CARS AT SPEED - Grand Prix's Golden Age

by Daley, Robert

  First, the circuit was strange. Only one or two had ever raced there before; this was only the second world-championship Grand Prix of Portugal, and the first had been held 216 miles away at Oporto.

  Second, the circuit, three and a half miles per lap, lapped at about 95 miles an hour, appeared quite dangerous. It is basically a triangle. The first, or pit side, plunges precipitously downhill into a hairpin bend, where it joins an autostrada. This autostrada forms the second side; it is flat and straight uphill, then levels off, turns, and enters a sort of narrow canyon between bare stone cliffs. After the cliffs, the cars race down a dark corridor of trees.

  The third and longest side of the triangle is level but very tortuous, the road running along a shelf. Below the shelf, meadows fall steeply toward the city itself, and there are magnificent views of the Tagus River and Lisbon harbor, studded with sails. However, it is a view that a driver, scrambling around bend after bend, has no time to enjoy. If he loses control he will slide sideways off the shelf. The car will then tumble hundreds of yards downhill, with the driver facing small chance of survival.

  Speaking of the circuit, Phil Hill said: "It is so twisty that if someone so much as spits on it there will be a skid and an accident--and there is always oil on the road at some time during a race."

  Many circuits are tortuous, but on some a driver can spin off the road without hitting anything. This is particularly true in Britain and America, which have pioneered the so-called "safe" circuits, many of them former airports. But in the hills above Lisbon, an erratic driver is likely to smack a tree or concrete telephone pole, or ram a stone cliff, or roll downhill off the shelf.

  (Only Trintignant claimed the circuit suited him fine. "This is the way road racing was before the 'safe' circuits," he declared, "and we didn't have as many accidents then as now." According to Trintignant, "safe" circuits make a driver careless; the Lisbon circuit is so obviously dangerous that no driver would attempt to maintain impossible speeds.)

  The men also did not like having to drive the longest, trickiest leg of the triangular circuit directly into the setting sun. For on the Iberian Peninsula, one lunches between two and four p.m. and dines between ten and midnight. And one holds 211-mile automobile races between five and seven-thirty when the sun, swollen and red, sits wedged among the hills, blinding the drivers on half a dozen of the most dangerous corners.

  "Terrible," remarked Moss. "You can barely see the other cars, much less something like oil on the road."

  Also, the crash that had snuffed out the life of Jean Behra was still fresh in their minds--barely three weeks had passed-and the inherent danger of the Lisbon circuit had been proved during the Friday practice. A Portuguese amateur training for a preliminary race had hit a tree. The man was in convulsions from a fractured skull when removed from the wreck and was operated on that night. Meanwhile, his car was left lodged against the tree while the Grand Prix drivers practiced—to have removed it would have delayed practice too long, officials explained.

  And finally there was another Portuguese amateur entered in the Grand Prix race itself, one Mario de Araujo Cabral, who had never in his life driven a Grand Prix car. It was taking him 16 seconds a lap longer to get round than Moss, which meant that he was liable to be blocking any of the blind turns that following cars might enter fast enough to bash him.

  Because of this combination of circumstances, the drivers were reacting to their trade emotionally for a change, rather than intellectually.

  The 1959 Grand Prix was a strange one. Moss, who was apparently not bothered, lapped every other car and won by more than five miles. Phil Hill, who was nervous, crashed into Graham Hill's Lotus in a blind turn, wrecking both cars. The impact batted the Lotus off the road. Phil Hill, thrown nose first into his steering wheel, bloody and groggy, jammed his gear lever into first and coaxed the wrecked, sputtering Ferrari off the road before another car came round.

  For a while Brabham chased Moss more or less closely. Then he came up behind "that bloody Portugee." Brabham trailed the local amateur a long time, wondering where to pass. "I thought he saw me in his mirror, knew I was there." But when Brabham finally decided to pass, the Portuguese swerved wide and "shunted me off the road."

