DFV, Stewart and of course his own team’s preparation and organisational skills.
Bruce McLaren is behind Jackie in the shot below.
Silverstone’s BARC 200 was run over two heats of a little over 30 minutes in duration, Rindt won both with John Surtees third in the two events, Alan Rees was second in one and Graham Hill runner-up in the other.
The aggregated results gave Rindt the round from Rees’ BT23, Surtees T100, Bruce’s M4A, Stewart’s MS5, Gardner’s BT23 and Jacky Ickx’ MS5.
The entry lists right from the get-go of the new category were top notch, other drivers who raced at Silverstone included Robin Widdows BT23, Mike Spence in a Tim Parnell ex-F1 Lotus 33 fitted with an FVA, Denny Hulme BT23 (DNF with a busted conrod in heat 2), Piers Courage M4A, Jean-Pierre Beltoise MS5, Jo Siffert in the BMW factory Lola T100 BMW (all three of whom had injection dramas) Mike Costin, Brian Hart and Trevor Taylor. The list of Did Not Arrives was equally impressive.
Siffert, Lola T100 BMW M11, fuel injection dramas brought an end to Jo’s run (unattributed)
Of twenty-four starters, four were fitted with Lotus-Ford twin-cam motors, Siffert’s Lola (above and below) the very interesting BMW M11 Apfelbeck, the balance were toting Ford FVA’s so Duckworth and the lads had the production line in Northhampton humming along nicely.
There were a couple of FVA users with Lucas injection dramas, but Denny’s buggered rod was the only example of greater mechanical mayhem in a package which proved a paragon of reliability over the ensuing years.
(unattributed)
This has to be the most distinctive, simple piece of personal branding ever- in colour or black ‘n white Hill G or Hill D are so easy to pick in their London Rowing Club colours aren’t they? Lotus 48 Ford FVA.
Sydneysiders had the chance to see a Euro F2 1.6 car earlier than most, Warwick Farm promoter Geoff Sykes did a one race deal for Graham to race Lotus 48 ‘R1’ in the Australian Grand Prix that February.
Having come all that way the car’s FT200 expired after 25 laps of the race, Jackie Stewart’s BRM P261 2.1 prevailed, the series was won that year by Jim Clark racing an F1 Lotus 33 Climax FWMV 2 litre V8.
Graham raced ‘R2’ back in Europe with Jim Clark using ‘R1’ as his mount in 1968.
Stewart, BRM P261, Clark, Lotus 33 Climax and Hill, Lotus 48 Ford FVA, row 2 Brabham left Brabham BT23A Repco and Leo Geoghegan, Lotus 39 Climax and against the fence, Denny Hulme, Brabham BT18/22 Repco. AGP, Warwick Farm, February 1967 (B Wells)
Rindt and Hill- and Rees to the right jump similarly at the start of heat 2.
Thats Brabham, Surtees and McLaren on row two and Hulme, Gardner, Ickx and far right in the red McLaren- Piers Courage. The result was Rindt, Hill, Surtees.
(V Blackman)
Jochen with a delicate slide out of Woodcote, the proximity of ‘snappers to the action back then never ceases to amaze.
Rindt’s car control is right up there with the rest of the Gods of that art- Nuvolari, Fangio, Peterson, Villeneuve et al.
Etcetera…
Jack looks happy enough before the off.
Its only several weeks after the end of the Tasman Series- Brabham finished a pretty skinny series for the full on Repco-Brabham two car works assault on the championship that year well, he won the Longford final round in his one off Brabham BT23A on 5 March.
Two Repco ‘640’ engined cars were raced by Jack and Denny in all eight meetings of the six round championship- that season Levin and Teretonga were not championship rounds.
In fact there were a whole swag of blokes on that Silverstone grid who had raced in Australasia that summer- Stewart, Brabham, Gardner, Irwin, McLaren, Hill and Hulme- Clark was the only absentee from the roll-call.
(L Ruting)
Brabham fries a set of Goodyears and proves just how chuckable a BT23 can be in the hands of an Ace- AGP Warwick Farm 1967.
Its BT23A-1, JB’s 1967 Tasman weapon, a one-of-a-kind BT23 variant powered at that stage by a 640 Series Repco 2.5 litre Tasman V8, this machine is still in Australia, it was acquired by the National Motor Museum in 2018.
An imperfectly executed pan of Hill’s Lotus 48 chasing Brian Hart’s Protos 16 FVA. Now there is a interesting marque topic to explore one day!
Who are those fellows looking after Bruce?
Piers Courage in John Coombs M4A behind McLaren, and in the photograph below. This car, ‘M4A-2’, Piers acquired from Coombs and raced in the 1968 Tasman and brained everybody with his speed and commitment.
