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Graham Hill aboard his BRM P48 Grand Prix car in the first race of many races in New Zealand over the ensuing decade. Ardmore during the January 7, 1961 New Zealand Grand Prix.

65,000 Kiwis rocked up in searing Auckland heat to see 14 international drivers take on the locals. Hill finished third behind the two works Cooper T53 Climax 2.5s of Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren.

The Bourne equipe were regular visitors to New Zealand, having first made the trip in 1954 when a single BRM P15 V16 driven by Ken Wharton blew the minds of Kiwis with its staggering performance and sound, if not its reliability. The Rubery Owen Group/Owen Organisation had subsidiaries in New Zealand and Australia so BRM made the long trip on many occasions to wave the flag, despite the protestations of Chief Engineer, Tony Rudd in some years when he would have preferred to prioritise development of his GP machines over the European winter.

The BRM P48 – the marques first mid-engined car – took its swansong on this trip, and its only international win in the final meeting on the Ballarat Airfield in Victoria, albeit it was Hill’s team-mate, Dan Gurney who took the chequered flag that day. That year BRM didn’t contest the other Kiwi internationals, more on the BRM P48 here; https://primotipo.com/2018/03/16/bourne-to-ballarat-brm-p48-part-2/

Hill missed 1962 but returned for the ’63 summer as World Champion albeit he raced the revolutionary Ferguson P99 Climax four-wheel-drive car down south rather than his championship winning BRM P57/578.

He was stiff to miss out on third place in the NZ GP (above) held at the new Pukekohe track outside Auckland, he lost his clutch at the start then the gearbox cried enough on the very last lap. Hill returned home for a break, before returning for the Australian rounds. Innes Ireland raced the car at Levin for Q5/third, Wigram last/DNF o/heating and Teretonga Q5/third.

Hill’s best in Australia was a win in a greasy preliminary at Lakeside where the car’s grip showed through. In those pre-Tasman Cup 2.5 days both New Zealand and Australia had Formula Libre as their national categories. Once Coventry Climax developed the 2.75-litre ‘Indy’ FPF for Cooper’s 1961 assault on the Indy 500 that engine became the power unit de jour in Australasian events. The FPFs fitted to the P99 were 2.5-litre units so Hill and Ireland were starting behind the eight-ball compared with Brabham, McLaren, John Surtees and Tony Maggs etc who had 2.7s. So fitted we may really have seen the potential of these exciting cars which were somewhat hamstrung when raced with 1.5-litre FPFs in F1 events, where they were less able to ‘carry the additional weight’ inherent in the additional, complex transmission and associated components. What might have been?

In 1964 Hill contested two rounds of the Tasman Cup in Australia aboard a Brabham BT4 Climax 2.5 run by the David McKay’s Scuderia Veloce. He was third at Warwick Farm and won the South Pacific Trophy at Longford, so he happily signed up again in 1965, racing a brand new Brabham BT11A Climax, Ron Tauranac’s latest Tasman challenger which was also used by Jack and Frank Gardner.

Graham opened his ’65 Tasman account as he closed 1964 with a win at Pukekohe, the NZ GP. Hill again, as became his norm, skipped the balance of the Kiwi races to have some family time, doing the Warwick Farm and Sandown Australian rounds for fifth and DNF. More about the ’65 Tasman here; https://primotipo.com/2017/11/02/levin-international-new-zealand-1965/

Hill was complimentary about the preparation of his car by Bob Atkin and Spencer Martin, Martin raced this same chassis to Australian Gold Star championship wins in 1966 and 1967.

BRM returned to Australasia in 1966, figuring that their just obsolete F1 P261s, their P60 V8 engines bored from 1.5-1.9-litres would do the trick, and so it proved. Graham above at Pukekohe, where he won the NZ GP on the January 8 weekend.

In fact the series was a BRM rout, the team won seven of the eight rounds, Jackie Stewart – then an F1 newbee but with the 65′ Italian GP win under his belt – took four victories, Hill two, and Richard Attwood one at Levin, he stood in for Graham there and in the following race at Wigram. The BRM P261 Tasman story is contained here; https://primotipo.com/2020/02/22/1966-australian-grand-prix-lakeside/

The interesting shot above shows the BRMs arriving for scrutineering before the series opener at Pukekohe in January 1966. It’s at Grey Lynn near the Auckland City car testing station

In 1967 and 1968 Graham missed the NZ Tasman rounds in their entirety. He decamped from BRM to Lotus at the end of 1966 in a timely move which neatly matched the arrival of the ’67 Lotus 49 Ford DFV V8, another machine which set the trend for a couple of decades.

While Jackie Stewart gave him a good run for his money at BRM, Graham jumped from the fat into the flames with Jim Clark as his Lotus teammate. Clark easily won the ’67 Tasman with a 2-litre Climax FWMV V8 powered Lotus 33 F1 chassis, and in 1968, his F1 Lotus 49 powered by the 2.5-litre Cosworth, the DFW. Graham did only the Warwick Farm Tasman round in ’67, where he raced a new Lotus 48 Ford FVA F2 car in an expensive exercise for the WF promoter, the Australian Automobile Racing Club. Again he enjoyed a holiday at home in early 1968, then did the four Australian rounds, with his bests, second to Clark at Surfers Paradise and Warwick Farm.

Hill aboard his Gold Leaf Team Lotus, Lotus 49B Ford DFW on his way to second place at Teretonga in 1969, and below in earnest conversation with a mechanic during the Puke first Tasman round.

Hill arrived down south as the freshly minted World Champion after a season in which his brave leadership helped Team Lotus gather themselves together after the tragic death of Jim Clark in a Hockenheim F2 race on April 7.

It wasn’t to be a cushy summer though, Jochen Rindt was a man on a mission with a competitive F1 (and Tasman) car for the first time. His Lotus 49B Ford set the pace, winning two rounds to the four scored by Chris Amon in a title winning run of speed and consistency in a Ferrari Dino 246T.

Graham didn’t take a victory that summer, his bests were second places to Rindt at Wigram and at Teretonga behind Piers Courage in Frank Williams’ Brabham BT24 Ford DFW. More about the Lotus 49Bs in Australasia that summer here; https://primotipo.com/2022/02/26/lotus-49b-ford-chassis-r8/

The change in Tasman formula to F5000 (1970-71 transition years noted) and the growing number of F1 races in a season put paid to trips by full-time F1 drivers for a couple of months after Christmas each year. It was awfully sweet while it lasted, with Hill G one of the most popular visitors of all with the punters.

Credits…

Euan Sarginson, LAT, Ken Buckley, Brian Ferrabee, Milan Fistonic, Bryn Kempthorne, Brian Spurr, Warner Collins, John Lawton

Tailpiece…

Graham Hill preparing to load up at Wigram on January 18, 1969. Jochen won from Graham that day with local hero Chris Amon third, Piers Courage and Derek Bell fourth and fifth, demonstrating the typical depth of Tasman Cup fields.

Finito…