  Brabham paid heavily for his indecision. Out of control, his car rocketed on, whacked a concrete telephone pole, and knocked it down. By then Brabham had been thrown out. He lay in the road and Masten Gregory, racing round the same blind curve, nearly ran over him. Gregory screeched and skidded to a stop inches from the dazed, badly hurt Brabham. The noise, the sight of Gregory's quivering Cooper, seemed to wake Brabham up and he managed to crawl off the road. He was hospitalized with severe cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

  The wires and telephone pole that Brabham's car had dropped into the road were cleared away. The race went on.

  Moss circulated as fast as ever, so far in front he could let up in the dangerous places and pass slower cars whenever and wherever he chose.

  The rest of the pack dropped farther and farther back, noticing the three wrecked cars each time round, wondering if the men who had driven them were badly hurt or dead. Probably Tony Brooks was spooked worst of all. He finished 9th out of 10, beating only the Portuguese amateur, Cabral. Even the two BRMs and two Aston Martins beat him; and Dan Gurney in the other surviving Ferrari was third.

  Still, no one did get killed and the next Grand Prix on the calendar (run three weeks later) was normal in every way. Very likely, when the next Grand Prix of Portugal is run at Lisbon the drivers will be used to its unique hazards, and will regard it not only unemotionally, but with the same intellectual calm with which they treat the whole dangerous business of driving fast.

  There are two courses over which the Grand Prix of Portugal is run. The other is at Oporto, 216 miles north, a seaside resort and the birthplace of port wine. The 1958 and 1960 Grands Prix held there drew enormous, enthusiastic crowds, estimates running as high as 100,000. Crowds in the hills above Lisbon in 1959 were quiet, orderly, and, by my own estimate, numbered only about 30,000. Perhaps this means that Oporto will eventually replace Lisbon altogether as a Grand Prix site. But for the time being the two cities will alternate.

  The two circuits are alike in many ways. That at Oporto is slightly longer (4.6 miles to 3.5), faster (109 miles per hour to 95) and is roughly rectangular rather than triangular. But its hazards are similar. Indeed, nearly every solid object that it is possible for a motorist to hit is to be found on the Oporto circuit, which is composed of normally public streets in an undeveloped neighborhood on the northern edge of the city.

  The circuit is edged by low and high stone walls, by buildings, by trees. There are rows of lampposts, rows of telephone poles, and rows of poles supporting trolley wires. There are head-high concrete traffic signs and there are nice solid mailboxes.

  Three times the circuit turns 90 degrees left, crossing trolley tracks. Trolley tracks can cause trouble at 25 miles an hour, as every motorist knows. But Grand Prix cars cross these tracks at closer to 80.

  Furthermore, two of these corners have reverse camber. At all three the road surface is slick, bumpy cobblestone.

  The circuit begins along the oceanfront. The pits are here. Below and behind them, the Atlantic batters at a short sand beach, studded with giant rocks. Opposite the pits, there is a great vacant lot in which fishermen have spread nets over poles to dry.

  Usually there are half a dozen ox-drawn carts standing about in the lot, the carts piled high with nets, many fishermen squatting atop the pile, watching the fast cars go by. They are barefoot, shabbily dressed men. Below them their women squat on the ground, fingers busy mending other nets.

  A hundred yards beyond the pits, the track crosses a wide square and some trolley tracks and funnels into a two-lane, uphill street. This is a 1.2-mile-long straight and its surface is cobblestone all the way.

  For part of the way it runs by small cornfields, then past a row of villas behind white walls. At the end of the straight th
ere is another lefthander across more trolley tracks. The cars enter a street six lanes wide, with trolley tracks near the curbs on both sides. This also is a straight, but is only half a mile long.

  At the end of it there is a third left-hander and the road—smooth macadam now—runs down a residential street, the two-story houses wall to wall behind very narrow sidewalks, their upper windows packed with spectators.

  Then the circuit begins to wind downhill through a park that is virtually a pine forest. The winding goes on for two miles, the road headed vaguely back toward the sea. Some of the curves are sharp, some very fast. At last, the cars race across more trolley tracks, sweep 90 degrees left and regain the seafront. The surface here is cobblestone again, and there are a few hundred yards of straight before the cars pass the pits and begin a second lap.