He capped off an amazing summer with a blinding wet weather drive at Longford, his deft pace won the race from the 2.5’s which were hampered in their ability to put their power down on the slippery, bumpy bitumen.
The car was bought by Niel Allen at the end of the series, he did well in it and survived an almighty car destroying accident in it at Lakeside, it was rebuilt around a Bowin Designs built tub and then was one of the cars in which Warwick Brown made his name when owned by Pat Burke. Not so sure its still in Oz?
The photographs of the Courage McLaren in Australia below are during the Warwick Farm 100- he was second in the race won by Clark’s Lotus 49 Ford DFW.
The two monochrome photos below are during his victorious Longford weekend in March 1968, the great circuit’s final meeting.
(P Hudson)
Piers nipping the right front brake of M4A-2 on the entry to Mountford Corner during the dry, earlier over the Labour Day long weekend.
Courage ran the car on a shoestring assisted by Australian ex-Lotus mechanic Ray Parsons with two FVA’s, his performances that summer in many ways re-launched his career.
(oldracephotos.com.au)
It really did piss down on raceday, sadly for all, not least for the venues future, crowd numbers were way down although better than the ‘three men and a dog’ perspective provided by the shot below.
The hardy natives saw one of the great drives, Courage won from Pedro Rodriguez’ BRM P261 and Frank Gardner’s Brabham BT23 Alfa with Richard Attwood’s BRM P126 fourth.
(oldracephotos.com.au)
(unattributed)
‘And to think Jack pays me to do this shit! Its such a blast!’
Denny having a ball at Silverstone, he seems to have lost his front number but no doubt this was addressed by race day. The stars affixed to the cars are part of the Wills corporate identity i guess, sponsorship became less subtle from 1 January 1968!
Denny is racing BT23-2, his regular mount during 1967, although his primary commitments that year were winning the World Championship, which he managed nicely, and running the second of McLaren Cars, McLaren M6A Chevs in the Can-Am Challenge Cup- he was second to Bruce.
(D Simpson)
Max Stewart is shown above in the Mildren Waggott during the 1970 Sandown Cup, Tasman round.
Niel Allen won that day in his F5000 McLaren M10B Chev from Graeme Lawrence’s ex-Amon Ferrari Dino 246T, Ulf Norinder, Lola T190 Chev and then Max in the 2 litre Waggot TC-4V engined car- Max ‘won everything’ in Australia in this jigger including the 1971 Gold Star.
The photo is included for the sake of completeness to show one of the seven cars built by Bob Britton from the jig created from Rindt’s dead BT23-5, which these days of course is alive and well and racing in Europe.
Speaking of which, the photo below is of Denny ranging up on Lawrence Brownlie at Pukekohe during the 1968 NZ GP on 6 January in BT23-5, Lawrence’s car is a Brabham BT15/23 Ford t/c.
In a move which is still hotly debated by Kiwi enthusiasts decades later, Denny and Lawrence collided destroying both cars and ending Brownlie’s career.
(Classic Auto News)
1.6 F2 Reference Resource…
Most of you know Allen Brown’s oldracingcars.com is a primary reference source for me inclusive of F2 1.6, click here for his F2 homepage and then navigate the site easily to look at seasons, individual races and in many cases car and individual chassis histories; https://www.oldracingcars.com/f2/
Getty Images, LAT, F2 Index, oldracingcars.com, LAT, Lance Ruting, Paul Hudson, Dick Simpson, oldracephotos.com.au, Victor Blackman, Bruce Wells, Classic Auto News
Tailpiece: Six 210 bhp F2 Missiles whistle into Copse at speed…
Ken Cox’ Cooper T53 Ford at Hume Weir’s ‘New Year’ meeting on 29 December 1968…
The wise owls of ‘The Nostalgia Forum’ have determined this Cooper ‘Lowline’ as either ‘F1-4-61’, the ex Yeoman Credit/Reg Parnell Racing 1961 Intercontinental Formula car raced by John Surtees and then Roy Salvadori in Australasia, or ‘F1-7-61’ the ex-Rob Walker car raced by Stirling Moss in F1 and the Australasian Internationals in 1962. Perhaps the latter is more likely Allen Brown surmises on his excellent oldracingcars.com- see the link at the end of this piece. The car still exists in the hands of the Banister Family in Sydney.
Whatever the case isn’t it a fantastic looking car? Dick Simpson has captured it and Ken’s style marvellously!
I can feel and hear the rumble of the 289 Ford small-block bent-eight. Its not Australia’s ‘first F5000’ mind you, that honour goes to Austin Miller’s Geoff Smedley built Cooper T51 Chev which set an Australian Land Speed Record at Bakers Beach in Tasmania in 1961 at 163.94mph or thereabouts.
Cox from Bob Minogue, Elfin Mono Ford, Hume Weir circa 1969 (C Baron)
And again out of Scrub- who and what is the third car I wonder (C Baron)
The essentials of the Cox Cooper are as follows, sourced from a ‘Motor Racing Australia’ story written by Ray Bell in September 2001.
Cox raced anything and everything- speedway, dirt tracks and bitumen from the forties onwards. One of his main supporters was a timber-cutter named John Cierpicki, he acquired the Cooper in a sale of Stan Jones’ assets after Stan got into terrible strife off the back of the 1961 Australian recession- the car was extricated from an old chook-shed in Camberwell, Melbourne circa 1966. As a former long time Camberwell resident I am fascinated to know the whereabouts of said chook-shed…
Norm Beechey’s engine man, Claude Morton with assistance from Kerry Luckins at Paul England Engineering in Moonee Ponds soon had a 179 Holden six-cylinder ‘Red Motor’ race-prepped and inserted into the rear of the T53- its said only one frame tube had to be removed in this process, the tube was returned when the Ford engine went in.
The car raced with the Holden engine for a few years, the Colotti gearbox was rebuilt by Claude Morton and adapted to the Holden-six with a bell-housing made by someone long since forgotten.
The 289 had modified heads and a cam, it was fed by a four-barrel carb with ‘the exhausts made by Alan King’s Panel Shop over a dozen VB’s’. Later a 302 bottom end went in and a mismatched installation of 351 heads.
The car first raced in V8 engined form at Hume Weir on the 30 November- 1 December 1968 weekend which makes this meeting surely its second outing? The machine raced at the Weir, Winton, Calder and Phillip Island and ‘took on some minor kind of prominence at a time when the argument was raging about whether or not Australia should adopt F5000’ Bell observes.
Bryan Thomson raced the car at Winton in 1970, Bob Minogue owned it for a bit than Des Lascelles with the car even contesting an F5000 race- the Motor Show Trophy meeting at Warwick Farm in September 1972- it no doubt looked a bit out of place in amongst the T300 Lolas, Elfin MR5’s and McLaren M10’s…
Click here for Allen Browns piece on Cooper T53’s- all you wanted to know but were afraid to ask;
Doesn’t it look like a great, race long dice between the nimble, light Elfin and big, booming Cooper- Minogue was that impressed, or needing the challenge he bought the car.
Credits…
Dick Simpson, oldracingcars.com, The Nostalgia Forum, Ray Bell, Charles Baron
John Surtees, the reigning World F1 Champ, aboard his Cooper T75 BRM P80 during the ‘London Trophy’ weeekend at Crystal Palace in June 1965…
He was a busy boy that year, fitting in F2 races around his primary programs for Ferrari in F1 and Endurance events.
Ken Tyrrell entered two Coopers that weekend, the other for Jackie Stewart, above, very much on his career ascent- he scored his first GP win with BRM that season at Monza in September aboard a P261 after a great dice with his teammate Graham Hill.
Surtees, Cooper T75 BRM
The London Trophy comprised two heats of 25 laps, the top four in each race were the same, Jim Clark, Lotus 35 Cosworth SCA, Graham Hill, Brabham BT16 BRM, Richard Attwood, Lola T60 SCA and Jochen Rindt, Brabham BT16 SCA.
(Getty)
The off, Heat 1.
Stewart at left and Clark right, Brabham on the inside of row 2.
Clark won both heats, the Tyrrell Coopers had problems in this heat which were fatal for their chances of a start in the second race- Stewart had half-shaft failure after completing 16 laps and a rod let go in the BRM engine after 21 of the 25 laps in Surtees case.
There was plenty of depth on the grid, other starters included Mike Spence, Trevor Taylor, Chris Amon, Denny Hulme, Jack Brabham and Peter Revson with the DNQ list including Jo Siffert, David Hobbs and Chris Irwin.
Credits…
Getty Images
Tailpiece: Jim Clark, Lotus 35…
Jim Clark aboard his Lotus 35 SCA, final chat to his mechanic who has a tyre pressure gauge at the ready. I’m not sure this is Crystal Palace, if it is, the car behind is Bill Bradley’s Brabham BT10 SCA.
It has the feel of final practice/qualifying about it doesn’t it?
The wing in the foreground is either Jacky Ickx’ winning Ferrari 312 or Chris Amon’s sister car.
Graham Hill stands patiently at left whilst the mechanics make adjustments to his car with Lotus boss Colin Chapman leaving the boys to it, resting against the pit counter.
At far left, obscured, Jack Brabham is being tended to in his Brabham BT26 Repco ‘860’ V8- Jochen Rindt popped his BT26 on pole proving the car had heaps of speed if not reliability from its new 32 valve, DOHC V8. The speedy Austrian took two poles with it that year.