  The Grand Prix at Oporto usually is 55 laps, 255 miles, and the race lasts about two hours and twenty minutes. It was at Oporto in August 1960, that Jack Brabham won his fifth straight Grand Prix of the season, and so clinched his second world championship.

  He won this race smoothly, neatly, and without any drama whatsoever, just as he had won all the others. He is a quiet man. His smile is warm, but he does not have much to say. He does not smoke, drink, carouse, or throw his weight around. Some of his critics like to claim that he is the only man in the world who can drive a Grand Prix race car without making any noise.

  He had got a terrible start. The wheels of the car ahead had sprayed back dirt and stones that hit him in the face. Cut, bleeding, and unable to see, he lifted his foot. For many laps he was unnerved, running in eighth place. First Dan Gurney led in a B.R.M., then John Surtees, the motorcycle champion, in a Lotus.

  Brabham began to move quietly closer to the leaders. Other cars dropped out. Brabham soon was third behind Surtees and the Ferrari of Phil Hill. Once he passed Hill, but when Hill insisted, Brabham let him go by again. Brabham seemed to know that the Ferrari could not hold the pace, that Surtees, too, would fold, that he need only wait for victory to be handed to him.

  So he waited. Hill's clutch eventually broke. Surtees' gas tank sprang a leak. At the three-quarter mark Brabham moved quietly into first place, nearly a minute ahead of his teammate and protégé, Bruce McLaren, in a second Cooper. The race ended that way.

  The year before Brabham had won only two races, and it was widely felt that he had sneaked into the championship. In 1960, there was no question of sneaking. But the 34-year-old Australian still was not accepted as a great champion. For one thing, the Cooper was easily the best car in the business, faster on the straights, neater in the corners. Furthermore, in the seven championship races up to and including the Oporto race, the two factory Coopers had broken down only once each.

  All other drivers admit that Brabham is one of the best half-dozen drivers, but rate at least Moss and Hill ahead of him. But Moss missed three 1960 races due to injury, and Hill had a dog of a car. So Brabham won without competition.

  Brabham grew up in Sydney, the son of a grocer, and quit school at 15 to work as a mechanic. He began racing on dirt tracks at 20, and on road circuits at 26. He first went to England in 1955, and caught on with the Cooper factory. He was no wonder driver then, but John Cooper considered him the best diagnostician of mechanical flaws of any man capable of driving a car at racing speed. Brabham drove Coopers quietly for three seasons. His few sorties in other cars were mostly flops. In 1958, he co-drove an Aston Martin sports car with Moss in the Nurburgring 1,000 kilometers. Moss drove 38 laps, Brabham 7. Once Brabham even dissipated a big Moss lead. The car won, thanks to Moss.

  Meanwhile, Brabham and John Cooper were putting together the Cooper that was to win five of eight Grands Prix in 1959, and six of eight in 1960. Brabham tinkered and tested seven days a week for months and months, adding vital improvements one by one until, finally, the present Cooper emerged.

  His driving still was sloppy. Other drivers spoke contemptuously of the way Brabham "dirt-tracked" his car around corners, sliding it rather than steering it. "The Cooper is fantastic," Phil Hill said once. "You can do anything with it and still recover. It doesn't penalize Brabham's mistakes."

  But in 1960 Brabham's technique had smoothed considerably, and he reverted to dirt-track methods only occasionally, as when dueling with Hill at Reims. He also began to get a little mean on the circuits, as if he now felt that, as champion, he had certain rights. He was not above blocking other cars from passing him, when he felt like it.

  Outwardly he changed little. He still disliked wearing formal clothes or making speeches. He never read anything except motor-racing magazines, rarely went out, was not interested in clothes, fancy food, or foreign lands. He liked to play with his eight-year-old son. He talked about quitting racing in a few years. His ambition was to build a Grand Prix race car himself—from the ground up. He had had only one crash, at Lisbon in 1959. He never seemed to worry about crashing.

  Meanwhile, his wife, Betty, looking drawn and haggard, watched every race. "Look at me," she said at Oporto, just before Jack won his second world title, "my hair's a mess, I'm badly dressed, I've lost weight, I'm a nervous wreck. What I need is a four-month rest. Four months of not having to worry about Jack's life."