The dude in the blue helmet is Jackie Oliver who is about to have the mother and father of high speed accidents when wing support failure saw him pinging his way through the French countryside, clobbering a set of chateau gates and dispensing aluminium shrapnel liberally about the place at around 125 mph.
In the distance is Goodyear blue and white striped, jacket wearing Tyler Alexander so there must be a couple of McLaren M7A’s down that way.
Ickx won a tragic wet race in which French racer Jo Schlesser died on lap 2 when he lost control of the unsorted Honda RA302 in the fast swoops past the pits, burned alive in the upturned car it was a grisly death.
Ickx’ first GP win, no doubt it was memorable for the Belgian for all of the wrong reasons.
He won from John Surtees, below, in the conventional Honda RA301 V12 and Jackie Stewart’s Matra MS10 Ford.
Surtees did not have a great Honda season retiring in eight of the twelve GP’s- his second at Rouen and third place at Watkins Glen were the two high points of the season.
Honda withdrew from GP racing at the end of the year to return with a vengeance a decade or so hence.
Click on this article for a piece on the 1968 French GP and also the evolution of wings in that period; https://primotipo.com/2016/08/19/angle-on-the-dangle/
Credits…
Getty Images, oldracingcars.com
Tailpieces: Jo Schlesser, Honda RA302…
You would have to have a crack wouldn’t you?
The offer of a works car in your home Grand Prix, however badly your vastly experienced team leader felt about the radical magnesium chassis, 3 litre (88mm x 61.40 mm bore/stroke- 2987 cc) 120 degree air-cooled V8 machine would have been too much to resist ?
And so it was that poor, forty years old, Jo Schlesser died having a red hot go after completing only 12 Km of the race.
Denis Jenkinson looks on, above, as Schlesser prepares for the off during practice, the look on the great journalists face says everything about his interest in this new technical direction. The car behind is Richard Atwood’s seventh placed BRM P126 V12.
The air ducts here and there are clear and necessary to try to keep the engine lubricant coolish.
I’ve a feature part finished on this design so let’s not go too berserk now.
A magnesium monocoque chassis supported the unstressed, fuel injected V8 which is variously quoted at between 380 -430bhp at this early stage of its development- I am more at the conservative end of that range.
Inboard rocker front suspension and outboard at the rear, note the ‘boxed’ inboard lower inverted wishbones, single top link and two radius rods. Engine ducting again clear.
John Surtees tested another RA302 during the Italian GP weekend at Monza in September but declined to race the car, that chassis still exists.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see that machine at the Phillip Island Historics/Australian GP ‘double-whammy’ one March?
Lordy knows how many different bikes and cars the great John Surtees drove in his lengthy career at elite level, on two and four wheels?!…
His brief Matra F2 phase was a new one on me until tripping over some of these photographs whilst researching an article on Matras.
‘Big John’ did two races for Ken Tyrrells ‘Tyrrell Racing Organisation’ in France in July 1966.
Of course he was a man who was contract free after a series of confrontations with his Scuderia Ferrari employers, which, on the balance of probability, cost the pair the 1966 F1 titles and then caused his departure from the team with whom he was champion in 1964. I wrote a feature about Surtees a while back which covers all of that and a whole lot more.
Surtees on his way to winning the notorious 1966 Belgian GP at Spa. The first lap deluge decimated the field, the supremely brave, stupid cine-cameramen are capturing footage for ‘Grand Prix’. Surtees Ferrari 312 won from Rindt and Bandini- Cooper T81 Maser and Ferrari Dino 246 (LAT)
Toto Roche moves out of the way at the start of the 1966 French GP- Bandini’s Ferrari 312 is on pole with Surtees Cooper T81 Maserati alongside and out of shot to the right is Parkes in the other works Ferrari. Brabham won from Parkes and Hulme, Brabham BT20 Repco. Surtees and Bandini both DNF. Jack is behind Bandini and Rindt in the white peaked helmet in another T81 Cooper with Graham Hill’s distinctive helmet behind Jochen- BRM P261 (LAT)
Surtees’ last race with Ferrari was the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa on 12 June- he won it. His first with Cooper, was the French Grand Prix at Reims on 3 July.
There his Cooper T81 Maserati failed to finish with problems, (a small shaft driving the mechanical fuel pump sheared on the first lap but he ‘shoved it right up’ Ferrari by popping the unfamiliar and undoubtedly less competitive car second on the grid- behind Bandini’s Ferrari 312 on pole.
In fact, as Denis Jenkinson reported in MotorSport, the time ‘was artificial and could not last, for unaided a Cooper Maserati did not seem likely to break 2:10 seconds’- the time was recorded by way of the slipstreaming efforts of Rindt and Surtees, slotting John in behind the Bandini Ferrari and getting a decent tow before the ruse was picked up by Lorenzo.
Jack Brabham won the race of course and became the first dude to win a GP in a car bearing his own name and of his own (Ron Tauranac and Jack’s Motor Racing Developments) construction.
In addition to his Ferrari F1 and Sportscar commitments Surtees successfully attacked the 1966 Can-Am championship taking the title with three wins at St Jovite, Riverside and Las Vegas aboard a Team Surtees, Lola T70 Mk2 Chev.
But apart from that, the first Can-Am round at Mont Tremblant wasn’t until 11 September, he could take on rides as he saw fit- a couple of F2 races a week apart in France suited him very nicely indeed.
Ken Tyrrell ran Coopers in F2 in 1965 (Stewart and Frank Gardner/John Surtees/Bob Bondurant/Chris Amon/Ludovico Scarfiotti- how is that for a variety of drivers in the second car! in Cooper T75 BRM P80’s) and switched to the nascent Matra marque in 1966 when he ran Jacky Ickx and Jackie Stewart as the ‘primary drivers’ in Matra MS5 Cosworth SCA 1 litre machines. That year, out of interest, the drivers when either of the above were unavailable included Surtees, Scarfiotti, Mike Spence and Hubert Hahne.
Tyrrell and Stewart surfed the Matra wave to great effect and mutual benefit of course, winning the 1969 driver and manufacturer titles in the MS80 Ford- an F1 car Stewart rated as one of the best he ever raced. That story is told here;
Right from the start the Matras were regarded as jewels of cars deploying the latest in aeronautical technology applied to automotive engineering.
Matra MS5 Cosworth SCA cutaway drawing, technical specifications as per text (J Marsden)
Surtees settles himself into the Tyrrell Matra MS5 Cosworth SCA at a chilly Silverstone- thats Ken hovering over his new recruit (Getty)
Surtees had at least one test at Silverstone before journeying to France, given the engineer/racers knowledge of chassis dynamics his view of the car at the time would be interesting if any of you have any first hand accounts of his view of the car?
The twenty-second GP de Reims was run over 37 laps, 307 km on the same 3 July weekend as the French F1 GP and was predictably, on this power circuit, won by Jack Brabham’s Brabham BT18 Honda from Alan Rees in a Winkelmann Brabham BT18 Cosworth SCA and then Jean-Pierre Beltoise in a works MS5 SCA.
There were a large number of MS5’s in the race, John Coomb’s BRM engined car raced by Graham Hill to eleventh, Ickx and Schlesser were non-classified in their Tyrrell Racing Organisation BRM P80 and works SCA engined cars. Rodriguez was a DNF in his works car, also BRM engined with the Surtees SCA powered car out after completing 10 laps with piston failure.
At the end of the weekend the circus decamped from Reims in the Grand Est region, the ‘unofficial capital’ of the Champagne wine growing region, to Rouen, to the West, in Upper Normandy a distance of about 285 Km.
Reims 3 July 1966. Brabham and Hulme in Brabham BT18 Hondas, Rindt on the inside, Brabham BT18 Cosworth and Surtees Matra MS5 SCA on the outside, then Alan Rees, Brabham BT18 Cosworth (LAT)
The entry was a little smaller than the week before- 21 cars started rather than 24 cars, the Matra marque represented by five cars- works entries for Schlesser and JPB, Tyrrell cars for Ickx and Surtees and the Coombs entry for Hill.
Surtees started on row two with Graham Hill- the two Matras together, with Brabham, Hulme and Rindt up front.
JPB hit Rindt up the clacker going into the Nouveau Monde hairpin on the first lap and spread-eagled the field. Denny worked his way up to second behind Jack whilst Beltoise, sans nose, Rindt and Rees also sought to make up lost ground but JPB retired with a leaking radiator and Rindt with a wrecked Hewland.
‘With six laps to go Brabham (in the lead) failed to appear, his Honda engine having blown up, though he said his gear-lever had broke! (Crankshaft was more like it)…Hulme was just behind so he was able to take over the lead…Rodriguez had been running steadily in the Ron Harris Lotus and gaining places as the faster drivers ran into trouble and he passed Hill and Surtees to take third as the ex-Ferrari driver’s Matra-Cosworth expired and the BRM ex-World Champion struggled along in a sick Matra BRM’ wrote Denis Jenkinson.
Denny Hulme won the 46 lap 301 km race from Alan Rees’ Brabham, Pedro Rodriguez in the Ron Harris-Team Lotus, SCA engined Lotus 44, Hill who was fifth, Trevor Blokdyk in the other Harris entry Lotus 44 SCA sixth- Surtees was classified seventh falling one lap short of the distance with differential failure.