  There is more to driving race cars than holding your foot down. Brabham has more mechanical knowledge than most of the other drivers, works harder at preparing his car, and has a feeling for what kind of treatment the car will stand in a race. He also drives fast enough. That he has no flair whatsoever seems beside the point. There is no question that in 1960 he won the driver's world championship hands down.

  The Grand Prix of Portugal is usually held about August 15, between the German and Italian races. Portugal is a rarely visited part of Europe, a country with no economic, military, or even tourism impact on the rest of the continent. There is nothing much there, and few of the drivers have visited the place more than once or twice. The drivers are therefore likely to feel uncomfortable in Portugal, which is different from the rest of Europe. A strange enough place. Strange customs, strange language, strange circuit. And a driver who does not feel sure of himself is a driver who will not race very tenaciously.

  Therefore, in Portugal you probably will see odd races, rather than exciting ones, probably with one driver or another winning by a huge margin. Many cars will spin out, shunt, or crash—five in 1958, five in 1959, five in 1960—but with luck no one will be seriously hurt. The drivers are likely to feel great relief when the race is over, for from there they go on to Monza, which is a place they understand.

  Personally, I like watching the Grand Prix of Portugal.

  The races could be tighter, and I would appreciate a public-address announcer who spoke some other language besides Portuguese. At many European circuits the announcements are given in only one language, but if you don't happen to speak, say, German, there is always someone who does, and can translate for you. But there is no one among the journalists, drivers, mechanics, team managers, etc., who speaks Portuguese. Thus announcements, programs, mimeographed handouts, etc., are useless, frustrating, even a little infuriating.

  But the scenery of the circuits is exciting. So are the elaborate, medieval costumes of the police. So, particularly, is the road course itself, the tram tracks it crosses, the reverse camber on cobblestones of a 90-degree bend. A man can stand at such a turn and watch the cars skitter round it at 80 or 90 miles an hour and be filled with admiration for the road-holding of the cars and the skill of the drivers--if I tried to take such a bend at 35 miles per hour in my car, I would go off the road.

  This, to me, is what road racing is all about, what Monza, Silverstone, and Sebring miss so utterly. The circuit, if there is to be any excitement at all, must be composed of normal roads. A man must be able to imagine taking those bends himself at such speeds. There must be solid objects to hit if the driver miscalculates. Otherwise, what he is doing bears no resemblance whatever to what you and I do, hurrying over roads from one town to another. Otherwi
se, any man could drive as fast as he with a little practice--it does not seem to demand special courage or nerve. Otherwise, there is no control to be admired, just speed, and we would all be better off watching airplanes whiz by—they go even faster.

  For what we admire in a motor race is the beauty and genius built into the car, and the driver controlling both his own nerves and a machine that is basically skittish. Symbolically, you are watching and admiring man trying to cope with the demons he himself has created.

  Take away danger and you remove any need for control, for a driver. You leave yourself only the machine, which is not only inert by itself, but is not even beautiful when divorced from the function for which it was designed. The machine, without man fighting to control it, is nothing. But there can be no valid fight for control unless there are sanctions for loss of control. Motor racing without danger would reduce itself to a boys' game, played at by grown men, the whole thing, when you come right down to it, a bit silly.

  The Grand Prix at Lisbon or Oporto also is interesting because it gives point to a visit to Portugal, a country where you can drink green wine, wine that is dry, faintly tart and neither red, white, nor rose, but green; where you can stand beside the Tagus in the afternoon sun and watch people digging in the slime and mudbanks exposed by the retreating tide for clams or mussels or other such treasures; where you pass vacant lots (in Oporto) in which barefoot workers have dug down to bedrock and now are chopping out blocks of granite not with machines but with hammer and chisel; where, as soon as the practice is over and the streets reopened, women hurry by balancing baskets of produce on their heads, barefoot but carrying their shoes proudly on top of their burdens, possibly saving the shoe leather to use on their own time; where you ride in taxis powered by cheaper-to-run diesel engines that are sluggish, that chug slowly uphill, then coast down the other side to save even so cheap a fuel as diesel oil.