Surtees raced a Lola for the Midland Racing Partnership once in 1966 and ran a full F2 campaign in a Lola T100 Ford FVA with the change to the 1.6 litre formula from 1 January 1967.
Matra’s relentless march to F1 continued- and they achieved Formula 2 success with many race wins and Euro F2 titles for Jacky Ickx in 1967 aboard MS5 and MS7 Ford FVA, Jean-Pierre Beltoise in 1968, MS7 FVA and Johnny Servoz-Gavin in 1969 MS7 FVA.
Jackie Stewart at Silverstone during the ‘BARC 200′ Wills Trophy Euro F2 round on March 27 1967. He raced his Tyrrell MS5 Ford FVA 1.6 to 5th behind the two Winkelmann Brabham BT23 FVA’s of Rindt and Alan Rees, Surtees’ Lola T100 FVA and Bruce McLaren’s McLaren M4A FVA. The Lotus 48’s were non-classified. There was lots of depth in the 1967 F2 fields. JPB gave the new Matra MS7 its race debut at Rouen on 9 July- Ickx used both MS5 and MS7 chassis to win the Euro F2 Championship that year from Frank Gardner’s Brabham BT23 and BT23C FVA and JPB. ‘Graded driver’, Jochen Rindt did most of the winning but was not eligible for championship points
The Early Matras…
Writing about Surtees in 1966 sort of begs the question of what went before that, context is all!
Treat this as nothing more than a summary- I am just skimming the tops of the waves, this is not anything of depth but rather a bit of a teaser for a more comprehensive piece in the future on the early cars built by Matra.
Whilst in French, you can probably get the gist of the car specifications from the drawing above.
Matra enthusiast Gerard Gamand on The Nostalgia Forum provides useful information on the production numbers of these early Matras.
He cites 4 cars built in 1965, two each of MS1 and MS2.
The car was designed by Paul Carillo and was based on the Rene Bonnett F2 design- Matra took over the ailing concern, which became Matra Sports.
Most of you would know the Matra monocoque chassis, drawing upon aerospace techniques was fabricated in such a tight and accurate manner, ‘that fuel bag-tanks were not required as the tub was leak proof. This technique meant that lateral bracing to the tub was possible giving it a very high degree of stiffness’ f3.history.co.uk report.
Matra MS5 chassis (G Gamand)
The chassis above is identified as an MS5- the one below an F3/F2 tub bit i am not sure which. Regardless the in-build shot is interesting.
(autodiva)
The MS2 was a ‘long chassis’ development of the MS1.
MS1 was an immediate success with most of the teams focus naturally enough on French events in 1965.
Jean-Pierre Jaussaud was first entered for the Prix de Paris at Montlhery on 23 May 1965 in an MS1, but did not arrive.
The cars baptism of fire was at the biggest international event of the year- the 29 May Monaco F3 GP won by Peter Revson’s Ron Harris entered Lotus 35 Ford Holbay.
MS1’s were entered for JPJ and Eric Offenstadt- Eric DNF’d his heat so missed the final, whilst Jaussaud was tenth in his heat and fifteenth in the final.
Jean-Pierre Beltoise took the first marque win at Reims on July 4- the ‘Coupe Internationale de Vitesse de Formula 3’ support race for the Reims F2 GP.
Reims 1965, the first Matra win- Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Matra MS1 Ford (unattributed)
(Matra)
By the end of the season, JPB had taken another win at Cognac on 25 July and JPJ wins in the Coupe de Paris at Monthlery on 17 September and the Coupe de Vitesse at Albi a week later.
Together with points scored for their placings Beltoise and Jaussaud were first and second in the 1965 French F3 Championship- the nascent marque was away…
Whilst the F3 campaign continued, as Rene Bonnett was absorbed by Matra, their Djet (Jet) evolved into a Matra Djet with Matra boss Jean-Luc Lagarde hiring Bernard Boyer- French FJ Champion in 1961, to develop a prototype rallycar for the Tour de Corse, which now can perhaps be seen as the precursor of the sports prototypes which followed.
The resultant MS3/M610 was a Lotus-Ford twin-cam engined closed sportscar which used the Djet as a base but incorporated a new chassis designed by Boyer. Its frst outing was the 1965 26/27 November Criterium des Cevennes Rally driven by Phillipe Farjon and Johnny Servoz-Gavin.
Matra Djet 6 cop-car in December 1965
These forays into Rallying continued before the 1966 racing program got underway wrote Ed McDonough in ‘Matra Sports Cars’.
The MS4/M620 was a 1966 sports prototype powered by a BRM P60 2 litre V8, the gearbox a ZF, 5-speed transaxle- a later variant was powered by a 4.7 litre Ford pushrod V8.
Designed by Jean Hebert it used a spaceframe chassis rather than the now familiar type of Matra monocoque- the BRM engine required a new clutch and 40 amp alternator. The new car was ready by November 1965 but first made its public appearance at the 1966 Le Mans test weekend in April.
Actress Joanna Shimkus takes time out from filming ‘Les Aventuriers’ to show the lines of the MS5 to good effect in September 1966. Note rocker front and traditional outboard mounted spring/dampers at the rear- period typical. Montlhery? Former actress now wife of Sir Sidney Poitier and mother of actress Sydney Tamiliar Poitier
For the 1966 season 12 MS5 chassis were made- 6 each to F3 and F2 specifications.
The build for 1967 totalled 6 cars. Three each MS6 F3 and MS7 F2. The MS6 was a modified version of the MS5 with wheel and suspension geometry changes to take advantage of the latest in tyre developments
Pau GP April 1969, JPB in the bi-winged Matra MS7 Ford FVA- second, 1 minute behind Rindt’s Lotus 59B FVA (unattributed)
In 1968 a further four MS7’s were built, all were F2 cars built to accept the ‘class standard’ 1.6 litre 210bhp Ford Cosworth FVA engine.
The MS8/M630 was a 1967 BRM V8 engined Group 6 sports-racer coupe.
Stewart, Clark, Rindt, Surtees Kyalami 1968. Matra MS9 Ford, Lotus 49 Ford, Brabham BT24 Repco and Honda RA300. Its somehat poignant in its majesty- if that is the right word to describe the busy scene of South African enthusiasts thronging this magnificent, challenging racetrack. Clark took his last championship GP win that weekend, his very last was the Tasman Formula, Australian Grand Prix at Sandown Park on 25 February aboard a Lotus 49 Ford DFW 2.5- he won a ripper of a race of 105 miles prevailing over Chris Amon’s Ferrari Dino 246T by one tenth of a second. Clark won in South Africa from teammate Hill and Rindt. Stewart retired after completing 43 laps with conrod failure from grid 3 (LAT)
It may be a tangent too far, but the first F1 Matra, the 1968 Ford Cosworth engined MS9 raced by Tyrrell/Jackie Stewart as a ‘whoosh-bonk’, to use the Bruce McLaren words to describe a quick lash-up, stop-gap early 1968 car used a modified F2 MS7 chassis- with suspension from the MS630 sportscar and a Hewland DG300 gearbox. That car, in brief, is covered in the Matra MS80 article linked above.
Keith Duckworth on his Cosworth SCA 1 litre F2 engine…
Lets get back to where we started, the Matra MS5- in particular the engine which powered the Surtees chassis.
‘It might not have been right, but we had to make it work. It won the F2 Championships of 1964 and 1965…and…until the Honda engine of 1966 with four valves and twin overhead camshafts, tungsten carbide rockers and torsion bar valve springs appeared in Jack Brabham’s cars. We’d run out of breathing at 11,000 rpm so we obviously needed more valve area. That’s what started me thinking about 4-valve heads’.
‘Mike Costin and I exercised great ingenuity- we had ports that curved around, we had the piston of the week with every kind of shape, dint and odd hole- but the combustion was not good, the mixture never burned properly’.
All the same, the dominant F2 engine of 1964 and 1965 did rather well producing between 115 bhp @ 8700 rpm in its original Weber 40 IDF carburettor form and in ultimate 1966 spec, Lucas injected form, 143 bhp.
Good ole Ford 5 bearing 116E block. Single, (train of seven gears) gear driven overhead camshaft, two valves per cylinder , Cosworth rods and pistons, Laystall steel crank. 997cc- 81mm x 48.35mm bore-stroke.
SCB variant 1498cc 175 bhp – 3 engines only built including the Brabham BT21B raced by ex-Brabham mechanic Bob Ilich in Western Australia
SCC variant 1098cc 135 bhp for North American sportscar racing
Matra MS80 Ford cutaway in part. The 1969 World Championship machine (unattributed)
Credits…
LAT, MotorSport, oldracingcars.com, John Marsden, Gerard Gamand Collection, ‘Matra Sports Cars’ Ed McDonough, oldracingcars.com
Tailpiece: Hang on sonny…
(unattributed)
John Surtees giving his Tyrrell Racing Organisation teammate, Jacky Ickx a ride back to the paddock at the Circuit de Reim-Guex on the July 3 weekend- both drivers failed to finish the race.
John Surtees listens to Tony Vandervell’s questions in the Silverstone pitlane- Vanwall VW14, 6 May 1961…
The carnival is over in the sense that this weekend was the last ever race by the Vanwall Team. The first, fittingly was also at Silverstone when Raymond Mays and Ken Richardson contested the British Grand Prix on 14 May 1949, the 1.5 litre V12 Ferrari 125 ’02C’ ‘Thinwall Special’ retired after it was crashed by Richardson on lap 81 of the race won by Emmanuel de Graffenried’s Maserati 4CLT-48.
The result in May 1961 was better, a finish at least- 5th in the Intercontinental Formula 200 mile BRDC International Trophy, the race won by Stirling Moss from Jack Brabham and Roy Salvadori in Cooper T53 Climaxes. Henry Taylor was an interloper in 4th aboard a Lotus 18 Climax.
I wonder then, if young Surtees, fixated on his own career, understood the significance of Tony Vandervell’s work in making the breakthrough for the ‘Green Cars’?- the world of GP racing as we know it changed with the Vanwall victories of the late-fifties.
Surtees in more pleasant weather aboard the Vanwall during the BRDC Intl Trophy weekend (Getty)
(unattributed)
VW14 was the only mid-engined Vanwall built.
Of 2.6 litres in capacity, three of the nine Vanwall 2.5 litre engines- V5, V6 and V9 were converted to rear-engine specification in 1961 which involved movement of the fuel injection pump and magneto to the right hand side of the cylinder block. In Mk 2 form this car is retained by Vandervell Products.
At Silverstone Bruce McLaren put his Cooper T53 on pole from Moss, Brabham, Hill BRM P48, Salvadori, then Surtees and Ireland’s Lotus 18 Climax.
Surtees drove the car well in tricky, wet conditions holding second between Brabham and Moss and then spun finishing fifth.
Etcetera: Jack Brabham’s Test Driving Impressions of the Vanwall…
Stephen Dalton provided a copy of Brabham’s August 1961 ‘Motor Racing’ magazine column which included Jack’s driving impressions of the car on the Thursday prior to the 8 July Silverstone ‘British Empire Trophy’ won by Stirling Moss in a Rob Walker Cooper T53 Climax. Jack also raced a T53 Climax that season, so that is his frame of reference.
‘Silverstone was a disappointment too, though the Thursday preceding the race was very interesting when i had a go in the Vanwall. Tony Vandervell wanted me to try it to see whether i would drive it in the race. (Jack entered the Intercontinental races in his own car not a factory Cooper so he was free to pick and choose)
After the try out i decided it was not a race winning car in the form in which i drove it so i regretfully turned down the drive. But i think with perhaps two days of test driving, while suspension alterations were made, it could have been a potential winner. Unfortunately we didn’t have time for this, and i decided to use my Cooper in the race…
The Vanwall is about the same weight as the Cooper but it has about 40 horsepower more more than the 2 1/2 litre Coventry Climax gives.
The five-speed gearbox, designed by Colotti and made by the Vandervell Organisation, is a real honey to use. The brakes too were very good, though completely different in feel to what i have been used to, with a much softer pedal. But they are more than adequate for the cars performance, and they really do stop the car.
The Vanwall certainly felt a beautifully made, rigid racing car. It steered very well down the straights but it did not handle well enough round the corners to make full use of the performance. I found it was over-steering too much, and i was also getting the front wheels pattering across the road.
After a comparatively short experience with the car i managed a Silverstone lap in 1 minute 36.8 seconds. This was of course 3 seconds slower than i managed in my Cooper during the next days practice. With a little more practising i think a 1 minute 35 seconds lap would have been quite possible with the Vanwall, but i wouldn’t have liked to have tried anything much quicker without modifications. To my mind it would have been necessary to have altered the roll stiffness and the spring rates to get a better balance.
Cornering apart, it is in fact difficult to answer the question why the Vanwall was not as fast as the Cooper. The Climax, of course, has more torque at low revs, but the Vanwall really winds up in a most exciting way along the straights, and the traction is good.
I would rate the car as possessing definite prospects in Intercontinental competition. It could of course be turned into a Formula 1 car, since it is light enough for a 1 1/2 litre engine. But i doubt whether the frame is wide enough to take a multi-cylinder engine, which i think would be needed to compete seriously in Formula 1 next season.
Another thing which struck me at the time was the enthusiasm of Tony Vandervell when he goes motor racing. I was pretty impressed with his knowledge of racing machinery’ Jack concluded.
So there we go, with a couple of days suspension sorting the Vanwall was potentially a competitive Intercontinental car in 1961.
Credits…
Getty Images, f2register, Stephen Dalton Collection
Tailpiece: Surtees, Vanwall VW14…
Surtees sets off for the grid and the last ‘in period’ race by a Vanwall, 6 May 1961, Silverstone (unattributed)
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